It is 33 years now since the IPCC in its first report in 1990 concluded that it is “certain” that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities “will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting on average in an additional warming of the Earth’s surface.” That has indeed happened as predicted, it has been confirmed by a zillion studies and has been scientific consensus for decades. Yet, when the next global climate summit is coming up (it’s starting tomorrow), we don’t only learn that the host, United Arab Emirates, intends to use the event for new oil deals. We also see more attempts to cast doubt that global warming is caused by emissions from burning oil, gas and coal – as so often before these summits.
This time making the rounds is a “discussion paper” published by Statistics Norway. It is noteworthy not because it contains anything new (it doesn’t), but because despite clearly violating the established standards of good scientific practice, it was published by a government agency. That’s why it is having an impact in non-scientific quarters including the corporate world, and it has even been cited in a submission to proceedings of the German parliament.
The flood of fallacies or deceptions begins with the paper’s title: “To what extent are temperature levels changing due to greenhouse gas emissions?” But the effect of greenhouse gases is not even investigated in the paper – which suggests the title is politically motivated. And the paper revolves around ignoring past studies and basic physics, using dubious sources, and the glaring blunder of arguing that warming at any individual weather station might be caused by random weather variations, without ever wondering how it is possible that these supposed random variations go in the same direction all over the planet: in the direction of warming.
The paper provides a good opportunity to illustrate how climate science obfuscation works, and to remind readers how we actually know for sure that greenhouse gas emissions are indeed responsible for modern global warming.
Egregious scientific errors
The paper contains far too many egregious scientific errors and logical fallacies to review here, but let’s look at one: The paper continually mixes up local and global temperatures. It performs some statistical analysis on local temperature changes and argues they individually might just be within random fluctuations (a 25-year-old argument, which works if you assume long autocorrelation) – but even if that were true, the same does not apply to the global temperature. In an unchanging climate, the random fluctuations would lead to warming in some parts of the world and cooling in others. The fact that all parts of the world, with very few exceptions, show warming at the same time cannot be explained by random internal fluctuations.
It’s not hard to understand. In a world with just random local fluctuations but no climate change, about half the weather stations would show a (more or less significant) warming, the other half a cooling. With a modest amount of global warming, perhaps 60% would be warming and 40% cooling. With strong global warming, close to 100% will show warming, and that is exactly what is happening. It shows global warming has overwhelmed natural temperature variability, and that is what the Statistics Norway paper confirms yet again. Its authors literally don’t see the forest for the trees when they falsely claim the opposite.
Figure 1: Map of observed near-surface air temperature changes since the late 19th Century. Gray areas show lack of data. The only region of cooling is the northern Atlantic, where climate models have long predicted just that due to a slowing of the Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation. The data are from the independent open-source Berkeley Earth project – a project by the formerly outspoken climate skeptic physicist Richard Muller, which in 2010 set out to do better than the traditional climate institutes and in the end obtained almost exactly the same results, just a slightly faster global warming. Muller was converted to accepting mainstream climate science by his own results. Image: Zeke Hausfather / Berkeley Earth.
Such statistics have of course been investigated for other climate parameters, too. For extreme rainfall events, a study of a global dataset of 8326 high-quality weather stations found that “64% of stations show increasing trends and 36% show decreasing trends”. Another study has shown the same for 940 Western European weather stations. That confirms that extreme rainfall is increasing – as predicted by elementary physics as well as climate models.
Blind use of statistics without understanding physics
Perhaps the most important law of physics is the conservation of energy, and the observed warming of Earth requires a huge energy input, which cannot be provided by random weather fluctuations. But even first-term physics is completely ignored in the Statistics Norway paper.
The heating of the global ocean has been going on at a steady rate of nine zeta Joules per year for decades, which is 15 times the worldwide primary energy consumption. We know this from the thousands of Argo floats drifting in the oceans, regularly diving down to 2000 meters while taking measurements. And we know where this staggering amount of heat energy comes from: It represents 91% of the additional heat retained on our planet by the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases. The energy balance of our planet, the radiation arriving and leaving, is continually monitored by a global radiation network at the surface and by dedicated satellites.
The greenhouse effect is in fact the largest control knob to dial up the temperature of our planet. We are receiving 342 Watts per square meter of Earth surface in back-radiation from the greenhouse effect, which is more than twice the Sun’s energy absorbed at Earth’s surface. And yes, also the increase in back-radiation towards the Earth surface from the CO2 greenhouse effect is a measured fact.
The physics behind the greenhouse effect and the gases that cause it have been understood since the 1800s, and that is why global warming was correctly predicted since the 1970s, even before observations unequivocally showed it. This warming was predicted not only by independent university and government scientists, but also by scientists from the oil company Exxon.
Is it sheer incompetence or is it politically motivated?
So the Statistics Norway paper ignores physics, misinterprets statistics and cherry-picks data – but is that just sheer incompetence, or is it politically motivated? In addition to the title, there are many tell-tale signs that strongly suggest the latter. Here’s just a few examples.
The paper shows a graph of local Greenland temperature from the famous Camp Century ice core drilled in 1960-1966. But rather than the data from the original publication in Science, it shows a hand-drawn version that has never been published in the peer-reviewed literature and is mislabeled, with the vertical axis showing variations around an average temperature of 15 °C (rather than -25 °C) to suggest it represents the global mean. This version originates from a 1995 German book and to this day is highly popular with the climate skeptics bubble on social media, and with the German right-wing AfD climate denial party (see my 2019 blog article).
The Statistics Norway authors try to cast doubt on modern warming being human-caused by pointing to the fact that Greenland was warmer during past millennia. But they don’t tell you why: as explained for example in the paleoclimate chapter of the 4th IPCC report of 2007 (which I co-authored), this is as expected from Earth’s natural orbital cycles. And they conveniently ignore global data reconstructions, which show Earth is warmer now than any time at least since the last Ice Age 24.000 years ago.
Similarly, they show Antarctic ice core data, taken from the climate skeptic website climate4you rather than a scientific source, with the figure caption falsely claiming that these data show global temperature when in fact, it is local. Greenland and Antarctica are perhaps the two locations on Earth where temperature variations are least representative of the global average.
The statistical analysis in fact confirms climate change
The paper analyses only one temperature data set which is actually global: the HadCRUT3 data, one of the well-established global temperature series. Strangely, the data shown end in December 2010 and the diagram is copied from the same climate skeptic website, instead of using the current HadCRUT5 data which have improved global coverage and are readily available from the source (which google finds in one second). But regardless: for this data set even their method “found that the HadCRUT3 time series is far from stationary”. The real result of their statistical analysis is thus: global temperature does show climate change! They even wonder why it does that, despite their home-baked aggregate of a small number of weather stations does not even though it shows a similar trend. They don’t seem to understand that the signal-to-noise ratio matters, which is worse the fewer data one uses (they used a meagre 74 stations).
Figure 2: Carbon dioxide levels and global temperature over the past 2022 years. Carbon dioxide data from air bubbles enclosed in Antarctic ice. Global temperature data from the PAGES2k project, a collaboration of 78 paleo-climatologists from 24 countries. The Statistics Norway paper conveniently ignored these well-known state-of-the art data, even though they are shown in the IPCC report. Image: Prof. Ed Hawkins, National Centre for Atmospheric Science.
Unscientific sources
The paper also repeatedly cites a climate skeptics book by Fritz Vahrenholt and Sebastian Lüning, a former German CEO and an employee of the energy giant RWE, the largest CO2 emitter in Europe. The US edition of this book, called The Neglected Sun, is published by the climate denial lobby Heartland Institute. Yes, that’s the think tank which ran a poster campaign comparing the Unabomber and Osama Bin Laden to those concerned about global warming.
The original German title of this book is called Die kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun), referring to the fact that solar activity has declined, and thus has counteracted a small amount of the greenhouse warming caused by burning coal, oil and gas. This book badly overestimated the importance of solar variations and thus predicted an imminent global cooling. When this was soon disproven by observations, they accused NASA of doctoring the data.
I could go on. The paper presents many more hair-raising false statements and misleading climate-change-denial talking points. The authors have clearly swallowed a great mouthful of the toxic brew found on climate denial websites. But they have apparently not bothered to look at real climate science or talk to a climate scientist before publishing this “discussion paper”.
A massive blow to Statistics Norway’s credibility
It is more than embarrassing that Statistics Norway has published this nonsense. It is a scandal. Let’s hope it was not political on the part of that institution, but just a bad mistake. If they want to salvage their reputation and credibility, they should withdraw it immediately, with an appropriate explanation of the real science of global warming.
I am delighted to see this rebuttal. I was quite concerned that the name Statistics Norway would give credibility to what sure sounded like nonsense to me.
The question now is how to get due attention to the rebuttal.
Stefan, you are obviously way better than me at all kinds of climate physics and analysis, but you really seem not to “get it” about this stuff.
Who exactly are you attempting to convince with what you just wrote? It’s the same classic problem here in the USA with D and R approaches. The R’s provide this short slogan/claim, and the D’s provide TL:DR responses that nobody is going to bother reading.
The piece in question is basically pretend science; it isn’t intended to make an actual case for their claims. but when you answer in detail, you create the illusion that there is substance to it… even though you are absolutely correct about each and every idiotic point they make.
As long as scientists can be manipulated into playing defense, the other guys are winning. There needs to be a concise, consistent narrative to describe what is happening, and yes, it has to be based in physics.
Believe it or not, “the public” can understand what’s happening, but you have to teach them the language and communicate with confidence.
The public, if they are not ideologically constrained, can understand things like conservation of energy…. I’ve taught it to really “poor students”…. but they have no interest in getting into the weeds, whether statistical or complex relationships.
If you are the experts, act like it. Explain the basic principles, consistently and concisely, and dismiss the made-up nonsense out of hand. Don’t “answer” that, teach what is correct, even if it requires repetition.
[Response: You are right. But it is not an either/or thing. I publish regular media commentary explaining the basics (e.g. https://www.spiegel.de/impressum/autor-e7e38f3d-0001-0003-0000-000000027129) over and over again, and have done so for over 25 years, but should that stop me from publishing the odd nerdy article here at RealClimate? -Stefan]
Stefan, sorry, fair enough. Your piece just happened to be the one that triggered my building frustration from seeing multiple responses here and elsewhere that had the defensiveness I keep seeing.
I had also just been reading about the poor marketing the Biden administration was doing here in the US on various issues, where progress was being made but people had no idea what had been accomplished…. actual Dem voters saying “why haven’t they done anything about the climate yet?”.
Arrrgh!
MESSAGING is something Democrats and scientists continually fail at with the general public, but the general public is generally STUPID. That’s the thing! You really have to dumb this shit down to where a 5th grader can understand it.
I see articles and news stories every single day about Climate Change and the dangers, but look at all these consumers who are way more worried about shopping and driving and flying everywhere. Try getting their attention and you will be ignored. You’re trying to communicate with a deaf public that is easily distracted.
Climate Change is as much a political problem as anything else and you have a good 40-50 % that distrust scientists thanks to Donald Trump.
Stefan, many thanks for the link to your exchange with AdF Bundestag member Karsten Hilse, which though too idiomatic to be easily rad in American English— the Der Siegel problem, , still conveyed in Google translation the sense that this was a politician reading a playbook, quite possibly one from The CO2 Coalition.
Such playbooks have become a bipartisan problem, because the Climate Wars have become an embedded feature of both the political lobbying and social entrepreneurship industries, and convey the editorial positions and cultural advertising of a fairly narrow political spectrum,
While relatively few Americans have heard of AfP, many are daily are exposed to Secretary Guterres’ environmental rhetoric by national mass media like NPR and PBS . That content in turn increasingly relies in on climate communications from manifestly partisan media , E.G. The Guardian.
One reason for the absence of climate policy in US Presidential debate, is the spillover of the active political hostility of Covering Climate Now and Climate Desk to Republican or conservative views, which tend to be as absent from academic centers of climate communication as critical discourse or Marxist polemics are from the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. or The London Telegraph
Once there were science writers who wrote for journals of all political stripes- John Maddox for example. Today few atmospheric scientists or Green politicians seem interested in engaging any political spectrum but their own, or to care how electorates at large may react to seeing the climate rhetoric of yet another Socialist International President boil over at yet another UN Congress of Parties.
Russel, I am very interested in the communication issue, as you may deduce from my comments on this. I have trouble understanding what you are trying to say about climate scientists “engaging a political spectrum other than their own”.
What would that be like? I’m pretty sure there are plenty of climate scientists who would qualify as (traditional) Republicans on many topics, but even the people working for Exxon, who certainly owned lots of stock and were being payed very well, reported the science as they found it.
Can you provide any concrete examples to clarify your point?
Oh, bullcrap, codswallop, and poppycock. The reason for the partisan divide on climate change (particularly in the US) is that in the last 15 or so years the GOP has fallen captive to the interests of the conservative side of the American oligarchic class. (Ask Bob Inglis, to take a very salient example.)
No-one who seriously cares about climate change as an issue dares vote or advocate for GOP policies or candidates. No-one who’s motivated by environmental concerns are likely to be sympathetic to a party antithetical to their values. I’m a Democratic voter, but I would dearly love to find a Republican I could vote for once in a while, because how else am I to hold my own party to account when they (or their local candidate) screws up?
But I can’t. Not when Trump makes “Drill, baby drill!” a campaign slogan. Not when he promises to take us out of Paris–again. Not when he basically made his term one long war on the environment. And, closer to home, not when my state lags so pathetically on the energy transition. It was during the 2012 RNC that Mitt Romney made climate change the punchline of a pathetic, sick joke. And the GOP has only gotten worse. The partisan divide will persist for as long as they persist in denying climate change–and not only climate change, but quite a few other facets of objective reality. “The lightbulb must want to change…”
At the link to the discussion paper, they reference a 2020 journal article in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A: Statistics in Society titled “How Does Temperature Vary Over Time?: Evidence on the Stationary and Fractal Nature of Temperature Fluctuations” The two authors of the current “discussion” were also authors of the 2020 paper (the third author has not joined their recent effort).
The 2020 paper has 3 citations, and the publication timelines are interesting:
Received: 01 September 2016
Accepted: 01 January 2020
Published: 20 March 2020
Way down in the Concluding Remarks, the second-to-last paragraph has a massive understatement tucked away.
“However, it cannot be ruled out that temperature data coupled with other types of data or information, and models based on geophysical processes, might result in a different picture. Hence, it may be that a systematic change in the temperature levels is under way but that our statistical methods are unable to distinguish such changes from natural temperature variation.”
Ya think?
But when people who started writing up a statistical climate idea in 2016 are still, in 2023, choosing not to use the >decade-old HadCRUT4, it kind of reveals their level of attention. Or intention.
The work from these two Norwegian jokers actually has a longer history. This page of a 2015 newspaper doesn’t cut-&-paste to allow an easy translation. However, this blogpage from 2015 refers to an article by the two jokers in the same newspaper although a week earlier. The blog page reads:-
MA – thanks for the extra time scaling. Seems it takes a long time to find the very special kind of statistical tool that allows one to look at all the temperature data avaialable in 2015 and say “it does not appear that there has been any systemic change in the global temperature level over the past 60 years”
To my uneducated eye, it looks to me like the span 1954 to 2015 shows global temperatures moving from smaller values to larger values. NOAA showing that span with a warming trend of +1.38°C/century,
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/global/time-series/globe/land_ocean/12/1/1850-2023?trend=true&trend_base=100&begtrendyear=1954&endtrendyear=2015
And everyone else points their arrows the same way.
https://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/hadcrut4gl/from:1954/to:2015/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1954/to:2015/trend/plot/gistemp/from:1954/to:2015/trend/plot/best/from:1954/to:2015/trend/plot/uah5/from:1978/to:2015/trend/plot/rss/from:1978/to:2015/trend
Guess I didn’t pay enough attention in statistics class. I supposed sea levels aren’t rising, either, and the increase in sunny-day flooding on coastlines everywhere is just some kind of Gaussian noise, not saltwater.
nice
Thanks for your article Stefan.
I find it increasingly amazing that the misinformation tactic is being used. It’s not only being used about the causes and consequences of climate heating, it’s also being used against the solutions.
EVs, heat-pumps and eating less meat are all coming under attack. In other areas this kind of activity would be illegal.
Maybe it’s about time we had ecocide legislation that outlawed this kind of thing. It’s tricky to balance free speech though with every ‘right’ there is also a ‘responsibility’.
@Ewan You are right, it is amazing and difficult to understand why it is happening in organizations that are chartered to work on the principles of science. The promotion of misinformation through media and all kind of organizations, setup as cover for vested interests, the fossil fuel industry among others, is more difficult to control, but not impossible.
The current wave I see on professional social media is EV and renewable energy misinformation. Often, I cannot tell if it is written by an actual human, ignorant or paid, or is it an AI compilation. Which ever it is, there is no clear legal mechanism in place to forbid it and penalize its dissemination.
No matter how tiresome it is to counter it with correct information, we have to do it. We cannot allow ignorants, sociopaths, biopaths (anti-biopshere), obscurantists win the argument and win in destroying the natural living world.
Completely agree, we need ecocide legislation. There are very good news on this path, Stop Ecocide International is hard at work on such legislation
https://www.stopecocide.earth/breaking-news-2023/agreement-reached-eu-to-criminalise-severe-environmental-harms-comparable-to-ecocide
It is very sad that Polly Higgins will not see the results of her extraordinary work and ethics. Those of us who are biophilic, decide on science and universal human values, have a duty to help this proposal become international law.
““The rules of our world are laws, and they can be changed. Laws can restrict or they can enable. What matters is what they serve. Many of the laws in our world serve property – they are based on ownership. But imagine a law that has a higher moral authority… a law that puts people and planet first. Imagine a law that starts from first do no harm, that stops this dangerous game and takes us to a place of safety….” Polly Higgins, 2015
“We need to change the rules.” Greta Thunberg, 2019”
Ewan McEwan says — It’s tricky to balance free speech though with every ‘right’ there is also a ‘responsibility’.
Misses the point entirely. Billionaires have no Responsibilities. None.
They rule the world, and you all, not Laws.
Dear Stefan,
Thank you for your contribution! As soon as the paper was published, I had to deal with it and I came to the same conclusion as you. It is more heresy than science and I am ashamed of this paper.
Figure 2 in this paper is a fraud. Where is the Little Ice Age? Where is the Medieval Warming Period? Where is the Roman Warming Period?
Totally disgusting.
[Response: The PAGES2k reconstruction includes these, but they are regional phenomena while the graph shows a global mean. How about catching up with the science rather than posting insults? -Stefan]
Stephan, you are correct, the Medieval Warm Period was only regional. But it also included eastern Europe. And, North America, and oh yeah South America. That region. And Africa, and don’t forget Asia. Oh oh, there’s New Zealand as well. So yeah, it was regional. And Antarctica, so it was regional to earth.
https://www.hyzercreek.com/MWP-LIA.jpg
You are correct.
So just exactly who is the “fraud” here?
Uh, Morgan. Look at the dates that were warm in your various different plots. Thank you for doing the work of proving that there was no global MWP.
Morgan, your implication that the Medieval Warm Period was significant and global in scope is inconsistent with the evidence. C.f. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period#/media/File:2000+_year_global_temperature_including_Medieval_Warm_Period_and_Little_Ice_Age_-_Ed_Hawkins.svg
This level of misinformation from Statistics Norway is outrageous. Do we know who the authors actually are? This looks like an excellent example of institutional and regulatory capture, a strategy well established by the oil industry and still continuing. This should be an enormous embarrassment for Statistics Norway. Their response will reveal a great deal about to what degree they should now be trusted.
Martin Bush; – “Do we know who the authors actually are?”
Apparently it seems a retired Economist and retired Civil Engineer.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/as-soon-as-possible/#comment-815084
Stefan: While coincidental with the COP-28 meetings it remains important to assess denialism for what it is (science denialism, with whatever motivation, political or merely economic), in the aftermath of COP-28, it may be suitable for you or a colleague at Real Climate to post a candid assessment of “climate catastrophism” in order to point out which exaggerations and “over-statements” creep into the discourse proffered by climate eschatologists: this would go some distance in allowing responsible citizens seeking accurate information to understand what can still be done to avert some of the more extreme consequences of Technogenic Climate Change and offer legitimate hope that at least some ameliorative and mitigation efforts can still be undertaken to whatever effect.
Left unchecked, climate catastrophism breeds “climate fatalism”. While arguably denialism poses a greater risk of inaction (or tardy response) at present and across the coming decade or more, public discourse can be disrupted unhelpfully by what comes from the climate catastrophists, too. To attain clear and clean public discourse, we need to block off the muddy waters fermenting at both ends.
Keep up all good work.
Sincerely,
Edward Burke
In addition to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/science-denial-is-still-an-issue-ahead-of-cop28/#comment-816503
Dear Dr. Rahmstorf,
I do agree with Mr. Edward Burke and have an additional plea.
I think that it could make sense to address, besides
(i) misinformation that could be classified as pure “denialism” and
(ii) exaggeration of threats and risks linked to climate change that Mr Burke assigned by well-fitting term “eschatology”, also
(iii) misinformation spread unwittingky and with the best intentions by climate activists (and sometimes even by climate scientists themselves).
Let me shortly explain the item (iii).
As an example of such misinformation that in my opinion results from limited understanding to current climate science and its uncertainties can serve frequent simplification of the climate as a mere “radiative balance”.
Year ago, two Czech biologists raised publicly an objection against an official statement of the Czech Academy of Sciences explaining the climate solely in terms of surface albedo and greenhouse effect of non-condensing greenhouse gases. They opposed to this simplistic statement by asserting that an important element or Earth climate is the global water cycle, and that policies promoting “biofuels” or “biomass” as allegedly “green” replacement for fossil fuels actually cause deforestation which not only threatens biodiversity but, finally, can even enhance the global warming caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
The reply published by the respective institute of the Academy politely asserted that both scientists are wrong because they allegedly do not know the law of energy conservation.
This is, unfortunately, an utterly incorrect bullshit, showing clearly that there is not only problem with Norwegian statistical office but a similar problem may be also in institutions that officially deal with climate science and prepare advice for public and for politicians.
I am afraid that public policies criticized by the two above mentioned biologists show that goodwill + incompetence-backed climate activism can be equally harmful as badwill + ignorance-backed “climate denialism”.
Thank you in advance and best regards
Tomáš Kalisz
Kalisz
I would also like to have Nephelai, the clouds and the chill rains and hailshowers better cleared up.
I found by reading Wikipedia on Köppens climate system that Praha does also have an oceanic climate.
Try and set on Meteorology, Köppens system, hydrology and physical chemistery, . And facultary biology.
Depending on variable continental high pressure that comes and goes, Moskva and all the way to Ural now and then gets travelling low pressure cyclones in the northatlantic antipassat, and in other situations that current stagnates west of Stavanger.
It hardly comes over to Sverdlovsk Jekaterinburg trans- ural.
The travelling cyclones at the polar front may enter all the way from Bisqaia to the north sea and Balticum, and into the Barents sea when continental highpressure rotating clockvice lays over over Europe.
Equally misguided are the goodwill comments – save the planet – etc
[in case I’m too subtle and am suspected of trolling: explains: 3C or even 6C wont affect the planet much and in 5000 or 10000 years all will be gone, so will the humans, this is all about human survival, not the planet’s]
I don’t think we expose society to that concept [economy before critters] (sic)
“[in case I’m too subtle and am suspected of trolling: explains: 3C or even 6C wont affect the planet much
I’m not so sure. At those warming levels sea level rise will utterly transform the shape of coastlines and could possibly lead to mass extinction events of fauna and flora. Humans will survive although in possibly reduced numbers. Oceans will be significantly more acidic.
I think those are significant effects on the planet. Of course the planet and life of some sort will survive just as its survived asteroid impacts, but that is not much consolation.
Yes. The evidence strongly suggests that we are in for a serious mass extinction event. The biosphere is getting hammered, not only by climate change, but also by ocean acidification, truly massive habitat loss, an amazing ramping up of the invasive species problem (which has the effect of replacing many diverse specialist species with a few successful generalist/adaptable ones, and radically ‘simplifying’ ecosystems), and of course toxic emissions, including the plastic/micro-plastic waste crisis.
Nothing like a multi-pronged assault when you really want to devastate something, right?
Lest I be accused of eschatology, life will, of course, survive. Just not “as we know it”, because it’s going to be a biologically flatter and hence less stable world for probably tens or even hundreds of millennia to come. It remains to be seen to what degree we allow that change to develop; we aren’t going to escape all such consequences, but we still have the choice between bad and much, much worse.
Around here (Eastern Australia) 1C has already given 1.4C of local temperature rise. Even without any warming drought, heatwaves and fires here are devastating; no weather related disaster is more economically devastating than drought and few are more terrifying than wildfires. With 3C global and 4.2C local to 6C and 8.4C hotter they can be expected to be a LOT more severe – truly terrifying if you thought it through.
Natural climate change within the time of homo sapiens has previously made whole regions uninhabitable and extincted the human populations there. Your “won’t affect the planet much” is bunk – and if widely believed, enough to prevent the changes that will limit it, irresponsible and dangerous.
And yet my greatest fear is not global warming itself, but of Doubt, Deny, Delay politicking in the service of saving fossil fuels from global warming using all the powers of wealth and influence to prevent the world facing up to it. Nothing eases global warming fears better than knowing our governments and leaders of industry are treating decades of top level science based expert advice seriously and facing up to it head on.
Re: Edward Burke Nov.30
A few questions to clarify your intentions:
– Could you give the examples of the “climate catastrophists” – so we know to whom you want to compare and/or with whom you want to whitewash/relativize the climate change denialists ?
– Do you imply the symmetry in scientific incredibility between the two ?
The false equivalency and demanding a false objectivism under which one gives the same weight to a climatologist publishing for decades in primary journals, and a blogger, or some guy from a non-climate related discipline, have been a mainstay of climate change denialism for decades.
And although you say that the risks to the future of humanity of the climate denial are larger than that of the catastrophists, from the very fact that you insist on addressing the latter as the condition to criticize the former – implies otherwise.
Piotr:
Thank you for your response.
I’m not interested in “relativizing” climate change denialism. As COP-28 discourse already is showing, denialism remains alive and far too well among the large players interested in keeping the carbon and petrochemical economies alive and thriving. I’m persuaded by Stefan’s multiple accounts in numerous venues that climate change is technogenic historically and a by-product of carbon-fuel emissions globally cumulative since the middle of the 19th century (and/or slightly earlier).
My concern is that the legitimate sciences and the sciences that point to the legitimate understanding of climate phenomena in this age of the onset of Technogenic Climate Change can, without proper discourse framing, get associated–even unintentionally–with irresponsible “climate catastrophists” and with the purely emotivist ethics of “climate eschatologists” as I’ve termed them who themselves are often not articulate or cogent when it comes to citing the science itself and whose discourse contributions can unhelpfully suggest that we can only watch Technogenic Climate Change turn before our disbelieving eyes into Runaway Technogenic Climate Change without undertaking any efforts of mitigation or amelioration or serious response. Rather than “name names”, as I said earlier, I am content to let Stefan, et al., decide whether or how to address “climate eschatology” as a movement some of whose representatives (mostly anonymous to my ears anyway, given the usual clamor of internet megaphones) routinely fail in their emotivist fervor to cite available science data and fail to acknowledge approaches to combatting at least some of the ravages of TCC already in evidence.
Understand, then, that my concern is that responsible climate science steers its public discourse contributions between both Scylla and Charybdis, without getting itself unintentionally associated with climate catastrophists and climate eschatologists who are no more attentive to climate sciences than are the climate change denialists, most of whom themselves already are quite prominent and abundantly well-known without having to be named.
Sincerely,
Edward Burke
Edward Burke: “ I’m not interested in “relativizing” climate change denialism”
But their fruits, not their assurances, you shall know them. So let’s see:
Q.1 P” Could you give the examples of the “climate catastrophists”
EB: Rather than “name names”, as I said earlier, I am content to let Stefan, et al., decide whether or how to address “climate eschatology”
Huh? You have talked about “climate eschatology”, and “climate catastrophists”, you have had a problem with them, and yet when
asked to be specific so we know what you mean – you …duck the question and … delegate the task onto … the moderators, who are supposed to do your bidding and guess whom you have meant?
Q2. Do you imply the symmetry in scientific incredibility between the two ?
EB: “ irresponsible “climate catastrophists” and with the purely emotivist ethics of “climate eschatologists” as I’ve termed them who themselves are often not articulate or cogent when it comes to citing the science itself and whose discourse contributions can unhelpfully suggest that we can only watch Technogenic Climate Change turn before our disbelieving eyes into Runaway Technogenic Climate Change without undertaking any efforts of mitigation or amelioration or serious response.
For brevity, I have quoted only …. half of a one sentence. ;-)
You certainly have a lot to say to NOT answer the question. So, in the absence of a direct answer, let me infer one:
not only you don’t think the “catastrophists” are not better scientifically than deniers, you actually think that they are WORSE – otherwise you would not have re-tasked the moderators from disputing deniers claims to disputing the claims of the “catastrophists”. Did I read you right?
3. P “Although you say that the risks to the future of humanity of the climate denial are larger than that of the catastrophists, from the very fact that you insist on addressing the latter as the condition to criticize the former – implies otherwise.”
I haven’t seen an answer to this one either. So, zero out of three. Rather telling. As zebra says how to tell a denier:
“They never answer the questions“
Or, Piotr:
If you’re so busy grandstanding your own commitments as to be wearing your allegiances as epaulets, you do risk failing to observe the point I do make. (By the way: if you differ with my invitation to Stefan, et al., to address “climate catastrophism” and “climate eschatology” for the distinct dangers they pose to public discourse, who says I’m obliged to respond to your lively emotivist fact-checking in just the way you insist? I seem to discern your talent for flame-throwing in public forums–if I am mistaken, I am sure that you will tell me..)
