Bottom line, the 1989 film presents early climate change warnings including the solutions. Today, we still face too much GHGs, plus tipping points are closer.
JCMsays
Lovelock defies his own philosophical viewpoint with bizarre dissonant inconsistencies in that piece. It seemed to be going so well, then BAM! totally off the rails.
Russell: “Though it may be interesting to see if Tucker Carlson’s departure has any cautionary effect on cable TV climate coverage”
Only to the extent: DON’T YOUR EVER leave a paper/email trail that you KNOW that the lies you feed your audience are lies. This could cost your employer a heavy change as it blows its plausible deniability defense that they only reported things they believed may possibly be true. That’s in case, if the original line of defense that no reasonable person should assume that your program on a “News” network is about … news, and not entertainment fiction..
Ray Ladburysays
Dude, Faux News has actually used the argument that lying is protected free speech as a defense in a lawsuit. They paid 785 million $$ so they didn’t have to admit publicly that they were lying. And their audience is waiting to lap up whatever new lies come their way. The only threat to Faux News’s business model is not lying enough to please their most rabid base.
Piotrsays
Huh? Nobody discussed whether Fox lies to its base or not, “Dude”. And if they ONLY LIED , they would have got off scot-free on the protected free speech defense. Therefore:
“ Dominion had to prove that Fox News hosts KNOWINGLY disseminated falsehoods to their viewers. To do so – they “subpoenaed extensive internal text messages and emails” from Fox. And because Dominion found in the emails the PROOF that they KNEW it were lies – Fox had to settle. Hence the lesson to Fox is precisely as I said:
“ DON’T YOUR EVER leave a paper/email trail that you KNOW that the lies you feed your audience are lies., Dude.
Ray Ladburysays
Oh yes, there is documented evidence up the kazoo, but the point is they don’t have to admit it to their viewers on the air. The evidence doesn’t matter if nobody looks at it. And burying it under a big pile of money is one way to hide it.
Piotrsays
RL: “ but the point is they don’t have to admit it to their viewers on the air.”
This may be “ the point ” in your discussion with ….yourself, In the discussion
you barged in with you patronizing tone (“Dude”) – we talked about ,,, a very different point – namely Russel’s:
“it may be interesting to see if Tucker Carlson’s departure has any cautionary effect on cable TV climate coverage”
To which I replied that it WON’T stop them from lying, merely will teach them not to
“leave a paper/email trail that you KNOW that the lies you feed your audience are lies?
And even that may be optimistic – Fox was made to pay because it was sued by a party
that could prove an obvious injury – Dominion company whose reputation was attacked, thus causing _calculable_ financial harm to the prospects of their future sales.
In contrast – who would claim to be the party that should get compensated for the lies on climate change? And good luck in trying to certify in the US courts a class action suit on the behalf of .. all humans, today and in the future, who have been, or will be, negatively affected by the climate change,
Ray Ladburysays
And my point is that the paper trail or the “cloud-storage trail” doesn’t matter if the rubes who support Faux News don’t look at it. $785 mil. is nothing to Rupert. It just means he might have to take one less yacht trip this year.
Piotrsays
Ray Ladbury 10 MAY: “And my point is that the paper trail or the “cloud-storage trail” doesn’t matter if the rubes who support Faux News don’t look at it.”
My argument you comment ” wasn’t about your “rubes who watch Fox” – because NOTHING can change their mind about Fox (well, other than Fox switching to support Democrats) – it was about the lesson Fox crew will get – don’t leave the email/paper trial for the COURTS, because this is the ONLY place where Fox can be hurt – even if Murdoch can afford “$785 MILLION” for the settlement – it does not mean that having the choice – to KEEP these 3/4 of a $ BIllion or to pay it to the very company his Fox accused of helping Democrats, he would say – I don’t really care one way or another.
Ray Ladburysays
Piotr,
Sorry to have intruded. I assure you that I do not find the prospect of engaging with you sufficiently rewarding to justify putting up with abuse.
Another commenter whose comments I can pass by without reading.
Mr. Know It Allsays
Before the 2020 election, Democrats didn’t think too highly of Dominion:
Everybody knows that Biden, unable to utter 3 coherent words in a row, hiding in his basement, unable to fill a phone booth with supporters, won fair and square. Uh huh. Right.
KIA: Everybody knows that Biden, unable to utter 3 coherent words in a row, hiding in his basement, unable to fill a phone booth with supporters, won fair and square. Uh huh. Right.
BPL: 1. Your characterization of Biden is stupid, wrong, and offensive. 2. 2020 was the fairest and most carefully watched national election in US history. All attempts to challenge it failed miserably to produce any evidence, as shown by 61 unsuccessful lawsuits, many of them decided by Trump-appointed judges. Believing the lie that the 2020 election was stolen is on a par with believing aliens built the pyramids–strictly for brainwashed dupes and conspiracy-theory idiots.
Ray Ladburysays
Mr. KIA,
The enemy of my enemy…or in this case, the enemy to the enemies of democracy–foreign or domestic..
Piotrsays
Ray Ladbury’s farewell post on May14:
So let me get it right, Ray – you joined in to comment my post. lectured me in a patronizing manner (“Dude”) on issues that … were not discussed, and when I respond to your comments asking how they are relevant to the discussion at hand – you … portray yourself as a …victim of “abuse” and proudly declare walking away:
“ I do not find the prospect of engaging with you sufficiently rewarding to justify putting up with abuse
Well, it will be hard (muffled sound of swallowed tears), but I will have to learn to live without the benefit your enlightening guidance.
The Gaia Hypothesis hasn’t stood up well to time. Someone even published a book about a countervailing “Medea Hypothesis,” in which Earth repeatedly tries to kill all life. Both are, as popularly misused, personifying abstracts.
There are stabilizing feedbacks in the climate system that usually keep Earth habitable. That’s all that can be said for the Gaia Hypothesis. The idea that life stabilizes things doesn’t have much evidence for it these days.
jgnfldsays
I subscribe to a “proteins are always trying to make more proteins like themselves and die out when they cannot for whatever reason” hypothesis, personally. It kinda’ melds Gaia and Medea.
Piotrsays
jgnfld: “I subscribe to a “proteins are always trying to make more proteins like themselves and die out when they cannot for whatever reason” hypothesis”
Unless you mean prions, shouldn’t this read: DNA?
jgnfldsays
Which came first, the proteins or the nucleic acids? I don’t know nor does anyone else for sure. I lean more to the protein first side for reasons of parsimony which is why I said what I said…(but mainly I’m agnostic in any absolute sense).
Piotrsays
jgnfld says “Which came first, the proteins or the nucleic acids?”
Irrelevant to your own claim – there is no KNOWN mechanism for PROTEINS “ to make more like themselves“. Even prions re-fold of the proteins synthesized based on specific DNA.
There is one known process of “ to make more like themselves” used by ALL KNOWN LIFE, and even by non-life (viruses) – applies to nucleic acids – so DNA (or in case of some viruses – RNA).
The debate over the chemical basis of heredity was settled 80 years ago so there is no need to relitigate it.
jgnfldsays
Waayyy off topic and mods should free to moderate or stick in bore hole/crankshaft…
I am pretty sure there is no evidence in the scientific record that proto-nucleic acids (in the form of primitive ribozymes) first arose that could form proteins any more than there is evidence that proto-proteins (in the form of primitive enzymes) could form nucleic acids.
Piotrsays
jgnfld I am pretty sure there is no evidence in the scientific record that proto-nucleic acids”
Nor is there evidence to the contrary – hence a subject about which we don’t know anything one way or another – can’t be a basis of falsifiable claims. Everything that has happened since and is happening today – can. And in that – it is the DNA, not PROTEINS, that “make more like themselves”. That’s why Dawkins chose: “The Selfish Gene“, over: “The Selfish Protein“.
Chuck Hughessays
jgnfld says “Which came first, the proteins or the nucleic acids?”
“That`s all that can be said for the Gaia hypothesis”
Avoid teaching 0f things that you know less about MJr.Levenson, and watch your grammar
James Lovelock would have been just another new age freak if it had not been his delivery of a series of analytic instrumental designs and inventions apparently above Levenson in the grades.
A next critical point and hot potatoe is that the Gaia-hypothesis re- cycles and re- vitalizes the old and falsified theory and philosophy of VITALISM . that played a philosophical role up to about 1860.. That was substituted by the less spiritualistic and pan- theistic conscept of “bio….” in order to save the ruins of a chosmology that is different from dry desert dust mechanical random walk “newtonian” or “classical” physics, milled and served by bolzmann statistics and confidence.
It is a fameous history about animal and eve plant soul and intelligence. Where soul and intelligence are no well formed formulas in classical physics.
A next very tense situation and hot potatoe is that, Lovelocks Gaia- theory re- cycles the fameous world championchip of heavyweight mud wrestling between Thomas Huxley, known as Darwins Bulldog. And his opponent the just as heavy and weighty Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, better known as “Soapy Sam” . professor of theology in Cambridge. About ” blind evolution” vs Intelligent design and Gods allmighty creation and further surveillance and finger into it.
No wonder it can becone tense then.
It erases and deletes the state- religion of the very DDR, the worlds first ateistic state with is faculty ofr absolute systematics on environmental affairs, the Arbeiter und Bauernfakultät in Greifswald.
Puttlers position, I don`t know . He has been seen both wrestling and going to church but I hardly believe that they are allowed to be evangelicals protestants and spiritualists under Patriarch KIirill to Moskva.
But we should notice that Pope Franciscus, who is rather a Jesuit, has taken a Hans Joachim Schellnhuber into his Pontifica Academia Scientiarum.
H.J. Schellnhuber is known to have been inspired by and worked directly along with Lovelocks ideas, to became a pioneer and leading author of the first IPCC conscepts.
So, better brush up your beliefs here, Levenson.
It is not for nothing that the dia- lectic materialists and surrealists labels the CO2-AGW theory by their fameous operational word “religion!” that to them means un- scientific, EX-COMMUNICATED for lifetime.
The Gaia- theory is clearly neo- religious from the second half of the 20ietyh century, and so is also the Tyndall Arrhenius Revelle Hansen Brundtloand Schellnhuber Gore Greta- theory.
As they sleep together and go hand in hand. they should go to confession and get orderly married then.
Piotrsays
In a “deliberate” manner – doesn’t, but I don’t think it ever had. But inadvertent way:
– the original insight of Lovelock et al. – about the DMS produced by algae increasing albedo over the oceans , keeping the Earth cooler than it would have been otherwise
– on a geological time-scale – where the increasing solar radiation input (mainly due to the increase in the size of the solar disc) has been countered by biological reduction of atmospheric CH4 and CO2
I believe still hold.
So is the fact that more diverse ecosystems tends to be more stable. And at a higher level of generalization – life depends on negative feedbacks, and those are critical to “stabilizing things”, both inside of organisms AND outside of them.
Chuck Hughessays
BPL: Someone even published a book about a countervailing “Medea Hypothesis,” in which Earth repeatedly tries to kill all life. Both are, as popularly misused, personifying abstracts.
“The idea that life stabilizes things doesn`t have much evidence for it in those days”
Well, if you believe in God, and take Prolog im Himmel Goethe Faust 1 and the initial book of Genesis for serious, you may better understand., but the Levensons cannot even read and believe in the scriptures. They only believe in their “elderlies”
Mephisto: “Denn, alles was ensteht, ist wert dass es zugrunde geht!” SANN!
Saturnus you see, the mushroms and the re- cyclings,…
Moral:
Dia- lectic materialism, flat earthing, desert walking, and blind belief in the scritures you see, is helpless in the climate.
How often do I have to make Levenson aware of that?.
UAH TLT has reported for April with an anomaly of +0.18ºC, a little down on March’s +0.20ºC anomaly but a long way up on chilly January (-0.04ºC) and February (+0.08ºC).
April 2023 is the =8th warmest in the UAH TLT record, behind top-spot El Niño years 1998 (+0.62ºC) & 2016 (+0.61ºC), and 2019 (+0.32ºC), 2020, 2022, 2005, 2010, while equalling 2017.
April 2023 is =83rd in the all-month UAH TLT ranking.
As a start-of-year, 2023 Jan-Apr is =11th warmest, up from the 15th spot of Jan-March and with a href=”https://iri.columbia.edu/our-expertise/climate/forecasts/enso/current/”>the predicted El Niño due to kick in soon, 2023 will likely be seeing further such climbs up the rankings as the year progresses.
…….. Jan-Apr Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.59ºC … … … +0.39ºC … … … 1st
1998 .. +0.45ºC … … … +0.35ºC … … … 3rd
2020 .. +0.41ºC … … … +0.36ºC … … … 2nd
2010 .. +0.31ºC … … … +0.19ºC … … … 6th
2019 .. +0.25ºC … … … +0.30ºC … … … 4th
2017 .. +0.23ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 5th
2018 .. +0.12ºC … … … +0.09ºC … … … 10th
2007 .. +0.12ºC … … … +0.02ºC … … … 15th
2002 .. +0.11ºC … … … +0.08ºC … … … 11th
2022 .. +0.11ºC … … … +0.17ºC … … … 7th
2005 .. +0.11ºC … … … +0.06ºC … … … 12th
2023 .. +0.11ºC
2004 .. +0.10ºC … … … -0.05ºC … … … 20th
2003 .. +0.09ºC … … … +0.05ºC … … … 13th
2021 .. +0.07ºC … … … +0.13ºC … … … 9th
2015 .. +0.06ºC … … … +0.14ºC … … … 8th
Let’s look at the denialist playbook. Nearly every denialist who comes on here follows it:
1) Start with a statistic that is inherently noisy and/or uncertain–surface temperature is a good one, as it varies considerably over time on many different timescales and there are many factors that affect the reading.
2) Find a time period where it is particularly noisy. Make the period as long as possible by ignoring segments where it agrees with predictions
3) Pull a straw-man theory out our our posterior and tell people this is what “theory” predicts.
4) Claim evidence contradicts theory
5) Profit.
Of course the entire approach is horse puckey. For every statistic where there is a seeming discrepancy, there are 10 or more that show the trend. Atmospheric temperature varies with a variety of inputs, but ocean temperature (over it’s entire depth) increases monotonically. And given that the oceans contain ~300x as much mass as the atmosphere, the conclusion any reasonable person would come to is “Oh, atmospheric temperature is noisy.”
The fact is that there is a lot of energy going into the climate system–enough energy to warm an entire planet. Where is all that energy coming from? Climate science has an answer–anthropogenic greenhouse gasses. The denialists got nothin’.
jgnfldsays
Wrong…they’ve got solid propaganda techniques behind them. Your steps 1-5 are right out of Chapter 1 of any serious textbook analysis of propaganda methodology. Factoids out of context and “truthy” non-facts are not data, but propagandists try to make them seem so by presenting them with a serious and somewhat breathless way. Then they play sad, hurt little puppies when they get “personally attacked”…poo’ widdle little innocent things they are.
We see this here all the time with our resident propagandists and all the time in political media on line and on cable as well. Oh…and also sci-fi awards where the _actual_ majority now appears to be ruling now that they’ve actively fought the extremists rather than tying to ignore them like they tried at first
THAT is why “don’t feed the trolls” is not always the best advice. Committed propagandists aren’t trolling (only) for adolescent kicks. They’re plying their trade for money and/or power. And that is why propagandists need either to be moderated (which is presently not happening here) or strongly challenged. They won’t go away. And the trouble with authoritarians is they only need to win once. Then they own the tools.
Anyone who cannot see the harm that is created when propagandists are given free, unchallenged rein is not very observant of the world around them these days.
zebrasays
Wrong. You guys just can’t admit that they have won by creating the “framing” in which you participate.
Back when Creationism was being pushed as a way to motivate the R base, they would say “teach the controversy”. But the correct answer to that was: There is no controversy!
So here we are again, and all the people responding to Victor and the Vapor Folk are contributing to the illusion that there is a scientific discussion going on. “See how the brave Galileo is holding his own against all those establishment elitists!”
You just can’t admit that you are as addicted to responding as they are to getting you to respond.
Your use of the Chat thing was interesting, if imperfect, but it illustrates the point. There is a simple answer, which is to have one statement that describes the settled science. You don’t need the moderators; you just have to exercise self control.
jgnfldsays
Disagree.
A troll would give up if ignored. A committed propagandist does not.
Consider Fox News and other propaganda outlets in this regard. They are in it for the long term and actually prosper when ignored. A small setback is just that.
They only have to win once and all the losses get erased. Literally.. Societally, we are not all that far from that point.
zebrasays
Well, we are talking about RC, not the NYT, so I doubt we are being visited from Russian troll farms.
But I’m not sure what you “disagree” with. When I respond to people on major venues (who might really be Russian trolls) I follow that basic principle, which is to explain what the actual science is, and not get drawn into the phony framing they are trying to promote.
People here are supposed to be the teachers, and as I’ve said before, that means setting the standards for how discussions are carried out… teaching people how science actually works.
That means requiring someone like Victor to stipulate what they agree with before discussing what they are questioning. It’s like a pre-requisite; you don’t allow someone in your advanced physics class who doesn’t accept conservation of energy.
“That means requiring someone like V. to stipulate what they agree with before discussing what they are questioning.”
For stating proof and for telling truth and acheive any kind of agreement and understanding between people, there must be a minimal set of common axioms or dogmas or archetyps that are TABU, that means, not to be denied, not to be violated, not to be disputed. And you mention a fameous doctrinal axiom, the conservation of energy.
The technique of surrealism and rabulism is to erase any kind of such doctrnary agreement first even in a doctrinary way. Example:
I suddenly woke up by the sentence:
“Where there is science, there is not consensus, and where there is consensus there is not SCIENCE…..PERIOD!”
I heard that with my own ears spoken by “Dr” Richard Lindsen from the pulpit, in Domus Academica, Old festival hall, Royal Frederiks.
Then I went safely to sleep again and lost nothing.
And brought with me the consensus- book “Maqgnitudes Units and Symbols in Physics Otto Øgrims small catechism on their next surrealistic meeting.
” Here, The Consensus- book!” I told them
It was not opened!
Where I find ” the CRC handbook of chemistery and physics”The Rubber Bible on the writing desk and in then library, opened, there is science. And where that is not found, there is not science.
“One thing is for certain, nothing is for certain!”
That statement is often heard from surrealistic side in the climate dispute, and that statemkent is a false statement.
It is a common, stupidi- fying PARA DOXON- pill to be swallowed first.
Victorsays
Must be a conspiracy afoot. Time for some tinfoil hats.
Or simply a very fameous and quite sublime , organized and worshipful declared state- religion on behalf of true “science” , genosse Victor. That is calling for “Anerkennung” worldwide.
Where you are a washproof example.
That is my diagnosis of it. (Pat.Pending).
There are frapping similarities of basic beliefs and liturgies and katechisms between the Soviet academy of sciences in Ljeningrad with special deputee in Greifswald DDR Arbeiter und Bauernfakultät and the Asbestos palace , Palass der Republik behind the wall in Berlin,…..
……….and Chateau Heartland in Michigan.
They celebrate Das Kapital and the fossile fuel industies to progressive materialism both of them. rather by the same means also.
I tend to see that you are misconsceived also on this point.
I personally believe that it is bloody KADREs, Kadre soldiers to the fameous bloodgroup P, P for Pure, Pork, Party, Privileged, Pøbel, Populists…… etc etc etc etc.. that are lacking a proper nation and imperial state religion and army that can further own them and put them under strict instructions and dicipline the way they were brought up.
Consequently, they run afoot- wildly on the free market due rather to lack of a due conspiracy
I repeat, due rather to lack of a properly believeable conspiracy…
………after that big chosmopolitical cathastrophy for them in Berlin late autumn 1989 as the wall fell down.
(SIC! TRANCIT GLORIA MVNDI)
So their very upbringings, trainings, learning, lifestyle and hopes for their future careers and rents, (Vodka Kaviar and Salami for lifetime as promised by Stalin)………. became worthless.
That cathastrophic event , that according to Puttler…..
(PP again, for Puttler and Prigoshin)
……. was the biggest geopolitical one of the 20ieth century,
was a major loss of hope and meaning of life for millions and other millions in the west ………. as also in the east.
All in all, You seem to suffer rather under the lack of a conspiracy by which you can be owned and perfrorm together with your comrades with bitties over your heads.
PS
Have you ever conscidered the Wagner- group ? DS
Chuck Hughessays
DO NOT RESPOND TO VICTOR, OR THIS MONTH’S UNFORCED VARIATIONS WILL BE A WASTE OF TIME FOR EVERYONE EXCEPT VICTOR.
zebrasays
But it will not be a waste of time for the people who are addicted to either responding to Victor, or, filling up the page with their own comments whatever the topic. That’s what it means to be an addict.
Ray Ladburysays
Oh, it’ll wast Weaktor’s time as well, but then his time isn’t worth anything.
There are amateur theories here on how to avoid and eventually fight trolls.
They were first discovered or set name on in Scandinavia, that I am representng, but it shows that trolls operate under different names and labels further worldwide. “monster” is close to the norwegian ” Troll” In Denmark the trolls are more slimy and smooth. No wonder in that flat landscape..
We have a set of stories and formulas on it.
Trolls can be both cheated and poisoned. They should hardly be ignored, due to the importance of hygiene.
There are some efficient herbal mecdicines that keeps them at distance. only by being mentioned. Such as Thymus vulgaris, and especially Artemisia vulgaris L. Then also Betula pubescens L and especially Urtica urens L.
You need no barbed wires if you can use roses with thorns and secure conditions for proper whasps nests, Vespa vulgaris L. . At sea we have firefish “Lions mane” and Strongylocentyrolus droebaciensis.
Betula & Urtica to be applied on their bottoms with pants down, and afront also if from behind is not enough. On naked skin with diapers off.
The European druide- weeds you see can work wonders and should be set on and used much more in the climate. What have we got them for?
Yes, it is obvious that they have a catechism and a thinktank on it, some kind of a “party” or a troll- factory. And this is a rather clear and consequent picture of it..
But it also takes volouteer soldiers, people who are deeply trained to organize and to go against any accute civil and transparent world order.
Nigeljsays
The heartland institute!
Barry E Finchsays
I just came across the source of that bloke’s silly +0.5 degrees /decade GMST anomaly December 2022, or a copy of it, via Gavin’s NOAA-STAR post. At https://sites.google.com/site/housman100resultstemperarypost/cited-graphs is GISTEMP LOTI plot with a +0.52 degrees /decade GMST anomaly 2013-2018 trend drawn and annotated on it. That’ll be what that lady was looking at on her computer she wouldn’t let us see in her December 2022 talk when she said she’s seeing +0.5 degrees /decade as the “current” rate. So a ridiculous 5 years trend with a large El Nino a bit past the middle. That’s the old Knappenberger-Michaels-Monckton-Cruz which I remarked then:
18 years 1 month = 217 months 1996-10 – 2014-10 = 0.0 degrees / century from Knappenberger-Michaels (Monckton) and
15 years 9 months = 189 months 1999-02 – 2014-10 = 1.2 degrees / century (the very same graph shown by Ted Cruz)
Which shows clearly that the “global warming” rate has increased in February 1999 by 1.2 degrees / 0.0 degrees = infinity rate of increase. THIS IS ALARMING, AN INFINITE WARMING INCREASE.
I don’t think this “sauce for goose, sauce for gander” method is the proper physical science method (even though I did it back then).
Barry E Finch,
The discussion which led to the graphic of 18th April 2022 you refer-to initially concerned likely projections of 2100 global temperatures. But at some point the +0.5ºC/decade was tossed into the mix, the source of such a claim being @4:50 in this video presentation. The assertion made in the video that “you can basically read it of the chart. It’s basically half a degree per decade. That is our current trajectory in terms of our current emissions” is not borne out by the “chart” which is Fig1.2 from IPCC Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5 ºC. This shows the temperature record is running at +0.17ºC/decade but also shows a SAT trace for CMIP5 model average rising at perhaps +0.35ºC/decade. No sign of any +0.5ºC/decade.
Geoff Miellsays
Barry E Finch,
Per the James Hansen et. al. pre-print paper titled Global warming in the pipeline, revised 12 Dec 2022, on page 33 includes (bold text my emphasis):
We conclude that peak aerosol climate forcing – in the first decade of this century – was of a (negative) magnitude of at least 1.5-2 W/m². We estimate that the GHG plus aerosol climate forcing during the period 1970-2010 grew +0.3 W/m² per decade (+0.45 from GHG, – 0.15 from aerosols), which produced observed warming of 0.18°C per decade. With current policies, we expect climate forcing for a few decades post-2010 to increase 0.5-0.6 W/m² per decade and produce global warming at a rate at least +0.27°C per decade. In that case, global warming should reach 1.5°C by the end of the 2020s and 2°C by 2050 (Fig. 19).
I note that Figure 19 in the Hansen et. al. pre-print shows the upper and lower edges of the yellow area are +0.36 and +0.27°C per decade warming rates.
James Hansen and colleagues at the Columbia University’s Earth Institute, in their communication August Temperature Update, a “Thank You” & Biden’s Report Card, dated 22 Sep 2022, presented some ‘predictions’ including (bold text my emphasis):
The next year, 2023, will be warmer because of the present strong planetary energy imbalance, which is driven by the factors noted above – mainly increasing greenhouse gases. Perhaps an El Nino will begin in the second half of the year, but the El Nino effect on global temperature lags by 3-4 months. So, the 2023 temperature should be higher than in 2022, rivaling the warmest years.
Finally, we suggest that 2024 is likely to be off the chart as the warmest year on record. Without inside information, that would be a dangerous prediction, but we proffer it because it is unlikely that the current La Nina will continue a fourth year. Even a little futz of an El Nino – like the tropical warming in 2018-19, which barely qualified as an El Nino – should be sufficient for record global temperature. A classical, strong El Nino in 2023-24 could push global temperature to about +1.5°C relative to the 1880-1920 mean, which is our estimate of preindustrial temperature.
The global (60°S-60°N latitude) sea surface temperature (SST) for April 26 came in at 20.98°C. The last time the SST was below 21°C was on March 22 (20.99°C). That’s 34 days at or above 21°C.
Thanks for this. I actually went to realclimate.org to see if there might be a post discussing the Hansen preprint you mention. As a “lay person” in terms of climate, I was interested to here the response from other scientists: I wish I could see what the paper’s reviewers are saying…
Geoff Miellsays
Michael Smith,
I think it would be foolish to bet that Hansen & colleagues are significantly wrong on this issue.
There is nothing I’ve seen/heard so far in the mainstream media reporting about the Hansen et. al. pre-print paper.
The Guardian published an article on 17 Jan 2023 by Damian Carrington headlined Warning of unprecedented heatwaves as El Niño set to return in 2023. It included:
Prof James Hansen, at Columbia University, in New York, and colleagues said recently: “We suggest that 2024 is likely to be off the chart as the warmest year on record. It is unlikely that the current La Niña will continue a fourth year. Even a little futz of an El Niño should be sufficient for record global temperature.” Declining air pollution in China, which blocks the sun, was also increasing heating, he said.
Hansen & colleagues included in their communication (dated 22 Sep 2022), linked in The Guardian article – but you have to go look for it yourself – contained Fig. 3. Global surface temperature relative to 1880-1920 mean. The graph included global mean surface temperature ‘predictions’ for years 2022, 2023 & 2024.
But it seems to me there is some information Damian Carrington (or perhaps his editor) didn’t wish to highlight – no mention of the Hansen et. al. pre-print paper.
I’d be interested to see the gist of the second paper that Hansen & colleagues alluded to working on in their communication titled Global Warming in the Pipeline, dated 13 Dec 2022:
One merit of arXiv is that it permits discussion with the scientific community (in addition to official reviewers) analogous to but less formal than the procedure used by journals with a “Discussion” publication phase. Thus, we invite criticism of the submitted paper. We do not invite media discussion; we will write a summary appropriate for the public at the time a final version of the paper is published. This approach allows time to work on a second paper. Also, now that it’s clear what President Biden is willing to do (and not do) about climate change, it’s time for JEH to finally finish Sophie’s Planet.
Thanks! Yeah, it’s the “in the pipeline” paper I was hoping to have other experts give an opinion on… I am probably really misunderstanding – but the gist seems to be there’s a discrepancy between the current GCM sensitivity estimates and the estimates from looking at the response in the paleo-record? (possibly due to clouds and aerosols?) — but it seems like a quite a big discerpancy?
“The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) stated that there is high confidence that ECS is within the range of 2.5 °C to 4 °C, with a best estimate of 3 °C.[33]”
vs
“Eventual climate response to this forcing, including slow feedbacks, is ~10°C (Fig. 1).”
Is the difference due to slightly different meanings of “ECS” ? Maybe does the IPCC estimate keep pollution aerosols, and so reduce the ECS value? What do we need to do to the models to make them match? What empirical experiment can we do to falsify one of these hypotheses?
Thanks again for your comment, Geoff!
PS I also want to be clear that I am genuinely curious – so please don’t take any of my questions as being ‘loaded’!! Until now I feel like most climate stuff I’ve read makes relatively small adjustments, and the general estimates of e.g. global/regional temps/ECS/etc haven’t change much for a long time… this preprint is a long way from that. I now have quite a lot of density at the 2.5-4C in my internal ‘prior’, so I’ll need considerable evidence to convince me that I should move it to 10C! Am very interested to hear more! I’ll google about to see if other climate scientists have commented anywhere on the “In The Pipeline” paper.
(sorry, to add – I guess that maybe the IPCC is referring to “fast” ECS… even the abstract in Hansen’s paper says (first line!) “fast-feedback equilibrium climate sensitivity is at least ~4°C for doubled CO2 (2xCO2), with likely range 3.5-5.5°C.” — so maybe that explains the massive discrepancy?
Michael Smith,
I spotted this tweet by Sophie Gabrielle on May 10;
Global warming in the pipeline is greater than prior estimates. Eventual global warming due to today’s GHG forcing alone — after slow feedbacks operate — is about 10°C.
One of the most essential reports everyone should read.
This prompted me to revisit the Hansen et. al. pre-print paper titled Global Warming in the Pipeline, which included on page 3:
This first paper – Global Warming in the Pipeline – focuses on climate sensitivity, climate response time, and aerosols. The second paper – Sea Level Rise in the Pipeline – presents evidence that continued warming and increasing ice melt can cause shutdown of the overturning ocean circulations within decades and large sea level rise within a century.
I vaguely recall reading this at the time when I first became aware of the Hansen et. al. pre-print paper (from here at RC in Dec 2022), but couldn’t quite recall from where when I commented to you here at this thread on May 9.
And on page 34:
Our second perspective article – Sea Level Rise in the Pipeline⁹³ – concludes, as outlined already,¹⁵ that exponential increase of sea level rise to at least several meters is likely if high fossil fuel emissions continue. Specifically, it is concluded that the time scale for loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet and multimeter sea level rise would be of the order of a century, not a millennium. Eventual impacts would include loss of coastal cities and flooding of regions such as Bangladesh, the Netherlands, a substantial portion of China, and the state of Florida in the United States. For practical purposes, the losses would be permanent. Such outcome could be locked in soon, which creates an urgency to understand the physical system better and to take major steps to reduce the human-made drive of global warming.
Clock’s ticking! And yet it seems there’s no urgent effective action…
That is why data on Earth’s paleoclimate history are so valuable; they allow us to compare different equilibrium climate states, knowing that all feedbacks were in operation.
The concept of system thresholds, and comparisons to past events makes sense, but there are differences to each earth state, in terms of stored carbon and how accessible it is. So far we assume gradual permafrost deglaciation, but the visible abrupt formation of Arctic sink holes, and the new discovery that formation can span an entire permafrost layer, gives a different picture, as outlined in this 2022 documentary https://earthclimate.tv/video/arctic-sinkholes/
The best is probably to extrapolate based on the observed growth-occurance rates of such sites, and to cross reference the gradual upper layer developments, to look for fault region hot-spots.
nigeljsays
The following comments are excerpts from commentary from Yale Climate connections on ENSO and seemed interesting, and have some huge implications. Any thoughts?
A mystery in the Pacific is complicating climate projections. The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which has a huge influence on global weather patterns, isn’t behaving as computer models predicted. That’s puzzling scientists…..
Many aspects of human-caused climate change are playing out as long predicted, including overall warming of the global atmosphere and oceans as well as the intensification of rainfall extremes and the drying of many subtropical areas.
Not so for ENSO. Top global climate models have predicted for more than 20 years that the tropical Pacific would gradually shift toward an “El Niño-like” state, with the surface waters warming more rapidly toward the east than toward the west.
Instead, just the opposite is going on. The western tropical Pacific has warmed dramatically, as predicted, but unusually persistent upwelling of cool subsurface water has led to a slight drop in average sea surface temperature over much of the eastern tropical Pacific.
The result is a strengthening west-to-east temperature contrast that increasingly resembles La Niña. Scientists expect that El Niño events will continue to occur – such as the one predicted to arrive later this year – but they will take place on a backdrop of an ocean that looks more like La Niña……
NigelJ, That’s a dense forum (YCC=YaleClimateConnections), full of observational insights, yet not conducive to breaking the puzzle of ENSO. The bit of info in the post that one should mull over is that the Pacific Ocean’s thermocline averages only 50 meters deep in the eastern equatorial region, which means the surface temperature is very sensitive to thermocline disturbances.
The reason that I won’t end up contributing to YCC is because I see no goal stated by the blog owners for themselves and the commenters. They aren’t defining an objective like: “let’s see if we can figure out ENSO by working together”. That was in fact the goal of the Azimuth Project site and accompanying discussion forum. Alas, today the entire Azimuth site was deleted by the owner. Really sad to see it go because it was the only site doing a deep dive with discussion threads that plodded along for years. If you ask ChatGPT where to do climate discussions that was the place — read my obit https://geoenergymath.com/2023/05/03/azimuth-project/
BTW, the way to figure out ENSO is not to do predictions of future events, but to discover the patterns in past data. The remaining artifact of the Azimuth Project forum is an organizational GitHub site, and I started a new discussion area there. Anyone with a GitHub account can contribute and has equal ability to add previewable charts, code, math markup, etc.
– ” seemed interesting ”
– ” isn’t behaving as computer models predicted ”
– ” Top global climate models have predicted for more than 20 years … shift toward an “El Niño-like” state ”
– ” Instead, just the opposite is going on ”
– ” That’s puzzling scientists…..”
ms: — Why are you always interested in particularly blind low-level flights by climate pilots. (in this case his name is Bob Henson) ?
Does that possibly have something to do with your own cockpit?
It’s always nice to find open ears and eyes – but it just doesn’t work without a working processor between the left and right ear.
Anyone who then opens their mouths to document their computer-modeled blind flight quickly ends up on my black list.
The least and most important thing you should know about ENSO I have already explained to you (and others) here in the past.
This includes that El Nino phases reduce the Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI), which is very beneficial for humans and nature in the long term. In addition, among other things, ENSO correlates strongly with humidity and cloud cover and NOT with CO2 or GHE.
But that goes in with you on the left – and comes out on the right without any of it sticking.
nigeljsays
Macias Shurly.
When I asked people for their thoughts on the article, I was hoping for something constructive on the actual article, or proof its claims were wrong.
What I got from you was you putting words in my mouth, a long series of insults, and pushing of unrelated personal agendas about how ENSO allegedly influences XYZ, strawman statements, and yet more of your dubious sounding comments on things.
So try again, and maybe stay on topic. If such a thing is possible from you.
b fagansays
Hi nigelj –
InsideClimateNews via ArsTechnica article about that: “Wildfire smoke from Australia fueled three-year “super La Niña”
How wildfire smoke from Australia affected climate events around the world.”
Discussed is a new research paper in Science Advances with authors John T. Fasullo, Nan Rosenbloom, Rebecca Buchholz
“A multiyear tropical Pacific cooling response to recent Australian wildfires in CESM2”
Here’s the abstract:
“The climate response to biomass burning emissions from the 2019–2020 Australian wildfire season is estimated from two 30-member ensembles using CESM2: one of which incorporates observed wildfire emissions and one that does not. In response to the fires, an increase in biomass aerosol burdens across the southern hemisphere is simulated through late 2019 and early 2020, accompanied by an enhancement of cloud albedo, particularly in the southeastern subtropical Pacific Ocean. In turn, the surface cools, the boundary layer dries, and the moist static energy of the low-level flow into the equatorial Pacific is reduced. In response, the intertropical convergence zone migrates northward and sea surface temperature in the Niño3.4 region cools, with coupled feedbacks amplifying the cooling. A subsequent multiyear ensemble mean cooling of the tropical Pacific is simulated through the end of 2021, suggesting an important contribution to the 2020–2022 strong La Niña events.”
“The climate response to biomass burning emissions from the 2019–2020 Australian wildfire season ….. A subsequent multiyear ensemble mean cooling of the tropical Pacific is simulated through the end of 2021, suggesting an important contribution to the 2020–2022 strong La Niña events”
We all need to watch out for the fallacy of “assuming the conclusion” aka “begging the question”. The underlying issue is that without a fundamental model of El Niño cycles one can’t make any claims of a perturbation, such as what enhanced AGW will contribute to an El Niño event. Consider that if climate is C, then if C = ENSO + AGW, we can’t know exactly what contributes to C without knowing ENSO and AGW individually, and moreover, knowing how the two may interact — these articles all somehow asserting that AGW influences ENSO.
The current situation is that there is still no consensus model of why El Nino develops. There is also no average surface temperature (SST) increase in the Pacific Ocean equatorial region band where the ENSO climate indices are measured. The earth is definitely gaining heat from GHGs. The ocean does act like a heat sink, so this increase in heat is entering the equatorial regions and diffusing downward at a rate corresponding to the vertical eddy diffusivity (about the same as another excellent heat sink called copper — 1 cm^2/sec). Does this increase reach the thermocline, and thereby adjust its level? Seems a tenuous connection to something that can actually be measured.
siddsays
Schuckmann and many of the usual suspects: where does the energy go
To me Fig 8 sez that OHC climbed out of the noise in the 80’s, and accelerated after 2000. The 700-2000 m section seems to be accelerating too.
Now i seem to recall that Pielke, Sr. wanted to estimate heat flux into deeper ocean layers, back in the day, possibly to get a direct measure of heat diffusivity. Did he or others do something along those lines ?
sidd
JCHsays
sidd – P Sr. wanted to prove the GISS model was wrong and toss it out. Not long after Josh Willis had mistakenly detected ocean cooling. As soon as Willis corrected, R Sr. dropped OHC like a rock with mucho heat content. I think everybody agreed it is the better metric (end of Victor et al,) but Global Mean Surface Temperature is the metric they had early on so best to stick with it.
@chris says: – ” Scientists also think another major ocean circulation in shallower waters that spans the entire Atlantic Ocean – known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – is also slowing down. ”
ms: — There is no real evidence for a diminishing trend of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.
– If the AMOC reduces, then less heat is conveyed to Greenland, and then less ice is melted there. This is a stabilizing rather than a non-stabilizing factor because a reduction of the AMOC would translate in a reduction of the ice melting of Greenland that is claimed by Rahmstorf et al. to slow down the AMOC.
We last discussed this topic here with Prof. Rahmstorf in Dec.
Setup a wiki dedicated to the climate, details on editing will be posted in the days and weeks ahead. For questions use the main page talk. Everybody is welcome to contribute. If you are new to wiki page contribution/edits start by looking at existing content. Also a good place to start, Wikipedia – basically the same standards apply at the CSWiki..
“People here are supposed to be the teachers, and as I’ve said before, that means setting the standards for how discussions are carried out… teaching people how science actually works.That means requiring someone like Victor to stipulate what they agree with before discussing what they are questioning. It’s like a pre-requisite; you don’t allow someone in your advanced physics class who doesn’t accept conservation of energy.”
Zebra has noble ideals, and his approach to teaching forces people to think. However zebra cant seem to grasp this website is not his classroom where he can control things. There is no way in a forum like this you can force someone like Victor to “agree” to accepting the laws of thermodynamics, and even if he did he would quickly ignore them. And then what do you do? Zebra doesn’t have the power to put him in the naughty corner. And zebras teaching approach requires dozens of interchanges between people which just isn’t practical here.
The only workable option we have here is to shoot down the denialists claims, with traditional rebuttals, ( preferably in a polite and clear fashion). I actually find the related discussions informative.
I agree with jgnfld that its unwise to completely ignore the denialists. In fact the climate science community seems to have generally ignored the denialists, given them the silent treatment, with the exception of a few websites like realclimate.org, and I think that has just let their nonsense gain traction.
I thought Ray Ladbury also summed things up well.
Barry E Finchsays
@Various ENSO comments May 3rd-4th I’m sticking with my cut’n’paste of my 2014 comment I’ve been posting on Googles since 2014 & on RealClimate until somebody either shows me the wind stress plot for 1900-2022 to show that it dropped to prior-1995 after the 2015/16 El Nino or they point to the science refuting “Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus Nature Climate Change 4, 222–227 (2014) doi:10.1038/nclimate2106 Received 11 September 2013 Accepted 18 December 2013 Published online 09 February 2014 Corrected online 14 February 2014 Matthew H. England, Shayne McGregor, Paul Spence, Gerald A. Meehl, Axel Timmermann, Wenju Cai, Alex Sen Gupta, Michael J. McPhaden, Ariaan Purich & Agus Santoso Obviously, scientists have refuted that paper or scientists would not now after 9 years suddenly be “puzzled” all the time (notwithstanding that “stunned”, “puzzled” & “alarmed” is the normal brain condition of climate scientists according to most commercial and Mom’n’Pop Social Media I’ve seen & heard for 10 years).
Nigel J also requested “thoughts on the article” that’s “puzzling scientists”.
I provided some thoughts above, having previously read the article. To try to articulate further., I think we are in the “just-so stories” phase of explaining climate behaviors such as El Nino. Since it is not well understood at all, everyone will offer up ideas and correlations to establish any kind of traction. In other words, we are not even yet at the point when someone asks “why was the tide high at 3PM yesterday?” and the answer doesn’t involve a precise orbital configuration. Instead it’s just more unanswered questions, which is what the YCC article implies.
nigeljsays
Paul Pukite. Thanks for your two sets comments above, and for adressing the actual article.
@Paul Pukite says: – ” El Nino. Since it is not well understood at all, everyone will offer up ideas and correlations to establish any kind of traction. ”
ms: — From my understanding, ENSO is primarily driven by the temperature difference between land and oceans.
– La Nina transports more precipitation from the sea over the land surfaces and thus ensures a cooling of the land surface. With the slow cooling by La Nina, the temperature difference between land and ocean decreases and less marine air packets are transported over the land areas.
As a result, more precipitation is now falling over the oceans and land areas remain drier – this is the El Nino phase. It heats and dries the land masses until the increasing land/ocean temperature difference leads to a wetter La Nina phase again.
“From my understanding, ENSO is primarily driven by the temperature difference between land and oceans.”
That doesn’t address the root cause, It’s just more potential correlations that also have no root cause by themselves.. Consider that the wind is also considered a trigger for ENSO events — so what causes the wind to suddenly change in it’s prevailing speed and direction.
This is a well-known fallacy in research findings. Similar to “correlation does not equal causation”, the fallacy of incorrectly ID’ing the true root cause is known as “causal ambiguity.” This is the mistaken belief that just because a relationship exists between two variables, one can’t determine which one is causing the other. See wind and it’s origin in atmospheric pressure differences (caused by what? see what I mean?).
So what you are saying is that El Nino / La Nina cycles are spontaneous and were set in motion long ago? That all we are observing is this back-and-forth energy exchange between land and ocean? If that’s the case there will likely never be any possibility of validating such a model.
I would prefer to assume that the ENSO cycle has a signal fingerprint of an eternal known forcing, and that the underlying pattern can be revealed by applying signal processing techniques, models of geophysical dynamics, and empirical calibration of external factors. The validation method is c0nceptually simple, as a stationary external forcing will enable one to cross-validate a model on one time interval (the training interval) against another interval that is not being fitted to (the test or evaluation interval). Yes, the concern of cross-interval contamination or bias is justified, but if the pattern matching is highly significant with very few degrees of freedom, it should be followed through. Eventually a deep learning machine will find it anyways, so better to get a head-start. https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2855758/238029930-8eeedbbd-ad6a-45f8-aa9c-cccdd9b09a69.png
” So what you are saying is that El Nino / La Nina cycles are spontaneous and were set in motion long ago? ”
ms: — I didn’t say anything about spontaneous, I just pointed out that the fluctuating average temperatures over land in the ENSO cycle naturally have an impact on how much energy in the atmosphere is transported from the oceans across the continents.
If there are still important things to research about ENSO as natural fluctuations, then it would be the fact that the EEI decreases in an El Nino phase – even though the strongest climate gas H2O has the highest concentrations in the atmosphere at the same time.
Cross-validation can do the trick — how do you think conventional tides were decoded to a root cause? There never was a lab-scale controlled experiment available.
Now you discuss ENSO again.
It needs also a more enlighted, full understanding of causation and all its common types.
You very seldom find the type A causes B , BASTA! punctum.
You very often find A causes B and at the same time B also causes A. I am especially aquained to that from chemical reactions. Take away B, and A will decay and cease to be there afterv some time.. Or take away A, and B will decay and cease to exist after a while.
Think of an ant road or a highway. Traffic goes both ways at the same time without collisions.
Then what about one way catalyzers or partial inhibitions on that road, and theese may come and go. That is also quite common and it is a 3rd and 4th causation. And what about the road or pathway itself? that will be a fifth causation. And day and night and season? All this is very common in nature and in everyday life.
In several diciplines it is very essencial to keep all causes constant and then vary one by one of them experimentally, and observe and measure what of the rest is then changing, why and how. . But that cannot be done with the ENSO for instance, and it cannot be done in old Roma if you will study life and business there and what was the true cause of what in 0ld Roma. Then you may need, and have to argue for, representative indirect models of it. And you can from a test tube or an aqvarium tell a lot of things for sure about the very Pacific ocean. But not all of it.
Causation may just as well lay in the future.
What caused Columbus to go westwards? One cause was good enough ships but another cause was the hope of finding India. We are told that a third cause was that the Arabs had been thrown out of Spain so the King had enough money and could agree to other plans than earlier. And Queen Isabella could also agree.
Still another caquse was that artificial model globes were popular in some royal societies. Take away just one of theese causes, and Columbus would not have landed in the West indies 1492.
But, there seems to have been many enough causes in the air and on land and at sea and in the heavens in those days, so it seems highly plausible that someone else would have discovered the West indies just shortly after Columbus.
And that circumstance alltogether can be called a cultural and historical cause.
Those who fail to grasp the role of resources in our transition to a regenerative future fail to understand what must be done to avoid societal collapse, mass extinction, and our own extinction.
nigeljsays
Minerals are a finite resource, but I doubt we will run out of metals based ores any time soon, because there are likely to be new discoveries, there are considerable reserves of low grade ores and there are vast reserves of metals based minerals dissolved in sea water and geothermal brines, not currently included in known reserve calculations. And engineers are very good at finding substitutes for rare materials. If we do run short of minerals, we will have to alter our lifestyles accordingly and do a lot more recycling.
Geoff Miellsays
nigelj: – “…I doubt we will run out of metals based ores any time soon, because there are likely to be new discoveries, there are considerable reserves of low grade ores and there are vast reserves of metals based minerals dissolved in sea water and geothermal brines, not currently included in known reserve calculations.”
I think the following statements are worth repeating:
The limits to mineral extraction are not limits of quantity, but of energy.
Extracting minerals takes energy, and the more dispersed the minerals are, the more energy is needed.
Technology can mitigate the depletion problem, but cannot solve it.
“The limits to mineral extraction are not limits of quantity, but of energy.Extracting minerals takes energy, and the more dispersed the minerals are, the more energy is needed.Technology can mitigate the depletion problem, but cannot solve it.”
I totally accept the comment. By running out it should have been self evident I meant reasonable quality deposits, and minerals that can be economically extracted, and that reflects the energy issue. We are unlikely to ever literally run out of something like iron, but extraction costs will increase and will be the governing factor.
I just dont believe we are in imminent danger of problems, or that it will not be feasible to build a renewables grid, based on material I have read. Many ores are currently low grade but its economic to extract them. From what Ive read lithium can be extraced from both sea water and geothermal brines with good economics, so not too much extra energy.
Of course the day will almost certainly come when we are looking at VERY low grade ores and the energy needed to extract minerals will get prohibitively expensive, especially if the whole world wants to live like American middle classes. When that day comes we will have to change our lifestyles and make do with less “stuff'” But that day doesnt look like this century. I would say we are looking at big problems in a couple of centuries time perhaps..
It might all change if cheap fusion power becomes a reality but we can’t assume it ever will.
Two groups of people annoy me: The mineral optimists like KIA, who think we can just dig a hole anywhere and extract minerals at low cost with minimal energy, and the mineral pessimists who think we are in imminent danger of running out or of extraction costs sky rocketing. I believe its more nuanced, based on what I’ve read, and the reality is most likely between these two view points.
Back in the 1980s I remember reading reports that the world would run out of certain metals like lead, zinc and tin by 1990 ( they meant that could be economically extracted). It never happened of course and its made me a bit suspicious of the pessimists. But obviously rich lodes of minerals are scarce and sooner or later we will come up against limits.
Killiansays
Read the article. Your unsupported, uneducated opinion is irrelevant next to facts, data and analysis. You “believe.” That’s religion, not analysis. Nobody cares what you believe. Every point you made is addressed in the essay.
If you’ve nothing intelligent to say, don’t say anything, is what your parents should have taught you. What you “believe”… good god…
As the essay shared, an analysis of the resource base, covering all your silly caveats and more, reveals less than one generation of a global, fairly distributed, non-FF-based energy system can be built out.
This is math, not wishing and hoping and pretending to be an analyst.
nigeljsays
Killian. Yeah the article you posted is full of facts and figures, maths and analysis. Just like studies I read back in the 1980s that said we would run out of various metals completely by the 1990. That makes me sceptical of material that makes very doomy predictions on the minerals issue.
There is a looming minerals supply problem at some stage, however its easy to get excessively pessimistic and look for data and analysis that suits that perspective. And also assume its all true. Its called confirmation bias and you do this on virtually every issue. I suggest you stop commenting on this website until you learn to be calm and objective.
nigeljsays
Killians ‘essay’ above thread has an appendix 8 with calculations on minerals and metals depletion but they dont appear to be peer reviewed calculations, and its not clear which publication in the bibliography applies to the table of calculations. The following published peer reviewed study by Jacobson finds that the planet has enough materials for building an electricity grid at scale, and primarily powered by renewables such as wind and solar power:
“Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials (Mark Z. Jacobson a, Mark A. Delucchi b )”
One good option is phasing out fossil fuels fast and building a renewable energy grid as best we can (maybe with some nuclear power), and if we hit materials supply constraints we will then be forced to economise the use of energy. The idea that we we shouldnt even ATTEMPT to build a proper renewable energy grid at reasonable scale, because it might possibly run into materials shortages, strikes me as some form of insanity. If thats what is being proposed.
That said the world has to learn to mine resources in a way that minimises impacts on the environment and do a lot more recycling to minimise the requirement for opening new mines. And we can minimise the quantity of renewables required by living in small highly energy efficient homes. Housing is a massive user of material resources and energy. Changing that one thing seems feasible and would make a big difference.
Nigelj
I once conscidered the problem by thinking over the local, large glacial morraine where they have been digging sorting and selling sand for 100 years. Really the very best for making concrete as it is humus- free, And believe it or not, splendid for enrichment and improovement of garden soils also.
Simply by a magnet you can take out as much iron as you want, but iron ore is cheaper. and silicium aluminium calsium magnesium potassium Titanium Thorium…. you name it, all in all 92 elements ,
Gold can also be guaranteed.
But how would that industry look and what would it cost if that was to be done the best possible way, and what would be the best possible way?
Special resources are taken from where it is naturally enriched and concentrated in large enough quantities from Natures side allready.
Maybe sand was the very best for a while and the hole has become a fine local harbour, and next by they now prouce and sell the finest apple cider & cetera.
A very important aspect is not just the energy costs for refining and upgrading it but also the by- products and waste- products. That gets worse and worse the more you have to rinse and refine large masses of low grade resources.
Its highest value for a very long time was to sell it as it is with least possible refinery, as grades of exellent natural sand and stones. The big advantage of it is that the ice has naturally grinded it and brought it allready to a place easy for shipping. .
How to utilize and possibly sell the by- products of it also and how eventually to get rid of it is maybe a most important aspect of modern mining industries.
Another fameous industry is Norsk Hydro, the old hydroelectric salpeter fertillizer and…. heavy water industry. They have been very good at it and selling the very Adolf Hitler and further Volkswahen ultra light cast- magnesium motor- metals from common seawater. And in recent time gone into the gas and gasoline industries also.They seem especially clever at seeing the possible wholeness of what they do.
They were first digging local limestone and apatite.
Quite interestingly, i have talked with them, they are also well aware of ecology and of climate issues, and do see that the best sustainable solutions to that will also be the most prophitable future for that industry, today labeled YARA.
nigeljsays
Carbomontanus, yes I agree the more low grade the ore, the more the waste products.
You appear to be saying extracting minerals from sea water has less waste products? It does look like it would have a lower ecological footprint overall.
With low grade ores you also despoil large areas of land. For example mining Canadas tar sands. Another problem.
The mining discussion goes back a few years before you appeared on this website. Killian has proposed we stop all mining or stop opening any new mines ( I just forget which) and make do with what products we already have, and he has posted proposals for reducing energy use by 90% within 20 years, and for massive simplification of lifestyles, etc, etc,
I’m very worried about what mining does to the environment, and have studied environmental subjects at university, and Im not opposed in principle to lower use of energy, minerals and resources, and simplification, but just quickly stopping all mining and making huge and rapid reductions in use of energy and resources looks like it would cause massive problems for society. You can imagine the pain, chaos and unemployment and the huge difficulties of persuading people to follow such a plan. I have said this several times. Sorry for the repetition.
The more viable plan would be to dispose of waste products in a more environmentally responsible way. Humans are good at solving those sorts of problems technically. However it does require brave governments that set high standards for waste disposal.
@ Killian
How often have I told you, and your environment….. of drunken sailors?
Shall I also have to tell them of psycho- pharmaca and the symptoms of personal use of central stimulants?
Above your situation in the gratdes, we also have traditionjalo incureable stalinists and so- vi- ett- Unionists here, who referre and ardress to their very clear racial and exclusive leadership thinking and brains.
Adolph & al did say the same.
They were inaugurated and so clearly understanding.
That was systematic political use of cocaine for the ruling führers “class”, and industrial Metamphetamine for their soldiers and followers.
Logics also has got some basic and official definitions youn see, and is not equal to that brightness and clearness and endurance that you “see” in your own thoughts and brains.
Ned Kellysays
Hi Geoff Miell, really like that Bardi quote (saved the video TY), very good way to put it, because it’s true. same said by Simon Michaux and others. (see Killian’s article refs)
I looked at your Mar 2023 post and again I agree with all of that. You are on the ball sir.
Seems you are correct about heavier crudes vs light oil as well …. can’t recall if berman above was the source, but the only field in growth phase still is the permian in Texas which is light crude – and that does not supply US needs who must import several million barrels of heavy crude to operate. Someone showed (?) in global oil energy supply today almost 15% or more is Natural gas liquids producing diesel/gasoline which does not come from Oil …. only began using this a decade+ ago.
Good to see two level-headed people actually looking to facts and data rather than logical fallacies and what they “believe.” Nigel continues to argue almost exclusively via “Straw Man,” and other, fallacies, as he does here:
“Killian. Yeah the article you posted is full of facts and figures, maths and analysis. Just like studies I read back in the 1980s that said we would run out of various metals completely by the 1990. That makes me sceptical of material that makes very doomy predictions on the minerals issue. “
The argument is, someone screwed up before [or at least he claims], so nothing that follows is legitimate. Ridiculous. Then, of course, is the double fallacy of “Doomy.”, which is meaningless because 1. I have never sought out information to confirm a bias that has never existed. I understand the world as I do because of the data, nothing else. Once I knew the cryosphere wasn’t even included in IPCC IV SLR calculations, I knew we were in deep shit. So “looking for” doomy crap? This is an insult, and one I am ever more tired of from this troll. I will say it again, those with an INTP personality are the exact opposite of people acting from bias. We are fact-driven and find people like nigel, who exhibit no ability to think logically, extremely annoying – particularly when they respond to every goddamned thing I post and do so insipidly and unintelligently…. from 2016 to today. Nothing ever changes. 2. How can “doomy” be applied to a wost-case scenario that includes societal collapse an mass extinction? This is nothing more than his right-wing propaganda shining through.
Such milquetoast Pollyannas are far more dangerous today than the denialists. In fact, they are “soft denialists” – which I recognized from his first months on this platform. Solutions denialists are the new climate denialists. Again, nothing changes.
[“Killians ‘essay’ above thread has an appendix 8 with calculations on minerals and metals depletion but they dont appear to be peer reviewed calculations,”
“‘…essay’…”
At least we can give him props for subtlety on that Ad Hom fallacy using both scare quotes and questioning the legitimacy of the calculations without any reason whatsoever.
Now calculations must be peer-reviewed?! What new level of nonsense is this? One simply does an equation! One determines the numbers, does the equation. It’s REALLY simple. But now we must submit an equation to some unnamed publication to present it to others? Holy mother of god…
I suppose he meant to say the variables used in the calculations, but who knows? He says inane stuff like this constantly, so I assume he means what he writes…?