My point remains the same: we know that climate change denialism remains a danger in the short term because the continuing expression of this view in public discourse can postpone immediate (political–political, but not individual) responses to the early signs of Technogenic Climate Change that can now be catalogued with abundant data going back three decades and more. “Immediate (political) responses” may soon show themselves abruptly to be of critical necessity: humanity-at-large will get no second chance to do things right the first time when it comes to Technogenic Climate Change, as world history since c. 1850 already has shown.
–but meanwhile: “climate catastrophism” and “climate eschatology” pose their own threats to the conduct of public discourse on the subject of Technogenic Climate Change, I continue to contend. I’m still not interested in your invitation to “name names”–you sound far too much like a commissar or a thought-policemen when you issue such a summons. Much of what is appearing across media landscapes as “climate catastrophism” and “climate eschatology” is anonymous because of its quasi-collective character. You might expect me to name Greta Thunberg, but I don’t know enough about her career to be able to cite her here. (From what little I’ve seen of her in media clips. she has a talent for holding microphones, and I also seem to find that she does not as commonly “cite the science” as she simply resorts to expressing her sincere disaffection for climate degradation). Simply having a sincere emotional reaction to the onset of Technogenic Climate Change does not strike me as a suitably substantive response to such a profound circumstance. Simple emotional disaffection for the onset of Technogenic Climate Change can lead to proclamations of unsound or uncritical proposals which have begun to emerge in public discourse and which yet-uncommitted publics nation-by-nation cannot help but see as incredible, irresponsible, and/or vastly impractical. (Like it or not, EVs will not be replacing ICE-vehicles at anything like anticipated or desired scales for many more years yet: but to hear some of the anonymous catastrophists and eschatologists tell the tale, we should immediately end all transportation of people and goods worldwide until we have the EV fleets we want or yearn for: that view, I can tell you, is not shared by many or most people, for ample good reasons.)
What I continue to say, then, is that uncritical expressions of climate catastrophism and climate eschatology pose a risk to the conduct of discourse concerning responsible climate science (as performed by Stefan, et al., here at Real Climate) and emerging political responses thereto. If carping emotivist and uncritical expressions come to be associated by others (the climate change denialist media apparatus, e. g.) with responsible and critically informed climate sciences, it will take additional effort for climate scientists to get the public’s attention should matters become suddenly much more acute. (Nota bene: the denialists whom you purport to oppose will be more than happy and obliging to taint public discourse by attempting to associate climate catastrophism and climate eschatology with responsible and informed climate science–this is already occurring in some media markets.) Better now for the responsible climate science community to address whatever dangers to public discourse are posed by emerging catastrophists and eschatologists.
You may not care for my discursive style any more than you care for the substance of my remarks, but look on the bright side: our readers probably will not be able to confuse us.
Sincerely,
Edward Burke
Re: E. Burke Dec. 5 “ If you’re so busy grandstanding your own commitments as to be wearing your allegiances as epaulets”
Huh? What “commitments” ?And how does one even “grandstands his own commitments” ??? English is not my first language, so perhaps some native speaker could help? And … why would I wear my … allegiances as … “ornamental shoulder pieces” (epaulets) ????
And for the record – I was wearing my allegiances as epaulets by
asking you two simple questions and making one falsifiable argument . You have addressed … none, offering instead your verbal diarrhea, with meandering sentences sometimes 100+ words long.
Yes, I don’t care for your vacuous, pretentious, style. But I know one RC contributor who just might.
” Carbomontanus, this may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship…” ;-)
Edward Burke says
5 Dec 2023 at 11:06 AM
It is truly a phurphy, a distraction and misdirection, nay a falsehood that “climate change denialism remains a danger in the short term because the continuing expression of this view in public discourse can postpone immediate political responses.”
Nope it these things make absolutely no difference at all beyond “entertainment value”
The *political responses* are governed solely by *TPTB*, the mega wealthy international elites, who own all the global wealth and hire all the “hit-men” to do their dirty work. They pay no heed at all to *climate denialism* nor direct it, nor does the *public discourse* play any role in their decision making processes which is only there for the masses to waste their time arguing about ….. and nor does the latest *climate science* intrigues bother them at all for all these things are *entirely irrelevant* to them all and make absolutely no difference whatsoever Business As Usual.
COP 28 is as important as the next episode of Little House on the Prairie. Sorry. But some one had to tell you.
Ned Kelly:
“ The *political responses* are governed SOLELY by *TPTB*, the mega wealthy international elites. They pay NO HEED AT ALL to *climate denialism* nor direct it, nor does the *public discourse* play ANY role in their decision making processes”
Care to prove your assertions with evidence? You know, Hitchens’s razor”… ;-)
I cannot agree with Edward Burke nor Stephan
Climate change is the accumulated by-product of the insatiable greed for wealth creation, the craving for unbridled power and colonialist slave owning immorality of the owners and controllers of global financialized capital from the late 1500s to today.
Was previously unaware of the recent notion of ‘climate eschatology’ but quite like it. It’s perfectly descriptive. As is climate catastrophists, and climate denialists of course. But Technogenic Climate Change is a wonderful whiz bang term new to me ears! :-)
Where would we be without such Literary Calavera in climate circles?
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/science-denial-is-still-an-issue-ahead-of-cop28/#comment-816827
and
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/science-denial-is-still-an-issue-ahead-of-cop28/#comment-816828
Dear Ned,
It appears that you do not believe that rich people would be willing to change their blossoming businesses for the sake of desired transition to cleaner energy etc. I respectfully disagree.
Personally, I see lot of signs that they, in fact, do actively support present climate policies, by asserting that fighting climate change is the goal of an utmost importance. For example, most active proponents of huge investments into infrastructure for so called “hydrogen economy” are corporations like Aramco or BP.
The only small flaw in these policies consists in the circumstance that the noble goals of the transition to sustainable energy shall be achieved by accordingly generous public subsidies. I think that the mighty people you are speaking about are in fact quite willing to accept that money. Why not?
I am, however, afraid that enough money for that goal do not really exist. Or, from another point of view, I do not believe that such goal can be globally financed by non-existent, fictitious money virtually created just for this purpose. Although vacuum fluctuations can create real objects in quantum mechanics, these objects do not persist too long. I suspect that it can be similar in economy, too.
It is my feeling that nowadays, climate change denialists are more less the people who already now experience economical obstacles and therefore perceive the economical disaster that may arise from such policies as more real and actual than possible future ecological and economical disasters painted by climate alarmists. Oppositely, climate alarmists are in my opinion mostly people who, for various reasons, do not care much about recent economy but perceive, as much more serious, the future threats of the climate change.
I perhaps have an idea how we could achieve the desired economy transition without changing the people. What about making the desired economy transition to renewable energy economically more attractive than staying with the business as usual?
I am, however, afraid that it would have needed both
(i) stopping subsidies for further fossil fuel use, as well as
(ii) desisting from subsidies for allegedly green but economically uncompetitive alternatives.
I think that only under such circumstances will the above discussed decisive players start re-thinking their present attitude and looking after new, innovative solutions that might be more suitable for this goal.
Unfortunately, this option does not appear to be considered in ongoing disputes yet.
Greetings
Tomáš
@ Tomáš Kalisz says
7 Dec 2023 at 9:11 AM
Me saying “from the late 1500s to today.” suggests there’s a systemic cause.
My beliefs about rich people nor what “they” are willing or not willing to do, wasn’t part of the comment at all. You’ve shifted the framing and moved the goal posts simultaneously, in one sentence. :-)
Think systems, not individuals. cheers
Good explanation. An additional reason for creating the junk science paper might be the fact that Norway is in the top 20 oil exporting countries, and is very dependent on oil exports. Crude oil is 26% of their total exports.
One of these sorts of “tricks” comes out before every major climate conference and has for decades now. Climategate was probably the most successful trick, but the tricks do just keep on coming..
It’s absolutely NONsurprising any more. In point of fact, before the next large meeting, possibly a paper pointing this out could be circulated first.
Nigelj
I can hardly believe that it explains it all.
That Dragsvik & Moen situation at Statistisk sentralbyrå looks really very rotten on civil service and political level.
We shall see what comes out of it locally.
My diagnosis of it is scolars who had their diplomas traditionally on the party quote, Party with P, the grand old one, who also is in charge at the moment and may try to re- enter lost, privileged positions in civil service.
That privileged class is lacking orderly studies and legally stood exams along with that tradition, , that is also represented in Norway.
The thing is that the target audience for the Statistics Norway article is not scientists or even serious policy makers. It’s the drunk uncle at Thanksgiving who wants a fig leaf to defend himself and his politics. It’s the drunk billionaire who doesn’t want to think about the fact that his carbon footprint is equal to more than 700 of his fellow citizens and that all this climate change might get in the way of making money–the only thing that gives him any sort of self respect. You cannot appeal to the sense of shame of these people, because they left their sense of shame in the rear-view mirror long ago,
Statistics Norway, however is an official government organization. They may not have a sense of shame, but they do have a reputation to protect. Publishing this drivel under their imprimatur is not just scandalous, it is shortsighted. I for one know I’ll never trust them again. This should blow up in their face. So, Stefan’s approach is precisely the correct one. If governmental organizations are going to let North Sea oil revenue count more than the truth, we have to hit them hard with the one weapon they cannot then wield against us–the truth.
Ray, you really just figured out that governments let oil revenue count more than the truth? You weren’t aware that they actually poison and dismember their opponents in order to maintain power, that the truth about elections doesn’t count even a little to many?
Do you think that various government agencies even in the seemingly democratic countries can’t be influenced by political appointees when regimes change?
The problem here is that you have to decide who the audience is that you are trying to reach. It’s not the individuals who will say whatever they are told to say by Fox News because of where their psychology places them politically, or those with vested economic issues.
It also isn’t us, the choir that doesn’t need preaching to.
It’s reasonable people (voters, decision-makers) with busy, complicated lives. That’s the target of the article, but the intent is not to have them read the article; the intent is to create the illusion of controversy. Do I have to remind you once again of “teach the controversy” from Creationists?
My critique here is the one I’ve been making in general. It’s not just Stefan; it’s the people who are the authorities on this topic contributing to the illusion that there is a controversy. That happens when you present evidence… as Stefan did pretty well… of “the truth”, but juxtapose it with the denialist absurdities.
How about just saying “this article is full of errors; we know the energy in the climate system is increasing from basic physics and direct measurement.” Maybe show some pictures along with the graphs… an Argo float and satellites and so on. That’s what those reasonable, busy people, with complicated lives, will listen to; that’s all they have time for.
Stop…Playing…Defense.
Hr Ladbury
I am quite surprized that such an article comes out via Statistisk sentralbyrå. As many people here say, it may ruin their credibility.
I am further surprized that I hardly find and read anyting about it in Norway. And have suggested that we must wait an see eventual norwegian and official reactions.
You say “Statistics Norway is an official government organization.” It is labour party government at the moment, but that should not matter because Statistisk sentralbyrå is civil service not to be owned by the minister. Further , there is legislation about civil service. And this “scandal” is clearly against what we get to know from the dept of environment for instance. And further departments of waterways harbour rads and railway & electricity and health. Where we need plausible and conscistent ideas of how to plan and prepare and think for the future.
So I should look through possible legislation that rules for civil service employees and their duties. Their relations to facts and truth and so on. It must somehow be credible.
What has shown now is quite incredible and that hurths our trust in civil service.
And what will be our belief in statistics after this?. They should have thought of that at least.
I am not so fond of statistics, but that is my own problem. But I allways believed that Statistisk sentralbyrå could be relied on.
Hr Rahmstorf
I sent a first comment that did not show up.
On this being a massive blow to Statistisk Sentralbyrås credibility.
I happen to live here, and have visited the tavern meetings of those who con- spired, and have done it regularly, It was Klimapizza, Pelles Pizza Jernbanetorget Oslo downtown.no.
Now they are probably thrown out from that Pizza, after they tried to throw me out, not owning the place.
I thus know the big guns personally. The Klimarealistene scientific comittee.
Ole Humlum is a washproof Dane, able to discuss real glaciers, The Sea Serpent, and Jørungandr with me in an understanding way on equal level over a long beer. Humlum adapts. He likes stone rubbish with Dryas octopetala L.
But the norwegians Prof & Prof Emeritus & Emeritus Jan Erik Solheim and Ole Hernrik Ellestad with some supporters are worse.
Look up for the late Hans Jelbring whoose catechism has gone further., the zeller nicolov- effect. And look after Dipl.Ing Heinz Thieme, upstairs at the Railways in old Leipzig. That must have been eastern line.
Hr. H.Thieme Dipl.Ing. stated that the climate engagemennt of Angela Merkel (a DDR priest daughter), may be her religion, smile smile… hum hum.
Thereyou have the Religionøøøøøø argument, how to ban and dis- qualify anyone in old Leipzig by upstairs
I am repeatedly pointing at the Arbeiter und Bauernfakultät in Greifswald and the Asbestos Palace with one way transparent red windows behind the Berlin wall, now taken down, to give people here an idea of who they really may be at their deep bottoms.
That idea may hurt deeply …. as intended. But it is not crazy or violent from my side, it may be the truth, and thus hurt further deeply as intended.
Because I hate that race that allways bothered me. Those who came to it by industrialized exam. cheating on the Party quote , the Party with P, the grand old one. The local and inter- national socialists of that great scientific unity Party with P. With Patent from Ljeningrad on how to take over society and to take over the situation and the keye-positions and the whole world.
Arbeiter und Bauernfakultät you see, for all those who lack Mittlere Reife and Examen Artium due to history, heritage, and regrettable, (bedauerloiche) national circumstances. Not only in Prussia.
A Martin Bush has stated it quite ingeniously d/ o
“Institutional and regulatory capture”
That can be found on Wikipedia.
I have withnessed the same in person and had it explained in detail by the KADREs at the institude of Philosophy in Oslo 1971 as they tried to take over the very institute and faculty, pointing at and quoting from LENINs teachbook of “Scientific socialism and party work.”
LENIN probably learnt this from experienced western European Mafia during his studies. And they performed it experimentally practically in all details.
It takes 4 persons to play Poker. Plant the professional union representative from that trained “Communist cell” poker- table in the given, burgeoise, high chair with the hammer, and the 3 othes in the audience to lead the applaud, and commit the new and more scientific democratic and direct rules and regulations of procedures on behalf of science and The People with P.
Enter, and take over old and lazy civil ideal societies and institutions that way,… for the progressive purpose of the chareers and existance (Lexistansøøøø!…” of the inaugurated comrades / Genossers. .
Then follows KADRE- members at the doors and The Peoples Police for etnical racial rinsing.
It violates a few articles in the UN declaration of Human Rights of 1948, that was furthered in their respective republics by Lech Valensa, Andrej Sakharov and Vaclav Havel
that broke the backbone of a superpower in alliance with eastern European catholisism and protestantism.
And may soon break the backbones of another superpower also.
“Greenland and Antarctica are perhaps the two locations on Earth where temperature variations are least representative of the global average.”
What would be the reason? Is there an article or a paper on this? The Vostok station temperature record did follow the global mean in the recent past, at least.
[Response: I think this follows from the larger variability of temperature in the polar regions on all time scales. It implies that to see climate signals emerge you need substantially longer time periods than the tropical regions (say). For the very long term (as seen at Vostok) the variability is greatly diminished. – gavin]
Romain, perhaps you should explain what you mean by “representative of global averages”?
And maybe Gavin could explain what “climate signal” means? (it seems like an almost impossible definition if you think about it.)
A recent thing I saw was “Arctic warming is four times global since 1979”,
-Is that a climate signal?
-Is it a signal of a change in the Arctic climate?
-If the Arctic climate changes, wouldn’t that mean that the global climate has changed?
This to me illustrates the problem with how the term/concept GMST has been confusingly applied for all these decades…. GMST is conflated with “climate”, which is a great boon to the denialist trolls and a source of confusion for the public.
I made a suggestion on the other thread (buried in a sub-thread); it got 1.5 upvotes, and I’m curious what people think. The proposal was that as the system moves away from the previous equilibrium state, there could be different new states but with the same GMST. (The differences in the states would be meaningful in terms of consequences for humanity.)
Any thoughts?
[Response: Climate change is of course not the same as change in GMST. Since 1991 I’ve been studying climate change resulting from changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which has almost no effect on GMST as it only redistributes heat differently on the planet (a small GMST effect results from changes in sea ice cover and thus albedo). Climates with or without AMOC differ dramatically, but not in GMST.
It’s just that the human-caused greenhouse gas increase traps more radiation world-wide and thus warms the planet everywhere (except where an AMOC slowdown cools it), so the primary result of that is a warming of GMST. -Stefan]
Stefan, I thought the “primary result” of trapping radiation by CO2 was an increase in Ocean Heat (Energy) Content, no?
And as I often like to point out, GMST is an effect, a metric, a proxy… but it is not a cause, because it is simply a mean value.
So if I understand what you are saying correctly, the AMOC could slow down so much that the GMST would actually be a bit less, but that slowdown would have serious consequences for Europe and parts of the USA.
So 2C might be worse than 2.1C?
I’m pretty sure, from reading comments in newspapers, that even members of the general public who do accept and are concerned about, climate change, do not really understand the complexity of the issue. That’s why, paradoxically, I keep looking for simpler ways to communicate with them.
I have a sloppy amateur idea about those cold spots. In a warming climate, huge bodies of ice (Greenland, Antarctica) are melting at speed. I think this cools nearby areas of water. This does not explain the cool area in the middle of northern North America, though that region also gets extreme heat, and the lack of modification by large bodies of water is part of that.
Susan Anderson 2 DEC 2023 AT 9:52 AM For Greenland it isn’t that extra melt water cools the surface by being cold but rather that it’s lighter than salt water so it reduces the cold deep ocean current AMOC so there’s less warm surface water going there from Gulf of Mexico. I quick-calculated the cold water effect and concluded that 12 months of runoff warms to ambient in 6 months so it cannot cause a cold blob (extra ice could do it though, in theory, because latent heat). What happens is that colder water spreading on surface emits less LWR upwards so it increases the regional TOA energy imbalance causing additional surface heating. The bloke posting this item might possibly know something about it. Antarctica I don’t know. The cool area in the middle of northern North America must likely be Wonky Jet Stream (if so then the Arctic is getting its heat).
Professor Rahmstorf,
There is a large proportion of anti-AGW disinformation propaganda in the approximately 100 comments responding to your relevant post in LinkedIn (from one day ago) signposting this article – see this post thread there:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stefan-rahmstorf-37049a1b9_science-denial-is-still-an-issue-ahead-of-activity-7135738660133449728-T7dt?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
Please provide some moderation in that thread in LinkedIn, to address the risk of not just “false balance” but even a high degree of false consensus among apparent respondents in that LinkedIn thread, with many of those responses claiming that AGW either does not exist or is not a significant problem.
More on false balance here:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/exclusive-bbc-issues-internal-guidance-on-how-to-report-climate-change/
I hate to break it to y’all, but this is just the beginning. I’m very sorry. Just like every other failed theory in the past–TIME–is the great equalizer. You may be able to get away with it for years or even, in this case, decades, but in the end the roosters always come back home.
Just because you can show that the earth has warmed over the past few decades doesn’t mean at all that this warming is detrimental, and looks like may even be beneficial. This is evidenced by the many different lines of research all pointing to the same thing: Life is getting better on planet earth, not worse.
I tried to warn y’all about using CNN and guardian articles hyperventilating about this fire or that flood, or the other hurricane. But for a group so hellbent on using “global means” to track temperature changes over time, it’s strange that you so quickly look to anecdotes on outcomes readily supplied by the mainstream media.
It’ s over. Y’all had a good run. Actually a surprising run. I’m truly surprised it lasted this long. Honestly. But there’s a good reason Stefan or Gavin or Mike or any other climate team member won’t do public debates with these so called “science deniers”. They know that all we have to do is start producing graphs showing that life on earth is indeed getting better, not worse. And they’ll lose.
Nobody with a science background denies the earth is warming. But you are missing the point, entirely. Anyone care to challenge me to a public debate on this?
Science is not about public debate, talk-shows and argument-boxing on TV.
Thats politics, (science-)journalism or political debate on topics.
And such debates must (should) be based on facts. (If not. it’s yellow press pastime.)
If debates and decisions are based on rumors or gossip and so called anecdotal evidence, this hardly gets the political decisions right. Also if it’s just bogus pseudo-science.
Cherry picking “it’s not bad, it’s good”-anecdotes is bogus too.
It’s interesting, that – for the AGW-deniers/-euphemists – climate scientists always seem to do it wrong: if they engage in public debate, they are called activists, and therefore are dismissed as politically driven, instead of knowledge driven.
If they do not engage in public debate, they are blamed for hiding and not challenging the opponents (which generally are scientific lay people, but educated in rhetorics).
If you think you have good arguments, write them down (like scientists do) and make them public.
If you are a scientist, write your scientific research. If you are not a scientist, but nevertheless think you have found unsound arguments in climate science, write thet stuff on your own blog.
But if you write nonsense, and scientists point it out, acknowledge it, instead of offering a “challenge” … and instead of blaming the scientists for finding the nonsense you may have written there.
If you are just here to create trouble, just go home, please.
If you want to challenge scientists, write papers and let them be questioned by those experts you criticize. This is how the rules of the game are.
For your attention-seeking game, scientists are the wrong personel.
Maybe you looked out for the wrong line of business.
Perhaps wrestling shows may better match your interests?
You could ask your job-coach about that.
Scott: You’re not paying attention. The accumulating information about climate change due to global warming shows that we are indeed ‘just getting started’. Unsupported claims of benefits from warming don’t work unless one seals oneself off the the mounting data and reporting of events all around the world, coming fast and furious. Here are a few resources:
Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/
Tipping points. I’ve included two, one from the Potsdam Institute in honor of author Stefan [by the way, it takes an all-fired nerve to bring unsupported claims from the universe of ignorance to a science blog] and one from the World Economic Forum
https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/output/infodesk/tipping-elements
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/12/climate-tipping-points-earth/
Yale Climate Connections has a variety of reporting on all aspects of the problem. Jeff Masters and Bob Henson maintain and regularly update the costly events from all over the world. A number of the world’s best meteorologists with interests in extreme weather start in the blog as youngsters and go on to graduate and become world class experts. [your claim to expertise above is nonexistent]
Dozens of billion-dollar weather disasters hit Earth in 2022: The year was the second-costliest on record for drought. It also had three mega-disasters costing at least $20 billion, plus a heat wave that killed over 40,000 people in Europe.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/01/dozens-of-billion-dollar-weather-disasters-hit-earth-in-2022/
The current article is useful as well, and in the comment section you can see posts from the last couple of days about floods, recordbreaking heat everywhere, in direct reports. Massive numbers of people are suffering, and desperate migration is already happening because of losses and crop failures, which will increase and, as usual, invite more nativist hate as people seek others to blame when things go haywire.
The unusual 2023 Atlantic hurricane season ends: Despite El Niño conditions, record-warm ocean waters helped bring about above-average activity for the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/11/the-unusual-2023-atlantic-hurricane-season-ends/
Here’s a great place to get information on the cryosphere (ice world) from Zack Labe at Princeton, for NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory & Princeton’s e Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Program
https://zacklabe.com/arctic-sea-ice-figures/
I know you’re not interested in the facts or reality which contradict your world view, but perhaps someday you will unclog your senses and take in some real information about what is happening.
If not, this will come to your dooryard eventually. [10 years? 20 years? next year? soonish, anyway]
Hi Susan, thanks for the links. However, has it occurred to you that trying to trend “billion dollar disasters” over decades (like climate et al, has done with temps) has a really, really big and obvious confounding variable? I bet you already know what that variable is, so I’ll let you tell me. Actually there are two big variables, but one is more than enough to squash any meaning out of “billion dollar disasters”.
It’s really sad to see the lack of self awareness prevalent in the climate science community. An above average year of named storms is just as anecdotal as showing a below average year in named storms. We all can do better than that. After all, The Climate Team have built careers on a single global trend lines over decades (or a hockey stick, I suppose).
If you’re going to tell me about heat waves killing people, trend it globally over decades. If you’re going to tell about stronger and worsening cyclones, trend it globally over decades. If you’re going to tell me about billion dollar disasters getting more frequent, trend it globally over decades (and control for inflation and population change along coasts because it goes into the round file if these aren’t controlled for–oops). Usually these are going to come from peer reviewed, published journals and validated databases like EM-DAT, not opinion pieces by people or institutes.
We’re sorry, Scott. Susan made the mistake of assuming good faith on your part…well, not a mistake, really, she does that to let folks who are in over their head retreat with dignity intact. She’s kind that way. If she were Southern, she’d just say “Bless your heart.”
Do you know how long we’ve listened to arrogant pricks like you tell us, that the whole climate-change-industrial complex was on the hairy edge of collapse. “Any day, now. You watch,” they say. “You’ll see!”
And yet, here we are, another COP-28, with evidence stronger, theories and techniques improved, and even oil companies and petro-states having to at least pretend that they’re leading the change. I notice that even you don’t suggest it’s not warming, or that it’s not greenhouse gasses or that it’s not us. Nope. You’ve retreated back to the last redoubt–the one with the cartoon of a dog with a beer in an inferno saying “This is fine.”
But to tell you the truth, Scot, I haven’t quite figured you out. It could be that you are just a father who doesn’t quite have the courage to face the reality of the world his generation is leaving to his progeny. He has to whistle past the graveyard and pretend everything is just fine.
Or there’s the other possibility I’m leaning toward–mainly because of your love of the spectacle of the Great Public Debate–and that is that this is a grift. You hope you can milk out one last “win” by appearing on a public stage in front of an audience who doesn’t understand the science and judges who don’t understand the science–that you can be Professor Harold Hill up there doing the song and dance about the evils of “climate science”. And I suppose C does rhyme with T which can stand for “trouble” in some circles.
The thing is, Scott. That ain’t science. Science advances carefully, where everything can be checked and rechecked and peer reviewed. It takes months. We’ve seen quite well how debates work. The debate is over, and the winners declared and argued over for days before even half the lies are fact-checked and identified. If you want to influence the science, submit your evidence for peer review and publication. Do the actual, fricking work of being a scientist.
If you are a concerned father, I hope that some day you find the courage to accept the truth and fight for the future of your children. I really do.
If you are a flim-flam artist, take your medicine show down the road, ’cause it ain’t playin’ well here. I would urge you to do it sooner rather than later, while there are still pieces of your ass big enough to hand back to you.
The problem is that folks here love chew toys. And unfortunately, they’ll give you attention as long as you’re willing to settle for contempt in the place of the love whatever parent never gave you. But your psychological issues ain’t the issue of this site.
Scott, if you choose to mischaracterize and ignore the evidence when you look at it, I can’t help you. You’re just wrong. You will find out you are wrong because reality is real; meanwhile, you should stop pretending you’re being honest when you’re not.
Two of us have tried, and there’s no point in continuing to present the vast and overwhelming obvious evidence to someone who gets to work claiming it isn’t what it is.
“lack of awareness” – really? Scott didn’t bother to follow through on the multiple resources I provided. Masters/Henson is as good as it gets, as are the others I cited. I’ve focused on weather, because that is inarguable. Costs because that is one of the fake talking points regularly trotted out.
Ray Ladbury is too kind. He’s right about the rest. Scott is not interested in anything but finding a pressure point to argue. Perhaps because I’m a lay female, he thinks I’m vulnerable? Facts matter, and he ain’t got ’em. What is shocking is how much worse it has become, while the arguments haven’t changed. I just found this – song from 2011, video from 2014, which just about summarizes the useless anti-humanity of these garbage talking points:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_eNQcdwDo8
Scott: – “I hate to break it to y’all, but this is just the beginning. I’m very sorry. Just like every other failed theory in the past–TIME–is the great equalizer. You may be able to get away with it for years or even, in this case, decades, but in the end the roosters always come back home.”
Actually, the Earth System has been warming since about the 1880-1920 baseline (roughly a century) – see Figure 24 in the Hansen et al. (2023) paper at:
https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/423296595/kgad008f24.tif
And while the Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI) remains in a net gain state, the Earth System will continue to get hotter. That’s physics in action – see Figure 25 in the Hansen et al. (2023) paper at:
https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/423296599/kgad008f25.tif
Scott: – “Life is getting better on planet earth, not worse.”
Life for whom and what species, Scott? See the PNAS research article by Gerardo Ceballos, and Paul R. Ehrlich published on 18 Sep 2023 titled Mutilation of the tree of life via mass extinction of animal genera. It begins with:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2306987120
See Fig 2 showing number of generic extinctions since 1500 at:
https://www.pnas.org/cms/10.1073/pnas.2306987120/asset/fe8022fa-a8d0-493f-b395-52775a22a6bf/assets/images/large/pnas.2306987120fig02.jpg
Scott: – “It’ s over. Y’all had a good run. Actually a surprising run. I’m truly surprised it lasted this long. Honestly.”
Nope, data indicates global warming is not over. The EEI has doubled since the first decade of this century. This increase suggests a post-2010 acceleration of the global warming rate. Global warming will continue while there continues to be an EEI net energy gain. (2023 Hansen et al. paper)
Scott: – “But there’s a good reason Stefan or Gavin or Mike or any other climate team member won’t do public debates with these so called “science deniers”.”
This expression comes to my mind: “If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”
Scott: – “They know that all we have to do is start producing graphs showing that life on earth is indeed getting better, not worse.”
I’d suggest the graphs in the William J Ripple et al. (2023) paper titled The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory indicate otherwise.
https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad080
I’d suggest the evidence/data presented in the talk and slides (beginning from time interval 0:13:03) by Professor Johan Rockström, Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, on 18 Oct 2023 in Edinburgh UK, delivering the 44th TB Macaulay Lecture indicates otherwise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2VjdyqG-nY
Scott: – “Anyone care to challenge me to a public debate on this?”
Already have. See the previous thread (and earlier) from:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/a-distraction-due-to-errors-misunderstanding-and-misguided-norwegian-statistics/#comment-815999
It seems to me you have an accumulating history at this blog of ignoring/denying evidence/data that’s inconvenient for your ideological narrative.
Geoff et. al,
Thanks, but when I say “debate”, I mean a live, public debate, in front of a wide group of people of varied backgrounds, with a winner and a loser at the end. I do NOT mean on an unequivocally slanted climate science blog. Neither I, nor the vast majority of other (as y’all call “science deniers”, “idiots”, “flat-earthers”) professionals (I happen to be a physician) question whether the earth has warmed over the past century. That’s a straw man that just needs to be left alone. Save your breath and your writing space on that topic please.
My main point, again, is that for a group so hellbent on measuring the change in long term global land and ocean temperature trends, (creating entire careers on measuring changes to the hundredth degree), they seem to have collective ignorance in trending long term health and natural outcomes at all! I mean, isn’t it kind of important to be able to externally validate all your measuring tools with the same intensity so you can make sure that what you are measuring is actually a valid indicator of global health?
I’ll give you an example: Atorvastatin is a drug that lowers cholesterol levels. It also lowers the risk of a heart attack or stroke by anywhere between 20-60+% in people with high risk. Ezetimibe is another drug that lowers cholesterol levels, but by itself, hasn’t been shown to lower heart attack or stroke risk (It may be synergistic when paired with atorvastatin though). There is clearly more to lowering your heart attack risk by just lowering cholesterol alone. This has been validated by other studies of drugs that lower cholesterol but not heart attack risk (e.g. welchol). The same rules apply in climate change! It is requisite of the climate scientists to validate the claim of “global boiling” by showing us that life is getting worse. Unfortunately, just the opposite is occurring.
You could never respond adequately to my posts about how life is indeed not worsening, but getting better. The vizhub reference was ignored. All links to studies showing decreasing heat sensitivity were unanswered, other than that you said they were old. OK, what do YOU have to disprove what I showed? Other than one unpublished counterfactual modeling study with one single author who openly admits that his data may be incorrect? Seriously?
Your link to “2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory” is incredible. Although not in a good way. More hand waving and charts showing increasing temps, decreasing ice, Canadian fires, human population trends, meat consumption per capita, CO2 level, ocean acidity trends, etc etc. OK, looks like we’re in the 1.5 degree territory. So what? That factoid, in and of itself, is just like ezetimibe. Forget the correlation doesn’t automatically mean causation here. We don’t even have a correlation to begin the debate in the first place!
Ok if temps are increasing, then we should see that manifested in the literature as increasing global mortality due to heat. We don’t. It’s just the opposite (regardless of A/C use or not–after all we’re too weak to adapt, right?)
If decreasing global sea ice is causing problems, we should see that manifested in other areas like increasing polar bear mortality and coastal flooding. While there is much debate about polar bear populations, the most scientific attempt to record data showed that they are at least stable (see: https://perma.cc/TZ52-3558). While coastal flooding may have increased globally, deaths from flooding are at all time lows. (See: https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters).
If accelerating human induced climate change is causing sea levels to rise, why then, is the rate of increase slowing down? (See: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach/activity/graphing-sea-level-trends/) Apr 1993-Apr 2008 was 680% rate increase, compared to Apr 2008-Apr 2023 153% rate increase (it’s SLOWING DOWN, NOT SPEEDING UP And we’re talking millimeters in change!!)
I won’t bore you with other factoids of decreasing malnutrition, starvation, malaria deaths, cholera deaths, Global fires and fire related deaths, cold related deaths, etc. etc. etc. I’ll keep it simple: They are all decreasing. But if you really want the references let me know. I guarantee that they won’t come from CNN or Guardian or NYT. All published, peer reviewed journals and databases.
The Youtube video presenter you linked to says: “Suddenly we get 2-3 standard deviations outside of this range currently occurring and we can’t explain it, it is not represented in the climate models, not represented in the IPCC research, its not yet possible for us to have a full understanding of what is happening in the complex self regulating earth system”. Hmmm, so much for “the science is settled?” Your “catastrophe” is my waking, working, living, loving, laughing, crying, sharing, giving, taking, sleeping, and repeating. And I have a hunch, it is yours too. Cheers.
Scott,
Just to catch you up a bit, it’s safe to say the commentariat here knows exactly what you meant. You only need to be aware of the experience gained from decades of futile debates with creationists in all sorts of venues, formal and otherwise– and similar experiences with AGW. So whether you imagine yourself some sort of hard-ass barroom brawler or perhaps a swashbuckling 17th century duelist is moot.
However, I have to admit that I haven’t been following your thread, so I am curious what exactly would be the precise question that you would want to resolve?
I’m also curious what your thoughts are on this fact sheet from the WHO:
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health
also
https://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-causing-heat-fatalities.html
Since you seem to be mostly arguing by analogy, I’ll throw in one. If you decided to drive your car over a 20′ cliff with a steep, rocky slope at 60mph, you may not know the precise health outcome, but you wouldn’t need to be a genius to figure out that it would be a pretty stupid idea.
Scott: – “The Youtube video presenter you linked to says: “Suddenly we get 2-3 standard deviations outside of this range currently occurring and we can’t explain it, it is not represented in the climate models, not represented in the IPCC research, its not yet possible for us to have a full understanding of what is happening in the complex self regulating earth system”. Hmmm, so much for “the science is settled?””
There’s enough to know we/humanity are currently on a trajectory towards civilisation collapse before the end of this century.
I’d suggest what is ‘settled’ is that:
1. The Earth System is warming – for example, see Fig 24:
https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/423296595/kgad008f24.tif
2. The Earth System will continue to warm while the Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI) remains in a net energy gain state – for example, see Fig 25:
https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/423296599/kgad008f25.tif
3. The EEI has doubled since the first decade of this century. That means the warming rate is accelerating. That’s simple physics in action!
https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/423296599/kgad008f25.tif
4. Unless the EEI is reduced to a zero net energy gain state planet Earth will continue warming.
5. As the planet warms more locations on Earth will become progressively unlivable.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2305427120
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01132-6
6. Observations from space show that the rate of sea level rise is increasing, and has “more than doubled” since 1993.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-uses-30-year-satellite-record-to-track-and-project-rising-seas
7. Glaciologists have found, in study after study, that both of the planet’s remaining ice sheets are losing overall mass at an accelerating rate. Both the North Greenland and West Antarctic ice shelves are destabilizing.
https://nsidc.org/ice-sheets-today/analyses/introducing-ice-sheets-today
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42198-2
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01818-x
8. Multi-metre SLR is now unstoppable unless the planet cools. SLR will change every coastline.
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/sealevelrise/sealevelrise-tech-report.html
The Hansen et al. (2023) paper includes (bold text my emphasis):
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfclm/kgad008
Professor Johan Rockström, Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said from time interval 0:21:28 (bold text my emphasis):
“So, dear friends, what, what tends to be forgotten is that we’re in the middle of a climate crisis and that the only way to have a safe landing, to hold the 1.5 °Celsius, is a global sustainability transformation. Phasing out coal, oil and gas is actually – and I know this comes across often as a provocative statement – but that’s the easy part of the challenge. That’s the easy part of the challenge. We need to transform the food system, keep nature intact, and scale negative emission technologies in an unprecedented way. All of this has to occur, simultaneously, to have a safe landing. That’s where we are at, and this requires – which I will be kind of arguing in the continued part of this talk – a planetary boundary approach, because we have to have the checks and balances across all the systems of the planet, even if we only care about holding 1.5 °Celsius – one of the nine planetary boundaries. So, that’s where we are. And unfortunately, if you take the latest IPCC and UNFCCC assessment of the journey we’re following, even after the last stock-take on the Nationally Determined Contributions that were performed just before the New York climate week in September this year, we’re following a pathway that takes us to 2.7 °Celsius by the end of this century. And let me just be very clear from the outset, that is, without any hesitation in science, a path to disaster, That’s a path to disaster. We have no evidence, whatsoever, that we can support in a dignified and responsible way, eight, soon to be 9 billion people in the world as we know it, at anything above 2 °Celsius. Actually, we’ve not been at that point for the past 4 million years, at the 2.7 °Celsius level. So this is why we are talking about urgency – that we really need to move this around very fast. Now, is this only me standing here saying this? Well, actually no. The scientific communities now today, are very well, has a very strong consensus here.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2VjdyqG-nY
The peer-reviewed evidence/data is overwhelming.
Scott, what will it take for you and your climate science denier mates to stop denying and cherry-picking to fit your ideological narratives?
Scott: – “The vizhub reference was ignored.”
One reference only – where are the multiple peer-reviewed papers pointing in the same direction that include a full representation of ‘hotter’ countries?
Why does the data end at year-2019? Where are the 2020, 2021 & 2022 data?
What’s the data based on? Is it peer-reviewed?
How do they define heat-related deaths?
Lots of questions that I think you’d likely ignore because that would be inconvenient for your ideological narrative.
Scott, I guess you still haven’t figured out what “average” means.
Oh wow…
Did you in all seriousness write “(See: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach/activity/graphing-sea-level-trends/) Apr 1993-Apr 2008 was 680% rate increase, compared to Apr 2008-Apr 2023 153% rate increase (it’s SLOWING DOWN, NOT SPEEDING UP And we’re talking millimeters in change!!)?
You might want to learn a little bit more before you make large pronouncements that show you are extremely ignorant. A small hint: that graph shows the increase in sea levels since 1993, NOT RATES! Ignoring for a moment that it is not smart to use single points to start, April 1993 starts at 5 mm higher than the reference point, while April 2008 is at 39 mm. That’s an increase of 34 mm in 15 years. April 2023 is at 96.5 mm. That is, an increase of 57.5 mm in 15 years. Do we really need to explain to a physician that these numbers indicate that the *rate* of sea level rise has increased, the exact opposite from what you claimed.
Marco,
Please review this link to see how percent change represents the relative change in size of a population (in our case millimeters of sea level rise) over time. The rate of growth is also measured relatively and expresses as a percentage:
https://blogs.oregonstate.edu/socialdemography/2014/04/29/whats-difference-growth-rate-percent-change/
The rate of growth from Apr 93 to Apr 08 is 45% ((39mm – 5mm)/15 years/5mm x100 = 45%)
The rate of growth from Apr 08 to Apr 23 is 9.9% ((97mm-39mm)/15 years/39mm x100 = 9.9%)
The last time I checked, 9.9 is less than 45.
The percent change from Apr 93 to Apr 08 is 680% (39mm-5mm)/5mm x100 = 680%
The percent change from Apr 08 to Apr 23 is 149% (97mm-39mm)/39mm x100 = 149%
The last time I checked, 149 is less than 680.
So while the rate is increasing, the change in that rate is decreasing over time. I specifically used a 15 year time period so nobody could accuse me of cherry picking. Pick any starting point you want–I happened to use April.
We are still talking millimeters–let me repeat–millimeters of change. Not centimeters or even inches, let alone feet. The only way we can show that sea level rise is accelerating is by seeing a more exponential curve than what we are seeing in NASA’s graph. I’m sorry.
Scott: “The percent change from Apr 93 to Apr 08 is 680% (39mm-5mm)/5mm x100 = 680%
The percent change from Apr 08 to Apr 23 is 149% (97mm-39mm)/39mm x100 = 149%”
In the last 15 years 58mm of sea level rise. Lets say in the next 15 years we have a doubling of of that number, 116mm. Using Scott’s math:
Apr 23 to Apr 38 is (213mm-97mm)/97mm = 120%
So even though I doubled the yearly rate of increase, according to Scott’s methodology the rate of growth in seal level rise is decreasing. Nothing to see here folks, everything is fine, just move along.
Scott (at 4 DEC 2023 AT 8:33 AM): – “So while the rate is increasing, the change in that rate is decreasing over time. I specifically used a 15 year time period so nobody could accuse me of cherry picking. Pick any starting point you want–I happened to use April.”
What a load of jiggery-pokery nonsense.
Here’s the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) State of the Global Climate report 2022, published 21 Apr 2023, which included in the accompanying press release:
https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/wmo-annual-report-highlights-continuous-advance-of-climate-change
In my estimation the average rate of SLR of 2.27 mm/y (for the first decade of satellite measurements, i.e. 1993-2002) is less than half the average rate of SLR of 4.62 mm/y (for the most recent decade of satellite measurements, i.e. 2013-2022). That’s a clear acceleration!
Scott (at 4 DEC 2023 AT 8:33 AM): – “We are still talking millimeters–let me repeat–millimeters of change. Not centimeters or even inches, let alone feet.”
From little things, big thing grow! With continued global warming the rate of SLR will continue to double, and double again, and so on. The current rate of around 4.62 mm/y soon becomes more than a cm/y, then more than a dm/y, etc.
Hansen et al. (2023) states (bold text my emphasis):
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfclm/kgad008
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” – Al Bartlett
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Allen_Bartlett
Scott, a public debate isn’t science. It’s a strawman. If you think you have evidence contrary to the scientific consensus on global warming, then it’s up to you to submit a paper to a reputable, peer-reviewed journal. That’s science.
The ball’s in your court.
I don’t see much evidence of balls.
Steven,
You are mistaking what Scott is getting at.
This site is littered with proclamations about the dire consequences of global warming (even this thread) with anecdotal articles about heat deaths or floods or whatever, this is despite the findings of the IPCC AR6 that there is no discernible trend in the historic record. It isn’t that we need a new paper to prove it, we just need climate scientists to call out the catastrophising.
A beautiful example is the, now famous, Lancet paper talking about heat and cold deaths. There is a clear latitudinal trend from cold to warm climates. In cold climates, cold deaths outnumber heat deaths by more than 40 to one!!!In southern Europe that number becomes five to one.
So in the hottest cities in Europe cold deaths are far higher than heat deaths, and yet we are bombarded with messages about unlivable heat, even from the WHO. Let’s imagine that the earth warms by 2 degrees, and the effective latitude shift may be something like 250km for each of those cities, home many lives would be saved and why doesn’t anyone talk about it?
Just for a bit of fun, try googling “what temperatures can human’s live in” On my system the first page of 20 results all talk about heat, nothing about cold. Without engineering, how long would a human survive in Antarctica?
KW: In cold climates, cold deaths outnumber heat deaths by more than 40 to one!!!
BPL: There are a lot of cold deaths in cold climates??? Good grief! Who would have seen that coming?
Keith Woolard, its just not that simple. Its projected that in many places total temperature related deaths will increase. Essentially increased deaths due to warming temperatures in summer will outweigh reduced mortality rate in winter as winters warm up. Some references:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/extreme-temperatures-kill-5-million-people-a-year-with-heat-related-deaths-rising-study-finds
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/mar/higher-risk-temperature-related-death-if-global-warming-exceeds-2degc
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/global-warming-wont-cut-winter-deaths-as-hoped/
Do I really need to go through this again Nigelj?
The Guardian piece says no such thing. It says cold related deaths were decreasing and heat deaths are increasing, it doesn’t quantify those changes. But I would hazard a guess that as cold deaths are 20 times heat deaths then the likely saving on cold deaths would outweigh the increase in heat deaths. It does have the traditional “but this will all change”. The mantra of the AGW scare campaign…. “things are getting better, but that is just about to get worse”
The UCL also doesn’t say what you claim. In the extreme scenario they say heat deaths could increase 75%. At the moment in the UK cities, cold deaths outweigh heat deaths by 56 to one! (42915 to 762 from the Lancet study) They do not mention a change in cold deaths (a bit bias don’t you think?)
And the “Scientific” American opinion piece is just that. His projections are not based on anything other than his feeling that there will be “more volatile winters”. Instead of basing this on his feelings, perhaps a quick look at actual data might help. Here is a plot that took me 5 minutes. I used the entire 250 year daily CET mean temperatures and plotted the standard deviation on a rolling 3 month window and plotted just the winter values.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/2UZVaMXKDjMUY1GB6
Hmmmm, looks to me like variability in winter in central England is decreasing. But obviously I am not a climate scientist so I am wrong.
(and a small aside to BPL – really? That’s what you took away from my comment? I was highlighting the latitudinal variation)
Keith Woollard (at 4 DEC 2023 AT 11:41 PM): – “Let’s imagine that the earth warms by 2 degrees, and the effective latitude shift may be something like 250km for each of those cities, home many lives would be saved and why doesn’t anyone talk about it?”
And many more lives and livelihoods around the world would likely be lost from water and food scarcities, and extreme weather events (e.g. lethal moist heat, floods, storms, droughts, wildfires, etc.). And lowlands and coastal cities will become progressively inundated by SLR.
In the YouTube video titled 2°C is too high for the world’s ice #COP28, published 4 Dec 2023, duration 0:12:40, Dr James Kirkham, Chief Scientific Advisor for the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative says from time interval 0:01:52:
“For sea level rise, that two degrees is simply too high. It will lock-in multiple metres of sea level rise over the coming centuries.
For mountain glaciers and snow, two degrees is too high. We’re going to lose half the world’s ice at 1.5 and above that, much, much worse. This will create massive problems of water, water scarcity.
The permafrost – two degrees is too high. One-point-five already now, will commit massive amounts of emissions from permafrost, and two degrees will be far, far worse – about the same size as the emissions from the EU today, every single year.
Polar oceans – two degrees is too high. We’re going to cause irreversible damage in terms of acidifying and dissolving the fundamental basis of the food chains there. And for sea ice, above anything else, two degrees is too high. Losing sea ice in the Arctic will be like putting a radiator next to the Greenland Ice Sheet, which will cause massive feedbacks around the world, which will be very, very bad.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJKdQZJ30Hw
Keith Woollard (at 4 DEC 2023 AT 11:41 PM): – “Without engineering, how long would a human survive in Antarctica?”
You can always wear more insulating clothes/apparel to keep warm in freezing conditions.
Without engineering, the thermoregulating organism Homo sapiens, aka modern humans, cannot survive for as little as 15 minutes to a few hours of exposure time in moist heat conditions where the wet bulb temperature is at or exceeds 35 °C. Recent empirical evidence suggests even lower moist heat thresholds (even for fit and healthy subjects) are exceeded for human abilities to biologically thermoregulate.
https://www.pnas.org/cms/10.1073/pnas.2305427120/asset/7e1197f1-3196-4a36-a310-937609789b47/assets/images/large/pnas.2305427120fig04.jpg
As heatwaves become more frequent, intense, and longer-lasting due to climate change, the question of breaching thermal limits (not just for humans but also for plants and animals we depend upon for food) becomes increasingly pressing.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2305427120
A little closer to your home, it seems the region between Port Hedland and Broome extending inland, and around Kununurra in Western Australia, could start to become increasingly unliveable at and above the +1.5 °C global mean warming threshold, and progressively enlarge as the global mean surface temperature continues to rise.
https://twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/1661450321766371329
Geoff,
Obviously you have been listening to Twiggy far too much and his “lethal humidity” rant.
It’s like you all have the same playbook and just think the pat answers apply to all situations. Kununurra doesn’t have a long term continuous weather record, but nearby Halls Creek is just as hot and humid and it has a nice 75 year record. Don’t trust me, look it up yourself but the temperature trend over that entire record is -0.1 degrees/century
There are long term weather stats for Kununurra going back to 1971 and the wet bulb average for the peak of the hot/wet season is 25.6. According to the BoM, the highest ever wet bulb temp recorded in Australia is 31
I am not saying it has never reached 35, and it could well in the future in some places for some amount of time. To propose it as a risk, but dismissing cold as just needing to put more clothes on is simplistic in the extreme
Keith Woolard, this is what the Guardian article said, and it is generally consistent with my comments:
The study found more people had died of cold than heat over the two-decade period. But heat-related deaths were increasing, while cold-linked deaths were dropping.
“In the future, cold-related mortality should continue to decrease, but because the heat-related mortality will continue to increase, that means there will be a break point,” Guo said.
He said in Europe there had already been an overall increase in the rate of deaths associated with temperatures.
“If we don’t take any action to mitigate climate change … more deaths will be caused.”
The study, published in the journal the Lancet Planetary Health, took into account the differing optimal temperatures for people living in different regions.
Keith Woollard (at 6 DEC 2023 AT 12:18 AM): – “Obviously you have been listening to Twiggy far too much and his “lethal humidity” rant.”
Um… Which is actually based upon peer-reviewed science…
https://cdn.fortescue.com/docs/default-source/announcements-and-reports/2599801.pdf?sfvrsn=11d660ea_6
But I keep forgetting that you deny peer-reviewed science that’s inconvenient for your ideological narrative, aye Keith?
Keith Woollard (at 6 DEC 2023 AT 12:18 AM): – “It’s like you all have the same playbook and just think the pat answers apply to all situations.”
I don’t speak for anyone else. My “playbook” is the accumulating and overwhelming peer-reviewed science pointing in the same direction along multiple lines of inquiry.
It seems to me that your “playbook” is to ignore and deny anything inconvenient, and cherry-pick anything that is convenient, for your ideological narrative.
Keith Woollard (at 6 DEC 2023 AT 12:18 AM): – “There are long term weather stats for Kununurra going back to 1971 and the wet bulb average for the peak of the hot/wet season is 25.6. According to the BoM, the highest ever wet bulb temp recorded in Australia is 31”
I’d suggest it’s the extremes that kill, NOT the average conditions.
A quick look at the BoM records for Halls Creek, Western Australia, shows:
Sun, 3 Dec 2023, at 3pm, the temperature was 40.6 °C at 14%RH
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/IDCJDW6052.latest.shtml
40.6 °C / 105.08 °F at 14% RH yields a heat index of 101.3 F / 38.5 C.
https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/html/heatindex.shtml
Per the NWS Heat Index Chart, a heat index of 101.3 F is in the “Extreme Caution” category, and close to the “Danger” category. Just a few degrees warmer and/or more humid and working outside becomes dangerous. And that’s for being in shady, light wind conditions. Full sunshine can increase heat index values by up to 15 °F.
https://www.weather.gov/images/safety/heatindexchart-650.jpg
And the summer 2023/24 season is only just getting started in a year that will be the hottest on record.
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/climate-change-2023-will-be-warmest-year-record-eus-copernicus-2023-12-06/
Doctors in northern WA are already seeing people presenting with direct heat injuries like heat stroke and heat stress.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-05/kimberley-doctors-urge-climate-action/103178082
As heatwaves become more frequent, intense, and longer-lasting due to a warming climate, places like Halls Creek, Kununurra, Port Hedland and Broome, will likely become progressively unliveable.
Keith Woollard (at 6 DEC 2023 AT 12:18 AM): – “I am not saying it has never reached 35, and it could well in the future in some places for some amount of time. To propose it as a risk, but dismissing cold as just needing to put more clothes on is simplistic in the extreme”
Humans have lived in freezing conditions for multiple millennia. The risk is well understood and manageable with appropriate insulation and/or heating.
Per Wikipedia, humans have never experienced weather where wet bulb temperatures have exceed 36.3 °C (Ras Al Khaimah City, UAE).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature
Wet bulb temperatures above 35 °C for exposure times in as little as 15 minutes are well known to be lethal for humans. Heat pumps can provide thermal relief, but that means the outdoors become a n0-go zone while those lethal conditions prevail. What do people, plants and animals do exposed to those conditions where air-con is not available/working? They move or die.
More and more locations are heading towards that climate territory as the Earth System warms further. Most people are likely to move away from those locations than endure those climate conditions. That creates increasing migration pressures on ‘cooler’ countries, which may increase geopolitical instability.
I think your ill-informed ideology is blinding you to the increasing climate risks…
K. Woollard Dec 4. “A beautiful example is the, now famous, Lancet paper talking about heat and cold deaths.”
That “beautiful example” wouldn’t be by any chance from the “ famous Lancet Planet Health 2021;5: 415–25, heavily promoted by Lomborg, and brought onto RC by your fellow denier, Thomas W Fuller a few months back?
Back then, I questioned the methodology of that beautifully famous paper
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/back-to-basics/#comment-813103 : they didn’t identify the heat or cold-related death based on any etiology of diseases – they simply … fitted the local temperature changes against the local mortality.”
[P: So when later Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022, the Lancet paper methodology would have attributed the war-deaths on both-sides at the time to …cold.]
I also question how they failed to address non-climatic confounding factors. To illustrate the point:
– Eastern Europe had the lowest mean temperatures out of all regions
and yet… had HEAT-mortality 5 x global average!
– while the subSaharan Africa, with its oppressive heat and humidity, had …2x the global average for deaths from … COLD.”
If true these would be truly astounding findings – yet not a word on that from Lomborg, not from TWFuller who brought up the Lancet paper in July, not from Keith Woollard, otherwise very active in that same thread …
But since you brought up that beautifully famous Lancet paper in the current thread, would you care to defend the credibility of your source, by explaining the reasons behind these East European and subSaharan results?
Because if you can’t – then your famous Lancet Health paper is a glorified garbage, actually worse than garbage, since it promises an insight where there is none – only spurious correlations.
So in consecutive comments I am accused of “you deny peer-reviewed science” andrelying on it????
True – sometimes peer reviewed science is wrong and sometimes it isn’t, More often people’s interpretation of it is wrong.
Let me just point out some of your obvious mistakes Geoff. For a start you have jumped from wet bulb temps to heat index and pretended they are the same thing. Utter rubbish. Take it from a Perth resident, 42 degrees at 14%RH is a walk in the park, and it is far nicer than 30 degrees at 90%RH. like a lot of places in the tropics. 42@14% gives a wet bulb of 22!
I gave you an average wet bulb max to give some sort of indication of “normal for the Pilbarra. I realise extremes kill, that is exactly why I gave you the highest ever recorded wet bulb temp in Australia ever, and it is a long way from the dangerous level In fact, let’s work out how long it will take at current trends…… we need 4 degrees warmer, and Halls Creek is dropping at 0.1 degrees/century.. Wow, that’s going to be a problem in -4000 years
This issue of lethal humidity is only relevant when the human body cannot get rid of heat, at 14% it always can
The more you all go on about the supposed dangers of heat vs cold the more the world will see the bias in your thinking. There is not a country on earth that has a death rate higher in warmer weather than cold. It is mostly an order of magnitude larger in cold weather. You can complain about methodologies, and what might happen, or the fact that you think at some time in the future it may reverse but cold is far far far more dangerous to humans.
.
Keith Woollard (at 8 DEC 2023 AT 12:34 AM): – “True – sometimes peer reviewed science is wrong and sometimes it isn’t, More often people’s interpretation of it is wrong.”
Basically, cherry-picking bits that suit your ideological narrative and ignoring/denying anything that’s inconvenient, aye Keith? Thanks for being so candid!
Keith Woollard (at 8 DEC 2023 AT 12:34 AM): – “Let me just point out some of your obvious mistakes Geoff. For a start you have jumped from wet bulb temps to heat index and pretended they are the same thing. Utter rubbish.”
I think you are deliberately misrepresenting me here.
The Wet Bulb temperature is the temperature of adiabatic saturation. Wet bulb temperatures are a function of dry bulb temperature, air flow and relative humidity.
The Extended Heat Index (primarily for activities away from direct sunlight) is also a function of dry bulb and relative humidity. I’d suggest it provides a better means to assess the risks during heat waves and warn about the conditions dangerous for human health.
Keith Woollard (at 8 DEC 2023 AT 12:34 AM): – “Take it from a Perth resident, 42 degrees at 14%RH is a walk in the park…”
Um… Hardly! That’s a Heat Index of 40 ºC – Extreme Caution. Heat stroke, heat cramps or heat exhaustion possible with prolonged exposure and/or physical activity.
https://www.isglobal.org/en/heat-index-calculator
Keith Woollard (at 8 DEC 2023 AT 12:34 AM): – “…and it is far nicer than 30 degrees at 90%RH. like a lot of places in the tropics.”
Only three Heat Index degrees more – that’s a Heat Index of 43 ºC – Danger. Heat cramps or heat exhaustion likely and heat stroke possible with prolonged exposure and/or physical activity.
Keith Woollard (at 8 DEC 2023 AT 12:34 AM): – “42@14% gives a wet bulb of 22!”
Nope. It’s 20.2 ºC.
https://www.mit.edu/~eltahirgroup/calTW.html
Keith Woollard (at 8 DEC 2023 AT 12:34 AM): – “I gave you an average wet bulb max to give some sort of indication of “normal for the Pilbarra. I realise extremes kill, that is exactly why I gave you the highest ever recorded wet bulb temp in Australia ever, and it is a long way from the dangerous level”
You state “I realise extremes kill”, but continue to assert AVERAGE wet bulb max temperatures (NOT extremes) as being indicative of survivability for the Pilbara. Yet on 13 Jan 2022, Onslow reached 50.7 ºC (I’d suggest the humidity was probably very low, assuming only 5%RH).
https://twitter.com/BOM_WA/status/1481547395225772035
That yields a Heat Index of 46 ºC – Danger. Heat cramps or heat exhaustion likely and heat stroke possible with prolonged exposure and/or physical activity. Increase humidity to 14%RH and the Heat Index rises to 52 ºC – Extreme Danger. Heat stroke highly likely.