The idea that we we shouldnt even ATTEMPT to build a proper renewable energy grid at reasonable scale, because it might possibly run into materials shortages, strikes me as some form of insanity. If thats what is being proposed.
If you are not sure that is being proposed, why claim it is? Another Straw Man. His posts are rife with them. He’s been told a billion damned times good design never starts with any conditions, limits, or assumptions. One designs as determined by the principles and characteristics of regenerative systems and according to effective ecological engineering processs. Yet, here we are, the same logical fallacies and dishonest insinuations.
What the essay says exceedingly clearly (so how did he miss it, if not intentionally misleading people reading this blog?) is the resources do not exist for a FAIR, GLOBAL buildout of a 1:1 replacement of fossil fuels given projected future growth in population and consumption. Also, that the timeline with regard to the frightening increases in rates of change within the climate system – I just read an article today stating a previously stable glacier on Greenland had doubled within about 5 years. Such doublings and triplings over 20-, 10- and 5-year time frames are becoming common, clearly indicating the climate system is as sensitive as I have said it is since 2007.
But we should just ignore that and choose pathways that cannot meet the challenges of a rapidly collapsing ecosystem? It is criminally negligent to push such nonsensical, illogical thinking at this late date.
Then there is this nothing burger: “That said the world has to learn to mine resources in a way that minimises impacts on the environment and do a lot more recycling to minimise the requirement for opening new mines. And we can minimise the quantity of renewables required by living in small highly energy efficient homes. Housing is a massive user of material resources and energy. Changing that one thing seems feasible and would make a big difference.”
1. We apparently *must* keep mining and completely ignore the needs of the future? Even if we will exhaust many resources with just one build-out of an equitable energy system?
Why is no more mining, simplify and become regenerative not an option? We must double down on sui-ominicde rather than solve our problems because…. nigelism?
2. Small, highly efficient homes? First, this does not solve the problem of resource depletion, concomitant ecosystem destruction and additional climate forcing. Second, the size of a building does not determine its regenerativeness, though it’s a factor, if regeneratively designed. The claim is that would “make a big difference.”.. Hmmm… Is that peer-reviewed? What does “make a big difference” mean? This silly expression, and sillier claim, ignore a simple fact: Sustainability/Regenerativeness is a threshold, not a continuum.
3. Recycling? Yeah, the essay covers that. And the same thing applies to building out a global recycling system: You get maybe one generation before you run out of key resources.
4. Why can he not understand we don’t need to run out of all, or even many, resources, but can see the entire system break down because of the exhaustion of just a few Liebig minimums?
5. Why does the nige ignore the fact ChatGPT is stated as a co-writer? Well, he can’t use an Ad Hom against ChatGPT, right? The calculations? Done by ChatGPT. What an idiot app it must be!
So tired of this pointless exchange. Stop responding, nigel. You’ve nothing to say and the rudeness and disrespect in your posts is inappropriate.
nigeljsays
Killian, you have essentially posted claims that there is a huge problem finding enough materials for a renewable energy grid (paraphrased for the sake of brevity). You have produced a few interviews, opinions, articles, and some calculations based on god knows what assumptions and analysis. This does not carry the same weight as published peer reviewed science. I have every right to be sceptical of it.
I produced a proper peer reviewed study by Jacobson showing its feasible to find enough materials. There are other similar studies. As far as I recall this is for a fair global buildout of renewables and more than one generation. We can also recycle the materials extending the life further.
Liebigs law of the minimum while valid ignores the fact humans have shown they are ingenious at finding substitutions for scarce materials.
Whats your plan to convince everyone to just “stop mining”? I say this because The NZ Green Party have been promoting stopping or heavily reducing mining for at least 25 years, and they get enormous resistance to this policy and only about 5 – 10% in the polls. (Sad because they have many other good ideas).
I prefer to spend my time promoting things that look like they might gain SOME traction with the public, like 1) reducing mining by recycling and 2) mining in a more environmentally responsible way, and 3)small energy efficient homes. Even these goals face considerable resistance, so its hard to see how even more ambitious goals would work.
Geoff Miellsays
Ned Kelly: – “Seems you are correct about heavier crudes vs light oil as well …. can’t recall if berman above was the source, but the only field in growth phase still is the permian in Texas which is light crude – and that does not supply US needs who must import several million barrels of heavy crude to operate.”
Art Berman tweeted on May 12 a graph that shows total world liquids production has recovered to 2018 average level but crude oil plus condensate remains more than 2.6 Mb/d below late 2018 levels (up to Nov 2022). https://twitter.com/aeberman12/status/1656995529849544705
Art Berman tweeted on May 14 a graph that shows world crude oil and condensate production has recovered to within 1.8 Mb/d of late 2018 peak level after falling 14 Mb/d during the COVID economic closures. https://twitter.com/aeberman12/status/1657421609911693313
Most crude oil producing countries have passed peak production. Some countries are still pre-peak, and some are at peak. Ever fewer pre-peak oil producing countries need to compensate for post-peak oil producing countries, or total world oil production begins declining.
Ned Kelly: – “Someone showed (?) in global oil energy supply today almost 15% or more is Natural gas liquids producing diesel/gasoline which does not come from Oil …. only began using this a decade+ ago.”
Natural gas liquids (NGLs) include:
* Ethane – applications include plastics production and petrochemical feedstock;
* Propane – applications & uses include residential & commercial heating, cooking fuel, small stoves, and petrochemical feedstock. Some vehicles also use propane as fuel;
* Butanes – applications include blending with gasoline & with propane (that becomes liquified petroleum gas), as a feedstock in the production of synthetic rubber for tires, lighter fuel & refrigerant;
* Isobutanes – applications include refinery feedstock & petrochemical feedstock, aerosols & refrigerants;
* Pentanes – applications include natural gasoline & as a blowing agent for polystyrene foam, & for bitumen production in oil sands.
NGLs require high pressure or low temperature to maintain their liquid state for shipment.
Diesel fuel is refined from crude oil and from biomass materials.
Killiansays
Nigel, thank you for outing yourself, proving you are doing nothing but trolling – as clearly shown by the errant, shallow and pointless responses in this thread. You said, “and some calculations based on god knows what assumptions and analysis.” Yet, the assumptions and analsyses are in the essay.
Stop polluting threads with Voictor-level obfuscation. Shush.
nigeljsays
Killian.
My questions regarding the table of data on mineral depletion listed in appendix b are how were the calculations done in detail, what assumptions were used – for example what definition of mineral reserves was used precisely, how was the analysis done, where does data on current rates of consumption come from etcetera. In other words the background material.
I have read the essay. There is nothing of any substance in appendix b relating to my questions. There is nothing in the section titled Section Three minerals and mineral depletion, or in the other sections on other issues as far as I can see. If I have managed to miss it, please copy and paste it.
There might be something in the bibliography but the appendix b does not say what item in the bibliography applies. There is no footnote beside appendix b. I have no intention of reading and viewing all 8 items in the bibliography which look like lengthy documents and interviews, to find if the information is there.
However none of that is the main point. The MAIN POINT is your essay is not published in a peer reviewed journal as far as I can tell. It all appears to be the informal views and calculations of a couple of people. In comparison I provided a proper published, peer reviewed study on renewables and supply of materials. Thats how serious science is done.
You accuse me of trolling and obfustication. Nope. Its all coming from you, along with your bad, confusing writing..
Killiansays
“However none of that is the main point. The MAIN POINT is your essay is not published in a peer reviewed journal as far as I can tell.”
You have the intellect of a golem. The subtitle states. “A Brief (11-page) Overview”
Nowhere does the essay claim to be a paper with the rigidity to be published. It is written, as is everything I write and record, to Everperson because that is who will ultimately create whatever future, or non-future, we have.
Straw Man noted. I have finally realized just how pitiable your contributions are: I now realize you are not intentionally using Straw Man fallacies, and other falsehoods, you simply do not know any better.
nigeljsays
Killian, my comments were not a strawman. This is because what I said in FULL CONTEXT was “The MAIN POINT is your essay is not published in a peer reviewed journal as far as I can tell. It all appears to be the informal views and calculations of a couple of people. In comparison I provided a proper published, peer reviewed study on renewables and supply of materials. Thats how serious science is done.” This is clearly NOT a strawman. Its an argument that your essay is not as convincing as a peer reviewed study. And it isn’t as convincing.
“That means requiring someone like V. to stipulate what they agree with before discussing what they are questioning.”
For stating proof and for telling truth and acheive any kind of agreement and understanding between people, there must be a minimal set of common axioms or dogmas or archetyps that are TABU, that means, not to be denied, not to be violated, not to be disputed. And you mention a fameous doctrinal axiom, the conservation of energy.
The technique of surrealism and rabulism is to erase any kind of such doctrnary agreement first even in a doctrinary way. Example:
I suddenly woke up by the sentence:
“Where there is science, there is not consensus, and where there is consensus there is not SCIENCE…..PERIOD!”
I heard that with my own ears spoken by “Dr” Richard Lindsen from the pulpit, in Domus Academica, Old festival hall, Royal Frederiks.
Then I went safely to sleep again and lost nothing.
And brought with me the consensus- book “Maqgnitudes Units and Symbols in Physics Otto Øgrims small catechism on their next surrealistic meeting.
” Here, The Consensus- book!” I told them
It was not opened!
Where I find ” the CRC handbook of chemistery and physics”The Rubber Bible on the writing desk and in then library, opened, there is science. And where that is not found, there is not science.
“One thing is for certain, nothing is for certain!”
That statement is often heard from surrealistic side in the climate dispute, and that statemkent is a false statement.
It is a common, stupidi- fying PARA DOXON- pill to be swallowed first.
Victorsays
“Those who fail to grasp the role of resources in our transition to a regenerative future fail to understand what must be done to avoid societal collapse, mass extinction, and our own extinction.”
Not to mention the ravages of climate change.
Ned Kellysays
Reply to Killian, great summary article.
about your question – “Why, then, is this hyper tech-based approach dominating the global conversation around achieving a sustainable future?”
Great question. I’m not 100% sure, but to me it looks like the mega wealthy elites (corporations / neoliberals / globalists whatever you want to call them) who actually run the world and know about all these matters (because $ is power and resources and they buy knowledge on tap) already knew such an approach will not work, same as CDR will not work and all the other options being floated by techno heads everywhere sucking on the funding teat and lure of fame.
By selling faux solutions though it keeps the teaming masses calm and asleep, the activists and extremists happy that something is happening. The ideas are then slotted into the IPCC reports and then into the UNFCCC COP system which we should all know by now are all Cop Outs.
Most of the world doesn’t care and those that do are too gullible and easily led by Pied Pipers.
People like Jacobson, Tol, and Nordhaus et al (there’s thousands of them) all well looked after by the “elite” system to push their impractical solutions theories and snake oil.
Then occasionally a scientist will show up on RC to suggest if only the Oil Company execs knew how to read/understand the latest AR6 summary, then they’d understand and would take proper action. aka disconnected from reality.
Psychopaths (aka the elites) have no ethics or morals let alone empathy for anyone bar themselves. It’s partly their deep psychological flaws and disorders along with everyone else’s cognitive and psychological flaws who get so easily misled.
That’s why.
Give it another decade and like Germany now, Coal will be the growth energy sector again.
After collapse, after multiple climate catastrophes, after we are living in a 2c world only then might something approaching human intelligence and genuine humanist values might arise.
In the meantime it’s everyone for themselves. Forget the governments doing anything constructive or serious about the problem.
The elites own them all. They own the entire IPCC/UNFCCC system as well. They own everything and everyone.
Ned Kellysays
Also re your question Killian.
Global institutions like IPCC/COP meetings, the UN in general are used to stop things being done.
The only way to get things done is at a national level. That is where the power rests, where real decisions can be made and implemented in Law and finally actions that drive real change.
for example rational regenerative practices. They cannot arise from the community level up (local scale show pieces can be created) but genuine change must be directed nationally in each country independently.
Of course nothing is being done at this level, and will not be done until we are in a world of hurt.
In the meantime, educate and share and encourage and support like minded people. Leave a legacy.
Because Knowledge is Power. And currently we have 10,000 years of accumulated human knowledge to hopefully save, secure and pass on before it gets destroyed by the crazies.
“Do not cast pearls before swine, and what that means is that if people are not listening to you, stop talking to them. If you stop talking to people who aren’t listening to you, and start watching them instead, they will tell you what they’re up to. If you have things to say, say them, but find people that will listen. The ones who aren’t listening; pull back. Because you’re devaluing what you’ve got to say by offering it to an audience that does nothing but reject it. That’s a good guideline to life in general.” — Jordan Peterson
New Zealand is signed up to some UN agreements and the Paris accords on climate, etc, etc, but I see nothing in those that stops us getting things done. There is certainly nothing stopping us getting useful sensible things done.
In fact the whole aim of the Paris accords was to leave it to individual countries to figure out what options they want to use to reduce emissions.
Neither institutions are opposed to regenerative agriculture to the best of my knowledge.
You would need to give specific examples of countries being part of the UN and IPCC agreements are not allowed to “get things done”.
Jordan Peterson is a right wing conservative ideologue and a climate science denialist. Not someone I would quote..
I have a better quote:
“if you want people to agree with you and take you seriously, be nice and talk sense. Dont call them names and say they are unintelligent, dont keep telling them how special you think you are, dont overplay your hand with wild claims easily falsified , and dont stubbornly support crazy, impractical ideas.” (Nigel, 14.05.2021).
Yours free of charge. Not talking about you specifically.
About taking people seriously, there your quote of yourself is very orthodox.
But,, there arre different people and there are exeptions..
I just red that Zelensky has been in Roma with the Pope, who suggeested serious peace talks between Moskva and Zelensky, and Zelenssk said categorically “NO!” one cannot negotiate with them. What is needed is a just peace.”
I have looked at it for years, and looked after russian media also as I am aquainteed from the cold war. Not just Voice of America and the Royal Norwegian national broadcast and Radio Lux, Also check up Deutschlandsender Moscows eccho- chamber in Berlin.
One finds a contrast.
My impression is that it has been heavy hate propaganda and growing mad- ness for years from Moscovas side, similar to Deutschlandsender in east Berlin. And the question comes, what to do with madness and an obviously growing collective psychosis with consequent increase of media censorship and constructional design of iron curtains also?
Madness could be found also in Ukiraina but most of all in Belarus, , mad- ness has even been seen in the USA in recent years, in in the oval room and even on Capitol Hill. But, there seems to be more qualified doctors on it in the USA by the supreme court.
Mad- ness in the climate dispute,….i have visited the climate surrealists in Oslo downtown and examined their vebsites also where I am rather consequently ex- communicated and etnically rinsed out,, a refflex that corresponds with the mentioned, general para– noia social mad- ness syndrom.
But I say you, your orthodox recepy works on presumably civilized people and can even work wonders there, if they are temporarily confused. But it does not work on manifest madness. That may be present realiy here and there
they misintereprete common civil social norms and politeness as weakness . from their bellieved social or etnic class enemys side and thus invitation to manifesto performance.
It may better belong in jail, in chains, or under Nevroleptica.
that may be reality also.
nigeljsays
Carbomontanus.
I accept that my conventional, civil approach to communications doesn’t work with the denialist cranks and crazies (eg Victor). I doubt anything will work to change those peoples minds. Remember there is still a flat earth society and some of those people really believe. Quite a significant minority of people still oppose things like Darwins Theory of Evolution or dispute that tobacco is a carcinogen. Some of them probably always will dispute those things..
I agree the crazy denialists see politeness as weakness. But I dont think calling them names would work either. It could also alienate some of the warmists.
However sometimes Im “bluntly polite.” For example I will call someones ideas crazy or idiotic,, but I wont call them crazy or an idiot (to their face)
I believe our job is to rebut the sensible rational climate sceptics who are open to persuasion and the best approach is polite and being rational. Since its hard to know if the person you are responding to is a sensible or crazy sceptic its always worth trying the rational polite approach. And remember other rational sceptics might be reading the comments.
And warmists are reading the comments and might be persuaded by the denialists if their comments go unchallenged.
As to putting denialists in jail. Im very tempted because some of them are professional liars of the worst kind, but I’m also a believe in free speech. So I admit Im conflicted.
However the main thing is I do believe denialists views should be rebutted. Giving them the silent treatment doesnt sound right to me. Although where you get repetitive trolls like Victor there comes a point where he is best ignored, and should be put in the bore hole or crank case.
.
Killiansays
for example rational regenerative practices. They cannot arise from the community level up (local scale show pieces can be created) but genuine change must be directed nationally in each country independently.
I completely disagree. You need to look at things from a First Principles perspective. Everything starts from there. Everything else is built upon those. The principles underlying politics and economics are the opposite of regenerative. You are asking a cow to beget a horse. How is the current system supposed to create its opposite, to engage in self-immolation for the greater good? When has a “ruling class” or “elite class” ever done that? I know of no examples from history, do you?
Given that sustainability is a first and foremost a locally-achieved state, it makes far more sense for it to come from the bottom up.
Some characteristics and principles of Regenerative Societies:
* Egalitarian
* Commons, not Capitalism
* Networks of small communities
* Non-hierarchical
* Gender equality
* Highly cooperative, yet…
* Absolute individual autonomy
* Needs-based decision-.making
* Living within ecosystem limits
* Lots of free time
* “Work” is a social event
* No “jobs”; work is done as needed and chosen
Some of the things on that list have been an objective of more enlightened people for centuries and still have not been achieved, but we’re going to achieve a massive global change with the same system that has not made any significant core changes in hundreds of years, and is the system that created the existential threats we now face? That does not make sense, as Einstein opined.
Have you seen the Energy Watch Group’s 2013 report titled Fossil and Nuclear Fuels – the Supply Outlook? The data is now more than a decade old, but you may find the sections on ‘Uranium supply’ (from page 122) & ‘Future uranium demand and supply’ (from page 125) of interest. https://www.energywatchgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/EWG-update2013_long_18_03_2013up1.pdf
2. The thorium fuel cycle is immature, not yet self-sustaining and at least decades away (if ever), as explored in the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency publication titled Introduction of Thorium in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Short- to long-term considerations, at: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/46/066/46066594.pdf
3. Some small reactors physically exist, but they don’t conform to the ‘modular’ definition of serial factory production of reactor components.
According to the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency, electricity produced by the Russian floating plant costs an estimated US$200/MWh. https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_14924
China has the world’s first prototype of a demonstration twin unit (2x 250 MWₜₕ) high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) connected to a single steam turbine to generate 211 MWₑ (gross), at Shidaowan (Shidao Bay) in Weihai city. Initially approved in November 2005, construction began on 9 Dec 2012, and first grid connection occurred on 14 Dec 2021. https://pris.iaea.org/pris/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=957
Both the Russian and Chinese physical examples undermine claims by proponents that small modular reactors (SMRs, nominally up to 300 MWₑ per unit output capacity) could be built in as little as 2-3 years and provide cheap electricity.
4. An IEEFA post by David Schlissel on 17 Nov 2022, headlined Small Modular Reactor update: The fading promise of low-cost power from UAMPS’ SMR, included the following price information for the UAMPS NuScale SMR project, currently projected to be completed in 2030:
5. An analysis by physicist and University of British Columbia Professor M.V. Ramana, published in a perspectives paper titled Small Modular and Advanced Nuclear Reactors: A Reality Check, in IEEE Xplore on 9 Mar 2021, examines some of the claims being made by nuclear technology proponents, with a particular focus on the economic challenges. It briefly discusses the technical challenges confronting advanced reactor designs and the many decades it might take for these to be commercialized, if ever. It concludes with:
All of these problems might just end up reinforcing The Economist magazine’s observation from the turn of the century: “nuclear power, which early advocates thought would be ‘too cheap to meter’, is more likely to be remembered as too costly to matter”.
Nuclear is very slow to deploy – 10+ years (to plan, design, procure, site prepare, construct, grid connect and commission) for existing technologies by experienced countries, and 15–20 years for inexperienced countries, like Australia. See FIG. 8: Typical durations for the main contracts, at: https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1537_web.pdf
Nuclear is too slow to deploy to make any significant difference for humanity’s need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Killiansays
Great work. Your post can serve as a great link to send people to for a short course in why nuclear is a non-starter as a climate solution.
The list was generated by ChatGPT, so I left it as is. I asked for the 20 most endangered minerals and got that list. As a Permaculture practitioner and regenerative systems advocate and analyst, I am well aware of the issues around NPK. Worth bringing up in this thread, though, so thanks for doing so.
Ned Kellysays
“Mythonomics” The Great Simplification #30 with Nate Hagens – YouTube
Steve Keen: This is really a human flaw. You become wedded to the way in which you view the world, more than the world itself. When you face a contradiction between it, for most people, they’ll turn their eyes from the contradiction.
My work really is on two things, building up systems for doing proper, non-linear, non-equilibrium monetary modeling of capitalism, and then working on how we bring energy properly into economic theory and castigating the complete neglect of that in mainstream economics, which has led to total understatement of the dangers of climate change.
[…] we’ve wasted 250 years arguing about
the wrong stuff, the Physiocrats were right,
we only have an advanced economy because
we exploit free energy and all we’re
paying is the cost of extraction.
[…] but if it wasn’t for fossil
fuels to harness we wouldn’t be
producing this volume of output
So this became obvious to them that
what what was causing the wealth in
human societies was what they literally
called the free gift of nature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiocracy
Perhaps best seen within the background hum of talk around the coming El Nino/s possibly super el ninosin the near term years.
Killiansays
[Sorry for the multiple posts, but I rarely post anymore, so please, a little patience, moderator.]
I have not listened to this because I have known Steve Keen for years and we have yet to disagree on anything about economics since he shifted to a thermodynamic bases for Economics, as I pointed out was necessary when he presented his Minsky model 12 or 13 years ago at a Local Futures conference.
I’m sure this presentation is well worth everyone’s time who doesn’t already follow the likes of Keen and Kelton – which covers all the posters here still mired in Neo-classical Econ. The same people that have always claimed I don’t understand Econ… despite the fact I helped fundamentally change humanity’s understanding of Economics…
LOL
Ned Kellysays
While I read Killian’s new work, for Geoff Miell and Killian another resource on diminishing and non-existent resources fyi
reports, papers, lectures, and tons of data graphs tables etc. Actively engaged with EU govt officals and politicians for a few years now. His first major report in 2021 is 1000 pages long https://www.simonmichaux.com/
“I am developing a plan to transform our relationship between energy, minerals, and industrialization, as the existing proposed strategic plans are shown to be logistically impractical.”
Thanks for those. I am already familiar with Michaux and have interviewed him three times since last summer. Here is the more recent one with Prof. Simon Michaux and Prof. Steve Keen where we talk about resources, climate, bottlenecks, etc., in a more integrated system context as we had Steve with us, too.
It is not far away from we having our techno- cakes to eat, and you ought to get aware of it.
What is eaten in the bioswphere?
That is allmost incredible things. And humans have all the time also exelled in making incredible things edible.
Potatoes ara hardly edible digestible unless you cook them , an that takes the invention of fire frirst. Corn is also hardly digestible. It goes right through undigested, thus better make cornflakes from it first, which is an old stoneage invention.
Malted cereales enzymatic and bacterial pre- digestion, of grains are much preferred both by animals and humans and have plaid a main role in the diet before there was enough motorized mill capacity.
What about ants and bugs and grasshoppers?
They are easily digestible by omnivorous animals.
But plant cellulose? hey and dry straw with water? The ruminants take it with ease by bacterial symbiosis. Dr. Virtaqnen 0f Finland, was a pioneer of ensilation who showed that common cattle can live on a diet of industrial finnish paper pulp, water, salt, and Urea for nitrogen. He had experimental cows in the barn who were not allowed to go out, forv 3-4 generations on that diet.
Today, corn- starch is steamed under pressure and made into corn syrup, that was necessary after the USA had embargoed Cuba and become sugar- free, Which is why the americans are so “obese” with Diabetes 2 also. Conventional sucrose especially from sugar cane unrefined is much healthier.
But you can by the help of mould mushroms and bacteria, or hydrochloric acid steam and heat transform common sawdust into digestible carbohydrates also, and then you have your “Techno- cake”
“Bi- proteins” are made in large stainless steel tanks from Methane ammonia, water, salt and some air, dried and packed and sold as fodder for swinery poultry and Salmon production Bon appetit.
Industrial Soya meal is hardly better.
Techno- fantacy has really taken off in the fodder industries in our days and more is to come. I preferre Mackrels apples, potatoes tomatoes wild onions and other flowers , blueberries raspberries and gooseberries. But all that will soon be my privilege.
As for desert grasshoppers, they are known to be especially fat and plenty.
In fact, red shrimps were regarded the same until 150 years ago when pioneers found how to trawl them up industrially, boil them, and sell them in town.
Lobsters were also regarded as “ugly” exept for poor people who had nothing better left for them.
“In the need, the Devil will eat flies.”
Chicken, Darwins jungle fowl and KALIs temple bird Indias national bird, is omnivorous and preferres rainworms red ants and shale- snails with vegetables in the wild They eat the “bugs” first before taking the green. By lack of red ants they go on the dung heap and eat larvae and puppets of barn- flies that are eating blood and bacteria and who breed in masses there.
Those egs are also then very best.
We were buying alive frogs from France for vivisection, and were told how they are produced.
One takes on prends….a dead body , Un Cadavre spoken Æææææ cadavrøøøø! in french. Si9mply pull pull a strong wire through that and hang it up between 2 rods over a pool where the frogs have been laying egs egs in the spring.
Flies come swarming by that smell and lay egs in that Cadavrøøøø…which will get quite frull of larvae. Theese grow up and creep out and fall down it the pool in order to pupate.
And under there the frogs sit and yawn….
Bon appetit
That ware is offered in the finest restaurants on Champs Elyse together with rotten lobsters and oysters from Normandie. .
And in recent time there is pipelines laid from the green pissoirs of Paris and out of town, to Champagne, so that the champagne is also being re- cycled.
I have also checked up wines and “Cognac”.
You would not believe it, or you have allready guessed it in an unqualified and much too fanatic and blunt way.
The worlds wineyards by square kilometres or acres cannot deliver all those bottles of wine in the cellars and in the shops. , in barrels and gallons,… that is being sold and consumed, So what is it and where does it come from, what is it made from????????????
As you learnt no quantitative chemistery and are immune to “maths”, you can hardely guess the truth,
But I can!
And then you have all the vodka. Potatoes and “corn” and sugar bete ,
Cuban cane sugar is embargoed / forbidden in the US, but that was the best / only available Jamaica rhum for the British navy, as whiskey was only for upstairs…
I would suggest Propane- gas in addition to serve all that need on the free market. It is steamed and synthetized and catalysed and doubble- pressed , distilled and rinsed—… with additives…. and you buy it and drink it.
No wonder there are much drunken sailors in our days then.
And then comes also the cocaine and the synthetic, especially smart drugs that gives you an new personality.
With all that nostalgic longing back to “permaculture”.
======000
The USSGerald Ford is here in town. That is the worlds largest battleship on its first visit abroad, and 4500 US sailors in town who pay in Dollars and must have a beer.
There are worries,….
Will there be girls enough for 4500 drunken sailors?
The sailors are interwiewed in media and tell that life on board the USS Gerald Ford is quite especially boring.
No wonder, really.
======000
We discuss here how to shoot it and sink it as we also shot Blücher, 18000 tons in 1940.
2 torpedoes of the old kind would do, But the torpedo battery is taken down since then, so we must think of something else..
I was asked who would thank us for that?. And I could say the very EU and the Soviet Union and the very Chineese,…. and surely also more than half of the US citicen admitted legal voters also, as I know them right from the climate dispute and the episodes at the Capitol hill.
Killiansays
Oh, and I came up with a plan to shift to a sustainable society back in 2011, Regenerative Governance. Simon is trying to reinvent the wheel. His analyses are great, but like pretty much all scientists, he loses his footing when it comes to policy and planning for mitigation and adaptation.
Ned Kellysays
I agree with that about Simon … he’s like learning on the run since he switched “modes”.
I especially like — “but like pretty much all scientists, he loses his footing when it comes to policy and planning for mitigation and adaptation.”
Because it’s so true – i have not seen one cross the rubicon yet.
Thanks for your other comments as well, good luck to you, nice essay, will share it.
Killiansays
“Because it’s so true – i have not seen one cross the rubicon yet.”
Sadly, yes. I take it as a badge of honor many climate scientists have blocked me for pointing this out.
Thanks for your other comments as well, good luck to you, nice essay, will share it.”
Appreciate that. In fifteen years, that’s the first time anyone has said that to me. The awakening is spreading, but still far too slowly. But the window is still open so we must scratch and claw for every nth of a % chance we can get this done.
The ERA5 reanalysis has reported for April with a global anomaly of +0.32ºC, down on the ‘scorchio’ March anomaly and a little above the Jan & Feb anomaly.
ERA5 make April 2023 the 5th warmest on record behind 2016 (+0.53ºC), 2020, 2019 & 2017, while ahead of 2018, 2022, 2010 & 2021 (+0.17ºC).
2023 is also 5th as warmest start-of-year Jan-Apr, a ranking which will push higher in coming months as the predicted El Niño arrives.
Referring to my question of 30 Mar 2023 at 11:46 AM and to the reply thereon by MA Rodger on 8 Apr 2023 at 7:52 AM, I would like to know if I understood correctly that
– climate models predict higher global precipitation due to higher average global temperature,
– this trend is in accordance with observation (both from meteorological stations across the globe as well as from satellite measurements),
– climate models further predict that the global warming causes decrease in global cloud cover,
– this trend is also confirmed during the last 25 years by satellite observations.
Do I conclude correctly that, in nutshell, there is (at least in the last 25 years and in a global average), more rain from less clouds?
Another reply to my post aserts that thank to increased rain frequency, the African Sahel is greening, is it true?
Thank you very much in advance for a comment.
Best regards
Tomáš Kalisz
zebrasays
Tomas, it would be helpful if you would be more precise in forming your questions. (I understand that English may not be your original language, so this is not meant to be insulting.)
-There is definitely a prediction that there will be an increase in occurrence of intense rainfall events.
-There may also be a slight increase in global rainfall averaged over the course of a year.
Not sure which you are asking about. The first has serious consequences for humans, but the second, if it is correct, is not that significant.
With respect to “global cloud cover”, your question is similarly unclear. The metric “cloud cover” tells us nothing about the type of cloud, so “more rain from less clouds” is essentially meaningless. You would have to give more details to get a useful answer.
As to the Sahel, you would have to give a peer-reviewed source for that claim.
Tomáš Kaliszsays
Dear zebra,
many thanks for your reply.
Actually, I tried to find out if the available data (e.g. from satellite observations) may enable estimating the development of the earth energy imbalance (EEI) in the last two or three decades, and if so, wherther or not contributions of e.g. cloud cover changes, precipitation changes etc. can be assigned precisely enough to be comparable with models.
To be more specific, when I learned from this forum that the global precipitation climatology project (GPCP, see e.g. https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/9/4/138) collects the data about precipitation, I asked if somebody evaluated the contribution of the observed changes in the global summarized rainfall (that, I think, may be seen as commensurate to non-radiative heat transfer from the surface, having a “cooling” effect thereto) to mitigation of the observed global warming.
Similarly, if there are satellite observations that perhaps collect the data about clouds, I asked if this data enable estimating cloud cover change cotribution to a possible change in the respective “forcings” caused by changes of sunlight absorption in Earth surface and, oppositely, in longwawe infrared absorption by clouds).
I think that you should attempt to formulate your questions in a more direct manner rather than stringing together multiple phenomena/concepts.
If you have further questions about a specific topic, try asking it in one shorter sentence; that makes it easier for people to provide an answer.
Piotrsays
Tomáš Kalisz: “estimating the development of the earth energy imbalance (EEI) in the last two or three decades, and if so, whether or not contributions of e.g. cloud cover changes, precipitation changes etc. can be assigned precisely enough to be comparable with models.
The effect of cloud cover change on the EEI – will be latitude-, land-cover-, and season- dependent (10% decrease in cloud cover over tropical ocean in summer would have very different effect that the same 10% drop in cloud cover over high latitude lands in winter,
Therefore, you won’t get any meaningful answers from global annual averages.
Plus could cover does not capture type and elevation of clouds that affect the balance between albedo and IR radiation.
Piotrsays
– Tomáš: “ Do I conclude correctly that, in nutshell, there is (at least in the last 25 years and in a global average), more rain from less clouds?
Zebra Tomas, it would be helpful if you would be more precise in forming your questions .
Classic Zebra – the triumph of form over substance – lecturing others on … their language, even when his answers are more confusing than the questions:
Tomáš asks about global annual AVERAGE of cloud cover and rain – so Zebra lectures him about … the VARIABILITY (extreme rainfalls, different types of clouds) even though their effects are already included in the calculation of annual global AVERAGES.
zebrasays
Piotr, the confusion seems to be on your part not mine.
“Tomáš asks about global annual AVERAGE of cloud cover and rain – so Zebra lectures him about … the VARIABILITY (extreme rainfalls, different types of clouds) even though their effects are already included in the calculation of annual global AVERAGES.”
“The effect of cloud cover change on the EEI – will be latitude-, land-cover-, and season- dependent (10% decrease in cloud cover over tropical ocean in summer would have very different effect that the same 10% drop in cloud cover over high latitude lands in winter,
Therefore, you won’t get any meaningful answers from global annual averages. ”
Sounds like you are arguing with yourself, not me.
Piotrsays
zebra: May 14: Sounds like you are arguing with yourself, not me.
No, I am arguing with you. You made 3 arguments in response to Tomáš:
1) Completely irrelevant to his question: Tomáš asked about global average precipitation (in the context of global average radiative budget), and you lectured him on … extreme rain events … “having serious consequences for humans“. You see the problem, right?
2) Lazy truism:. Truism: clouds of different types may have different radiative balance effect.
Lazy – because incomplete : whether clouds form over ocean or land, in low or high lats, and at what height – each is as, or more, important to radiative balance than what type of clouds they are. And it’s lazy also because you didn’t know?/didn’t bother ? to explain directly the relevance of your comment to Tomáš question (the way I did in my response to him ). And that’s incomplete and failing to clearly identify the relevance of argument to the other person’s question, comes from zebra, whose main contribution to this group seems to be … lecturing others on their ineffective, not direct, and imprecise writing.
And your third argument? Ahh:
3) “ Tomas, it would be helpful if you would be more precise in forming your questions. and I think that you should attempt to formulate your questions in a more direct manner.
Given your performance in pp. 1) and 2) – that’s … rich.
Him that makes shoes go barefoot himself, eh?
Actually, when I googled for “Sahel greening”, I arrived on an older article file:///C:/Users/tomas.kalisz/Downloads/Journal_of_Arid_Env_63_pp556-566.pdf
Comparison of both articles suggests that the alleged “greening” migh have been a temporary change rather than a long-term trend, I think.
@Tomáš Kalisz says: – ” …more rain from less clouds? ”
ms: — It depends on how you want to quantify clouds. Clouds can be very different, also in water content, optical density, height, temperature, global distribution, etc.
In that case, I recommend classifying by weight. Since the proportion of condensation or sublimation in nature is very small even without cloud formation, you can assume that 1kg evaporation = 1kg cloud = 1kg precipitation.
In your home region, the loss of clouds can be traced back even 70 years and decreasing precipitation even for 140 years. Your home region is clearly one of the dry regions that are becoming even drier and are therefore warming up above average (+0.5°C / 20 years).
The background of my imprecise questions was as follows:
If the data from the GPCP (see my response to zebra) might enable estimating not only the trend in global rainfall but also “partial” trends in the rainfall over seas and over continents, it could perhaps clarify if the tendency to “drying” that you mention is special for Europe, or if it is indeed a common feature of the observed climate change, applying for all continents, as some authors claim https://www.mpsr.sk/en/index.php?navID=54&id=84
@Tomas says: – “… if the available data (e.g. from satellite observations) may enable estimating the development of the earth energy imbalance (EEI) in the last two or three decades, and if so, wherther or not contributions of e.g. cloud cover changes…”
ms: — Actually, I had already posted the following GEB to you weeks ago. I thought you knew what a global energy balance is – and how to extract the EEI.
The tendency to dry out is a global phenomenon and is felt wherever temperatures rise.
Long before industrialization and rising GHE, humans actively practiced this dehydration. (see website)
Tomáš Kaliszsays
Hallo macias,
I asked if somebody knows how your GEB diagram looked like in, let say, years 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020. In other words, if we can construct a graph showing a temporal trend in the EEI, and, similarly, in the flows that form the EEI in GEBs for the respective year.
So far, I have not seen any such graph. If you know, please give me a hint.
BRT
JCMsays
to anyone:
chiming in from the anomalously compacted plains which are entirely devoid of functional ecosystem services:
Seems to me that profound human caused continental desertification, particularly in northern mid-latitudes, must be associated with overall reduction of evaporative fraction, reduced magnitude of local water recycling, and lower precipitation efficiency.
Instead of several-times weekly low-intensity rain received at the surface, we must wait weeks in hopes of a major frontal system to come through to clear the sky of anomalously accumulating dusty-humid-haze.
Measured in averages it might appear as reduced cloud fraction, increased cloud height, and reduced average cloud top temperature. Increasing verticality, coinciding with diminishing cloud fraction observed by optical horizontal spectrometrists (or keen eyeball using observationalists).
Less frequent, but higher intensity rainfall events seems a reasonable hypothesis related to massive soil degradation. Check the weather logbook scribbled with permanent blue pen.
Due to the higher bulk density of eroded soils compared to relatively high soil organic matter historical terrain, and higher average precipitation intensity, a greater proportion of rainfall surely runs off due to infiltration excess overland flows; thereby exacerbating hydrological and temperature extremes. ouch.
check the hourly levellogger timeseries for the well.
Lower frequency flushing of the skies, with more violent events when the time finally comes.
Reduced soil moisture, reduced periods of green growth & associated transpiration, warmer thermodynamic surface temperatures, lower cloud fraction, lower cloud top temperature, increasing ocean-continent contrasts, etc.
It’s not really so complicated in principle (and climatologically relevant when trying to rationalize change).
You are describing a situation that is not happening here where I live. There has not been drought summers for years, and the groundwater level increases, allthough swings more than before.
A lot of fameous cathastrophies that come through media , are rather obvious consequenses of urbanization and mis-use of water resources, bad water management from human side, that rather should be adressed and they say the same in souithern California. They blame on climate and nature what should be blamed on humans, local politicians, and entrepreneurs.
Also, I find it hard to believe that destruction of vegetation and of “Humus” is causing less rain It is rather opposite . Rain and snow increases. But destruction of high enough and natural vegetation makes the landscape more vunerable to drought periods. That is an accepted fact. Do not cut your lawn for instance when growth obviously stagnates against predictable warmer and more sunny days . And avoid making lawn monoculture Do not fight the obviiously more drought resisstant local flora speecies with deeper roots in your “lawn”. ..
I have heard the same from the USA praiiries, Wild “tallgrass” with buffalos is better.
Motorized leave- blowers and lawn moovers will be forbidden in private hands now. Rain and humus is there , it even increases, but it is fanatically fought against and raked out and remooved as fast as it appears.
Where nothing willl grow, think opposite and seet on what you cannot get rid of at your place. The pioneering “weeds” after your land was ruined. And soon after, just in a few years, the quite local, wild forest will come up again. That can be carefully iinfected with valuable flowers and fruit trees. it stands very well together.
Look over old and lleft gardens for species that have survived any human treatment and mistreatment for centuruies, then you have the cheapest and mosts valuable garden wiith least effort for max prophit. Avoid changing the soil too much from what it is from natures side. Then you willl have no desertification.
Nature adapts to human presence in any case, but it takes time. A new chief gadener every 3rd year willl turn anything healthy and alive into betonized pavement.
It takes 50 years at least for a garden or a park or a forrest to grow up with representable, sustainable, and valuable vegetation..
In the meantime, all experts and knowitalls, / all witches and spindoctors must be kept at distance. where Stnging nettles, Artemissia vulgarisi, and Vespa vulgaris are recommended.
JCMsays
“groundwater level increases, allthough swings more than before.”
rapid recharges indicates bedrock controlled drainages. One in which a piezometer is practically useless. Shallow or non-existent drifts, and a climate already adapted to the ecosystem. No amount of action can perturb this rocky terrain where there is no capillary pressure head nor unnatural resistance to infiltration..
However, climatologically, I suspect the +/- 60 degrees latitudes are unique zones, to-which there is a net delivery of heat in the global thermodynamic fluid transport system.
Some conjecture..
The true mid-latitude continents are but transit zones. Bypassed further-still by unnatural desertification of the deep organic soils, and associated unnatural blocking ridges.
For the cause of this behaviour, it may relate to the hypothesis of maximum dissipation in fluid dynamics discussed by Axel Kleidon (linked elsewhere here).
In nature, the rate of poleward decrease of heat vs the poleward increase of atmospheric transparency operates to maximize dissipation and dynamically moderate radiative transmittance.
Somehow a peak of transmittance is found around 60 degrees in the turbulent optical greenhouse system.
A mechanism of variable latent heating and opacity of the atmospheric column in variable dynamic global mass flux configurations.
Such that the poleward and vertical dynamic gradients are less steep than in static concept, but not too little.
A natural scheme so that heat is to arrive where there is best opportunity to transmit radiation to space, while simultaneously sustaining a maximum rate of mass dissipation.
The effect is low radiative transmittance in the tropics where the atmosphere is too opaque, but also a low rate of transmittance at the high poles where the temperature is too low. Instead, a peak rate of radiative transmittance at about +/- 60 degrees. Just warm enough, in a just transparent enough column of air. Selected by nature.
Some folks at +/- 60 are luckier than others. For dwellers in rafts in the southern ocean (an unlikely occurrence!) the result is persistent cloud cover and rough seas. The net radiative flux configuration is best achieved from low suspended condensate there. It is conceivable the surface in the southern ocean might cool with enhanced latent heating delivered in the unnatural global warming circulatory configuration. The South is quite free to do so, and the ocean surface temperature is disconnected from the outgoing flux on cloudy seas.
In Scandinavia, and other land areas +/- 60, a greater proportion of real surface radiative transmittance provides a more perfect mix along with varying degrees of low cloud. For Scandinavia specifically, a comfortable mix fed by the northern seas on terrain unlikely to be perturbed much by humanity.
end of conjecture.
The western Scandinavian catchments relatively stable hydrologically, with a clear path of latent influx via oceanic conveyors. It is mostly sheltered from the vast continental biohydrological disruption. So, uninhibited and increasing latent flux should be anticipated to easily recharge and raise the average well loggerlevel under unnatural global warming.
You say “…and a climate allready adapted to the ecosystem……”
Normal belief is that the ecosystems adapt to the climate, not that the climate adapts to the ecosystems..
Climate adapting to the ecosystems seems to be the gaia- theory, and if that is what you try and say, then specify it. It is hardly possible on short timescales..
Microclimate, yes. There it is obvious, but hardlly on regional scale allready.
We can exel in examples where species and ecosystems adapt to climate variation and changes, but not the opposite that climate adapts to the biosphere.
You have geographically, politically socially nationally, racially ettnically provinccial model theory of tthe Earth, The Climates, and the weathers.
Have you ever heard of Costta del Sol? and “Sunmaid rasins” from southern California?
Is there more blue skies in the foggy dews and in Bergen where it rains all the time? Do you believe in the blue sky tourist cruice ship brochures of the Norwegian Fjords?,
Havent you heard of Hurtigruten, that you must bring with you an umbrella, a raincoat, a thick pullover, an anurak, woolen unnderwear and proper boots, because you can expect flat snowstorm also in the summers at any time in the midnight sun?
And in the south, the roaring fourties and the fierceful fifties,…is there any blue sky in between that?
The rain in Spain staying mainly in the plains and its clearing up furtther north is commmercial, politcal theater and Hollywood studio rumors.
“Nivlheim” for Hell is the dark frosty moist foggy reality the furthere north you get, Nivl- for Nephelai in greek. Nebel in German.
“Kunsten med den Danske sommer
er at ta den naar den kommer”
SANN!
and that was Denmark.
the diffference between Norway and EU is the dfference of coalsmoke and hydroelectric power, and onland oceanic winds washed clean by rain and snow at sea,,. freshly washed heavens from Jan Mayen. compared to coalsmoke and freqent desert dusts from Sahara and Kasakhstan further south.
The blue heavens in the Ukrainian flag is only a rare glimpse of it now and then.
France has a quite more revolutionary blue sky than Germany due to onland westerly winds and nuclear power.
Higher temperature gives more evaporation provided that water is there. And since higher precipitation is predicted, this seems physically plausible.
Decrease of global cloud cower, there I am not so sure, and I preferre not to believe in the experts, it must have a set of plausible reasons that I can check up and understand.
Then we come to the morphology and plausible physics of clouds.
There is a lot of clouds from which it does not rain, at least not down to earth. That can also be seen in the summer. It obviously rains but the rain dissolves evaporates before it hits the ground.
And there is also traditionally a lot of flat grey weather without any rain or snow.
Then there are predictions that due to global warming, rain will come in stronger showers and not as steady light rain all the day.
This is for the tempered zone here where I live but I have learnt that the situation is similar but quite more dramatic in the tropes.
The troposphere with all the rain will become thicker by global warming, that is for sure.
But, why it should clear up more and more in between the clouds, that I cannot quite understand. Only one effect that hardly can explain it, as long as China India and South Africa are heating up with coal. The effect of H2SO4 acid rain, sulphate haze and aerosols in the atmosphere. It indeed clears up if coalsmoke is shrubbed. But I would recommend a qualified meteorologist on this, able to explain to us also How! about the weathers.
Then you also have the arid belts north and south between tropes and tempered, between passat and antipassat wind. The “silent belts” at sea and deserts on land. There it is high- pressure and blue sky and the air falls down . If tose areas get larger, then it will clear up but it will rain more in the low pressure belts.
This explaination rules both for local thunderstorms and for the earths major climatic zones.
(If I’ve understood correctly, reserves are basically the reported economically (and legally)-extractable amount with given technology that we can have high confidence exist at specific locations. Not everyone reports, not all such resource is reported as reserves even if it fits those criteria, and there is generally a reasonable expectation that more reserves will be identified in time. Reserves are not all of what we could ever economically mine.)
Also, compare the costs/prices of PV systems/etc. to the price of the input material. Maybe? doubling raw material prices for some parts (photovoltaic layers?) may not have much impact overall, on which case we could expect that needing to use lower grade ores, or require mining companies to spend more on safety/environmental protections/land reclamation/etc./ use alternate sites, would (up to a point?) not have much impact on supply for the PV/etc. industry. (Actually if I’ve done this before for PV, I don’t remember the results exactly, but eg., I do remember that Li supply is a relatively small cost for Li batteries)
Let’s burn the (unintentional?) Straw Man first. It is acknowledged we can build out *almost* a generation fully replacing fossil fuels with either one technology or a mix even considering future growth. Those are the conditions for the essay: 9 billion people, doubled energy consumption, by 2050-ish. So, nobody has said you can’t do it once. The problem is, you can *only* do it once. What then?
But you don’t really need to do all this gyrating, right? There’s a broadly accepted meme that it would take 5 Earths to have all people living a Middle-Class American life. Note all the talk of “equity.” And I agree with that talk. But we can’t do that. Such a state of equity would require, at minimum, global average consumption to be at least that of Europeans, which is half that of Americans last I heard. We’d still need 2 or 3 Earths.
But look at what is *truly* being proposed and the resources available and you see very quickly there is zero intention of giving all humans such a life. The calls for renewables do not include calculations of the energy demand for 9 billion Americans, right? Nobody is saying it, but the goal is to maintain the status quo, electrify things a bit, and that’s it.
But how could/would we maximize the resources available? You’d prioritize, by a lot, building out the recycling infrastructure. But that, also, would basically max us out, or come close, because it needs to be somewhere between 10 and 15x larger, perhaps even 20x larger than today.
There’s no tech-based way out of this mess. Without simplification/localization/Regenerative status, there is no pathway through. This is a simple mathematical reality.
Killiansays
1. Perhaps you missed this: “This makes metal mining inherently unsustainable on human timescales since economically extractable mineral deposits become exhausted before replenishment by natural processes.”
2 Any distinction between resources and reserves is pointless within the context of how long we can keep making X, Y and Z: It clearly implies both as the resources and reserves would have to be exhausted for them to stop being mined. Read for context, not just hyper-explicit accuracy of verbiage. Yes, I could be more careful, but why bother with all the extra words when it’s obvious what the context is and you have a brain? Besides, I’m fairly sure I made this point somewhere in that essay/White Paper.
3. Michaux’s analysis comes from last year and this year. The paper you cite is 2 years older. The newer analysis should take a back seat to older analysis outside any claim the new one is flawed? If you’re going to critique Michaux and others, you can’t just say a previous paper disagreed, you still have to analyze his work first and foremost.
4. All of these systems are unsustainable, so ultimately will run out. The goal should not be to maximize them, but to minimize them to the level of need, not wishes and wanting.
patrick O'twentysevensays
“Perhaps you missed this: “… “Let’s burn the (unintentional?) Straw Man first.“…
Didn’t miss it. We both agree the Earth is finite and such geological processes as ore formation are generally relatively slow. If we keep extracting ores at a significant (for us), constant or increasing rate for long enough, the accumulated ores will run out. Faster if we put some places out of bounds, etc. (as I agree we should try to do). But how long will that take? The article is saying longer than some may think (although one may get the impression that they regard legal/social limitations as a nuissance but I choose to take their statements on the subject as mattero-of-fact and won’t read into it further).
I was largely motivated by your listing of generations remaining of various metals/etc. (****PS is a generation about 25 years?) If you look at Fig. 2B, you can see that, much like economical fusion power plants, running out of Ag is always about 10-20 years in the future; it’s been that way since ~1955 (interpolating across the data gaps). Of course in several more decades, that might be 7-15 years, and maybe it will be 5 years away eventually. So my point is that some of those generations left-type numbers might be an order-of-magnitude (or more?) too small.
I agree that we should limit our impact on the environment, but I think it’s okay to have some impact.
“There’s no tech-based way out of this mess.” – I would amend that to: Technology alone won’t fix it. We will use technology (both new and old). I’m not counting on fusion, or space elevators, but there is room for improvement in solar PV technology, and other things. Passive solar, Insulation, etc. And better neighborhood design (not exactly tech, per se – strategy/lifestyle, perhaps), although that’s tricky for towns/cities that are already built.
“But look at what is *truly* being proposed and the resources available and you see very quickly there is zero intention of giving all humans such a life.”
I’m not against changing our lifestyles, but I’d like to keep my pizza, chocolate, laptop, Legos, and A/C …
Okay, how about this:
Lets do 2000 W /person * 10 ‘Gigapeople‘ = 20 TW. From solar PV:
20 % capacity factor (lower on many roofs/near populations, higher in low-latitude deserts, etc.)
times
~75 % (soiling + shading, inverter clipping, BOS losses, reduced output at evelated Temps)
times
70% (aging – I’m not retiring these panels on their 30th birthdays!)
times
80% (weighted average roundtrip storage efficiency * T&D) …
(I’ve actually done some calculations to get the aging factor/ cap.factor is familiar; storage efficiency might be too high although I figure a significant fraction of power is used instantaneously; also, some is used at/near where produced, although some may be transmitted 2000 km+. The derate for temp, inverter, etc. I’m less sure about – too optimistic or pessimistic?)
…
20 TW/8.4 % ~= just under 250 TW nameplate capacity (DC)
Now for glass:
3.2 mm thick * 2.5 g/mL = 8 kg/m2. For a nameplate capacity of 200 W / m2,
(250 TW / 200 W/m2 = 1.25 million km2 – that’s huge but less than 1 % land area, although the panels won’t be flat on the ground continuously – may have to multiply by 2.5 to get actual land use – still, some may be used to provide shade to some crops, etc., and runoff could strategically concentrate moisture for crops/grass for cattle/etc. in arid regions…
Hopefully the efficiency will increase so we don’t need as much area, land, or materials – clever light-trapping could boost c-Si cells to just over 30% eff, while using ~ 1/10 of the Si (15 microns) – I’ll post a link for that later)…
… that’s 40 g/W. (glass). So that’s 40*250 Tg = 10 trillion kg = 10 billion metric tons, which is maybe roughly 140 years of current flat glass production (50 years all glass) (sources pending), but also, at 2.5 metric tons/m3, = 2.5 Gt/km3,
4 cubic km of glass. Huge. But … okay, what’s the volume of rock that would be mined for that. Well I’ll just multiply by 2 for now (glass is not very different from common continental rock; it’s the purity that’s the problem. For solar glass we don’t want Fe or other such metals that would impart color (specifically, that would absorb solar radiation above the band gap). Could we mine granite and crush and separate the amphiboles, micas, feldspars and quartz and use the first 2 for Fe and extract CaO, NaO from the feldspars and use the Al from the feldspar and then make the soda-lime glass…?
Anyway,
Killiansays
This entire response is argumentative. Every caveat was covered in the essay. I don’t think you read the essay. It was very clear on the parameters, so why would you ask what they are if you read it thoughtfully?
“Tech-based” is very clear, Your argument is a Straw Man.
Glass? Who mentioned glass? Nobody. Why are you? It’s a logical fallacy here, twice. First, nobody raised glass as an issue. Second, Liebig’s is the central concern with resources.
Etc.
We get it. You are against sustainable futures. Unfortunately, these are serious issues. Come back when you’re serious.
nigeljsays
patrick O’twentyseven
Good points. I have been saying much the same to Killian and other de-growth people for the last five years, to no avail. Not the details about solar panels, but the general principles of what you posted.
Agree that there is clearly a minerals problem where we we run out of some metals eventually. However over the last 40 years I’ve seen various prediction about running out of minerals and time showed they were too pessimistic.
My own view is the only practical way out of the ‘mess’ is a combination of renewable energy at reasonable scale, moderate, achievable cuts in consumption of technology, materials and energy, and smaller global population size. And obviously recycling.
You have to consider all the options carefully and separately. So relying purely on renewable energy alone will probably push resources beyond the limits.
Moderate reductions in consumption sound feasible. Massive and rapid reductions in consumption of resources and energy ( as favoured by Killian) is obviously hugely problematic on many levels from impacts on peoples lives, to creating mass unemployment, and the impossibility of persuading people.
Smaller population looks like it would be too slow to be a sufficient stand alone solution.
So I keep coming back to a combination of renewable energy at reasonable scale, moderate, achievable cuts in consumption, and smaller global population size as being the only practical approach.
“But look at what is *truly* being proposed and the resources available and you see very quickly there is zero intention of giving all humans such a life.”
Your response might have missed the point. The concern is that abundant renewable energy as scale is flawed because some people will have it but possibly not the whole world. Its an ethical issue. However not everyone has a computer or car, and this is just the reality of life. Obviously we could still eliminate global poverty as such. Nobody needs to starve in this world.
patrick O'twentysevensays
Of course I meant Na2O; and I’ve come to learn that glass (soda-lime) tends to be made from silica ((quartz) sand, I guess), limestone, and soda ash, … and sometimes dolomite (so that would be soda-lime-magnesia? glass). Sand and limestone are certainly common, although we’d want to meet thresholds in quality/purity; I’m not clear on where soda ash comes from but I get the impression it’s not hard to get.
And I know glass is just one part, of course.
patrick O'twentysevensays
Re Killian – I think we’ve had a miscommunication. I did not bring up glass in order to say we’ll have enough Ag. I happened to have some glass parameters fresh in my mind and *I* wanted to know about it. And it turns out it will take a large production rate, although the raw resources are probably sufficient, I guess. (I was going to do Al for transmission lines next) No straw man, no logical fallacy.
Also, I did not mean to imply that I believe we should only use solar PV. I am aware of the tendency for solar and wind to complement each other (daily and seasonally and maybe with weather?), so that, combined, there is less need for storage (although cloudy calm and sunny windy periods still happen). I am in favor of at least keeping the nuclear power we have, and hydropower, although there’s salmon to consider…
And I could say more but I have other things to work on… so later.
Re nigelj – thanks. Although I would rather not be accepting of the inequality as it is; I’m okay with maybe 1/10 people having 50% more than the rest, 1/100 having a bit more… but I would like the world to head towards more egalitarianism, especially on a global scale. … speaking of morality one thing I’m concerned about for the immediate future –
The world relies way too much on China for solar PV panels. I’m not coming at this from a protectionist perspective – I’m fine with buying stuff from other countries if they have better resources and a better-trained workforce to make the stuff. But the Chinese gov’s MCGA (C=China) attitude toward Taiwan, their tolerance of Putins’ MRGA… and their treatment of the Uyghurs (esp. if that is directly tied to the production of solar products??)
Maybe we should bring Solyndra back?
(not that my country (US) is perfect – MAGA politicians cracking down on women and pediatric healthcare and teachers and books, and for some reason they hate Cathode Ray Tubes; US and Europe generally could be more welcoming of immigrants/refugees/etc., and so on…)
nigeljsays
patrick O’twentyseven
Income and wealth inequality have become very high. I read statistics that about 50 families own half the worlds wealth. This leads to poverty with some people missing out despite working long hours, and excessive inflation of asset bubbles.
I agree there should be efforts to reduce inequality to more moderate levels. However the easiest tools are wealth taxes, capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes and they are not politically popular.
I live in New Zealand and we have the same issue with China. We are uncomfortable about their human rights abuses but very dependent on them for farm exports. We are facing the fact we might end up having to find other markets.
I favour a globalised world, but there sometimes need to be exceptions. Being reliant on China for critical components is not a great idea. That said starting a trade war with China is not a great idea either. Needs a very delicate dance.
Killiansays
Alright, let me try again. A generation in the overview was stated to be a generation of each technology, so the time frame is referring specifically to the life cycle of each technology.
It doesn’t really matter to analyze any given product because we are talking about a system, right? And we are trying to understand the system as a whole. To that end, at that meta/macro level, and given how many of the resources on that list are critical to the systems they are used in, all we need to know to come to conclusions on the sustainability of those systems is whether *any* of them can support even one generation of a global buildout.
Certainly, if you want to know about any single product or industry, then, sure, drill down on the things used in that specific industry. But the conclusion underlying all of this is already clear: You get one generation. The parameters for that are 9 billion people, current rates of growth/use of each item in that list and a doubling of consumption. Why? The estimate from ChatGPT was around a 50 to 70% increase, I think, but I don’t want to go back and check so if that number is off a bit, that’s fine if someone corrects it because it’s irrelevant: Resource curves are notoriously resistant to large shifts in depletion outcomes even from large introductions of additional reserves, etc. That is, a significant increase in reserves, efficiencies, etc., doesn’t any curve more than some decades. And, we need to be looking at worst-case scenarios to have a solid risk analysis.
Additionally, another way to look at doubling is time. Consumption doubling due to increases in consumption is no different than doubling because of a longer time period. Either way, whether there is a 50% increase in consumption or 100% doesn’t shift the curves all that much, and it doesn’t matter if it’s due to an increase in total consumption per year or consumption over twice the time frame.
Regardless, we get between somewhat less than a generation and maybe 1.25 or so generations. This is a trivial number given the context.
Cheers
patrick O'twentysevensays
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-48981-w: From Abstract: “We demonstrate through precise numerical simulations the possibility of flexible, thin-film solar cells, consisting of crystalline silicon, to achieve power conversion efficiency of 31%. Our optimized photonic crystal architecture consists of a 15 μm thick cell patterned with inverted micro-pyramids with lattice spacing comparable to the wavelength of near-infrared light, enabling strong wave-interference based light trapping and absorption. Unlike previous photonic crystal designs, photogenerated charge carrier flow is guided to a grid of interdigitated back contacts with optimized geometry to minimize Auger recombination losses due to lateral current flow.…
(Question – how will glass connect to this? Will it use glass? Or maybe I didn’t read through enough of it. Ideally the real part of the refractive index increases gradually from the front transparent surface, going down into the photovoltaic layer…)
BTW, with “interdigitated” (Scrabble points alert!) back contacts, no need for Ag (unless Ag is involved at all in… well anyway…) https://www.thesolarnerd.com/blog/can-solar-panels-be-made-without-silver/#:~:text=Another%20way%20to%20eliminate%20silver%20is%20to%20develop,light%20from%20hitting%20the%20front%20of%20the%20cell.
Before I read that, I actually thought the Ag was used because of electronic compatibility or thermodynamic/chemical stability (eg., don’t connect Au wires to Al wires – you’ll invite the purple plague!) but apparently it’s just because it’s slightly better conductor than Cu. It’s important for front contacts because obviously you want them as small as possible to let as much solar radiation (> bandgap) through. But maybe they could use Al and just make the fingers taller, with sloped sides that reflect most light down into the cell?
Ag might be necessary for other PV technologies; I’m not sure -there’s a bunch of ideas (surface plasmon resonance, photonic crystals, dye-sensitized cells, organic…)
… Anyway, so maybe we’ve mined and left 80 square km areas 100 m deep, and what should we do with these holes? Energy storage!
Put some glass over the top and now we can store solar energy thermally via a greenhouse. If that glass reflects at >~ 1 micron, and some thermal insulation, and maybe the underlying black surface is only black >~ 1 micron, we could perhaps get a temp near 1200 K! In the winter a pond could freeze and the ice could be harvested every morning, go into another hole as more water is added to the pond, Now we have a heat sink.
BTW, maybe the thermal storage medium could be some mix of basaltic gravel and … maybe junk we couldn’t recycle, and some hot fluids that might leach certain metals out of stuff and maybe a little charcoal here and there to grab that metal and stick some graphite electrodes in it… I’m suggesting we might, possibly maybe try making our own ores.??? (decomission after 1000 years or 10,000 years…? 100,000 years? and mine it again?)
But maybe there is something to the idea of – if we're going to heat something up, might as well be something we can cook.
patrick O'twentysevensays
“possibility of flexible, “… so no glass, then.
patrick O'twentysevensays
It’s also worth remembering that there are multiple PV technologies with different material requirements.
Having more buildings built with PV systems (combined w/ solar water heating to cool panels and boost system efficiency) built in (I’m saying built a lot!) – e.g. with housing/building portfolio standards (tuned to local conditions – and I don’t want to cut down trees; the places I grew up generally had few/no trees shading the roofs but there was a neighborhood in nearby city which I imagine might have looked almost like a forest from above) would presumably lower costs (relative to roof-top systems now) by reducing some of the material needs and lowering soft-costs…
PS see my comment below (after Tomas Kalisz 5/14 4:35) that was supposed to be here
Barry E Finchsays
MS 5 MAY “AMOC reduces, then less heat is conveyed to Greenland”. Perhaps for surface warming to the southern tip. I understand that ice loss from surface melt is ~1/2 of the loss. Prevailing wind southwesterly not southerly would presumably provide that warm air too far east to affect Greenland much, shouldn’t affect the west coast. much. Warming of water below the surface layer will continue to increase ice melt at the face at depths below 200 m or some such. Greenland east coast gets that from the starting flow due to high pressure at all depths in winter in that little deep pool from above Iceland to ~75N. As that flow lessens, the deep water should become warmer. So it doesn’t seem to me nearly as simple as “AMOC reduces, then less heat is conveyed to Greenland” due to deeper water.
Barry E Finchsays
Geoff Miell says 5 MAY 2023 “Barry E Finch, “. I haven’t the foggiest idea why that interesting well-typed information was stated as being for me rather than for the audience. I mean, thanks anyway because it’s nice to get personalized service for a change.
Barry E Finchsays
Tomáš Kalisz 8 MAY 2023 There seems to be a major factor missing in your pondering. Less cloud (or fewer clouds, whatever one prefers) isn’t the same as global cloud cover unless residency time is included in the calculations. I know nothing about what it is, I’ve never studied it, but it’s patently obvious that if clouds were to form and then precipitate more rapidly then there could indeed be more cloud and more precipitation with less average cloud cover over a year.
Barry E Finchsays
Geoff Miell 5 MAY 2023 I seriously question your source for Earth energy imbalance (EEI) “928,000 ‘Hiroshimas’ per Day” (21.3 Zettajoules /year, 1.33 w/m**2). It’s way more than Karina von Schuckmann et al’s latest 0.78 w/m**2 (I eye balled 0.88 w/m**2 for last 4 years off her plot with her recent talk). That casual source of yours would need to be fact-checked with something formal from a scientist who does that work. I’d be interested because I’ve been trying to keep track of EEI since 2013.
Geoff Miellsays
Barry E Finch,
“I seriously question your source for Earth energy imbalance (EEI) “928,000 ‘Hiroshimas’ per Day” (21.3 Zettajoules /year, 1.33 w/m**2).”
CERES_EBAF_Edition4.2 is the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) Energy Balanced and Filled (EBAF) Top-of-Atmosphere (TOA) and surface monthly means data in netCDF format Edition 4.2 data product. Data was collected using the CERES Scanner instruments on the Terra, Aqua and NOAA-20 platforms for various periods. Data collection for this product is ongoing.
“It’s way more than Karina von Schuckmann et al’s latest 0.78 w/m**2 (I eye balled 0.88 w/m**2 for last 4 years off her plot with her recent talk).”
Reference?
What “recent talk”?
What’s the date range of the plot in “her recent talk”?
Where does Karina von Schuckmann et. al. source their data from?
Perhaps that might explain the discrepancy?
“That casual source of yours would need to be fact-checked with something formal from a scientist who does that work.”
I’d suggest it requires comparing the information presented in the graph presented by Prof Jacobson with the “CERES – EBAFTOA42” source data.
Geoff Miellsays
Barry E Finch: – “That casual source of yours would need to be fact-checked with something formal from a scientist who does that work.”
Would you accept Andrew Dressler’s assessment of the “NASA CERES EBAF-TOA Ed4.1 Net flux” data?
Climate scientist Andrew Dressler tweeted on 25 Mar 2022:
I found this hard to believe, but I downloaded the data and confirmed it. The energy imbalance for the Earth in 2021 was indeed 1.5 W/m2.
The researchers found that as Petermann Glacier’s grounding line retreated nearly 4 kilometers—2½ miles—between 2016 and 2022, warm water carved a 670-foot-tall cavity in the underside of the glacier, and that abscess remained there for all of 2022.
“These ice-ocean interactions make the glaciers more sensitive to ocean warming,” said senior co-author Eric Rignot, UCI professor of Earth system science and NASA JPL research scientist. “These dynamics are not included in models, and if we were to include them, it would increase projections of sea level rise by up to 200 percent—not just for Petermann but for all glaciers ending in the ocean, which is most of northern Greenland and all of Antarctica.”
Though this paper predicts significant sea level rise in future, we see little to no evidence of any long-term upward trend during this 34 year period.
Once again, no sign of any upward trend over this period. In addition, Goddard quotes an article referring to an 1837 report, in which “The natives observe the atolls to be wasting away; in some the cocoanut trees are standing in the water ; in another the black soil of the island is discernible at low water thirty feet from the beach ; the south-east side of an island in Phaidee Pholo Atoll is entirely gone, but is marked by a banyan tree in the water. They say that some islands have disappeared entirely . . . ”
From the very extensive and detailed paper, “Relative sea-level rise and land subsidence in Oceania from tide gauge and satellite GPS,” by Alberto Borelli, as published in the journal Nonlinear Engineering, 2020:
“As relative sea-level trends oscillate with many periodicities, from hours to multi-decadal, up to quasi-60 years, only long-term-trend (LTT) tide gauges spanning more than 100 years without quality issues allow assessment of the rate of rise and the acceleration of the sea levels. The sea level oscillates with periodicities in the 60-year range, like other climate parameters [2, 10, 11]. Thus, more than 60 years of recording from the same tide gauge, without any major perturbation, are needed to compute a reliable rate of rise by linear fitting [12, 13, 14]. More than 100 years are otherwise needed to compute a reliable acceleration by parabolic fitting [15].”
“The global pattern is consistent with a small thermo-steric sea level rise with negligible acceleration, explained as a gentle recovery from the low temperatures of the Little Ice Age, that was caused by the record low solar activity of the Maunder and Spörer Minima [70] as well as volcanic activity and internal oscillations in the climate system [71]. The onset of the Little Ice Age occurred after the Medieval Warm Period, about 1350 [71]. It was the cause of the Vikings’ decolonizing of the once green Greenland [72]. This cooling period ended about 1850 [73]. Since then, the sea levels are rising without any significant acceleration component. The effect of global warming on the rate of rise of the sea level is thus much smaller than thought.” https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/nleng-2020-0007/html
From your own source, Genius:
“ Global mean sea levels are projected to gradually rise in response to greenhouse warming.”
“On shorter time scales, modes of natural climate variability in the Pacific, such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), can affect regional sea level variability and extremes, with considerable impacts on coastal ecosystems and island nations“.
And: “we find that climate change will enhance El Niño–related sea level extremes
“A few more victories like this, my dear Pyrrhus, and we will be annihilated” ?
nigeljsays
Victor some locations have no sea level rise or very little sea level rise because of land uplift and other local infuences.. Thats why you have to look at all countries and derive a global average, which does show globally sea levels are rising. Once again you are cherrypicking, and not thinking about why some places might not have sea level rise
..very little sea level rise because of land uplift
Since the deglaciation causes uplift in Antarctica of hundreds of feat(?) how will this affect sea level rise – likely not considered in sea level rise estimates? This likely also modulates the gravitational field, again changes sea level distribution. Further deglaciation slows the currents, in turn changes winds, again changing local sea heights.
John Pollacksays
For the land to rise under Antarctica, the weight of the ice must first be removed. This would take many centuries to millenia, even in a high-emissions scenario, because the interior of Antarctica is so cold. Once the ice is removed, it would also be a slow process for the land to rise, and it would be compensated by subsidence elsewhere as the semi-molten mantle redistributes itself. The gravitational effects of this process are second-order. They are quite a bit smaller than the many feet of sea level rise that even a partial melt of the Antarctic ice sheet would produce.
The whole process is so slow, compared to a human lifespan, that it is basically a theoretical consideration, entirely dependent on emission scenarios lasting centuries.
Also note that there are variations within Antarctica. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is a lot less stable than the rest of the continent, but also quite a bit smaller. It would still generate a nasty amount of sea level rise if it melts away. That process has already started.
Just from a weight perspective, since ice is perhaps 1/4 as dense as continental crust, I would guess the ultimate local rebound would be very approximately 1/4 the depth of the ice. – but that’s for areas above sea level. It also doesn’t account for other gravitational adjustments, etc. That would occur over tens of thousands of years.
The sea-level fall close to a melting ice-sheet is not counter-intuitive if one understands earth tides. The sheet is like a magnet, attracting ocean fluid toward it, but when it disappears the attracting force reduces and the water level lowers.
The other feature that people don’t appreciate is the lowering of sea-level with increasing atmospheric pressure, as occurs with El Nino cycles For some tidal-gauge locations, ENSO factors contribute to the majority of inter-annual variation in sea-level. It correlates so well in some places, that sea-level is a proxy for the ENSO index. It’s called the inverse barometer effect, which you can look up.
BTW, it’s also responsible for much of the flooding during a hurricane. As the low-pressure hurricane eye approaches, a bay may have it’s water recede, attracted to the low-pressure and pushed down by the leading edge high-pressure. As it passes, the water sloshes back in and together with winds will create the large storm surge.
Adam Leasays
@Paul Pukite
“BTW, it’s also responsible for much of the flooding during a hurricane. As the low-pressure hurricane eye approaches, a bay may have it’s water recede, attracted to the low-pressure and pushed down by the leading edge high-pressure. As it passes, the water sloshes back in and together with winds will create the large storm surge.”
Not really. The receding of the ocean as a hurricane approaches land is mainly due to offshore winds from the hurricane’s circulation pushing the water away from land, like a reverse storm surge. Once the hurricane makes landfall and the eye passes the winds reverse and shove that water back onto land. This is one of the reasons why the death toll in supertyphoon Haiyan was so high, because of the draining of the bay from strong northerly winds as the typhoon approached from the south-east, then that water got driven onto land when the winds switched after the eye passed, which caused not only a high surge but it came up very quickly and caught people out.
The pressure gradient in even a category 5 hurricane doesn’t have much effect on the sea level in itself. For a hurricane with a 900mb central pressure, the rise in sea level due to the inverse barometer effect is around 1 meter, the storm surge will be 6 or 7 times bigger than that.
RSS has updated its TLT files for March & April 2023 (but not yet its Trend Browse Tool) giving a global April anomaly of +0.56ºC, down on March’s +0.66ºC but above Jan & Feb (+0.45ºC & +0.54ºC).
April 2023 is the 9th warmest April in the RSS record (=8th in UAH, 5th in ERA5 SAT). The first four months of 2023 in RSS TLT sits as =9th warmest start-of-the-year (=11th in UAH, 5th in ERA5 SAT). With an El Niño expected to boost temperatures through the closing months of 2023, the full 2023 calendar year will perhaps end up as a top five year in RSS.
GISTEMP LOTI anomaly for April 2023 is +1.00ºC, the 4th warmest April on record behind 2020 (+1.13ºC), 2016 (+1.10ºC) & 2019 (+1.01ºC) while ahead of 2017 (+0.94ºC), 2017, 2010 & 2022 (0.84ºC).
The start of 2023 Jan-Apr is the 5th warmest on record.
With the emerging El Nino, our global temperature forecast gives about even odds that 2023 will set a new instrumental record, with a 76% chance that 2024 will set a new instrumental record.
Chris,
I see no sign at neither of that CO2 nor that the temperature rise iis beginning to curve down.
But,, I see a lot of efforts from humman side for this to happen. And a a lot of political religious commercial struggle against the same. A lot t of people do obviously feel intuittively that they will loose their wrrant, hegemony, and leadership then.
Chris,
The strength of the coming El Niño is presumably the big thing to determine the 2023 & 2024 temperatures.
Various projections suggest the coming El Niño is not as meaty as the 1997/98 and 2015/16 El Niños with the IRI ENSO predictions and the Met Office and NOAA projections all apparently showing a likely sub 2ºC Nino3.4 thro’ the 2023 autumn peak when 1997 & 2015 saw Nino3.4 peak at +2.7ºC & +3.0ºC respectively. The global temperature wobbles thro’ those big El Niños would relative to 2022 see a new ‘scorchyisimo!!’ year in 2023 but would fall short of +1.5ºC for 2024. (That is the graphic in your twitter link would require a +0.4ºC wobble when the big El Niño years 1998 & 2016 saw only a +0.3ºC wobble.)
But of course time will be the proper judge of this.
Tomáš Kaliszsays
Thank you very much for this reference. I have to admit that this is too complicated reading for me.
It appears, however, that the authors did not deal with precipitation at all, neither globally, nor with a distribution thereof over land and sea.
As the relationship between moisture and precipitation does not seem to be addressed in this publication, I suppose that the document in fact does not clarify my question regarding temporal trends in the EEI and in contribution of latent heat transfer thereto.
So far, I still can’t understand your reference to “contribution of latent heat transfer to EEI”, nor quite what you mean by “the relationship between moisture and precipitation”.
The reference tells us that there is an increase in water vapor, which we know contributes to EEI.
(It also tells us that the moisture content varies with altitude and over different regions.)
Perhaps you could explain:
1. Since we can already measure water vapor, what exactly is average global precipitation supposed to tell us?
2. Apart from some variation in the altitude at which latent heat is transferred to the atmosphere through condensation, which might shorten the path for radiant energy to potentially follow to space, how does that transfer affect the energy content of the climate system?
Piotrsays
Zebra: “ Since we can already measure water vapor, what exactly is average global precipitation supposed to tell us?”
My guess would be that water vapour does not tell the whole story – the latent heat transport is realized only when the water vapour condenses into clouds. Further, water in water vapour only absorbs IR, water in clouds absorbs IR and increases Earth’s albedo. And rain removes the water from clouds.
But as I mentioned before – these can’t be resolved with using global annual averages.
zebrasays
Piotr, I am trying to help Tomas, if he is sincerely trying to figure this stuff out, clarify his thinking/formulate his questions better… that’s the hard part in science, not reciting factoids (which everyone already knows).
I challenged the usefulness of average global precipitation, and you butt in with “blah, blah, blah, look at what I know, and oh yeah I agree with zebra that average global precipitation is not useful”.
Either Tomas will answer the questions, which will show that he is actually interested in the science, or not. Do you really not get the point of the exercise, or are you just incapable of any self-control?
nigeljsays
Zebra says “I am trying to help Tomas, if he is sincerely trying to figure this stuff out, clarify his thinking/formulate his questions better… that’s the hard part in science, not reciting factoids (which everyone already knows).”
Thomas Kaliz original question was “Do I conclude correctly that, in nutshell, there is (at least in the last 25 years and in a global average), more rain from less clouds? ”
I feel its a reasonable question and does seem hard to reconcile. I do not understand what zebra means by formulate it better and how you would do that .
I also believe that when people ask questions on websites they deserve open frank answers not interactive teaching sessions they haven’t asked for. if people want to do that sort of thing, maybe they should say they are not sure what the answer is, but we could go through a discovery process.
Nobody has given an answer, although Piotr made a useful related comment on the EEI.
Zebra plays down the precipitation issue which just looks like an evasion. and suggests Zebra doesnt really know why fewer clouds produce more rain.
And there are many obvious reasons we need to know why precipitation is changing.
I don’t have much expertise but I would guess that while the climate models predict less clouds in total (assuming they do that) its possible that within this scenario you get fewer high and low level clouds but more of the mid level heavy rain bearing clouds and this might explain the slightly increased total global precipitation.
Maybe one of the climate experts actually knows. I’m curious.
I very much doubt everyone knows all the factoids mentioned on this website. As far as I know we are not human encyclopedias.
Piotrsays
zebra: “I challenged the usefulness of average global precipitation ” … for the application that Tomas wasn’t proposing ?Tomas wanted to use avg. precipitation for the Earth energy imbalance (EEI), so you were lecturing him that it is not the average rainfall but the increase in occurrence of intense rainfall events … [that] has serious consequences for humans” .
Very …helpful [zebra: “ I am trying to help Tomas“]
Zebra: Do you really not get the point of the exercise
wasn’t the point, as usual – to stroke your ego by paternalistically lecturing others on their language and informing them on facts irrelevant to their point? You know, the zebrasplaining ?
Zebra: or are you just incapable of any self-control?
Yeah, this must be it: I am just incapable of any self-control over my urge to post falsifiable questions to your lecturing others, say: .
Tomáš Kaliszsays
Dear zebra,
Thank you very much for your comments. I will try to explain the background of my assumptions / questions:
1. Climate models seem to predict that relative increase in humidity caused by temperature increase is significantly larger than corresponding precipitation increase, see e.g. Pendergrass and Hartmann, Journal of Climate 2014, p. 757-68, DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00163.1.
According to an earlier answer to my question, satellite data on global precipitation seem to confirm this difference.between relative increase in absolute air humidity on one hand, and relative increase in global precipitation on the other hand,
2. I suppose that any mechanism cooling the Earth surface by intensification of the heat transport into upper atmosphere may influence the EEI. In this sense, latent heat transport may compensate the increased greenhouse effect.
By asking my questions, I would like to learn if the increase in surface cooling by latent heat transfer caused by 1 K increase in Earth average temperature (which is commensurate to the respective increase in the global precipitation) would have been higher than it actually is, if there was less terrestrial deforestation in the past.
And/or, if the current positive EEI causing global warming could be reversed to a negative sign, provided that we will be able to increase the evaporation rate from the land significantly (e.g. by reforestation and/or irrigation) and secure the corresponding water supply enabling to keep such intensified evaporation sustainably.
Greetings
T
zebrasays
Tomas, thank you for taking the effort to clarify your question(s). I will attempt to explain what I think are problems in your reasoning.
You say:
“2. I suppose that any mechanism cooling the Earth surface by intensification of the heat transport into upper atmosphere may influence the EEI. In this sense, latent heat transport may compensate the increased greenhouse effect.”
The EEI is defined as the difference between the radiant energy the climate system is absorbing from the Sun and the radiant energy emitted from the climate system to space. This is quantified by satellite measurement and Ocean Heat Content. It is increasing, according to the measurements.
This empirically contradicts your “supposition”, and it validates the underlying theoretical/quantitative principles, about which you seem to be confused.
Water vapor is the major contributor to the Greenhouse Effect, which is causing EEI. So increasing evaporation, resulting in increased water vapor, would have exactly the opposite effect from what you suggest, and that is what we observe.
You also seem to have a misconception about latent heat. When vapor condenses, that energy is converted to thermal energy in the climate system, so there is no immediate effect on the EEI… the energy is still in the system.
The effect, as I said in the previous comment, is limited to whatever increase in radiant energy escaping to space there is compared to radiant energy from a lower altitude. So you would have to balance this in relation to the increased Greenhouse Effect from the water vapor that doesn’t condense. But in any event, you are still “warming” the system.
I hope this clarifies what is happening. If you have any questions or disagreements I am happy to respond.
Piotrsays
Tomas: Thank you very much for your comments. I will try to explain the background of my assumptions / questions:
1. Climate models seem to predict that relative increase in humidity caused by temperature increase is significantly larger than corresponding precipitation increase.”
If there was a question here (e.g. why?) – the increase in evaporation cause increase in absolute humidity (AH), in not relative humidity (RH % of the max. water vapour content at given conditions) and it is the relative humidity that determines whether clouds would form and whether it rains – below 100% you should not have any clouds/rains. So you could have had an increase AH with decrease in RH and in precipitation.
As for countering EEI by increasing evaporation it won’t likely work. The two main effects of evaporation is the warming by water vapour absorption of IR by water vapour gas and water in clouds vs. increased albedo of clouds.
Over the scale of Earth the first is larger than the second, that why (water vapour +clouds) have warming effect and in fact it is an important POSITIVE warming feedback.
Your latent heat has a minor contribution at best – as Zebra already indicated it does not remove the heat into space, it just puts it higher in the atmosphere, so the only cooling effect would be if a bigger fraction of the IR was re-emitted at that height escaped into the space.
But I doubt it would make a huge difference.
As for your suggestion of increasing ground level evaporation- I doubt reforestation/irrigation would be of much help. Say you evaporate at site A – RH=40% and site B – RH=80%.
At site A) evaporation would just raise AH, and RH, but as long as RH you get ONLY warming part without any cooling part (no increased albedo nor your latent heat)
At site B) evaporation – at first (i.e. for RH 80% => RH 100%) you only warm, then you start forming clouds, thus adding cooling, but once clouds have formed – their albedo effect is close to max, and the only extra cooling is your latent heat – but this one is limited only to the probably minor increase in the % of IR re-emitted from clouds that escape into space.
So depending on the local balance between warming due to increased AH and increased absorption by droplets or crystals of water in clouds, and cooling from increased albedo and slight(?) increase in the IR emissions into space from your latent heat – it may go either way – so even if it were a slight cooling, it WON’T be enough to compensate for having the 50% higher conc. of CO2 today than in the preindustr. times.
Finally – the difference in the increased absorption IR and increased cloud albedo and latent heat is HIGHLY LOCAL and Seasonal- hence the global annual averages of evaporation would be useless, or worse – misleading.
Dear Piotr, and dear zebra (apology for replying to both of you at once),
I have a feeling that there are three central points in your answers:
1) water vapor is an important greenhouse gas (what is certainly true)
2) condensing water may form clouds that have very different influence on th eradiation balance, depending on cloud character, however, there is an evidence that when average tempeature rises, the greenhouse effect of increased water vapor concenbtration (absolute humidity) overweights the effect of cloud albedo (mostly because, due to basically constant relative humidity, cloud formation will not increase substantially)
It sounds quite reasonably.
3) Earth surface cooling by non-radiative heat transfer in form of latent heat cannot influence EEI because the condensation heat only warms troposphere and stays in the system:
“Your latent heat has a minor contribution at best – as Zebra already indicated it does not remove the heat into space, it just puts it higher in the atmosphere, so the only cooling effect would be if a bigger fraction of the IR was re-emitted at that height escaped into the space.
But I doubt it would make a huge difference.”
I think that in this third point, both of you may be wrong. As it appears that the view according 3) is still shared and spread by some scientists dealing with climate, I would be happy if the topics attracted the attention of moderators on this discussion site. As it has not happened yet, I will strive to do my best and try to explain my present reasoning as well as uncertainties linked thereto myself.
In my public orgpage (a dynamic interactive scheme in the web application OrgPad), accessible per link
you may see the story behind my questions put on RealClimate. It might be perhaps characterized as an „unsettled discussion about role of water in Earth climate“, which I translated into an idea of a „pilot scale geoengineering experiment“. In this orgpage, I put also some references that may be relevant for the presently discussed topics.
First of all, you can consult the cell comprising a very basic, rough explanation of the greenhouse effect from a textbook (Physical climatology, Dennis Hartmann 2016).
Let us imagine Moon inside a glass sphere having a perfect transparency for sunlight and completely absorbing longwave infrared radiation. Assuming that the mean surface albedo of the Moon and Earth are the same, the sphere would have established a new steady state („equilibrium“) with an average surface temperature ca 303 K (30 °C) and temperature of the sphere about 255 K (– 18 °C), which is equal the original average surface temperature of the Moon without atmosphere.
As soon as we fill the vacuum between the glass sphere with a gas, the situation changes due to an additional heat transfer enabled by thermal convection. The difference between the average surface temperature and average temperature of the glass sphere will decrease, because part of the energy coming from the Sun is now transported to the sphere by convection and the average radiative temperature of the surface decreases accordingly.
The original difference 48 K (between the average surface temperature and the average radiation temperature of a hypothetical „greenhouse cover“ as described above) thus clearly represents a maximum (let me call it „greenhouse limit“) of the greenhouse effect that may be achieved under given surface albedo / atmosphere transparency / insolation. Any non-radiative heat transfer mechanism will act as an additional „surface cooling“ and will decrease the average surface temperature as well as the respective difference between the surface temperature and the average radiative temperature of the glassy „greenhouse cover“.
You may note my uncertainty how to deal with the ambiguity of the term “greenhouse effect” as used in media and daily life. I think that it would be better using this term solely for the effect itself, in terms of the observed difference between the average surface temperature of a planet and its average steady state radiation temperature. The same term is, however, used also for a specific mechanism causing this effect in planetary atmospheres, namely for the “radiative forcing”, resulting from the presence of “greenhouse gases” that absorb the longwave surface radiation of planetary bodies. Furthermore, the term “greenhouse effect” is sometimes used also for other mechanisms causing the observed temperature difference. An example of these mechanisms may be the back-reflectance of the longwave surface radiation by clouds.
Anyway, I believe that we can say that any non-radiative heat transfer mechanism „weakens“ the greenhouse effect. In famous Trenberth’s diagrams showing graphically the energy flows participating on the Earth energy „budget“ made for a selected timespan, the arrow for the latent heat flow is approximately four times thicker than the arrow for the sensible heat flow. I think that this fact can be seen as a first hint that, contrary to your assumption cited above, Earth surface cooling by latent heat flow may play an important role in Earth climate. The second hint may be taken from the cited textbook which unequivocally asserts that the difference between average emission temperature computed for a hypothetical Earth with the same albedo but without atmosphere which is about 30 °C and the observed average surface temperature which is about ca 15 °C has to be ascribed to non-radiative heat transport from the surface.
One of the reasons why I posted my questions on the RealClimate site was just the circumstance that your view (that Earth surface cooling by latent heat flux has a negligible importance in Earth climate regulation) is still shared and actively promoted by some scientists. As an example could serve a fierce defence of this view by leaders of Czech Globe, an institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, published in October 2022 in a Czech newspaper as an answer to a public critique of their opinion Avex 4/2020 about climate change.
Their oponents criticized that Avex 4/2020 is completely silent about the role of the water cycle in climate regulation, and Czech Globe described them in their reply as people wishing to cool a closed room by opening the door of a fridge arranged in the room.
Personally, I see such „closed room“ arguments as a very unfortunate kind of „climate advocacy“, because spreading unfair arguments (If I understood correctly, even you admit that a certain part of the heat transported to the atmosphere must escape into space, because Earth can be no way considered as a closed thermodynamic system in a thermodynamic equilibrium) by people representing a scientific institution can, in my opinion, discredit the science as such.
I hoped that moderators of this discussion step up and make clear that the terms like „radiative equilibrium“, „energy balance“ etc., as usually used in the context of the climate science, in fact describe a mere steady state (which is still idealized, because the „Earth energy imbalance“ may be quite likely no exception caused by human influence but rather a usual condition of the Earth system) and have nothing to do with thermodynamic. Unfotunately, the moderators stay virtually invisible on this site since I posted my first question in the end of March.
Although the above mentioned ratio of the latent and sensible heat flow certainly reflects the circumstance that majority of Earth surface is covered by water, I suppose that asking question whether or not we could somehow „manage“ this ratio may be still relevant, at least because we do have technical means therefor. If mitigating the influence of rising concentration of non-condensing greenhouse gases this way was indeed possible, it might perhaps perhaps represent an alternative or additional way towards climate change mitigation. It could be quicker and/or cheaper than other proposed means like direct carbon dioxide capture from the ambient air (DAC) and might have less inpredictable effects than other “geoengineering” proposals like creating sulfate aerosol in upper atmosphere.
In this respect, I see quite unfortunate that even journals like Nature publish articles about DAC (which I personally see as a totally useless and potentially harmful idea, due to exorbitant costs that will be unavoidable if we really try to achieve the „decarbonisation“ this way), while currently available options for an active water management attracted hardly any attention yet.
Back to my questions regarding the total annual rainfall. In view of the above explanations, I still believe that it does fit with the total latent heat annually transferred from earth surface into space. Furthermore, I do not see any reason yet, why its current value should be considered as an unchangeable parameter, or as a parameter dependent merely on the average Earth temperature. I can imagine that we need certain sensible heat flux because convection helps to move the water vapor from Earth surface into atmosphere, but I have not found any clear explanation yet that the current ratio of the latent heat flux and the sensible heat flux is already at a certain natural limit and cannot be increased by any kind of human intervence.
For these reasons, I am looking for further deeper discussion on this topics. As this site does not enable graphical presentations that may sometimes support and simplify the argumentation significantly, please do not hesitate to use the clone of the above mentioned orgpage that I designed especially for this discussion and put your arguments and comments therein. This public orgpage with the title „Discussion forum: Heat wave mitigation in urban environment, solar energy exploitation and global water cycle restoration“ is accessible using the following link for commenting:
I will be very pleased if the moderators of this discussion decide to contribute as well.
Greetings
Tom
JCMsays
@ Tom,
A few more thoughts for entertainment:
When radiation budgets increase, the air warms, yes? and also the evaporation increases.
This heating vs moistening of the air is characterized by the equilibrium partitioning of surface flux. i.e. the ratio of warming vs moistening turbulent fluxes.
This partitioning is temperature dependent. The principle is that at warmer temperatures a greater proportion of surface net radiation goes into moistening the air, and at colder temperatures a greater proportion goes into heating the air. The temperature dependence of equilibrium partitioning is related to the temperature-entropy (T-S) vapor saturation curve.
The sum is the total turbulent flux.
The net transport of heat from the surface into atmosphere by turbulent flux is related to the non-equilibrium (difference) between surface temperature and the effective outgoing radiative emission temperature.
The difference of temperature between the surface (hot) and the emission temperature higher up (cold) induces spontaneous dynamic atmospheric transport. If the slope of the gradient is changed, the dynamic transport must also change to reach a new non-equilibrium steady state.
In moist tropical regions, the gradient between surface temperature and the temperature of outgoing flux is large, and so the dynamic heat transport and dissipation is also large.
In warm desert regions, the opposite. With fewer clouds, a greater proportion of surface radiative transmittance naturally reduces the difference between surface temperature and outgoing emission temperature. The temperature difference is relatively small between surface, and that of the chorus of outgoing IR emitters, and so the magnitude of spontaneous dynamic heat transport is relatively small too.
Nevertheless, near surface temperature in low-mid latitude desert zones average higher than in a moist regime in the same zone. This is because the available surface moisture constrains the actual evapotranspiration vs the potential evaporation. This also constrains the equilibrium partitioning, forcing a greater proportion of sensible heat than there otherwise would be.
In spite of less total turbulent flux in deserts, the sensible kind is higher and the air is likely to be more stable.
More broadly, we know the Earth system in total can never meet the demands potential evaporation. We know that in MIP experiments the rate of actual evaporation(precipitation) does not keep up with the rate of global temperature rise. I think MIP experiments indicate that for a 5C increase of temperature there is only a 12% increase of evaporation or something. This equates to an average of around 2.5% per C. This is in part due to natural and unnatural limitation of surface available moisture in space and time.
The Earth is in part warmer near the surface on average because of the existence of dry regions. With a limitless surface area of endless water availability, the equilibrium partitioning of surface flux would be unconstrained. But, it seems obvious the equilibrium partitioning IS constrained.
I have not yet heard a reason to veto the notion that unnaturally increasing surface dryness must have a warming influence on average near surface temperature.
thank you
zebrasays
Tomas,
My goal, as I said originally, was to help you clarify your thinking and the presentation of your questions, but now we seem to be back to many many words that show confusion.
If you want to engage in a scientific discussion, you have to be willing to address what the other person is saying, and you have to deal with real-world data. Quoting myself:
The EEI is defined as the difference between the radiant energy the climate system is absorbing from the Sun and the radiant energy emitted from the climate system to space. This is quantified by satellite measurement and Ocean Heat Content. It is increasing, according to the measurements.
I should have also included first that we have observed the energy in the climate system to be increasing in the long term… the apparent increase in the EEI is with shorter term measurements.
So I would hope you would offer a concise explanation for what we are observing, given that we also have clear evidence that water vapor has been increasing. There is more and more latent heat contained in the water vapor at higher altitudes, but energy in the system is still increasing. How does that not contradict your analysis?
Piotrsays
Tomas: “ In famous Trenberth’s diagrams showing graphically the energy flows participating on the Earth energy „budget“ made for a selected timespan, the arrow for the latent heat flow is approximately four times thicker than the arrow for the sensible heat flow.
Irrelevant to your proposal, which hopes to use increased latent heat to counter NOT the “sensible heat flow”, but GHG-driven greenhouse effect. And the arrow for the latter is NOT 4 times thinner, but 4 times THICKER than your latent heat arrow.
In other words, in your model of a glass sphere without air vs. one with air – the MAIN
difference for the EEI is NOT the possibility of having latent heat flux in the sphere with air, but the air containing water vapour and other GHGs absorbing IR – and reradiating it in all directions.
Furthermore, latent heat does NOT directly export energy into space – it has to be RE-RADIATED there in form of IR, and from your Trenberth graph, on average, from all the energy absorbed by the atmosphere – only slightly above 1/3 escapes into space.
So your latent heat export into space is only 1/12 (= 1/4 x 1/3) of the back-radiation (IR re-radiation absorbed by the Earth). Thus latent heat loss to space is a minor contributor to the EEI even at the preindustrial steady state.
In the context of current changes – your cooling Earth by increased latent heat – not only would have to be reduced by the same 1/3 as above. and STILL match the effect the increased conc. of greenhouse gases PLUS the increased IR absorption by higher water vapour concentration from your scheme.
And all this massive increase in GLOBAL latent heat – only from tiny portion of evaporation:
86.5% of of current evaporation is from the ocean and you can’t change this – so ALL the global increase would have to be found within the remaining 13.5% of evaporation from land.
The two ways you proposed do not add up:
– not much room for the reforestation – not only it competes against growing population, food production and resource extraction, but is not viable in many parts of the Earth (Antarctica, Sahara, tundra, grasslands, etc …),
– increased irrigation even worse – not only has ugly downside (salination and toxic pollution of the soil, rendering it infertile), but it is already probably at its maximum – with aquifers mostly empty and fierce competition for surface water between cities, industries and agriculture, and between countries (Afghanistan vs. Iran, India vs. Pakistan).
Take ALL THE ABOVE into account and your big plan can’t deliver, not even close.
That and the fact that you have problems with basic concepts and/or didn’t do your homework (back-of-envelope calculations) is the reason why your:
I will be very pleased if the moderators of this discussion decide to contribute as well.
sounds a bit presumptuous. That’s like asking a busy university prof why they haven’t “decided to contribute” on the spelling by a third-grader. They contribution of specific topic articles and administration of this website is already more than could be reasonably expected, given all the other demands on their time. So don’t expect them to comment on your posts, particularly in the Unforced Variation discussions.
So we’re already over 13 times the 20 GW/year installation (which presumably is roughly matched by production) envisioned in the first nrel doc I linked to, and 28 years early (US installation rates are now around 20 GW DC, as I recall). Is this using up > 63+18.9 ~= 81.9% of glass production?
Granted, a lot of this production is in places with… well… …okay
(I have read that solar glass could get thinner. And better (general-purpose glass has impurities that impact transmittance of solar radiation).)
Geoff Miell 13 MAY 2023 I’ve found the authoritative source that I needed and I compute by trend extrapolation for 3.4 years after end of 2019 as 1.31 w/m**2 from that which is 1.14+0.34*0.5 w/m**2 which is the same as your preferred source (1.33 w/m**2) so OK. That reliable published science I’ve found is “Satellite and Ocean Data Reveal Marked Increase in Earth’s Heating Rate” authored by Norman G. Loeb, Gregory C. Johnson, Tyler J. Thorsen, John M. Lyman, Fred G. Rose , and Seiji Kato published June 15, 2021. Karina von Schuckmann’s talk I heard a few months ago is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QKY0DgHLlE The heat inventory plot in that ends at 2018.
The paper which I only read the Abstract of 3-4 weeks ago and skimmed through looking for pictures is “Heat stored in the Earth system 1960–2020: where does the energy go?” authored by Karina von Schuckmann (many authors) published April 17, 2023. Quotes:
“Over the most recent period (2006–2020), the EEI amounts to 0.76 +/- 0.2 W/m**2” (I suppose that’s where I recalled the 0.78 W/m**2).
“Today, the EEI can be best estimated from the quantification of the Earth heat inventory, complemented by direct measurements from space (von Schuckmann et al., 2016; Loeb et al., 2021)”.
OK, I didn’t realize that the EEI has been increasing at a rate as high as the 0.5 w/m**2 / decade. Note to self: I’ll have to take another look at my quick calculation 5 years ago of 0.20 degrees / decade + 0.06 degrees / decade**2 for +GMST if I ever find the time (it was based of course on what I’d read as the prior increase in EEI since 1970).
Mr. Know It Allsays
Interesting weather. Vostok has been running lows of -99 F, and highs of -98 F for the past week or so:
Speaking of icy, looks like the tripod tripped the clock on May 8 this year, about 47 days after the equinox. Might nudge the graph upwards a tad: the date this year appears to be about where the average was in the 1930s. I watched the weather up there over the winter – it was fairly cool compared to some recent years.
And your scientific conclusions of what all these isolated factoids about isolated places without reference to any global context whatsoever are?
Mr. Know It Allsays
The context is set by the subject of this website. Conclusions are that it’s COLD down there. -99 is a tad below normal per prl’s comment. Here is an interesting story about it – says it could hit -141 F some day:
Your “conclusion” that weather exists is 1) pretty well known already though it may be new to you, I suppose, and 2) irrelevant to any conclusions about global trends positive or negative. Oddly, when trying to make scientific conclusions about global climate trends, honest nonpropagandists look at, well, er, global data. Or at the very least the aggregated long term values in a large region. So no, by cherry-picking a few daily values from a few specific sites and ignoring the rest you completely miss the “context…set by the subject of this website”.
What profession(s) use cherry-picked factoids to mislead others? (Hint: It’s NOT the profession of research science.)
And no…the factoid that Gramps lived to 102 and smoked 2 packs a day from age 12 on does NOT prove that tobacco does not cause cancer in the population any more than a cold winter day or two in Antarctica “proves” warming–or cooling for that matter–is not occurring globally.
Chuck Hughessays
Some places in Antarctica get extremely cold! Who would have thunk it?
prlsays
Gosh, it’s approaching winter in the southern hemisphere and it’s getting cold at Vostok Antarctic station!
The average May minimum at Vostok (2005–2015) is -64°C (-83°F). The recent cold spell 9-11 May was for minimums of -71°C (-99°F). So it’s a bit unseasonably cold now, but forecast to be a bit unseasonably warm in the coming week peaking at a -51°C (-60°F), before dropping down to minimums that are close to the May average. It seems that even at Vostok station, some days are colder (or warmer) than others.
Interestingly, the actual winter period at Vostok station has average minimum temperatures only a little (1°C/1.8°F) colder than May.
prl: – “Gosh, it’s approaching winter in the southern hemisphere and it’s getting cold at Vostok Antarctic station!”
Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) issued a press release, published 17 May 2023, headlined Global temperatures set to reach new records in next five years. It began with:
Geneva, 17 May 2023 (WMO) – Global temperatures are likely to surge to record levels in the next five years, fuelled by heat-trapping greenhouse gases and a naturally occurring El Niño event, according to a new update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
There is a 66% likelihood that the annual average near-surface global temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year. There is a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record.
“This report does not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5°C level specified in the Paris Agreement which refers to long-term warming over many years. However, WMO is sounding the alarm that we will breach the 1.5°C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas.
I’d suggest the WMO can’t say it’s a 100% likelihood, but I think (barring multiple nuclear weapons airbursts, major volcanic eruptions, and/or major meteor surface impact event(s) here on Earth) it’s INEVITABLE with the current Earth energy imbalance (EEI) at an all-time high in the instrumental record – 928,000 ‘Hiroshimas’ per Day. https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1653515518400417792
Remote places like Vostok station may well stay very frosty for ‘a while longer’, but places where most people live are on a rising temperature trajectory towards becoming unlivable/uninhabitable.
NGLs’ is complicated and confusing to me. There are NGLs from oil refining and also direct out of natural gas from wells. the term is broad.
Basically NGLs can be are now being used to make diesel and gasoline … and/or are added to oil refinery stocks to beef up diesel/gasoline outputs and quality. It depends, variations abound. Bottom line is not ALL Diesel fuel comes from Oil refining anymore – they cranked up a manufacturing process over a decade ago, to help fill the shortfalls in various types of Oil supply problems…. but back-ending more hydrocarbons ex-Methane Gas.
It;s not well discussed. I was surprised when i found out. and the documentation of volumes produced is blurry at best. BUt that growing fast, as per Berman graphs online, so fyi
Abstract: Synthetic diesel fuels can be made from carbon containing feedstocks, such as natural gas or coal, in a process developed by Fischer and Tropsch in the 1920s. That process has been further developed by oil companies and is considered a viable option of natural gas utilization. Synthetic diesel fuels are characterized by excellent properties, such as very high cetane number and no sulfur content. They can be used in existing diesel engines without modifications or mixed with petrodiesel. Several studies found significant reductions in all regulated diesel emissions, including NOx and PM, when using synthetic fuel. https://dieselnet.com/tech/fuel_synthetic.php
Gas to liquids (GTL) is a refinery process to convert natural gas or other gaseous hydrocarbons into longer-chain hydrocarbons, such as gasoline or diesel fuel. Methane-rich gases are converted into liquid synthetic fuels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_to_liquids
2008 … A Texas company says that it has developed a cheaper and cleaner way to convert natural gas into gasoline and other liquid fuels, making it economical to tap natural-gas reserves that in the past have been too small or remote to develop. https://www.technologyreview.com/2008/08/15/219289/natural-gas-to-gasoline/
The point is, my point was, that the volumes of NGLs to Liquid diesel/gasoline is growing fast, while in reality supply of Oil and liquid fuels from that Oil are decreasing faster.
There is already a constant lac of Supply from Oil to the global demand …. of fuel and other components for chemicals, plastics and bitumen and NGLs etc etc.
This is what I have learnt recently, Via Berman et al, but do seek out better professional sources than myself.
Geoff Miellsays
Ned Kelly,
Thanks for your comments & links. I note that the Wikipedia reference for GtL includes:
GTL using natural gas is more economical when there is wide gap between the prevailing natural gas price and crude oil price on a Barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) basis. …
However, GTL fuels are much more expensive to produce than conventional fuels.
Ned Kelly: – “2008 … A Texas company says that it has developed a cheaper and cleaner way to convert natural gas into gasoline and other liquid fuels…”
I note that article was published more than 14 years ago. Has this technology progressed to demonstrating the claims with (a) commercially viable operating plant(s), or not? I’d suggest that’s the real test.
You can do anything (within the constraints of the Laws of Physics) if you are prepared to pay the price (monetarily/energetically).
Ned Kelly: – “The point is, my point was, that the volumes of NGLs to Liquid diesel/gasoline is growing fast, while in reality supply of Oil and liquid fuels from that Oil are decreasing faster.”
A portion of NGLs (pentanes) can directly contribute to producing gasoline fuels.
It seems that’s not the case for producing diesel (and kerosene/jet) fuels, where NGLs are required to be processed in additional multi-stage purpose-built plants with sufficient capacity & viable economics.
So I’d suggest the growing problem is too much gasoline and not enough diesel.
It’s diesel that’s the workhorse of the current global economy – the predominant fuel for maritime vessels, agricultural machinery, rail and road transportation.
Today we have Constitutional day in Norway, pleace congratulate and celebrate with me.
I have just planted out the flags in the morning sun with new Betula pubescens leaves, and the wild autentic (different from the Japaneese in Washington) cherries are blossoming. It is Prunus avium and cerasus, you see. . They are later edible, as the japs are not.
And prunus communis var damascus, norwiesco chlivoita has also come in the climate.
Leontodon officinalis Taraxacum is also there and the oaks are shooting.
Lilium con- vallium are soon to flower.
Oak berore ash gives splash
whereas ash before oak gives smoke.
Comment:
So what the hell are you fighting for?
“For Norge, Kiæmper Fødeland
vi denne Skaal vil tømme.
For naar vi først faar Blod paa Tand
vi8 sødt om Frihed drømme.
Saa vogner vi vel op engang
og kaster Lænker, Baand og Tvang.
For Norge Kiæmpers Fødeland
vi denne Skaal vil tømme!”
sann!
I have a new Ash coming up totally wild outside of the fence and an oak inside also totally wild.
That is due to climate change,
They were not on this side of the hill before but are now creeping northeast into the earlier Taiga together also with splendid wild advanced and sweet apples. That is Malus x- domesticus
Wiild Oak and apple is a traditional climatic landmark and Ash is Odins tree, Ask Yggdrashil, the worlds tree. entailing earliest agriculture lands with barley beers and swinery. Wild . apples have been dried,, milled, and baked since stoneage. Horses and swines adore them as they are.
The fllat earthers, desert wakers and blind believers should better care for their figue trees and datte -palms and learn how to piss first. .
Vitis vinifera is shooting.
The imported turkish blood- hazels have been seeding out, obbviously mixed with local ones, and are secured.. Hazel is also a fameous climate indicator.
Chuck Hughessays
I’m happy for you, but you’re not making any contributions to the thread. Your post belongs on Facebook or Twitter, not here. At least make an attempt to follow the guidelines.
I was told the same from what showed to be the chairman 0f the local Climate Surrealist society in their tavern downtown.
“you are not discussing climate, you disrupt the “conversation” at the tables, you do not belong here!” Genosse http://www.Geir/aaslid said to me quite surprizingly.
It follows their deep bottom backgrounds and mafiotic upbringing and syndicalistic training from home in the fameous “unions” and progressive pioneering missionary groups you see.
My culture and basic education and training and belonging is religiously politically constitutionally against that,
Thus me and my race represent their worst frustration and barrier, that they were never able to break here where I live.
I state and tell things that consciously violate and smash their central opperational liturgic dogmas.
For his special case I had spoken efficiently against his holy vulgar Hegelian marxist leninist “cycle” and climatic “cyclings” , and quite efficientløy simply by knowing other matematical curves for the discussion of nature and physics….. being professional also on sinus and cycles.
It is not cycles all that mooves and runs.
So simply smash that silly Cycle, and they will have their very CREDO and operational performance vocabulary dammaged, and that hurts.
So that rather facultary and orderly studied physics chemistery biology meteorology oceanography glaciology geology can get the upper hand on them.
That hurts even more.
You are not supposed to administer and to instruct the guidelines here, ,
because that is a basic routine of trained gangsters.
It takes 1 1qvasi chairman and 3 fellows to applaud from the audience, to take over any given, ideal and “burgeoise” society, party and “forum”, according to Lenin and his textbook on “Party- work” and “scientific socialism”.
That was shown at the institute of philosophy when I was there, and I have seen it again and again and again even by the conservatives later in civil society.
Lenin studied for years in western Europe and most probably learnt it from the downtown Mafia there in The Emperors days.
So I suggest that we must have Genosse Chuck H. discussing rules and regulations and class belongings , under more strict observation from now on!
I repeat….!
4 comrades of the blood, the schnapps and the beers and the sausseages, and with one mascot lady also to know them , is what can train on LENINs Poker together in the civil taverns with open doors first. And then further in the scientific institutes and websites.
Chuck Hughessays
So you respond with another load of horse manure and nonsense. I can’t make sense of anything you’re saying. Your comments are completely useless.
Your senses and your “uses” may be inferiour then. Have them checked up.
You see, a minimum of higher formation and general academic aqusintance would give you no problems with such things, and I check up that on people if they make me too suspicious.
If that lack repeats and shows communist mabnifesto with o, I label it DDR, Arbeiter und Bauernfakultät in Greifswald, and Asbestos Palatz der Republik in East Berlin.
Which gives a further useful psycho – anaqlytical hypo- thesis. also for others.
It roots in racial political warfare against Baccalaureus 1, Mittlere Reife of presumably western civilization. Which is a main syndrom of especially organized and trained, snobbish vulgar populism, ..
With the next El Nino brewing, a Science article reports that the resulting climate disturbance will cost the global economy trillions of $$$, with “most of it borne by the world’s poorest nations in the tropics.”
“El Niño amplifies the wider inequities in climate change, disproportionately impacting the least resilient and prepared among us.”
I recall last year suggesting in one of these threads that being able to predict the next El Nino years in advance could “save countless lives”, and then getting hammered for that.
I have heard the same from Lyndon Jonson in Oslo 1963 on a diplomatc visit propagating for the NASA- projects, the possible civil benefits and values of all that space research. Improoved longtime regional and global weather forecasts was maybe his strongest point.
I later had quite dramatic personal benefits from the post apollo radical development of micro electronic integrated cirquits that was raining down on earth.,
And have come to think that Johnson was the great lobbyist for NASA in the congress. And that the works of roger Revelle and Keeling was part of it, and that James Hansen was set to explain the russian findings of extreemly high ground temperatures on Venus by the Venera- sondes.
Thus you have it , James Hansens fameous royal thoughts on behalf of NASA GISS to the US congress.
I must say I am quite impressed by todays weather forecasts and display of that by updated means.
But it seems that the prediction of ENSO has been lagging behind that, for some strange and unknown reason. And come to think Maybe it is unpredictable the way we expect predictions to be?
Einstein and Niels Bohr came together to discuss physics, 2 roosters or 2 jews in the same basket . It became very tense.
Einstein: “God does not play with daise!” Einstein hated Bohrs explaination of the unpredictability (trans- scendence?) of elementary particle behaviours. where statistics better take over.
Niels Bohrs fameous reply: “Albert, don`t tell God how he shall not play!”
Discussion:
Maybe the Pacific ocean is a further area where God is playing with daise? Wherefore we in Niels Bohrs spirit must resign on certain “classical” conscepts of physical determinism there? as they have also done with great success in meteorology. That means, be prepared for any eventuality, because yes or no cannot be determined there.
It is a matter of finding out what can be determined and what can not be determined, and why.
Certain real things cannot, and should not be tried modelled the “classic” or “conventional” way.
Lars Larsen??? Good Lord. Have you paid him his $20 for his official Larsen AR-faced “challenge coin” yet? (Funny grift, that.) Or filed an official “criminal alien report” on your lawn guy with him yet? THIS is where you get your “science”??? I repeat: Good Lord.
Back to science, daily records in single locations mean next to nothing climatically even for single location climate let alone global. Further, outliers are particularly low in statistical power to make any statement at all as they are rare by definition.
There are statistically valid ways of analyzing outlier data to estimate underlying trends. Actuaries do it all the time. One elementary way is to examine the ratio of new record highs to new record lows over time. If there is no underlying trend, the expected ratio is 1:1. Even with the vastly reduced statistical power resulting from throwing out the overwhelming majority of the data–like you try here–that is not the case I am sad to inform you. New highs outnumber new lows around 2:1 these days which is quite statistically significant. What would Mr. Larsen conclude from that fact? On the other hand, what would a non-propagandist conclude?
Mr. Know It Allsays
Perhaps the 2:1 ratio these days is due to more weather stations being in urban areas as the country is paved over from sea to shining sea? Urban heat island effect.
Ray Ladburysays
Mr. KIA, I am beginning to become genuinely concerned about the degradation of your cognitive faculties. This question has been examined in minute detail–and it is in fact considered in every temperature product produced. Someone who has been hanging around here as long as you have would certainly know that unless their long-term memory were degraded. Maybe it’s time to take that test where the doctor shows you pictures of camels, dogs, etc.
Jgnfld, Be careful with that therm “outlier”. A true outlier is not representative of the parent distribution at all and so conveys no real information. An extreme, or more generally, an order statistic can convey critical information about the tails of the parent distribution. Moreover, when comparing distributions–e.g. current vs. historical–it can be invaluable.
Yet, I don’t quite understand the statistics here. Why are daily record readings not as unbalanced hot vs cold? All-time extremes are unbalanced 9 to 1, hot to cold. Monthly records around 6 to 1. But daily are unbalanced only 3 to 1.
..page 26 makes comparisons with the PETM, but is avoiding more detail on possible isolated fault line connected methane – as has been reported recently.
Also I would like to see a more detailed definition on climate sensitivity, why is there no mention of transient climate sensitivity? Equilibrium, Earth.. and I do not understand how we can possible calculate a TCS, without knowing the exact forcing. Since the forcing depends on feedbacks, the bottom line is always, it can get worse.
Page 26: ..there were no large ice sheets on Earth in the PETM era. Today, ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland make the Earth system sensitivity (ESS) greater than it was at the time of the PETM, as quantified above. Equilibrium response to today’s human-made climate forcing includes deglaciation of Antarctica and Greenland, with sea level 60 m (about 200 feet) higher than today and the potential for chaotic climate change this century..
Do you read about cathastrophic, ongoing rain and flood in Italia east and west, and on Balkan?
It disqualifies a lot of speculations here and sustains others
I saw 887 millimeters in 24 hours somewhere.
They mention Korsika, Genova, Liguria, Ravenna, Bologna,…. and further in Bosnia and Balkan.
Not only catastrophic floods, but also earth and mudslides.
I have heard and seen it predicted by our Dept of environment.
“Due to global warming the weather in the near future will become Warmer, Wetter, and Wilder!”
Add “Worse” to that, and it is easily remembered : The weather will soon become WWWW!