Yet the wet bulb temperature is 19.9 ºC (for 50.7 ºC dry bulb, 5%RH), and 25.0 ºC (for 50.7 ºC dry bulb, 14%RH).
Keith Woollard (at 8 DEC 2023 AT 12:34 AM): – “Halls Creek is dropping at 0.1 degrees/century…”
Um… where do you get that from, Keith? Please show your links, data and working calculations.
Keith Woollard (at 8 DEC 2023 AT 12:34 AM): – “This issue of lethal humidity is only relevant when the human body cannot get rid of heat, at 14% it always can”
Provided you are continually well hydrated and topped-up with electrolytes. Continued excessive sweating can rapidly deplete the body of fluids and electrolytes. That can also stress the heart and kidneys, leading to organ failures. And I’d suggest it’s not conducive to sleeping well at elevated temperatures.
Keith Woollard (at 8 DEC 2023 AT 12:34 AM): – “There is not a country on earth that has a death rate higher in warmer weather than cold.”
Evidence/data, Keith?
From DEGREES OF RISK: Can the banking system survive climate warming of 3˚C?, by David Spratt & Ian Dunlop, published Aug 2021, on page 10:
https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/dor
For comparison, Sous Vide Steak Time and Temperature for Strip and Ribeye Steak:
Medium-rare: 129 °F / 54 °C to 134 °F / 57 °C for 1h to 4h
Medium: 135 °F / 57 °C to 144 °F / 62 °C for 1h to 4h
Keith Woollard Dec.8: “ So in consecutive comments I am accused of “you deny peer-reviewed science” and relying on it???? ”
No, Mr. Woollard, you are not accused of “relying on science”, but of intellectual dishonesty – of being selectively skeptic – hyperskeptical toward the papers which message you don’t want to hear, and utterly uncritical to the few papers that do support your ideology.
Being published in a peer reviewed paper, does not put ANY article beyond criticism – see another “famous” paper in the same Lancet that “beautifully” tied autism to vaccination. Even more so – this does not prove
the EXTRAPOLOATIONS of that paper by others: the implication by Lomborg and his sheep that global warming is good because it saves lives.
Furthermore, the ship that you do not owe any answers because you are not the paper’s author has sailed the moment you called upon its results, described them as “beautiful” and the paper as “famous”.
If you don’t understand the paper enough to defend it – how can you do know that it is “beautiful” because it supports your views on climate change???
Finally, as pointed to you before – when you brought up your “beautiful” paper – you were perfectly AWARE about the problems with the paper, and therefore with Lomborg’s use of it – we have discussed “the very same paper when it was brought onto RC by your fellow denier, Thomas W Fuller, a few months back. And you were active in that thread – so you KNEW the criticisms of it. e.g.: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/back-to-basics/#comment-813103”
where I wrote: “ they didn’t identify the heat or cold-related death based on any etiology of diseases – they simply … fitted the local temperature changes against the local mortality”
So if you had a war in winter – they would count the war deaths as “cold deaths”. As a result their results were often absurd:
Piotr: “Eastern Europe had the lowest mean temperatures out of all regions and yet… had HEAT-mortality 5 x global average!
– while the subSaharan Africa, with its oppressive heat and humidity, had …2x the global average for deaths from … COLD.”
Neither Fuller nor you were able to mount any defense of that paper – you just disappeared and lauding the same paper:
KWoollard, this thread: “A beautiful example is the, now famous, Lancet paper”
And that’s all one needs to know about scientific credibility and intellectual honesty of .Keith Woollard. So the only remaining question is – why? What it is in it for you?
There are a number of necessary replies to your comment. First, mortality is driven by many factors, not just climate. improved medical practices perhaps are a factor??? odd that as a physician you mention statins to demonstrate a point while ignoring that these very statins are increasing lifespan and this could easily compensate for decreased lifespan due to climate changes.
Second, just because we have not yet hit a threshhold where effects on a planetary level in things like crop yields does not mean it won’t happen. we are in early days still and a lot more warming is coming. in fact, we have not even hit the threshhold where major impacts were expected.
Third, you cannot so glibly dismiss that ‘everyone knows the planet is warming due to co2’ when the denialist community has spent decades denying just this. if there is a focus on rising temperatures in climate science it is because (a) that is the actual topic of investigation, and (b) it HAS been, and still is, denied all the time.
Fourth, your sea-level rise comments seem confusing. are you actually arguing that sea levels are not going to rise due to AGW? How? Ice won’t actually melt? Thermal expansion isn’t real? Or are you arguing that yes, of course sea levels HAVE TO rise, but magically, this is not actually going to cause flooding? Decreased fatalities due to sea level rise (i’ll take your word that this is a fact) would off course be due to better forecasting and evacuations. but catastrophics costs to coastlines and coastal cities are measured in lots of ways beyond fatalities.
S: when I say “debate”, I mean a live, public debate, in front of a wide group of people of varied backgrounds, with a winner and a loser at the end.
BPL: Biologists no longer debate creationists.
That’s a pretty damn good comment actually. A slam dunk. Short direct to the point. Bingo. A reader would nod their head, go get on with their lives and not give it a second thought. While none would read Stephans’ “compelling” missives. :-)
Does anyone want to debate the Sophist though? Or be good enough to win? I think not. With a public jury voting who won, they’d probably lose easily.
I nominate Carbomontanus to take Scott on. Can we film it? :-)
————————————-
Scott says: ” a group so hellbent on using “global means” to track temperature changes over time ”
It most certainly “begs the question” alright. My point and framing is completely different than Scotts — not tracking issue but a public information issues of the Yardstick that was chosen — but the issue of “global means” remains valid.
eg “OMG we have keep temperature increases below 2C!” ….. wow, who are you, Chicken Little?
“Woohoo, 2 degrees C increase, oh so scary that, not!” …. thinks the average person when they first hear it …. and then go carry on with their lives. You lose. The planet loses. Life loses.
Let me know when y’all defeat that slippery pole. (Smile)
S: Just because you can show that the earth has warmed over the past few decades doesn’t mean at all that this warming is detrimental, and looks like may even be beneficial.
BPL: Sure, because more droughts, more violent weather along coastlines, rising oceans, more killer heat waves, and the eventual collapse of human agriculture and human civilization with it are all good things, right?
Unfortunately I feel we are wasting our time trying to debate with someone like Scott or Victor. The problem is it is very difficult if not impossible to show tangible consequences now of anthropogenic climate change that cannot be dismissed by something like being within the bounds of natural variability, upward trend in insured losses can be dismissed by questioning whether losses have been normalised to account for wealth and population increases. Future projections can be dismissed as mere projections with uncertainty, not reality.
The consequences of climate change are an issue of risk. If we are very very lucky we will get off lightly. If we are very very unlucky we will end up with a global human catastrophe. It comes down to whether we adopt measures now which may cause some inconvenience, expense and reduction in freedom to shift the propability from the latter to the former, or do we wing it and place faith that nothing bad happens to us personally. The answer to that question is not about science, it is about human values. Someone might have the opinion that climate change is unimportant because they personally are unlikely to be affected but that is a personal value and you can’t say they cannot hold it. It is not just the polarised community that oppose any measures to tackle climate change if they personally experience some undersiable side effects, it crosses into the general population as well. For example, you may be able to claim the majority of people in the UK think climate change is a problem and we should do something about it, but how many of that majority are taking personal measures to cut their carbon footprint such as avoiding flights, eating less meat, using a bicycle for short journeys instead of a car, reducing energy consumption at home, or voting for political parties that have a strong green agenda? Not many I suspect, and when you have protests against reducing speed limits in urban areas despite the evidence clearly showing that will reduce road injuries and deaths, protesting against Ultra Low Emission Zones even though improving air quality in urban areas cannot be a bad thing, or protesting against congestion charging despite the evidence there are social and economic costs to traffic congestion, the majority or urban journeys are short enough to be done by bicycle or public transport, and the UK has some of the most congested roads in Europe, but the population insists on acting like some dystopic clone of the U.S. with its car is king mentality, I don’t know what the answer is to bring enough people together to act on climate change that governments will be forced to take notice and act accordingly.
Gee, who could have guessed that Scott is a “Debate-me” bro. Color me shocked. Just like every creationist and flat Earther and anti-vaxxer…, he needs real scientist to provide him a pedestal to spew his anti-science crap. It’s getting harder for his type to lure in the masses when there are fact checkers in most reputable media outlets. Hell, after Dominion, even Faux News knows there are consequences to lying through your teeth all the time–they know they have to be more careful about their lies. So, what is an ambitious conspiracy theorist to do? They have to find a reputable scientist to elevate them and their half-baked ideas to seemingly have equal validity and be worthy of presentation on the same stage as actual science.
Unfortunately, for Scott and the other “Debate-me” bro’s, most scientists now know that science is never advanced on a debate stage. Science needs to be checked and rechecked and validated and revalidated and peer-reviewed, and cited and revised in subsequent publications. It’s not advanced by a Powerpoint presentation or a terse memo or a well placed bon mot. Scientists are serious people. Scott and the “Debate-me” bros are not.
So, is life getting better? It’s certainly getting interesting. And given that there are 8 billion people on the planet–a not insignificant proportion of whom are actively trying to make things better, it would not be surprising to see improvements. It’s fascinating for a physicist in his 60s to watch the development of AI, to watch more an more satellites launching, to see advances in our understanding of the genomes of life on the planet… Those of us with money can buy nifty gadgets and binge watch entertainment and try out the latest recipes we see on televised food porn. So, we certainly have our bread and circuses. But is life getting better?
Do we have more time with the people who count to us? Probably not. Many are working two jobs just to make ends meet. We’re seeing wealth become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few megalomaniacs–many of whom do not even need to pool their funds with other vulture capitalists to ruin companies that could have contributed to the common good (looking at you Xitter!)
Are we more secure against disease and adverse weather. Well, the dead from the floods in the Horn of Africa and Pakistan…this year certainly weren’t. The dead from the increasingly severe heat waves that have hit all over the world from the Pacific Northwest to the Russian Steppes were not. The Brazilian Swifties were disappointed because the spring heat in Rio was deadly (We all know that this is Taylor’s and Oprah’s world, they just graciously let us live in it.) We know with near certainty that climate change made these events a lot worse than the likely would have been.
Are farmers more secure. Well, the rivers and the aquifers they need for their crops are drying up–and we know climate change is contributing to that, both through drought and ironically through increasingly impulsive rain events, which are more likely to run off saturated near-surface ground and cause flooding and erosion than they are to recharge aquifers. And sea level is rising, polluting freshwater with brackish water. BTW, when an aquifer dries up, it’s done. The pores in the rock compact and water flow stops for good. It’s permanent.
I could go on, and probably, if the purpose of this were to benefit Scott, I should. But I suspect Scott will put up his denial shields at full power and keep whistling past the graveyard, afraid, just like all his other conspiracy theorist “Debate-me” brethren, to confront the problems and the truths that are essential to solve.
And he’ll keep waitin’ for the day when his enemies get their comeuppance–cause just your wait–any day now–any day–the skies’ll open up and the great sky daddy will punish all the evilutionists, and people will realize that the entire space program is just a big conspiracy by the manufacturers to sell more globes and people will realize that–despite the fact that they’ve given out over 13 billijon doses of Covid-19 vaccine, that it’s real purpose is to magnetize your nose…and of course people will realize that over 200 years of understanding the greenhouse effect is wrong and the warming we are seeing is due to Jewish space lasers…any day now.
And all sarcasm aside, could we at least confine Scott and Weaktor, etc. to the Unforced Variations, so they don’t pollute the discussion of the actual science threads?
Regarding pollution:
Where is the science in this remark? I observe a ratio of about 10:1 in terms of “polluting” contributions vs points of interest here.
Also on the ‘featured stories’ on this page a similar ratio holds – these include recent headlines such as “science denial”, “clauser-ology”, “misguided Norwegian statistics”, “old habits”, “Scafetta Saga”, and “as Soon as Possible”. Interspersed are topics of scientific interest, such as “AMOC tippings”. It’s rare to find a gem here; this is empirical fact.
The science of real climates is subordinate. I have only recently come to this realization.
My working hypothesis is that this condition may stem from the commercialization of science in academic press and related forums, where science is commodified and traded as political capital or a similar form of currency. Commercialization is invariably associated with the proliferation of junk and pollution as by-product. 10 units of junk generation per unit of genuine value created.
In our work outside the confines of academic press, we are meticulous about data collection and observational methods, hypothesis formation, experimentation, adaptation, and genuine improvement of knowledge and methods pertaining to the nature of reality on the landscape. Proliferating junk content at a rate of 10 times would be considered (obviously) disastrous and counter-productive. This should be actively avoided.
Dear JCM,
I just asked Barton Paul Levenson if he could join my plea to moderators for an article clarifying the controversies about the role of the water cycle in climate regulation.
Would you join the plea?
Greetings
Tomáš
in response to: Joining the Plea.
Consider myself joined by default.
However, in light of my recent realization that the real climate science mission is quite narrowly defined, I question whether this is the right forum. It’s like expecting a Contemporary Art Gallery to showcase a collection of the Classics. It’s not inconceivable but it requires the right set of circumstances.
For example, during my recent visit to Chicago Illinois, the river cruise architectural tour-guide Sam highlighted the mix of many style of buildings ranging from Neo-classical and Gothic Revival, to Art Deco and Post Moderne. There was also a very humorous discussion of the sewage works. This eclectic mix of vision and ideas seems somehow synergistic and quite unique. And, according to Sam, this required flushing out the pollution (stench) in order to attract newcomers and investment along the Riverwalk.
Join me also in celebrating World Soil Day December 5th which runs the risk of being overshadowed by the drama, polarization, division, and fingerpointing at the COP28 trace gas emission negotiation conference. This culture seems to manifest in many aspects of current climate discussion, where fresh air is overwhelmed and displaced by a lot of stench.
Soil management is intimately tied to water and contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly the SDG 1 (No poverty), SDG 2 (Zero hunger), along with other SDGs such as SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 15 (Net Zero land degradation), and perhaps most importantly, SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals).
cheers
On the plus side, I got to mark the “Debate Me” box on my ClimateBall Bingo card. I believe it’s the “or you’re a coward” variation.
Yet another outstanding comment, Ray, you’re my role model. Scott’s climate-science denial is more sweeping than lukewarmism; but as you so succinctly demonstrate, the denialist claim “life is getting better” always implies “for the denialist”, and denies the costs of climate change already being paid by people who’ve contributed least to the problem. The “life is getting better” claim is relentlessly propagated by paid disinformers. That’s clear from the confessions of my go-to former Libertarian denialist, Jerry Taylor:
It sounds like Scott just hasn’t figured out he’s being played for profit.
Scotts view seems to be humanity should just ignore problems in life because “things are generally getting better”. Tell that to the Israeli’s, Palestinians, Ukrainians, the guy being robbed or on a ventilator. Scotts view is naive at best.
We didn’t reduce the covid problem by saying things in life are generally getting better and life expectancy is increasing. Anyone with more than half a brain could see at day one that covid could cause a catastrophe, so measures were taken to minimise impacts and fast track vaccines and treatments. We didn’t wait until tens of millions were dying before action was taken.
We have to think ahead. Climate change will only get worse if we do nothing. The impacts will be increasingly severe. Life expectancy could ultimately start to fall despite the best efforts of the medical profession and medical advances.
I believe our best option is to mitigate the climate problems with solutions we have now such as renewable energy, before it gets worse leaving only high risk options like geoengineering or wishful thinking around other magic bullet cures.
nigelj: – “We didn’t reduce the covid problem by saying things in life are generally getting better and life expectancy is increasing.”
Data I see suggests the “covid problem” is ongoing.
Life expectancy has fallen in many countries since COVID-19 emerged.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01450-3
Life expectancy in the US has declined to 76.4 years, the shortest it’s been in nearly two decades, according to December 2022 data from the CDC.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/whats-behind-shocking-u-s-life-expectancy-decline-and-what-to-do-about-it/
COVID-19 caused 9,859 deaths and became the third leading cause in Australia in 2022. There were 190,939 deaths in 2022 in Australia, almost 20,000 more than 2021.
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/causes-death-australia/latest-release
At least 65 million individuals worldwide are estimated to have long COVID, with cases increasing daily.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2
Despite the downgrading of the COVID-19 pandemic in many countries and treating it as influenza, there’s a greater likelihood of long-term complications associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection.
https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-023-03200-2
Data suggests life has got worse for many people.
You’d think Scott, as “a very busy actively practicing physician”, would have noticed some changes in the lives of his patients?
n: We didn’t reduce the covid problem by saying things in life are generally getting better and life expectancy is increasing. Anyone with more than half a brain could see at day one that covid could cause a catastrophe, so measures were taken to minimise impacts and fast track vaccines and treatments. We didn’t wait until tens of millions were dying before action was taken.
BPL: Exactly. Good analogy. I’d even debate whether things are getting better generally, but even if they are at the moment, that doesn’t guarantee that that will continue. If you fall off the Sears Tower, and say as you hurtle past the 14th floor, “Well, so far, so good,” it doesn’t mean you’ll be fine at sidewalk level,
Scott,
I am heartened that you acknowledge that anyone with a knowledge of science knows the planet is getting warmer. so you acknowledge that the denialist community was 100% wrong for decades? that the scientists you now deride were in fact 100% correct? that the hockey stick mocked by the deniers yearly, monthly, daily, hours, over decades, was actually real? and that the literally thousands of claims over decades made by deniers were entirely wrong. not a little wrong. not sort of wrong. but fantastically, completely, irredeemably wrong? thanks. I really appreciate your acknowledging this.
I am curious about one thing. Can you quantify this claim that “life is getting better”? human life? all life-forms? By better do you happier? more advanced? Healthier? increased net biomass? can you show the trend-line of “betterness” with appropriate error bars?
Dan B, as an observer of the climate debate I must say you have completely mischaracterized what your opponents say, hardly a surprise in a heated debate. Those you characterize as ‘deniers’ (what a loathsome term) readily acknowledged the planet was getting warmer. The hockey stick had very real problems.
Yes, your opponents made many wrong claims. And a few right ones. Much like those on your side of the conversation.
It’s great to be a lukewarmer and to have the luxury of criticizing both sides. As we make relatively few claims there is less opportunity for us to be mistaken. However, I must also admit that on the whole we often don’t contribute much more than criticism to the conversation, something I really regret.
Finally, many, many respected organizations have indeed quantified improvements to the human condition–you really should get out more.
*Just because you can show that the earth has warmed over the past few decades doesn’t mean at all that this warming is detrimental, and looks like may even be beneficial. This is evidenced by the many different lines of research all pointing to the same thing: Life is getting better on planet earth, not worse*
Damn! That was idiotic.
Nobody is afraid to debate you in public or anywhere else, but you’re not worth anyone’s time or effort to do so.
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/
https://www.facebook.com/cosheep
The Earth’s orbit around the Sun is not the only orbital cycle that’s important for climate variations,. The lunar cycle likely has a significant tidal effect on ocean flows and upwelling cycles. And most importantly, the cycles are short enough to be observed in terms of human years. Yet, what I find odd is the consensus acceptance of Milanković cycles, which can’t easily be validated due to the length of time involved, but the non-acceptance (or disinterest) in long-period tidal cycles, which in contrast can be cross-validated against historical instrumental records or validated over the span of decades or less.
Of course this is fluid dynamics we’re talking about so the mathematical treatment isn’t always easy, but with the advent of machine learning horsepower, it’s just a matter of time before someone feeds calibrated forcing parameters and test data into a NN and confirms the pattern. When that happens, progress in inter-annual climate predictions will be rapid.
[Response: Lunar cycles are not ignored. For example, I have personally looked into them in the context of the rhythms of Dansgaard-Oeschger events, but found no connection. Perhaps scientists simply didn’t find any effects on climate of these cycles so far? Do you have any evidence for such an effect? I’d be interested to see it. -Stefan]
Here we go again, Paul Pukite’s tidal oscillations – a solution in search of a problem to solve. Having failed to prove that better prediction of tidal influence on the exact timing of ENSO would “save countless lives“, Mr. Pukite tries to hitch himself to the social importnace of the science of AGW. Failing to do so with ENSO – now he tries to get there by a back-door – via glacial climate, by comparing the lunar oscillations with Milankovic cycles:
Pukite: “ What I find odd is the consensus acceptance of Milanković cycles but the non-acceptance (or disinterest) in long-period tidal cycles”
A few possible reasons why the disinterest may be justified, Mr. Pukite:
1. Milankovic cycles alter the main source of energy for the Earth energy budget: amount, location and timing of the solar radiation. Your “long-period” lunar oscillations do not ALTER the amount of energy received by Earth (tidal friction heat is negligible compared to solar radiation). So the only effect of tides on Earth’s energy flows is secondary – the redistribution of the solar-derived heat.
2. The interest of Milankovic cycles for climate science is that they may trigger deglaciation by warming the summers in Arctic and subArctic. Can you prove that your tides can deliver the same amount of heat to the right place in the right season?
3. The timing of deglaciation, initially 40,000 yrs cycles, switched in the last 700,000 yrs to ~100,000 yrs cycles. Milankovic can explain it – it has both the ~ 40,000 AND ~100,000 cycles. What mechanism do you propose for the Moon to have these two specific-length cycles?
4. You try to get the respect for your pet idea (tides ) by casting it as critically important to humanity (better prediction is supposed to save “countless lives”) – and if so – it deserves the social appreciation for its researches, like you, and redirecting the resources from investigating the AGW (which you claimed as largely understood). Unfortunately – gunning for Milankovic won’t get you there – Milankovic cycles have MARGINAL role for AGW – if has been mainly used by deniers to claim that if deglaciation followed Milankovic cycles – then climate change is natural => climate is not sensitive to CO2 and CH4 => we can burn as much fossil fuel industrial complex, Russia and Saudi Arabia would like us to.
But the reality is the opposite – Milankovic is not the driver, but a mere trigger for deglaciation – most of the several deg. C difference between glacial-interglacial comes from the 4 positive feedbacks with T: ice/snow albedo, CO2, CH4, and water vapour. Which implies the opposite to what the deniers try to clail with their interpretation of glacial cycles data:
a) confirms that CO2 and CH4 do warm the Earth (if they didn’t they would not have been a part of a positive feedback with T)
b) the two other feedbacks, albedo and water vapour, having amplified the warming by more CO2 and more CH4 in the past, will also amplify the current and future warming by the (much bigger) concentrations of CO2 and CH4 caused by humans. Thus the glacial-interglacial cycles prove that the climate is more, not less sensitive to the human actions.
Whether the initial trigger for deglaciation was Milankovic or, if you were able to successfully answer the points 1-3, your lunar cycles – is pretty much a purely academic exercise, knowledge for the knowledge sake, because we can’t do anything about it, hence they do not offer any actionable recommendation to the humanity. This is in a stark contrast with the science into AGW – which provides actionable information (if you do X – that will happen, if you do 1.5 X – this will happen) and unlike the tidal oscillations, the future of our civilization may hang upon getting the science of AGW right, and on the politicians following it.
This is why the research into AGW gets so much societal attention and scientific interest, and your lunar tidal oscillation – don’t.
I have told it to you several times before – but invariably has fallen on a deaf ear. I guess, if invested yourself in a fancy hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. And the hammer enthusiasts would not hear otherwise…
Piotr
Still,I woud not recommend you for professor of geophysical rubbish behaviours and possible science & order of the same.
You obviously take it from your etnically, Racially, Professionally, Geographically, Historically provincial schoolbooks and instruction orders for behaviours on the factory floor where the earth is flat within error- bars. Bringing nothing new to the industries that have allready migrated to China.
You will not be able to make America great again that way.
I would remind Paul Pukite of the white cliffs of Dover, a national symbol and the harbours of Plymuth, that are being eroded by tidal forces. And Cape Hatteras over there in the states and the swamps of Washington. that were to be drained by King Donald Grozny.
. Look at what he has done with that in his rather Grozny way. .
In Hamborg auf der Reeperbahn bei Nacht,……… they have the delta of Elben, that is the National river also of Bohemia. The land is sinking and the hurricanes are coming. The tides are rather extreeme.
There they have Alten Land on the left Elbe- bank, that is below sea level allready, but the Dutch have come to their help and shown them how to make Dijks and to drain a Polder with lunar forces.
They have a large gate in the Dijks where the water is running out at ebbe-tide. . And close the gate exactly and consequently at zero current out regardless of Waterstaat..
Intelligent rectification in the oscillations you see. and by a condenser, capacity to it. That together gives Lifestyle and earning potencials in Alten Land.
The consequense of that is that the moon looses a bit of its orbital velosity V and thus will not fall down either, as feared by somebody. . Quite on the contrary it will get still a bit further away in safe distance each time.
Explain that scientifically.
Alten Land has become a fameous exporter of apples and cherries, with houses in traditional Dutch style.
That is proper Hydraulics you see even without windmills and pompers.
It is along with Christiaan Huyghens“ Horlogium oscillatorium and how also the Saturn rings are working.
They even have Edamer and Gouda and wooden shoes there.
Why not tell Paul Pukite (@ whut) rather about examples of successful hydraulics and possible earnings on that by cycling lunar forces?
Carbo: “ Piotr Still, I woud not recommend you for professor of geophysical rubbish behaviours and possible science & order of the same”
I would start worry if you did agree with me.
I track the research literature on the numerical modeling of the primary climate behaviors such as ENSO, AMO, etc. What I’ve noticed is that of the recent publications, a growing fraction have described using neural networks or other machine learning approaches to help in predictions or in basic understanding.
Look at this table, the 2nd column is Google Scholar search results for the following keywords “ENSO” “El Nino” “prediction” “model” , and the 3rd column includes “machine learning” in the search terms (AND logic). I also included the word “tidal” in the search and that has remained consistent at ~10% of the total cites over the years.
Year cites w/ “machine learning”
2010 2130 46
2011 2220 46
2012 2510 56
2013 2730 48
2014 2880 84
2015 2980 106
2016 3200 114
2017 3300 169
2018 3550 234
2019 3870 361
2020 4020 493
2021 4480 764
2022 4230 875
2023 3860 1060
In 2010, less than 3% of the 2130 articles on ENSO mentioned machine learning, but this year its more than 25%.
The implication being that the underlying patterns are hypothesized to be there but that the exploratory mode of ML holds more promise than the limited power and potentially dead-end of human-created models, That is the hammer being applied by others. While I’m in the 10% that are researching tidal connections, but with the twist of applying non-linear modulation to explore the territory that NN-based machine learning is also intended for.
OK, so they may not have not been ignored, but they have been misinterpreted and underestimated. Only a few scientists are treating them with the impact they likely have. In independent results reported in 2018, Lin et al published a qualitative evaluation that tidal forces have on ENSO (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-49678-w) , and my colleagues and I published an analytical model on the same topic (Mathematical Geoenergy, https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Mathematical+Geoenergy%3A+Discovery%2C+Depletion%2C+and+Renewal-p-9781119434290),
Again this is not describing a gradual effect over the course of centuries but an interannual effect. You mention that the warming of oceans is ~9,0 zeta joules per year. In comparison, the moon exchanges the same amount of energy with the spinning Earth by cyclically changing it’s length of day by 1 milliseconds every 2 weeks. This is the fortnightly lunar tide (Mf) doing this and what is not better understood is the impact this has on the ocean’s thermocline — which is much more sensitive to tidal forces than the ocean’s surface.
The ocean has a dynamic inertial response to the lunar orbit that is only beginning to become understood. The new ring laser instrument constructed at the Technical University of Munich is now able to measure LOD at sub-diurnal resolution (see https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-023-01286-x ), and from what they are reporting from initial results is that the energy exchange is much greater that 9 zJ/year when considered at a semi-diurnal cycle. Of course, most of that energy is not dissipated as friction but it will slosh the ocean and atmosphere, thus redistributing heat cyclically. I contend that what we see with the familiar shoreline tidal cycles is just the tip of the iceberg.
@ Paul Pukite
You may know Harad Yndestad, who has claimed to have empirically found and prooven lunar cycles in the Norwegian sea and barents sea large fisheries, smile smile.
And become a favourite among https://www.Klimarealistene.no. because of that.
It took me 5 seconds to disquaklify his very lifeworks just by looking at his graphs. Natural swings are not pure cyclings sinus, that model conscept delusion from psevso-scientific side has stopped and blocked musical wind instrument science for 120 years. Oscilloscope and online transducer servography shows anything but Yndestads physics. That is not how natural molecular matter on earth cycles and rumbles.
His pupils are setting on “Nordmånan” that is the overwhelming full moon right in the north sometimes up to 5 deg higher than the midninght sun. or seen 5 deg further south. With its enormeous gravitational forces on atlantic hotwater up to the Barents sea and Kings Bay north Spitzbergen every 18.6 years. . due to annual regression of the lunar nodes and the lunar orbit being tilted 5 deg to the ecliptic.
The same water being dragged down in the quite opposite direction every 1/2month when that goes on,, did not occur to him / them ..
Yndestad was just not able to think in terms of Sex, not even in the fisheries,….,……….. and Moonshine & moonlight festivals and serenatas also on animal level, even on plancton microbial and coral reef level and maximum & minimum codfish % herring spawning- level.
I have calculated.
The average distance to the moon is 60 times the radius of the earth. That proportion squared due to the nature of gravitational attraction gives 3600.
The moons mass according to the earth is, .012.. proof Bakers Astronomy 7th edition.
By newtons gravitation F= g (m1 *m2) /r one Kg of water on the earth surface is attracked by 1/ 3600 * 0.012 = 0.0000033333333333…. Kilopond from the moon, that is the weight of 3.33333333 milligrams of water.