It is rather what I believe.
It simply follows from Claussius Clappeyron and Aristoteles. No doubt about it.
And rainbarrels are helpless against that.
Make the best out of it.
nigeljsays
New Zealand has endured record setting floods in recent months. Clearly this is influenced by global warming.
The denialists have suggested the recent global flooding all caused by the Tongan volcanic eruption of January 2022 that injected water vapor into the stratosphere. It seems to me this would mainly influence high level clouds where the rain doesn’t reach the earth, and that the eruption is over a year ago so it wouldn’t still have any significant effect? Couldn’t find anything on this. Does anyone have information or thoughts?
Postkeysays
No ‘BAU’?
‘Most’ ‘economic thinking’ is ‘short run’ and ‘redundant’? ‘It’ ignores the ‘supply side’? ‘Growth’ {and ‘civilisation’} depends upon ‘cheap’ F.F. – those so called ‘halcyon days’ are ‘over’. ?
“The crisis now unfolding, however, is entirely different to the 1970s in one crucial respect… The 1970s crisis was largely artificial. When all is said and done, the oil shock was nothing more than the emerging OPEC cartel asserting its newfound leverage following the peak of continental US oil production. There was no shortage of oil any more than the three-day-week had been caused by coal shortages. What they did, perhaps, give us a glimpse of was what might happen in the event that our economies depleted our fossil fuel reserves before we had found a more versatile and energy-dense alternative. . . . That system has been on the life-support of quantitative easing and near zero interest rates ever since. Indeed, so perilous a state has the system been in since 2008, it was essential that the people who claim to be our leaders avoid doing anything so foolish as to lockdown the economy or launch an undeclared economic war on one of the world’s biggest commodity exporters . . . And this is why the crisis we are beginning to experience will make the 1970s look like a golden age of peace and tranquility. . . . The sad reality though, is that our leaders – at least within the western empire – have bought into a vision of the future which cannot work without some new and yet-to-be-discovered high-density energy source (which rules out all of the so-called green technologies whose main purpose is to concentrate relatively weak and diffuse energy sources). . . . Even as we struggle to reimagine the 1970s in an attempt to understand the current situation, the only people on Earth today who can even begin to imagine the economic and social horrors that await western populations are the survivors of the 1980s famine in Ethiopia, the hyperinflation in 1990s Zimbabwe, or, ironically, the Russians who survived the collapse of the Soviet Union.” ? https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2022/07/01/bigger-than-you-can-imagine/
“It is this belief in a new digital revolution which gave rise to the much-derided article by Danish politician, Ida Auken – originally titled “Welcome to 2030: I own nothing, I have no privacy, and life has never been better.” More popularly known as “you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.” It is a world of digital currencies and digital IDs, vaccine passports and 15-minute cities, electrification and driverless cars. All of it based around the “energy too cheap to meter” from wind turbines and solar panels, and all of it operated by autonomous artificial intelligence within the “singularity” of the “internet of things.”
It is a mirage, of course… one only visible to so-called “virtuals” – people whose lives and careers are now so detached from the material world that, were there not so many of them, could otherwise be diagnosed as certifiably insane. The real world, meanwhile, looks more akin to the second global collapse – the first being the collapse of the integrated economies of the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean empires sometime around 1186 BCE. The majority of ordinary people have seen their living standards decline over the past two decades – a process compounded and accelerated by two years of lockdowns followed by a year of self-destructive sanctions on key resources.”? https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2023/03/01/paradise-postponed
nigeljsays
Good quality deposits of minerals are known to be relatively scarce, and on current rates of materials use its virtually self evident we could run out of some metals eventually, or more accurately they will be extremely expensive to extract by requiring a lot of energy and processing. This is the hand nature has dealt us.
Its a daunting proposition because it means we may have to eventually go without some technology we take for granted, and also get by using less energy. All other things being equal. If the world population shrinks fairly fast it would offset the problem. As will recycling.
But Im not convinced severe materials shortages are imminent. Back in the 1980s I recall studies were saying the world would run out of various metals by the 1990s. Read the fine print and their calculations are usually based on known land based reserves at current extraction prices.
No account is taken of known reserves that are slightly less economic to extract, minerals dissolved in sea water and the possibility of future discoveries of new deposits of both high and low grade ores, and improvements in the ability to extract and refine ores.
Its all doomy hype driven by people with various unspoken agendas. Any website called “The consciousness if sheep” should be sending you a red alert its unlikely to be objective. It looked a bit evidence free and incoherent to me.
Geoff Miellsays
nigelj; – “But Im not convinced severe materials shortages are imminent.”
I guess it depends on what the contextual definition of “imminent” is: Minutes? Hours? Days? Weeks? Months? Years? Decades?
Did you actually view & listen to the YouTube video titled EXTRACTED – How the Quest for Mineral Wealth Is Plundering the Planet, duration 0:08:57, nigelj?
Ugo Bardi says from time interval 0:00:55:
“We are not running out of any mineral, but extracting and producing minerals is becoming more expensive because of depletion.
So a fundamental issue in the question of mineral resources is how the extraction and production costs are related to energy, because extracting minerals from the ground requires a lot of energy. You have to grind rock, to dig holes in the ground, to process rock, and to extract the minerals out of it – the minerals you need – because the mineral never comes, never comes pure – it’s always mixed with a matrix, which is usually rock.
Now, you have two problems.
One is that as you move on exploiting the resource, you exhaust those resources which are highly concentrated, easy to extract, and giving you a good yield, and you don’t have to use too much energy to extract them. And this is one problem.
The other problem is that the energy you use to extract anything normally comes from hydrocarbons.
The mineral industry uses a lot of energy from fossil fuels.
Most crude oil producing countries have passed peak production. Some countries are still pre-peak, and some are at peak. Ever fewer pre-peak oil producing countries need to compensate for post-peak oil producing countries, or total world oil production begins declining.
nigelj: – “Its all doomy hype driven by people with various unspoken agendas.”
I follow the evidence/data.
It seems to me you appear to be ignoring inconvenient evidence/data that contradicts your ‘brightside’ narrative.
nigeljsays
Geoff Miell
Thanks for the links. I will read them in detail eventually. This is just a quick response to your post:
By running out of minerals imminently (getting very expensive to extract) I meant this century or next. I should have been more specific.
I was also talking metals based minerals. That should be clear from the context.
I agree that oil production has likely already peaked. When we run low on heavy crude its just another reason why we will have little choice but to expand renewables. We should be phasing out burning oil anyway due to the climate problem.
Please note that Jacobson has published peer reviewed research that we have enough materials that can be economically extracted to build a grid powered by renewables. I posted a link upthread somewhere. This carries more weight than You tube videos and their so called data.
I don’t disagree with your concerns in principle, but you might be at risk of ignoring research that contradicts your dark side narrative!
If the costs of minerals extraction have already gone up, its had very little impact that I’m aware of on cost of products we buy. A lot of technology has actually fallen in price in recent decades and even the last few years. It certainly hasnt increased in price all that hugely. Its why I get sceptical that we face an imminent and huge problem in coming decades.
However its inevitable we will face high metals and oil extraction costs eventually. Then we will have to adapt as Ive stated previously. We will have to decrease our consumption.
But what is it that you expect us to do right now?
Do you think we should just go on burning oil?
Are you opposed to building out a renewables electricity grid, as best we can?
Do you think nuclear power is the answer?
Do you think we should make a big effort to reduce our use of resources to conserve them for future generations and reduce toxic pollution? How would you convince people to do that? Given most people are materialistic?
I’m trying to figure out where you are coming from.
Ned Kellysays
Nigel you are embellishing the Jacobson paper from 2010/11 quite a lot.
The link is paywalled provides next to nothing as far as data is concerned, and is extremely outdated – it only says:
Material resources
In a global all-WWS-power system, the new technologies produced in the greatest abundance will be wind turbines, solar PVs, CSP systems, BEVs, and electrolytic-HFCVs. In this section, we examine whether any of these technologies use materials that either are scarce or else concentrated in a few countries and hence subject to price and supply manipulation…… https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510008645
and nothing else .
Do you a full access version, or any other such “papers” that actually quantified what was needed in regard materials , resources, minerals and metals for a 100% RE energy supply with storage needs met?
Michaux notes: The paper assumes that only 4 hours needs to be used for power storage. and
At no time does the paper discuss the physical engineering requirements to do this.
As such, the true requirements of the post fossil fuel system were not developed.
Again, this paper did not consider what quantity of metals would be required to manufacture all this new renewable technology (EV’s H-Cells, wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, etc.), or where such a quantity of metal might be sourced from. and
There was not discussion about what mining might be needed to supply the metals to produce all the new renewable technology units. There also seems to be the belief that mining of lithium, cobalt, vanadium and REE is some how ‘cleaner’ than mining fossil fuels, by virtue of being ‘green’. This is actually not the case.
It was not recognized at all that these units (wind turbines, solar panels, etc.) wear out after 10 to 20 years of operation.
Once at the end of life, they must be decommissioned and replaced. Where does the materials come from to do this? Recycling systems have logistic bottle necks and may not be able to deliver needed quantity of metals. [end quotes]
So this does not seem more advanced than Jacobson from 2011?
Well Michaux did a big ‘peer reviewed’ Report in 2021, over 1000 pages of accumulated data analysis globally. here is a link to the summary doc, with internal page 1 link to full report (it very unwieldy)
In conclusion, this report suggests that replacing the existing fossil fuel powered system (oil, gas, and coal), using renewable technologies, such as solar panels or wind turbines, will not be possible for the entire global human population. There is simply just not enough time, nor resources to do this by the current target set by the World’s most influential nations. https://mcusercontent.com/72459de8ffe7657f347608c49/files/be87ecb0-46b0-9c31-886a-6202ba5a9b63/Assessment_to_phase_out_fossil_fuels_Summary.pdf
His home page with most of his work/info is at https://www.simonmichaux.com/
While an outlier with some unusual assumptions eg needing a month of back up electricity storage on average to handle long period shortfalls of wind/solar, during winter time especially, he is the first to truly quantify the data down to total RE /storage units required and the amount of energy mining minerals and metals required to build them,
Geoff Miellsays
nigelj: – “By running out of minerals imminently (getting very expensive to extract) I meant this century or next.”
Extracting these minerals using what energy system, nigelj?
The extractive industries are currently reliant on an energy system that’s predominantly based on petroleum fuels, and more particularly diesel fuels. I’d suggest that’s the critical path.
Disrupt or reduce global diesel supplies and the whole global economy becomes disrupted.
nigelj: – “When we run low on heavy crude its just another reason why we will have little choice but to expand renewables.”
Data indicates global heavy crude oils are already becoming relatively scarce. The interesting question is: Will the decline rate of global heavy crude oil supplies (and thus the decline of supplies of diesel/gasoil fuels) outrun the deployment rate of renewables?
nigelj: – “Do you think we should just go on burning oil?”
We/humanity need to stop burning carbon-based substances ASAP.
We/humanity need to also end our petroleum dependency ASAP, because the era of cheap & abundant petroleum fuels has ended – evidence/data I see indicates we are likely at the beginnings of a downhill slide.
I think the next few years will be telling on a number of fronts.
nigelj: – “Do you think nuclear power is the answer?”
nigelj: – “Do you think we should make a big effort to reduce our use of resources to conserve them for future generations and reduce toxic pollution?”
Yep; the alternative is likely civilisation collapse within the lifetimes of younger people already alive at present.
nigelj: – “How would you convince people to do that?”
For older people: Do you care about the future of your children/grandchildren?
For younger people: Do you care about your future?
nigelj: – “I’m trying to figure out where you are coming from.”
Your series of questions/statements suggest to me you haven’t bothered to look at (or not understood) my previous comments in this thread & previous threads.
nigeljsays
Ned Kelly
“Nigel you are embellishing the Jacobson paper from 2010/11 quite a lot.”
No I’m not. I get rather irate when people falsely imply I have embellished things. You are not off to a good start. You didn’t need to make that sort of accusation to make your point.
“The link is paywalled provides next to nothing as far as data is concerned, and is extremely outdated – it only says: In a global all-WWS-power system, the new technologies produced in the greatest abundance will be wind turbines, solar PVs, CSP systems, BEVs, and electrolytic-HFCVs….and nothing else”
You are only reading the abstract and a few snippets from the paper. The full paper has more details on materials availability. So I haven’t embellished anything.
“Do you a full access version, or any other such “papers” that actually quantified what was needed in regard materials , resources, minerals and metals for a 100% RE energy supply ”
I don’t have a link to a free copy of the Jacobson paper sorry. Use google scholar and you might track one down.
“In 2022 Michaux did a review of 4 papers”
He is reviewing a different paper to the one I referenced.
“Well Michaux did a big ‘peer reviewed’ Report in 2021, over 1000 pages of accumulated data analysis globally. here is a link to the summary doc, with internal page 1 link to full report (it very unwieldy)”
There is nothing that says this is peer reviewed or published in a scientific journal like “Nature”. It appears to be a report he has written while working at Finlands Geological Survey institution.
However Michaux work is still clearly worth a read, and at least some of his findings sound right. Although I dont have time to read his 1000 page document and compare it to Jacobson. Do you? :)
One brief point. Like other reviews Michauxs work seems to be based on known reserves of minerals and extraction of metals at todays prices and mines that currently exist. I totally accept using those critieria there may not be enough materials to build a fully global renewables grid! However as pointed out previously, there are known lower grade reserves of minerals that are still feasible to mine and extract metals from, that do not add too many costs, more mines could be opened, and its likely more discoveries of high grade deposits will be made.
I’ve seen these sorts of pessimistic reports on resources before way back in the 1980s and history shows they were too pessimistic. However I hope I’m not being excessively optimistic either.
But thanks for the information. Its all thought provoking useful stuff.
nigeljsays
Geoff Miell
“The extractive industries are currently reliant on an energy system that’s predominantly based on petroleum fuels, and more particularly diesel fuels. I’d suggest that’s the critical path…Disrupt or reduce global diesel supplies and the whole global economy becomes disrupted.Data indicates global heavy crude oils are already becoming relatively scarce. ”
Good points .
“The interesting question is: Will the decline rate of global heavy crude oil supplies (and thus the decline of supplies of diesel/gasoil fuels) outrun the deployment rate of renewables?”
Nobody really knows. Have been reading a university general textbook on geology (nerdy, semi retired) and things are very complicated down there in the ground and even modern remote sensing only tells you so much. I only hope that there is enough heavy crude for the transition otherwise we are in the pooh. I guess I’m just a bit more optimistic on this stuff than you are, hopefully not excessively so.
“We/humanity need to stop burning carbon-based substances ASAP.”
Agreed.
“We/humanity need to also end our petroleum dependency ASAP, because the era of cheap & abundant petroleum fuels has ended – evidence/data I see indicates we are likely at the beginnings of a downhill slide.”
Agreed. Found this a few years back. Look at the long term graph of the costs of oil extraction and it looks like the low cost days of last century are over:
“I think the next few years will be telling on a number of fronts.”
Yes.
“Nope. Nuclear is too slow to deploy to make any significant difference for humanity’s need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Agreed in general, although I’m not opposed to nuclear power and it may have some role longer term in some places, and it could be made fast to deploy if the industry got organised and managed properly. Its faster to deploy in Asian countries.
“Do you think we should make a big effort to reduce our use of resources to conserve them for future generations and reduce toxic pollution?”
“Yep; the alternative is likely civilisation collapse within the lifetimes of younger people already alive at present.”
Its not clear that our voracious appetite for resources would make our civilisation collapse “as such”. It does cause loss of biodiversity, and pollution although many countries have minimised that pollution.
Shortages of resources could obviously make our civilisation collapse. But if we deliberately reduce our use of resources we are potentially deliberately creating shortages and thus collapsing our civilisation. Catch 22. The other problem is that a deliberate reduction in the use of resources risks creating poverty and pain, and mass unemployment by sucking demand out of the system.
Its very difficult simplifying complex societies. Google the work of Jospeh Tainter.
That said. IMO most of us could get by with smaller cars and houses for example. I do believe there may be a middle ground way of phasing down the use of resources without too many negative side effects – but it will probably require a slow phase down that doesnt jolt our society too much. Economic growth has been slowing anyway in recent decades so it might all be an inevitability.
“Do you think we should make a big effort to reduce our use of resources to conserve them for future generations and reduce toxic pollution?”…”How would you convince people to do that?”
“Ecosystems and communities around the world are already being impacted today. For older people: Do you care about the future of your children/grandchildren?For younger people: Do you care about your future?”
Noble ideals, and good suggestions and I agree in principle. But here are some the problems getting in the way for a large proportion of people:
1)Our brains are hardwired to respond best to short term immediate threats (like covid) rather than longer term future problems that unfold more gradually, like ecosystem problems, resource scarcity, and climate change:
2) Humans are very materialistic. Its like a drug. Our whole society and all our jobs are designed around materialism. So people say they care about future generations but scream at the thought of making any sacrifices themselves. Sure this could all change but it looks like a daunting task.
3) Humans are status seekers. Its possibly in our DNA, and many people use materialism to demonstrate status.
And its why I think its unlikely we will decrease our consumption too much in a voluntary sense, and thats why I believe our best PRACTICAL solution to the climate problem is building a renewable energy grid, even with the possibility we have difficulties. Although I do encourage people to be less materialistic and I try not to be too materialistic myself.
“Your series of questions/statements suggest to me you haven’t bothered to look at (or not understood) my previous comments in this thread & previous threads.”
Quicker to just ask you than trawl back through countless pages :)
patrick O'twentysevensays
Re Ned Kelly: “It was not recognized at all that these units (wind turbines, solar panels, etc.) wear out after 10 to 20 years of operation.”
Idk about the turbines, but this is largely not true for solar panels. Often LCA’s (Lifecycle analyses) assume a 30 year lifetime but that may be conservative. A person may replace a panel after 20 or 30 years if they need > ~80-90%(ish) of the initial performance – ie that much power, in that given space – but the old panel would presumably be given a second life in a new location at that point. The oldest panels, with their lower efficiency, might be combined with solar thermal applications, perhaps at higher latitudes – etc.
(Although I’m under the impression that keeping the panels cooler would slow their aging to some extent…
*(as well as increasing their efficiency)*
…, and cooling them with water, which is heated or preheated in that process, would help. This would make sense for rooftop applications, or maybe if community solar were linked to district heating…)
I imagine solar plants could reach a steady state where they rotate their panels and/or BOS (inverters, batteries/flywheels? etc.) relative to the panels – to make more efficient use of all the equipment, – at any given time, the panels might span a range from brand new to 60 or 80 or 100 years old(?), depending on the relative costs of area and BOS vs. recycling/replacing.
Adam Leasays
Nigelj:
“That said. IMO most of us could get by with smaller cars and houses for example. I do believe there may be a middle ground way of phasing down the use of resources without too many negative side effects – but it will probably require a slow phase down that doesnt jolt our society too much. Economic growth has been slowing anyway in recent decades so it might all be an inevitability.”
I do have a house that is bigger than I need but moving is a major upheaval in one’s life, and in any case, I try to minimise energy consumption by setting the thermostat to 15C and wearing extra layers in winter. I don’t get how people are spending thousands of pounds annually on gas and electricity in the UK. My car is fairly large but economical, it is useful for transporting manure to my allotment, and for local journeys I nearly always use a bicycle.
“Do you think we should make a big effort to reduce our use of resources to conserve them for future generations and reduce toxic pollution?”…”How would you convince people to do that?”
“Ecosystems and communities around the world are already being impacted today. For older people: Do you care about the future of your children/grandchildren?For younger people: Do you care about your future?”
“Do you care about your future?”
Older people: I am not making sacrifices because I want to live my retirement in comfort, and I’ll be dead within in 20 years so why should I care. My children/grandchildren can look after themselves.
Younger people: Lets party on down don’t think about tomorrow.
“1)Our brains are hardwired to respond best to short term immediate threats (like covid) rather than longer term future problems that unfold more gradually, like ecosystem problems, resource scarcity, and climate change:”
Our brains are hardwired to respond best to short term immediate VISIBLE/TANGIBLE threats. There was a lot of denial during the COVID pandemic:
I suspect with COVID and climate change, part of what fuels denial is the fear of losing freedoms.
“2) Humans are very materialistic. Its like a drug. Our whole society and all our jobs are designed around materialism. So people say they care about future generations but scream at the thought of making any sacrifices themselves. Sure this could all change but it looks like a daunting task.”
Funnily enough I personally cannot relate to materialism. I am very utility minded, if I purchase something it is either because I need it or I am getting a much more useful version of something I currently have. I wear clothes that are nearly 20 years old because they are still functional. I buy new clothes from charity shops because they are much cheaper and it is consistent with Reduce-Reuse-Recycle. Maybe that is one reason why I have been unable to attract a woman throughout my life and remained single, because I don’t do the materialism thing therefore I am lost in the background of those that do.
“3) Humans are status seekers. Its possibly in our DNA, and many people use materialism to demonstrate status.”
That sounds reasonable, it is the same with the alpha-males in the natural world, where if a male wants to pass his genes on, he has to fight the alpha of the pack for the right to mate. I suspect there is an analogy with humans, if a man has nothing that makes him stand out from the crowd (e.g. me), his chances of attracting a woman are lower. All humans are descended from only a few percent of men, the men that took big risks and gained big rewards.
nigeljsays
Adam Lea
Good points. I see nothing there of significance to disagree with.
Regarding women. Its getting off topic but hopefully the website indulges this because it seems important to you.
I’m not very materialistic either, but I do have modern clothes, and nothing too old. Men wearing very old or particularly old fashioned clothes could be offputting to women. I know that I find that women dressed that way are offputting to me so its likely the reverse might apply.
Women certainly drop hints to me they like fashionable guys. Old clothes send a signal the guy might have no money and so be a bad provider. So you might want to do a bit of shopping….
GWP Methane / CH4 is about 40 per AR6 (The sum of 81.2 divided by 20)? The methane Wikipedia entry in this regard is not properly cited, but mentions a GWP of 40.
Horsefeathers. The IPCC is biased, and fossil corps. use time as a fraudulent dilution factor.
The Global Warming Potential of Methane to Carbonic Acid Gas (CO2) is over two orders of magnitude (10 x 10 or 100). (See for example Howarth at Cornel) The use of one hundred years for a theoretical diminution of methane, via oxidation by the hydroxyl radical into carbonic acid gas and water vapor, is a strategic requirement for the advent of “natural gas” as a “clean transition fuel.,” or “bridge to a renewable future.” It is much more a gangplank to ecologic collapse and extinction..
JCMsays
I wonder if anyone could shed some light on Ian Eisenmann’s interesting virtual simulation experiment
It looks like he simulates climate across 11 doublings of CO2. I have never seen such a thing. Ranging from practically 0 ppm CO2 up to something like 10,000 ppm
1) a: My first inquiry relates to the 0 ppm scenario, depicted in the slide at 37 minute mark. Approaching 0 ppm the temperature appears to dip approaching 255K. Is the idea that the albedo remains practically unchanged, and that it is roughly fixed at 30% in all climate states irrespective of trace gas concentration? Presuming there is no trace gas to kick start weather and heat transport, I suppose it is exclusively the surface reflection of solid ice that is maintaining the albedo at 30% approaching 0 ppm. I have difficulty to imagine a 0 ppm, or basically no atmosphere scenario, with cloud.
1) b: By inverse logic, for each doubling there must be a swapping of surface ice albedo for cloud albedo, to maintain this fixed 30% up to preindustrial CO2 levels. I have noticed in introductory lectures the climate is depicted with a fixed function of Solar (1 – 0.3) = Outgoing Longwave Radiation. However, I have always figured that the OLR must relate moreso to cloud fraction than albedo specifically, to account for variable fluid heat transport, latent heating at altitude, and associated condensation, radiative flux, and optical depth. In any case, it stands to reason that with a reduction of snow/ice extent under warming we should therefore expect more cloud to maintain this 30% figure in nature. I can’t see any other way.
2) I am also curious about the U shaped feedback parameter depicted at around the 42 minute mark. Am I reading it correctly that there is a very strong net negative feedback parameter across almost all climate states, and that there is an “optimal” stability specifically at the pre-industrial unperturbed system temperature around 286K or so? That peak, or maximum stability, is right at the base of the U. Moving away from peak stability, the feedback parameter remains strongly negative across all CO2 conditions except at the far extremes of snowball Earth. Please confirm I am reading this correctly.
Thank you.
JCMsays
To supplement my previous questions with respect to Eisenman, I have browsed the paper corresponding to the video presentation in some detail.
I now understand clearly that while the total feedback remains mostly negative moving up the limbs of the U, the relative change in feedback is positive. i.e. from very negative to slightly less negative.
What is news to me is that the water vapor feedback “becomes fairly constant in climates warmer than the [pre industrial]”. lines 313-314.
I have not heard this mentioned at all in public communication. Vast accumulations of water vapor even in a 10C warmer world compared to pre industrial allegedly have no net positive influence. This is quite fascinating.
According the Eisenman’s paper, it is the lapse rate feedback which somehow becomes minimally less negative with warming. That seem a bit odd. nevermind.
It is all a bit odd, no?
Summing everything, it really all does boil down to the mysteries of unnatural cloud disruption corresponding also with moving up the rightward warming limb of the U.
My takeaway is that for one reason or another the pre-industrial ‘global’ earth system state evolved in such a way to maximize stability measured as global temperature; a system that was mostly unperturbed by humanity and was therefore dominated by natural process.
Furthermore, practically no amount of additional water vapor can cause a warming influence – and so continental ecological restoration and conservation of watersheds & stable soil moisture should not be feared. In fact, there can be only upsides in consideration of the currently unknown and underexplored biological relations to atmospheric heat transport and cloud condensation..
in consideration that the phase relationships with temperature and pressure are discussed in great detail by Clausius, there must be a much more consequential implication for the thermodynamics of things.
The Earth being right smack in the Goldilocks habitable zone where all three phases of water coexist in contact. The intellectual reduction of water phase transformations to concepts of mere radiative heat trapping is apparently misplaced. It ignores the far more interesting bits about atmospheric heat transport. Something special is happening there in the diagrams by Eisenman which helps it become very easy to see. A net warming influence of increasing vapor up to some optimized maximum state thermodynamic dissipation (see Axel Kleidon), at which point this IR radiative effect is overwhelmed by dynamical mechanisms. The vapor is warming, until it isn’t.
The illustration of water vapor + lapse rate makes it abundantly clear additional net positive feedback is coming all from this supposed lapse rate effect (I have more questions on that but nevermind for now). Considering the moist dynamics are all about vapor content and phase transformations, the radiation enthusiasts are revealing some sort of blind spot and underappreciation of what Clausius’ teachings are all about.
Piotrsays
JCM: ” What is news to me is that the water vapor feedback “becomes fairly constant in climates warmer than the [pre industrial[” I have not heard this mentioned at all in public communication. ”
Don’t get you panties in knots – the reason you “have not heard about it at all in public communication ” is that it doesn’t not apply to ANY realistic scenario of AGW,
The title “Snowball Earth to an ice-free hothouse” wasn’t a dead giveaway? Or that they run their models between “1.6ppm to 3,422ppm” CO2. Humans we are not very likely to experience ANY
these situations.
If ALL THESE didn’t give you a pause, then how about the paper conclusions, in the part surprisingly called: “Summary and conclusion”, e.g..:
:
“Previous studies have represented the dependence of climate feedbacks on the underlying global temperature by approximating that the net feedback scales linearly, which is equivalent to including a quadratic term in the global energy budget (e.g., Sherwood et al., 2020). Our results suggest that this representation only approximately holds over a limited range of climates, spanning about 3K colder to 10K warmer than the PI climate. .
If we blew past 10C above the preindustrial temp. – the departures from linearity of feedbacks for warming above the +1OC – would be the last of our problems.
JCM,
In the Eisenmann talk in the video @35:00 to @48:00 you pick up on the λ[net] (either λ[eff] or λ[diff]) being described as “feedback” and being negative in the equation ΔN = ΔF[ghg] + λ[net].ΔT except at low ΔF[ghg] when it goes positive and a stable snowball Earth results.
This is a bit alien to the usual view of things when we denizens are familiar with calculations in which climate feedback is positive.
Indeed, the talk begins with the usual ‘ECS= graphic and refers to Sherwood et al (2020) which puts the 66% range of ECS at 2.6-3.9ºC when without any feedback ECS=1.
The point to make is that λ[net] is the ‘feedback parameter’ and in terms of the usual feedback discussions via climate sensitivity ECS = -ΔF[2xCO2] / λ[net]. (Note the two graphs in the talk @41.30, the LH showing λ[net](PI) = -1.6W/m^2/ºC and the RH showing ECS(PI) = +2.5ºC.) So when this λ[net] rises above zero, ECS hits infinity and, in the talk, temperature runs away into snowball Earth.
The other take-away from those graphcs @41:30 is that ESC is shown increasing under a warming climate at something like +0.5ºCΔECS for +1ºCGlobal ΔT.
Ned Kellysays
@nigel, there is no need to be irate.
you say ” Like other reviews Michauxs work seems to be based on known reserves of minerals and extraction of metals at todays prices and mines that currently exist.”
You need to read it and not assume things. The facts and the details matter. Or should.
And whatever your experiences were in the “1980s” are irrelevant – either read the materials available today, see where they connect with today’s reality, or don’t bother saying anything. I could tell you my 1980s stories too if you want.
YOu also say:
“You are only reading the abstract and a few snippets from the paper. The full paper has more details on materials availability. So I haven’t embellished anything.
and – “I don’t have a link to a free copy of the Jacobson paper sorry. Use google scholar and you might track one down. ”
I did, there isn’t one which is why I asked you.
Given you have access to the paper, you indicated you’ve read it’s contents obviously – so how about doing a copy/paste of some juicy pieces about materials availability from that paper? The scope of it? That would be great of you could give an indication of what’s in it re metals, minerals, materials required to build a new 100% WWS grid.
I have seen other papers by him and that topic is missing entirely – it’s based on economics TWh output parameters not total quantities of RE units to build nor mineral/metals supply vs reserves or resource quantities. Michaux did a review on one of his papers where material requirements was completely absent as was any electricity storage component for the grid reliability and longer term storage.
How can you build a national or global 100% WWS RE electricity grid without some solid storage component given there is no longer any gas etc as a back up?
nigeljsays
Ned Kelly,
I have read some of Michaux commentary and he does appear to base his findings on known reserves of minerals, and existing mines, and current extraction costs. That’s the whole point I was making. If he doesn’t please copy and paste it. Perhaps he has done different studies or reviews using different criteria. I just dont have time to read the whole lot they are very long.
I haven’t purchased the Jacobson paper. I don’t have a copy on my computer. I don’t know of any links to the paper for free. I’m going by recollection of discussions about the paper and a few quotes from it on another website some years ago. All I can say is it had more details than in the abstract. It did quote a lot of economics along the lines you mentioned, but I seem to recall discussions of availability of various minerals as well.
I’m not saying Jacobson is 100% correct on everything either. My point was only that published peer reviewed studies carry a bit more weight than general articles and internet chatter. I assume you would agree that denialists reviews and internet chatter is less weighty than published science. For example.
“How can you build a national or global 100% WWS RE electricity grid without some solid storage component given there is no longer any gas etc as a back up?”
My understanding is Jacobson does allow for some pumped hydro storage, but its fairly minimal. His design appears to be based on combatting wind and solar intermittency primarily by a significant overbuild of wind and solar power, and smart grids that share power regionally. If you do a google search you can download his detailed commentary on his plans for free. Here is one example:
That said Jacobsons approach to the intermittency issue looks challenging to build. Smart grids require a lot of new long distance transmission lines using direct current. Lots of challenges in this economically and politically. I would say he will need more storage.
I’m looking at the issue more from the bigger picture point of view. It’s clear building a global renewables grid faces a variety of huge challenges, and I don’t doubt resources will be one. It wont be a walk in the park, and ultimately we may find power prices escalate forcing us to reduce our energy use.
But the alternatives look worse. Burning fossil fuels is a serious problem we seem to agree on. It cannot continue.
Carbon capture and storage does not look feasible as a stand alone solution.
Nuclear power is a possible solution but faces its own challenges with resource availability namely uranium. It might help alongside renewables.
Expecting people to voluntarily reduce their use of energy faces huge challenges as well.
So it seems to me (and I’m open to persuasion otherwise) our best bet is to build out a renewable energy grid and deal with the problems as they arise. If we can persuade people to make at least moderate voluntary reductions in their consumption of energy that would clearly help. However I find some of Killians very ambitious suggestions in this area rather optimistic. I think reductions in energy use willl happen but when they are forced on us by rising prices,
And a lot can be achieved just with better insulated homes, more public transport, cycling, and more efficient appliances. This is the sort of thing we will probably need.
One thing is for sure. There are no simple, easy solutions all things considered.
Dennis Hornesays
I need help with an argument in a suburban newspaper here in Auckland.
Ryan Price writes: “I have only mentioned radiative forcing in relation to Richard Feynman’s 1963 lecture, which Dennis is studiously avoiding, where Feynman demonstrated that neither CO2 nor radiative forcing are required to explain the greenhouse effect.”
I had already answered some weeks ago, But have just sent another letter to the editor: “Science shows us Earth’s temperature and atmospheric CO2 level rise and fall together – and have done since time immemorial. For the last 10,000 a benign climate has fostered human civilisation. The last 100 years the CO2 level has soared and the temperature has followed it up: 1C. More coming.
“Due to the greenhouse effect, Mr Price. Richard Feynman never contradicted that. His lecture concerned a simple static system, not a “living” planet like Earth with a complex climate system.”
I have only a vague idea what Feynman was talking about and would appreciate comments. I think Ryan Price worked in an international advertising company…
Dennis Horne,
You seem to have an on-going tussle with a determined denier. My own local rag tends to shut down such to-&-fro so my own ding-dongs don’t last that long.
I cannot see your letter on-line which is quoted by the denier as saying of Feynman “why did he not say so” but I assume your argument was that if science had gone so badly off the rails (as the denier implies) then certainly before his death in 1988 the likes of Feynman would not have stayed silent. Mind your citing of Feynman is still not explained. Even if he didn’t ever address the science of climatology, he was quite strong on not deferring to authority.
The nonsense from the denier is quite straightforward to demolish, even in a short letter.
What complicates this is his referencing some Feynman lecture of 1963 (of which there are many. This series of 51 lectures is partly from 1963.) in which the denier says Feynman “quoted Maxwell while demonstrating how an atmosphere comprised of only Nitrogen and Oxygen would perform as predicted, with no radiative forcing, CO2 or H20.”
I’d suggest there is no such paper and the denier is doing no more than reproducing a garbled version of crazy-talk from the nutters at Principia Scientific who are certainly referring to this Feynman lecture. Myself, given the denier has not done what he should have and properly reference this Feynman lecture, I would do it for him. More so, as he accuses you (March 8) of “not even having read it.”
If you have identified the Feynman 1963 lecture as being “The Principles of Statistical Mechanics”, note Feynman does not mention Maxwell in respect to any atmospheric modelling as Ryan Price says he does in his letter of 8 Feb.
This 1963 Feynman lecture only set out a very simplistic atmospheric model to calculate pressure with altitude and with it comments on the distribution of Nitrogen and Oxygen as well as Hydrogen with height under gravity. This is not in any way ‘validating’ some theory that contradicts modern climatology and the workings of Earth’s greenhouse atmosphere. Indeed, Feynman never passed comment on man-made global warming, a theory well established scientifically prior to his death. So if your denier writes that “Feynman demonstrated that neither CO2 nor radiative forcing are required to explain the greenhouse effect,” he is both entirely wrong and in doing so invoking authority as a basis for his claims when Feynman was well known for criticising use of authority as the basis for an argument.
zebrasays
Dennis, how about starting with a reference to which Feynman “lecture” we are talking about?
And if you really want help debunking what sounds like typical Denialist nonsense, you could also reference the actual letters or give a quote.
Anyway, in a quick unsuccessful search for “Feynman’s Greenhouse lecture”, I came on this, which might be helpful to you as a starting point. :
What are your specific questions? It’s quite unclear.
Certainly it is possible to explain the greenhouse effect using more basic concepts than radiative forcing in a planetary atmosphere and employing other molecules than CO2.
Ray Ladburysays
Hi Dennis,
First, most people who quote Feynman aren’t smart enough to understand him. There are several posts on the Intertubes that seem to make this argument. They are all very careful NOT to identify the paper of Feynman’s on which they are basing their drivel. I have yet to find a citation even having looked through about 20 ludicrous screeds–most of which, interestingly, are identical.
I would simply tell Mr. Price to publish forthwith and get back to us once he gets through peer review. These people don’t even understand how science works!
Adam Ashsays
IMHO the most pertinent comment by Hansen recently is from his…
Equilibrium Warming = Committed Warming? 25 May 2023 James Hansen
“…if we leave atmospheric composition as it is today, sea level will eventually rise about 60 m (200 feet).”
That is all the terror any thinking man needs to cope with – if we do nothing, or worse if we do anything between nothing and BAU, then ‘sea level will eventually rise about 60 m’.
Just run your cursor around anywhere on Google Earth to discern where the 60 m contour runs through the civilized and not so civilized world, and weep.
Tiananmen Square. 48 m.
Place de la Concorde. 35 m
Trafalgar Square. 9 m
Times Square, New York. 16 m
Parliament building, Dhaka, Bangladesh. 10 m
Tokyo, mostly all between 1 m and 60 m.
Every coastal town on Earth. Eventually nothing but bubbles and fish.
“…if we leave atmospheric composition as it is today, sea level will eventually rise about 60 m (200 feet).”; isn’t that the only message the world needs to hear? Isn’t that enough??!!
Geoff Miellsays
Adam Ash: – “That is all the terror any thinking man needs to cope with – if we do nothing, or worse if we do anything between nothing and BAU, then ‘sea level will eventually rise about 60 m’.”
Sea level rise (SLR) of 60 m will be highly disruptive for coastal and riverine locations, but that will be on a timescale over centuries (plural) or more. I’d suggest there are many decades to adapt for that.
But on our current GHG emissions trajectory, I’d suggest human civilisation is unlikely to prevail beyond the second half of this century, due to accelerating rising temperatures that likely drastically reduce global food production yields and greatly diminish habitable areas. I’d suggest this will be far more disruptive, and occurring on a much shorter timescale.
IMO, what’s far more concerning in James Hansen’s May 25 communication titled Equilibrium Warming = Committed Warming? is the Fig. 25: Global temperature relative to 1880-1920 (also in the Global Warming in the Pipeline preprint paper), indicating an estimated accelerating warming rate. Hansen concludes in his latest communication with:
Let’s end with another figure from our paper, Fig. 25 (above), which compares the long-term global temperature trend with our prediction of accelerated warming that accounts for declining atmospheric aerosols and an uptick in GHG growth rates. As much as possible, the projection is based on data: measured global energy imbalance and indirect indications of declining aerosol amount. It has become popular to say that the emerging El Nino will cause global temperature to soon exceed 1.5°C. We don’t know that for certain, but we can expect it to reach at least +1.4-1.5°C. An El Nino spurred global temperature close to +1.5°C will not provide a valid measure of what the world will be like when the trend-line reaches +1.5°C, but the El Nino spurred peak temperature will provide a first indication of whether there is a new, accelerated trend line. If the 2024 temperature (peak global temperature lags El Nino by several months) falls clearly above the yellow region in Fig. 25, it will tend to confirm the acceleration.
In other words, it seems we/humanity will likely see a clear indication of how close to reality the estimates of accelerated global warming by Dr. Hansen & colleagues are in the next 18 months or so.
Berkley Earth lead scientist Dr Robert Rohde tweeted May 18:
Following a warm March & April, and with a potential strong El Niño looming, the @BerkeleyEarth forecast for 2023 has again shifted up.
It is now slightly more likely than not that 2023 becomes the warmest year in the instrumental record (56% chance).
On May 20, 2023 surpassed 2016 as the year with the hottest (60°S-60°N latitude) global mean sea surface temperatures (SST) since record keeping began in 1982. While 2016 was at the end of a record El Niño, the SST impact from the coming 2023 El Niño has not yet left its mark. https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1659578806242529282
Head of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, Professor Stefan Rahmstorf tweeted on May 25:
The area no longer inhabitable for humans (purple) changes depending on the extent of global warming. Current study from Nature Sustainability, https://nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01132-6
The tweet included a gif animation showing areas of the globe (in purple) that would be considered no longer habitable (MATs ≥ 29 °C), for a global mean surface temperature of:
• +1.5 °C (increasingly likely breached within this decade, per Hansen et. al.);
• +1.8 °C (on our current GHG emissions trajectory, likely breached as soon as the 2030s);
• +2.1 °C (on our current GHG emissions trajectory, likely breached sometime around 2050);
• +2.4 °C;
• +2.7 °C;
• +3.6 °C; and
• +4.4 °C: https://twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/1661450321766371329
Professor Stefan Rahmstorf then follows with this tweet (twitter translation from German to English):
The 29°C annual mean temperature (in Potsdam: 10°C) is of course only a simple criterion and therefore the limits are not exact. The study also discusses precipitation, humidity and temperature extremes, such as the number of days above 40°C. Around 1980, about 0.3% of the world’s population lived in the zone above 29°C.
The problem when it gets too hot: the data shows increasing mortality and pregnancy problems, decreasing labor productivity, the ability to think and learn, and problems with crop yields, so that many people try to move away from such regions.
Wikipedia‘s reference for Wet-bulb temperature includes:
A sustained wet-bulb temperature exceeding 35 °C (95 °F) is likely to be fatal even to fit and healthy people, unclothed in the shade next to a fan; at this temperature human bodies switch from shedding heat to the environment, to gaining heat from it.
Billions of people could be on the move in a few decades as many locations in the world become progressively unlivable.
Adam Ashsays
Thank you for your considered response. Some years ago, based on Hansen’s sea rise estimates, I put up a few signs around my neighbourhood indicating ‘High Tide 2100″ and the like as a way to alert my fellow citizens about the threat/promise of BAU.
I appreciate your points relating to increased temperatures in currently habitable zones, and certainly the threat of migration out of those zones combined with the loss of agricultural production of staples like rice there (not that the rice won’t grow, just too hot for humans to harvest it!) will have an unimaginably sad impact.
I have wondered what the potential upper bound of ‘high’ ground level temperatures is under these scenarios. We have already seen 60C in places, and we have only just begun to warm seriously. Is it somehow limited to below 100 C, or can the forcings see surface temperatures reach whatever number nature dictates, including above 100C?
Geoff Miellsays
Adam Ash: – “I have wondered what the potential upper bound of ‘high’ ground level temperatures is under these scenarios.”
The top-10 hottest countries in the world, 1991-2020 by mean annual temperature (MAT):
I’d suggest you look at the records for the summer peaks and winter troughs for these countries.
Per DEGREES OF RISK: Can the banking system survive climate warming of 3˚C? by David Spratt & Ian Dunlop, on page 10:
Prof. Andy Pitman, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes in Australia notes that global mean warming is badly understood. As a general rule of thumb, global average warming of 4°C (covering land and ocean) is consistent with 6°C over land, and 8°C in the average warming over mid-latitude land. That risks 10°C in the summer average, or perhaps 12°C in heatwaves. Western Sydney has already reached 48°C. If you add 12°C to the 48°C you get summer heatwaves of 60°C.
The highest dew point ever recorded, 95°F (35°C), was recorded at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on July 8, 2003. With an air temperature of 108°F (42°C) the heat index was 178°F (81°C).
Adam Ash: – “…can the forcings see surface temperatures reach whatever number nature dictates, including above 100C?”
I’d suggest not in this century…
nigeljsays
Adam
“…if we leave atmospheric composition as it is today, sea level will eventually rise about 60 m (200 feet).”
This sea level rise is spread out over centuries as Geoff Miell explains. In fact its spread out over millennia from what I recall so it would only be modest sea level rise each year, of substantially less than one metre. We can adapt. Settlements would gradually move inland.
However the last IPCC report predicted a worst case sea level rise per century (including this century, ) of 2 metres, based on warming up around 2 – 4 degrees. This is the real killer because adaptation would be incredibly difficult due to the speed of change. And it would go on for several centuries at least.
Its predicated on an abrupt physical collapse of ice sheets in Antarctica with Greenland also contributing. Hansen did a study on this as well and predicted something like 5 metres of sea level rise was possible this century, although the IPCC seem to have settled on 2 metres as the worst case, Both would be horrendous in terms of infrastructure, the economy and loss of farmland.
This is why we must stop warming getting over 2 degrees c, and preferably stop it getting over 1.5 degrees..
Adam Ashsays
“We can adapt. Settlements would gradually move inland.”
As Hansen said: “…if emissions follow a business-as-usual scenario, sea level rise of at least two meters is likely this century. Hundreds of millions of people would become refugees. No stable shoreline would be reestablished in any time frame that humanity can conceive.”
So staged retreat becomes nonsensical, as wherever you retreat to (below the eventually stable coastline) you will have to retreat from again a later day.
Hansen has also suggested that up to 5 metres rise could occur this century if we hit 1.5 degrees soon, as an upper bound of possibilities. It looks like we will install more than 1.5 degrees of forcing, so 5 m is not unreasonable, and of course that is the bottom of the melt S-curve, so SL rise rate will increase for quite a while.
At the same time we are faced with increasingly expensive energy for the plant required to develop new settlements and coastal infrastructure, so we can only afford the rebuild maybe one more time. .Any relocated settlement must be built above the eventual high tide mark – i.e. over the 75 m all-ice-melted level plus local allowance for surf erosion to a stable coastline.
Any port infrastructure has to be readily relocated, so floating jetties tied to piles and road/rail heads will be the norm..
We will not and realistically cannot avoid this, as until the CO2 gets back to below 250 ppm and the global ice block is put back in the fridge, the ice will continue to melt. Very interesting times.
nigeljsays
Adam Ash
Firstly a clarification. I said that 60 m of sea level rise spread over millenia (thousands of years) is something we could adapt to . I said it would only be “modest sea level rise each year, of substantially less than one metre.” This was a typo. I meant substantially less than one centimetre per year, and thus maybe around 300 mm per century. .
Secondly I did acknowledge the possibility of 2 metres sea level rise per century if warming gets above 2 degrees, and how difficult adaptation would be. I struggle to understand why you didn’t read that.
However I do agree with your detailed assessment of the problems of adapting to sea level rise from 2-5 metres per century. It would be a catastrophic situation.
Your quote that Hansen predicts 5 metres per century for 1.5 degrees doesn’t look very credible even as a very worst case possibility. Hansens past predictions on temperature have proven very accurate but his predictions on sea level rise less so.
However the more plausible worst case scenario of 2 metres per century would still be a massive problem. Its too fast to adapt to. And the paleo climate record has periods where sea level rise appeared to rise at 2 metres per century. So there is a precedent.
Geoff Miellsays
nigelj: – “I meant substantially less than one centimetre per year, and thus maybe around 300 mm per century.”
Firstly, sea level rise (SLR) won’t be linear. Observed SLR is already accelerating:
1993-1998: +1.5 mm per year
1998-2012: +3.2 mm per year
2012-2018: +5.0 mm per year
See the graph displayed in the YouTube video titled Sea Level Rise Can No Longer Be Stopped, What Next? – with John Englander from time interval 0:27:20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvqY2NcBWI8
nigelj: – “Your quote that Hansen predicts 5 metres per century for 1.5 degrees doesn’t look very credible even as a very worst case possibility.”
A recent study suggests the extent of future SLR could be vastly underestimated. An article headlined UCI, NASA JPL researchers discover a cause of rapid ice melting in Greenland, dated May 8, included:
“These ice-ocean interactions make the glaciers more sensitive to ocean warming,” said senior co-author Eric Rignot, UCI professor of Earth system science and NASA JPL research scientist. “These dynamics are not included in models, and if we were to include them, it would increase projections of sea level rise by up to 200 percent – not just for Petermann but for all glaciers ending in the ocean, which is most of northern Greenland and all of Antarctica.”
But I think increasing temperatures are a far bigger danger for humanity/civilisation in the next few decades.
Adam Ashsays
Thanks NigelJ, and Geoff too, great comments..
One of the several unscientific worries I have may be illustrated by a trivial experiment I did a while back. I see the increased forcing as equivalent to taking an ice block out of the fridge as we passed 250 ppm, and it will continue to melt until we put it back into the 0 C) which drop down moulins to transfer that incredible amount of energy to the base of the ice slab. So there are lots of ways the ice is being heated from both top and bottom.
This scenario then sees all grounded ice getting to 0 C at around the same time, and then starting to melt at around the same time. It will not be progressive. Ice at close to 0 C has very poor structural integrity, and so a glacier could turn from a solid to a mush flow which trundles to the sea quite suddenly.
Is this a real issue, or am I delusional? TIA.
Dennis Hornesays
Thanks for your help. Here is the letter I sent earlier in the week. I have also answered earlier letters rebutting Feynman’s alleged “proof”.
Ryan Price still does not realise his position makes no sense. Either adding CO2 to the atmosphere is heating Earth – as the science predicted, measures and explains – or it does not.
Ryan Price fails to distinguish between the informal fallacy “Appeal to Authority” and deferring to experts. Appeal to authority is what lawyers do to fool juries – find the one in a 1000 “expert” who disagrees with the rest and is paid for it.
The thing about science is it compensates for bias and corrects error. Any one scientist can be wrong – a human with human failings. That is why it is the scientific consensus that goes into the textbooks and scientific reports, like IPCC reports. Fake science stays on the crank sites, for fools to read and useful idiots to regurgitate.
Science shows us Earth’s temperature and atmospheric CO2 level rise and fall together – and have done since time immemorial. For the last 10,000 a benign climate has fostered human civilisation. The last 100 years the CO2 level has soared and the temperature has followed it up: 1C. More coming.
Due to the greenhouse effect, Mr Price. Richard Feynman never contradicted that. His lecture concerned a simple static system, not a “living” planet like Earth with a complex climate system.
Most “extra” energy is going into the oceans. More than four Hiroshima bombs – every second. That’s why we see heavier rain and worse storms. Nature is following the laws of physics!
Do you remember what Feynman said, Mr Price? No matter how elegant your hypothesis, if it does not fit the evidence it is wrong. You can blow as hard you like, Mr Price, climate science is rock solid. It won’t change much, and neither will you.
Correct me if I am wrong but all the future sea level maps do not process geomorphology, the result of wave and seeping water modulating landscapes and coasts – in addition to sea level height. The headline, ‘Coastal errosion reached a new high!’
Postkeysays
“Ramping up wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles can’t solve our energy problem
Posted on February 3, 2023 by Gail Tverberg”
James Lovelock – The man who named the world (1989) https://climatestate.com/2023/05/01/james-lovelock-the-man-who-named-the-world-1989/
:) But I prefer David Attenborough. A very humble, gentle person.
np https://climatestate.com/?s=david+attenborough
Bottom line, the 1989 film presents early climate change warnings including the solutions. Today, we still face too much GHGs, plus tipping points are closer.
Lovelock defies his own philosophical viewpoint with bizarre dissonant inconsistencies in that piece. It seemed to be going so well, then BAM! totally off the rails.
Axel Kleidon provides an alternative entry point.
Kleidon uses his “Desert World” vs “Green Planet” in an attempt to pry open eyes.
https://nature.berkeley.edu/biometlab/espm298/Kleidon%202004%20BeyondGaia.pdf
On freedom vs constraint… a different way to think about it.
Though it may be interesting to see if Tucker Carlson’s departure has any cautionary effect on cable TV climate coverage., I wouldn’t wait up:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2023/04/tuckerbot-saves-newsmax-millions-in.html
Russell: “Though it may be interesting to see if Tucker Carlson’s departure has any cautionary effect on cable TV climate coverage”
Only to the extent: DON’T YOUR EVER leave a paper/email trail that you KNOW that the lies you feed your audience are lies. This could cost your employer a heavy change as it blows its plausible deniability defense that they only reported things they believed may possibly be true. That’s in case, if the original line of defense that no reasonable person should assume that your program on a “News” network is about … news, and not entertainment fiction..
Dude, Faux News has actually used the argument that lying is protected free speech as a defense in a lawsuit. They paid 785 million $$ so they didn’t have to admit publicly that they were lying. And their audience is waiting to lap up whatever new lies come their way. The only threat to Faux News’s business model is not lying enough to please their most rabid base.
Huh? Nobody discussed whether Fox lies to its base or not, “Dude”. And if they ONLY LIED , they would have got off scot-free on the protected free speech defense. Therefore:
“ Dominion had to prove that Fox News hosts KNOWINGLY disseminated falsehoods to their viewers. To do so – they “subpoenaed extensive internal text messages and emails” from Fox. And because Dominion found in the emails the PROOF that they KNEW it were lies – Fox had to settle. Hence the lesson to Fox is precisely as I said:
“ DON’T YOUR EVER leave a paper/email trail that you KNOW that the lies you feed your audience are lies., Dude.
Oh yes, there is documented evidence up the kazoo, but the point is they don’t have to admit it to their viewers on the air. The evidence doesn’t matter if nobody looks at it. And burying it under a big pile of money is one way to hide it.
RL: “ but the point is they don’t have to admit it to their viewers on the air.”
This may be “ the point ” in your discussion with ….yourself, In the discussion
you barged in with you patronizing tone (“Dude”) – we talked about ,,, a very different point – namely Russel’s:
“it may be interesting to see if Tucker Carlson’s departure has any cautionary effect on cable TV climate coverage”
To which I replied that it WON’T stop them from lying, merely will teach them not to
“leave a paper/email trail that you KNOW that the lies you feed your audience are lies?
And even that may be optimistic – Fox was made to pay because it was sued by a party
that could prove an obvious injury – Dominion company whose reputation was attacked, thus causing _calculable_ financial harm to the prospects of their future sales.
In contrast – who would claim to be the party that should get compensated for the lies on climate change? And good luck in trying to certify in the US courts a class action suit on the behalf of .. all humans, today and in the future, who have been, or will be, negatively affected by the climate change,
And my point is that the paper trail or the “cloud-storage trail” doesn’t matter if the rubes who support Faux News don’t look at it. $785 mil. is nothing to Rupert. It just means he might have to take one less yacht trip this year.
Ray Ladbury 10 MAY: “And my point is that the paper trail or the “cloud-storage trail” doesn’t matter if the rubes who support Faux News don’t look at it.”
My argument you comment ” wasn’t about your “rubes who watch Fox” – because NOTHING can change their mind about Fox (well, other than Fox switching to support Democrats) – it was about the lesson Fox crew will get – don’t leave the email/paper trial for the COURTS, because this is the ONLY place where Fox can be hurt – even if Murdoch can afford “$785 MILLION” for the settlement – it does not mean that having the choice – to KEEP these 3/4 of a $ BIllion or to pay it to the very company his Fox accused of helping Democrats, he would say – I don’t really care one way or another.
Piotr,
Sorry to have intruded. I assure you that I do not find the prospect of engaging with you sufficiently rewarding to justify putting up with abuse.
Another commenter whose comments I can pass by without reading.
Before the 2020 election, Democrats didn’t think too highly of Dominion:
https://www.warren.senate.gov/oversight/letters/warren-klobuchar-wyden-and-pocan-investigate-vulnerabilities-and-shortcomings-of-election-technology-industry-with-ties-to-private-equity%20/
https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/H.I.G.%20McCarthy,%20&%20Staple%20Street%20letters.pdf
Everybody knows that Biden, unable to utter 3 coherent words in a row, hiding in his basement, unable to fill a phone booth with supporters, won fair and square. Uh huh. Right.
https://hereistheevidence.com/
Succinct, courteous, on point.
KIA: Everybody knows that Biden, unable to utter 3 coherent words in a row, hiding in his basement, unable to fill a phone booth with supporters, won fair and square. Uh huh. Right.
BPL: 1. Your characterization of Biden is stupid, wrong, and offensive. 2. 2020 was the fairest and most carefully watched national election in US history. All attempts to challenge it failed miserably to produce any evidence, as shown by 61 unsuccessful lawsuits, many of them decided by Trump-appointed judges. Believing the lie that the 2020 election was stolen is on a par with believing aliens built the pyramids–strictly for brainwashed dupes and conspiracy-theory idiots.
Mr. KIA,
The enemy of my enemy…or in this case, the enemy to the enemies of democracy–foreign or domestic..
Ray Ladbury’s farewell post on May14:
So let me get it right, Ray – you joined in to comment my post. lectured me in a patronizing manner (“Dude”) on issues that … were not discussed, and when I respond to your comments asking how they are relevant to the discussion at hand – you … portray yourself as a …victim of “abuse” and proudly declare walking away:
“ I do not find the prospect of engaging with you sufficiently rewarding to justify putting up with abuse
Well, it will be hard (muffled sound of swallowed tears), but I will have to learn to live without the benefit your enlightening guidance.
Ladies and Gentlemen
We have a new month in the climate and the instruction goes that we should be succinct (?), courteous and on point.
I checked up “succinct” and suggest Ochams razor. Entia non sunt multiplicandem præter necessitatem for being “succinct”.
Courteous, there we have http://www.Håvamål and Konungs skuggsjå, SPECVLM REGALE
And on the point, ….. well…… I have Evklids Elements in english translation from “Everymans library”.
We discuss hitting the nail on its head, , and if you fail there, a sledgehammer will hardly hit better.
Neither will just hammering around it and set on the statistics.
Watch your thumbs also.
The Gaia Hypothesis hasn’t stood up well to time. Someone even published a book about a countervailing “Medea Hypothesis,” in which Earth repeatedly tries to kill all life. Both are, as popularly misused, personifying abstracts.