Not easy to undertand. but let us think of a man weighing 100 Kg standing on the shore looking at the large fullmoon “Nordmånan” How much will he be drawn or attracked in that direction by “Nordmånan”?
Answer: 333.3333…. milligrams.
and how many drops of piss is that as one drop is 50 milliliters acording to old pharmacy measure?
Answer Exactly the weight of 6.66666666…. drops of common piss. more or less.
Moral:
Wherefore I better recommend fullmoon festivals and moonshine serenatas coming and going to be taken more serious in the real climate. North and south and in between.
I once learnt from a very young scotch lady at Cristal Palace London, a priests daughter with quite grown boobs, trying kindly to get in touch with us on tourist level..
“It`s a brå brecht moonlecht necht!” was her secret scotch talking at the age of 14.
The luna- tics should rather understand that, and have something fruitful done with it.
==================000
Once in Yugoslavia in july in cloudy weather without moonshine at night……… I cannot remember having been in any darker night. Not even I could find firewood on the shore. and had to touch my way in the bushes. It is never that kind of dark in Norway.
So no wonder ,why tropical animals must follow the fullmoon light rythms. And arctic that of “Nordmånan” in the arctic winters.
Think in terms of fullmoon festivals, moonlight serenatas and of sex and you get it., the lunar biorythms.
On Spitzbergen in the beginning they had a provisoric airport with no landing lights. But found after a while that landing in the moonshine at fullmoon in the white arctic landscape is practically as bright as full daylight to human eyes. So the planes began trafficking regularly at fullmoon in the winter.
Cont. from: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/05/cmip6-not-so-sudden-stratospheric-cooling/#comment-811658
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/what-is-happening-in-the-atlantic-ocean-to-the-amoc/#comment-813848
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/a-distraction-due-to-errors-misunderstanding-and-misguided-norwegian-statistics/#comment-816183
On the QBO:
After farther reading, I must concede/admit that I probably(?) overstated the weight of evidence for the vertically-propagating-wave driving theory: in particular, observations of the requisite waves have been at least partly lacking – although this may be because observational methods have been lacking for this purpose. There may be other things I’ve missed; my understanding of the QBO only goes a bit beyond the introductory level. But FWIW I still have confidence in the basic idea of the consensus view (the wave-driven theory). —- —
On LOD
I see how the polar tides (~ fortnightly and ~semiannual cycles due to orbital planes’ inclinations relative to equatorial plane, and ~monthly and ~annual cycles due to eccentricity of orbits) would change LOD. That component of the tidal bulge is symmetric around the rotation axis (setting aside Chandler wobble stuff), as will be those tidal accelerations. If the Earth had constant density and fluid/solid elastic properties/etc. it would just evenly contract toward and expand along its axis, and then reverse. Conservation of angular momentum requires angular velocity speeds up and slows down, respectively. But, at least in this case, this happens via the Coriolis effect, which accelerates inward motion (to the axis) eastward and outward motion (from the axis) westward; this is a body force that would feel like gravity in a way. The ocean and atmosphere would accelerate the same (in proportion to their inward/outward motion to/from the axis), so any sloshing/running up E-W slopes would depend on the uneveness of the tidal deformations: due to the density variations, equilibrium tidal deformation tends to be concentrated in outer layers. Of course the mantle can slide on the outer core, … etc. I imagine it could be that the ocean and atmosphere actually tend to accelerate E-W even more than the crust (which may be held back by the lower mantle) and would run into west-facing slopes when rotation speeds up.
Tides:
When the Moon is in the Earth’s equatorial plane, for the average distance (385,000 km), the lunar semidiurnal tidal acceleration at the equator is a vector of about 0.8199 μm/s² (0.0708 m/s per day, or 2.13 m/s per 30 days) which rotates from downward, to eastward, to upward, to westward, and then downward, in just over a day. There’s a constant upward component 1/3 that size (at the equator), so long as the Moon doesn’t shift in latitude (ie in terms of the sublunar point) – which of course it does, as you know.
I did not mean to imply that seamounts are the only place that surface waves’ energy is transferred to internal modes. Of course there are the continental slopes etc.
Fair point that the ocean could support wave modes with higher wavenumbers.
My point overall:
The thermocline position is sensitive to a given energy input, or a given force, because of the reduced gravity – ie the tiny difference in potential density between the uppermost ocean and the deeper water means that a smaller force can create a larger displacement with a given potential energy (kinetic energy? the internal modes are slower, which could compensate for the large vertical displacements (I haven’t done calculations)).
But the tidal acceleration is also a gravitational field. Shouldn’t the small density difference make internal modes relatively insensitive to such accelerations?; ie. the difference between water masses, in force per unit volume, is small.
Patrick said:
Tidal forcing is of course a differential response already. The gravitational force of the whole Earth on sea-level is many more orders of magnitude than that of the Moon on the Earth.
The density difference may be small but the accumulated mass over the entire volume is large. Consider that the LOD change over a 1/2 a day due to the semi-diurnal tide leads to a ~1 meter lateral shift in the volume (according to the recent U Munich ring laser results). This is in an inertial frame, so the calculation essentially amounts to determining how the volume underneath the Pacific ocean thermocline responds in piling up (i,e. sloshing) due to the “sudden” speed up or slow down in the basin that the water is sitting in. This is similar to the videos of sloshing of pools, etc during an earthquake but on a different scale, i which case sudden is really sudden, Remember that the sloshing comes about as an inertial response of the fluid to the Earth’s rotation slightly speeding up and slowing down as a result of the fault slippage.This is a YT video I put together of sloshing events during the near-Jamaica magnitude 7.7 of 2020.
https://youtu.be/5wTFCcw3VOc
“the lunar semidiurnal tidal acceleration at the equator is a vector of about 0.8199 μm/s² (0.0708 m/s per day, or 2.13 m/s per 30 days) which rotates from downward, to eastward, to upward, to westward, and then downward, in just over[half] a day. “
“the lunar semidiurnal tidal acceleration at the equator” was calculated using the 6371 km radius; oops! Should have used the equatorial radius.
Patrick said:
Should mention again that the LOD is being measured with perhaps 10X more precision and in much less time required (compared to the current very long baseline interferometry) using the new ring laser instrument at the U of Munich. Even though that’s a scientific breakthrough, when I search on Twitter for references to it, most of the tweets are directed at FLAT-EARTHERS to prove that the spherical Earth is rotating.
Can you believe this is what it has come down to? Such a breakthrough and it’s primarily used as ammo against people that are either delusional or having fun playing a con? It reinforces what ZEBRA said in an earlier comment up thread — by even responding to Flat-Earthers or denialists that we are “creating the illusion that there is substance to it…”
Oh well, this is not addressing the points in the Patrick quote above but I wanted to illustrate the vast gulf between what I wish the discussion was about and what you will often find.
But one point on understanding the LOD, mountain ranges such as the Himalayas provide torque points which allow the longitudinal lunar tides such as fortnightly Mf and the lunar semidurnal to tug on and thus slow down or speed up the rotation. so called mountain torque. This is in addition to the differences in the projected moment of inertia as the moon declinates cyclically. That’s the LOD, OTOH, the interesting feature of the wobbles is that these are invariant to longitudinal forces due to group symmetry ,,, therefore the primary polar wobbles observed, the annual wobble and Chandler wobble, can only be caused by the same invariant modes of the Sun and Moon, respectively, and that is not the Mf fortnightly but its close relation the lunar nodal fortnightly. You won’t get the correct wobble frequency with the Mf but will with the nodal (aka draconic). I think that’s what has stumped geophysicists. Stuff like this will come out when more data gets analyzed.
Paragraph
Let:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
mean radius R = 6371.0 km
equatorial radius Re = 6378.137 km = 1.00112 * R
mass M = 5.972168 E24 kg
angular velocity = Ω = 7.29212 E-5 per s = 2π/(sidereal rotation period; 86164.1 s for Earth)
angular momentum L = I*Ω
moment of inertia I = c*M*R² ; c = 0.3307 or 0.3308 (would be 0.4 for a constant density sphere)
— –
horizontal tidal force F = g’h * m’ = horizontal tidal acceleration * mass anomaly;
Torque T = F * r = r * g’h * m’ = L• (pretend the dot is above the variable)
Note g’ ∝ r, so for a given mass, T ∝ r²
— –
u (ue) = eastward velocity at surface (on equator); ue/Re = Ω
For mass anomalies at Re on the equator and east-west tidal accelerations g’h:
ue• = Re ⋅ Ω• = Re ⋅ L• / I
= Re ⋅ L• / (c ⋅ M ⋅ R²)
= Re ⋅ T / (c ⋅ M ⋅ R²)
= Re² ⋅ g’h ⋅ m / (c ⋅ M ⋅ R²)
= [(Re/R)² / c ] ⋅ g’h ⋅ (m / M)
≈ 3.030667 ⋅ g’h ⋅ (m / M)
ue• / g’h ≈ 3.030667 ⋅ (m / M)
— –
E-W displacement amplitude Δx
E-W velocity amplitude Δu = Δx ⋅ 2π / period
etc. Δu• = Δu ⋅ 2π / period
for a semidiurnal range of 1 m, an amplitude of 0.5 m:
Δue = (72.7 , 70.3) μm/s (first value for half mean solar day, 2nd for half mean lunar day); corresponds to ΔΩ/Ω of (1.56 , 1.51) E-7
As a fraction of the lunar semidiurnal tidal acceleration amplitude (equatorial surface value for sublunar latitude (declination?) of 0 for average distance) of 8.208 E-7 m/s² (corrected for equatorial radius):
Δue• / Δg’h ≈ 1.29 % , 1.20 % ≈ 3.030667 ⋅ (m / M)
So we need an m equivalent to roughly (using the lower value) 23.7 E21 kg (at two opposite points on the equator near the surface, or more elsewhere). We could use less for a spring tide at perigee, etc., but…
(also, we can subtract the I of the core, but that’s a relatively small part of total I)
Taking all the continental mass above sea level (~ 149 E6 km² * 0.84 km * 2700 kg/m³ ) and between sea level and the sea floor (~ 200 ? E6 km² * 4 km * 2700 kg/m³ ) gives 1.7 E21 kg. Not enough. Also, taking into account the positively buoyant roots of continents and mountains, you’ll end up with less torque overall (torque ∝ r², so the depth of the roots will allow some remaining effect)
Now maybe if there’s enough subducted lithospheric slabs sitting aroung… but would the density difference be too small?
OTOH, a lateral displacement amplitude of ~ ¼ m would make sense to me for tidal deformation (not change in rotation), although see link below.
——– –
BTW: I made an intuitive leap, base on the equilbrium bulge of the zonally-symmetric tidal component having the same shape as the total equilbrium bulge, that the tidal acceleration field had the same form. I think I could argue based on the nondivergence of (Newtonian?) gravity (outside its source mass) that this makes sense… but anyway, FWIW: a contraction/expansion toward/from the axis, at the surface at the equator, of (6 , 12) cm , will (via angular momentum conservation) cause a velocity change of (8.75 . 17.5) μm/s , and corresponds to a ΔΩ/Ω of (1.88 , 3.76) E-8. I’m not sure what the amplitude of the zonally-symmetric tidal bulges are ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_tide is ambivalent about some details and I would have expected more of a 1/1 ratio (or 1/2 or … depending on the bulge shape) between lateral and vertical displacement amplitudes at their peak locations) –
and I used the wrong terminology above: pole tide is not what I was thinking of (oh, cool, that rhymes!) – and the tidal periods I had in mind were semi-tropical month (sunrise to sunset at the poles) and semi-tropical year (equinox to equinox) and the anomalistic(?) month and year (periapsis to periapsis).
… anyway, it seems clear to me that these velocity changes are far from sufficient to be a major player in the QBO.
Patrick said:
All those computations were for QBO? I don’t think that you have any kind of intuition for the forcing required to reverse the velocity of winds from east and west, and then back, which is the essential characteristics of the QBO (on the average 2 reversals every 2,37 years), I always refer back to the SAO or semi-annual oscillation, which is located directly above the QBO in the stratosphere. This cycle reverses every season EXACTLY over the long term. So the wind will be easterly in winter first of the year, switch to westerly in spring, back to easterly in summer, and then westerly in the fall. What else can cause this but a differential heating in the atmosphere, but nudged by gravitational forces of the nodal cycle. So the combination of an annual thermal cycle multiplied by an annual gravitational cycle will generate a DOUBLING of that cycle so that it will generate such a semi-annual cycle — basically a cycle that has a hot-cold subcycle for the northern hemisphere alternating with that for the southern hemisphere every half-year. That’s the only physically plausible explanation for what’s happening.
Yet, this is an effect on a very rarified stratosphere, where the density of the air is low, so the thermal impact should be maximized. However, below this altitude — where the QBO resides — the density obviously increases, enough so that gravitational forces will be stronger. So therefore the lunar gravitational forcing should play a much larger role. Calculating the mixing frequency in a way that mimics that for the SAO, we multiply the annual thermal cycle with the 27.2122 day lunar nodal cycle, keeping track of the harmonics this will generate. This comes out to be:
QBO nominal frequency = (365.242/27.2122) mod 1 = 0.422 cycles per year,
This is a 2.37 year period, which EXACTLY matches the measured QBO period over the long term — averaged since measurements started in 1950.
You have to be able to show that BOTH the SAO and QBO aligning EXACTLY as predicted is just a coincidence. The estimates of the forcing required based on the calculations you are providing are essentially meaningless when it comes to a triggering effect that reverses the wind direction. In other words, the behavior is likely metastable and the balancing force is what causes the metastable winds to go in one direction versus the other.
I have this published as a model in 2018, so you may want to try to falsify this through a refereed journal article instead of spending your ammo here.
Isn’t the above a brilliant and concise geophysics analysis? That’s just the way that physics is taught — elementary principles, mathematical and logical reasoning, and a first-order calculation.
Thank you so much for the compliment!
At least you’re willing to discuss and trade-off ideas (which is not considered debate) .
“All those computations were for QBO?”
No. First, equations with greek letters just look cool. But also, I was showing that accounting for a 1 m lateral shift by rotation of the whole mantle+crust by tidal torques on features near the surface is a tall order:
(correction: (~ 200 ? E6 km² * 4 km * [2700-1000] kg/m³ ) ; the result of 1.7 E21 kg was correct.)
But I now realize the 1 m figure was from a different context. Could you tell me which page that was on?
“ I always refer back to the SAO or semi-annual oscillation, which is located directly above the QBO in the stratosphere. This cycle reverses every season EXACTLY over the long term. So the wind will be easterly in winter first of the year, switch to westerly in spring, back to easterly in summer, and then westerly in the fall. What else can cause this but a differential heating in the atmosphere, but nudged by gravitational forces of the nodal cycle.”
Well, of course solar heating (and its vertical distribution) depends on clouds, H2O vapor, O3, snow, ice, the condition of vegetation, the zenith angle, etc., but as far as the incoming flux/area at TOA, the available (potential) solar heating has a semiannual component at least near the equator. Were it not for the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit, there would not be a 1/year frequency component at the equator, or any odd multiple thereof; there would be two equal maxima at the equinoxes and two equal minima at the solstices. The 1/year cycle must dominate going closer to and then beyond the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. But it is obvious again near the poles that there must be higher frequency components: the winter solstice is not significantly darker than any other time during the multi-month polar night.
I don’t know much about the SAO but from the little I’ve read so far, it sounds like it’s a wave-driven phenomenon, like the QBO but apparently more closely-tied to seasons. I’m aware that QBO transitions are favored to occur at certain times of the year.
added to my reading list: “The Semiannual Oscillation of the Tropical Zonal Wind in the Middle Atmosphere Derived from Satellite Geopotential Height Retrievals” Anne K. Smith, et al. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/74/8/jas-d-17-0067.1.xml#:~:text=The%20semiannual%20oscillation%20%28SAO%29%20in%20zonal%20wind%20is,between%20the%20middle%20stratosphere%20and%20the%20upper%20mesosphere.
— –
Various sorts of imbalances and perturbations, or the processes which would restore balance, emit various sorts of waves (elastic (sound, seismic, capillary), gravity (incl. intertio-gravity and Kelvin), vorticity/Rossby).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-022-00323-7 Box 1 p 591: Scientists have estimated using “Estimates from high-resolution global models and reanalyses“: the proportions of the contributions of different types of waves: of Eastward forcing, Kelvin and other gravity waves have been estimated to each account for half; of Westward forcing, gravity waves are thought to account for a majority with smaller contributions from Rossby and “mixed Rossby and gravity waves“. “Improved global observing systems are needed to verify these results and to quantify global wave momentum fluxes, but vertical resolution limits satellite views of the important short-vertical-wavelength waves (<4 km)111–113,194. New results from long-duration, super-pressure balloons overcome these limitations, shedding new light on the details of wave driving of the QBO at very short vertical wavelengths124,186.”
Further reading:
Holton, James R. “An Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology” 3rd ed. 1992, Academic Press, New York: see Ch. 12, especially p.420-429
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-022-00323-7 “Impacts, processes and projections of the quasi-biennial oscillation” James A. Anstey, et al. 2022 (especially p. 591)
“The quasi-biennial oscillation” M. P. Baldwin, et al. 2001 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/1999RG000073 – I didn’t read a lot of this yet because the prior is so much more recent, but that refers back to this for farther reading, so I hope to read this one more sometime.
I could explain in more detail exactly how the waves can accelerate a layer of fluid:
A material surface, or material line, etc., is a set of points which follow the material as it moves (in some cases they may be approximated by isentropes or IPV contours). Unresolved eddies and molecular diffusion c/would perforate such a surface, but absent that, momentum (and energy) cannot be transported/convected through such a surface, but can be transfered. When a mechanical wave propagates through a material surface it can make the surface wavy, and when the pressure and displacement (normal to baseline surface) fields’ phase relationship is neither 0° nor 180°**, but in between, there will be a correlation between pressure and slope, so that there is a net force, via form drag, acting across the surface; the layers on either side are pushing each other in opposite directions. When the wave doens’t lose or gain strength, it can apply the same form drag to subsequent surfaces, so that there is no net force on the layer in between (the layers above push it equally in opposite directions and it pushes back equally). But when the wave does lose strength or otherwise stops propagating – via thermal or mechanical damping…
(eg., One reason for thermal damping: For lossless propagation, the wave displacements must be adiabatic. But pushing material up and down through pressure changes will cause adiabatic temperature changes, which cause net radiant heating and cooling anomalies, taking energy from the wave.)
…, or wave breaking…
(refraction can concentrate wave (pseudo-?)energy, and some amplitudes **(?) may increase as a result of refraction(?)**. Large displacements can result in nonlinear … etc. – picture crashing water waves near the beach.)
… Then the form drag changes across a layer and the layer experiences a net force and net acceleration.
to be cont…
Patrick said:
This is in an inertial frame. The Earth may have rotated completely in this time, but the delta Length of Day (dLOD) indicates that the physical mantle ends up moving by a mere meter ahead or a meter behind in this same duration depending in the lunar torque. This is very well understood and calibrated (see R.D. Ray from NASA) and it’s not clear why you want to be a denialist over the geophysics.
The greater implication being: since the ocean is not pinned to the mantle but has a huge inertial mass, it will slosh within its basin as a response. And this is especially exaggerated due to the subsurface thermocline differential. Since the ocean really can’t go anywhere because of the ocean basin boundaries, it will pile up vertically, and due to the reduced effective gravity along the thermocline this piling up will be especially pronounced in the subsurface layers — thus leading to El Nino / La Nina cycles.
Of course, the atmosphere and then the stratosphere has a much smaller inertial moment compared to the ocean, but obviously an analogous behavior occurs. Since the equatorial stratosphere is not pinned to any ocean basin boundaries, being longitudinally invariant, the response is not dictated by the same lunar torquing terms and so only the lunar draconic (aka nodal) can contribute. And that is the one controlling the nominal QBO wind reversal cycle.
So let me summarize in terms of what is universally understood by geophysicists and what is contentious:
LOD variations: Lunisolar tidal torque forced with essentially a linear response following solid Newtonian dynamics — consensus understood
Ocean cycling : No consensus because sloshing response follows strongly non-linear fluid dynamics within a longitude-specific basin and so the temporal patterns are difficult to model, despite the clear standing-wave modes.
SAO in upper stratosphere: Consensus that the thermal and gravitational annual/nodal cycle play into this as that is in the name. Obviously a nonlinear response as well but the longitudinal invariance of the toroidal (donut-shaped) atmospheric “basin” along the equator causes the singular semi-annual cycle,
QBO in lower stratosphere: The stratosphere implies stratification, and so the lower atmosphere can conceivably have a different response than the upper. Not even close to a consensus, but the QBO cycle can be predicted as with the SAO, but incorporating the longitudinally invariant lunar draconic forcing terms to the semi-annual mix, thus producing an incommensurate 2.37 year cycle. We can thank the incompetent but pretentious Richard Lindzen for missing this obvious connection several decades ago, and his follower acolytes such as Tim Dunkerton to carry on his ruse.
This all follows from basic geophysics, anybody paying attention? I wrote the book Mathematical Geoenergy (Wiley, 2018) after working on open-science DARPA projects for a few years focused on modeling Earth behaviors as part of an AI engineering initiative, realizing that there are so many open and unresolved issues in geophysics remaining to be explored. What I described above is essentially all covered in specific chapters, so Patrick you may want to read that and if you have issues, write a PubPeer review.
I was specifically referring to a 1 m range (0.5 m amplitude) with a semidiurnal period, and that tidal torques on the surface topography and bathymetry are ~ a factor of 10 (at least) too small to accomplish this. In fact, taking into account the supporting density variations underneath (which would cancel out maybe something like ~ 95% to 99.5% of the torque, depending on the effective depth (I used ~150 km and ~15 km) , it may be more like ~200 to ~2000 times too small. (Not counting the non-ideal geography for that purpose (but also not taking into account perigee at spring tides).) I suspect the sideways pushing on continents by the ocean tides would also be too small, though I haven’t done the calculations.
Of course it’s easier to accomplish 1 m displacement for longer periods. And assymetries are not limited to the lithosphere. And there’s the torsional shear strain(?).
SAO = “Semiannual Oscillation”; says nothing about the mechanism. Why would it be tidal */+ annual heating cycle and not the semiannual solar heating cycle which shapes it (not that I know that’s what it is, but it seems much more plausible. Also it’s conceivable that some mechansims could be functions of the absolute value of the meridional heating or temperature gradient).
“but incorporating the longitudinally invariant lunar draconic forcing”
The tropical semi-monthly cycle is also zonally-symmetric and has direct relevance to tidal forces
(tropical month is moonrise – moonset – moonrise at either of Earth’s poles; ie the cycle of the Moon’s declination)
(the nodes are where the Moon’s orbit around the Earth crosses the orbital plane of the Earth(-Moon system) around the Sun. The draconic month is a cycle through these nodes, which precess in the 18.(6?) Year cycle (due mainly to the Sun’s torqueing, I expect; and thus the precession rate should come to near 0 when the Sun sees the Moon’s orbit appears edge-on (slightly more than 2x per year) (just as Earth’s axial precession would stop if/when the Moon crosses the equator on an equinox). Hence the draconic month varies from being ~= sidereal month to being faster than its own average. Even if it were constant, this precession would make the tropical month’s period (depending on the phase by which it is measured??) wobble, but because the inclination of the Moon’s orbit is smaller than Earth’s obliquity, the tropical month on average is longer (would = sidereal month if not for Earth’s precession (~ 26,000 years)) – I find I can visualize this by mapping the Earth’s equator and Moon’s orbit as great circles on a globe whose own equator is Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The Earth’s equator revolves westward around this globe once per ~26,000 years while the Moon’s orbit revolves westward much faster. The points where they cross each other wobble back and forth; if the Moon’s orbit tilted more than Earth’s axis then those points would revolve and the averages of the tropical and draconic months would be the same.)
I don’t see the draconic month having a major effect on tides by itself because the Moon’s orbit is only tilted slightly more than 5°. And it would depend on how the draconic phases line up with phases of other cycles (synodic, tropical, anomalistic,…)
Clarification: “ The Earth’s equator revolves westward around this globe once per ~26,000 years while the Moon’s orbit revolves westward much faster. The points where they cross each other wobble back and forth , revolving only ~1/(26,000 yr); if the Moon’s orbit tilted more than Earth’s axis then those points would revolve ≈ 1 / (18.6 yr)
and the averages of the tropical and draconic months would be the same.”
Re my I don’t see the draconic month having a major effect on tides
Of course this modulates the amplitude of the tropical monthly cycle (via changing the range of lunar declination, which in turn partly controls
the amplitude of the lunar Mf (tropical semi-monthly) zonally-symmetric tide,
and modulates (tropical semi-monthly cycle) the amplitudes of the lunar diurnal and lunar semidiurnal tides)
– but that’s an 18.6 year cycle.
— —
Re my …” and then there’s the vertical parts of the Coriolis effect ( 2Ω cos(ø) ) but compare Δu/Δz to Ω·Δz …(??)”
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/science-denial-is-still-an-issue-ahead-of-cop28/#comment-817382
(below)
– actually, the proper comparisons would be (ø=0):
∂u/∂z + u / (Re+z) , Ω
∂u/∂z ·dz , 2Ω·dz
But that’s part of an ill-formed and incomplete thought that isn’t likely of great significance (I hope) to the main point…
Funny the way people think about the orbit, which is prejudiced by what they read. Doing years of articulated simulation it becomes easy to describe using Euler angles. Look at the Moon’s long-period orbit around the Earth, with the tropical cycle of 27.3216 days (radial frequency =f_tropical) and the draconic cycle of 27.2122 days (radial frequency =f_draconic). In terms of Cartesian coordinates about the Earth’s rotational z-axis (ignoring phase) the orbit is: (x,y,z)= ( sin(f_tropical*time), cos(f_tropical*time), sin(f_draconic*time). Note that the z-axis is ONLY draconic or nodal (ignoring the perigee/apogee cycle, i..e. anomalistic period of 27.255 days). That’s the only factor that can influence a wavenumber=0 global behavior.
You do realize that Earth’s axis is tilted relative to it’s orbital plane (around Sun), right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon#Lunar_periods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_month#Types
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_month#Tropical_month
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon#Inclination_to_the_equator_and_lunar_standstill
Paragraph
Technically, what I should perhaps refer to is the declination cycle (of the Moon), whose amplitude and frequency vary over an 18.6 year cycle, but on average has a period = tropical month. If the definition of the tropical month is defined by a revolution in a frame that rotates as Earth’s axis precesses (around an axis perpendicular to the plane of the orbit around the Sun), then if the inclination of the Moon’s orbit were greater than Earth’s obliquity (tilt), the declination cycle would switch to having an average period = average period the draconic month, but the tropical month would remain as is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon#Lunar_periods
h = height of equilibrium tide (displacement of geopotential surface which would be at sea level), without feedback from gravity of tides
h = A [ cos²(α) – ?1/3 *?*] (**I need to double check the 1/3 value**)
α = angle from sublunar/subsolar/etc. point
δ = declination (latitude of sublunar/etc. point) of tide-raising object
ø = latitude
λ = longitude relative to the longitude of sublunar/etc. point
cos(α) = sin(δ)·sin(ø) + cos(δ)·cos(ø)·cos(λ)
cos²(α)
= ¼[1 – cos(2δ)]·[1 – cos(2ø)]
+ 1/8 [1 + cos(2δ)]·[1 + cos(2ø)]·[1 + cos(2λ)]
+ 2·¼ sin(2δ)·sin(2ø)·cos(λ)
= ¼[ 1 − cos(2δ) − cos(2ø) +cos(2δ)·cos(2ø) ]
+ 1/8 [ 1 + cos(2δ) + cos(2ø) +cos(2δ)·cos(2ø) ]
+ 1/8 [1 + cos(2δ)]·[1 + cos(2ø)]·cos(2λ)
+ ½ sin(2δ)·sin(2ø)·cos(λ)
= 1/24 [ 9 − 3·cos(2δ) − 3·cos(2ø) + 9·cos(2δ)·cos(2ø) ]
+ 1/8 [1 + cos(2δ)]·[1 + cos(2ø)]·cos(2λ)
+ ½ sin(2δ)·sin(2ø)·cos(λ)
= 1/24 [ 3·cos(2δ) − 1 ]·[ 3·cos(2ø) − 1 ] + 1/3
+ 1/8 [1 + cos(2δ)]·[1 + cos(2ø)]·cos(2λ)
+ ½ sin(2δ)·sin(2ø)·cos(λ)
h = A [ cos²(α) – 1/3*?* ] = h_{zonally symmetric} + h_{diurnal} + h_{semidiurnal}
h_{zonally symmetric} = A/24 · [ 3·cos(2δ) − 1 ]·[ 3·cos(2ø) − 1 ] + 0?*?*
h_{semidiurnal} = A/8 · [1 + cos(2δ)]·[1 + cos(2ø)]·cos(2λ)
h_{diurnal} = A/2 · sin(2δ)·sin(2ø)·cos(λ)
…”semi-tropical month (moonrise to moonset at the poles) “…
…cont. from
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/science-denial-is-still-an-issue-ahead-of-cop28/#comment-817105
Correction: When the wave doens’t lose or gain strength, it can apply the same form drag to subsequent surfaces, so that there is no net force on the layer in between (the layers above and
below push it equally in opposite directions and it pushes back equally). But when the wave does lose strength or otherwise stops propagating – via thermal or mechanical damping…
…
For upward (group velocity) Vertically-propagating gravity (incl. Kelvin) and Rossby-gravity waves, the pressure and vertical displacements fields phase relationships are such (90°, I believe**) that, for upward group velocity, waves propagating eastward carry westerly (eastward) momentum upward, and waves propagating westward carry easterly (westward) momentum upward.
(**PS for a wave packet (which propagates with group velocity), the edges of the packet may have shifted phase relationships. I’m not sure offhand how this works out for pressure and displacement for the waves involved in QBO, but eg., the velocity and displacement fields have a 90° phase relationship for steadily propagating waves with no gain or loss (*unless?__*), but at the leading and trailing edges of a wave packet, the velocity and displacement fields must have some positive and negative correlation, respectively (in order to grow and decay the displacement amplitude). A wave packet can change the momentum reversibly if it passes through material without dissipation.)
In particular for understanding QBO, the vertical variation of the horizontal velocity is key: as wave packets propagate upward (with group velocity; phase velocity is different), the frequency relative to the fluid (intrinsic frequency) gets Doppler-shifted (eg. it would tend toward 0 approaching a level where the phase speed relative to the flow would be 0 ie. a critical level); horizontal wave numbers don’t tend to change much so the dispersion relationship changes the vertical wavelength in response (the tilts of phase planes change over height), and this can change the group velocity: the vertical component of group velocity is reduced as intrinsic frequency decreases**…
(**As explained in Holton; I’m not sure but I suspect that generally, for sufficiently large horizontal wave numbers k and/or l (small horizontal wavelengths) and sufficiently large vertical wavelengths (small vertical wavenumber m), the vertical part of group velocity will initially increase as intrinsic frequency decreases. I believe the types of waves Holton (1992) was considering for driving the QBO already have large m relative to k)
…slowing the upward group velocity gives more time for dissipation of the wave per unit vertical distance; I expect this also (except for the dissipation?) concentrate the wave (pseudo?-)energy, which could increase the likelihood of wave breaking.
…
—- — —
(In addition to Doppler-shifting by changes in the flow, changes in the shear of the flow would also affect the dispersion relation – by providing a vorticity gradient. Eg, increasing westerly shear with height…
(ie./eg. positive ∂²u/∂z² – or perhaps positive ∂/∂p (1/g · ∂u/∂p) – and then there’s the vertical parts of the Coriolis effect ( 2Ω cos(ø) ) but compare Δu/Δz to Ω·Δz …(??))
…should increase the phase speed for eastward-propagating waves with a given κ or κ = [k,l,m] wave vector…
____ PS these are angular wavenumbers: wavelength = 2π / |κ|
____ = 2π / √(k²+l²+m²) ;
____ often wavenumbers may be expressed differently; in particular the zonal wavenumber may be given as the number of wavelengths around a circle at a given latitude.
…which would require increasing m even more for the same intrinsic frequency (correct?)… etc. This may tend to be a smaller effect.(?))
—- — —
…
Anyway, this refraction process will select different waves for enhanced dissipation at different levels, so that westerly momentum is added more in layers with westerly shear (approaching the critical levels of eastward propagating waves), and easterly momentum is added more in layers with easterly shear, etc. When the region of westerlies reaches the base of the QBO region and is reduced and dissipated itself, the waves carrying westerly momentum are no longer blocked by that lower region of westerly shear and can thus propagate higher, initiating a new region of westerlies above the easterlies (which are blocking some of the eastery momentum from getting higher.
So waves tend to deliver momentum in such a way that regions of easterlies and westerlies develop (from waves that have propagated to reach the top of the QBO region) and then migrate downward over time.
Waves with sufficient horizontal wavenumbers and surface-relative phase velocities may not be dissipated as much in the QBO region and so can propagate higher to deliver momentum to the mesosphere (?contributing to SAO?).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_wave#Internal_waves_in_uniformly_stratified_fluid
https://climate.ucdavis.edu/ATM121/AtmosphericDynamics-Chapter06-Part03-InternalGravityWaves.pdf (see esp. p. ~25-27)
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/12-810-dynamics-of-the-atmosphere-spring-2008/2d93a8e94c03168d27e766218a84f224_chapter_8.pdf ;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_wave
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_wave
(Note that there may be differences in the dispersion relationships for eg. the near constant density approx. and the constant scale height approx. but I’m guessing they’ll be qualitatively similar if not approx. the same (?) for certain wave vectors)
———- ——-
(Complexity/Caveat: When there is a perturbation/change, such as caused by eddy flux convergence (in this context, waves can count as eddies) of momentum or heat, or diabatic heating, or viscosity/friction, or the flow itself (material moving into a place where the pressure gradient is different), a secondary circulation tends to occur to adjust the momentum and mass (ie. pressure gradient) so that they are balanced (eg. geostrophic or gradient-wind balance). Eg. I believe the Ferrel Cell is an example. (PS Geostrophic adjustment itself can emit (inertia-)gravity waves.)
I think this may be part of the reason why the QBO (and SAO??) are limited to near the equator; the stronger (the horizontal part of) the Coriolis effect…
( f = 2Ω sin(ø) ; Du/Dt = f·v (+ vertical part acting on w), Dv/Dt = -f·u )
… the smaller the displacement required to change the velocity, or rather the larger the velocity change per displacement, and other things being equal (horizontal and vertical scales, and the stratification (N = buoyancy frequency)), displacements ∝ pressure changes (in this context). So nearer the equator, mass should shift more to balance a velocity perturbation, which itself may be more persistent. (There is a section of “The quasi-biennial oscillation” M. P. Baldwin, et al. 2001 which discusses this but I haven’t gone through it thoroughly yet.)
When it comes to dissipation of Rossby waves, at least those at some remove from the equator(?), if damping simply erases the PV anomalies of the wave, then whatever the Rossby waves did is, I would guess, (??)then undone(??) – because Rossby waves (at least away from the equator) are in approximate geostrophic balance (or perhaps gradient-wind balance?) – whereas gravity waves are ageostrophic. Not sure how this works out near the equator / for Rossby-gravity waves.)
to be cont…
An aside about Coriolis Effect:
Ω = angular velocity of rotating frame of reference = angular velocity of planet (or moon, star, laboratory fluid container, etc.)
The centrifugal acceleration of Earth’s rotation is ‘grandfathered’ into local gravity (because Earth’s angular velocity Ω can be approx. as constant over a few million years (not 100s millions, though; ), the oblateness of the Earth – its equatorial bulge – tilts local horizontal and vertical to match the combined gravitational acceleration and centrifugal acceleration. It’s like playing hockey on a merry-go-round, where the water was allowed to flow in response to a constant rotation before freezing; its slope will balance centrifugal acceleration.)
The azumithal acceleration is caused by changes in the angular velocity, and can generally be ignored for Earth (and other planets, stars, …)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon#Tidal_evolution
——————- ——-
velocity u = [ u , v , w ] in local ( x , y , z ) space
x , y , z = east, north, up
velocity of rotation = Ω × r
(total) Coriolis acceleration Du/Dt = −2 Ω × u = [ Du/Dt , Dv/Dt , Dw/Dt ]
PS A coriolis Δu = −2 Ω × Δr = [ Δu , Δv , Δw ]
where
ø = latitude
f = 2Ω sin(ø) , γ = 2Ω cos(ø) (γ not standard notation);
Du/Dt = f·v − γ·w ; Dv/Dt = −f·u ; Dw/Dt = γ·u
The total Coriolis Du/Dt acts parallel to the equatorial plane in proportion to the component of velocity parallel to the equatorial plane, tending to turn eastward motion outward (from rotation axis), outward motion westward, westward motion inward, and inward motion eastward. With no other forces, this results in inertial oscillation (a circular motion) with angular frequency 2Ω.
— (This can be helical, with no change in the component of velocity parallel to the axis; not to be confused with Taylor Columns!).
— (Note this can be a (centered or off-centered) westward orbit around the axis; curvature of the coordinate system allows trajectories to move toward and then away from the axis even when continually accelerating inward.)
———— ———-
Why 2Ω and not Ω? The Coriolis effect has two distinct equal parts:
1. conservation of (linear) momentum: in a rotating frame of reference, the velocity vector will tend to rotate in the opposite direction of the frame’s rotation, to keep it pointing the same direction in an inertial frame.
… but keeping momentum constant in an inertial reference frame requires both coriolis and centrifugal accelerations. In that case, the direction of velocity in the rotating frame will rotate −Ω, but the speed will change as the trajectory spirals in and out to/from its closest approach to the axis.
2. With the centrifugal force ‘grandfathered’ into local gravity, you can consider yourself at the center of a rotating frame (the pattern of motion of the frame relative to any point is the same regardless of where the axis is, for a given Ω). All coordinate points around you are revolving. As you move, you gain velocity in the opposite direction relative to the frame, at the rate that you move, perpendicular to your (frame-relative) motion. This causes an additional rotation of your velocity.
—— —– ——–
Scaling: γ (outside of high latitudes) and |f| (outside of low latitudes) ∼ 1E-4 s¯¹ generally, but each going toward 0 toward some latitude ø (f = 0 at equator (ø = 0)).
At least up to some level of approximation, the vertical parts of the Coriolis effect (the γ terms) are often ignored, at least for atmospheric dynamics, and I believe in the ocean as well. This is because (outside of high latitudes):
◊ for large-horizontal scale motions, w is much smaller than u and v. Even for smaller-scale motions where w can be large, the displacements Δz are limited by the vertical scale of motion. An upward 20 km results in a westward ∼ 2 m/s.
◊ coriolis vertical accelerations tend to be small compared to the effects of stratification. For u = 100 m/s (which is fast even for jet streams), a vertical accel. of ∼0.01 m/s² is about ∼ 1/1000 of gravity and would be balanced by a temp diff of ∼ −0.2 to −0.3 K, which, given a stable lapse rate ~ 1 K/km different from (dry or moist, whichever applies) adiabatic, would be achieved by a vertical shift of ∼ 200 to 300 m.
PS Neither condition applies to Earth’s outer core.
——— ———-
PS There are also curvature terms in the momentum equation:
acceleration Du/Dt
= g
− (∇p)/ρ
−2Ω × u
+ curvature terms +…
curvature terms account for the fact that locally defined ( x , y , z ) coordinates additionally rotate following motion around the globe – ie., due to horizontal curvature of lines of latitude (related to convergence of “poleward”), and downward curvature of all horizontal ‘lines’ (related to divergence of “up”) … did I miss anything?
The curvature terms tend to be relatively small (except near the axis/poles **(how ‘near’ ?)).
Corrections … but keeping momentum constant in an inertial reference frame requires both coriolis and centrifugal accelerations. True
…In that case, the direction of velocity in the rotating frame will rotate −Ω, No. This is true in the case of zero velocity in the inertial frame – (in that case centrifugal acceleration can be seen as canceling out half the total Coriolis acceleration) -, and thus should be approximately true when that |velocity| is small relative to Ω · {distance from axis}, but more generally the centrifugal acceleration may go with, against, or orthogonal to Coriolis acceleration.
…
2. With the centrifugal force ‘grandfathered’ into local gravity, or otherwise accounted for (the following applies regardless – and does not depend on the location (relative to/of the) axis -, but is distinct from centrifugal acceleration, which does depend on the location (relative to/of the) axis)you can consider yourself at the center of a rotating frame (the pattern of motion of the frame relative to any point is the same regardless of where the axis is, for a given Ω)…
From Holton Ch. 12 p.424 Table 12.1 “Characteristics of the Dominant Observed Planetary-Scale Waves [ie. long horizontal wavelengths] in the Equatorial Lower Stratosphere“-cites Andrews et al. 1987:
For: **Kelvin , **Rossby-gravity waves: (long horizontal wavelengths)
zonal wave number (number of wavelengths around a circle at a given latitude): 1-2 , 4
2π/m = vertical wavelength: 6-10 , 4-8 km
c average phase speed relative to Earth’s surface: +25 , −23 m/s
2π/ω (period relative to Earth’s surface): 15, 4-5 days
approximate amplitudes of:
observed:
u’ (zonal (E-W) wind): 8 , 2-3 m/s
v’ (meridional (N-S) wind): 0 , 2-3 m/s
T’ temperature: 2-3 , 1 K
infered:
geopotential height displacement Z’ (=Φ’/g): 30 , 4 m
vertical velocity w’: 1.5 , 1.5 mm/s
**The table seems to indicate this is for (Kelvin , Rossby-gravity) waves observed during (easterly(−) , westerly(+)) mean zonal flow u0 (with? largest values u0 = (−25 m/s , +7 m/s))
—————————- —
Now, with tidal effects on LOD, it seems we may be dealing with u’ amplitudes ∼ 10 – maybe 50?*** μm/s, ie., 1 – 5 E-5 m/s:
——— —
2 ms seems to be roughly the subannual-annual range in LOD for previous measurements ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_length_fluctuations – note causes given); 2 ms / 86,164.1 s ≈ 2.32 E-8; this corresponds to a 1.08 E-5 m/s = 10.8 μm/s velocity change at the equator, which is similar (a bit bigger) to the Coriolis gain or loss for material moving up or down 6 cm (which is the permanent tide at the equator according to https://geodesyworld.github.io/SOFTS/ptd.png);
***preliminary math results: ((1?-2.5?){love number} · 54(?) cm · (∼2?){syzygy at perigee} · ∼(1/6 − (1/24)+ = 1/8−){Mf,semiannual} = ∼13.5−(?) – ∼33.75−(?) cm
(1/24 is based on declination of ±30°, which the Moon only approaches and the Sun stays a few deg away from, hence the +,− signs after the numbers);
33.75 cm ⇒ 49.2 µm/s coriolis speed).
————— —
Even if a shift of 100 μm/s (0.1 mm/s) occurs relative to the inertia of the atmosphere, what could that do? Consider what happens if a 0.1 m/s anomaly is advected into the equatorial region in a ~400 km wide zone; this will have a zonal wavenumber 0 component of ~1 mm/s. It seems to me that weather events will easily drown out the effects of LOD variations.
to be cont…
Corrections:
From Holton Table 12.1: geopotential height displacement Z’ =Φ’/g if g is the gravity at the surface; if g is local gravity, than it’s geometric height displacement z’; it will be a small difference from the surface to the stratopause; I’m not sure which was used in Table 12.1
preliminary math results: (∼2?){syzygy at perigee} – phase of synodic month has no role in this component of the tide; also, I should replace
(∼2?){—— at perigee} · ∼(1/6 − (1/24)+ = 1/8−)
with
( [(385/356.4)³+(solar/aver.lunar)] /6 − [(385/406.7)³+(solar/aver.lunar)] /24 )
{solar/aver.lunar = equilibrium solar tidal bulge / equilibrium lunar tidal bulge @ 385,000 km = a bit less than 1/2}
and subtract ∼ 1 E-5 m/s (=u'(ΔLOD)) from f·( (1?-2.5?){love number} · 54(?) cm · [“”] ), but it was good enough for a rough est.
That’s too rich. In a normal mature scientific discipline, no one would use all those words to describe the behavior. They would plug in the forcing and see what the essential response is. So I can do that with the QBO. Can even get ChatGPT to provide an answer because AI takes the shortest route instead of some elaborate explication.
ChatGPT prompt:
ChatGPT response:
0.422 cycles per year is the observed QBO period of 2.37 years. QED
Re “That’s too rich. In a normal mature scientific discipline, no one would use all those words to describe the behavior.”
I take it you are not a fan of reading popular science books, or perhaps even textbooks, review articles, going to class, watching educational TV shows (NOVA, Nature) or Youtube videos. They use words, you know.
“They would plug in the forcing and see what the essential response is. ”
How will you know what the forcing is or where to plug it in if you don’t understand how things work?
“0.422 cycles per year is the observed QBO period of 2.37 years. QED”
QED implies a well-developed physical theory. Mostly what you have is an apparent correlation. If you think you’re onto something, don’t you want to understand how it works? Why the draconic month (or ½ month)? – why not a ½ tropical month, which is the dominant frequency in the lunar |declination| ( |δ_{lunar}| ) variation (23.44° vs. ∼5.1°). And why would the QBO mechanism sample the phase of the lunar cycle in one window per year, or a set of windows with sufficient alignment, and why would that actually result in the frequency (year/lunar cycle) mod 1? How would the Coriolis−LOD Mf+semiannual tide u’ effect be amplified by a factor of ∼ 10^5 or … or how would the tidal acceleration actually drive or contribute or modify the QBO?
(the amplitude of the lunar g’ @ 385,000 km (g’= 8.2 E-7 m/s² ≈ 0.071 m/s per day) is a factor of ∼ 4.2 to 14 times smaller than the necessary accelerations of the zonal winds in the QBO; even at spring tide extreme perigee+perihelion, g’ is ∼ 2.4 to 8.1 times smaller –
(see “Balloon-Borne Observations of Short Vertical Wavelength Gravity Waves and Interaction With QBO Winds”
Robert A. Vincent, M. Joan Alexander https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020JD032779 )
– and this is not including that the solid tidal bulges generally should (AFAIK, and depends on phase lag) use up some portion of the horizontal g’ (by adjusting local horizontal)
– and that’s an amplitude – how would it be turned to drive anything like the QBO, besides perhaps contributing to the wave activity in semimonthly and semiannual pulses?)
It would help a lot if you explained what you think would be different about the QBO without a tidal influence. Slower, faster, stronger, weaker, more or less variable?
Have you asked ChatGPS-GPA-GDP-… what causes the QBO?
_____________
Vincent & Alexander https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020JD032779 : 7th paragraph under section “4 Summary and Discussion” : “The total zonal mean force needed to drive the QBO is roughly 0.3–1.0 m s−1 day−1 depending on altitude and phase of the QBO, and contributions from Kelvin waves roughly half of that during the westerly phase of the QBO (Alexander & Ortland, 2010).” Note I skipped over most of this paper (sorry) – I was just looking for numbers at the time.
Also: QBO-like phenomena have been found on other planets: “Atmospheric Circulation of Brown Dwarfs and Jupiter- and Saturn-like Planets: Zonal Jets, Long-term Variability, and QBO-type Oscillations” Adam P. Showman, Xianyu Tan, Xi Zhang (2019) https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ab384a
from abstract:
“Jupiter and Saturn themselves exhibit numerous robust zonal (east–west) jet streams at the cloud level; moreover, both planets exhibit long-term stratospheric oscillations involving perturbations of zonal wind and temperature that propagate downward over time on timescales of ∼4 yr (Jupiter) and ∼15 yr (Saturn). These oscillations, dubbed the quasi-quadrennial oscillation (QQO) for Jupiter and the semiannual oscillation (SAO) on Saturn, are thought to be analogous to the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) on Earth, which is driven by upward propagation of equatorial waves from the troposphere. To investigate these issues, we here present global, three-dimensional, high-resolution numerical simulations of the flow in the stratified atmosphere—overlying the convective interior—of brown dwarfs and Jupiter-like planets. The effect of interior convection is parameterized by inducing small-scale, randomly varying perturbations in the radiative–convective boundary at the base of the model. Radiative damping is represented using an idealized Newtonian cooling scheme. In the simulations, the convective perturbations generate atmospheric waves and turbulence that interact with the rotation to produce numerous zonal jets. Moreover, the equatorial stratosphere exhibits stacked eastward and westward jets that migrate downward over time, exactly as occurs in the terrestrial QBO, Jovian QQO, and Saturnian SAO. This is the first demonstration of a QBO-like phenomenon in 3D numerical simulations of a giant planet.”
________________
cont. from
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/science-denial-is-still-an-issue-ahead-of-cop28/#comment-817865
δ_{lunar} ≈ (obliquity=axial tilt)·cos(f_{tropical}·t + phaseT) + (Moon’s orbital inclination)·cos(f_{draconic}·t + phaseD) ;
approximation works well when tilt, inclination, and eccentricity are small and when frequencies are nearly constant. Earth’s obliquity is a bit larger than ‘small’, and the precession of nodes is not constant (the draconic month should slow to near the sidereal month twice per eclipse year (Sun sees moon’s orbit edge-on), and also twice per synodic month (1st and 3rd quarter) but this may still work as a rough approx.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
obliquity ≈ 23.44°, varies a bit over thousands of years and very (I presume) small amounts semimonthly, semiannually, and per 18.6 years
Moon’s orbital inclination ≈5.145°, but varies a bit
δ_{lunar} ≈ 23.44°·cos(f_{tropical}·t + phaseT) + 5.1°·cos(f_{draconic}·t + phaseD)
The tropical month is dominant here.
(PS the diurnal tidal g’ exerts the torque on the equatorial bulge that causes axial precession; the actual surface traced out by the axis is not a smooth circular cone – it is ‘fluted’ with wobbles (see above about obliquity) – the torques by the Moon and Sun each trace out a loop over half of each orbit, cycling through magnitude and direction. I expect this angular jerking contributes to Chandler wobble.)
__________________
one more comment on QBO planned…
I have not yet read much of these and I don’t know when I will but they look like good resources for learning about the QBO mechanisms:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/78/3/JAS-D-20-0248.1.xml
“Revisiting the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation as Seen in ERA5. Part I: Description and Momentum Budget” Hamid A. Pahlavan, Qiang Fu, John M. Wallace, George N. Kiladis
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/78/3/JAS-D-20-0249.1.xml
“Revisiting the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation as Seen in ERA5. Part II: Evaluation of Waves and Wave Forcing” Hamid A. Pahlavan, John M. Wallace, Qiang Fu, George N. Kiladis
_______________
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-022-00323-7 “Impacts, processes and projections of the quasi-biennial oscillation” James A. Anstey, et al. 2022 : The section “Processes and modelling” p. 594-597 discusses the difficulties of modelling the QBO in a GCM, the differences between real (observed) and model QBO behavior, and also discusses reanalysis (right column p. 595, into 596). (I believe I’ve read the whole section.)
Not surprisingly, models’ horizontal and vertical resolution and the quality of their parameterizations are important.
It can be difficult to even get a model to produce a QBO; however, the implication is that this is due to the difficulty of parameterization given finite model horizontal and vertical resolution, rather than due to a problem with theory…
(see bottom of first column p. 594, into 2nd column – models lacking any of 4 traits ([emphasis mine] …”highly active and variable convective rain/latent heating (parameterized and/or resolved); high horizontal resolution; weak implicit and explicit grid-scale dissipation; and high vertical resolution107,117. The first two of these conditions are required to generate a broad spectrum of tropical waves118,119, and the latter conditions are required to support wave propagation without excessive dissipation, allowing waves to get reasonably close to their critical levels109,120–124.” – reiterated in summary of section) need “specially tuned” parameterizations to get a QBO).
p.594 “The QBO is forced by wave dissipation (see BOX 1) involving wave scales ranging from global-scale Kelvin waves to mesoscale gravity waves.“…
p.594:
“The number of climate models that are able to simulate the QBO has increased in the past two decades. Fifteen models in the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) were able to simulate a QBO32, compared with five models in CMIP51. Although the mean period of the QBO in these models and those participating in the SPARC QBO Initiative (QBOi)129 is represented quite well, the vertical structure of its amplitude is not: models systematically underestimate the QBO wind amplitude in the lowermost stratosphere (about 50 hPa), and often overestimate it above 10 hPa (FIG. 3). The latitudinal extent of the amplitude tends to be well represented near 10 hPa but underestimated near 50 hPa (REF.129).” …
following on same page: a couple other rather interesting quotes regarding QBO asymmetry (in the downward progression of westerlies vs. easterlies) and variability:
“The finer features of the QBO are not well captured by models. In observations, eastward phases of the QBO descend approximately twice as fast as westward phases, which sometimes stall in the lower stratosphere130, whereas most models have comparable eastward and westward descent rates, and under-represented (or less pronounced) stalling1,129.” … “The variability in the duration and amplitude of individual cycles is less than in observations129,133, which is probably related to over-reliance on parameterized gravity wave forcing.”
Some interesting physics: from fig. 1b (p.590), end of 1st paragraph in Box 1 (p.591), and p. 597 (near top of 1st column): the wave driving must overcome the Brewer-Dobson circulation, which involves upward flow in the tropical stratosphere; when the air is rising, the downward phase progression must actually be faster through the air itself than it is in terms of altitude. The QBO’s secondary circulation changes with QBO phase; its vertical motion can, locally, add to or go against the Brewer-Dobson circulation; “Descent of the westward phase is opposed by tropical upwelling more strongly than during eastward phase descent because the QBO secondary circulation is upward in westward shear56,164 (FIG. 1b), and substantial uncertainty exists regarding the observed upwelling speed43 and, hence, whether this speed is well represented in models.” (see box p. 590) The QBO’s secondary circulation also affects the ozone distribution and thus radiative heating, which (can?/does? [both words are used; “can” refering to some specific aspects]) feedback on QBO dynamics.
from p. 595 into 596, there is a discussion of reanalysis.
p.597 last paragraph of section:(1st column, end of section)”In summary, simulating the QBO requires high horizontal resolution for realistic tropical convection and a broad spectrum of tropical waves, and also requires high vertical resolution and minimal numerical diffusion to simulate stratospheric waves and wave–mean flow interactions. In lieu of such high resolution, substantial developments in gravity wave parameterization, informed by high-resolution observations, will be needed.“; also notes that parameterizations that produce similar QBOs for present conditions have differences that lead to different changes to QBO with climate change
There is a part of the last paragraph on p.594 that I don’t yet understand.
Correction: the article (in that context/part) does not use both words (“can”, “does”); it uses both meanings.
“The 6-month semi-annual oscillation (SAO) of the seasonal variations dominates the zonal circulation at low latitudes. With the Sun crossing the equator twice a year, the SAO is generated by momentum advection associated with the meridional circulation.“: quote shown in google search “what causes the semiannual oscillation”, for the result:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/semiannual-oscillation#:~:text=The%206%2Dmonth%20semi%2Dannual,associated%20with%20the%20meridional%20circulation. :
[Quotes don’t appear with spaces between paragraphs in original; bold is mine]
From
“MIDDLE ATMOSPHERE | Quasi-Biennial Oscillation
T.J. Dunkerton, … L.J. Gray, in Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences (Second Edition), 2015
QBO of Mean Zonal Wind”:
…”The SAO attains measurable amplitude in the tropical middle stratosphere, and dominates the upper stratosphere and lower mesosphere. There is also a ‘mesopause SAO’ out of phase with the stratopause SAO. Both SAOs are affected by the underlying QBO.
Details of the wind oscillation are as follows. The QBO attains maximum amplitude of about 23 m s−1 on the Equator, between 30 and 10 hPa, diminishing in amplitude above and below this layer.“…
— — — — — —
From
“Meteorology, Dynamic (Stratosphere)☆
Erdal Yiğit, Rolando R. Garcia, in Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, 2018
The tropical oscillations”
… “Eastward-propagating waves [c greater than 0] are absorbed at their critical levels (where [ū = c]), while westward waves propagate to higher altitudes where they force westward winds. The result, shown in panel (B), is that the westward phase descends and occupies nearly the entire domain; this in turn allows eastward waves [c greater than 0] to propagate to higher altitudes, where they begin to force a new eastward phase. As the westward phase descends further (panel C), a new eastward phase develops near the top of the domain. In this way, alternating eastward and westward regimes are generated and propagate downward.
The period of oscillation of these alternating regimes is about 27 months for the QBO, but precisely 6 months for the SAO. Computer simulations suggest that the QBO period is sensitive to the strength of the wave forcing, such that stronger forcing decreases the period and vice versa. Interannual variations in the strength of wave forcing presumably account in part for the variability of the QBO cycle.
The period of the SAO, on the other hand, is regulated by the seasonal cycle because of one crucial difference between the QBO and the SAO: The westward wind phase of the SAO in the stratosphere (see Fig. 11) is produced, not by wave forcing, but by the advection of westward zonal-mean momentum by the mean meridional circulation. […] As shown in Fig. 13, the meridional velocity [skipped math notation] is relatively large near the stratopause and its direction is such as to produce negative (westward) zonal-mean zonal winds.
The presence of westward winds at the solstices leads to selective absorption of westward waves in the stratosphere and propagation of eastward waves to the mesosphere, where they force eastward winds. Near the equinoxes, on the other hand, eastward winds can be generated in the stratosphere by dissipation of eastward waves, while westward waves propagate to the mesosphere and force a mesospheric westward phase. In this way the seasonal cycle determines the timing of the SAO wind regimes.“
scroll up from where https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/semiannual-oscillation#:~:text=The%206%2Dmonth%20semi%2Dannual,associated%20with%20the%20meridional%20circulation. opens to find sections I quoted; there is more worth reading in those sections (and diagrams)
Paragraph
I looked at one or both of these before once, but the use of γ (see below) left me doubtful – maybe it works, but eg. can it distinguish between diurnal and semidiurnal tides? I would imagine that could have some consequence. Am I wrong? Anyway, I never finished reading it/them and just quick found the quotes below; … for anyone who’s interested:
“Possible forcing of global temperature by the oceanic tides”
Charles D. Keeling, Timothy P. Whorf (1997) https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.94.16.8321 “As an approximate relative measure of the global tide raising forces of individual strong tidal events we have adopted the factor, γ, of Wood (ref. 23, p. 201), defined as the angular velocity of orbital motion of the Moon with respect to the perturbed motion of perigee, in degrees of arc per day at the moment of maximum forcing.”
“The 1,800-year oceanic tidal cycle: A possible cause of rapid climate change”
Charles D. Keeling and Timothy P. Whorf (2000) https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.070047197 “As a measure of the global tide raising forces (ref. 5, p. 201.33), we adopt the angular velocity, γ, of the moon with respect to perigee, in degrees of arc per day, computed from the known motions of the sun, moon, and earth.“
Meanwhile, back in Dubai, the usual Russian philanthropists have proposed a mammoth geoengineering project :
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2023/12/one-mammoth-steppe-for-mankind.html
Another wonderful and informative Russell offering. Thank you!