There are stabilizing feedbacks in the climate system that usually keep Earth habitable. That’s all that can be said for the Gaia Hypothesis. The idea that life stabilizes things doesn’t have much evidence for it these days.
I subscribe to a “proteins are always trying to make more proteins like themselves and die out when they cannot for whatever reason” hypothesis, personally. It kinda’ melds Gaia and Medea.
jgnfld: “I subscribe to a “proteins are always trying to make more proteins like themselves and die out when they cannot for whatever reason” hypothesis”
Unless you mean prions, shouldn’t this read: DNA?
Which came first, the proteins or the nucleic acids? I don’t know nor does anyone else for sure. I lean more to the protein first side for reasons of parsimony which is why I said what I said…(but mainly I’m agnostic in any absolute sense).
jgnfld says “Which came first, the proteins or the nucleic acids?”
Irrelevant to your own claim – there is no KNOWN mechanism for PROTEINS “ to make more like themselves“. Even prions re-fold of the proteins synthesized based on specific DNA.
There is one known process of “ to make more like themselves” used by ALL KNOWN LIFE, and even by non-life (viruses) – applies to nucleic acids – so DNA (or in case of some viruses – RNA).
The debate over the chemical basis of heredity was settled 80 years ago so there is no need to relitigate it.
Waayyy off topic and mods should free to moderate or stick in bore hole/crankshaft…
I am pretty sure there is no evidence in the scientific record that proto-nucleic acids (in the form of primitive ribozymes) first arose that could form proteins any more than there is evidence that proto-proteins (in the form of primitive enzymes) could form nucleic acids.
jgnfld I am pretty sure there is no evidence in the scientific record that proto-nucleic acids”
Nor is there evidence to the contrary – hence a subject about which we don’t know anything one way or another – can’t be a basis of falsifiable claims. Everything that has happened since and is happening today – can. And in that – it is the DNA, not PROTEINS, that “make more like themselves”. That’s why Dawkins chose: “The Selfish Gene“, over: “The Selfish Protein“.
jgnfld says “Which came first, the proteins or the nucleic acids?”
Actually, the chicken came first.
And the egg still has a headache!
Hr levenson
“That`s all that can be said for the Gaia hypothesis”
Avoid teaching 0f things that you know less about MJr.Levenson, and watch your grammar
James Lovelock would have been just another new age freak if it had not been his delivery of a series of analytic instrumental designs and inventions apparently above Levenson in the grades.
A next critical point and hot potatoe is that the Gaia-hypothesis re- cycles and re- vitalizes the old and falsified theory and philosophy of VITALISM . that played a philosophical role up to about 1860.. That was substituted by the less spiritualistic and pan- theistic conscept of “bio….” in order to save the ruins of a chosmology that is different from dry desert dust mechanical random walk “newtonian” or “classical” physics, milled and served by bolzmann statistics and confidence.
It is a fameous history about animal and eve plant soul and intelligence. Where soul and intelligence are no well formed formulas in classical physics.
A next very tense situation and hot potatoe is that, Lovelocks Gaia- theory re- cycles the fameous world championchip of heavyweight mud wrestling between Thomas Huxley, known as Darwins Bulldog. And his opponent the just as heavy and weighty Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, better known as “Soapy Sam” . professor of theology in Cambridge. About ” blind evolution” vs Intelligent design and Gods allmighty creation and further surveillance and finger into it.
No wonder it can becone tense then.
It erases and deletes the state- religion of the very DDR, the worlds first ateistic state with is faculty ofr absolute systematics on environmental affairs, the Arbeiter und Bauernfakultät in Greifswald.
Puttlers position, I don`t know . He has been seen both wrestling and going to church but I hardly believe that they are allowed to be evangelicals protestants and spiritualists under Patriarch KIirill to Moskva.
But we should notice that Pope Franciscus, who is rather a Jesuit, has taken a Hans Joachim Schellnhuber into his Pontifica Academia Scientiarum.
H.J. Schellnhuber is known to have been inspired by and worked directly along with Lovelocks ideas, to became a pioneer and leading author of the first IPCC conscepts.
So, better brush up your beliefs here, Levenson.
It is not for nothing that the dia- lectic materialists and surrealists labels the CO2-AGW theory by their fameous operational word “religion!” that to them means un- scientific, EX-COMMUNICATED for lifetime.
The Gaia- theory is clearly neo- religious from the second half of the 20ietyh century, and so is also the Tyndall Arrhenius Revelle Hansen Brundtloand Schellnhuber Gore Greta- theory.
As they sleep together and go hand in hand. they should go to confession and get orderly married then.
In a “deliberate” manner – doesn’t, but I don’t think it ever had. But inadvertent way:
– the original insight of Lovelock et al. – about the DMS produced by algae increasing albedo over the oceans , keeping the Earth cooler than it would have been otherwise
– on a geological time-scale – where the increasing solar radiation input (mainly due to the increase in the size of the solar disc) has been countered by biological reduction of atmospheric CH4 and CO2
I believe still hold.
So is the fact that more diverse ecosystems tends to be more stable. And at a higher level of generalization – life depends on negative feedbacks, and those are critical to “stabilizing things”, both inside of organisms AND outside of them.
BPL: Someone even published a book about a countervailing “Medea Hypothesis,” in which Earth repeatedly tries to kill all life. Both are, as popularly misused, personifying abstracts.
I believe that was Dr. Peter Ward
“The idea that life stabilizes things doesn`t have much evidence for it in those days”
Well, if you believe in God, and take Prolog im Himmel Goethe Faust 1 and the initial book of Genesis for serious, you may better understand., but the Levensons cannot even read and believe in the scriptures. They only believe in their “elderlies”
Mephisto: “Denn, alles was ensteht, ist wert dass es zugrunde geht!” SANN!
Saturnus you see, the mushroms and the re- cyclings,…
Moral:
Dia- lectic materialism, flat earthing, desert walking, and blind belief in the scritures you see, is helpless in the climate.
How often do I have to make Levenson aware of that?.
UAH TLT has reported for April with an anomaly of +0.18ºC, a little down on March’s +0.20ºC anomaly but a long way up on chilly January (-0.04ºC) and February (+0.08ºC).
April 2023 is the =8th warmest in the UAH TLT record, behind top-spot El Niño years 1998 (+0.62ºC) & 2016 (+0.61ºC), and 2019 (+0.32ºC), 2020, 2022, 2005, 2010, while equalling 2017.
April 2023 is =83rd in the all-month UAH TLT ranking.
As a start-of-year, 2023 Jan-Apr is =11th warmest, up from the 15th spot of Jan-March and with a href=”https://iri.columbia.edu/our-expertise/climate/forecasts/enso/current/”>the predicted El Niño due to kick in soon, 2023 will likely be seeing further such climbs up the rankings as the year progresses.
…….. Jan-Apr Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.59ºC … … … +0.39ºC … … … 1st
1998 .. +0.45ºC … … … +0.35ºC … … … 3rd
2020 .. +0.41ºC … … … +0.36ºC … … … 2nd
2010 .. +0.31ºC … … … +0.19ºC … … … 6th
2019 .. +0.25ºC … … … +0.30ºC … … … 4th
2017 .. +0.23ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 5th
2018 .. +0.12ºC … … … +0.09ºC … … … 10th
2007 .. +0.12ºC … … … +0.02ºC … … … 15th
2002 .. +0.11ºC … … … +0.08ºC … … … 11th
2022 .. +0.11ºC … … … +0.17ºC … … … 7th
2005 .. +0.11ºC … … … +0.06ºC … … … 12th
2023 .. +0.11ºC
2004 .. +0.10ºC … … … -0.05ºC … … … 20th
2003 .. +0.09ºC … … … +0.05ºC … … … 13th
2021 .. +0.07ºC … … … +0.13ºC … … … 9th
2015 .. +0.06ºC … … … +0.14ºC … … … 8th
The SAT CFRS reanalysis is showing a drop for the April global anomaly, down from the “scorchio” March anomaly. I’m not sure how that squares with thems record-breaking April SSTs.
Let’s look at the denialist playbook. Nearly every denialist who comes on here follows it:
1) Start with a statistic that is inherently noisy and/or uncertain–surface temperature is a good one, as it varies considerably over time on many different timescales and there are many factors that affect the reading.
2) Find a time period where it is particularly noisy. Make the period as long as possible by ignoring segments where it agrees with predictions
3) Pull a straw-man theory out our our posterior and tell people this is what “theory” predicts.
4) Claim evidence contradicts theory
5) Profit.
Of course the entire approach is horse puckey. For every statistic where there is a seeming discrepancy, there are 10 or more that show the trend. Atmospheric temperature varies with a variety of inputs, but ocean temperature (over it’s entire depth) increases monotonically. And given that the oceans contain ~300x as much mass as the atmosphere, the conclusion any reasonable person would come to is “Oh, atmospheric temperature is noisy.”
The fact is that there is a lot of energy going into the climate system–enough energy to warm an entire planet. Where is all that energy coming from? Climate science has an answer–anthropogenic greenhouse gasses. The denialists got nothin’.
Wrong…they’ve got solid propaganda techniques behind them. Your steps 1-5 are right out of Chapter 1 of any serious textbook analysis of propaganda methodology. Factoids out of context and “truthy” non-facts are not data, but propagandists try to make them seem so by presenting them with a serious and somewhat breathless way. Then they play sad, hurt little puppies when they get “personally attacked”…poo’ widdle little innocent things they are.
We see this here all the time with our resident propagandists and all the time in political media on line and on cable as well. Oh…and also sci-fi awards where the _actual_ majority now appears to be ruling now that they’ve actively fought the extremists rather than tying to ignore them like they tried at first
THAT is why “don’t feed the trolls” is not always the best advice. Committed propagandists aren’t trolling (only) for adolescent kicks. They’re plying their trade for money and/or power. And that is why propagandists need either to be moderated (which is presently not happening here) or strongly challenged. They won’t go away. And the trouble with authoritarians is they only need to win once. Then they own the tools.
Anyone who cannot see the harm that is created when propagandists are given free, unchallenged rein is not very observant of the world around them these days.
Wrong. You guys just can’t admit that they have won by creating the “framing” in which you participate.
Back when Creationism was being pushed as a way to motivate the R base, they would say “teach the controversy”. But the correct answer to that was: There is no controversy!
So here we are again, and all the people responding to Victor and the Vapor Folk are contributing to the illusion that there is a scientific discussion going on. “See how the brave Galileo is holding his own against all those establishment elitists!”
You just can’t admit that you are as addicted to responding as they are to getting you to respond.
Your use of the Chat thing was interesting, if imperfect, but it illustrates the point. There is a simple answer, which is to have one statement that describes the settled science. You don’t need the moderators; you just have to exercise self control.
Disagree.
A troll would give up if ignored. A committed propagandist does not.
Consider Fox News and other propaganda outlets in this regard. They are in it for the long term and actually prosper when ignored. A small setback is just that.
They only have to win once and all the losses get erased. Literally.. Societally, we are not all that far from that point.
Well, we are talking about RC, not the NYT, so I doubt we are being visited from Russian troll farms.
But I’m not sure what you “disagree” with. When I respond to people on major venues (who might really be Russian trolls) I follow that basic principle, which is to explain what the actual science is, and not get drawn into the phony framing they are trying to promote.
People here are supposed to be the teachers, and as I’ve said before, that means setting the standards for how discussions are carried out… teaching people how science actually works.
That means requiring someone like Victor to stipulate what they agree with before discussing what they are questioning. It’s like a pre-requisite; you don’t allow someone in your advanced physics class who doesn’t accept conservation of energy.
@ Zebra
You have a quite important point there.
“That means requiring someone like V. to stipulate what they agree with before discussing what they are questioning.”
For stating proof and for telling truth and acheive any kind of agreement and understanding between people, there must be a minimal set of common axioms or dogmas or archetyps that are TABU, that means, not to be denied, not to be violated, not to be disputed. And you mention a fameous doctrinal axiom, the conservation of energy.
The technique of surrealism and rabulism is to erase any kind of such doctrnary agreement first even in a doctrinary way. Example:
I suddenly woke up by the sentence:
“Where there is science, there is not consensus, and where there is consensus there is not SCIENCE…..PERIOD!”
I heard that with my own ears spoken by “Dr” Richard Lindsen from the pulpit, in Domus Academica, Old festival hall, Royal Frederiks.
Then I went safely to sleep again and lost nothing.
And brought with me the consensus- book “Maqgnitudes Units and Symbols in Physics Otto Øgrims small catechism on their next surrealistic meeting.
” Here, The Consensus- book!” I told them
It was not opened!
Where I find ” the CRC handbook of chemistery and physics”The Rubber Bible on the writing desk and in then library, opened, there is science. And where that is not found, there is not science.
“One thing is for certain, nothing is for certain!”
That statement is often heard from surrealistic side in the climate dispute, and that statemkent is a false statement.
It is a common, stupidi- fying PARA DOXON- pill to be swallowed first.
Must be a conspiracy afoot. Time for some tinfoil hats.
Or simply a very fameous and quite sublime , organized and worshipful declared state- religion on behalf of true “science” , genosse Victor. That is calling for “Anerkennung” worldwide.
Where you are a washproof example.
That is my diagnosis of it. (Pat.Pending).
There are frapping similarities of basic beliefs and liturgies and katechisms between the Soviet academy of sciences in Ljeningrad with special deputee in Greifswald DDR Arbeiter und Bauernfakultät and the Asbestos palace , Palass der Republik behind the wall in Berlin,…..
……….and Chateau Heartland in Michigan.
They celebrate Das Kapital and the fossile fuel industies to progressive materialism both of them. rather by the same means also.
Hr Victor
I tend to see that you are misconsceived also on this point.
I personally believe that it is bloody KADREs, Kadre soldiers to the fameous bloodgroup P, P for Pure, Pork, Party, Privileged, Pøbel, Populists…… etc etc etc etc.. that are lacking a proper nation and imperial state religion and army that can further own them and put them under strict instructions and dicipline the way they were brought up.
Consequently, they run afoot- wildly on the free market due rather to lack of a due conspiracy
I repeat, due rather to lack of a properly believeable conspiracy…
………after that big chosmopolitical cathastrophy for them in Berlin late autumn 1989 as the wall fell down.
(SIC! TRANCIT GLORIA MVNDI)
So their very upbringings, trainings, learning, lifestyle and hopes for their future careers and rents, (Vodka Kaviar and Salami for lifetime as promised by Stalin)………. became worthless.
That cathastrophic event , that according to Puttler…..
(PP again, for Puttler and Prigoshin)
……. was the biggest geopolitical one of the 20ieth century,
was a major loss of hope and meaning of life for millions and other millions in the west ………. as also in the east.
All in all, You seem to suffer rather under the lack of a conspiracy by which you can be owned and perfrorm together with your comrades with bitties over your heads.
PS
Have you ever conscidered the Wagner- group ? DS
DO NOT RESPOND TO VICTOR, OR THIS MONTH’S UNFORCED VARIATIONS WILL BE A WASTE OF TIME FOR EVERYONE EXCEPT VICTOR.
But it will not be a waste of time for the people who are addicted to either responding to Victor, or, filling up the page with their own comments whatever the topic. That’s what it means to be an addict.
Oh, it’ll wast Weaktor’s time as well, but then his time isn’t worth anything.
Ladies and Gentlemen
There are amateur theories here on how to avoid and eventually fight trolls.
They were first discovered or set name on in Scandinavia, that I am representng, but it shows that trolls operate under different names and labels further worldwide. “monster” is close to the norwegian ” Troll” In Denmark the trolls are more slimy and smooth. No wonder in that flat landscape..
We have a set of stories and formulas on it.
Trolls can be both cheated and poisoned. They should hardly be ignored, due to the importance of hygiene.
There are some efficient herbal mecdicines that keeps them at distance. only by being mentioned. Such as Thymus vulgaris, and especially Artemisia vulgaris L. Then also Betula pubescens L and especially Urtica urens L.
You need no barbed wires if you can use roses with thorns and secure conditions for proper whasps nests, Vespa vulgaris L. . At sea we have firefish “Lions mane” and Strongylocentyrolus droebaciensis.
Betula & Urtica to be applied on their bottoms with pants down, and afront also if from behind is not enough. On naked skin with diapers off.
The European druide- weeds you see can work wonders and should be set on and used much more in the climate. What have we got them for?
To administer other peoples minds, senses, thougthts, habits, rights, and unforced variations…….
………. is not that easy, Miss Hughes.
Putin has tried now for a while, and just look what that becomes. .
Yes, it is obvious that they have a catechism and a thinktank on it, some kind of a “party” or a troll- factory. And this is a rather clear and consequent picture of it..
But it also takes volouteer soldiers, people who are deeply trained to organize and to go against any accute civil and transparent world order.
The heartland institute!
I just came across the source of that bloke’s silly +0.5 degrees /decade GMST anomaly December 2022, or a copy of it, via Gavin’s NOAA-STAR post. At https://sites.google.com/site/housman100resultstemperarypost/cited-graphs is GISTEMP LOTI plot with a +0.52 degrees /decade GMST anomaly 2013-2018 trend drawn and annotated on it. That’ll be what that lady was looking at on her computer she wouldn’t let us see in her December 2022 talk when she said she’s seeing +0.5 degrees /decade as the “current” rate. So a ridiculous 5 years trend with a large El Nino a bit past the middle. That’s the old Knappenberger-Michaels-Monckton-Cruz which I remarked then:
18 years 1 month = 217 months 1996-10 – 2014-10 = 0.0 degrees / century from Knappenberger-Michaels (Monckton) and
15 years 9 months = 189 months 1999-02 – 2014-10 = 1.2 degrees / century (the very same graph shown by Ted Cruz)
Which shows clearly that the “global warming” rate has increased in February 1999 by 1.2 degrees / 0.0 degrees = infinity rate of increase. THIS IS ALARMING, AN INFINITE WARMING INCREASE.
I don’t think this “sauce for goose, sauce for gander” method is the proper physical science method (even though I did it back then).
Barry E Finch,
The discussion which led to the graphic of 18th April 2022 you refer-to initially concerned likely projections of 2100 global temperatures. But at some point the +0.5ºC/decade was tossed into the mix, the source of such a claim being @4:50 in this video presentation. The assertion made in the video that “you can basically read it of the chart. It’s basically half a degree per decade. That is our current trajectory in terms of our current emissions” is not borne out by the “chart” which is Fig1.2 from IPCC Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5 ºC. This shows the temperature record is running at +0.17ºC/decade but also shows a SAT trace for CMIP5 model average rising at perhaps +0.35ºC/decade. No sign of any +0.5ºC/decade.
Barry E Finch,
Per the James Hansen et. al. pre-print paper titled Global warming in the pipeline, revised 12 Dec 2022, on page 33 includes (bold text my emphasis):
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.04474
I note that Figure 19 in the Hansen et. al. pre-print shows the upper and lower edges of the yellow area are +0.36 and +0.27°C per decade warming rates.
James Hansen and colleagues at the Columbia University’s Earth Institute, in their communication August Temperature Update, a “Thank You” & Biden’s Report Card, dated 22 Sep 2022, presented some ‘predictions’ including (bold text my emphasis):
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2022/AugustTemperatureUpdate.22September2022.pdf
The latest Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) model (NINO34, run on 22 Apr 2023) was recently published, predicting a super El Niño by August 2023:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/model-summary/#tabs=Bureau-model®ion=NINO34
The current Earth energy imbalance (EEI) is at an all-time high in the instrumental record – 928,000 ‘Hiroshimas’ per Day.
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1653515518400417792
The global (60°S-60°N latitude) sea surface temperature (SST) for April 26 came in at 20.98°C. The last time the SST was below 21°C was on March 22 (20.99°C). That’s 34 days at or above 21°C.
Before this year, SSTs were never measured at or above 21°C.
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1651625217108881409
It seems to me that the ‘predictions’ by Hansen & colleagues in Sep 2022 are looking increasingly likely to become realised.
Thanks for this. I actually went to realclimate.org to see if there might be a post discussing the Hansen preprint you mention. As a “lay person” in terms of climate, I was interested to here the response from other scientists: I wish I could see what the paper’s reviewers are saying…
Michael Smith,
I think it would be foolish to bet that Hansen & colleagues are significantly wrong on this issue.
There is nothing I’ve seen/heard so far in the mainstream media reporting about the Hansen et. al. pre-print paper.
The Guardian published an article on 17 Jan 2023 by Damian Carrington headlined Warning of unprecedented heatwaves as El Niño set to return in 2023. It included:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/16/return-of-el-nino-will-cause-off-the-chart-temperature-rise-climate-crisis
Hansen & colleagues included in their communication (dated 22 Sep 2022), linked in The Guardian article – but you have to go look for it yourself – contained Fig. 3. Global surface temperature relative to 1880-1920 mean. The graph included global mean surface temperature ‘predictions’ for years 2022, 2023 & 2024.
But it seems to me there is some information Damian Carrington (or perhaps his editor) didn’t wish to highlight – no mention of the Hansen et. al. pre-print paper.
I’d be interested to see the gist of the second paper that Hansen & colleagues alluded to working on in their communication titled Global Warming in the Pipeline, dated 13 Dec 2022:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2022/Pipeline.arXiv.13December2022.pdf
Thanks! Yeah, it’s the “in the pipeline” paper I was hoping to have other experts give an opinion on… I am probably really misunderstanding – but the gist seems to be there’s a discrepancy between the current GCM sensitivity estimates and the estimates from looking at the response in the paleo-record? (possibly due to clouds and aerosols?) — but it seems like a quite a big discerpancy?
“The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) stated that there is high confidence that ECS is within the range of 2.5 °C to 4 °C, with a best estimate of 3 °C.[33]”
vs
“Eventual climate response to this forcing, including slow feedbacks, is ~10°C (Fig. 1).”
Is the difference due to slightly different meanings of “ECS” ? Maybe does the IPCC estimate keep pollution aerosols, and so reduce the ECS value? What do we need to do to the models to make them match? What empirical experiment can we do to falsify one of these hypotheses?
Thanks again for your comment, Geoff!
PS I also want to be clear that I am genuinely curious – so please don’t take any of my questions as being ‘loaded’!! Until now I feel like most climate stuff I’ve read makes relatively small adjustments, and the general estimates of e.g. global/regional temps/ECS/etc haven’t change much for a long time… this preprint is a long way from that. I now have quite a lot of density at the 2.5-4C in my internal ‘prior’, so I’ll need considerable evidence to convince me that I should move it to 10C! Am very interested to hear more! I’ll google about to see if other climate scientists have commented anywhere on the “In The Pipeline” paper.
(sorry, to add – I guess that maybe the IPCC is referring to “fast” ECS… even the abstract in Hansen’s paper says (first line!) “fast-feedback equilibrium climate sensitivity is at least ~4°C for doubled CO2 (2xCO2), with likely range 3.5-5.5°C.” — so maybe that explains the massive discrepancy?
Sorry to add another comment (feel free to merge or something)
There’s a summary in the comments here: https://skepticalscience.com/new_research_2022_52.html –> summary: the “discrepancy” is explained in lots of papers. Ignore the Pipeline preprint! :)
Michael Smith,
I spotted this tweet by Sophie Gabrielle on May 10;
https://twitter.com/CodeRedEarth/status/1656119658691321856
This prompted me to revisit the Hansen et. al. pre-print paper titled Global Warming in the Pipeline, which included on page 3:
I vaguely recall reading this at the time when I first became aware of the Hansen et. al. pre-print paper (from here at RC in Dec 2022), but couldn’t quite recall from where when I commented to you here at this thread on May 9.
And on page 34:
Clock’s ticking! And yet it seems there’s no urgent effective action…
Re Geoff Miell and Mike Smith, from the paper:
The concept of system thresholds, and comparisons to past events makes sense, but there are differences to each earth state, in terms of stored carbon and how accessible it is. So far we assume gradual permafrost deglaciation, but the visible abrupt formation of Arctic sink holes, and the new discovery that formation can span an entire permafrost layer, gives a different picture, as outlined in this 2022 documentary https://earthclimate.tv/video/arctic-sinkholes/
The best is probably to extrapolate based on the observed growth-occurance rates of such sites, and to cross reference the gradual upper layer developments, to look for fault region hot-spots.
The following comments are excerpts from commentary from Yale Climate connections on ENSO and seemed interesting, and have some huge implications. Any thoughts?
A mystery in the Pacific is complicating climate projections. The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which has a huge influence on global weather patterns, isn’t behaving as computer models predicted. That’s puzzling scientists…..
Many aspects of human-caused climate change are playing out as long predicted, including overall warming of the global atmosphere and oceans as well as the intensification of rainfall extremes and the drying of many subtropical areas.
Not so for ENSO. Top global climate models have predicted for more than 20 years that the tropical Pacific would gradually shift toward an “El Niño-like” state, with the surface waters warming more rapidly toward the east than toward the west.
Instead, just the opposite is going on. The western tropical Pacific has warmed dramatically, as predicted, but unusually persistent upwelling of cool subsurface water has led to a slight drop in average sea surface temperature over much of the eastern tropical Pacific.
The result is a strengthening west-to-east temperature contrast that increasingly resembles La Niña. Scientists expect that El Niño events will continue to occur – such as the one predicted to arrive later this year – but they will take place on a backdrop of an ocean that looks more like La Niña……
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/04/a-mystery-in-the-pacific-is-complicating-climate-projections/
NigelJ, That’s a dense forum (YCC=YaleClimateConnections), full of observational insights, yet not conducive to breaking the puzzle of ENSO. The bit of info in the post that one should mull over is that the Pacific Ocean’s thermocline averages only 50 meters deep in the eastern equatorial region, which means the surface temperature is very sensitive to thermocline disturbances.
The reason that I won’t end up contributing to YCC is because I see no goal stated by the blog owners for themselves and the commenters. They aren’t defining an objective like: “let’s see if we can figure out ENSO by working together”. That was in fact the goal of the Azimuth Project site and accompanying discussion forum. Alas, today the entire Azimuth site was deleted by the owner. Really sad to see it go because it was the only site doing a deep dive with discussion threads that plodded along for years. If you ask ChatGPT where to do climate discussions that was the place — read my obit https://geoenergymath.com/2023/05/03/azimuth-project/
BTW, the way to figure out ENSO is not to do predictions of future events, but to discover the patterns in past data. The remaining artifact of the Azimuth Project forum is an organizational GitHub site, and I started a new discussion area there. Anyone with a GitHub account can contribute and has equal ability to add previewable charts, code, math markup, etc.
@nigelj says:
– ” seemed interesting ”
– ” isn’t behaving as computer models predicted ”
– ” Top global climate models have predicted for more than 20 years … shift toward an “El Niño-like” state ”
– ” Instead, just the opposite is going on ”
– ” That’s puzzling scientists…..”
ms: — Why are you always interested in particularly blind low-level flights by climate pilots. (in this case his name is Bob Henson) ?
Does that possibly have something to do with your own cockpit?
It’s always nice to find open ears and eyes – but it just doesn’t work without a working processor between the left and right ear.
Anyone who then opens their mouths to document their computer-modeled blind flight quickly ends up on my black list.
The least and most important thing you should know about ENSO I have already explained to you (and others) here in the past.
This includes that El Nino phases reduce the Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI), which is very beneficial for humans and nature in the long term. In addition, among other things, ENSO correlates strongly with humidity and cloud cover and NOT with CO2 or GHE.
But that goes in with you on the left – and comes out on the right without any of it sticking.
Macias Shurly.
When I asked people for their thoughts on the article, I was hoping for something constructive on the actual article, or proof its claims were wrong.
What I got from you was you putting words in my mouth, a long series of insults, and pushing of unrelated personal agendas about how ENSO allegedly influences XYZ, strawman statements, and yet more of your dubious sounding comments on things.
So try again, and maybe stay on topic. If such a thing is possible from you.
Hi nigelj –
InsideClimateNews via ArsTechnica article about that: “Wildfire smoke from Australia fueled three-year “super La Niña”
How wildfire smoke from Australia affected climate events around the world.”
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/05/wildfire-smoke-from-australia-fueled-three-year-super-la-nina/
Discussed is a new research paper in Science Advances with authors John T. Fasullo, Nan Rosenbloom, Rebecca Buchholz
“A multiyear tropical Pacific cooling response to recent Australian wildfires in CESM2”
Open access https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg1213
Here’s the abstract:
“The climate response to biomass burning emissions from the 2019–2020 Australian wildfire season is estimated from two 30-member ensembles using CESM2: one of which incorporates observed wildfire emissions and one that does not. In response to the fires, an increase in biomass aerosol burdens across the southern hemisphere is simulated through late 2019 and early 2020, accompanied by an enhancement of cloud albedo, particularly in the southeastern subtropical Pacific Ocean. In turn, the surface cools, the boundary layer dries, and the moist static energy of the low-level flow into the equatorial Pacific is reduced. In response, the intertropical convergence zone migrates northward and sea surface temperature in the Niño3.4 region cools, with coupled feedbacks amplifying the cooling. A subsequent multiyear ensemble mean cooling of the tropical Pacific is simulated through the end of 2021, suggesting an important contribution to the 2020–2022 strong La Niña events.”
bfagan quoted:
Many papers on this topic of “how does [ GHG | AG | ClimateChange] impact El Nino”, including this other recent one: Anthropogenic impacts on twentieth-century ENSO variability changes
We all need to watch out for the fallacy of “assuming the conclusion” aka “begging the question”. The underlying issue is that without a fundamental model of El Niño cycles one can’t make any claims of a perturbation, such as what enhanced AGW will contribute to an El Niño event. Consider that if climate is C, then if C = ENSO + AGW, we can’t know exactly what contributes to C without knowing ENSO and AGW individually, and moreover, knowing how the two may interact — these articles all somehow asserting that AGW influences ENSO.
The current situation is that there is still no consensus model of why El Nino develops. There is also no average surface temperature (SST) increase in the Pacific Ocean equatorial region band where the ENSO climate indices are measured. The earth is definitely gaining heat from GHGs. The ocean does act like a heat sink, so this increase in heat is entering the equatorial regions and diffusing downward at a rate corresponding to the vertical eddy diffusivity (about the same as another excellent heat sink called copper — 1 cm^2/sec). Does this increase reach the thermocline, and thereby adjust its level? Seems a tenuous connection to something that can actually be measured.
Schuckmann and many of the usual suspects: where does the energy go
doi: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-1675-2023
To me Fig 8 sez that OHC climbed out of the noise in the 80’s, and accelerated after 2000. The 700-2000 m section seems to be accelerating too.
Now i seem to recall that Pielke, Sr. wanted to estimate heat flux into deeper ocean layers, back in the day, possibly to get a direct measure of heat diffusivity. Did he or others do something along those lines ?
sidd
sidd – P Sr. wanted to prove the GISS model was wrong and toss it out. Not long after Josh Willis had mistakenly detected ocean cooling. As soon as Willis corrected, R Sr. dropped OHC like a rock with mucho heat content. I think everybody agreed it is the better metric (end of Victor et al,) but Global Mean Surface Temperature is the metric they had early on so best to stick with it.
Perhaps it is related to the deep ocean current slowing down?
The deep ocean current influences the climate around the world, and has the potential to radically shift rainfall. https://climatestate.com/2023/04/16/antarctic-ice-melt-slows-deep-ocean-current-with-potential-impact-on-worlds-climate-for-centuries/
Yes, this is things that are less known about.
@chris says: – ” Scientists also think another major ocean circulation in shallower waters that spans the entire Atlantic Ocean – known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – is also slowing down. ”
ms: — There is no real evidence for a diminishing trend of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S246801331500008X
– If the AMOC reduces, then less heat is conveyed to Greenland, and then less ice is melted there. This is a stabilizing rather than a non-stabilizing factor because a reduction of the AMOC would translate in a reduction of the ice melting of Greenland that is claimed by Rahmstorf et al. to slow down the AMOC.
We last discussed this topic here with Prof. Rahmstorf in Dec.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2022/12/the-water-south-of-greenland-has-been-cooling-so-what-causes-that/
https://michaelmann.net/sites/default/files/articles/RahmstorfEtAl_NatureCC15.pdf
Setup a wiki dedicated to the climate, details on editing will be posted in the days and weeks ahead. For questions use the main page talk. Everybody is welcome to contribute. If you are new to wiki page contribution/edits start by looking at existing content. Also a good place to start, Wikipedia – basically the same standards apply at the CSWiki..
https://wiki.climatestate.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
https://wiki.climatestate.com/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges
Zebra
“People here are supposed to be the teachers, and as I’ve said before, that means setting the standards for how discussions are carried out… teaching people how science actually works.That means requiring someone like Victor to stipulate what they agree with before discussing what they are questioning. It’s like a pre-requisite; you don’t allow someone in your advanced physics class who doesn’t accept conservation of energy.”
Zebra has noble ideals, and his approach to teaching forces people to think. However zebra cant seem to grasp this website is not his classroom where he can control things. There is no way in a forum like this you can force someone like Victor to “agree” to accepting the laws of thermodynamics, and even if he did he would quickly ignore them. And then what do you do? Zebra doesn’t have the power to put him in the naughty corner. And zebras teaching approach requires dozens of interchanges between people which just isn’t practical here.
The only workable option we have here is to shoot down the denialists claims, with traditional rebuttals, ( preferably in a polite and clear fashion). I actually find the related discussions informative.
I agree with jgnfld that its unwise to completely ignore the denialists. In fact the climate science community seems to have generally ignored the denialists, given them the silent treatment, with the exception of a few websites like realclimate.org, and I think that has just let their nonsense gain traction.
I thought Ray Ladbury also summed things up well.
@Various ENSO comments May 3rd-4th I’m sticking with my cut’n’paste of my 2014 comment I’ve been posting on Googles since 2014 & on RealClimate until somebody either shows me the wind stress plot for 1900-2022 to show that it dropped to prior-1995 after the 2015/16 El Nino or they point to the science refuting “Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus Nature Climate Change 4, 222–227 (2014) doi:10.1038/nclimate2106 Received 11 September 2013 Accepted 18 December 2013 Published online 09 February 2014 Corrected online 14 February 2014 Matthew H. England, Shayne McGregor, Paul Spence, Gerald A. Meehl, Axel Timmermann, Wenju Cai, Alex Sen Gupta, Michael J. McPhaden, Ariaan Purich & Agus Santoso Obviously, scientists have refuted that paper or scientists would not now after 9 years suddenly be “puzzled” all the time (notwithstanding that “stunned”, “puzzled” & “alarmed” is the normal brain condition of climate scientists according to most commercial and Mom’n’Pop Social Media I’ve seen & heard for 10 years).
Nigel J also requested “thoughts on the article” that’s “puzzling scientists”.
I provided some thoughts above, having previously read the article. To try to articulate further., I think we are in the “just-so stories” phase of explaining climate behaviors such as El Nino. Since it is not well understood at all, everyone will offer up ideas and correlations to establish any kind of traction. In other words, we are not even yet at the point when someone asks “why was the tide high at 3PM yesterday?” and the answer doesn’t involve a precise orbital configuration. Instead it’s just more unanswered questions, which is what the YCC article implies.
Paul Pukite. Thanks for your two sets comments above, and for adressing the actual article.
@Paul Pukite says: – ” El Nino. Since it is not well understood at all, everyone will offer up ideas and correlations to establish any kind of traction. ”
ms: — From my understanding, ENSO is primarily driven by the temperature difference between land and oceans.
– La Nina transports more precipitation from the sea over the land surfaces and thus ensures a cooling of the land surface. With the slow cooling by La Nina, the temperature difference between land and ocean decreases and less marine air packets are transported over the land areas.
As a result, more precipitation is now falling over the oceans and land areas remain drier – this is the El Nino phase. It heats and dries the land masses until the increasing land/ocean temperature difference leads to a wetter La Nina phase again.
https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs00382-014-2430-z/MediaObjects/382_2014_2430_Fig2_HTML.gif?as=webp
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-020-05451-8#Fig3
However, this does not rule out the possibility that other factors also have an influence on ENSO.
“From my understanding, ENSO is primarily driven by the temperature difference between land and oceans.”
That doesn’t address the root cause, It’s just more potential correlations that also have no root cause by themselves.. Consider that the wind is also considered a trigger for ENSO events — so what causes the wind to suddenly change in it’s prevailing speed and direction.
This is a well-known fallacy in research findings. Similar to “correlation does not equal causation”, the fallacy of incorrectly ID’ing the true root cause is known as “causal ambiguity.” This is the mistaken belief that just because a relationship exists between two variables, one can’t determine which one is causing the other. See wind and it’s origin in atmospheric pressure differences (caused by what? see what I mean?).
So what you are saying is that El Nino / La Nina cycles are spontaneous and were set in motion long ago? That all we are observing is this back-and-forth energy exchange between land and ocean? If that’s the case there will likely never be any possibility of validating such a model.
I would prefer to assume that the ENSO cycle has a signal fingerprint of an eternal known forcing, and that the underlying pattern can be revealed by applying signal processing techniques, models of geophysical dynamics, and empirical calibration of external factors. The validation method is c0nceptually simple, as a stationary external forcing will enable one to cross-validate a model on one time interval (the training interval) against another interval that is not being fitted to (the test or evaluation interval). Yes, the concern of cross-interval contamination or bias is justified, but if the pattern matching is highly significant with very few degrees of freedom, it should be followed through. Eventually a deep learning machine will find it anyways, so better to get a head-start.
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2855758/238029930-8eeedbbd-ad6a-45f8-aa9c-cccdd9b09a69.png
@PP says: –
” So what you are saying is that El Nino / La Nina cycles are spontaneous and were set in motion long ago? ”
ms: — I didn’t say anything about spontaneous, I just pointed out that the fluctuating average temperatures over land in the ENSO cycle naturally have an impact on how much energy in the atmosphere is transported from the oceans across the continents.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-014-2430-z/figures/2
If there are still important things to research about ENSO as natural fluctuations, then it would be the fact that the EEI decreases in an El Nino phase – even though the strongest climate gas H2O has the highest concentrations in the atmosphere at the same time.
https://www.mdpi.com/atmosphere/atmosphere-12-01297/article_deploy/html/images/atmosphere-12-01297-g004-550.jpg
https://climate.metoffice.cloud/humidity.html
I dare to doubt whether this can only be achieved with AI and deep learning – as well as to classify the root cause on the moon and Tiede.
“classify the root cause:”
Cross-validation can do the trick — how do you think conventional tides were decoded to a root cause? There never was a lab-scale controlled experiment available.
@ Pukite
Now you discuss ENSO again.
It needs also a more enlighted, full understanding of causation and all its common types.
You very seldom find the type A causes B , BASTA! punctum.
You very often find A causes B and at the same time B also causes A. I am especially aquained to that from chemical reactions. Take away B, and A will decay and cease to be there afterv some time.. Or take away A, and B will decay and cease to exist after a while.
Think of an ant road or a highway. Traffic goes both ways at the same time without collisions.
Then what about one way catalyzers or partial inhibitions on that road, and theese may come and go. That is also quite common and it is a 3rd and 4th causation. And what about the road or pathway itself? that will be a fifth causation. And day and night and season? All this is very common in nature and in everyday life.
In several diciplines it is very essencial to keep all causes constant and then vary one by one of them experimentally, and observe and measure what of the rest is then changing, why and how. . But that cannot be done with the ENSO for instance, and it cannot be done in old Roma if you will study life and business there and what was the true cause of what in 0ld Roma. Then you may need, and have to argue for, representative indirect models of it. And you can from a test tube or an aqvarium tell a lot of things for sure about the very Pacific ocean. But not all of it.
Causation may just as well lay in the future.
What caused Columbus to go westwards? One cause was good enough ships but another cause was the hope of finding India. We are told that a third cause was that the Arabs had been thrown out of Spain so the King had enough money and could agree to other plans than earlier. And Queen Isabella could also agree.
Still another caquse was that artificial model globes were popular in some royal societies. Take away just one of theese causes, and Columbus would not have landed in the West indies 1492.
But, there seems to have been many enough causes in the air and on land and at sea and in the heavens in those days, so it seems highly plausible that someone else would have discovered the West indies just shortly after Columbus.
And that circumstance alltogether can be called a cultural and historical cause.
Brief overview of the issue of resources in the so-called #renewablestransition/#greentransition aka faux sustainability.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/understanding-to-82601818
Those who fail to grasp the role of resources in our transition to a regenerative future fail to understand what must be done to avoid societal collapse, mass extinction, and our own extinction.
Minerals are a finite resource, but I doubt we will run out of metals based ores any time soon, because there are likely to be new discoveries, there are considerable reserves of low grade ores and there are vast reserves of metals based minerals dissolved in sea water and geothermal brines, not currently included in known reserve calculations. And engineers are very good at finding substitutes for rare materials. If we do run short of minerals, we will have to alter our lifestyles accordingly and do a lot more recycling.
nigelj: – “…I doubt we will run out of metals based ores any time soon, because there are likely to be new discoveries, there are considerable reserves of low grade ores and there are vast reserves of metals based minerals dissolved in sea water and geothermal brines, not currently included in known reserve calculations.”
I think the following statements are worth repeating:
See my comments to you in Mar 2023 at:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/03/unforced-variations-march-2023/#comment-810221
Geof Miell
Thanks for your comments.
“The limits to mineral extraction are not limits of quantity, but of energy.Extracting minerals takes energy, and the more dispersed the minerals are, the more energy is needed.Technology can mitigate the depletion problem, but cannot solve it.”
I totally accept the comment. By running out it should have been self evident I meant reasonable quality deposits, and minerals that can be economically extracted, and that reflects the energy issue. We are unlikely to ever literally run out of something like iron, but extraction costs will increase and will be the governing factor.
I just dont believe we are in imminent danger of problems, or that it will not be feasible to build a renewables grid, based on material I have read. Many ores are currently low grade but its economic to extract them. From what Ive read lithium can be extraced from both sea water and geothermal brines with good economics, so not too much extra energy.
Of course the day will almost certainly come when we are looking at VERY low grade ores and the energy needed to extract minerals will get prohibitively expensive, especially if the whole world wants to live like American middle classes. When that day comes we will have to change our lifestyles and make do with less “stuff'” But that day doesnt look like this century. I would say we are looking at big problems in a couple of centuries time perhaps..
It might all change if cheap fusion power becomes a reality but we can’t assume it ever will.
Two groups of people annoy me: The mineral optimists like KIA, who think we can just dig a hole anywhere and extract minerals at low cost with minimal energy, and the mineral pessimists who think we are in imminent danger of running out or of extraction costs sky rocketing. I believe its more nuanced, based on what I’ve read, and the reality is most likely between these two view points.
Back in the 1980s I remember reading reports that the world would run out of certain metals like lead, zinc and tin by 1990 ( they meant that could be economically extracted). It never happened of course and its made me a bit suspicious of the pessimists. But obviously rich lodes of minerals are scarce and sooner or later we will come up against limits.
Read the article. Your unsupported, uneducated opinion is irrelevant next to facts, data and analysis. You “believe.” That’s religion, not analysis. Nobody cares what you believe. Every point you made is addressed in the essay.
If you’ve nothing intelligent to say, don’t say anything, is what your parents should have taught you. What you “believe”… good god…
As the essay shared, an analysis of the resource base, covering all your silly caveats and more, reveals less than one generation of a global, fairly distributed, non-FF-based energy system can be built out.
This is math, not wishing and hoping and pretending to be an analyst.
Killian. Yeah the article you posted is full of facts and figures, maths and analysis. Just like studies I read back in the 1980s that said we would run out of various metals completely by the 1990. That makes me sceptical of material that makes very doomy predictions on the minerals issue.
There is a looming minerals supply problem at some stage, however its easy to get excessively pessimistic and look for data and analysis that suits that perspective. And also assume its all true. Its called confirmation bias and you do this on virtually every issue. I suggest you stop commenting on this website until you learn to be calm and objective.
Killians ‘essay’ above thread has an appendix 8 with calculations on minerals and metals depletion but they dont appear to be peer reviewed calculations, and its not clear which publication in the bibliography applies to the table of calculations. The following published peer reviewed study by Jacobson finds that the planet has enough materials for building an electricity grid at scale, and primarily powered by renewables such as wind and solar power:
“Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials (Mark Z. Jacobson a, Mark A. Delucchi b )”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510008645
One good option is phasing out fossil fuels fast and building a renewable energy grid as best we can (maybe with some nuclear power), and if we hit materials supply constraints we will then be forced to economise the use of energy. The idea that we we shouldnt even ATTEMPT to build a proper renewable energy grid at reasonable scale, because it might possibly run into materials shortages, strikes me as some form of insanity. If thats what is being proposed.
That said the world has to learn to mine resources in a way that minimises impacts on the environment and do a lot more recycling to minimise the requirement for opening new mines. And we can minimise the quantity of renewables required by living in small highly energy efficient homes. Housing is a massive user of material resources and energy. Changing that one thing seems feasible and would make a big difference.
Nigelj
I once conscidered the problem by thinking over the local, large glacial morraine where they have been digging sorting and selling sand for 100 years. Really the very best for making concrete as it is humus- free, And believe it or not, splendid for enrichment and improovement of garden soils also.
Simply by a magnet you can take out as much iron as you want, but iron ore is cheaper. and silicium aluminium calsium magnesium potassium Titanium Thorium…. you name it, all in all 92 elements ,
Gold can also be guaranteed.
But how would that industry look and what would it cost if that was to be done the best possible way, and what would be the best possible way?
Special resources are taken from where it is naturally enriched and concentrated in large enough quantities from Natures side allready.
Maybe sand was the very best for a while and the hole has become a fine local harbour, and next by they now prouce and sell the finest apple cider & cetera.
A very important aspect is not just the energy costs for refining and upgrading it but also the by- products and waste- products. That gets worse and worse the more you have to rinse and refine large masses of low grade resources.
Its highest value for a very long time was to sell it as it is with least possible refinery, as grades of exellent natural sand and stones. The big advantage of it is that the ice has naturally grinded it and brought it allready to a place easy for shipping. .
How to utilize and possibly sell the by- products of it also and how eventually to get rid of it is maybe a most important aspect of modern mining industries.
Another fameous industry is Norsk Hydro, the old hydroelectric salpeter fertillizer and…. heavy water industry. They have been very good at it and selling the very Adolf Hitler and further Volkswahen ultra light cast- magnesium motor- metals from common seawater. And in recent time gone into the gas and gasoline industries also.They seem especially clever at seeing the possible wholeness of what they do.
They were first digging local limestone and apatite.
Quite interestingly, i have talked with them, they are also well aware of ecology and of climate issues, and do see that the best sustainable solutions to that will also be the most prophitable future for that industry, today labeled YARA.
Carbomontanus, yes I agree the more low grade the ore, the more the waste products.
You appear to be saying extracting minerals from sea water has less waste products? It does look like it would have a lower ecological footprint overall.
With low grade ores you also despoil large areas of land. For example mining Canadas tar sands. Another problem.
The mining discussion goes back a few years before you appeared on this website. Killian has proposed we stop all mining or stop opening any new mines ( I just forget which) and make do with what products we already have, and he has posted proposals for reducing energy use by 90% within 20 years, and for massive simplification of lifestyles, etc, etc,
I’m very worried about what mining does to the environment, and have studied environmental subjects at university, and Im not opposed in principle to lower use of energy, minerals and resources, and simplification, but just quickly stopping all mining and making huge and rapid reductions in use of energy and resources looks like it would cause massive problems for society. You can imagine the pain, chaos and unemployment and the huge difficulties of persuading people to follow such a plan. I have said this several times. Sorry for the repetition.
The more viable plan would be to dispose of waste products in a more environmentally responsible way. Humans are good at solving those sorts of problems technically. However it does require brave governments that set high standards for waste disposal.
@ Killian
How often have I told you, and your environment….. of drunken sailors?
Shall I also have to tell them of psycho- pharmaca and the symptoms of personal use of central stimulants?
Above your situation in the gratdes, we also have traditionjalo incureable stalinists and so- vi- ett- Unionists here, who referre and ardress to their very clear racial and exclusive leadership thinking and brains.
Adolph & al did say the same.
They were inaugurated and so clearly understanding.
That was systematic political use of cocaine for the ruling führers “class”, and industrial Metamphetamine for their soldiers and followers.
Logics also has got some basic and official definitions youn see, and is not equal to that brightness and clearness and endurance that you “see” in your own thoughts and brains.
Hi Geoff Miell, really like that Bardi quote (saved the video TY), very good way to put it, because it’s true. same said by Simon Michaux and others. (see Killian’s article refs)
I looked at your Mar 2023 post and again I agree with all of that. You are on the ball sir.
Here’s a ref may of be assistance Art Berman (see especially around 14 mins on 20mins section), about “peak oil and natural gas liquids”what is really going on. re depletion and supply not able to keep up with demand. Arthur Berman: “Peak Oil – The Hedonic Adjustment”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDBJdQnjE2o
plus refs for that https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/54-arthur-berman
Seems you are correct about heavier crudes vs light oil as well …. can’t recall if berman above was the source, but the only field in growth phase still is the permian in Texas which is light crude – and that does not supply US needs who must import several million barrels of heavy crude to operate. Someone showed (?) in global oil energy supply today almost 15% or more is Natural gas liquids producing diesel/gasoline which does not come from Oil …. only began using this a decade+ ago.
OK a couple of other handy refs “peak shale” with good technical info by an oil man, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c0XcYzaOEE and LCOE, the Levelized Cost of Electricity insights a deep dive (discounted cash flows) what it is and isn’t. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9PARx79i6s ( bridge out dead ahead! )
Killian’s emphasis on Liebig’s Law of the Minimum is another key point I see mentioned by many lately re resource supply depletion issues for RE transition
.https://www.patreon.com/posts/understanding-to-82601818
Best wishes.
Good to see two level-headed people actually looking to facts and data rather than logical fallacies and what they “believe.” Nigel continues to argue almost exclusively via “Straw Man,” and other, fallacies, as he does here:
“Killian. Yeah the article you posted is full of facts and figures, maths and analysis. Just like studies I read back in the 1980s that said we would run out of various metals completely by the 1990. That makes me sceptical of material that makes very doomy predictions on the minerals issue. “
The argument is, someone screwed up before [or at least he claims], so nothing that follows is legitimate. Ridiculous. Then, of course, is the double fallacy of “Doomy.”, which is meaningless because 1. I have never sought out information to confirm a bias that has never existed. I understand the world as I do because of the data, nothing else. Once I knew the cryosphere wasn’t even included in IPCC IV SLR calculations, I knew we were in deep shit. So “looking for” doomy crap? This is an insult, and one I am ever more tired of from this troll. I will say it again, those with an INTP personality are the exact opposite of people acting from bias. We are fact-driven and find people like nigel, who exhibit no ability to think logically, extremely annoying – particularly when they respond to every goddamned thing I post and do so insipidly and unintelligently…. from 2016 to today. Nothing ever changes. 2. How can “doomy” be applied to a wost-case scenario that includes societal collapse an mass extinction? This is nothing more than his right-wing propaganda shining through.
Such milquetoast Pollyannas are far more dangerous today than the denialists. In fact, they are “soft denialists” – which I recognized from his first months on this platform. Solutions denialists are the new climate denialists. Again, nothing changes.
[“Killians ‘essay’ above thread has an appendix 8 with calculations on minerals and metals depletion but they dont appear to be peer reviewed calculations,”
“‘…essay’…”
At least we can give him props for subtlety on that Ad Hom fallacy using both scare quotes and questioning the legitimacy of the calculations without any reason whatsoever.
Now calculations must be peer-reviewed?! What new level of nonsense is this? One simply does an equation! One determines the numbers, does the equation. It’s REALLY simple. But now we must submit an equation to some unnamed publication to present it to others? Holy mother of god…
I suppose he meant to say the variables used in the calculations, but who knows? He says inane stuff like this constantly, so I assume he means what he writes…?
The idea that we we shouldnt even ATTEMPT to build a proper renewable energy grid at reasonable scale, because it might possibly run into materials shortages, strikes me as some form of insanity. If thats what is being proposed.
If you are not sure that is being proposed, why claim it is? Another Straw Man. His posts are rife with them. He’s been told a billion damned times good design never starts with any conditions, limits, or assumptions. One designs as determined by the principles and characteristics of regenerative systems and according to effective ecological engineering processs. Yet, here we are, the same logical fallacies and dishonest insinuations.
What the essay says exceedingly clearly (so how did he miss it, if not intentionally misleading people reading this blog?) is the resources do not exist for a FAIR, GLOBAL buildout of a 1:1 replacement of fossil fuels given projected future growth in population and consumption. Also, that the timeline with regard to the frightening increases in rates of change within the climate system – I just read an article today stating a previously stable glacier on Greenland had doubled within about 5 years. Such doublings and triplings over 20-, 10- and 5-year time frames are becoming common, clearly indicating the climate system is as sensitive as I have said it is since 2007.
But we should just ignore that and choose pathways that cannot meet the challenges of a rapidly collapsing ecosystem? It is criminally negligent to push such nonsensical, illogical thinking at this late date.
Then there is this nothing burger: “That said the world has to learn to mine resources in a way that minimises impacts on the environment and do a lot more recycling to minimise the requirement for opening new mines. And we can minimise the quantity of renewables required by living in small highly energy efficient homes. Housing is a massive user of material resources and energy. Changing that one thing seems feasible and would make a big difference.”
1. We apparently *must* keep mining and completely ignore the needs of the future? Even if we will exhaust many resources with just one build-out of an equitable energy system?
Why is no more mining, simplify and become regenerative not an option? We must double down on sui-ominicde rather than solve our problems because…. nigelism?
2. Small, highly efficient homes? First, this does not solve the problem of resource depletion, concomitant ecosystem destruction and additional climate forcing. Second, the size of a building does not determine its regenerativeness, though it’s a factor, if regeneratively designed. The claim is that would “make a big difference.”.. Hmmm… Is that peer-reviewed? What does “make a big difference” mean? This silly expression, and sillier claim, ignore a simple fact: Sustainability/Regenerativeness is a threshold, not a continuum.
3. Recycling? Yeah, the essay covers that. And the same thing applies to building out a global recycling system: You get maybe one generation before you run out of key resources.
4. Why can he not understand we don’t need to run out of all, or even many, resources, but can see the entire system break down because of the exhaustion of just a few Liebig minimums?
5. Why does the nige ignore the fact ChatGPT is stated as a co-writer? Well, he can’t use an Ad Hom against ChatGPT, right? The calculations? Done by ChatGPT. What an idiot app it must be!
So tired of this pointless exchange. Stop responding, nigel. You’ve nothing to say and the rudeness and disrespect in your posts is inappropriate.
Killian, you have essentially posted claims that there is a huge problem finding enough materials for a renewable energy grid (paraphrased for the sake of brevity). You have produced a few interviews, opinions, articles, and some calculations based on god knows what assumptions and analysis. This does not carry the same weight as published peer reviewed science. I have every right to be sceptical of it.
I produced a proper peer reviewed study by Jacobson showing its feasible to find enough materials. There are other similar studies. As far as I recall this is for a fair global buildout of renewables and more than one generation. We can also recycle the materials extending the life further.
Liebigs law of the minimum while valid ignores the fact humans have shown they are ingenious at finding substitutions for scarce materials.
Whats your plan to convince everyone to just “stop mining”? I say this because The NZ Green Party have been promoting stopping or heavily reducing mining for at least 25 years, and they get enormous resistance to this policy and only about 5 – 10% in the polls. (Sad because they have many other good ideas).
I prefer to spend my time promoting things that look like they might gain SOME traction with the public, like 1) reducing mining by recycling and 2) mining in a more environmentally responsible way, and 3)small energy efficient homes. Even these goals face considerable resistance, so its hard to see how even more ambitious goals would work.
Ned Kelly: – “Seems you are correct about heavier crudes vs light oil as well …. can’t recall if berman above was the source, but the only field in growth phase still is the permian in Texas which is light crude – and that does not supply US needs who must import several million barrels of heavy crude to operate.”
Yep. See Art Berman’s Jan 18 post titled THEY’RE NOT MAKING OIL LIKE THEY USED TO: STEALTH PEAK OIL? See Figures 6, 7 & 10.
https://www.artberman.com/2023/01/18/theyre-not-making-oil-like-they-used-to-stealth-peak-oil/
Art Berman tweeted on May 12 a graph that shows total world liquids production has recovered to 2018 average level but crude oil plus condensate remains more than 2.6 Mb/d below late 2018 levels (up to Nov 2022).
https://twitter.com/aeberman12/status/1656995529849544705
Art Berman tweeted on May 13 a graph that shows natural gas liquids (NGLs) accounted for 6 Mb/d (30%) of US oil production in 2022.
https://twitter.com/aeberman12/status/1657117690933268500
Art Berman tweeted on May 14 a graph that shows world crude oil and condensate production has recovered to within 1.8 Mb/d of late 2018 peak level after falling 14 Mb/d during the COVID economic closures.
https://twitter.com/aeberman12/status/1657421609911693313
The US produced 66% of the world’s oil at the end of WW2, & it’s now about 17% (due
primarily to the uptick from light ‘tight’ oil from about 2008).
https://twitter.com/aeberman12/status/1648171251020574720
Most crude oil producing countries have passed peak production. Some countries are still pre-peak, and some are at peak. Ever fewer pre-peak oil producing countries need to compensate for post-peak oil producing countries, or total world oil production begins declining.
Data indicates Saudi Arabia & Russia are now looking like they too have passed peak crude oil production.
https://twitter.com/crudeoilpeak/status/1643237145493270530
https://twitter.com/crudeoilpeak/status/1644322417542852608
The US operational oil rig count fell by two to 586 this week, their lowest since June 2022, while the gas rig count plunged by 16 to 141, their lowest since April last year. The oil & gas rig count is an early indicator of future output.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-oil-gas-rig-count-falls-lowest-since-june-2022-baker-hughes-2023-05-12/
Ned Kelly: – “Someone showed (?) in global oil energy supply today almost 15% or more is Natural gas liquids producing diesel/gasoline which does not come from Oil …. only began using this a decade+ ago.”
Natural gas liquids (NGLs) include:
* Ethane – applications include plastics production and petrochemical feedstock;
* Propane – applications & uses include residential & commercial heating, cooking fuel, small stoves, and petrochemical feedstock. Some vehicles also use propane as fuel;
* Butanes – applications include blending with gasoline & with propane (that becomes liquified petroleum gas), as a feedstock in the production of synthetic rubber for tires, lighter fuel & refrigerant;
* Isobutanes – applications include refinery feedstock & petrochemical feedstock, aerosols & refrigerants;
* Pentanes – applications include natural gasoline & as a blowing agent for polystyrene foam, & for bitumen production in oil sands.
NGLs require high pressure or low temperature to maintain their liquid state for shipment.
Diesel fuel is refined from crude oil and from biomass materials.
Nigel, thank you for outing yourself, proving you are doing nothing but trolling – as clearly shown by the errant, shallow and pointless responses in this thread. You said, “and some calculations based on god knows what assumptions and analysis.” Yet, the assumptions and analsyses are in the essay.
Stop polluting threads with Voictor-level obfuscation. Shush.
Killian.
My questions regarding the table of data on mineral depletion listed in appendix b are how were the calculations done in detail, what assumptions were used – for example what definition of mineral reserves was used precisely, how was the analysis done, where does data on current rates of consumption come from etcetera. In other words the background material.
I have read the essay. There is nothing of any substance in appendix b relating to my questions. There is nothing in the section titled Section Three minerals and mineral depletion, or in the other sections on other issues as far as I can see. If I have managed to miss it, please copy and paste it.
There might be something in the bibliography but the appendix b does not say what item in the bibliography applies. There is no footnote beside appendix b. I have no intention of reading and viewing all 8 items in the bibliography which look like lengthy documents and interviews, to find if the information is there.
However none of that is the main point. The MAIN POINT is your essay is not published in a peer reviewed journal as far as I can tell. It all appears to be the informal views and calculations of a couple of people. In comparison I provided a proper published, peer reviewed study on renewables and supply of materials. Thats how serious science is done.
You accuse me of trolling and obfustication. Nope. Its all coming from you, along with your bad, confusing writing..
“However none of that is the main point. The MAIN POINT is your essay is not published in a peer reviewed journal as far as I can tell.”
You have the intellect of a golem. The subtitle states. “A Brief (11-page) Overview”
Nowhere does the essay claim to be a paper with the rigidity to be published. It is written, as is everything I write and record, to Everperson because that is who will ultimately create whatever future, or non-future, we have.
Straw Man noted. I have finally realized just how pitiable your contributions are: I now realize you are not intentionally using Straw Man fallacies, and other falsehoods, you simply do not know any better.
Killian, my comments were not a strawman. This is because what I said in FULL CONTEXT was “The MAIN POINT is your essay is not published in a peer reviewed journal as far as I can tell. It all appears to be the informal views and calculations of a couple of people. In comparison I provided a proper published, peer reviewed study on renewables and supply of materials. Thats how serious science is done.” This is clearly NOT a strawman. Its an argument that your essay is not as convincing as a peer reviewed study. And it isn’t as convincing.
@ Zebra
You have a quite important point there.
“That means requiring someone like V. to stipulate what they agree with before discussing what they are questioning.”
For stating proof and for telling truth and acheive any kind of agreement and understanding between people, there must be a minimal set of common axioms or dogmas or archetyps that are TABU, that means, not to be denied, not to be violated, not to be disputed. And you mention a fameous doctrinal axiom, the conservation of energy.
The technique of surrealism and rabulism is to erase any kind of such doctrnary agreement first even in a doctrinary way. Example:
I suddenly woke up by the sentence:
“Where there is science, there is not consensus, and where there is consensus there is not SCIENCE…..PERIOD!”
I heard that with my own ears spoken by “Dr” Richard Lindsen from the pulpit, in Domus Academica, Old festival hall, Royal Frederiks.
Then I went safely to sleep again and lost nothing.
And brought with me the consensus- book “Maqgnitudes Units and Symbols in Physics Otto Øgrims small catechism on their next surrealistic meeting.
” Here, The Consensus- book!” I told them
It was not opened!
Where I find ” the CRC handbook of chemistery and physics”The Rubber Bible on the writing desk and in then library, opened, there is science. And where that is not found, there is not science.
“One thing is for certain, nothing is for certain!”
That statement is often heard from surrealistic side in the climate dispute, and that statemkent is a false statement.
It is a common, stupidi- fying PARA DOXON- pill to be swallowed first.
“Those who fail to grasp the role of resources in our transition to a regenerative future fail to understand what must be done to avoid societal collapse, mass extinction, and our own extinction.”
Not to mention the ravages of climate change.
Reply to Killian, great summary article.
about your question – “Why, then, is this hyper tech-based approach dominating the global conversation around achieving a sustainable future?”
Great question. I’m not 100% sure, but to me it looks like the mega wealthy elites (corporations / neoliberals / globalists whatever you want to call them) who actually run the world and know about all these matters (because $ is power and resources and they buy knowledge on tap) already knew such an approach will not work, same as CDR will not work and all the other options being floated by techno heads everywhere sucking on the funding teat and lure of fame.
By selling faux solutions though it keeps the teaming masses calm and asleep, the activists and extremists happy that something is happening. The ideas are then slotted into the IPCC reports and then into the UNFCCC COP system which we should all know by now are all Cop Outs.
Most of the world doesn’t care and those that do are too gullible and easily led by Pied Pipers.
People like Jacobson, Tol, and Nordhaus et al (there’s thousands of them) all well looked after by the “elite” system to push their impractical solutions theories and snake oil.
Then occasionally a scientist will show up on RC to suggest if only the Oil Company execs knew how to read/understand the latest AR6 summary, then they’d understand and would take proper action. aka disconnected from reality.
Psychopaths (aka the elites) have no ethics or morals let alone empathy for anyone bar themselves. It’s partly their deep psychological flaws and disorders along with everyone else’s cognitive and psychological flaws who get so easily misled.
That’s why.
Give it another decade and like Germany now, Coal will be the growth energy sector again.
After collapse, after multiple climate catastrophes, after we are living in a 2c world only then might something approaching human intelligence and genuine humanist values might arise.
In the meantime it’s everyone for themselves. Forget the governments doing anything constructive or serious about the problem.
The elites own them all. They own the entire IPCC/UNFCCC system as well. They own everything and everyone.
Also re your question Killian.
Global institutions like IPCC/COP meetings, the UN in general are used to stop things being done.
The only way to get things done is at a national level. That is where the power rests, where real decisions can be made and implemented in Law and finally actions that drive real change.
for example rational regenerative practices. They cannot arise from the community level up (local scale show pieces can be created) but genuine change must be directed nationally in each country independently.
Of course nothing is being done at this level, and will not be done until we are in a world of hurt.
In the meantime, educate and share and encourage and support like minded people. Leave a legacy.
Because Knowledge is Power. And currently we have 10,000 years of accumulated human knowledge to hopefully save, secure and pass on before it gets destroyed by the crazies.
“Do not cast pearls before swine, and what that means is that if people are not listening to you, stop talking to them. If you stop talking to people who aren’t listening to you, and start watching them instead, they will tell you what they’re up to. If you have things to say, say them, but find people that will listen. The ones who aren’t listening; pull back. Because you’re devaluing what you’ve got to say by offering it to an audience that does nothing but reject it. That’s a good guideline to life in general.” — Jordan Peterson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XayjUzb271A 2.45 MINS
Ned Kelly.
New Zealand is signed up to some UN agreements and the Paris accords on climate, etc, etc, but I see nothing in those that stops us getting things done. There is certainly nothing stopping us getting useful sensible things done.
In fact the whole aim of the Paris accords was to leave it to individual countries to figure out what options they want to use to reduce emissions.
Neither institutions are opposed to regenerative agriculture to the best of my knowledge.
You would need to give specific examples of countries being part of the UN and IPCC agreements are not allowed to “get things done”.
Jordan Peterson is a right wing conservative ideologue and a climate science denialist. Not someone I would quote..
I have a better quote:
“if you want people to agree with you and take you seriously, be nice and talk sense. Dont call them names and say they are unintelligent, dont keep telling them how special you think you are, dont overplay your hand with wild claims easily falsified , and dont stubbornly support crazy, impractical ideas.” (Nigel, 14.05.2021).
Yours free of charge. Not talking about you specifically.
Nigelj
About taking people seriously, there your quote of yourself is very orthodox.
But,, there arre different people and there are exeptions..
I just red that Zelensky has been in Roma with the Pope, who suggeested serious peace talks between Moskva and Zelensky, and Zelenssk said categorically “NO!” one cannot negotiate with them. What is needed is a just peace.”
I have looked at it for years, and looked after russian media also as I am aquainteed from the cold war. Not just Voice of America and the Royal Norwegian national broadcast and Radio Lux, Also check up Deutschlandsender Moscows eccho- chamber in Berlin.
One finds a contrast.
My impression is that it has been heavy hate propaganda and growing mad- ness for years from Moscovas side, similar to Deutschlandsender in east Berlin. And the question comes, what to do with madness and an obviously growing collective psychosis with consequent increase of media censorship and constructional design of iron curtains also?
Madness could be found also in Ukiraina but most of all in Belarus, , mad- ness has even been seen in the USA in recent years, in in the oval room and even on Capitol Hill. But, there seems to be more qualified doctors on it in the USA by the supreme court.
Mad- ness in the climate dispute,….i have visited the climate surrealists in Oslo downtown and examined their vebsites also where I am rather consequently ex- communicated and etnically rinsed out,, a refflex that corresponds with the mentioned, general para– noia social mad- ness syndrom.
But I say you, your orthodox recepy works on presumably civilized people and can even work wonders there, if they are temporarily confused. But it does not work on manifest madness. That may be present realiy here and there
they misintereprete common civil social norms and politeness as weakness . from their bellieved social or etnic class enemys side and thus invitation to manifesto performance.
It may better belong in jail, in chains, or under Nevroleptica.
that may be reality also.
Carbomontanus.
I accept that my conventional, civil approach to communications doesn’t work with the denialist cranks and crazies (eg Victor). I doubt anything will work to change those peoples minds. Remember there is still a flat earth society and some of those people really believe. Quite a significant minority of people still oppose things like Darwins Theory of Evolution or dispute that tobacco is a carcinogen. Some of them probably always will dispute those things..
I agree the crazy denialists see politeness as weakness. But I dont think calling them names would work either. It could also alienate some of the warmists.
However sometimes Im “bluntly polite.” For example I will call someones ideas crazy or idiotic,, but I wont call them crazy or an idiot (to their face)
I believe our job is to rebut the sensible rational climate sceptics who are open to persuasion and the best approach is polite and being rational. Since its hard to know if the person you are responding to is a sensible or crazy sceptic its always worth trying the rational polite approach. And remember other rational sceptics might be reading the comments.
And warmists are reading the comments and might be persuaded by the denialists if their comments go unchallenged.
As to putting denialists in jail. Im very tempted because some of them are professional liars of the worst kind, but I’m also a believe in free speech. So I admit Im conflicted.
However the main thing is I do believe denialists views should be rebutted. Giving them the silent treatment doesnt sound right to me. Although where you get repetitive trolls like Victor there comes a point where he is best ignored, and should be put in the bore hole or crank case.
.
for example rational regenerative practices. They cannot arise from the community level up (local scale show pieces can be created) but genuine change must be directed nationally in each country independently.
I completely disagree. You need to look at things from a First Principles perspective. Everything starts from there. Everything else is built upon those. The principles underlying politics and economics are the opposite of regenerative. You are asking a cow to beget a horse. How is the current system supposed to create its opposite, to engage in self-immolation for the greater good? When has a “ruling class” or “elite class” ever done that? I know of no examples from history, do you?
Given that sustainability is a first and foremost a locally-achieved state, it makes far more sense for it to come from the bottom up.
Some characteristics and principles of Regenerative Societies:
* Egalitarian
* Commons, not Capitalism
* Networks of small communities
* Non-hierarchical
* Gender equality
* Highly cooperative, yet…
* Absolute individual autonomy
* Needs-based decision-.making
* Living within ecosystem limits
* Lots of free time
* “Work” is a social event
* No “jobs”; work is done as needed and chosen
Some of the things on that list have been an objective of more enlightened people for centuries and still have not been achieved, but we’re going to achieve a massive global change with the same system that has not made any significant core changes in hundreds of years, and is the system that created the existential threats we now face? That does not make sense, as Einstein opined.
No, the changes must come from the bottom up, primarily, and Regenerative Governance gives us the means to do so. https://twitter.com/PermResInitDet/header_photo
(Ignore the fool on the hill. He’ll go to his grave mumbling, “Nothing must change! Nothing must change!”)
Killian,
Thanks for your (& ChatGPT’s) brief overview: Understanding Technical Limits to a “Renewable” Society“, dated May 2023.
You might like to also add in phosphorus to your list – a critical element for food production.
http://phosphorusfutures.net/the-phosphorus-challenge/the-story-of-phosphorus-8-reasons-why-we-need-to-rethink-the-management-of-phosphorus-resources-in-the-global-food-system/
Have you seen the Energy Watch Group’s 2013 report titled Fossil and Nuclear Fuels – the Supply Outlook? The data is now more than a decade old, but you may find the sections on ‘Uranium supply’ (from page 122) & ‘Future uranium demand and supply’ (from page 125) of interest.
https://www.energywatchgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/EWG-update2013_long_18_03_2013up1.pdf
ICYMI/FYI:
1. A comprehensive analysis of the world’s nuclear industry can be found in the latest edition of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report-2022, at:
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/World-Nuclear-Industry-Status-Report-2022-870.html
2. The thorium fuel cycle is immature, not yet self-sustaining and at least decades away (if ever), as explored in the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency publication titled Introduction of Thorium in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Short- to long-term considerations, at:
https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/46/066/46066594.pdf
3. Some small reactors physically exist, but they don’t conform to the ‘modular’ definition of serial factory production of reactor components.
Russia has a floating nuclear power plant, called the Akademik Lomonosov, with two modified KLT-40 naval propulsion reactors on board, rated at 150 MWₜₕ / 35 MWₑ (gross) capacity each. Construction started on 15 Apr 2007, with operations commencing on 22 May 2020, after lengthy delays (about four times as long as originally planned), as well as huge cost overruns, from an initial estimate of around 6 billion rubles (US$₂₀₀₇232 million), to at least 37 billion rubles as of 2015 (US$₂₀₁₅740 million).
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=895
https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=896
https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/-World-Nuclear-Industry-Status-Report-2021-.html
According to the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency, electricity produced by the Russian floating plant costs an estimated US$200/MWh.
https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_14924
China has the world’s first prototype of a demonstration twin unit (2x 250 MWₜₕ) high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) connected to a single steam turbine to generate 211 MWₑ (gross), at Shidaowan (Shidao Bay) in Weihai city. Initially approved in November 2005, construction began on 9 Dec 2012, and first grid connection occurred on 14 Dec 2021. https://pris.iaea.org/pris/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=957
Both the Russian and Chinese physical examples undermine claims by proponents that small modular reactors (SMRs, nominally up to 300 MWₑ per unit output capacity) could be built in as little as 2-3 years and provide cheap electricity.
4. An IEEFA post by David Schlissel on 17 Nov 2022, headlined Small Modular Reactor update: The fading promise of low-cost power from UAMPS’ SMR, included the following price information for the UAMPS NuScale SMR project, currently projected to be completed in 2030:
* Previous target price: US$58/MWh
* Anticipated new target price range: US$120-130/MWh
* IRA subsidy: US$30/MWh
* Anticipated subsidized target price range: US$90-100/MWh
https://ieefa.org/resources/small-modular-reactor-update-fading-promise-low-cost-power-uamps-smr
5. An analysis by physicist and University of British Columbia Professor M.V. Ramana, published in a perspectives paper titled Small Modular and Advanced Nuclear Reactors: A Reality Check, in IEEE Xplore on 9 Mar 2021, examines some of the claims being made by nuclear technology proponents, with a particular focus on the economic challenges. It briefly discusses the technical challenges confronting advanced reactor designs and the many decades it might take for these to be commercialized, if ever. It concludes with:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9374057
Nuclear is very slow to deploy – 10+ years (to plan, design, procure, site prepare, construct, grid connect and commission) for existing technologies by experienced countries, and 15–20 years for inexperienced countries, like Australia. See FIG. 8: Typical durations for the main contracts, at:
https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1537_web.pdf
Nuclear is too slow to deploy to make any significant difference for humanity’s need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Great work. Your post can serve as a great link to send people to for a short course in why nuclear is a non-starter as a climate solution.
The list was generated by ChatGPT, so I left it as is. I asked for the 20 most endangered minerals and got that list. As a Permaculture practitioner and regenerative systems advocate and analyst, I am well aware of the issues around NPK. Worth bringing up in this thread, though, so thanks for doing so.
“Mythonomics” The Great Simplification #30 with Nate Hagens – YouTube
Steve Keen: This is really a human flaw. You become wedded to the way in which you view the world, more than the world itself. When you face a contradiction between it, for most people, they’ll turn their eyes from the contradiction.
My work really is on two things, building up systems for doing proper, non-linear, non-equilibrium monetary modeling of capitalism, and then working on how we bring energy properly into economic theory and castigating the complete neglect of that in mainstream economics, which has led to total understatement of the dangers of climate change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q23wwyksdY
[…] we’ve wasted 250 years arguing about
the wrong stuff, the Physiocrats were right,
we only have an advanced economy because
we exploit free energy and all we’re
paying is the cost of extraction.
[…] but if it wasn’t for fossil
fuels to harness we wouldn’t be
producing this volume of output
So this became obvious to them that
what what was causing the wealth in
human societies was what they literally
called the free gift of nature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiocracy
Late last month my post about the recent big uptick in CO2 yoy rate increases to above 4ppm
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/04/unforced-variations-apr-2023/comment-page-2/#comment-811166
Perhaps best seen within the background hum of talk around the coming El Nino/s possibly super el ninosin the near term years.
[Sorry for the multiple posts, but I rarely post anymore, so please, a little patience, moderator.]
I have not listened to this because I have known Steve Keen for years and we have yet to disagree on anything about economics since he shifted to a thermodynamic bases for Economics, as I pointed out was necessary when he presented his Minsky model 12 or 13 years ago at a Local Futures conference.
I’m sure this presentation is well worth everyone’s time who doesn’t already follow the likes of Keen and Kelton – which covers all the posters here still mired in Neo-classical Econ. The same people that have always claimed I don’t understand Econ… despite the fact I helped fundamentally change humanity’s understanding of Economics…
LOL
While I read Killian’s new work, for Geoff Miell and Killian another resource on diminishing and non-existent resources fyi
reports, papers, lectures, and tons of data graphs tables etc. Actively engaged with EU govt officals and politicians for a few years now. His first major report in 2021 is 1000 pages long
https://www.simonmichaux.com/
“I am developing a plan to transform our relationship between energy, minerals, and industrialization, as the existing proposed strategic plans are shown to be logistically impractical.”
Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of
Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems
to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels
summary with link to full 1000 page report
https://mcusercontent.com/72459de8ffe7657f347608c49/files/be87ecb0-46b0-9c31-886a-6202ba5a9b63/Assessment_to_phase_out_fossil_fuels_Summary.pdf
Thanks for those. I am already familiar with Michaux and have interviewed him three times since last summer. Here is the more recent one with Prof. Simon Michaux and Prof. Steve Keen where we talk about resources, climate, bottlenecks, etc., in a more integrated system context as we had Steve with us, too.
https://www.clubhouse.com/room/xoabL87o?utm_medium=ch_room_xr&utm_campaign=0vIh7fkq9PMM2ZU9Db7TFQ-711082
Here’s the first one which was just straightforward resources vs. techno-fantasies. Can we have our techno cake and eat it, too? Short answer: No.
https://www.clubhouse.com/room/M14OJAaR?utm_medium=ch_room_xr&utm_campaign=0vIh7fkq9PMM2ZU9Db7TFQ-711082
Killian
It is not far away from we having our techno- cakes to eat, and you ought to get aware of it.
What is eaten in the bioswphere?
That is allmost incredible things. And humans have all the time also exelled in making incredible things edible.
Potatoes ara hardly edible digestible unless you cook them , an that takes the invention of fire frirst. Corn is also hardly digestible. It goes right through undigested, thus better make cornflakes from it first, which is an old stoneage invention.
Malted cereales enzymatic and bacterial pre- digestion, of grains are much preferred both by animals and humans and have plaid a main role in the diet before there was enough motorized mill capacity.
What about ants and bugs and grasshoppers?
They are easily digestible by omnivorous animals.
But plant cellulose? hey and dry straw with water? The ruminants take it with ease by bacterial symbiosis. Dr. Virtaqnen 0f Finland, was a pioneer of ensilation who showed that common cattle can live on a diet of industrial finnish paper pulp, water, salt, and Urea for nitrogen. He had experimental cows in the barn who were not allowed to go out, forv 3-4 generations on that diet.
Today, corn- starch is steamed under pressure and made into corn syrup, that was necessary after the USA had embargoed Cuba and become sugar- free, Which is why the americans are so “obese” with Diabetes 2 also. Conventional sucrose especially from sugar cane unrefined is much healthier.
But you can by the help of mould mushroms and bacteria, or hydrochloric acid steam and heat transform common sawdust into digestible carbohydrates also, and then you have your “Techno- cake”
“Bi- proteins” are made in large stainless steel tanks from Methane ammonia, water, salt and some air, dried and packed and sold as fodder for swinery poultry and Salmon production Bon appetit.
Industrial Soya meal is hardly better.
Techno- fantacy has really taken off in the fodder industries in our days and more is to come. I preferre Mackrels apples, potatoes tomatoes wild onions and other flowers , blueberries raspberries and gooseberries. But all that will soon be my privilege.
As for desert grasshoppers, they are known to be especially fat and plenty.
In fact, red shrimps were regarded the same until 150 years ago when pioneers found how to trawl them up industrially, boil them, and sell them in town.
Lobsters were also regarded as “ugly” exept for poor people who had nothing better left for them.
“In the need, the Devil will eat flies.”
Chicken, Darwins jungle fowl and KALIs temple bird Indias national bird, is omnivorous and preferres rainworms red ants and shale- snails with vegetables in the wild They eat the “bugs” first before taking the green. By lack of red ants they go on the dung heap and eat larvae and puppets of barn- flies that are eating blood and bacteria and who breed in masses there.
Those egs are also then very best.
We were buying alive frogs from France for vivisection, and were told how they are produced.
One takes on prends….a dead body , Un Cadavre spoken Æææææ cadavrøøøø! in french. Si9mply pull pull a strong wire through that and hang it up between 2 rods over a pool where the frogs have been laying egs egs in the spring.
Flies come swarming by that smell and lay egs in that Cadavrøøøø…which will get quite frull of larvae. Theese grow up and creep out and fall down it the pool in order to pupate.
And under there the frogs sit and yawn….
Bon appetit
That ware is offered in the finest restaurants on Champs Elyse together with rotten lobsters and oysters from Normandie. .
And in recent time there is pipelines laid from the green pissoirs of Paris and out of town, to Champagne, so that the champagne is also being re- cycled.
@ Killian
I have also checked up wines and “Cognac”.
You would not believe it, or you have allready guessed it in an unqualified and much too fanatic and blunt way.
The worlds wineyards by square kilometres or acres cannot deliver all those bottles of wine in the cellars and in the shops. , in barrels and gallons,… that is being sold and consumed, So what is it and where does it come from, what is it made from????????????
As you learnt no quantitative chemistery and are immune to “maths”, you can hardely guess the truth,
But I can!
And then you have all the vodka. Potatoes and “corn” and sugar bete ,
Cuban cane sugar is embargoed / forbidden in the US, but that was the best / only available Jamaica rhum for the British navy, as whiskey was only for upstairs…
I would suggest Propane- gas in addition to serve all that need on the free market. It is steamed and synthetized and catalysed and doubble- pressed , distilled and rinsed—… with additives…. and you buy it and drink it.
No wonder there are much drunken sailors in our days then.
And then comes also the cocaine and the synthetic, especially smart drugs that gives you an new personality.
With all that nostalgic longing back to “permaculture”.
======000
The USSGerald Ford is here in town. That is the worlds largest battleship on its first visit abroad, and 4500 US sailors in town who pay in Dollars and must have a beer.
There are worries,….
Will there be girls enough for 4500 drunken sailors?
The sailors are interwiewed in media and tell that life on board the USS Gerald Ford is quite especially boring.
No wonder, really.
======000
We discuss here how to shoot it and sink it as we also shot Blücher, 18000 tons in 1940.
2 torpedoes of the old kind would do, But the torpedo battery is taken down since then, so we must think of something else..
I was asked who would thank us for that?. And I could say the very EU and the Soviet Union and the very Chineese,…. and surely also more than half of the US citicen admitted legal voters also, as I know them right from the climate dispute and the episodes at the Capitol hill.
Oh, and I came up with a plan to shift to a sustainable society back in 2011, Regenerative Governance. Simon is trying to reinvent the wheel. His analyses are great, but like pretty much all scientists, he loses his footing when it comes to policy and planning for mitigation and adaptation.
I agree with that about Simon … he’s like learning on the run since he switched “modes”.
I especially like — “but like pretty much all scientists, he loses his footing when it comes to policy and planning for mitigation and adaptation.”
Because it’s so true – i have not seen one cross the rubicon yet.
Thanks for your other comments as well, good luck to you, nice essay, will share it.
“Because it’s so true – i have not seen one cross the rubicon yet.”
Sadly, yes. I take it as a badge of honor many climate scientists have blocked me for pointing this out.
Thanks for your other comments as well, good luck to you, nice essay, will share it.”
Appreciate that. In fifteen years, that’s the first time anyone has said that to me. The awakening is spreading, but still far too slowly. But the window is still open so we must scratch and claw for every nth of a % chance we can get this done.
The ERA5 reanalysis has reported for April with a global anomaly of +0.32ºC, down on the ‘scorchio’ March anomaly and a little above the Jan & Feb anomaly.
ERA5 make April 2023 the 5th warmest on record behind 2016 (+0.53ºC), 2020, 2019 & 2017, while ahead of 2018, 2022, 2010 & 2021 (+0.17ºC).
2023 is also 5th as warmest start-of-year Jan-Apr, a ranking which will push higher in coming months as the predicted El Niño arrives.
…….. Jan-Apr Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.60ºC … … … +0.44ºC … … … 2nd
2020 .. +0.55ºC … … … +0.47ºC … … … 1st
2017 .. +0.43ºC … … … +0.34ºC … … … 4th
2019 .. +0.38ºC … … … +0.40ºC … … … 3rd
2023 .. +0.34ºC
2022 .. +0.30ºC … … … +0.30ºC … … … 5th
2018 .. +0.27ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 7th
2010 .. +0.23ºC … … … +0.13ºC … … … 9th
2021 .. +0.17ºC … … … +0.27ºC … … … 6th
2015 .. +0.17ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 8th
Dear Dr. Schmidt,
Referring to my question of 30 Mar 2023 at 11:46 AM and to the reply thereon by MA Rodger on 8 Apr 2023 at 7:52 AM, I would like to know if I understood correctly that
– climate models predict higher global precipitation due to higher average global temperature,
– this trend is in accordance with observation (both from meteorological stations across the globe as well as from satellite measurements),
– climate models further predict that the global warming causes decrease in global cloud cover,
– this trend is also confirmed during the last 25 years by satellite observations.
Do I conclude correctly that, in nutshell, there is (at least in the last 25 years and in a global average), more rain from less clouds?
Another reply to my post aserts that thank to increased rain frequency, the African Sahel is greening, is it true?
Thank you very much in advance for a comment.
Best regards
Tomáš Kalisz
Tomas, it would be helpful if you would be more precise in forming your questions. (I understand that English may not be your original language, so this is not meant to be insulting.)
-There is definitely a prediction that there will be an increase in occurrence of intense rainfall events.
-There may also be a slight increase in global rainfall averaged over the course of a year.
Not sure which you are asking about. The first has serious consequences for humans, but the second, if it is correct, is not that significant.
With respect to “global cloud cover”, your question is similarly unclear. The metric “cloud cover” tells us nothing about the type of cloud, so “more rain from less clouds” is essentially meaningless. You would have to give more details to get a useful answer.
As to the Sahel, you would have to give a peer-reviewed source for that claim.
Dear zebra,
many thanks for your reply.
Actually, I tried to find out if the available data (e.g. from satellite observations) may enable estimating the development of the earth energy imbalance (EEI) in the last two or three decades, and if so, wherther or not contributions of e.g. cloud cover changes, precipitation changes etc. can be assigned precisely enough to be comparable with models.
To be more specific, when I learned from this forum that the global precipitation climatology project (GPCP, see e.g. https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/9/4/138) collects the data about precipitation, I asked if somebody evaluated the contribution of the observed changes in the global summarized rainfall (that, I think, may be seen as commensurate to non-radiative heat transfer from the surface, having a “cooling” effect thereto) to mitigation of the observed global warming.
Similarly, if there are satellite observations that perhaps collect the data about clouds, I asked if this data enable estimating cloud cover change cotribution to a possible change in the respective “forcings” caused by changes of sunlight absorption in Earth surface and, oppositely, in longwawe infrared absorption by clouds).
Tomas,
Perhaps this would be helpful:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022JD036728?campaign=woletoc
I think that you should attempt to formulate your questions in a more direct manner rather than stringing together multiple phenomena/concepts.
If you have further questions about a specific topic, try asking it in one shorter sentence; that makes it easier for people to provide an answer.
Tomáš Kalisz: “estimating the development of the earth energy imbalance (EEI) in the last two or three decades, and if so, whether or not contributions of e.g. cloud cover changes, precipitation changes etc. can be assigned precisely enough to be comparable with models.
The effect of cloud cover change on the EEI – will be latitude-, land-cover-, and season- dependent (10% decrease in cloud cover over tropical ocean in summer would have very different effect that the same 10% drop in cloud cover over high latitude lands in winter,
Therefore, you won’t get any meaningful answers from global annual averages.
Plus could cover does not capture type and elevation of clouds that affect the balance between albedo and IR radiation.
– Tomáš: “ Do I conclude correctly that, in nutshell, there is (at least in the last 25 years and in a global average), more rain from less clouds?
Zebra Tomas, it would be helpful if you would be more precise in forming your questions .
Classic Zebra – the triumph of form over substance – lecturing others on … their language, even when his answers are more confusing than the questions:
Tomáš asks about global annual AVERAGE of cloud cover and rain – so Zebra lectures him about … the VARIABILITY (extreme rainfalls, different types of clouds) even though their effects are already included in the calculation of annual global AVERAGES.
Piotr, the confusion seems to be on your part not mine.
“Tomáš asks about global annual AVERAGE of cloud cover and rain – so Zebra lectures him about … the VARIABILITY (extreme rainfalls, different types of clouds) even though their effects are already included in the calculation of annual global AVERAGES.”
“The effect of cloud cover change on the EEI – will be latitude-, land-cover-, and season- dependent (10% decrease in cloud cover over tropical ocean in summer would have very different effect that the same 10% drop in cloud cover over high latitude lands in winter,
Therefore, you won’t get any meaningful answers from global annual averages. ”
Sounds like you are arguing with yourself, not me.
zebra: May 14: Sounds like you are arguing with yourself, not me.
No, I am arguing with you. You made 3 arguments in response to Tomáš:
1) Completely irrelevant to his question: Tomáš asked about global average precipitation (in the context of global average radiative budget), and you lectured him on … extreme rain events … “having serious consequences for humans“. You see the problem, right?
2) Lazy truism:. Truism: clouds of different types may have different radiative balance effect.
Lazy – because incomplete : whether clouds form over ocean or land, in low or high lats, and at what height – each is as, or more, important to radiative balance than what type of clouds they are. And it’s lazy also because you didn’t know?/didn’t bother ? to explain directly the relevance of your comment to Tomáš question (the way I did in my response to him ). And that’s incomplete and failing to clearly identify the relevance of argument to the other person’s question, comes from zebra, whose main contribution to this group seems to be … lecturing others on their ineffective, not direct, and imprecise writing.
And your third argument? Ahh:
3) “ Tomas, it would be helpful if you would be more precise in forming your questions. and I think that you should attempt to formulate your questions in a more direct manner.
Given your performance in pp. 1) and 2) – that’s … rich.
Him that makes shoes go barefoot himself, eh?
TK,
As to greening in the Sahara, this paper differs:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/31/9/jcli-d-17-0187.1.xml
Dear BPL,
many thanks for the reference.
Actually, when I googled for “Sahel greening”, I arrived on an older article file:///C:/Users/tomas.kalisz/Downloads/Journal_of_Arid_Env_63_pp556-566.pdf
Comparison of both articles suggests that the alleged “greening” migh have been a temporary change rather than a long-term trend, I think.
I apologize for a wrong link to the old article I mentioned. The correct one is http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2005.03.008
@Tomáš Kalisz says: – ” …more rain from less clouds? ”
ms: — It depends on how you want to quantify clouds. Clouds can be very different, also in water content, optical density, height, temperature, global distribution, etc.
In that case, I recommend classifying by weight. Since the proportion of condensation or sublimation in nature is very small even without cloud formation, you can assume that 1kg evaporation = 1kg cloud = 1kg precipitation.
In your home region, the loss of clouds can be traced back even 70 years and decreasing precipitation even for 140 years. Your home region is clearly one of the dry regions that are becoming even drier and are therefore warming up above average (+0.5°C / 20 years).
https://www.dwd.de/DWD/klima/national/gebietsmittel/brdras_sun_17_sn_8110_abs.png
https://african.business/2023/03/resources/is-africas-great-green-wall-collapsing
Dear macias,
The background of my imprecise questions was as follows:
If the data from the GPCP (see my response to zebra) might enable estimating not only the trend in global rainfall but also “partial” trends in the rainfall over seas and over continents, it could perhaps clarify if the tendency to “drying” that you mention is special for Europe, or if it is indeed a common feature of the observed climate change, applying for all continents, as some authors claim
https://www.mpsr.sk/en/index.php?navID=54&id=84
@Tomas says: – “… if the available data (e.g. from satellite observations) may enable estimating the development of the earth energy imbalance (EEI) in the last two or three decades, and if so, wherther or not contributions of e.g. cloud cover changes…”
ms: — Actually, I had already posted the following GEB to you weeks ago. I thought you knew what a global energy balance is – and how to extract the EEI.
https://climateprotectionhardware.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/geb_2000-2020finish.png?w=1024
The tendency to dry out is a global phenomenon and is felt wherever temperatures rise.
Long before industrialization and rising GHE, humans actively practiced this dehydration. (see website)
Hallo macias,
I asked if somebody knows how your GEB diagram looked like in, let say, years 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020. In other words, if we can construct a graph showing a temporal trend in the EEI, and, similarly, in the flows that form the EEI in GEBs for the respective year.
So far, I have not seen any such graph. If you know, please give me a hint.
BRT
to anyone:
chiming in from the anomalously compacted plains which are entirely devoid of functional ecosystem services:
Seems to me that profound human caused continental desertification, particularly in northern mid-latitudes, must be associated with overall reduction of evaporative fraction, reduced magnitude of local water recycling, and lower precipitation efficiency.
Instead of several-times weekly low-intensity rain received at the surface, we must wait weeks in hopes of a major frontal system to come through to clear the sky of anomalously accumulating dusty-humid-haze.
Measured in averages it might appear as reduced cloud fraction, increased cloud height, and reduced average cloud top temperature. Increasing verticality, coinciding with diminishing cloud fraction observed by optical horizontal spectrometrists (or keen eyeball using observationalists).
Less frequent, but higher intensity rainfall events seems a reasonable hypothesis related to massive soil degradation. Check the weather logbook scribbled with permanent blue pen.
Due to the higher bulk density of eroded soils compared to relatively high soil organic matter historical terrain, and higher average precipitation intensity, a greater proportion of rainfall surely runs off due to infiltration excess overland flows; thereby exacerbating hydrological and temperature extremes. ouch.
check the hourly levellogger timeseries for the well.
Lower frequency flushing of the skies, with more violent events when the time finally comes.
Reduced soil moisture, reduced periods of green growth & associated transpiration, warmer thermodynamic surface temperatures, lower cloud fraction, lower cloud top temperature, increasing ocean-continent contrasts, etc.
It’s not really so complicated in principle (and climatologically relevant when trying to rationalize change).
JCM
You are describing a situation that is not happening here where I live. There has not been drought summers for years, and the groundwater level increases, allthough swings more than before.
A lot of fameous cathastrophies that come through media , are rather obvious consequenses of urbanization and mis-use of water resources, bad water management from human side, that rather should be adressed and they say the same in souithern California. They blame on climate and nature what should be blamed on humans, local politicians, and entrepreneurs.
Also, I find it hard to believe that destruction of vegetation and of “Humus” is causing less rain It is rather opposite . Rain and snow increases. But destruction of high enough and natural vegetation makes the landscape more vunerable to drought periods. That is an accepted fact. Do not cut your lawn for instance when growth obviously stagnates against predictable warmer and more sunny days . And avoid making lawn monoculture Do not fight the obviiously more drought resisstant local flora speecies with deeper roots in your “lawn”. ..
I have heard the same from the USA praiiries, Wild “tallgrass” with buffalos is better.
Motorized leave- blowers and lawn moovers will be forbidden in private hands now. Rain and humus is there , it even increases, but it is fanatically fought against and raked out and remooved as fast as it appears.
Where nothing willl grow, think opposite and seet on what you cannot get rid of at your place. The pioneering “weeds” after your land was ruined. And soon after, just in a few years, the quite local, wild forest will come up again. That can be carefully iinfected with valuable flowers and fruit trees. it stands very well together.
Look over old and lleft gardens for species that have survived any human treatment and mistreatment for centuruies, then you have the cheapest and mosts valuable garden wiith least effort for max prophit. Avoid changing the soil too much from what it is from natures side. Then you willl have no desertification.
Nature adapts to human presence in any case, but it takes time. A new chief gadener every 3rd year willl turn anything healthy and alive into betonized pavement.
It takes 50 years at least for a garden or a park or a forrest to grow up with representable, sustainable, and valuable vegetation..
In the meantime, all experts and knowitalls, / all witches and spindoctors must be kept at distance. where Stnging nettles, Artemissia vulgarisi, and Vespa vulgaris are recommended.
“groundwater level increases, allthough swings more than before.”
rapid recharges indicates bedrock controlled drainages. One in which a piezometer is practically useless. Shallow or non-existent drifts, and a climate already adapted to the ecosystem. No amount of action can perturb this rocky terrain where there is no capillary pressure head nor unnatural resistance to infiltration..
However, climatologically, I suspect the +/- 60 degrees latitudes are unique zones, to-which there is a net delivery of heat in the global thermodynamic fluid transport system.
Some conjecture..
The true mid-latitude continents are but transit zones. Bypassed further-still by unnatural desertification of the deep organic soils, and associated unnatural blocking ridges.
For the cause of this behaviour, it may relate to the hypothesis of maximum dissipation in fluid dynamics discussed by Axel Kleidon (linked elsewhere here).
In nature, the rate of poleward decrease of heat vs the poleward increase of atmospheric transparency operates to maximize dissipation and dynamically moderate radiative transmittance.
Somehow a peak of transmittance is found around 60 degrees in the turbulent optical greenhouse system.
A mechanism of variable latent heating and opacity of the atmospheric column in variable dynamic global mass flux configurations.
Such that the poleward and vertical dynamic gradients are less steep than in static concept, but not too little.
A natural scheme so that heat is to arrive where there is best opportunity to transmit radiation to space, while simultaneously sustaining a maximum rate of mass dissipation.
The effect is low radiative transmittance in the tropics where the atmosphere is too opaque, but also a low rate of transmittance at the high poles where the temperature is too low. Instead, a peak rate of radiative transmittance at about +/- 60 degrees. Just warm enough, in a just transparent enough column of air. Selected by nature.
Some folks at +/- 60 are luckier than others. For dwellers in rafts in the southern ocean (an unlikely occurrence!) the result is persistent cloud cover and rough seas. The net radiative flux configuration is best achieved from low suspended condensate there. It is conceivable the surface in the southern ocean might cool with enhanced latent heating delivered in the unnatural global warming circulatory configuration. The South is quite free to do so, and the ocean surface temperature is disconnected from the outgoing flux on cloudy seas.
In Scandinavia, and other land areas +/- 60, a greater proportion of real surface radiative transmittance provides a more perfect mix along with varying degrees of low cloud. For Scandinavia specifically, a comfortable mix fed by the northern seas on terrain unlikely to be perturbed much by humanity.
end of conjecture.
The western Scandinavian catchments relatively stable hydrologically, with a clear path of latent influx via oceanic conveyors. It is mostly sheltered from the vast continental biohydrological disruption. So, uninhibited and increasing latent flux should be anticipated to easily recharge and raise the average well loggerlevel under unnatural global warming.
@ JCM
You say “…and a climate allready adapted to the ecosystem……”
Normal belief is that the ecosystems adapt to the climate, not that the climate adapts to the ecosystems..
Climate adapting to the ecosystems seems to be the gaia- theory, and if that is what you try and say, then specify it. It is hardly possible on short timescales..
Microclimate, yes. There it is obvious, but hardlly on regional scale allready.
We can exel in examples where species and ecosystems adapt to climate variation and changes, but not the opposite that climate adapts to the biosphere.
JCM
You have geographically, politically socially nationally, racially ettnically provinccial model theory of tthe Earth, The Climates, and the weathers.
Have you ever heard of Costta del Sol? and “Sunmaid rasins” from southern California?
Is there more blue skies in the foggy dews and in Bergen where it rains all the time? Do you believe in the blue sky tourist cruice ship brochures of the Norwegian Fjords?,
Havent you heard of Hurtigruten, that you must bring with you an umbrella, a raincoat, a thick pullover, an anurak, woolen unnderwear and proper boots, because you can expect flat snowstorm also in the summers at any time in the midnight sun?
And in the south, the roaring fourties and the fierceful fifties,…is there any blue sky in between that?
The rain in Spain staying mainly in the plains and its clearing up furtther north is commmercial, politcal theater and Hollywood studio rumors.
“Nivlheim” for Hell is the dark frosty moist foggy reality the furthere north you get, Nivl- for Nephelai in greek. Nebel in German.
“Kunsten med den Danske sommer
er at ta den naar den kommer”
SANN!
and that was Denmark.
the diffference between Norway and EU is the dfference of coalsmoke and hydroelectric power, and onland oceanic winds washed clean by rain and snow at sea,,. freshly washed heavens from Jan Mayen. compared to coalsmoke and freqent desert dusts from Sahara and Kasakhstan further south.
The blue heavens in the Ukrainian flag is only a rare glimpse of it now and then.
France has a quite more revolutionary blue sky than Germany due to onland westerly winds and nuclear power.
Kalisz
Certain things can be said apriori.
Higher temperature gives more evaporation provided that water is there. And since higher precipitation is predicted, this seems physically plausible.
Decrease of global cloud cower, there I am not so sure, and I preferre not to believe in the experts, it must have a set of plausible reasons that I can check up and understand.
Then we come to the morphology and plausible physics of clouds.
There is a lot of clouds from which it does not rain, at least not down to earth. That can also be seen in the summer. It obviously rains but the rain dissolves evaporates before it hits the ground.
And there is also traditionally a lot of flat grey weather without any rain or snow.
Then there are predictions that due to global warming, rain will come in stronger showers and not as steady light rain all the day.
This is for the tempered zone here where I live but I have learnt that the situation is similar but quite more dramatic in the tropes.
The troposphere with all the rain will become thicker by global warming, that is for sure.
But, why it should clear up more and more in between the clouds, that I cannot quite understand. Only one effect that hardly can explain it, as long as China India and South Africa are heating up with coal. The effect of H2SO4 acid rain, sulphate haze and aerosols in the atmosphere. It indeed clears up if coalsmoke is shrubbed. But I would recommend a qualified meteorologist on this, able to explain to us also How! about the weathers.
Then you also have the arid belts north and south between tropes and tempered, between passat and antipassat wind. The “silent belts” at sea and deserts on land. There it is high- pressure and blue sky and the air falls down . If tose areas get larger, then it will clear up but it will rain more in the low pressure belts.
This explaination rules both for local thunderstorms and for the earths major climatic zones.
FWIW, food for thought.
The Limits to Growth at 50: From Scenarios to Unfolding Reality
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-02-24/the-limits-to-growth-at-50-from-scenarios-to-unfolding-reality/
Everything all at once everywhere? Here’s hoping we can avoid a perfect storm of stupid.
——–
So long and thanks for all the fish.
This is more a response to Killian but I’m posting it here:
There is a basis for skepticism regarding near-term limits of raw material resources – especially if based on reserves:
Future availability of non-renewable metal resources and the influence of environmental, social, and governance conflicts on metal production”
(If I’ve understood correctly, reserves are basically the reported economically (and legally)-extractable amount with given technology that we can have high confidence exist at specific locations. Not everyone reports, not all such resource is reported as reserves even if it fits those criteria, and there is generally a reasonable expectation that more reserves will be identified in time. Reserves are not all of what we could ever economically mine.)
Also, compare the costs/prices of PV systems/etc. to the price of the input material. Maybe? doubling raw material prices for some parts (photovoltaic layers?) may not have much impact overall, on which case we could expect that needing to use lower grade ores, or require mining companies to spend more on safety/environmental protections/land reclamation/etc./ use alternate sites, would (up to a point?) not have much impact on supply for the PV/etc. industry. (Actually if I’ve done this before for PV, I don’t remember the results exactly, but eg., I do remember that Li supply is a relatively small cost for Li batteries)
See also:
“Will we have enough materials for energy-significant PV production?” (2004, a bit old, but some numbers are still useful/ helpful comparisons)
I haven’t read much of these yet, but I’ll just go ahead and post these links now:
https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2021/what-it-takes-to-realize-a-circular-economy-for-solar-photovoltaic-system-materials.html
(more; PS not sure if this is one of the links from the prior, but same topic)
Let’s burn the (unintentional?) Straw Man first. It is acknowledged we can build out *almost* a generation fully replacing fossil fuels with either one technology or a mix even considering future growth. Those are the conditions for the essay: 9 billion people, doubled energy consumption, by 2050-ish. So, nobody has said you can’t do it once. The problem is, you can *only* do it once. What then?
But you don’t really need to do all this gyrating, right? There’s a broadly accepted meme that it would take 5 Earths to have all people living a Middle-Class American life. Note all the talk of “equity.” And I agree with that talk. But we can’t do that. Such a state of equity would require, at minimum, global average consumption to be at least that of Europeans, which is half that of Americans last I heard. We’d still need 2 or 3 Earths.
But look at what is *truly* being proposed and the resources available and you see very quickly there is zero intention of giving all humans such a life. The calls for renewables do not include calculations of the energy demand for 9 billion Americans, right? Nobody is saying it, but the goal is to maintain the status quo, electrify things a bit, and that’s it.
But how could/would we maximize the resources available? You’d prioritize, by a lot, building out the recycling infrastructure. But that, also, would basically max us out, or come close, because it needs to be somewhere between 10 and 15x larger, perhaps even 20x larger than today.
There’s no tech-based way out of this mess. Without simplification/localization/Regenerative status, there is no pathway through. This is a simple mathematical reality.
1. Perhaps you missed this: “This makes metal mining inherently unsustainable on human timescales since economically extractable mineral deposits become exhausted before replenishment by natural processes.”
2 Any distinction between resources and reserves is pointless within the context of how long we can keep making X, Y and Z: It clearly implies both as the resources and reserves would have to be exhausted for them to stop being mined. Read for context, not just hyper-explicit accuracy of verbiage. Yes, I could be more careful, but why bother with all the extra words when it’s obvious what the context is and you have a brain? Besides, I’m fairly sure I made this point somewhere in that essay/White Paper.
3. Michaux’s analysis comes from last year and this year. The paper you cite is 2 years older. The newer analysis should take a back seat to older analysis outside any claim the new one is flawed? If you’re going to critique Michaux and others, you can’t just say a previous paper disagreed, you still have to analyze his work first and foremost.
4. All of these systems are unsustainable, so ultimately will run out. The goal should not be to maximize them, but to minimize them to the level of need, not wishes and wanting.
“Perhaps you missed this: “… “Let’s burn the (unintentional?) Straw Man first.“…
Didn’t miss it. We both agree the Earth is finite and such geological processes as ore formation are generally relatively slow. If we keep extracting ores at a significant (for us), constant or increasing rate for long enough, the accumulated ores will run out. Faster if we put some places out of bounds, etc. (as I agree we should try to do). But how long will that take? The article is saying longer than some may think (although one may get the impression that they regard legal/social limitations as a nuissance but I choose to take their statements on the subject as mattero-of-fact and won’t read into it further).
I was largely motivated by your listing of generations remaining of various metals/etc. (****PS is a generation about 25 years?) If you look at Fig. 2B, you can see that, much like economical fusion power plants, running out of Ag is always about 10-20 years in the future; it’s been that way since ~1955 (interpolating across the data gaps). Of course in several more decades, that might be 7-15 years, and maybe it will be 5 years away eventually. So my point is that some of those generations left-type numbers might be an order-of-magnitude (or more?) too small.
I agree that we should limit our impact on the environment, but I think it’s okay to have some impact.
“There’s no tech-based way out of this mess.” – I would amend that to: Technology alone won’t fix it. We will use technology (both new and old). I’m not counting on fusion, or space elevators, but there is room for improvement in solar PV technology, and other things. Passive solar, Insulation, etc. And better neighborhood design (not exactly tech, per se – strategy/lifestyle, perhaps), although that’s tricky for towns/cities that are already built.
“But look at what is *truly* being proposed and the resources available and you see very quickly there is zero intention of giving all humans such a life.”
I’m not against changing our lifestyles, but I’d like to keep my pizza, chocolate, laptop, Legos, and A/C …
Okay, how about this:
Lets do 2000 W /person * 10 ‘Gigapeople‘ = 20 TW. From solar PV:
20 % capacity factor (lower on many roofs/near populations, higher in low-latitude deserts, etc.)
times
~75 % (soiling + shading, inverter clipping, BOS losses, reduced output at evelated Temps)
times
70% (aging – I’m not retiring these panels on their 30th birthdays!)
times
80% (weighted average roundtrip storage efficiency * T&D) …
= 1/5 * 3/4 *4/5 * 0.7 = 3/25*0.7 = 2.1/25 = 8.4 %.
(I’ve actually done some calculations to get the aging factor/ cap.factor is familiar; storage efficiency might be too high although I figure a significant fraction of power is used instantaneously; also, some is used at/near where produced, although some may be transmitted 2000 km+. The derate for temp, inverter, etc. I’m less sure about – too optimistic or pessimistic?)
…
20 TW/8.4 % ~= just under 250 TW nameplate capacity (DC)
Now for glass:
3.2 mm thick * 2.5 g/mL = 8 kg/m2. For a nameplate capacity of 200 W / m2,
(250 TW / 200 W/m2 = 1.25 million km2 – that’s huge but less than 1 % land area, although the panels won’t be flat on the ground continuously – may have to multiply by 2.5 to get actual land use – still, some may be used to provide shade to some crops, etc., and runoff could strategically concentrate moisture for crops/grass for cattle/etc. in arid regions…
Hopefully the efficiency will increase so we don’t need as much area, land, or materials – clever light-trapping could boost c-Si cells to just over 30% eff, while using ~ 1/10 of the Si (15 microns) – I’ll post a link for that later)…
… that’s 40 g/W. (glass). So that’s 40*250 Tg = 10 trillion kg = 10 billion metric tons, which is maybe roughly 140 years of current flat glass production (50 years all glass) (sources pending), but also, at 2.5 metric tons/m3, = 2.5 Gt/km3,
4 cubic km of glass. Huge. But … okay, what’s the volume of rock that would be mined for that. Well I’ll just multiply by 2 for now (glass is not very different from common continental rock; it’s the purity that’s the problem. For solar glass we don’t want Fe or other such metals that would impart color (specifically, that would absorb solar radiation above the band gap). Could we mine granite and crush and separate the amphiboles, micas, feldspars and quartz and use the first 2 for Fe and extract CaO, NaO from the feldspars and use the Al from the feldspar and then make the soda-lime glass…?
Anyway,
This entire response is argumentative. Every caveat was covered in the essay. I don’t think you read the essay. It was very clear on the parameters, so why would you ask what they are if you read it thoughtfully?
“Tech-based” is very clear, Your argument is a Straw Man.
Glass? Who mentioned glass? Nobody. Why are you? It’s a logical fallacy here, twice. First, nobody raised glass as an issue. Second, Liebig’s is the central concern with resources.
Etc.
We get it. You are against sustainable futures. Unfortunately, these are serious issues. Come back when you’re serious.
patrick O’twentyseven
Good points. I have been saying much the same to Killian and other de-growth people for the last five years, to no avail. Not the details about solar panels, but the general principles of what you posted.
Agree that there is clearly a minerals problem where we we run out of some metals eventually. However over the last 40 years I’ve seen various prediction about running out of minerals and time showed they were too pessimistic.
My own view is the only practical way out of the ‘mess’ is a combination of renewable energy at reasonable scale, moderate, achievable cuts in consumption of technology, materials and energy, and smaller global population size. And obviously recycling.
You have to consider all the options carefully and separately. So relying purely on renewable energy alone will probably push resources beyond the limits.
Moderate reductions in consumption sound feasible. Massive and rapid reductions in consumption of resources and energy ( as favoured by Killian) is obviously hugely problematic on many levels from impacts on peoples lives, to creating mass unemployment, and the impossibility of persuading people.
Smaller population looks like it would be too slow to be a sufficient stand alone solution.
So I keep coming back to a combination of renewable energy at reasonable scale, moderate, achievable cuts in consumption, and smaller global population size as being the only practical approach.
“But look at what is *truly* being proposed and the resources available and you see very quickly there is zero intention of giving all humans such a life.”
Your response might have missed the point. The concern is that abundant renewable energy as scale is flawed because some people will have it but possibly not the whole world. Its an ethical issue. However not everyone has a computer or car, and this is just the reality of life. Obviously we could still eliminate global poverty as such. Nobody needs to starve in this world.
Of course I meant Na2O; and I’ve come to learn that glass (soda-lime) tends to be made from silica ((quartz) sand, I guess), limestone, and soda ash, … and sometimes dolomite (so that would be soda-lime-magnesia? glass). Sand and limestone are certainly common, although we’d want to meet thresholds in quality/purity; I’m not clear on where soda ash comes from but I get the impression it’s not hard to get.
And I know glass is just one part, of course.
Re Killian – I think we’ve had a miscommunication. I did not bring up glass in order to say we’ll have enough Ag. I happened to have some glass parameters fresh in my mind and *I* wanted to know about it. And it turns out it will take a large production rate, although the raw resources are probably sufficient, I guess. (I was going to do Al for transmission lines next) No straw man, no logical fallacy.
Also, I did not mean to imply that I believe we should only use solar PV. I am aware of the tendency for solar and wind to complement each other (daily and seasonally and maybe with weather?), so that, combined, there is less need for storage (although cloudy calm and sunny windy periods still happen). I am in favor of at least keeping the nuclear power we have, and hydropower, although there’s salmon to consider…
And I could say more but I have other things to work on… so later.
Re nigelj – thanks. Although I would rather not be accepting of the inequality as it is; I’m okay with maybe 1/10 people having 50% more than the rest, 1/100 having a bit more… but I would like the world to head towards more egalitarianism, especially on a global scale. … speaking of morality one thing I’m concerned about for the immediate future –
The world relies way too much on China for solar PV panels. I’m not coming at this from a protectionist perspective – I’m fine with buying stuff from other countries if they have better resources and a better-trained workforce to make the stuff. But the Chinese gov’s MCGA (C=China) attitude toward Taiwan, their tolerance of Putins’ MRGA… and their treatment of the Uyghurs (esp. if that is directly tied to the production of solar products??)
Maybe we should bring Solyndra back?
(not that my country (US) is perfect – MAGA politicians cracking down on women and pediatric healthcare and teachers and books, and for some reason they hate Cathode Ray Tubes; US and Europe generally could be more welcoming of immigrants/refugees/etc., and so on…)
patrick O’twentyseven
Income and wealth inequality have become very high. I read statistics that about 50 families own half the worlds wealth. This leads to poverty with some people missing out despite working long hours, and excessive inflation of asset bubbles.
I agree there should be efforts to reduce inequality to more moderate levels. However the easiest tools are wealth taxes, capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes and they are not politically popular.
I live in New Zealand and we have the same issue with China. We are uncomfortable about their human rights abuses but very dependent on them for farm exports. We are facing the fact we might end up having to find other markets.
I favour a globalised world, but there sometimes need to be exceptions. Being reliant on China for critical components is not a great idea. That said starting a trade war with China is not a great idea either. Needs a very delicate dance.