Repeat link: https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2023/12/one-mammoth-steppe-for-mankind.html
One must be more careful than me with the debunking. For 11 years I poo pooed everywhere I saw “It’s they’re spraying the skies ! See Dane Wigginton !” and now I find out in June 2023 and also from Jim Hansen they been spraying the skies but now International Maritime Organization ordered “Hey They ! Stop with the spraying the skies !”
Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry and the global warming deniers are running COP28:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/03/back-into-caves-cop28-president-dismisses-phase-out-of-fossil-fuels
Sec. Animist: Guardian: “Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels”
Hardly a surprise, when we allowed a fox to preside over the chicken meeting on the improvement to the security of the chicken cop. I mean: coop.
Why is climate denial – I prefer to call it climate ignorance, but you could also call it “oiligarchic climadness” – still an “issue”? Because this is a global power struggle, not a seminar. The globally ruling classes don’t acknowledge the problem with fossil fuels and the socalled “growth”, *because they aren’t willing to.* In a manner of speaking, they are obsessed with moneymaking, we all live under the unenlightened absolutism of moneyed oligarchies, a lot of – objectively seen: mad and childish tyrants like Trump, Musk, Erdogan, Netanyahu, Putin, Bin Salman etc. etc. etc.
And now they are being represented by this oil sultan (!) Ali Jaber chairing the COP28: a complete parody for sure. What does he say?
“Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels. Exclusive: UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber says phase-out of coal, oil and gas would take world ‘back into caves’”. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/03/back-into-caves-cop28-president-dismisses-phase-out-of-fossil-fuels
Why does he say this? Only all the usual smirking and babbling mediots and all the other politicians won’t admit the obvious: of course because he is an oil sultan! Instead they act as advised by Goebbels: “the masses will only believe a lie, if it is sufficiently rude.” Their job is to get the masses to believe the oiligarchic lie about global heating.
“Senior executives from the UAE’s national oil company are working with the Cop28 team as the country ramps up its PR campaign ahead of the major UN climate summit later this year, leaked internal records show.
Two PR professionals from the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) are identified as providing “additional support” to the team running the summit, according to a Cop28 communications strategy document obtained by the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) and the Guardian. It adds to growing evidence of blurred lines between the UAE’s Cop28 team and its fossil fuel industry (…)
“The meeting at the UN will “set the tone, inform the climate agenda and *shape the climate narrative* (my exclamation marks, KJ) in the lead up to Cop28”, the document states.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/22/uae-oil-company-executives-working-with-cop28-team-leak-reveals
The COP process is being turned into a trojan horse for the fossil lobby. At the same time, news confirm that current “progress” in the production of renewables isn’t changing the total dominance of fossil fuels. Around 1975 the percentage of fossil fuels out of total global energy consumption was around 75 pct., according to a lecture by Wally Broecker in 2010. Now this percentage is around 82:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/renewables-growth-did-not-dent-fossil-fuel-dominance-2022-statistical-review-2023-06-25/
“Renewables Growth Did Not Dent Fossil Fuel Dominance in 2022, Report Says, Reuters, June 26, 2023
Global energy demand rose 1% last year and record renewables growth did nothing to shift the dominance of fossil fuels, which still accounted for 82% of supply, the industry’s Statistical Review of World Energy report said on Monday.
Last year was marked by turmoil in the energy markets after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which helped to boost gas and coal prices to record levels in Europe and Asia.
The stubborn lead of oil, gas and coal products in covering most energy demand cemented itself in 2022 despite the largest ever increase in renewables capacity at a combined 266 gigawatts, with solar leading wind power growth, the report said.
“Despite further strong growth in wind and solar in the power sector, overall global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions increased again,” said the president of the UK-based global industry body Energy Institute, Juliet Davenport.
“We are still heading in the opposite direction to that required by the Paris Agreement.””
But then of course this “agreement” (what is an “agreement” consisting of voluntary promises which aren’t kept?) was from the very beginning what James Hansen called it in an interview in november 2015: “Pure bullshit”.
Hansen: “Get ready for the great deceit and hypocrisy planned for December in Paris. Negotiators do not want the global leaders to look like fools again, as they did in Copenhagen. They are determined to have leaders clap each other on the back and declare the Paris climate negotiations a success. A prelude of Paris deceit is shown by Chart 3, a press conference with John Podesta, once czar of Obama’s climate policy, and Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz. They express optimism on the Paris summit, citing an agreement of the U.S. and China to work together to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS). That spin is so gross, it is best described as unadulterated 100% pure bullshit.” http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2015/20151127_Isolation.pdf
It is now often said that CO2 levels are: (1) 50% higher than pre-industrial (2) the highest in the modern atmospheric record (3) the highest in the paleoclimate records over the past 800,000 years.
But this is not even close to a sober recognition of the harsh reality.
You often read statements like this one from the NOAA about paleoclimatic CO2 levels. But this only what you get from the airbubbles in the deepest ice-cores from Antarctica. There are other paleoclimate records going much further back in the deep past. Why does the NOAA, IPCC etc. never mention them?
In fact present CO2 levels are probably higher than anytime in at least 23 million years, according to this research:
https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/48/9/888/586769/A-23-m-y-record-of-low-atmospheric-CO2
“Across the past 23 m.y., CO2 likely ranged between ∼230 ppmv and 350 ppmv (68% confidence interval: ∼170–540 ppm). CO2 was found to be highest during the early and middle Miocene and likely below present-day levels during the middle Pliocene (84th percentile: ∼400 ppmv). These data suggest present-day CO2 (412 ppmv) exceeds the highest levels that Earth experienced at least since the Miocene, further highlighting the present-day disruption of long-established CO2 trends within Earth’s atmosphere”, “A 23 m.y. record of low atmospheric CO2”, Cui et al. 2020.
This deserves much more attention than it gets.
Furthermore, the present rise in CO2-levels is probably at least five times faster than anytime before in the known geological record:
1) PETM (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum): “Modern rates are many, and projection to a longer PETM time scale is tightly constrained—modern rates are some 9–10 times higher than those during onset of the PETM. If the present trend of anthropogenic emissions continues, we can expect to reach a PETM-scale accumulation of atmospheric carbon in as few as 140 to 259 years (about 5 to 10 human generations).”
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018PA003379 “Temporal Scaling of Carbon Emission and Accumulation Rates: Modern Anthropogenic Emissions Compared to Estimates of PETM Onset Accumulation”, Gingerich 2019.
PETM occurred around 56 million years ago.
Se also: “We calculate that the initial carbon release during the onset of the PETM occurred over at least 4,000 years. This constrains the maximum sustained PETM carbon release rate to less than 1.1 Pg C yr−1. We conclude that, given currently available records, the present anthropogenic carbon release rate is unprecedented during the past 66 million years. We suggest that such a ‘no-analogue’ state represents a fundamental challenge in constraining future climate projections. Also, future ecosystem disruptions are likely to exceed the relatively limited extinctions observed at the PETM.” https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2681 , Zeebe et al.: “Anthropogenic carbon release rate unprecedented during the past 66 million years”, 2016.
2) The end-permian extinction event: The fastest calculated CO2 release rate I have found for the end permian extinction event 252 million years ago (the volcanic eruptions which created the Siberian Traps), is around twice as fast as the rate calculated for PETM: “In contrast, Clarkson et al. (12) came to an opposite model-based conclusion, with a slow emission of CO2 (δ13Csource < −12.5‰) followed by faster rate of emissions (2.4 Pg C year−1 over 10,000 years)" https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq4082 "Volcanic CO2 degassing postdates thermogenic carbon emission during the end-Permian mass extinction", Wu et al. 2023.
Present CO2 release rates are around five times faster than this. So the same conclusion as abovementioned in Zeebe et al. 2016 about the PETM: "We suggest that such a ‘no-analogue’ state represents a fundamental challenge in constraining future climate projections" also applies in the case concerning the end-permian extinction event, even as the duration of the CO2 release during that event went on for much longer (ten thousand years) than will be possible for the release caused by humans – "only" maybe hundred more years, probably much less, since the industrial exploration of fossil fuels will be brought to an end by it's own catastrophic consequences for mankind long before they all have been burned.
3) I don't know any big volcanic events in the deep past with known faster release rates of CO2 than the end-permian extinction event. According to this article
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-01456-w , the volcanic eruptions that caused the "snowball earth" icehouse(s) – the socalled "Cryogenic" period – to end around 635 million years ago had release rates only half so fast as during than later volcanic events:
"To summarise our results, CO2 degassing rates appear to have increased twofold between the Cryogenian and early Palaeozoic, and remained reasonably high until the Cenozoic. When combined with the increasing solar flux, the Cryogenian emerges as a unique period of extremely low background temperature, in which the Earth could have easily been pushed into global glaciation under moderate enhancements of carbon sinks due to weathering and biological events", "Elevated CO2 degassing rates prevented the return of Snowball Earth during the Phanerozoic", Mills et al. 2017.
4) There are theories about the extinction of the dinosaurs being caused by the volcanic eruptions creating the Deccan traps 66 million years ago, but according to table 1 in this article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9351498/ "Volume and rate of volcanic CO2 emissions governed the severity of past environmental crises the release rates of CO2", Jiang et al. 2022, the release rate of CO2 then was around three to ten times slower than during the PETM. There are, as seen in the table, other events, but except for the end permian event the fastest release rates are only about as fast as during the PETM.
But after 33 years of "climate" "talks", where are we heading? *In the completely opposite direction of what is needed!* By 1975 around 75 pct. of global energy consumption was fossil fuels. As I cited above, this number has now grown to over 82 pct.!
It isn't difficult at all to understand why this madness is going on and on:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/richest-1-account-for-more-carbon-emissions-than-poorest-66-report-says
It's the ruling classes, stupid. They are both mad and stupid. By the way not exactly a new situation in the history of mankind…
I missed this comment –
Karsten V. Johansen says
3 Dec 2023 at 6:12 PM
It’s excellent. Very good. And not on mention of average degrees C anomalies yet the meaning is clear as hell. Well once one was aware of these mass extinctions, what happened with the climate, what caused the transition, how deadly it was, and how long it took.
For the scientists, deniers and the onlookers:
Brandolini’s law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage coined in 2013 that emphasizes the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. The law states the following: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
Hitchens’s razor is an epistemological razor that serves as a general rule for rejecting certain knowledge claims. It states “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”[1][2][3] The razor was created by and named after author and journalist Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011). It implies that the burden of proof regarding the truthfulness of a claim lies with the one who makes the claim; if this burden is not met, then the claim is unfounded, and its opponents need not argue further in order to dismiss it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor
Sealioning (also sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity (“I’m just trying to have a debate”), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter. It may take the form of “incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate”, and has been likened to a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
Thanks, Ned, I had forgotten Sealioning.
That is actually a perfect description of the vaporista people, although I do think there is a strong component of hagfishing.
As I said to Secular Animist, it’s up to the folks here to avoid being pulled under or suffocated by the mucus… and they don’t seem to be doing a very good job of that. Rather, the responses just get longer and longer and more often, which is the reward the trolls are seeking.
Personally I’ve tried to shorten all my responses to minimum possible for exactly that reason. Getting people trapped in a Gishmire is the obvious goal of some here, though, I agree.
Hr Rahmstorf
I come to think, but it is just a conspirational theory of mine..
That 3 days ago the state budget of Norway was settled, and the liberals and the greens were quite unsatisfied because nothing is done in relation to curbing of CO2 as promised.
So a solid conspirational theory would be that the labour party and peasant party may have ordered the minister of civil service, who administers Statistisk sentralbyrå, to come up with some statistical argument for the state budget negotiations right in time. .
It can be said in Deutsch also as a form of most traditional civil service traditional upper brass. As a “Köpernickiade”
Or blatant Corruption, Lobbyism , as it is termed elsewhere.
It has got exotic, quite incredible levels by the litterature list and references allready, .and those who accepted it lacking Mittlere Reife, rather graduated on the Party Quote through closed and privileged studies, through the Arbeiter und Bauernfakultät, owned by the fameous Party with P, the grand old one, that we have also got here.
I’d like to thank RC for allowing “science deniers” such as myself to post on this site. I am truly grateful. I am a very busy actively practicing physician, and today is busy, so this will be my final post for THIS subject (take note Geoff). My purpose here is to get you to think, really think outside of your comfort zone. It’s easy when we all we get are a bunch of other people who agree with us. Makes it easy, right?
I mean, when George Washington came down with an upper respiratory infection, the obvious thing to do was to bleed out the infection, right? Would you have told the expert physicians of his day that they were crazy for blood-letting? Would you have railed against Semmelweis, like most other doctors in his day about his crazy idea that washing hands actually might lower infection rates?
There is something profoundly alluring to the concept of appealing to the experts in a community, even in the face of compelling evidence that those experts are wrong. It’s human nature to want to be accepted in a group. I certainly don’t blame any of you for doing so. The problem here, though, is that when I presented evidence, using the common language in science, that is–peer reviewed, published scientific journal articles and validated databases on observations in the natural world–it was criticized not by other such articles, but by journalists and advocates opinions without any evidence.
Now I am the one who is crazy because someone at WHO states that “climate change presents a fundamental threat to human health”, without any references, anywhere, to back up their conclusion? Now I’m the crazy one who can’t see why it’s important to control for inflation and population changes when talking about the increase in billion dollar disasters, (see: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2020.1800440?src=recsys) or why 2023 had a slightly higher number of tropical storms but within natural variation? Now I’m the crazy one for repeatedly using a multitude scientific articles and databases like EM-DAT showing that indeed there is no signal–at all–of increasing heat related morbidity and mortality, just because some of them are from 2014? Geoff is the only one who really tried to take me on by providing actual studies. I really appreciate that. Unfortunately for Geoff, the studies either aren’t relevant to the discussion or not validated. (Geoff, see also: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17477891.2023.2239807#:~:text=Next%2C%20the%20statement%20that%20we,in%20the%20most%20recent%20report)
Everyone else just pretty much complained about what a horrible and stupid human I am. Ad hominem attacks abounding without any real true resistance. Not a great look for a pre-eminent climate science blog. But not unexpected either. Doesn’t that bother you? That all you have are ad hominem attacks?
All of this only emboldens me even more to speak out more on this. The fact that debates are off limits, assuming the public is too stupid to weigh each side’s argument fairly, assuming that the “just believe us, we’re experts” line is going to keep playing to the masses is a poor strategy. I previously shared the Pew and Gallup polls of people who believe that climate change is largely driven by humans has now crossed the 50% threshold THE WRONG WAY though, led by largest declines in democrats and independents, not republicans. You need to change tactics. People are losing faith in you. Maybe start debating us on a stage, in front of live people who you want to buy into this? Maybe people are tired of “just believe us”?
Scott says: “EM-DAT showing that indeed there is no signal–at all–of increasing heat related morbidity and mortality (thus far) ”
Ok so there is no proven, clear increase in heat related mortality and morbidity thus far. I assume this is largely because improvements in healthcare have countered the problems of rising temperatures and worsening heatwaves. But there is no guarantee this happy state of things will continue. It is naive to believe improvements in healthcare will stop an increase in mortality rate forever.
And the worst effects of worsening heatwaves are not expected until we get to over 1.5 degrees, and they could effect vast areas of the tropics. Climate change is not expected to follow a nice linear progression! An acceleration in some trends has already been found. This will really stress health systems and eat up resources. You of all people as a doctor should understand this.
And its not all about the mortality rate. We also face all the other costs that go with worsening heatwaves.
It baffles me why you cant see all this despite that I’ve pointed it out to you twice before. I have chosen one example, but the same principle applies to other climate changes. You criticise people for ignoring your comments and quoted studies but it seems you are even more guilty of this! Yet I suspect you are totally unaware of what you are doing!
Since you are a doctor lets use covid as a rough analogy. In the initial few months there was a spike in deaths in one province in China, then it escaped to Italy and so we saw more deaths. At that stage there wasn’t a significant if any increase in global mortality rate, but there was obvious potential for disaster, especially with exponential growth typical of viruses, so immediate steps were taken to apply various restrictions on behaviour, and vaccines and treatments were fast tracked. Even although covid was not 100% understood sensible people took the precautionary principle.
We did not wait until tens of millions of people were dead and other huge problems before taking action!!!!! Ok so obviously covid is not climate change but this is the main point. And obviously covid has different dynamics to climate change, but it is also unlikely to follow a linear trend. In a similar sense we need to act now to mitigate the climate problem before it gets truly out of control, leaving only very risky, options like geoengineering, and most likely a complete mess for millenia.
Scott: – “I am a very busy actively practicing physician, and today is busy, so this will be my final post for THIS subject (take note Geoff).”
You’ve said something similar in Aug.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/back-to-basics/#comment-813644
I don’t think you can help yourself – you’ve stated: “All of this only emboldens me even more to speak out more on this.”
Scott: – “My purpose here is to get you to think, really think outside of your comfort zone.”
I think you are here to regurgitate climate science denying memes. It seems to me whenever I’ve challenged your statements and offered peer-reviewed scientific references, you’ve ignored or denied them. Whenever I’ve offered counterarguments it appears to me you’ve ignored or denied them. It seems to me you want to manipulate everything on your own terms. Perhaps that’s the arrogant visage of some physician types? Perhaps the ‘bubble’ you live in protects you from most detrimental climate effects, but I’d suggest the wider world doesn’t work that way.
Scott, the Laws of Physics won’t bend to my will, nor will it bend to yours or anybody’s.
Scott: – “Geoff is the only one who really tried to take me on by providing actual studies. I really appreciate that. Unfortunately for Geoff, the studies either aren’t relevant to the discussion or not validated.”
There you have it – more denial, dismissing my observant criticisms of Scott’s offerings, and labelling my offered peer-reviewed references as “aren’t relevant”.
Scott: – “Maybe start debating us on a stage, in front of live people who you want to buy into this?”
A reassuring lie manipulates more people than an inconvenient truth.
https://twitter.com/peter_mcgahan/status/1443153715003805699
I’d suggest sooner or later climate reality will ‘bite’ everyone, much harder for some than others, whether you believe it or not. Millions of people are already being ‘bitten’.
Richer people (perhaps Scott is part of this cohort?) may be cocooned from the worst effects of the climate reality for some time, but if (and when) civilisation collapses, money will likely become worthless.
“Maybe start debating us on a stage, in front of live people who you want to buy into this?”
You are showing your complete failure to understand/learn the scientific method which you ought to have learned in grade school.. It is how science has been conducted for hundreds of years. Science is done via hypotheses, data collection, analyses, and peer review (journals, refereed papers, scientific conferences) . Always has been in all fields. Not via public debates..
Scott: I mean, when George Washington came down with an upper respiratory infection, the obvious thing to do was to bleed out the infection, right? Would you have told the expert physicians of his day that they were crazy for blood-letting?
BPL: Yes, I would have. They were mis-applying the theory of the four humors, which says that the balance of all four humors is important. The concentration on blood-letting in the 1700s was an aberration which should have been denounced by all competent physicians of the time. Even if blood were the issue, constantly bleeding a man is obviously going to lower his blood level below the point of balance.
Be careful what you wish for.
Scott, if you are interested in the literature supporting WHO’s assessment, I would refer you to Chapter 7 of the Working Group 2 AR6 report, which you can find here:
https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6/wg2/IPCC_AR6_WGII_FullReport.pdf
The picture is large, complex and nuanced, but there is a lot of evidence supporting concern about climate change. You argue that for many conditions mortality and morbidity are decreasing globally, not increasing, and that’s true. But you yourself, I imagine, work pretty hard to do your share to bring that happy result about, and I expect you are well aware of what that takes in terms of research, investment, and effort.
So, why would you tacitly ignore all of that, and ascribe the change in mortality and morbidity primarily to purely climatic effects instead?
The chapter I linked to above provides many citations, which indicate that for many of the conditions considered, climatic change is primarily opposing the efforts of you and your colleagues. And as a result, the improvement in outcomes is less than it would have been under a stable climate. Put plainly, medicine is saving lives, but not as many as it could be, absent the climatic challenges documented by WG 2.
I scanned a fair bit of WG 2, Chapter 7, linked for Scott in my previous comment.
Here’s a “hair on fire” tidbit I came across in the discussion of the projected exposure to extreme heat events:
Yikes! The ‘good news’ scenario still sees an exposure increase of four orders of magnitude!! Now, that’s math you’ve got to hate.
Re. “My purpose here is to get you to think, really think outside of your comfort zone. ”
To which the only rational reply given the mountain of “evidence” you have provided is:
MEDICE, CURA TE IPSUM.
It is clear you are staying within your own comfort zone in your posts. It would be far better if you would stay within your zone of professional competence. Science advancement, I might add, is largely based on working at the edges of any zone of comfort.
Not sure where the idea that Pew found less than half of the people believe that climate change is human-caused came from, and I’m not going scrolling for the links–but on October 23rd, Pew came out with a survey of American opinions on climate change, and while the results have gone slightly in “the wrong direction” since last year, they’re still about the same as in 2016.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/25/americans-continue-to-have-doubts-about-climate-scientists-understanding-of-climate-change/
So the change is likely just random variation, plus a skosh of recency bias based on weather.
WRT the following questions, here’s the percentage of respondents who said that climate scientists understand the issues either “very well” or “fairly well”:
1–“Is it happening?”: 68%
2–“How it affects extreme weather events?”: 65%
3–“Its causes?”: 73%
4–“How to address it?”: 52%
So, not one of those had “crossed” 50%.
So, Scott, do you get up on a debate stage and debate with a plumber a lawyer and an electrical engineer when trying to develop treatment for a patient. If so, how much do you pay in malpractice insurance?
S: My purpose here is to get you to think
BPL: It’s insulting to assume we can’t think without your help.
Let me help you with something Scott:
1)It’s not evidence if it’s cherrypicked. All the evidence has to be considered in aggregate. And really, you wouldn’t understand evidence if it bit your pecker off.
2) You want to play scientist? OK. What is your theory. What does it predict? How long will it take to find out.
2a) Want to find out sooner, pick a sensitive variable where you theory can be falsified more quickly.
3) What? Too busy with your “thriving medical practice?” Upset that that no dissident to the consensus method has been able to drive home the dagger? Maybe if you thought like a scientist rather than using motivated reasoning, that would tell you all you need to know.
But, hey, Scott. Keep doing what you’re doing to the chicken–just not when families are present.
Like most people, you probably think planets are all just cooling off from some original and much hotter state. Right? Wrong!
For starters, there is no compelling evidence that the planet Uranus is losing any energy at all, and so why, we might ask, is the base of its 350Km high nominal troposphere hotter than Earth’s global mean surface temperature when the planet is over 19 times further from the Sun than we are and no solar radiation reaches down there?
Yes, Jupiter is known to be losing energy having greater outward radiative flux than the incident solar radiation. But that is because, unlike Uranus, it has no solid core to help prevent it slowly collapsing. As it does so potential energy converts to kinetic energy and temperature is proportional to the mean molecular kinetic energy. It is this extra kinetic energy which increases the outward radiation. So this exception does not prove wrong what I am about to explain.
And, just in case you’re losing interest, thinking all this is irrelevant, in fact it has everything to do with why carbon dioxide and methane do not, and never will raise the surface temperature of Earth. The detailed proof is in the 2013 paper “Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures.”
In the above-mentioned paper I explain from the Second Law of Thermodynamics how the process I called “heat creep” takes place in all planetary systems from the top of the troposphere, through the crust and mantle and down to the core.
This discovery is as significant as when it was understood that the Earth is in orbit around the Sun, and not vice versa. We can deduce that planets are not cooling but rather were originally warmed up to current temperatures by energy from the Sun.
If you think about it, this must be the case because the original matter must have passed through interstellar Space where the temperature is only a degree or two above absolute zero. When some of the matter got trapped in orbit around the Sun then the gravitational force between such lumps of matter has drawn them together into some rough shape. But, as solar energy warmed them to melting point, they took on spherical shapes becoming planets and moons. The core of our Moon, for example, is kept at over 1,300°C.
All this evidence supports the “heat creep” hypothesis that is correctly explained from long-standing and valid laws of physics, and that process is what keeps you alive by warming the Earth’s surface. It is not radiation from carbon dioxide, methane or water vapor that does so.
Plan your company’s future knowing that the false science of climatology will soon be overthrown and related laws withdrawn.
Lots of good material here for the Crank Shaft.
& bore hole
I’m sorry sir. The crankshaft is over there.
Good lord, COP brings out the weirdos.
“But, as solar energy warmed them to melting point, they took on spherical shapes becoming planets and moons. ”
Ok, I’ll bite.
Why isn’t the planet mercury a complete molten planet due to solar energy?
Did the asteroids/comets impacting proto-earth contribute any heat due to collisions?
Any other plausible heating mechanisms that are occurring in earth’s core or is all solar radiation?
Reply to Centre for the Refutation of False Science, I found the paper you mentioned at ssrn.com, which allows almost anyone to post almost anything without peer-review.
Please provide a reference to a version of the paper that has been peer-reviewed by a credible publisher.
Until then, it’s not worth my time.
To all and everyone
This is a proper example, allthough some unfinished and not the very best, of qvasi & para- scientific quackery. Good enough for coming to Museum for further studies, reference and resemblance.
Science history is full of it.
Party membership Party with P, and sniffdogs, blood and urine and DNA-tests, samples of fæces hairs and Sperma should be secured.
C for the R of FS-
I believe you are neglecting the accumulation of heat built up due to friction between the orbiting planets and the ether. Please introduce this factor into your calculations to provide a fully rigorous explication of False Science.
Here’s an opening bit of cognitive dissonance, for which I am not providing a source because I’m taking it out of context.
Please please please don’t feel the troll(s).
And, while you’re at it, please don’t call people idiots. They may be as foolish as you please, appointing themselves expertise which they’ve gained in their own field but have failed to absorb in climate/meteorology/weather/etc. education and understanding, but this, while it may make you feel righteous, will only stiffen the opposition and lead to reams of boring arguments. In fact, they may be good and skillful in their own field, so you are enhancing their sense of self-righteousness as well.
One purpose of RealClimate, as I understand it, is to provide expertise from experts, and since fake skepticism is on the rise again (if it ever stopped), providing chapter and verse about the validity of our current scientific understanding and evidence is what this is for. Those who come to argue are both wrong and rude, the first about their own understanding and expertise, the second because this is a forum where one can learn from the best.
Reality will come and offer its own proof sooner rather than later, in the dooryard of those who deny it. Sadly, the rest of us will have to suffer along the way, as ignorance equates itself to knowledge, and stupidity claims to be wisdom. But once a sufficiency of evidence is offered and ignored, it’s best to move on and reserve one’s talk for people who have something of use to say and offer.
Ok susan but can we say the denialists are being wilfully or deliberately idiotic? That would be accurate. Ha ha.
Well, perhaps there’s not much point in appealing to their broader capability for leaning and absorbing information. And I’m hardly a shining example of being patient and treating every human being as worth attending to. But sneers sure as heck will not open their minds.
They live in a world where it’s all too easy to believe the catastrophic gassy mass of lies and deceptions presented nonstop by the Fox Koch Trump et al. universe. Everyone around them leads them to think we’re all in a grand conspiracy to hide the truth.
Sadly, the scientific enterprise is not understood, and in many cases, not taught. It’s not a belief system, it’s an evolving methodology which hopefully helps honest inquiry avoid deceiving itself. One would think satellite imagery, noticeable changes in weather, modern medicine, and a range of other inputs would peel off the blinders, but unfortunately it’s a slow process. The excesses of our growing billionaire class and the envy they inspire, along with marketing and product research, are distractions from reality, and it’s easier to find victims to blame than to share and fix things.
Susan Anderson.
I largely agree.
Insults and name calling don’t convince people. It hardens most peoples attitudes. This is basic psychology and PR skills. And it’s one reason why I take a polite approach along with the fact that my job required a lot of people management skills and diplomacy.
However like anyone I sometimes loose my temper, and sometimes you have to be blunt if someone is putting peoples lives at serious risk.
However NOTHING will convince Victor and other hard core denialists. And Victor is clueless and cant see it, so he annoys people and as a result of all this gets insulted by people and frankly I have no sympathy for Victor. He almost asks for it. But insults are not an appropriate response to every sceptic.
The scientific method is taught at school – but it’s by doing science, rather than by discussing the merits of the scientific method and its underlying philosophy. We need both.
I’m a little bit old fashioned in the sense that I think that ultimately its important to debunk the denialists, despite the risk that repeating a lie might spread the lie. Generally over time people have accepted once contentious scientific ideas and medical ideas like the dangers of tobacco. It can take time, but I’m sure it happens because junk science gets challenged.
While some of the criticism of billionaires is envy based, remember the huge level of wealth inequality is causing some very real problems. And billionaires arguably have attained excessive influence over society.
But IMHO the solutions are not to tear down rich people or to try to make everyone equal because its just not practical. The solutions are to narrow the gap a bit and ensure taxes are sufficient to give some extra help to poor people.. Scandinavian countries do this well by taking a practical problem solving approach that puts childrens interests first rather than a class conflcit approach or a utopian idealistic approach. But i digress.
And you are right ( If I understand you correctly) there is not a lot of point scapegoating billionaires for the climate problem. Most people have contributed to the problem. The finger pointing between countries is also not helpful.
Everyone has a part to play in the solution although poor people cant be expected to do much and will need some support. Especially as carbon pricing schemes will put pressure on them.
Nigelj
I believe that it has its ideological, paradigmatic,and esoteric, state- religious, katechismic dogmatic roots. with bodily exercises that educates your NERVUS VAGUS, , your hickup, your “heart” and your “stomack”, your “Guts!……
…….. alltogether your sub- conscious “CON-SCIENCE “…….
for life. .