Alright, let me try again. A generation in the overview was stated to be a generation of each technology, so the time frame is referring specifically to the life cycle of each technology.
It doesn’t really matter to analyze any given product because we are talking about a system, right? And we are trying to understand the system as a whole. To that end, at that meta/macro level, and given how many of the resources on that list are critical to the systems they are used in, all we need to know to come to conclusions on the sustainability of those systems is whether *any* of them can support even one generation of a global buildout.
Certainly, if you want to know about any single product or industry, then, sure, drill down on the things used in that specific industry. But the conclusion underlying all of this is already clear: You get one generation. The parameters for that are 9 billion people, current rates of growth/use of each item in that list and a doubling of consumption. Why? The estimate from ChatGPT was around a 50 to 70% increase, I think, but I don’t want to go back and check so if that number is off a bit, that’s fine if someone corrects it because it’s irrelevant: Resource curves are notoriously resistant to large shifts in depletion outcomes even from large introductions of additional reserves, etc. That is, a significant increase in reserves, efficiencies, etc., doesn’t any curve more than some decades. And, we need to be looking at worst-case scenarios to have a solid risk analysis.
Additionally, another way to look at doubling is time. Consumption doubling due to increases in consumption is no different than doubling because of a longer time period. Either way, whether there is a 50% increase in consumption or 100% doesn’t shift the curves all that much, and it doesn’t matter if it’s due to an increase in total consumption per year or consumption over twice the time frame.
Regardless, we get between somewhat less than a generation and maybe 1.25 or so generations. This is a trivial number given the context.
Cheers
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-48981-w: From Abstract: “We demonstrate through precise numerical simulations the possibility of flexible, thin-film solar cells, consisting of crystalline silicon, to achieve power conversion efficiency of 31%. Our optimized photonic crystal architecture consists of a 15 μm thick cell patterned with inverted micro-pyramids with lattice spacing comparable to the wavelength of near-infrared light, enabling strong wave-interference based light trapping and absorption. Unlike previous photonic crystal designs, photogenerated charge carrier flow is guided to a grid of interdigitated back contacts with optimized geometry to minimize Auger recombination losses due to lateral current flow.…
(Question – how will glass connect to this? Will it use glass? Or maybe I didn’t read through enough of it. Ideally the real part of the refractive index increases gradually from the front transparent surface, going down into the photovoltaic layer…)
BTW, with “interdigitated” (Scrabble points alert!) back contacts, no need for Ag (unless Ag is involved at all in… well anyway…)
https://www.thesolarnerd.com/blog/can-solar-panels-be-made-without-silver/#:~:text=Another%20way%20to%20eliminate%20silver%20is%20to%20develop,light%20from%20hitting%20the%20front%20of%20the%20cell.
Before I read that, I actually thought the Ag was used because of electronic compatibility or thermodynamic/chemical stability (eg., don’t connect Au wires to Al wires – you’ll invite the purple plague!) but apparently it’s just because it’s slightly better conductor than Cu. It’s important for front contacts because obviously you want them as small as possible to let as much solar radiation (> bandgap) through. But maybe they could use Al and just make the fingers taller, with sloped sides that reflect most light down into the cell?
Ag might be necessary for other PV technologies; I’m not sure -there’s a bunch of ideas (surface plasmon resonance, photonic crystals, dye-sensitized cells, organic…)
… Anyway, so maybe we’ve mined and left 80 square km areas 100 m deep, and what should we do with these holes? Energy storage!
Put some glass over the top and now we can store solar energy thermally via a greenhouse. If that glass reflects at >~ 1 micron, and some thermal insulation, and maybe the underlying black surface is only black >~ 1 micron, we could perhaps get a temp near 1200 K! In the winter a pond could freeze and the ice could be harvested every morning, go into another hole as more water is added to the pond, Now we have a heat sink.
BTW, maybe the thermal storage medium could be some mix of basaltic gravel and … maybe junk we couldn’t recycle, and some hot fluids that might leach certain metals out of stuff and maybe a little charcoal here and there to grab that metal and stick some graphite electrodes in it… I’m suggesting we might, possibly maybe try making our own ores.??? (decomission after 1000 years or 10,000 years…? 100,000 years? and mine it again?)
https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth103/node/1005#:~:text=Simply%20put%2C%20the%20heat%20capacity%20expresses%20how%20much,the%20temperature%20of%20the%20rock%20by%201%20%C2%B0C.
2000 J/kg K * 2700 kg/m3 * 100 m = 540 MJ/K m2;
540 MJ/K m2 / 80? W/m2 = 6.75 Ms/K ~= 1/4.68 yr/K; as designed it would only heat up ~ 4.7 K per yr (give or take because 80 W/m2 is just a ballpark figure guess of solar heating < 1 micron…
But maybe there is something to the idea of – if we're going to heat something up, might as well be something we can cook.
“possibility of flexible, “… so no glass, then.
It’s also worth remembering that there are multiple PV technologies with different material requirements.
Having more buildings built with PV systems (combined w/ solar water heating to cool panels and boost system efficiency) built in (I’m saying built a lot!) – e.g. with housing/building portfolio standards (tuned to local conditions – and I don’t want to cut down trees; the places I grew up generally had few/no trees shading the roofs but there was a neighborhood in nearby city which I imagine might have looked almost like a forest from above) would presumably lower costs (relative to roof-top systems now) by reducing some of the material needs and lowering soft-costs…
PS see my comment below (after Tomas Kalisz 5/14 4:35) that was supposed to be here
MS 5 MAY “AMOC reduces, then less heat is conveyed to Greenland”. Perhaps for surface warming to the southern tip. I understand that ice loss from surface melt is ~1/2 of the loss. Prevailing wind southwesterly not southerly would presumably provide that warm air too far east to affect Greenland much, shouldn’t affect the west coast. much. Warming of water below the surface layer will continue to increase ice melt at the face at depths below 200 m or some such. Greenland east coast gets that from the starting flow due to high pressure at all depths in winter in that little deep pool from above Iceland to ~75N. As that flow lessens, the deep water should become warmer. So it doesn’t seem to me nearly as simple as “AMOC reduces, then less heat is conveyed to Greenland” due to deeper water.
Geoff Miell says 5 MAY 2023 “Barry E Finch, “. I haven’t the foggiest idea why that interesting well-typed information was stated as being for me rather than for the audience. I mean, thanks anyway because it’s nice to get personalized service for a change.
Tomáš Kalisz 8 MAY 2023 There seems to be a major factor missing in your pondering. Less cloud (or fewer clouds, whatever one prefers) isn’t the same as global cloud cover unless residency time is included in the calculations. I know nothing about what it is, I’ve never studied it, but it’s patently obvious that if clouds were to form and then precipitate more rapidly then there could indeed be more cloud and more precipitation with less average cloud cover over a year.
Geoff Miell 5 MAY 2023 I seriously question your source for Earth energy imbalance (EEI) “928,000 ‘Hiroshimas’ per Day” (21.3 Zettajoules /year, 1.33 w/m**2). It’s way more than Karina von Schuckmann et al’s latest 0.78 w/m**2 (I eye balled 0.88 w/m**2 for last 4 years off her plot with her recent talk). That casual source of yours would need to be fact-checked with something formal from a scientist who does that work. I’d be interested because I’ve been trying to keep track of EEI since 2013.
Barry E Finch,
“I seriously question your source for Earth energy imbalance (EEI) “928,000 ‘Hiroshimas’ per Day” (21.3 Zettajoules /year, 1.33 w/m**2).”
I note the tweet by Prof Eliot Jacobson I’d referenced (in my comment to you on 5 May 2023) included a graph that contained a reference to “CERES – EBAFTOA42 Data”
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1653515518400417792/photo/1
A description at a NASA ASDC webpage includes:
https://asdc.larc.nasa.gov/project/CERES/CERES_EBAF_Edition4.2
“It’s way more than Karina von Schuckmann et al’s latest 0.78 w/m**2 (I eye balled 0.88 w/m**2 for last 4 years off her plot with her recent talk).”
Reference?
What “recent talk”?
What’s the date range of the plot in “her recent talk”?
Where does Karina von Schuckmann et. al. source their data from?
Perhaps that might explain the discrepancy?
“That casual source of yours would need to be fact-checked with something formal from a scientist who does that work.”
I’d suggest it requires comparing the information presented in the graph presented by Prof Jacobson with the “CERES – EBAFTOA42” source data.
Barry E Finch: – “That casual source of yours would need to be fact-checked with something formal from a scientist who does that work.”
Would you accept Andrew Dressler’s assessment of the “NASA CERES EBAF-TOA Ed4.1 Net flux” data?
Climate scientist Andrew Dressler tweeted on 25 Mar 2022:
https://twitter.com/AndrewDessler/status/1507165959999692800
The researchers found that as Petermann Glacier’s grounding line retreated nearly 4 kilometers—2½ miles—between 2016 and 2022, warm water carved a 670-foot-tall cavity in the underside of the glacier, and that abscess remained there for all of 2022.
“These ice-ocean interactions make the glaciers more sensitive to ocean warming,” said senior co-author Eric Rignot, UCI professor of Earth system science and NASA JPL research scientist. “These dynamics are not included in models, and if we were to include them, it would increase projections of sea level rise by up to 200 percent—not just for Petermann but for all glaciers ending in the ocean, which is most of northern Greenland and all of Antarctica.”
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-rapid-ice-greenland.html
Sea level anomalies in four different Pacific regions, 1979-2013: https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/sciadv.1500560/asset/ac4516cc-7aad-4ad9-a641-e790465cf82f/assets/graphic/1500560-f1.jpeg (see Future extreme sea level seesaws in the tropical Pacific – https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1500560)
Though this paper predicts significant sea level rise in future, we see little to no evidence of any long-term upward trend during this 34 year period.
Sea levels for the Maldives, 1998-2012, courtesy of our friend Steve Goddard: https://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/screenhunter_2434-sep-01-07-33.gif?w=544&h=403&zoom=2
Once again, no sign of any upward trend over this period. In addition, Goddard quotes an article referring to an 1837 report, in which “The natives observe the atolls to be wasting away; in some the cocoanut trees are standing in the water ; in another the black soil of the island is discernible at low water thirty feet from the beach ; the south-east side of an island in Phaidee Pholo Atoll is entirely gone, but is marked by a banyan tree in the water. They say that some islands have disappeared entirely . . . ”
From the very extensive and detailed paper, “Relative sea-level rise and land subsidence in Oceania from tide gauge and satellite GPS,” by Alberto Borelli, as published in the journal Nonlinear Engineering, 2020:
“As relative sea-level trends oscillate with many periodicities, from hours to multi-decadal, up to quasi-60 years, only long-term-trend (LTT) tide gauges spanning more than 100 years without quality issues allow assessment of the rate of rise and the acceleration of the sea levels. The sea level oscillates with periodicities in the 60-year range, like other climate parameters [2, 10, 11]. Thus, more than 60 years of recording from the same tide gauge, without any major perturbation, are needed to compute a reliable rate of rise by linear fitting [12, 13, 14]. More than 100 years are otherwise needed to compute a reliable acceleration by parabolic fitting [15].”
“The global pattern is consistent with a small thermo-steric sea level rise with negligible acceleration, explained as a gentle recovery from the low temperatures of the Little Ice Age, that was caused by the record low solar activity of the Maunder and Spörer Minima [70] as well as volcanic activity and internal oscillations in the climate system [71]. The onset of the Little Ice Age occurred after the Medieval Warm Period, about 1350 [71]. It was the cause of the Vikings’ decolonizing of the once green Greenland [72]. This cooling period ended about 1850 [73]. Since then, the sea levels are rising without any significant acceleration component. The effect of global warming on the rate of rise of the sea level is thus much smaller than thought.” https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/nleng-2020-0007/html
For accurate, nonpropagandistic information on sea level rise see https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/
From your own source, Genius:
“ Global mean sea levels are projected to gradually rise in response to greenhouse warming.”
“On shorter time scales, modes of natural climate variability in the Pacific, such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), can affect regional sea level variability and extremes, with considerable impacts on coastal ecosystems and island nations“.
And: “we find that climate change will enhance El Niño–related sea level extremes
“A few more victories like this, my dear Pyrrhus, and we will be annihilated” ?
Victor some locations have no sea level rise or very little sea level rise because of land uplift and other local infuences.. Thats why you have to look at all countries and derive a global average, which does show globally sea levels are rising. Once again you are cherrypicking, and not thinking about why some places might not have sea level rise
Re Nigelj, 13 May at 9:11 PM
Since the deglaciation causes uplift in Antarctica of hundreds of feat(?) how will this affect sea level rise – likely not considered in sea level rise estimates? This likely also modulates the gravitational field, again changes sea level distribution. Further deglaciation slows the currents, in turn changes winds, again changing local sea heights.
For the land to rise under Antarctica, the weight of the ice must first be removed. This would take many centuries to millenia, even in a high-emissions scenario, because the interior of Antarctica is so cold. Once the ice is removed, it would also be a slow process for the land to rise, and it would be compensated by subsidence elsewhere as the semi-molten mantle redistributes itself. The gravitational effects of this process are second-order. They are quite a bit smaller than the many feet of sea level rise that even a partial melt of the Antarctic ice sheet would produce.
The whole process is so slow, compared to a human lifespan, that it is basically a theoretical consideration, entirely dependent on emission scenarios lasting centuries.
Also note that there are variations within Antarctica. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is a lot less stable than the rest of the continent, but also quite a bit smaller. It would still generate a nasty amount of sea level rise if it melts away. That process has already started.
Just from a weight perspective, since ice is perhaps 1/4 as dense as continental crust, I would guess the ultimate local rebound would be very approximately 1/4 the depth of the ice. – but that’s for areas above sea level. It also doesn’t account for other gravitational adjustments, etc. That would occur over tens of thousands of years.
Thank you for the great explanation John.
When I have time, I will read more on the effects of falling sea level rise near ice sheets – during deglaciation, as explained here (ca minute 18) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhdY-ZezK7w and on seismicity i.e. https://earthclimate.tv/video/bill-mcguire-waking-the-climate-giant/
At minute 50 Jerry Mitrovica talks about this here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_rGksRoG9A
The sea-level fall close to a melting ice-sheet is not counter-intuitive if one understands earth tides. The sheet is like a magnet, attracting ocean fluid toward it, but when it disappears the attracting force reduces and the water level lowers.
The other feature that people don’t appreciate is the lowering of sea-level with increasing atmospheric pressure, as occurs with El Nino cycles For some tidal-gauge locations, ENSO factors contribute to the majority of inter-annual variation in sea-level. It correlates so well in some places, that sea-level is a proxy for the ENSO index. It’s called the inverse barometer effect, which you can look up.
BTW, it’s also responsible for much of the flooding during a hurricane. As the low-pressure hurricane eye approaches, a bay may have it’s water recede, attracted to the low-pressure and pushed down by the leading edge high-pressure. As it passes, the water sloshes back in and together with winds will create the large storm surge.
@Paul Pukite
“BTW, it’s also responsible for much of the flooding during a hurricane. As the low-pressure hurricane eye approaches, a bay may have it’s water recede, attracted to the low-pressure and pushed down by the leading edge high-pressure. As it passes, the water sloshes back in and together with winds will create the large storm surge.”
Not really. The receding of the ocean as a hurricane approaches land is mainly due to offshore winds from the hurricane’s circulation pushing the water away from land, like a reverse storm surge. Once the hurricane makes landfall and the eye passes the winds reverse and shove that water back onto land. This is one of the reasons why the death toll in supertyphoon Haiyan was so high, because of the draining of the bay from strong northerly winds as the typhoon approached from the south-east, then that water got driven onto land when the winds switched after the eye passed, which caused not only a high surge but it came up very quickly and caught people out.
The pressure gradient in even a category 5 hurricane doesn’t have much effect on the sea level in itself. For a hurricane with a 900mb central pressure, the rise in sea level due to the inverse barometer effect is around 1 meter, the storm surge will be 6 or 7 times bigger than that.
Steve Goddard is a serial liar, and Boretti/Borelli/Parker–this person is known to use multiple “identities”–is, well, unstable as well as unreliable.
The Parker/Boretti ‘oeuvre’ was discussed at some length on Tamino’s “Open Mind” blog. An entree is here:
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/07/20/can-albertalberto-parkerboretti-handle-the-math/
Kevin McKinney,
There is a page on sock-puppeteer Boretti/Parker although it needs updating. The grand nonsense spouted by Boretti/Parker continues past 2017, eg here for “Parker” and here for Boretti.
(I’m not entirely sure saying that the appearance of the name “Borelli” derives solely from a simple typo here back in 2017.)
RSS has updated its TLT files for March & April 2023 (but not yet its Trend Browse Tool) giving a global April anomaly of +0.56ºC, down on March’s +0.66ºC but above Jan & Feb (+0.45ºC & +0.54ºC).
April 2023 is the 9th warmest April in the RSS record (=8th in UAH, 5th in ERA5 SAT). The first four months of 2023 in RSS TLT sits as =9th warmest start-of-the-year (=11th in UAH, 5th in ERA5 SAT). With an El Niño expected to boost temperatures through the closing months of 2023, the full 2023 calendar year will perhaps end up as a top five year in RSS.
…….. Jan-Apr Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +1.09ºC … … … +0.82ºC … … … 2nd
2020 .. +0.90ºC … … … +0.82ºC … … … 1st
2019 .. +0.74ºC … … … +0.76ºC … … … 3rd
1998 .. +0.71ºC … … … +0.58ºC … … … 9th
2010 .. +0.69ºC … … … +0.62ºC … … … 7th
2017 .. +0.67ºC … … … +0.69ºC … … … 4th
2022 .. +0.58ºC … … … +0.60ºC … … … 8th
2021 .. +0.57ºC … … … +0.62ºC … … … 5th
2018 .. +0.55ºC … … … +0.55ºC … … … 10th
2023 .. +0.55ºC
2007 .. +0.53ºC … … … +0.41ºC … … … 14th
2015 .. +0.53ºC … … … +0.62ºC … … … 6th
GISTEMP LOTI anomaly for April 2023 is +1.00ºC, the 4th warmest April on record behind 2020 (+1.13ºC), 2016 (+1.10ºC) & 2019 (+1.01ºC) while ahead of 2017 (+0.94ºC), 2017, 2010 & 2022 (0.84ºC).
The start of 2023 Jan-Apr is the 5th warmest on record.
…….. Jan-Apr Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +1.25ºC … … … +1.02ºC … … … 2nd
2020 .. +1.18ºC … … … +1.02ºC … … … 1st
2017 .. +1.07ºC … … … +0.92ºC … … … 4th
2019 .. +1.02ºC … … … +0.98ºC … … … 3rd
2023 .. +1.01ºC
2022 .. +0.92ºC … … … +0.89ºC … … … 6th
2015 .. +0.87ºC … … … +0.90ºC … … … 5th
2018 .. +0.86ºC … … … +0.85ºC … … … 7th
2010 .. +0.84ºC … … … +0.73ºC … … … 10th
2007 .. +0.80ºC … … … +0.67ºC … … … 13th
With the emerging El Nino, our global temperature forecast gives about even odds that 2023 will set a new instrumental record, with a 76% chance that 2024 will set a new instrumental record.
It also gives an 8% chance that 2024 will be above the 1.5°C temperature target. https://twitter.com/PatrickTBrown31/status/1657196782521315329
Yes!
Chris,
I see no sign at neither of that CO2 nor that the temperature rise iis beginning to curve down.
But,, I see a lot of efforts from humman side for this to happen. And a a lot of political religious commercial struggle against the same. A lot t of people do obviously feel intuittively that they will loose their wrrant, hegemony, and leadership then.
Chris,
The strength of the coming El Niño is presumably the big thing to determine the 2023 & 2024 temperatures.
Various projections suggest the coming El Niño is not as meaty as the 1997/98 and 2015/16 El Niños with the IRI ENSO predictions and the Met Office and NOAA projections all apparently showing a likely sub 2ºC Nino3.4 thro’ the 2023 autumn peak when 1997 & 2015 saw Nino3.4 peak at +2.7ºC & +3.0ºC respectively. The global temperature wobbles thro’ those big El Niños would relative to 2022 see a new ‘scorchyisimo!!’ year in 2023 but would fall short of +1.5ºC for 2024. (That is the graphic in your twitter link would require a +0.4ºC wobble when the big El Niño years 1998 & 2016 saw only a +0.3ºC wobble.)
But of course time will be the proper judge of this.
Thank you very much for this reference. I have to admit that this is too complicated reading for me.
It appears, however, that the authors did not deal with precipitation at all, neither globally, nor with a distribution thereof over land and sea.
As the relationship between moisture and precipitation does not seem to be addressed in this publication, I suppose that the document in fact does not clarify my question regarding temporal trends in the EEI and in contribution of latent heat transfer thereto.
Tomaz, I assume you are responding to me re:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022JD036728?campaign=woletoc
So far, I still can’t understand your reference to “contribution of latent heat transfer to EEI”, nor quite what you mean by “the relationship between moisture and precipitation”.
The reference tells us that there is an increase in water vapor, which we know contributes to EEI.
(It also tells us that the moisture content varies with altitude and over different regions.)
Perhaps you could explain:
1. Since we can already measure water vapor, what exactly is average global precipitation supposed to tell us?
2. Apart from some variation in the altitude at which latent heat is transferred to the atmosphere through condensation, which might shorten the path for radiant energy to potentially follow to space, how does that transfer affect the energy content of the climate system?
Zebra: “ Since we can already measure water vapor, what exactly is average global precipitation supposed to tell us?”
My guess would be that water vapour does not tell the whole story – the latent heat transport is realized only when the water vapour condenses into clouds. Further, water in water vapour only absorbs IR, water in clouds absorbs IR and increases Earth’s albedo. And rain removes the water from clouds.
But as I mentioned before – these can’t be resolved with using global annual averages.
Piotr, I am trying to help Tomas, if he is sincerely trying to figure this stuff out, clarify his thinking/formulate his questions better… that’s the hard part in science, not reciting factoids (which everyone already knows).
I challenged the usefulness of average global precipitation, and you butt in with “blah, blah, blah, look at what I know, and oh yeah I agree with zebra that average global precipitation is not useful”.
Either Tomas will answer the questions, which will show that he is actually interested in the science, or not. Do you really not get the point of the exercise, or are you just incapable of any self-control?
Zebra says “I am trying to help Tomas, if he is sincerely trying to figure this stuff out, clarify his thinking/formulate his questions better… that’s the hard part in science, not reciting factoids (which everyone already knows).”
Thomas Kaliz original question was “Do I conclude correctly that, in nutshell, there is (at least in the last 25 years and in a global average), more rain from less clouds? ”
I feel its a reasonable question and does seem hard to reconcile. I do not understand what zebra means by formulate it better and how you would do that .
I also believe that when people ask questions on websites they deserve open frank answers not interactive teaching sessions they haven’t asked for. if people want to do that sort of thing, maybe they should say they are not sure what the answer is, but we could go through a discovery process.
Nobody has given an answer, although Piotr made a useful related comment on the EEI.
Zebra plays down the precipitation issue which just looks like an evasion. and suggests Zebra doesnt really know why fewer clouds produce more rain.
And there are many obvious reasons we need to know why precipitation is changing.
I don’t have much expertise but I would guess that while the climate models predict less clouds in total (assuming they do that) its possible that within this scenario you get fewer high and low level clouds but more of the mid level heavy rain bearing clouds and this might explain the slightly increased total global precipitation.
Maybe one of the climate experts actually knows. I’m curious.
I very much doubt everyone knows all the factoids mentioned on this website. As far as I know we are not human encyclopedias.
zebra: “I challenged the usefulness of average global precipitation ” … for the application that Tomas wasn’t proposing ?Tomas wanted to use avg. precipitation for the Earth energy imbalance (EEI), so you were lecturing him that it is not the average rainfall but the increase in occurrence of intense rainfall events … [that] has serious consequences for humans” .
Very …helpful [zebra: “ I am trying to help Tomas“]
Zebra: Do you really not get the point of the exercise
wasn’t the point, as usual – to stroke your ego by paternalistically lecturing others on their language and informing them on facts irrelevant to their point? You know, the zebrasplaining ?
Zebra: or are you just incapable of any self-control?
Yeah, this must be it: I am just incapable of any self-control over my urge to post falsifiable questions to your lecturing others, say: .
Dear zebra,
Thank you very much for your comments. I will try to explain the background of my assumptions / questions:
1. Climate models seem to predict that relative increase in humidity caused by temperature increase is significantly larger than corresponding precipitation increase, see e.g. Pendergrass and Hartmann, Journal of Climate 2014, p. 757-68, DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00163.1.
According to an earlier answer to my question, satellite data on global precipitation seem to confirm this difference.between relative increase in absolute air humidity on one hand, and relative increase in global precipitation on the other hand,
2. I suppose that any mechanism cooling the Earth surface by intensification of the heat transport into upper atmosphere may influence the EEI. In this sense, latent heat transport may compensate the increased greenhouse effect.
By asking my questions, I would like to learn if the increase in surface cooling by latent heat transfer caused by 1 K increase in Earth average temperature (which is commensurate to the respective increase in the global precipitation) would have been higher than it actually is, if there was less terrestrial deforestation in the past.
And/or, if the current positive EEI causing global warming could be reversed to a negative sign, provided that we will be able to increase the evaporation rate from the land significantly (e.g. by reforestation and/or irrigation) and secure the corresponding water supply enabling to keep such intensified evaporation sustainably.
Greetings
T
Tomas, thank you for taking the effort to clarify your question(s). I will attempt to explain what I think are problems in your reasoning.
You say:
“2. I suppose that any mechanism cooling the Earth surface by intensification of the heat transport into upper atmosphere may influence the EEI. In this sense, latent heat transport may compensate the increased greenhouse effect.”
The EEI is defined as the difference between the radiant energy the climate system is absorbing from the Sun and the radiant energy emitted from the climate system to space. This is quantified by satellite measurement and Ocean Heat Content. It is increasing, according to the measurements.
This empirically contradicts your “supposition”, and it validates the underlying theoretical/quantitative principles, about which you seem to be confused.
Water vapor is the major contributor to the Greenhouse Effect, which is causing EEI. So increasing evaporation, resulting in increased water vapor, would have exactly the opposite effect from what you suggest, and that is what we observe.
You also seem to have a misconception about latent heat. When vapor condenses, that energy is converted to thermal energy in the climate system, so there is no immediate effect on the EEI… the energy is still in the system.
The effect, as I said in the previous comment, is limited to whatever increase in radiant energy escaping to space there is compared to radiant energy from a lower altitude. So you would have to balance this in relation to the increased Greenhouse Effect from the water vapor that doesn’t condense. But in any event, you are still “warming” the system.
I hope this clarifies what is happening. If you have any questions or disagreements I am happy to respond.
Tomas: Thank you very much for your comments. I will try to explain the background of my assumptions / questions:
1. Climate models seem to predict that relative increase in humidity caused by temperature increase is significantly larger than corresponding precipitation increase.”
If there was a question here (e.g. why?) – the increase in evaporation cause increase in absolute humidity (AH), in not relative humidity (RH % of the max. water vapour content at given conditions) and it is the relative humidity that determines whether clouds would form and whether it rains – below 100% you should not have any clouds/rains. So you could have had an increase AH with decrease in RH and in precipitation.
As for countering EEI by increasing evaporation it won’t likely work. The two main effects of evaporation is the warming by water vapour absorption of IR by water vapour gas and water in clouds vs. increased albedo of clouds.
Over the scale of Earth the first is larger than the second, that why (water vapour +clouds) have warming effect and in fact it is an important POSITIVE warming feedback.
Your latent heat has a minor contribution at best – as Zebra already indicated it does not remove the heat into space, it just puts it higher in the atmosphere, so the only cooling effect would be if a bigger fraction of the IR was re-emitted at that height escaped into the space.
But I doubt it would make a huge difference.
As for your suggestion of increasing ground level evaporation- I doubt reforestation/irrigation would be of much help. Say you evaporate at site A – RH=40% and site B – RH=80%.
At site A) evaporation would just raise AH, and RH, but as long as RH you get ONLY warming part without any cooling part (no increased albedo nor your latent heat)
At site B) evaporation – at first (i.e. for RH 80% => RH 100%) you only warm, then you start forming clouds, thus adding cooling, but once clouds have formed – their albedo effect is close to max, and the only extra cooling is your latent heat – but this one is limited only to the probably minor increase in the % of IR re-emitted from clouds that escape into space.
So depending on the local balance between warming due to increased AH and increased absorption by droplets or crystals of water in clouds, and cooling from increased albedo and slight(?) increase in the IR emissions into space from your latent heat – it may go either way – so even if it were a slight cooling, it WON’T be enough to compensate for having the 50% higher conc. of CO2 today than in the preindustr. times.
Finally – the difference in the increased absorption IR and increased cloud albedo and latent heat is HIGHLY LOCAL and Seasonal- hence the global annual averages of evaporation would be useless, or worse – misleading.
Dear Piotr, and dear zebra (apology for replying to both of you at once),
I have a feeling that there are three central points in your answers:
1) water vapor is an important greenhouse gas (what is certainly true)
2) condensing water may form clouds that have very different influence on th eradiation balance, depending on cloud character, however, there is an evidence that when average tempeature rises, the greenhouse effect of increased water vapor concenbtration (absolute humidity) overweights the effect of cloud albedo (mostly because, due to basically constant relative humidity, cloud formation will not increase substantially)
It sounds quite reasonably.
3) Earth surface cooling by non-radiative heat transfer in form of latent heat cannot influence EEI because the condensation heat only warms troposphere and stays in the system:
“Your latent heat has a minor contribution at best – as Zebra already indicated it does not remove the heat into space, it just puts it higher in the atmosphere, so the only cooling effect would be if a bigger fraction of the IR was re-emitted at that height escaped into the space.
But I doubt it would make a huge difference.”
I think that in this third point, both of you may be wrong. As it appears that the view according 3) is still shared and spread by some scientists dealing with climate, I would be happy if the topics attracted the attention of moderators on this discussion site. As it has not happened yet, I will strive to do my best and try to explain my present reasoning as well as uncertainties linked thereto myself.
In my public orgpage (a dynamic interactive scheme in the web application OrgPad), accessible per link
https://orgpad.com/s/VhvfDd5uRIP ,
you may see the story behind my questions put on RealClimate. It might be perhaps characterized as an „unsettled discussion about role of water in Earth climate“, which I translated into an idea of a „pilot scale geoengineering experiment“. In this orgpage, I put also some references that may be relevant for the presently discussed topics.
First of all, you can consult the cell comprising a very basic, rough explanation of the greenhouse effect from a textbook (Physical climatology, Dennis Hartmann 2016).
Let us imagine Moon inside a glass sphere having a perfect transparency for sunlight and completely absorbing longwave infrared radiation. Assuming that the mean surface albedo of the Moon and Earth are the same, the sphere would have established a new steady state („equilibrium“) with an average surface temperature ca 303 K (30 °C) and temperature of the sphere about 255 K (– 18 °C), which is equal the original average surface temperature of the Moon without atmosphere.
As soon as we fill the vacuum between the glass sphere with a gas, the situation changes due to an additional heat transfer enabled by thermal convection. The difference between the average surface temperature and average temperature of the glass sphere will decrease, because part of the energy coming from the Sun is now transported to the sphere by convection and the average radiative temperature of the surface decreases accordingly.
The original difference 48 K (between the average surface temperature and the average radiation temperature of a hypothetical „greenhouse cover“ as described above) thus clearly represents a maximum (let me call it „greenhouse limit“) of the greenhouse effect that may be achieved under given surface albedo / atmosphere transparency / insolation. Any non-radiative heat transfer mechanism will act as an additional „surface cooling“ and will decrease the average surface temperature as well as the respective difference between the surface temperature and the average radiative temperature of the glassy „greenhouse cover“.
You may note my uncertainty how to deal with the ambiguity of the term “greenhouse effect” as used in media and daily life. I think that it would be better using this term solely for the effect itself, in terms of the observed difference between the average surface temperature of a planet and its average steady state radiation temperature. The same term is, however, used also for a specific mechanism causing this effect in planetary atmospheres, namely for the “radiative forcing”, resulting from the presence of “greenhouse gases” that absorb the longwave surface radiation of planetary bodies. Furthermore, the term “greenhouse effect” is sometimes used also for other mechanisms causing the observed temperature difference. An example of these mechanisms may be the back-reflectance of the longwave surface radiation by clouds.
Anyway, I believe that we can say that any non-radiative heat transfer mechanism „weakens“ the greenhouse effect. In famous Trenberth’s diagrams showing graphically the energy flows participating on the Earth energy „budget“ made for a selected timespan, the arrow for the latent heat flow is approximately four times thicker than the arrow for the sensible heat flow. I think that this fact can be seen as a first hint that, contrary to your assumption cited above, Earth surface cooling by latent heat flow may play an important role in Earth climate. The second hint may be taken from the cited textbook which unequivocally asserts that the difference between average emission temperature computed for a hypothetical Earth with the same albedo but without atmosphere which is about 30 °C and the observed average surface temperature which is about ca 15 °C has to be ascribed to non-radiative heat transport from the surface.
One of the reasons why I posted my questions on the RealClimate site was just the circumstance that your view (that Earth surface cooling by latent heat flux has a negligible importance in Earth climate regulation) is still shared and actively promoted by some scientists. As an example could serve a fierce defence of this view by leaders of Czech Globe, an institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, published in October 2022 in a Czech newspaper as an answer to a public critique of their opinion Avex 4/2020 about climate change.
Their oponents criticized that Avex 4/2020 is completely silent about the role of the water cycle in climate regulation, and Czech Globe described them in their reply as people wishing to cool a closed room by opening the door of a fridge arranged in the room.
Personally, I see such „closed room“ arguments as a very unfortunate kind of „climate advocacy“, because spreading unfair arguments (If I understood correctly, even you admit that a certain part of the heat transported to the atmosphere must escape into space, because Earth can be no way considered as a closed thermodynamic system in a thermodynamic equilibrium) by people representing a scientific institution can, in my opinion, discredit the science as such.
I hoped that moderators of this discussion step up and make clear that the terms like „radiative equilibrium“, „energy balance“ etc., as usually used in the context of the climate science, in fact describe a mere steady state (which is still idealized, because the „Earth energy imbalance“ may be quite likely no exception caused by human influence but rather a usual condition of the Earth system) and have nothing to do with thermodynamic. Unfotunately, the moderators stay virtually invisible on this site since I posted my first question in the end of March.
Although the above mentioned ratio of the latent and sensible heat flow certainly reflects the circumstance that majority of Earth surface is covered by water, I suppose that asking question whether or not we could somehow „manage“ this ratio may be still relevant, at least because we do have technical means therefor. If mitigating the influence of rising concentration of non-condensing greenhouse gases this way was indeed possible, it might perhaps perhaps represent an alternative or additional way towards climate change mitigation. It could be quicker and/or cheaper than other proposed means like direct carbon dioxide capture from the ambient air (DAC) and might have less inpredictable effects than other “geoengineering” proposals like creating sulfate aerosol in upper atmosphere.
In this respect, I see quite unfortunate that even journals like Nature publish articles about DAC (which I personally see as a totally useless and potentially harmful idea, due to exorbitant costs that will be unavoidable if we really try to achieve the „decarbonisation“ this way), while currently available options for an active water management attracted hardly any attention yet.
Back to my questions regarding the total annual rainfall. In view of the above explanations, I still believe that it does fit with the total latent heat annually transferred from earth surface into space. Furthermore, I do not see any reason yet, why its current value should be considered as an unchangeable parameter, or as a parameter dependent merely on the average Earth temperature. I can imagine that we need certain sensible heat flux because convection helps to move the water vapor from Earth surface into atmosphere, but I have not found any clear explanation yet that the current ratio of the latent heat flux and the sensible heat flux is already at a certain natural limit and cannot be increased by any kind of human intervence.
For these reasons, I am looking for further deeper discussion on this topics. As this site does not enable graphical presentations that may sometimes support and simplify the argumentation significantly, please do not hesitate to use the clone of the above mentioned orgpage that I designed especially for this discussion and put your arguments and comments therein. This public orgpage with the title „Discussion forum: Heat wave mitigation in urban environment, solar energy exploitation and global water cycle restoration“ is accessible using the following link for commenting:
https://orgpad.com/s/6jf-rtG8wUP
I will be very pleased if the moderators of this discussion decide to contribute as well.
Greetings
Tom
@ Tom,
A few more thoughts for entertainment:
When radiation budgets increase, the air warms, yes? and also the evaporation increases.
This heating vs moistening of the air is characterized by the equilibrium partitioning of surface flux. i.e. the ratio of warming vs moistening turbulent fluxes.
This partitioning is temperature dependent. The principle is that at warmer temperatures a greater proportion of surface net radiation goes into moistening the air, and at colder temperatures a greater proportion goes into heating the air. The temperature dependence of equilibrium partitioning is related to the temperature-entropy (T-S) vapor saturation curve.
The sum is the total turbulent flux.
The net transport of heat from the surface into atmosphere by turbulent flux is related to the non-equilibrium (difference) between surface temperature and the effective outgoing radiative emission temperature.
The difference of temperature between the surface (hot) and the emission temperature higher up (cold) induces spontaneous dynamic atmospheric transport. If the slope of the gradient is changed, the dynamic transport must also change to reach a new non-equilibrium steady state.
In moist tropical regions, the gradient between surface temperature and the temperature of outgoing flux is large, and so the dynamic heat transport and dissipation is also large.
In warm desert regions, the opposite. With fewer clouds, a greater proportion of surface radiative transmittance naturally reduces the difference between surface temperature and outgoing emission temperature. The temperature difference is relatively small between surface, and that of the chorus of outgoing IR emitters, and so the magnitude of spontaneous dynamic heat transport is relatively small too.
Nevertheless, near surface temperature in low-mid latitude desert zones average higher than in a moist regime in the same zone. This is because the available surface moisture constrains the actual evapotranspiration vs the potential evaporation. This also constrains the equilibrium partitioning, forcing a greater proportion of sensible heat than there otherwise would be.
In spite of less total turbulent flux in deserts, the sensible kind is higher and the air is likely to be more stable.
More broadly, we know the Earth system in total can never meet the demands potential evaporation. We know that in MIP experiments the rate of actual evaporation(precipitation) does not keep up with the rate of global temperature rise. I think MIP experiments indicate that for a 5C increase of temperature there is only a 12% increase of evaporation or something. This equates to an average of around 2.5% per C. This is in part due to natural and unnatural limitation of surface available moisture in space and time.
The Earth is in part warmer near the surface on average because of the existence of dry regions. With a limitless surface area of endless water availability, the equilibrium partitioning of surface flux would be unconstrained. But, it seems obvious the equilibrium partitioning IS constrained.
I have not yet heard a reason to veto the notion that unnaturally increasing surface dryness must have a warming influence on average near surface temperature.
thank you
Tomas,
My goal, as I said originally, was to help you clarify your thinking and the presentation of your questions, but now we seem to be back to many many words that show confusion.
If you want to engage in a scientific discussion, you have to be willing to address what the other person is saying, and you have to deal with real-world data. Quoting myself:
I should have also included first that we have observed the energy in the climate system to be increasing in the long term… the apparent increase in the EEI is with shorter term measurements.
So I would hope you would offer a concise explanation for what we are observing, given that we also have clear evidence that water vapor has been increasing. There is more and more latent heat contained in the water vapor at higher altitudes, but energy in the system is still increasing. How does that not contradict your analysis?
Tomas: “ In famous Trenberth’s diagrams showing graphically the energy flows participating on the Earth energy „budget“ made for a selected timespan, the arrow for the latent heat flow is approximately four times thicker than the arrow for the sensible heat flow.
Irrelevant to your proposal, which hopes to use increased latent heat to counter NOT the “sensible heat flow”, but GHG-driven greenhouse effect. And the arrow for the latter is NOT 4 times thinner, but 4 times THICKER than your latent heat arrow.
In other words, in your model of a glass sphere without air vs. one with air – the MAIN
difference for the EEI is NOT the possibility of having latent heat flux in the sphere with air, but the air containing water vapour and other GHGs absorbing IR – and reradiating it in all directions.
Furthermore, latent heat does NOT directly export energy into space – it has to be RE-RADIATED there in form of IR, and from your Trenberth graph, on average, from all the energy absorbed by the atmosphere – only slightly above 1/3 escapes into space.
So your latent heat export into space is only 1/12 (= 1/4 x 1/3) of the back-radiation (IR re-radiation absorbed by the Earth). Thus latent heat loss to space is a minor contributor to the EEI even at the preindustrial steady state.
In the context of current changes – your cooling Earth by increased latent heat – not only would have to be reduced by the same 1/3 as above. and STILL match the effect the increased conc. of greenhouse gases PLUS the increased IR absorption by higher water vapour concentration from your scheme.
And all this massive increase in GLOBAL latent heat – only from tiny portion of evaporation:
86.5% of of current evaporation is from the ocean and you can’t change this – so ALL the global increase would have to be found within the remaining 13.5% of evaporation from land.
The two ways you proposed do not add up:
– not much room for the reforestation – not only it competes against growing population, food production and resource extraction, but is not viable in many parts of the Earth (Antarctica, Sahara, tundra, grasslands, etc …),
– increased irrigation even worse – not only has ugly downside (salination and toxic pollution of the soil, rendering it infertile), but it is already probably at its maximum – with aquifers mostly empty and fierce competition for surface water between cities, industries and agriculture, and between countries (Afghanistan vs. Iran, India vs. Pakistan).
Take ALL THE ABOVE into account and your big plan can’t deliver, not even close.
That and the fact that you have problems with basic concepts and/or didn’t do your homework (back-of-envelope calculations) is the reason why your:
I will be very pleased if the moderators of this discussion decide to contribute as well.
sounds a bit presumptuous. That’s like asking a busy university prof why they haven’t “decided to contribute” on the spelling by a third-grader. They contribution of specific topic articles and administration of this website is already more than could be reasonably expected, given all the other demands on their time. So don’t expect them to comment on your posts, particularly in the Unforced Variation discussions.
“Our current estimate for the year’s build is 268 GW (DC)”
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/12/23/global-solar-capacity-additions-hit-268-gw-in-2022-says-bnef/#:~:text=BloombergNEF%20Analyst%20Jenny%20Chase%20says%20the%20world%20installed,installations%20expected%20to%20hit%20315%20GW%20in%202023.
So we’re already over 13 times the 20 GW/year installation (which presumably is roughly matched by production) envisioned in the first nrel doc I linked to, and 28 years early (US installation rates are now around 20 GW DC, as I recall). Is this using up > 63+18.9 ~= 81.9% of glass production?
Granted, a lot of this production is in places with… well… …okay
(I have read that solar glass could get thinner. And better (general-purpose glass has impurities that impact transmittance of solar radiation).)
Regarding glass production:
https://www.iyog2022.org/images/files/77-economicsiyog-200925.pdf#:~:text=This%20is%20a%20massive%20global%20industry%20-%201200,fibre%20production%2C%20art%2C%20speciality%20glasses%20and%20secondary%20industries.
Geoff Miell 13 MAY 2023 I’ve found the authoritative source that I needed and I compute by trend extrapolation for 3.4 years after end of 2019 as 1.31 w/m**2 from that which is 1.14+0.34*0.5 w/m**2 which is the same as your preferred source (1.33 w/m**2) so OK. That reliable published science I’ve found is “Satellite and Ocean Data Reveal Marked Increase in Earth’s Heating Rate” authored by Norman G. Loeb, Gregory C. Johnson, Tyler J. Thorsen, John M. Lyman, Fred G. Rose , and Seiji Kato published June 15, 2021. Karina von Schuckmann’s talk I heard a few months ago is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QKY0DgHLlE The heat inventory plot in that ends at 2018.
The paper which I only read the Abstract of 3-4 weeks ago and skimmed through looking for pictures is “Heat stored in the Earth system 1960–2020: where does the energy go?” authored by Karina von Schuckmann (many authors) published April 17, 2023. Quotes:
“Over the most recent period (2006–2020), the EEI amounts to 0.76 +/- 0.2 W/m**2” (I suppose that’s where I recalled the 0.78 W/m**2).
“Today, the EEI can be best estimated from the quantification of the Earth heat inventory, complemented by direct measurements from space (von Schuckmann et al., 2016; Loeb et al., 2021)”.
OK, I didn’t realize that the EEI has been increasing at a rate as high as the 0.5 w/m**2 / decade. Note to self: I’ll have to take another look at my quick calculation 5 years ago of 0.20 degrees / decade + 0.06 degrees / decade**2 for +GMST if I ever find the time (it was based of course on what I’d read as the prior increase in EEI since 1970).
Interesting weather. Vostok has been running lows of -99 F, and highs of -98 F for the past week or so:
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/antarctica/vostok-station/historic
-95 F now, feels like -127 F, with a heat wave coming soon, possibly up to -62 F on Tuesday.
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/antarctica/vostok-station
Brrrrrr……icy…..
Speaking of icy, looks like the tripod tripped the clock on May 8 this year, about 47 days after the equinox. Might nudge the graph upwards a tad: the date this year appears to be about where the average was in the 1930s. I watched the weather up there over the winter – it was fairly cool compared to some recent years.
https://www.nenanaakiceclassic.com/
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/04/nenana-ice-classic-2021/
And your scientific conclusions of what all these isolated factoids about isolated places without reference to any global context whatsoever are?
The context is set by the subject of this website. Conclusions are that it’s COLD down there. -99 is a tad below normal per prl’s comment. Here is an interesting story about it – says it could hit -141 F some day:
https://www.livescience.com/9795-story-earth-coldest-temperature.html
Your “conclusion” that weather exists is 1) pretty well known already though it may be new to you, I suppose, and 2) irrelevant to any conclusions about global trends positive or negative. Oddly, when trying to make scientific conclusions about global climate trends, honest nonpropagandists look at, well, er, global data. Or at the very least the aggregated long term values in a large region. So no, by cherry-picking a few daily values from a few specific sites and ignoring the rest you completely miss the “context…set by the subject of this website”.
What profession(s) use cherry-picked factoids to mislead others? (Hint: It’s NOT the profession of research science.)
And no…the factoid that Gramps lived to 102 and smoked 2 packs a day from age 12 on does NOT prove that tobacco does not cause cancer in the population any more than a cold winter day or two in Antarctica “proves” warming–or cooling for that matter–is not occurring globally.
Some places in Antarctica get extremely cold! Who would have thunk it?
Gosh, it’s approaching winter in the southern hemisphere and it’s getting cold at Vostok Antarctic station!
The average May minimum at Vostok (2005–2015) is -64°C (-83°F). The recent cold spell 9-11 May was for minimums of -71°C (-99°F). So it’s a bit unseasonably cold now, but forecast to be a bit unseasonably warm in the coming week peaking at a -51°C (-60°F), before dropping down to minimums that are close to the May average. It seems that even at Vostok station, some days are colder (or warmer) than others.
Interestingly, the actual winter period at Vostok station has average minimum temperatures only a little (1°C/1.8°F) colder than May.
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/antarctica/vostok-station/climate [Vostok averages]
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/antarctica/vostok-station/ext [Vostok 14-day forecast]
prl: – “Gosh, it’s approaching winter in the southern hemisphere and it’s getting cold at Vostok Antarctic station!”
Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) issued a press release, published 17 May 2023, headlined Global temperatures set to reach new records in next five years. It began with:
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/global-temperatures-set-reach-new-records-next-five-years
I’d suggest the WMO can’t say it’s a 100% likelihood, but I think (barring multiple nuclear weapons airbursts, major volcanic eruptions, and/or major meteor surface impact event(s) here on Earth) it’s INEVITABLE with the current Earth energy imbalance (EEI) at an all-time high in the instrumental record – 928,000 ‘Hiroshimas’ per Day.
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1653515518400417792
Remote places like Vostok station may well stay very frosty for ‘a while longer’, but places where most people live are on a rising temperature trajectory towards becoming unlivable/uninhabitable.
@Geoff Mielle PS
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/05/unforced-variations-may-2023/#comment-811451
Sorry if my comment wasn’t clear, or confusing.
NGLs’ is complicated and confusing to me. There are NGLs from oil refining and also direct out of natural gas from wells. the term is broad.
Basically NGLs can be are now being used to make diesel and gasoline … and/or are added to oil refinery stocks to beef up diesel/gasoline outputs and quality. It depends, variations abound. Bottom line is not ALL Diesel fuel comes from Oil refining anymore – they cranked up a manufacturing process over a decade ago, to help fill the shortfalls in various types of Oil supply problems…. but back-ending more hydrocarbons ex-Methane Gas.
It;s not well discussed. I was surprised when i found out. and the documentation of volumes produced is blurry at best. BUt that growing fast, as per Berman graphs online, so fyi
NGLs are used as inputs for petrochemical plants, burned for space heat and cooking, and blended into vehicle fuel. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=5930
Abstract: Synthetic diesel fuels can be made from carbon containing feedstocks, such as natural gas or coal, in a process developed by Fischer and Tropsch in the 1920s. That process has been further developed by oil companies and is considered a viable option of natural gas utilization. Synthetic diesel fuels are characterized by excellent properties, such as very high cetane number and no sulfur content. They can be used in existing diesel engines without modifications or mixed with petrodiesel. Several studies found significant reductions in all regulated diesel emissions, including NOx and PM, when using synthetic fuel.
https://dieselnet.com/tech/fuel_synthetic.php
Gas to liquids (GTL) is a refinery process to convert natural gas or other gaseous hydrocarbons into longer-chain hydrocarbons, such as gasoline or diesel fuel. Methane-rich gases are converted into liquid synthetic fuels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_to_liquids
2008 … A Texas company says that it has developed a cheaper and cleaner way to convert natural gas into gasoline and other liquid fuels, making it economical to tap natural-gas reserves that in the past have been too small or remote to develop.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2008/08/15/219289/natural-gas-to-gasoline/
The point is, my point was, that the volumes of NGLs to Liquid diesel/gasoline is growing fast, while in reality supply of Oil and liquid fuels from that Oil are decreasing faster.
There is already a constant lac of Supply from Oil to the global demand …. of fuel and other components for chemicals, plastics and bitumen and NGLs etc etc.
This is what I have learnt recently, Via Berman et al, but do seek out better professional sources than myself.
Ned Kelly,
Thanks for your comments & links. I note that the Wikipedia reference for GtL includes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_to_liquids
Ned Kelly: – “2008 … A Texas company says that it has developed a cheaper and cleaner way to convert natural gas into gasoline and other liquid fuels…”
I note that article was published more than 14 years ago. Has this technology progressed to demonstrating the claims with (a) commercially viable operating plant(s), or not? I’d suggest that’s the real test.
Then there are ‘renewable’ synthetic fuels; so-called ‘e-fuels’. This process takes the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere and combines it with hydrogen to make it a suitable fuel. One of the biggest hurdles regarding these synthetic fuels is the cost – apparently anywhere from $10 to $38/gallon!
https://www.futurebridge.com/industry/perspectives-mobility/synthetic-fuels-can-this-be-the-magic-bullet-environmentalists-wanted/
You can do anything (within the constraints of the Laws of Physics) if you are prepared to pay the price (monetarily/energetically).
Ned Kelly: – “The point is, my point was, that the volumes of NGLs to Liquid diesel/gasoline is growing fast, while in reality supply of Oil and liquid fuels from that Oil are decreasing faster.”
A portion of NGLs (pentanes) can directly contribute to producing gasoline fuels.
It seems that’s not the case for producing diesel (and kerosene/jet) fuels, where NGLs are required to be processed in additional multi-stage purpose-built plants with sufficient capacity & viable economics.
So I’d suggest the growing problem is too much gasoline and not enough diesel.
It’s diesel that’s the workhorse of the current global economy – the predominant fuel for maritime vessels, agricultural machinery, rail and road transportation.
I’d suggest we/humanity need to stop burning ‘fossil’ carbon ASAP, if we wish to have a civilisation prevail into the second half of this century and beyond.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/05/unforced-variations-may-2023/#comment-811286
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/05/unforced-variations-may-2023/#comment-811407
Ladies and Gentlemen
Today we have Constitutional day in Norway, pleace congratulate and celebrate with me.
I have just planted out the flags in the morning sun with new Betula pubescens leaves, and the wild autentic (different from the Japaneese in Washington) cherries are blossoming. It is Prunus avium and cerasus, you see. . They are later edible, as the japs are not.
And prunus communis var damascus, norwiesco chlivoita has also come in the climate.
Leontodon officinalis Taraxacum is also there and the oaks are shooting.
Lilium con- vallium are soon to flower.
Oak berore ash gives splash
whereas ash before oak gives smoke.
Comment:
So what the hell are you fighting for?
“For Norge, Kiæmper Fødeland
vi denne Skaal vil tømme.
For naar vi først faar Blod paa Tand
vi8 sødt om Frihed drømme.
Saa vogner vi vel op engang
og kaster Lænker, Baand og Tvang.
For Norge Kiæmpers Fødeland
vi denne Skaal vil tømme!”
sann!
I have a new Ash coming up totally wild outside of the fence and an oak inside also totally wild.
That is due to climate change,
They were not on this side of the hill before but are now creeping northeast into the earlier Taiga together also with splendid wild advanced and sweet apples. That is Malus x- domesticus
Wiild Oak and apple is a traditional climatic landmark and Ash is Odins tree, Ask Yggdrashil, the worlds tree. entailing earliest agriculture lands with barley beers and swinery. Wild . apples have been dried,, milled, and baked since stoneage. Horses and swines adore them as they are.
The fllat earthers, desert wakers and blind believers should better care for their figue trees and datte -palms and learn how to piss first. .
Vitis vinifera is shooting.
The imported turkish blood- hazels have been seeding out, obbviously mixed with local ones, and are secured.. Hazel is also a fameous climate indicator.
I’m happy for you, but you’re not making any contributions to the thread. Your post belongs on Facebook or Twitter, not here. At least make an attempt to follow the guidelines.
Dr Chuck Hughes
I was told the same from what showed to be the chairman 0f the local Climate Surrealist society in their tavern downtown.
“you are not discussing climate, you disrupt the “conversation” at the tables, you do not belong here!” Genosse http://www.Geir/aaslid said to me quite surprizingly.
It follows their deep bottom backgrounds and mafiotic upbringing and syndicalistic training from home in the fameous “unions” and progressive pioneering missionary groups you see.
My culture and basic education and training and belonging is religiously politically constitutionally against that,
Thus me and my race represent their worst frustration and barrier, that they were never able to break here where I live.
I state and tell things that consciously violate and smash their central opperational liturgic dogmas.
For his special case I had spoken efficiently against his holy vulgar Hegelian marxist leninist “cycle” and climatic “cyclings” , and quite efficientløy simply by knowing other matematical curves for the discussion of nature and physics….. being professional also on sinus and cycles.
It is not cycles all that mooves and runs.
So simply smash that silly Cycle, and they will have their very CREDO and operational performance vocabulary dammaged, and that hurts.
So that rather facultary and orderly studied physics chemistery biology meteorology oceanography glaciology geology can get the upper hand on them.
That hurts even more.
You are not supposed to administer and to instruct the guidelines here, ,
because that is a basic routine of trained gangsters.
It takes 1 1qvasi chairman and 3 fellows to applaud from the audience, to take over any given, ideal and “burgeoise” society, party and “forum”, according to Lenin and his textbook on “Party- work” and “scientific socialism”.
That was shown at the institute of philosophy when I was there, and I have seen it again and again and again even by the conservatives later in civil society.
Lenin studied for years in western Europe and most probably learnt it from the downtown Mafia there in The Emperors days.
So I suggest that we must have Genosse Chuck H. discussing rules and regulations and class belongings , under more strict observation from now on!
I repeat….!
4 comrades of the blood, the schnapps and the beers and the sausseages, and with one mascot lady also to know them , is what can train on LENINs Poker together in the civil taverns with open doors first. And then further in the scientific institutes and websites.
So you respond with another load of horse manure and nonsense. I can’t make sense of anything you’re saying. Your comments are completely useless.
Your senses and your “uses” may be inferiour then. Have them checked up.
You see, a minimum of higher formation and general academic aqusintance would give you no problems with such things, and I check up that on people if they make me too suspicious.
If that lack repeats and shows communist mabnifesto with o, I label it DDR, Arbeiter und Bauernfakultät in Greifswald, and Asbestos Palatz der Republik in East Berlin.
Which gives a further useful psycho – anaqlytical hypo- thesis. also for others.
It roots in racial political warfare against Baccalaureus 1, Mittlere Reife of presumably western civilization. Which is a main syndrom of especially organized and trained, snobbish vulgar populism, ..
With the next El Nino brewing, a Science article reports that the resulting climate disturbance will cost the global economy trillions of $$$, with “most of it borne by the world’s poorest nations in the tropics.”
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-years-el-nio-global-economy.html
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf2983
I recall last year suggesting in one of these threads that being able to predict the next El Nino years in advance could “save countless lives”, and then getting hammered for that.
@ P.Pukite
I have heard the same from Lyndon Jonson in Oslo 1963 on a diplomatc visit propagating for the NASA- projects, the possible civil benefits and values of all that space research. Improoved longtime regional and global weather forecasts was maybe his strongest point.
I later had quite dramatic personal benefits from the post apollo radical development of micro electronic integrated cirquits that was raining down on earth.,
And have come to think that Johnson was the great lobbyist for NASA in the congress. And that the works of roger Revelle and Keeling was part of it, and that James Hansen was set to explain the russian findings of extreemly high ground temperatures on Venus by the Venera- sondes.
Thus you have it , James Hansens fameous royal thoughts on behalf of NASA GISS to the US congress.
I must say I am quite impressed by todays weather forecasts and display of that by updated means.
But it seems that the prediction of ENSO has been lagging behind that, for some strange and unknown reason. And come to think Maybe it is unpredictable the way we expect predictions to be?
Einstein and Niels Bohr came together to discuss physics, 2 roosters or 2 jews in the same basket . It became very tense.
Einstein: “God does not play with daise!” Einstein hated Bohrs explaination of the unpredictability (trans- scendence?) of elementary particle behaviours. where statistics better take over.
Niels Bohrs fameous reply: “Albert, don`t tell God how he shall not play!”
Discussion:
Maybe the Pacific ocean is a further area where God is playing with daise? Wherefore we in Niels Bohrs spirit must resign on certain “classical” conscepts of physical determinism there? as they have also done with great success in meteorology. That means, be prepared for any eventuality, because yes or no cannot be determined there.
It is a matter of finding out what can be determined and what can not be determined, and why.
Certain real things cannot, and should not be tried modelled the “classic” or “conventional” way.
Is the climate change scare legit?
https://soundcloud.com/thelarslarsonshow/chuck-wiese-whats-causing-record-temperatures-in-portland-this-weekend
Saw it here:
https://www.larslarson.com/unraveling-the-mystery-behind-portlands-record-breaking-weekend-temperatures/
Lars Larsen??? Good Lord. Have you paid him his $20 for his official Larsen AR-faced “challenge coin” yet? (Funny grift, that.) Or filed an official “criminal alien report” on your lawn guy with him yet? THIS is where you get your “science”??? I repeat: Good Lord.
Back to science, daily records in single locations mean next to nothing climatically even for single location climate let alone global. Further, outliers are particularly low in statistical power to make any statement at all as they are rare by definition.
There are statistically valid ways of analyzing outlier data to estimate underlying trends. Actuaries do it all the time. One elementary way is to examine the ratio of new record highs to new record lows over time. If there is no underlying trend, the expected ratio is 1:1. Even with the vastly reduced statistical power resulting from throwing out the overwhelming majority of the data–like you try here–that is not the case I am sad to inform you. New highs outnumber new lows around 2:1 these days which is quite statistically significant. What would Mr. Larsen conclude from that fact? On the other hand, what would a non-propagandist conclude?
Perhaps the 2:1 ratio these days is due to more weather stations being in urban areas as the country is paved over from sea to shining sea? Urban heat island effect.
Mr. KIA, I am beginning to become genuinely concerned about the degradation of your cognitive faculties. This question has been examined in minute detail–and it is in fact considered in every temperature product produced. Someone who has been hanging around here as long as you have would certainly know that unless their long-term memory were degraded. Maybe it’s time to take that test where the doctor shows you pictures of camels, dogs, etc.
Jgnfld, Be careful with that therm “outlier”. A true outlier is not representative of the parent distribution at all and so conveys no real information. An extreme, or more generally, an order statistic can convey critical information about the tails of the parent distribution. Moreover, when comparing distributions–e.g. current vs. historical–it can be invaluable.
Evidence?
(Of course not. Propagandists don’t do evidence.)
jgnfld said:
From last year 2022:
https://twitter.com/RARohde/status/1660614637921132546
Yet, I don’t quite understand the statistics here. Why are daily record readings not as unbalanced hot vs cold? All-time extremes are unbalanced 9 to 1, hot to cold. Monthly records around 6 to 1. But daily are unbalanced only 3 to 1.
BTW, I don’t care what Mr. KIA has to say
Today an update has been posted by Hansen https://twitter.com/DrJamesEHansen/status/1659567180055298050
..page 26 makes comparisons with the PETM, but is avoiding more detail on possible isolated fault line connected methane – as has been reported recently.
Also I would like to see a more detailed definition on climate sensitivity, why is there no mention of transient climate sensitivity? Equilibrium, Earth.. and I do not understand how we can possible calculate a TCS, without knowing the exact forcing. Since the forcing depends on feedbacks, the bottom line is always, it can get worse.
Here’s the Hansen paper…
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/Documents/PipelinePaper.2023.05.19.pdf
@ All and everyone
Do you read about cathastrophic, ongoing rain and flood in Italia east and west, and on Balkan?
It disqualifies a lot of speculations here and sustains others
I saw 887 millimeters in 24 hours somewhere.
They mention Korsika, Genova, Liguria, Ravenna, Bologna,…. and further in Bosnia and Balkan.
Not only catastrophic floods, but also earth and mudslides.
I have heard and seen it predicted by our Dept of environment.
“Due to global warming the weather in the near future will become Warmer, Wetter, and Wilder!”
Add “Worse” to that, and it is easily remembered : The weather will soon become WWWW!
It is rather what I believe.
It simply follows from Claussius Clappeyron and Aristoteles. No doubt about it.
And rainbarrels are helpless against that.
Make the best out of it.
New Zealand has endured record setting floods in recent months. Clearly this is influenced by global warming.
The denialists have suggested the recent global flooding all caused by the Tongan volcanic eruption of January 2022 that injected water vapor into the stratosphere. It seems to me this would mainly influence high level clouds where the rain doesn’t reach the earth, and that the eruption is over a year ago so it wouldn’t still have any significant effect? Couldn’t find anything on this. Does anyone have information or thoughts?
No ‘BAU’?
‘Most’ ‘economic thinking’ is ‘short run’ and ‘redundant’? ‘It’ ignores the ‘supply side’? ‘Growth’ {and ‘civilisation’} depends upon ‘cheap’ F.F. – those so called ‘halcyon days’ are ‘over’. ?
“The crisis now unfolding, however, is entirely different to the 1970s in one crucial respect… The 1970s crisis was largely artificial. When all is said and done, the oil shock was nothing more than the emerging OPEC cartel asserting its newfound leverage following the peak of continental US oil production. There was no shortage of oil any more than the three-day-week had been caused by coal shortages. What they did, perhaps, give us a glimpse of was what might happen in the event that our economies depleted our fossil fuel reserves before we had found a more versatile and energy-dense alternative. . . . That system has been on the life-support of quantitative easing and near zero interest rates ever since. Indeed, so perilous a state has the system been in since 2008, it was essential that the people who claim to be our leaders avoid doing anything so foolish as to lockdown the economy or launch an undeclared economic war on one of the world’s biggest commodity exporters . . . And this is why the crisis we are beginning to experience will make the 1970s look like a golden age of peace and tranquility. . . . The sad reality though, is that our leaders – at least within the western empire – have bought into a vision of the future which cannot work without some new and yet-to-be-discovered high-density energy source (which rules out all of the so-called green technologies whose main purpose is to concentrate relatively weak and diffuse energy sources). . . . Even as we struggle to reimagine the 1970s in an attempt to understand the current situation, the only people on Earth today who can even begin to imagine the economic and social horrors that await western populations are the survivors of the 1980s famine in Ethiopia, the hyperinflation in 1990s Zimbabwe, or, ironically, the Russians who survived the collapse of the Soviet Union.” ?
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2022/07/01/bigger-than-you-can-imagine/
“It is this belief in a new digital revolution which gave rise to the much-derided article by Danish politician, Ida Auken – originally titled “Welcome to 2030: I own nothing, I have no privacy, and life has never been better.” More popularly known as “you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy.” It is a world of digital currencies and digital IDs, vaccine passports and 15-minute cities, electrification and driverless cars. All of it based around the “energy too cheap to meter” from wind turbines and solar panels, and all of it operated by autonomous artificial intelligence within the “singularity” of the “internet of things.”
It is a mirage, of course… one only visible to so-called “virtuals” – people whose lives and careers are now so detached from the material world that, were there not so many of them, could otherwise be diagnosed as certifiably insane. The real world, meanwhile, looks more akin to the second global collapse – the first being the collapse of the integrated economies of the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean empires sometime around 1186 BCE. The majority of ordinary people have seen their living standards decline over the past two decades – a process compounded and accelerated by two years of lockdowns followed by a year of self-destructive sanctions on key resources.”?
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2023/03/01/paradise-postponed
Good quality deposits of minerals are known to be relatively scarce, and on current rates of materials use its virtually self evident we could run out of some metals eventually, or more accurately they will be extremely expensive to extract by requiring a lot of energy and processing. This is the hand nature has dealt us.
Its a daunting proposition because it means we may have to eventually go without some technology we take for granted, and also get by using less energy. All other things being equal. If the world population shrinks fairly fast it would offset the problem. As will recycling.
But Im not convinced severe materials shortages are imminent. Back in the 1980s I recall studies were saying the world would run out of various metals by the 1990s. Read the fine print and their calculations are usually based on known land based reserves at current extraction prices.
No account is taken of known reserves that are slightly less economic to extract, minerals dissolved in sea water and the possibility of future discoveries of new deposits of both high and low grade ores, and improvements in the ability to extract and refine ores.
Its all doomy hype driven by people with various unspoken agendas. Any website called “The consciousness if sheep” should be sending you a red alert its unlikely to be objective. It looked a bit evidence free and incoherent to me.
nigelj; – “But Im not convinced severe materials shortages are imminent.”
I guess it depends on what the contextual definition of “imminent” is: Minutes? Hours? Days? Weeks? Months? Years? Decades?
Did you actually view & listen to the YouTube video titled EXTRACTED – How the Quest for Mineral Wealth Is Plundering the Planet, duration 0:08:57, nigelj?
Ugo Bardi says from time interval 0:00:55:
“We are not running out of any mineral, but extracting and producing minerals is becoming more expensive because of depletion.
So a fundamental issue in the question of mineral resources is how the extraction and production costs are related to energy, because extracting minerals from the ground requires a lot of energy. You have to grind rock, to dig holes in the ground, to process rock, and to extract the minerals out of it – the minerals you need – because the mineral never comes, never comes pure – it’s always mixed with a matrix, which is usually rock.
Now, you have two problems.
One is that as you move on exploiting the resource, you exhaust those resources which are highly concentrated, easy to extract, and giving you a good yield, and you don’t have to use too much energy to extract them. And this is one problem.
The other problem is that the energy you use to extract anything normally comes from hydrocarbons.
The mineral industry uses a lot of energy from fossil fuels.
About ten percent of the world’s energy production is used in… by the mining industry.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_Y29DqzWkc
More comprehensive information is in Ugo Bardi’s Apr 2014 book – Extracted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth Is Plundering the Planet, a 368-page paperback.
https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/extracted-2014/
I’ve read it. I recommend you should read it too, if you wish to gain a better understanding of the issues of resource depletion.
What’s the premier fuel currently used in mining, agriculture, marine & land transportation sectors? Diesel/gasoil, light and heavy bunker fuels.
Where do these fuels come from? From the heavier crude oils.
It’s the heavier crudes containing the longer-chain hydrocarbon molecules that are apparently becoming scarcer.
See my earlier comments to you above & repeat again for my comments in Mar 2023: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/05/unforced-variations-may-2023/#comment-811317
Most crude oil producing countries have passed peak production. Some countries are still pre-peak, and some are at peak. Ever fewer pre-peak oil producing countries need to compensate for post-peak oil producing countries, or total world oil production begins declining.
Data indicates Saudi Arabia & Russia are now looking like they too have passed peak crude oil production.
See my earlier comments: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/05/unforced-variations-may-2023/#comment-811451
Many US crude oils lack the heavy compounds for diesel.
“Oil drilling is collapsing.”
https://twitter.com/aeberman12/status/1659914615361265666
nigelj: – “Its all doomy hype driven by people with various unspoken agendas.”
I follow the evidence/data.
It seems to me you appear to be ignoring inconvenient evidence/data that contradicts your ‘brightside’ narrative.
Geoff Miell
Thanks for the links. I will read them in detail eventually. This is just a quick response to your post:
By running out of minerals imminently (getting very expensive to extract) I meant this century or next. I should have been more specific.
I was also talking metals based minerals. That should be clear from the context.
I agree that oil production has likely already peaked. When we run low on heavy crude its just another reason why we will have little choice but to expand renewables. We should be phasing out burning oil anyway due to the climate problem.
Please note that Jacobson has published peer reviewed research that we have enough materials that can be economically extracted to build a grid powered by renewables. I posted a link upthread somewhere. This carries more weight than You tube videos and their so called data.
I don’t disagree with your concerns in principle, but you might be at risk of ignoring research that contradicts your dark side narrative!
If the costs of minerals extraction have already gone up, its had very little impact that I’m aware of on cost of products we buy. A lot of technology has actually fallen in price in recent decades and even the last few years. It certainly hasnt increased in price all that hugely. Its why I get sceptical that we face an imminent and huge problem in coming decades.
However its inevitable we will face high metals and oil extraction costs eventually. Then we will have to adapt as Ive stated previously. We will have to decrease our consumption.
But what is it that you expect us to do right now?
Do you think we should just go on burning oil?
Are you opposed to building out a renewables electricity grid, as best we can?
Do you think nuclear power is the answer?
Do you think we should make a big effort to reduce our use of resources to conserve them for future generations and reduce toxic pollution? How would you convince people to do that? Given most people are materialistic?
I’m trying to figure out where you are coming from.
Nigel you are embellishing the Jacobson paper from 2010/11 quite a lot.
The link is paywalled provides next to nothing as far as data is concerned, and is extremely outdated – it only says:
Material resources
In a global all-WWS-power system, the new technologies produced in the greatest abundance will be wind turbines, solar PVs, CSP systems, BEVs, and electrolytic-HFCVs. In this section, we examine whether any of these technologies use materials that either are scarce or else concentrated in a few countries and hence subject to price and supply manipulation……
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510008645
and nothing else .
Do you a full access version, or any other such “papers” that actually quantified what was needed in regard materials , resources, minerals and metals for a 100% RE energy supply with storage needs met?
In 2022 Michaux did a review of 4 papers
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368307829_Review_of_4_papers_in_context_of_work_done_Affiliations
including:
4. Review C – Low-cost solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity for
145 countries
Citation: Jacobson, M. Z. et al Energy Environ. Sci., 2022, 15, 3343
Michaux notes: The paper assumes that only 4 hours needs to be used for power storage. and
At no time does the paper discuss the physical engineering requirements to do this.
As such, the true requirements of the post fossil fuel system were not developed.
Again, this paper did not consider what quantity of metals would be required to manufacture all this new renewable technology (EV’s H-Cells, wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, etc.), or where such a quantity of metal might be sourced from. and
There was not discussion about what mining might be needed to supply the metals to produce all the new renewable technology units. There also seems to be the belief that mining of lithium, cobalt, vanadium and REE is some how ‘cleaner’ than mining fossil fuels, by virtue of being ‘green’. This is actually not the case.
It was not recognized at all that these units (wind turbines, solar panels, etc.) wear out after 10 to 20 years of operation.
Once at the end of life, they must be decommissioned and replaced. Where does the materials come from to do this? Recycling systems have logistic bottle necks and may not be able to deliver needed quantity of metals. [end quotes]
So this does not seem more advanced than Jacobson from 2011?
Well Michaux did a big ‘peer reviewed’ Report in 2021, over 1000 pages of accumulated data analysis globally. here is a link to the summary doc, with internal page 1 link to full report (it very unwieldy)
In conclusion, this report suggests that replacing the existing fossil fuel powered system (oil, gas, and coal), using renewable technologies, such as solar panels or wind turbines, will not be possible for the entire global human population. There is simply just not enough time, nor resources to do this by the current target set by the World’s most influential nations.
https://mcusercontent.com/72459de8ffe7657f347608c49/files/be87ecb0-46b0-9c31-886a-6202ba5a9b63/Assessment_to_phase_out_fossil_fuels_Summary.pdf
some data graphs etc 2022
https://www.akadeemia.ee/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/simon-michaux.-30.05.2022.pdf
a more recent 20 pg summary is here
“Mining production & existing reserves are not enough to manufacture the first generation of renewable technology” (to replace all FF energy)
https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2023-02/1.%20Simon%20Michaus-Challenges%20and%20Bottlenecks%20for%20the%20Green%20Transition.pdf
His home page with most of his work/info is at https://www.simonmichaux.com/
While an outlier with some unusual assumptions eg needing a month of back up electricity storage on average to handle long period shortfalls of wind/solar, during winter time especially, he is the first to truly quantify the data down to total RE /storage units required and the amount of energy mining minerals and metals required to build them,
nigelj: – “By running out of minerals imminently (getting very expensive to extract) I meant this century or next.”
Extracting these minerals using what energy system, nigelj?
The extractive industries are currently reliant on an energy system that’s predominantly based on petroleum fuels, and more particularly diesel fuels. I’d suggest that’s the critical path.
Disrupt or reduce global diesel supplies and the whole global economy becomes disrupted.
nigelj: – “When we run low on heavy crude its just another reason why we will have little choice but to expand renewables.”
Data indicates global heavy crude oils are already becoming relatively scarce. The interesting question is: Will the decline rate of global heavy crude oil supplies (and thus the decline of supplies of diesel/gasoil fuels) outrun the deployment rate of renewables?
nigelj: – “Do you think we should just go on burning oil?”
We/humanity need to stop burning carbon-based substances ASAP.
We/humanity need to also end our petroleum dependency ASAP, because the era of cheap & abundant petroleum fuels has ended – evidence/data I see indicates we are likely at the beginnings of a downhill slide.
I think the next few years will be telling on a number of fronts.
nigelj: – “Do you think nuclear power is the answer?”
Nope. Nuclear is too slow to deploy to make any significant difference for humanity’s need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/05/unforced-variations-may-2023/#comment-811500
nigelj: – “Do you think we should make a big effort to reduce our use of resources to conserve them for future generations and reduce toxic pollution?”
Yep; the alternative is likely civilisation collapse within the lifetimes of younger people already alive at present.
nigelj: – “How would you convince people to do that?”
Ecosystems and communities around the world are already being impacted today.
https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/climate/climate-change-impacts
https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/
For older people: Do you care about the future of your children/grandchildren?
For younger people: Do you care about your future?
nigelj: – “I’m trying to figure out where you are coming from.”
Your series of questions/statements suggest to me you haven’t bothered to look at (or not understood) my previous comments in this thread & previous threads.
Ned Kelly
“Nigel you are embellishing the Jacobson paper from 2010/11 quite a lot.”
No I’m not. I get rather irate when people falsely imply I have embellished things. You are not off to a good start. You didn’t need to make that sort of accusation to make your point.
“The link is paywalled provides next to nothing as far as data is concerned, and is extremely outdated – it only says: In a global all-WWS-power system, the new technologies produced in the greatest abundance will be wind turbines, solar PVs, CSP systems, BEVs, and electrolytic-HFCVs….and nothing else”
You are only reading the abstract and a few snippets from the paper. The full paper has more details on materials availability. So I haven’t embellished anything.
“Do you a full access version, or any other such “papers” that actually quantified what was needed in regard materials , resources, minerals and metals for a 100% RE energy supply ”
I don’t have a link to a free copy of the Jacobson paper sorry. Use google scholar and you might track one down.
“In 2022 Michaux did a review of 4 papers”
He is reviewing a different paper to the one I referenced.
“Well Michaux did a big ‘peer reviewed’ Report in 2021, over 1000 pages of accumulated data analysis globally. here is a link to the summary doc, with internal page 1 link to full report (it very unwieldy)”
There is nothing that says this is peer reviewed or published in a scientific journal like “Nature”. It appears to be a report he has written while working at Finlands Geological Survey institution.
However Michaux work is still clearly worth a read, and at least some of his findings sound right. Although I dont have time to read his 1000 page document and compare it to Jacobson. Do you? :)
One brief point. Like other reviews Michauxs work seems to be based on known reserves of minerals and extraction of metals at todays prices and mines that currently exist. I totally accept using those critieria there may not be enough materials to build a fully global renewables grid! However as pointed out previously, there are known lower grade reserves of minerals that are still feasible to mine and extract metals from, that do not add too many costs, more mines could be opened, and its likely more discoveries of high grade deposits will be made.
I’ve seen these sorts of pessimistic reports on resources before way back in the 1980s and history shows they were too pessimistic. However I hope I’m not being excessively optimistic either.
But thanks for the information. Its all thought provoking useful stuff.
Geoff Miell
“The extractive industries are currently reliant on an energy system that’s predominantly based on petroleum fuels, and more particularly diesel fuels. I’d suggest that’s the critical path…Disrupt or reduce global diesel supplies and the whole global economy becomes disrupted.Data indicates global heavy crude oils are already becoming relatively scarce. ”
Good points .
“The interesting question is: Will the decline rate of global heavy crude oil supplies (and thus the decline of supplies of diesel/gasoil fuels) outrun the deployment rate of renewables?”
Nobody really knows. Have been reading a university general textbook on geology (nerdy, semi retired) and things are very complicated down there in the ground and even modern remote sensing only tells you so much. I only hope that there is enough heavy crude for the transition otherwise we are in the pooh. I guess I’m just a bit more optimistic on this stuff than you are, hopefully not excessively so.
“We/humanity need to stop burning carbon-based substances ASAP.”
Agreed.
“We/humanity need to also end our petroleum dependency ASAP, because the era of cheap & abundant petroleum fuels has ended – evidence/data I see indicates we are likely at the beginnings of a downhill slide.”
Agreed. Found this a few years back. Look at the long term graph of the costs of oil extraction and it looks like the low cost days of last century are over:
https://www.businessinsider.com/timeline-155-year-history-of-oil-prices-2016-12
“I think the next few years will be telling on a number of fronts.”
Yes.
“Nope. Nuclear is too slow to deploy to make any significant difference for humanity’s need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Agreed in general, although I’m not opposed to nuclear power and it may have some role longer term in some places, and it could be made fast to deploy if the industry got organised and managed properly. Its faster to deploy in Asian countries.
“Do you think we should make a big effort to reduce our use of resources to conserve them for future generations and reduce toxic pollution?”
“Yep; the alternative is likely civilisation collapse within the lifetimes of younger people already alive at present.”
Its not clear that our voracious appetite for resources would make our civilisation collapse “as such”. It does cause loss of biodiversity, and pollution although many countries have minimised that pollution.
Shortages of resources could obviously make our civilisation collapse. But if we deliberately reduce our use of resources we are potentially deliberately creating shortages and thus collapsing our civilisation. Catch 22. The other problem is that a deliberate reduction in the use of resources risks creating poverty and pain, and mass unemployment by sucking demand out of the system.
Its very difficult simplifying complex societies. Google the work of Jospeh Tainter.
That said. IMO most of us could get by with smaller cars and houses for example. I do believe there may be a middle ground way of phasing down the use of resources without too many negative side effects – but it will probably require a slow phase down that doesnt jolt our society too much. Economic growth has been slowing anyway in recent decades so it might all be an inevitability.
“Do you think we should make a big effort to reduce our use of resources to conserve them for future generations and reduce toxic pollution?”…”How would you convince people to do that?”
“Ecosystems and communities around the world are already being impacted today. For older people: Do you care about the future of your children/grandchildren?For younger people: Do you care about your future?”
Noble ideals, and good suggestions and I agree in principle. But here are some the problems getting in the way for a large proportion of people:
1)Our brains are hardwired to respond best to short term immediate threats (like covid) rather than longer term future problems that unfold more gradually, like ecosystem problems, resource scarcity, and climate change:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5530483#:~:text=Humans%20Wired%20to%20Respond%20to%20Short%2DTerm%20Problems%20Harvard%20psychology,distant%20dangers%2C%20like%20global%20warming.
Its not obvious how we would change this.
2) Humans are very materialistic. Its like a drug. Our whole society and all our jobs are designed around materialism. So people say they care about future generations but scream at the thought of making any sacrifices themselves. Sure this could all change but it looks like a daunting task.
3) Humans are status seekers. Its possibly in our DNA, and many people use materialism to demonstrate status.
And its why I think its unlikely we will decrease our consumption too much in a voluntary sense, and thats why I believe our best PRACTICAL solution to the climate problem is building a renewable energy grid, even with the possibility we have difficulties. Although I do encourage people to be less materialistic and I try not to be too materialistic myself.
“Your series of questions/statements suggest to me you haven’t bothered to look at (or not understood) my previous comments in this thread & previous threads.”
Quicker to just ask you than trawl back through countless pages :)
Re Ned Kelly: “It was not recognized at all that these units (wind turbines, solar panels, etc.) wear out after 10 to 20 years of operation.”
Idk about the turbines, but this is largely not true for solar panels. Often LCA’s (Lifecycle analyses) assume a 30 year lifetime but that may be conservative. A person may replace a panel after 20 or 30 years if they need > ~80-90%(ish) of the initial performance – ie that much power, in that given space – but the old panel would presumably be given a second life in a new location at that point. The oldest panels, with their lower efficiency, might be combined with solar thermal applications, perhaps at higher latitudes – etc.
(Although I’m under the impression that keeping the panels cooler would slow their aging to some extent…
*(as well as increasing their efficiency)*
…, and cooling them with water, which is heated or preheated in that process, would help. This would make sense for rooftop applications, or maybe if community solar were linked to district heating…)
I imagine solar plants could reach a steady state where they rotate their panels and/or BOS (inverters, batteries/flywheels? etc.) relative to the panels – to make more efficient use of all the equipment, – at any given time, the panels might span a range from brand new to 60 or 80 or 100 years old(?), depending on the relative costs of area and BOS vs. recycling/replacing.
Nigelj:
“That said. IMO most of us could get by with smaller cars and houses for example. I do believe there may be a middle ground way of phasing down the use of resources without too many negative side effects – but it will probably require a slow phase down that doesnt jolt our society too much. Economic growth has been slowing anyway in recent decades so it might all be an inevitability.”
I do have a house that is bigger than I need but moving is a major upheaval in one’s life, and in any case, I try to minimise energy consumption by setting the thermostat to 15C and wearing extra layers in winter. I don’t get how people are spending thousands of pounds annually on gas and electricity in the UK. My car is fairly large but economical, it is useful for transporting manure to my allotment, and for local journeys I nearly always use a bicycle.
“Do you think we should make a big effort to reduce our use of resources to conserve them for future generations and reduce toxic pollution?”…”How would you convince people to do that?”
“Ecosystems and communities around the world are already being impacted today. For older people: Do you care about the future of your children/grandchildren?For younger people: Do you care about your future?”
“Do you care about your future?”
Older people: I am not making sacrifices because I want to live my retirement in comfort, and I’ll be dead within in 20 years so why should I care. My children/grandchildren can look after themselves.
Younger people: Lets party on down don’t think about tomorrow.
“1)Our brains are hardwired to respond best to short term immediate threats (like covid) rather than longer term future problems that unfold more gradually, like ecosystem problems, resource scarcity, and climate change:”
Our brains are hardwired to respond best to short term immediate VISIBLE/TANGIBLE threats. There was a lot of denial during the COVID pandemic:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104620232100075X
I suspect with COVID and climate change, part of what fuels denial is the fear of losing freedoms.
“2) Humans are very materialistic. Its like a drug. Our whole society and all our jobs are designed around materialism. So people say they care about future generations but scream at the thought of making any sacrifices themselves. Sure this could all change but it looks like a daunting task.”
Funnily enough I personally cannot relate to materialism. I am very utility minded, if I purchase something it is either because I need it or I am getting a much more useful version of something I currently have. I wear clothes that are nearly 20 years old because they are still functional. I buy new clothes from charity shops because they are much cheaper and it is consistent with Reduce-Reuse-Recycle. Maybe that is one reason why I have been unable to attract a woman throughout my life and remained single, because I don’t do the materialism thing therefore I am lost in the background of those that do.
“3) Humans are status seekers. Its possibly in our DNA, and many people use materialism to demonstrate status.”
That sounds reasonable, it is the same with the alpha-males in the natural world, where if a male wants to pass his genes on, he has to fight the alpha of the pack for the right to mate. I suspect there is an analogy with humans, if a man has nothing that makes him stand out from the crowd (e.g. me), his chances of attracting a woman are lower. All humans are descended from only a few percent of men, the men that took big risks and gained big rewards.
Adam Lea
Good points. I see nothing there of significance to disagree with.
Regarding women. Its getting off topic but hopefully the website indulges this because it seems important to you.
I’m not very materialistic either, but I do have modern clothes, and nothing too old. Men wearing very old or particularly old fashioned clothes could be offputting to women. I know that I find that women dressed that way are offputting to me so its likely the reverse might apply.
Women certainly drop hints to me they like fashionable guys. Old clothes send a signal the guy might have no money and so be a bad provider. So you might want to do a bit of shopping….
GWP Methane / CH4 is about 40 per AR6 (The sum of 81.2 divided by 20)? The methane Wikipedia entry in this regard is not properly cited, but mentions a GWP of 40.
See page 27
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Chapter_07_Supplementary_Material.pdf
Horsefeathers. The IPCC is biased, and fossil corps. use time as a fraudulent dilution factor.
The Global Warming Potential of Methane to Carbonic Acid Gas (CO2) is over two orders of magnitude (10 x 10 or 100). (See for example Howarth at Cornel) The use of one hundred years for a theoretical diminution of methane, via oxidation by the hydroxyl radical into carbonic acid gas and water vapor, is a strategic requirement for the advent of “natural gas” as a “clean transition fuel.,” or “bridge to a renewable future.” It is much more a gangplank to ecologic collapse and extinction..
I wonder if anyone could shed some light on Ian Eisenmann’s interesting virtual simulation experiment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGWp0757Edc
It looks like he simulates climate across 11 doublings of CO2. I have never seen such a thing. Ranging from practically 0 ppm CO2 up to something like 10,000 ppm
1) a: My first inquiry relates to the 0 ppm scenario, depicted in the slide at 37 minute mark. Approaching 0 ppm the temperature appears to dip approaching 255K. Is the idea that the albedo remains practically unchanged, and that it is roughly fixed at 30% in all climate states irrespective of trace gas concentration? Presuming there is no trace gas to kick start weather and heat transport, I suppose it is exclusively the surface reflection of solid ice that is maintaining the albedo at 30% approaching 0 ppm. I have difficulty to imagine a 0 ppm, or basically no atmosphere scenario, with cloud.
1) b: By inverse logic, for each doubling there must be a swapping of surface ice albedo for cloud albedo, to maintain this fixed 30% up to preindustrial CO2 levels. I have noticed in introductory lectures the climate is depicted with a fixed function of Solar (1 – 0.3) = Outgoing Longwave Radiation. However, I have always figured that the OLR must relate moreso to cloud fraction than albedo specifically, to account for variable fluid heat transport, latent heating at altitude, and associated condensation, radiative flux, and optical depth. In any case, it stands to reason that with a reduction of snow/ice extent under warming we should therefore expect more cloud to maintain this 30% figure in nature. I can’t see any other way.
2) I am also curious about the U shaped feedback parameter depicted at around the 42 minute mark. Am I reading it correctly that there is a very strong net negative feedback parameter across almost all climate states, and that there is an “optimal” stability specifically at the pre-industrial unperturbed system temperature around 286K or so? That peak, or maximum stability, is right at the base of the U. Moving away from peak stability, the feedback parameter remains strongly negative across all CO2 conditions except at the far extremes of snowball Earth. Please confirm I am reading this correctly.
Thank you.
To supplement my previous questions with respect to Eisenman, I have browsed the paper corresponding to the video presentation in some detail.
http://eisenman.ucsd.edu/papers/Eisenman-Armour-submitted-2023.pdf
I now understand clearly that while the total feedback remains mostly negative moving up the limbs of the U, the relative change in feedback is positive. i.e. from very negative to slightly less negative.
What is news to me is that the water vapor feedback “becomes fairly constant in climates warmer than the [pre industrial]”. lines 313-314.
I have not heard this mentioned at all in public communication. Vast accumulations of water vapor even in a 10C warmer world compared to pre industrial allegedly have no net positive influence. This is quite fascinating.
According the Eisenman’s paper, it is the lapse rate feedback which somehow becomes minimally less negative with warming. That seem a bit odd. nevermind.
It is all a bit odd, no?
Summing everything, it really all does boil down to the mysteries of unnatural cloud disruption corresponding also with moving up the rightward warming limb of the U.
My takeaway is that for one reason or another the pre-industrial ‘global’ earth system state evolved in such a way to maximize stability measured as global temperature; a system that was mostly unperturbed by humanity and was therefore dominated by natural process.
Furthermore, practically no amount of additional water vapor can cause a warming influence – and so continental ecological restoration and conservation of watersheds & stable soil moisture should not be feared. In fact, there can be only upsides in consideration of the currently unknown and underexplored biological relations to atmospheric heat transport and cloud condensation..
thx
hello Chris,
in consideration that the phase relationships with temperature and pressure are discussed in great detail by Clausius, there must be a much more consequential implication for the thermodynamics of things.
The Earth being right smack in the Goldilocks habitable zone where all three phases of water coexist in contact. The intellectual reduction of water phase transformations to concepts of mere radiative heat trapping is apparently misplaced. It ignores the far more interesting bits about atmospheric heat transport. Something special is happening there in the diagrams by Eisenman which helps it become very easy to see. A net warming influence of increasing vapor up to some optimized maximum state thermodynamic dissipation (see Axel Kleidon), at which point this IR radiative effect is overwhelmed by dynamical mechanisms. The vapor is warming, until it isn’t.
The illustration of water vapor + lapse rate makes it abundantly clear additional net positive feedback is coming all from this supposed lapse rate effect (I have more questions on that but nevermind for now). Considering the moist dynamics are all about vapor content and phase transformations, the radiation enthusiasts are revealing some sort of blind spot and underappreciation of what Clausius’ teachings are all about.
JCM: ” What is news to me is that the water vapor feedback “becomes fairly constant in climates warmer than the [pre industrial[” I have not heard this mentioned at all in public communication. ”
Don’t get you panties in knots – the reason you “have not heard about it at all in public communication ” is that it doesn’t not apply to ANY realistic scenario of AGW,
The title “Snowball Earth to an ice-free hothouse” wasn’t a dead giveaway? Or that they run their models between “1.6ppm to 3,422ppm” CO2. Humans we are not very likely to experience ANY
these situations.
If ALL THESE didn’t give you a pause, then how about the paper conclusions, in the part surprisingly called: “Summary and conclusion”, e.g..:
:
“Previous studies have represented the dependence of climate feedbacks on the underlying global temperature by approximating that the net feedback scales linearly, which is equivalent to including a quadratic term in the global energy budget (e.g., Sherwood et al., 2020). Our results suggest that this representation only approximately holds over a limited range of climates, spanning about 3K colder to 10K warmer than the PI climate. .
If we blew past 10C above the preindustrial temp. – the departures from linearity of feedbacks for warming above the +1OC – would be the last of our problems.
JCM,
In the Eisenmann talk in the video @35:00 to @48:00 you pick up on the λ[net] (either λ[eff] or λ[diff]) being described as “feedback” and being negative in the equation ΔN = ΔF[ghg] + λ[net].ΔT except at low ΔF[ghg] when it goes positive and a stable snowball Earth results.
This is a bit alien to the usual view of things when we denizens are familiar with calculations in which climate feedback is positive.
Indeed, the talk begins with the usual ‘ECS= graphic and refers to Sherwood et al (2020) which puts the 66% range of ECS at 2.6-3.9ºC when without any feedback ECS=1.
The point to make is that λ[net] is the ‘feedback parameter’ and in terms of the usual feedback discussions via climate sensitivity ECS = -ΔF[2xCO2] / λ[net]. (Note the two graphs in the talk @41.30, the LH showing λ[net](PI) = -1.6W/m^2/ºC and the RH showing ECS(PI) = +2.5ºC.) So when this λ[net] rises above zero, ECS hits infinity and, in the talk, temperature runs away into snowball Earth.
The other take-away from those graphcs @41:30 is that ESC is shown increasing under a warming climate at something like +0.5ºCΔECS for +1ºCGlobal ΔT.
@nigel, there is no need to be irate.
you say ” Like other reviews Michauxs work seems to be based on known reserves of minerals and extraction of metals at todays prices and mines that currently exist.”
You need to read it and not assume things. The facts and the details matter. Or should.
And whatever your experiences were in the “1980s” are irrelevant – either read the materials available today, see where they connect with today’s reality, or don’t bother saying anything. I could tell you my 1980s stories too if you want.
YOu also say:
“You are only reading the abstract and a few snippets from the paper. The full paper has more details on materials availability. So I haven’t embellished anything.
and – “I don’t have a link to a free copy of the Jacobson paper sorry. Use google scholar and you might track one down. ”
I did, there isn’t one which is why I asked you.
Given you have access to the paper, you indicated you’ve read it’s contents obviously – so how about doing a copy/paste of some juicy pieces about materials availability from that paper? The scope of it? That would be great of you could give an indication of what’s in it re metals, minerals, materials required to build a new 100% WWS grid.
I have seen other papers by him and that topic is missing entirely – it’s based on economics TWh output parameters not total quantities of RE units to build nor mineral/metals supply vs reserves or resource quantities. Michaux did a review on one of his papers where material requirements was completely absent as was any electricity storage component for the grid reliability and longer term storage.
How can you build a national or global 100% WWS RE electricity grid without some solid storage component given there is no longer any gas etc as a back up?
Ned Kelly,
I have read some of Michaux commentary and he does appear to base his findings on known reserves of minerals, and existing mines, and current extraction costs. That’s the whole point I was making. If he doesn’t please copy and paste it. Perhaps he has done different studies or reviews using different criteria. I just dont have time to read the whole lot they are very long.
I haven’t purchased the Jacobson paper. I don’t have a copy on my computer. I don’t know of any links to the paper for free. I’m going by recollection of discussions about the paper and a few quotes from it on another website some years ago. All I can say is it had more details than in the abstract. It did quote a lot of economics along the lines you mentioned, but I seem to recall discussions of availability of various minerals as well.
I’m not saying Jacobson is 100% correct on everything either. My point was only that published peer reviewed studies carry a bit more weight than general articles and internet chatter. I assume you would agree that denialists reviews and internet chatter is less weighty than published science. For example.
“How can you build a national or global 100% WWS RE electricity grid without some solid storage component given there is no longer any gas etc as a back up?”
My understanding is Jacobson does allow for some pumped hydro storage, but its fairly minimal. His design appears to be based on combatting wind and solar intermittency primarily by a significant overbuild of wind and solar power, and smart grids that share power regionally. If you do a google search you can download his detailed commentary on his plans for free. Here is one example:
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/CountriesWWS.pdf
Its long. I confess I have only read snippets.
That said Jacobsons approach to the intermittency issue looks challenging to build. Smart grids require a lot of new long distance transmission lines using direct current. Lots of challenges in this economically and politically. I would say he will need more storage.
I’m looking at the issue more from the bigger picture point of view. It’s clear building a global renewables grid faces a variety of huge challenges, and I don’t doubt resources will be one. It wont be a walk in the park, and ultimately we may find power prices escalate forcing us to reduce our energy use.
But the alternatives look worse. Burning fossil fuels is a serious problem we seem to agree on. It cannot continue.
Carbon capture and storage does not look feasible as a stand alone solution.
Nuclear power is a possible solution but faces its own challenges with resource availability namely uranium. It might help alongside renewables.
Expecting people to voluntarily reduce their use of energy faces huge challenges as well.
So it seems to me (and I’m open to persuasion otherwise) our best bet is to build out a renewable energy grid and deal with the problems as they arise. If we can persuade people to make at least moderate voluntary reductions in their consumption of energy that would clearly help. However I find some of Killians very ambitious suggestions in this area rather optimistic. I think reductions in energy use willl happen but when they are forced on us by rising prices,
And a lot can be achieved just with better insulated homes, more public transport, cycling, and more efficient appliances. This is the sort of thing we will probably need.
One thing is for sure. There are no simple, easy solutions all things considered.
I need help with an argument in a suburban newspaper here in Auckland.
Ryan Price writes: “I have only mentioned radiative forcing in relation to Richard Feynman’s 1963 lecture, which Dennis is studiously avoiding, where Feynman demonstrated that neither CO2 nor radiative forcing are required to explain the greenhouse effect.”
I had already answered some weeks ago, But have just sent another letter to the editor: “Science shows us Earth’s temperature and atmospheric CO2 level rise and fall together – and have done since time immemorial. For the last 10,000 a benign climate has fostered human civilisation. The last 100 years the CO2 level has soared and the temperature has followed it up: 1C. More coming.
“Due to the greenhouse effect, Mr Price. Richard Feynman never contradicted that. His lecture concerned a simple static system, not a “living” planet like Earth with a complex climate system.”
I have only a vague idea what Feynman was talking about and would appreciate comments. I think Ryan Price worked in an international advertising company…
Dennis Horne,
You seem to have an on-going tussle with a determined denier. My own local rag tends to shut down such to-&-fro so my own ding-dongs don’t last that long.
I cannot see your letter on-line which is quoted by the denier as saying of Feynman “why did he not say so” but I assume your argument was that if science had gone so badly off the rails (as the denier implies) then certainly before his death in 1988 the likes of Feynman would not have stayed silent. Mind your citing of Feynman is still not explained. Even if he didn’t ever address the science of climatology, he was quite strong on not deferring to authority.
The nonsense from the denier is quite straightforward to demolish, even in a short letter.
What complicates this is his referencing some Feynman lecture of 1963 (of which there are many. This series of 51 lectures is partly from 1963.) in which the denier says Feynman “quoted Maxwell while demonstrating how an atmosphere comprised of only Nitrogen and Oxygen would perform as predicted, with no radiative forcing, CO2 or H20.”
I’d suggest there is no such paper and the denier is doing no more than reproducing a garbled version of crazy-talk from the nutters at Principia Scientific who are certainly referring to this Feynman lecture. Myself, given the denier has not done what he should have and properly reference this Feynman lecture, I would do it for him. More so, as he accuses you (March 8) of “not even having read it.”
If you have identified the Feynman 1963 lecture as being “The Principles of Statistical Mechanics”, note Feynman does not mention Maxwell in respect to any atmospheric modelling as Ryan Price says he does in his letter of 8 Feb.
This 1963 Feynman lecture only set out a very simplistic atmospheric model to calculate pressure with altitude and with it comments on the distribution of Nitrogen and Oxygen as well as Hydrogen with height under gravity. This is not in any way ‘validating’ some theory that contradicts modern climatology and the workings of Earth’s greenhouse atmosphere. Indeed, Feynman never passed comment on man-made global warming, a theory well established scientifically prior to his death. So if your denier writes that “Feynman demonstrated that neither CO2 nor radiative forcing are required to explain the greenhouse effect,” he is both entirely wrong and in doing so invoking authority as a basis for his claims when Feynman was well known for criticising use of authority as the basis for an argument.
Dennis, how about starting with a reference to which Feynman “lecture” we are talking about?
And if you really want help debunking what sounds like typical Denialist nonsense, you could also reference the actual letters or give a quote.
Anyway, in a quick unsuccessful search for “Feynman’s Greenhouse lecture”, I came on this, which might be helpful to you as a starting point. :
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-07-05/in-praise-of-scientific-theory
What are your specific questions? It’s quite unclear.
Certainly it is possible to explain the greenhouse effect using more basic concepts than radiative forcing in a planetary atmosphere and employing other molecules than CO2.
Hi Dennis,
First, most people who quote Feynman aren’t smart enough to understand him. There are several posts on the Intertubes that seem to make this argument. They are all very careful NOT to identify the paper of Feynman’s on which they are basing their drivel. I have yet to find a citation even having looked through about 20 ludicrous screeds–most of which, interestingly, are identical.
I would simply tell Mr. Price to publish forthwith and get back to us once he gets through peer review. These people don’t even understand how science works!
IMHO the most pertinent comment by Hansen recently is from his…
Equilibrium Warming = Committed Warming? 25 May 2023 James Hansen
“…if we leave atmospheric composition as it is today, sea level will eventually rise about 60 m (200 feet).”
That is all the terror any thinking man needs to cope with – if we do nothing, or worse if we do anything between nothing and BAU, then ‘sea level will eventually rise about 60 m’.
Just run your cursor around anywhere on Google Earth to discern where the 60 m contour runs through the civilized and not so civilized world, and weep.
Tiananmen Square. 48 m.
Place de la Concorde. 35 m
Trafalgar Square. 9 m
Times Square, New York. 16 m
Parliament building, Dhaka, Bangladesh. 10 m
Tokyo, mostly all between 1 m and 60 m.
Every coastal town on Earth. Eventually nothing but bubbles and fish.
“…if we leave atmospheric composition as it is today, sea level will eventually rise about 60 m (200 feet).”; isn’t that the only message the world needs to hear? Isn’t that enough??!!
Adam Ash: – “That is all the terror any thinking man needs to cope with – if we do nothing, or worse if we do anything between nothing and BAU, then ‘sea level will eventually rise about 60 m’.”
Sea level rise (SLR) of 60 m will be highly disruptive for coastal and riverine locations, but that will be on a timescale over centuries (plural) or more. I’d suggest there are many decades to adapt for that.
But on our current GHG emissions trajectory, I’d suggest human civilisation is unlikely to prevail beyond the second half of this century, due to accelerating rising temperatures that likely drastically reduce global food production yields and greatly diminish habitable areas. I’d suggest this will be far more disruptive, and occurring on a much shorter timescale.
IMO, what’s far more concerning in James Hansen’s May 25 communication titled Equilibrium Warming = Committed Warming? is the Fig. 25: Global temperature relative to 1880-1920 (also in the Global Warming in the Pipeline preprint paper), indicating an estimated accelerating warming rate. Hansen concludes in his latest communication with:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/CommittedWarming.25May2023.pdf
In other words, it seems we/humanity will likely see a clear indication of how close to reality the estimates of accelerated global warming by Dr. Hansen & colleagues are in the next 18 months or so.
Meanwhile, the current Earth energy imbalance (EEI) is at an all-time high in the instrumental record:
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1653515518400417792
Berkley Earth lead scientist Dr Robert Rohde tweeted May 18:
https://twitter.com/RARohde/status/1658869195541446683
On May 20, 2023 surpassed 2016 as the year with the hottest (60°S-60°N latitude) global mean sea surface temperatures (SST) since record keeping began in 1982. While 2016 was at the end of a record El Niño, the SST impact from the coming 2023 El Niño has not yet left its mark.
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1659578806242529282
Head of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, Professor Stefan Rahmstorf tweeted on May 25:
The tweet included a gif animation showing areas of the globe (in purple) that would be considered no longer habitable (MATs ≥ 29 °C), for a global mean surface temperature of:
• +1.5 °C (increasingly likely breached within this decade, per Hansen et. al.);
• +1.8 °C (on our current GHG emissions trajectory, likely breached as soon as the 2030s);
• +2.1 °C (on our current GHG emissions trajectory, likely breached sometime around 2050);
• +2.4 °C;
• +2.7 °C;
• +3.6 °C; and
• +4.4 °C:
https://twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/1661450321766371329
Professor Stefan Rahmstorf then follows with this tweet (twitter translation from German to English):
https://twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/1661680905813893121
Wikipedia‘s reference for Wet-bulb temperature includes:
The US National Weather service provides a Heat Index Calculator at:
https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/html/heatindex.shtml
Billions of people could be on the move in a few decades as many locations in the world become progressively unlivable.
Thank you for your considered response. Some years ago, based on Hansen’s sea rise estimates, I put up a few signs around my neighbourhood indicating ‘High Tide 2100″ and the like as a way to alert my fellow citizens about the threat/promise of BAU.
I appreciate your points relating to increased temperatures in currently habitable zones, and certainly the threat of migration out of those zones combined with the loss of agricultural production of staples like rice there (not that the rice won’t grow, just too hot for humans to harvest it!) will have an unimaginably sad impact.
I have wondered what the potential upper bound of ‘high’ ground level temperatures is under these scenarios. We have already seen 60C in places, and we have only just begun to warm seriously. Is it somehow limited to below 100 C, or can the forcings see surface temperatures reach whatever number nature dictates, including above 100C?
Adam Ash: – “I have wondered what the potential upper bound of ‘high’ ground level temperatures is under these scenarios.”
The top-10 hottest countries in the world, 1991-2020 by mean annual temperature (MAT):
#01: Mali: _ _ _ _ _ _ 28.83 °C / 83.89 °F
#02: Burkina Faso: _ 28.71 °C / 83.68 °F
#03: Senegal: _ _ _ _28.65 °C / 83.57 °F
#04: Tuvalu: _ _ _ _ _28.45 °C / 83.21 °F
#05: Djibouti: _ _ _ _ 28.38 °C / 83.08 °F
#06: Mauritania: _ _ 28.34 °C / 83.01 °F
#07: Bahrain: _ _ _ _ 28.23 °C / 82.81 °F
#08: Palau: _ _ _ _ _ 28.04 °C / 82.47 °F
#09: Qatar: _ _ _ _ _ 28.02 °C / 82.44 °F
#10: Gambia: _ _ _ _ 27.97 °C / 82.35 °F
These are average overall temperatures, that include day & night, summer, autumn, winter & spring seasonal temperatures.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/hottest-countries-in-the-world
I’d suggest you look at the records for the summer peaks and winter troughs for these countries.
Per DEGREES OF RISK: Can the banking system survive climate warming of 3˚C? by David Spratt & Ian Dunlop, on page 10:
https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/dor
But the humidity level is also important.
https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/hi
Adam Ash: – “We have already seen 60C in places…”
Where has it been 60 °C? Are you referring to heat index?
The world’s hottest temperature recorded was 56.7 °C (134 °F) on 10 Jul 1913 at Furnace Creek Ranch, CA, USA [formerly Greenland Ranch], [36°27’N, 116°51’W, elevation: -54.6m (-179ft)]
https://web.archive.org/web/20180501140030/https://wmo.asu.edu/content/world-highest-temperature
But there are some doubts this is a reliable record. There have since been readings of 54.4 °C (129.9 °F) in August 2020 and July 2021, both at Furnace Creek USA, that are pending validation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest_temperature_recorded_on_Earth
Adam Ash: – “…can the forcings see surface temperatures reach whatever number nature dictates, including above 100C?”
I’d suggest not in this century…
Adam
“…if we leave atmospheric composition as it is today, sea level will eventually rise about 60 m (200 feet).”
This sea level rise is spread out over centuries as Geoff Miell explains. In fact its spread out over millennia from what I recall so it would only be modest sea level rise each year, of substantially less than one metre. We can adapt. Settlements would gradually move inland.
However the last IPCC report predicted a worst case sea level rise per century (including this century, ) of 2 metres, based on warming up around 2 – 4 degrees. This is the real killer because adaptation would be incredibly difficult due to the speed of change. And it would go on for several centuries at least.
Its predicated on an abrupt physical collapse of ice sheets in Antarctica with Greenland also contributing. Hansen did a study on this as well and predicted something like 5 metres of sea level rise was possible this century, although the IPCC seem to have settled on 2 metres as the worst case, Both would be horrendous in terms of infrastructure, the economy and loss of farmland.
This is why we must stop warming getting over 2 degrees c, and preferably stop it getting over 1.5 degrees..
“We can adapt. Settlements would gradually move inland.”
As Hansen said: “…if emissions follow a business-as-usual scenario, sea level rise of at least two meters is likely this century. Hundreds of millions of people would become refugees. No stable shoreline would be reestablished in any time frame that humanity can conceive.”
So staged retreat becomes nonsensical, as wherever you retreat to (below the eventually stable coastline) you will have to retreat from again a later day.
Hansen has also suggested that up to 5 metres rise could occur this century if we hit 1.5 degrees soon, as an upper bound of possibilities. It looks like we will install more than 1.5 degrees of forcing, so 5 m is not unreasonable, and of course that is the bottom of the melt S-curve, so SL rise rate will increase for quite a while.
At the same time we are faced with increasingly expensive energy for the plant required to develop new settlements and coastal infrastructure, so we can only afford the rebuild maybe one more time. .Any relocated settlement must be built above the eventual high tide mark – i.e. over the 75 m all-ice-melted level plus local allowance for surf erosion to a stable coastline.
Any port infrastructure has to be readily relocated, so floating jetties tied to piles and road/rail heads will be the norm..
We will not and realistically cannot avoid this, as until the CO2 gets back to below 250 ppm and the global ice block is put back in the fridge, the ice will continue to melt. Very interesting times.
Adam Ash
Firstly a clarification. I said that 60 m of sea level rise spread over millenia (thousands of years) is something we could adapt to . I said it would only be “modest sea level rise each year, of substantially less than one metre.” This was a typo. I meant substantially less than one centimetre per year, and thus maybe around 300 mm per century. .
Secondly I did acknowledge the possibility of 2 metres sea level rise per century if warming gets above 2 degrees, and how difficult adaptation would be. I struggle to understand why you didn’t read that.
However I do agree with your detailed assessment of the problems of adapting to sea level rise from 2-5 metres per century. It would be a catastrophic situation.
Your quote that Hansen predicts 5 metres per century for 1.5 degrees doesn’t look very credible even as a very worst case possibility. Hansens past predictions on temperature have proven very accurate but his predictions on sea level rise less so.
However the more plausible worst case scenario of 2 metres per century would still be a massive problem. Its too fast to adapt to. And the paleo climate record has periods where sea level rise appeared to rise at 2 metres per century. So there is a precedent.
nigelj: – “I meant substantially less than one centimetre per year, and thus maybe around 300 mm per century.”
Firstly, sea level rise (SLR) won’t be linear. Observed SLR is already accelerating:
1993-1998: +1.5 mm per year
1998-2012: +3.2 mm per year
2012-2018: +5.0 mm per year
See the graph displayed in the YouTube video titled Sea Level Rise Can No Longer Be Stopped, What Next? – with John Englander from time interval 0:27:20.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvqY2NcBWI8
Satellite SLR observations indicate an average increase of 3.4 mm/year for the full period 1993-present at:
https://sealevel.nasa.gov/internal_resources/471
Secondly, as more observational data becomes available, the estimates for SLR for years 2050, 2100 and beyond keep increasing.
In recent years, glaciologists Professors Jason Box & Eric Rignot have both publicly suggested at least a metre SLR by 2100.
For example, see my reference to Jason Box’s statements in Nov 2021: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2022/07/the-cos2-problem-in-six-easy-steps-2022-update/#comment-805978
A 2022 NOAA report suggests the possibility of 10-to-12 inches of sea level rise as a global average by mid-century, then in the second half of century, between 2-to-7 feet.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/04/unforced-variations-apr-2023/#comment-811073
nigelj: – “Your quote that Hansen predicts 5 metres per century for 1.5 degrees doesn’t look very credible even as a very worst case possibility.”
A recent study suggests the extent of future SLR could be vastly underestimated. An article headlined UCI, NASA JPL researchers discover a cause of rapid ice melting in Greenland, dated May 8, included:
https://news.uci.edu/2023/05/08/uc-irvine-nasa-jpl-researchers-discover-a-cause-of-rapid-ice-melting-in-greenland/
But I think increasing temperatures are a far bigger danger for humanity/civilisation in the next few decades.
Thanks NigelJ, and Geoff too, great comments..
One of the several unscientific worries I have may be illustrated by a trivial experiment I did a while back. I see the increased forcing as equivalent to taking an ice block out of the fridge as we passed 250 ppm, and it will continue to melt until we put it back into the 0 C) which drop down moulins to transfer that incredible amount of energy to the base of the ice slab. So there are lots of ways the ice is being heated from both top and bottom.
This scenario then sees all grounded ice getting to 0 C at around the same time, and then starting to melt at around the same time. It will not be progressive. Ice at close to 0 C has very poor structural integrity, and so a glacier could turn from a solid to a mush flow which trundles to the sea quite suddenly.
Is this a real issue, or am I delusional? TIA.
Thanks for your help. Here is the letter I sent earlier in the week. I have also answered earlier letters rebutting Feynman’s alleged “proof”.
Ryan Price still does not realise his position makes no sense. Either adding CO2 to the atmosphere is heating Earth – as the science predicted, measures and explains – or it does not.
Ryan Price fails to distinguish between the informal fallacy “Appeal to Authority” and deferring to experts. Appeal to authority is what lawyers do to fool juries – find the one in a 1000 “expert” who disagrees with the rest and is paid for it.
The thing about science is it compensates for bias and corrects error. Any one scientist can be wrong – a human with human failings. That is why it is the scientific consensus that goes into the textbooks and scientific reports, like IPCC reports. Fake science stays on the crank sites, for fools to read and useful idiots to regurgitate.
Science shows us Earth’s temperature and atmospheric CO2 level rise and fall together – and have done since time immemorial. For the last 10,000 a benign climate has fostered human civilisation. The last 100 years the CO2 level has soared and the temperature has followed it up: 1C. More coming.
Due to the greenhouse effect, Mr Price. Richard Feynman never contradicted that. His lecture concerned a simple static system, not a “living” planet like Earth with a complex climate system.
Most “extra” energy is going into the oceans. More than four Hiroshima bombs – every second. That’s why we see heavier rain and worse storms. Nature is following the laws of physics!
Do you remember what Feynman said, Mr Price? No matter how elegant your hypothesis, if it does not fit the evidence it is wrong. You can blow as hard you like, Mr Price, climate science is rock solid. It won’t change much, and neither will you.
Correct me if I am wrong but all the future sea level maps do not process geomorphology, the result of wave and seeping water modulating landscapes and coasts – in addition to sea level height. The headline, ‘Coastal errosion reached a new high!’
“Ramping up wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles can’t solve our energy problem
Posted on February 3, 2023 by Gail Tverberg”
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2023/02/03/ramping-up-wind-turbines-solar-panels-and-electric-vehicles-cant-solve-our-energy-problem/
Tververg is an actuary not a scientist. ‘Nuff said.