Such things are very deep, and practically incureable.
But quite easily adressed to by psychopharmaca.
It is settled at the age of Confirmatione, that takes a new puberty later in life, such as a major life cathastropy in order to change.
Which is quite painful and which is what they fear deeply.
Susan , forgive me for being som rude as to recall how often misunderstanding and incivility arise from failing to call things by their correct names,
Asked what he would do if made Governor, Confucius said he would first make names correspond to actualities . At roughly the same time, democracy arose in Athens, and a new word was coined for someone oblivious to the realities and responsibilities of self-government.
Idiotes
Those whose blithering intrudes on civil discourse may be termed idiots.
Russell, thanks, I’m not saying it’s incorrect, I’m saying it’s impolitic. And in our current crises, keeping shtum about that is a shortcut. I am glad to share the universe with people of your quality.
Susan, once again I mean you no disrespect, but I think the various forms of denial we see here on RC are fit topics for discussion amongst ourselves. Your quoted excerpt is actually intriguing, to me at least. It’s written by someone who is clearly not an idiot, but educated and highly verbal. As a flight of fancy, IMHO it shows some creative talent! And again, I’m curious about the psychology underlying motivated cognition, like that seen in the Statistics Norway “discussion paper”. I’d be interested in hearing from John Mashey, WRT his taxonomy of denialists.
To be sure, some denialists who comment here are merely trolls, with nothing new or intriguing to say. They are best ignored, if not consigned to the borehole or crankshaft. I support your plea for simple forbearance in those cases, but OTOH my finger is poised on the scrolling wheel.
I find it extraordinarily depressing and disappointing that a site run by some of the world’s top climate scientists — what could be and should be a premiere site for educating and informing the public — has become little more than a platform for tiresome self-indulgent boorish denialist crackpots like “Doctor” Scott to spew crude falsehoods and clownish nonsense that would get them laughed off of Facebook, whereas here they are rewarded by wasting the time of climate experts who respond and interact with them at length, no matter how repetitive or bad-faith their comments become.
I’ve been visiting here off and on for years, and I would say that my previous paragraph describes about 90 percent of the content of this site over time.
Is that what this site is really for?
Secular Animist says: “…my previous paragraph describes about 90 percent of the content of this site over time. Is that what this site is really for?”
NED: You better believe baby! It is what it is. And here it is in “spades” for all to see.
Scott says: 4 Dec 2023 at 9:21 AM
“I’d like to thank RC for allowing “science deniers” such as myself to post on this site. I am truly grateful.”
To whit NED says: I’d like to insult ridicule rebuke lecture disabuse harangue expatiate reprimand chastise and castigate RC for allowing “science deniers” such as Scott & Centre for the Refutation of False Science (Jeez) to post on this site. I am truly disgusted and turned off by it.
Yours Sincerely
The Powerless
NK. I dont have a problem with deniers having some say, in the name of freedom of speech, but I think when they get repetitive like Victor does, at least half thier material should go in the borehole. This would force them to make better, more considered and fewer trolling comments.
It amazes me that this website doesn’t use its own borehole very much. The website makes itself look weak.
Spot on.
But “respond and interact with them at length” is on the knowledgeable (rather than “expert”) folks who do it.
Trolls gonna be trolls, but smart people aren’t supposed to be stupid.
They’ve discovered that they can use this comment section to promote themselves and that people will respond. Then they can cite themselves as posting on RealClimate. It’s a bigger and better audience than they could get elsewhere.
We should take responsibility and not answer them, but we don’t. Thanks for trying! :)
Susan + Ray + Stefan, et al:
I have long suspected that certain people who troll, and certain others who are intoxicated by the loquaciousness of their own verbosity, on this site are … ahem … actually unemployed ….
However, I am very grateful for the professionals’ comments
You are right and we should not answer them. I am happy to report that I don’t. I don’t even bother reading any of their comments. I am still waiting for the @group to apply the clearly explained rules, rather than get so annoyed that they will eliminate the comments.
Things were better for almost a year after RealClimate’s syndics agreed to enforce a one comment a day rule , I am bemused to report that , as it goes unenforced, it is ls least of all observed by those who complain of the usual borehole suspects resurgence.
The last week speaks for itself- vide supra
Denial of the climate crisis (and its source being human activities) and attempts to brainwash this denial into the minds of the general public, as well as sabotaging attempts to draw down fossil fuel use and extraction are as evil as Holocaust denial. Corporate lobbyists attending the COP meetings solely to derail action to end fossil fuel use and extraction, as well as policymakers who approve new fossil fuel projects or refuse to decarbonize are committing mass murder, for they know their actions will lead to many thousands more deaths, not to mention that of wildlife. The science is crystal clear. The planet must end fossil fuel use within approximately 10 years or else, as Drs. Mann and Hansen and others have stated, we will hit tipping points from which warming will become unstoppable and the climate will spiral out of control. Any stubborn refusals to decarbonize will be seen in future history books, if our species manages to survive the next few centuries, as similar to Chamberlain appeasing the Nazis or continually refusing to act to prevent genocides (Darfur, Rwanda, etc.). These will be considered as unforgivable acts.
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/science-denial-is-still-an-issue-ahead-of-cop28/#comment-816888
Dear Mr. Berg,
Please be so kind and desist from comparing climate change (or crisis, if you wish) with holocaust or anything like this.
Environmental pollution, even should it be caused by human irresponsibility, is in no aspect comparable with a thoroughly planned and organized mass murder.
Best regards
Tomáš Kalisz
Mr. Kalisz,
I’ll maintain my analogy, thanks. The fossil fuel industry knows their actions are killing tens of millions of people every year due to the climate crisis and pollution, yet they still demand to be able to continue business as usual and demand the “right” to rake in ever growing profits. If someone knows their actions are killing people, that is murder, and the industry has known this was true since the 1970s, yet covered it up and shelved their actually reputable science program just to continue to rake in record profits.
The climate crisis is as big a threat, even larger, than Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s, for it threatens the world, not just Europe. The existence of organized humanity is at stake, yet you seem to minimize this threat.
Regards,
Stephen Berg
When it comes to climate scientists debating openly with the public as someone advocated, I don’t think that is a good idea in general, given the type of people that make up a subset the public as shown here:
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/climate-expert-gets-death-threats-after-post-about-pubs-log-fire-goes-viral-145436951.html
Debating only works if all sides follow the rules of logic in which case what should happen is a convergence to the best estimate of the truth. Expecting that from all but a small subset of the general public where emotion trumps logic is laughable.
Anyhow here who knows if this answer has changed yet ?
—
Retired Research Scientist
The third graph on https://www.ntslf.org/products/sea-level-trends shows
sea level trends for six locations round the coast of the British
mainland.
All show the same consistent increase in sea levels, though starting from
different baselines apart from Liverpool, where there was no change during
the 19th. century, and Aberdeen where the measured sea level fell during
that same period.
That would be consistent with the land mass rising in the NE and staying
level at the latitude of Liverpool (and possibly Sheerness, though there
is a considerable gap in the data for there.)
Presumably the land mass would be falling further south, but the data does
not extend far enough back for these locations. So it does look as if
Britain was tilting up in the north, and possibly down in the south.
However, that change in the levels of the land has either not continued
throughout the 20th. century or has been masked by the geographically even
and widespread rise in the observed sea levels.
The Ordnance Survey used the sea level at Newly for the height data on
their maps, which doesn’t seem to have allowed for any change in sea or
land levels, but now say “Global Positioning System (GPS) and the OSGM15
TM model (the height transformation between the European Terrestrial
Reference System 1989 and the national height datums) is the preferred
method of heighting used by Ordnance Survey.”
That , AIUI, should mean that they now have an external fixed point with
which to compare heights across Britain, and it should be possible to
measure land heights independent of sea levels, and give us a definitive
answer. It would also show whether sea levels are rising or not relative
to that fixed point.
But nobody seems to have done it! :-((
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Mr Smith: – “Presumably the land mass would be falling further south, but the data does not extend far enough back for these locations. So it does look as if Britain was tilting up in the north, and possibly down in the south.
However, that change in the levels of the land has either not continued throughout the 20th. century or has been masked by the geographically even and widespread rise in the observed sea levels.>/i>”
Some regions are currently still rebounding while others are falling, since the end of the last glacial maximum. See the Wikipedia graph (from the article Post-glacial rebound) showing present-day vertical crustal motions in millimetres per year due to post-glacial rebound and the reloading of the ocean basins with seawater.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound#/media/File:PGR_Paulson2007_Rate_of_Lithospheric_Uplift_due_to_post-glacial_rebound.png
Northern Scotland is currently still rebounding (per the referred graph above, at roughly 4 mm/y).
But the rate of global mean sea level rise (SLR) is accelerating, per the satellite record, from a global mean of 2.27 mm∙yr⁻¹ (first decade of record average, 1993-2002) to 4.62 mm/y (most recent decade of record average, 2013-2022). With continued global warming the rate of SLR will continue to double, and double again, and so on. So global SLR will soon cancel-out and overwhelm the effects of local rebound uplift in Northern Scotland (and elsewhere).
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/science-denial-is-still-an-issue-ahead-of-cop28/#comment-816769
Thank you for those most interesting links.
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first decade of record average, 1993-2002
—
As the comment I mentioned is from 2005, how could it be possible they was measuring it accurately then, when someone told me it hadn’t happened yet ?
—
nobody seems to have done it! :-((
—
Does that mean, someone had already done it, or has since done it, or hasn’t done it yet at all ?
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global SLR will soon cancel-out and overwhelm the effects of local rebound uplift in Northern Scotland
—
Do we know when that might be ?
Maybe I should have asked that question 10 years ago, and then we might be discussing how accurate predictions are. :-)
Actually, are there any computer models that do predict that well, and have been shown to be accurate given past data, and told to predict the past of which they do not have data.
Mr Smith: – “As the comment I mentioned is from 2005, how could it be possible they was measuring it accurately then, when someone told me it hadn’t happened yet ?”
Um… Mr Smith, who told you what, and when? Are you being deliberately vague, Mr Smith? Is the “someone” relevant/competent/knowledgeable?
Mr Smith: – “Does that mean, someone had already done it, or has since done it, or hasn’t done it yet at all ?
Um… Done what? What is “it”? Are you being deliberately vague, Mr Smith?
Mr Smith: – “Do we know when that might be ?”
Um… I would have thought the rates of crustal uplift and global SLR referred to in my previous comment would be the approximate clues.
Mr Smith: – “Actually, are there any computer models that do predict that well, and have been shown to be accurate given past data, and told to predict the past of which they do not have data.”
The paleo-historical record is probably a better indicator of future outcomes – see the Hansen reference at:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/science-denial-is-still-an-issue-ahead-of-cop28/#comment-816769
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published in Feb 2022 a technical report titled Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States: Updated Mean Projections and Extreme Water Level Probabilities Along U.S. Coastlines. Table 2.3 in the report shows global mean sea level rise scenarios for various GHG emissions futures.
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/sealevelrise/sealevelrise-tech-report.html
See/hear oceanographer John Englander on SLR at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXskGqw4Uxo
On 22 August 2022, at the Cryosphere 2022 Symposium at the Harpa Conference Centre Reykjavik, Iceland, glaciologist Professor Jason Box said from time interval 0:15:27:
“And at this level of CO₂, this rough approximation suggests that we’ve committed already to more than 20 metres of sea level rise. So, obviously it would help to remove a hell-of-a-lot of CO₂ from the atmosphere, and I don’t hear that conversation very much, because we’re still adding 35 gigatonnes per year.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE6QIDJIcUQ
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Nobody with a science background denies the earth is warming.
—
Actually..
Since I have yet to find the raw data even for my local weather station, I don’t know if it is or isn’t warming.
Not that my local weather station is super reliable..
Or necessarily in the best place.
But it would be a nice start, so why make it so impossible to find out such historical data, something to hide, or just usual human incompetence getting in the way of things ?
By raw data, I mean the hourly readings, before any of it has been altered by anyone.
Mr. Smith,
How would you know that the “hourly readings” haven’t been “altered” by anyone?? What test is there that characterizes it as “raw”??
Or, how would you know, for example, that there hasn’t been a systematic bias introduced as equipment has been updated??
Conspiracy theory isn’t science.
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How would you know that the “hourly readings” haven’t been “altered” by anyone?? What test is there that characterizes it as “raw”??
—
You make a good point there.
I could at least check the current live data with my own equipment, to see if it closely matches.
That could give me a high degree of confidence that at least recently, that the raw data is being recorded honestly.
I do have a few snapshots going back just a handful of years that I could compare with any official archive to see if they match what the live data said at the time.
It would be a step in the process of seeing if the raw data available could match historical views of what happened in the past.
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Or, how would you know, for example, that there hasn’t been a systematic bias introduced as equipment has been updated??
—
You also make an excellent point there too.
One might hope that changes of equipment was noted in a dataset, or even changes of location of equipment.
I wonder which weather stations have used the same equipment, in the same location for the longest time, as they might offer us the most accurate raw data.
And didn’t someone mention someplace the other day, how some weather stations have changed at what time they measure things ?
I’m reminded where I am, some local weather stations appear to measure every hour, some every 2 hours, some every 10 minutes.
This can mean for example, as in a recent example that springs to mind, that record temperatures can be recorded in one, when in fact, its actually a record in another one, but it wasn’t reading at the same time..
As such, it gave a rather biased impression that something was happening, when it wasn’t really.
“Hottest day north on record” the headline said.
When it should have said:
“Hottest day further south on busy airport” which would have been more accurate, and might suggest that it is either, actually hot there, or just hotter because its an airport.
If you could find nearby other weather stations, that might help you figure out if the airport is a hotspot or not. ( I’ve heard some folk suggest airports are bad places to install weather stations. )
I’m a bit puzzled why a mayor airport has such a poor quality weather station, whilst a disused airport in the middle of nowhere, seems to have the best equipment.
Maybe its just because there, it blew away and they had to get some new stuff. :-)
Talking of which, I couldn’t seem to find anyone who sells wind speed measuring equipment for above 200mph winds, would anyone happen to know where I can, before I go ahead and build my own equipment ?
And yes, I do mean 200mph, not kph !
Please tell us WHO is “altering data”? Please tell us WHO or WHAT is “hiding” original data. WHO (other than you) said it’s “impossible” to find original data? Great conspiracy thinking there. But do you REALLY believe Dr. Warm is altering all the values in his cave under the extinct volcano? Or are you just saying it for some political reason or other?
Meteorologists and climatologists access hourly, daily, weekly, etc. data on a number of variables all the time. Station data is available from national weather services routinely. But you really need VERY high level resources to access these millions of data points from the various offices (there are 120-odd regional offices in the USA alone), to align and clean them appropriately. Think supercomputers. And think very advanced math and data wrangling skills which I’m sure you have to be makiong youor rather ridiculous conspiracy claims.
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Station data is available from national weather services routinely.
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If it isn’t impossible to find, perhaps someone could give me just one example of any weather stations raw data for say the last 50 years, that you can see online without needing any special permissions, to download to your own spreadsheet, to see any trends for yourself.
Or do you mean live data ?
I’ve found websites that can give me live data, but I don’t want to wait 50 years collecting that. :-)
It would be nice too, to have data from a weather station that hasn’t moved location in those 50 years. ( I hear that my local weather station has moved 3 times in the last 50 years, but I can’t seem to find any information online at least, when or where that occurred, and asking local people, no one seems to know anything. )
Talking of local people, there was a measurement mentioned once of a particular windspeed, but when chatting to one of the former staff high up in our weather service, they pointed out that it was impossible for the equipment to give that high a reading. So now I don’t know who to believe !
I wonder, does anyone here know enough to answer that kind of question ?
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The Met. Office anemographs had a full scale deflection of 70kts. If a wind speed exceeded 70, the instrument went into half scale mode, which meant the absolute maximum speed it could record was 140kts or 161mph. The anemometer (for real time indication) had an FSD of 120kts.
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Talking of my local weather station, since I’ve started to keep a bit of an eye on it lately, I notice occasionally it isn’t working ( Oddly when its been really windy, maybe it blew away like the last time.. ) and I notice other nearby stations also have trouble working reliably, but I guess that is perfectly normal.
Even though I can’t find anyone to tell me why X station stopped working, and did someone go out and fix it.
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WHO (other than you) said it’s “impossible” to find original data?
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I just thought, if anyone else here/elsewhere would care to point me to where I can just download the raw data, or even post a URL to a dump of the data they got, that could help show that it isn’t impossible !
If more than 2 people do that, one might hope that the data matches. :-)
I’m sure it must be possible for some people, otherwise how could they write articles about what the data said.
I’m just itching to write articles myself, but of course, first I need the data..
This is thick political surrealism and denialism propaganda.
I find out and put things together the best I can from details and horizons that were guaranteed not contaminated and biased by recent accute climate dispute, and come roughly to the same conclusions as the meteorologists and recent climate research as presented through the IPCC. .
When I am fought and racially rinsed out on the surrealist websites,….for trying to make them aware of wind and weathers and practical physical chemistery & botanics,….,…
……., then I aqm being forced by them to draw the conclusion that they are fighting my person and our very civilization of orientation and learnings as such.
We have had that before in Norway from the side ofThyranny.
The privileged inaugurated racial KADRE- class is fighting the aborgineans and their culture everywhere and regardless..
. .
Santa’s Elves took the raw data Mr Smith, and hid it.
Do you think if we are really good, that Santa might publish some for Christmas..
Raw OBSERVATIONAL data is nearly useless scientifically. It depends partially upon the field, but the MAJORITY of the work in science research involves calibrating and aligning the raw observational values from each and every source on to some sort of dimension or set of them for analysis. You appear not to know this. Why not ask for the raw UHI readings from NASA? Or the raw, unprocessed sensor output from CERN’s detector assuming you happen to own a supercomputer.
I could go on for hours, but perhaps this description of how I spent a year on a grant as a stats analyst with one grad student assistant back in the primitive days of computing will suffice though of course your implied completely tin foil multigenerational, multinational, and multinstrumental forgery conspiracies remain. (Hint: When multiple people are independently collecting data in the same general area over long periods of time using independent instruments, maintaining the conspiracy you posit is ridiculous to posit.).
Anyway…
Jan: Receive six 9″ reels of tape (this was some decades ago) containing raw outcome data from 4000 sites. and spend some weeks simply getting access to the encoding schemes for the files*, reading the technical manuals on all the various measuring sites and instruments used, looking for outliers and other flaws like typos.
Feb-Sep: Go through all 4000 sites individually first doing basic cleanup initiated in Jan and second examining and aligning (calibrating) each instrument and each and every data point from each and every site against a common metric. This results in a cleaned research-quality dataset.
Oct-Nov: Run analyses on said dataset. Many were overnight runs which is why it took two month given computing speeds of the day. Probably take only 3-4 weeks today to map out, run, and verify these same analyses on a research-quality dataset.
Dec: Write up tech report for grantor (NIDA in this particular case) and start writing additional articles for publication in peer-reviewed sources. Took another year or two to complete that last process.
I’d LOVE to see you go up to some CERN scientists and DEMAND to see the “real raw data” from their accelerator. They would collapse on the floor laughing as THEY have never seen all the real raw data either. And never will. For one small reason, there isn’t enough lifespan in anyone’s life to do so.
This site has links to the primary datasets. https://guides.erau.edu/data/weather
_________
*copy fileA to fileB at placeC was only just then being invented by Xerox (and we had a Xerox Sigma 9 mainframe to boot!). Sadly it was not yet implemented by the IBM OS and its hideously complex JCL that had a much more primitive access scheme by which the tapes were written.
yes.
@ jgnfld
Yes!
But I know of an easier way, that is raw- data.
Lick on your finger and put it up in the air, and you will soon know for sure from what direction the wind is coming . Simsalabim!
Discussion:
It also depends quite a lot what you really need for Data in order to be sure, DATA & “SCIENCE” should not be a method for ignorant workers and their d/o owners to earn monthly salaries according to tariff, . even for overtime.
There are different styles here.
Some “scientists” plan the assembly line routine factory with an enormeous lot of robotic “DATA!” for good “statistics” The one and only kind of “DATA”also.
The rather opposite situation is when it takes weeks, months and years to find out and to design the measuring and experimental procedure and with a lot of failed efforts and error suggestions and designs. And then at last , it takes only one or 2 or 3 experiments or measurements to be able to secure the proof and to publish. Or for you to know that it all was wrong.
Well-spoken. Thanks! Sometimes it’s good for somebody who actually deals with data analysis to provide some detail of the process involved.
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I’d LOVE to see you go up to some CERN scientists and DEMAND to see the “real raw data” from their accelerator.
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Interesting that you mention that, since one of my hobbies is nuclear reactor design, and as such, I do ask such folk for their raw data, and oddly this isn’t an issue for anyone.
But maybe nuclear reactor designers are more helpful than accelerator folk.
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This site has links to the primary datasets. https://guides.erau.edu/data/weather
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Thank you for that, I shall go and have a look and see if I can find something simple, like local wind speed data from my local weather station.
That shouldn’t be hard should it.. ?
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assuming you happen to own a supercomputer.
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Interestingly, yet again, I did once own one !
Obviously I got it second hand, since they are super expensive new !
Today’s PC’s are super powerful, so less need for expensive super computers, that nowadays, you couldn’t even afford the electricity to run them !
Though quantum computers look useful, I might have a go at building one of those, since those are currently a tad expensive.
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When multiple people are independently collecting data in the same general area over long periods of time using independent instruments, maintaining the conspiracy you posit is ridiculous to posit.
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It isn’t necessarily the raw data collecting that is the issue, it is what happens to the data after that.
Like I’ve mentioned, looking at alcoholic treatments, I don’t suppose there is a single study around anywhere that says they don’t work.
They all support treatment X as being more effective than treatment Y no doubt..
Yet they must all operate from raw data, perhaps biased raw data..
Like only asking people still alive, why they are alive, you won’t hear from the dead people !
I had access to the raw data for alcoholics treatment ( Perhaps before they found a way to collect it in a bias fashion so you can’t prove otherwise ! ) and it showed very easily how, nothing worked.
I hear the same applies to weight loss diets, though I’ve not had access to much data in that area, it wouldn’t surprise me that humans have a hard time breaking additions.
Sadly I could find no common connection to why some folk can kick such habits and some can’t, at least at that time.
Now I wonder if genetics plays a role, after all, they say alcoholism is an inherited condition.
Talking of “conspiracy” reminds me of this guy:
https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/february-2016-400-years-ago-catholic-church-prohibited-copernicanism
I don’t just see one side of the argument, I see several sides.
It is never a good sign when one side starts throwing around emotional terms like “conspiracy” to colour the water and try to make asking questions seem a bad thing.
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You appear not to know this.
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My time is limited, if I listed everything I knew, we’d be here for years !
As such, I try to keep my questions to the bare minimum.
That and even if I did expand on them, I’ve found in the past that has been a complete waste of time, since it made no difference to the outcome of the answer from the other person.
Whilst I enjoy a good debate over decades, such things are not prioritised, and as such, my answers may take a while to be returned.
I also know folk love to have the last word on things. :-)
MR Smith.. Some people are suspicious that raw temperature data is corrected in ways that are dubious to deliberately inflate the warming rate. for nefarious motives I find suspicions like that ridiculous.. And one thing certainly convinced me they are ridiculous. A few years ago a major correction was applied to the raw global warming data after errors were found in the way the raw data was measured and gathered. The end result was global warming DECREASED the exact opposite of inflating the temperature record. All the details here:
http://variable-variability.blogspot.com/2015/02/homogenization-adjustments-reduce-global-warming.html
Mr Smith: – “Since I have yet to find the raw data even for my local weather station, I don’t know if it is or isn’t warming.”
Would you have the competency to analyze the data correctly?
Mr Smith: – “Not that my local weather station is super reliable..”
What makes you think your local weather station is “not … super reliable”? Where is your local weather station? Care to share?
Mr Smith: – “But it would be a nice start, so why make it so impossible to find out such historical data, something to hide, or just usual human incompetence getting in the way of things ?”
Perhaps you have not tried to look very far?
Mr Smith: – “By raw data, I mean the hourly readings, before any of it has been altered by anyone.”
Have you never been aware of the need for instrument calibration?
Calibration helps to ensure accuracy, reliability, safety, and compliance with industry standards.
Meanwhile, records keep being re-adjusted/updated:
* Highest global average atmospheric concentrations of CO₂, CH₄, NO₂;
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/global.html
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_n2o/
* Total fossil CO₂ emissions, projected to reach 36.8 billon tonnes for full year-2023;
https://globalcarbonbudget.org/fossil-co2-emissions-at-record-high-in-2023/
* Highest global daily 2 m surface temperature anomaly (>2 °C, 17-18 Nov 2023);
https://climate.copernicus.eu/global-temperature-exceeds-2degc-above-pre-industrial-average-17-november
* Hottest year globally (2023 so far) & months (Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, so far);
https://climate.copernicus.eu/record-warm-november-consolidates-2023-warmest-year
* Highest global daily average sea surface temperatures;
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/
* Lowest daily Antarctic sea ice extent (currently dipped again below the 2016 curve);
https://zacklabe.com/antarctic-sea-ice-extentconcentration/
* Highest Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI).
https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1732749203758022871
https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1732751332195406003
And you “don’t know if it is or isn’t warming”, aye Mr Smith?
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Would you have the competency to analyze the data correctly?
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I would.
As I’ve mentioned, I have done some very basic analysing in the past, and if I get stuck, these days I can google, or just ask folk here what to do with the data to get the same results they do. :-)
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What makes you think your local weather station is “not … super reliable”?
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Oh that’s easy, when it says it isn’t windy, and its so windy, bits of houses blow away that haven’t blown away before since the last storm of 200+ mph winds hit the place, you begin to wonder that it might be broken.
It appeared to flat line for 12+ hours.
As such, it would be interesting to check the data to see if zero was recorded, or like the current online record, it just repeated the last recorded wind-speed, which is obviously not true.
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Perhaps you have not tried to look very far?
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I try to look everywhere me !
Do you know where to look ?
Can you tell me ?
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Have you never been aware of the need for instrument calibration?
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I have, but what has that got to do with my question…
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And you “don’t know if it is or isn’t warming”, aye Mr Smith?
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I do not, since I haven’t seen the raw data, and thus haven’t been able to get it to say the same things as folk who believe in global warming.
A nice collection of links you provided, picking one at random I notice:
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dataset that provides estimates of temperature based on a blend of satellite, ship, and buoy observations.
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So, probably if I looked at all of them, none of them would actually have any raw data ?
Before we even get the the stage of discussing how accurate said data is !
If you/anyone could kindly say something like:
“Here is a link to raw data” that would be peachy, and a nice first step towards me maybe believing what the rest of you say.
Mr. Smith,
Since you are talking about raw data, you need to realize that recording instruments sometimes get disabled, and it is most likely during really extreme conditions. Wind instruments can lose power, get knocked over, or get hit by flying debris. That is likely the case when an instrument flatlines during bad conditions.
Even in normal conditions, the raw data needs to be quality-checked. When our weather stations used rotating cup anemometers, one of the ways to tell that an ice storm was getting serious was when the wind speed went to zero because the instrument had frozen. When those were replaced with doppler anemometers that featured a faster response to gusts, those required software to interpret the sensor output. It turned out that hawks liked to roost on top of the anemometer pole, and when the hawk took off, it could totally confuse the software. For a while, this required a technician to go out an do a manual reset, a process that took hours for the more remote stations. The problem was solved by giving the hawks a somewhat higher perch that projected above the anemometer. Have fun getting that out of the raw data.
Regarding global warming, it’s not simply instrumental data providing evidence. There are also such things as plants and animals shifting their ranges, changes in ice and snow cover, and melting glaciers. None of those care what the raw data is on your local thermometer.
In general, scientists and engineers (well, or even psychologists and marketing people with their survey data) should always, always, always save the original/raw/unaltered data (not just aggregates like mean values). In case something went wrong with their calculations (today: maybe software bug) or, in case one day better mathematical methods exist, they can reevaluate their data.
That does not mean, they should always use raw data in their analysis or present them as results.
It’s always necessary in measurements, to look out for statistic errors (noise) as well as systematic errors (part of the measurement system). Both are unavoidable, but it is possible to cope with them.
There is a whole seperate domain, called Metrology (not Meteorology), which just has measurement quality/accuracy as working field. Measurement devices must undergo a lot of suspicion from people working in the field of Metrology. You can’t just buy a thermometer at the next supermarket, which is sold for measuring your bathtub temp or the temp in your garden or your furnace, when you want to do measurements in science (or even companies). Yo need precision devices with certificates on their accurracy.
Of course much of that was not so well established some hundred years ago, but to look out for how well thermometers from the past were working is also part of todays Metrology. And what to do, when old technology is replaced by newer ones.
This is not done ad hoc.
I guess even the climate scientist are not aware of how much work is done in that field (at least not the details). But because the field of Metrology is so well established, they can rely on the data they use and have error margins guaranteed for the measurement devices.
If you have raw data from a precision device, of course thats much better as from cheap customer measurement devices. Nevertheless error margins and potential systematic errors have to be taken into consideration.
Just looking at raw data (maybe for time intervals, during which the old devices have been replaced by newer ones, or changing environmental conditions) does not make any sense.
It is also nonsense to say that raw data can be used as such.
It’s always necessary to apply mathematical methods and reasoning on the raw data, so that systematical errors can be detected and as far as possible corrected.
So asking for the raw data shows, that you don’t know, how much reasoning just alone on the measurements does go into scientific data, before even the data sets can be used for the climate analysis. A lot of adaptions must be done beforehand. Some of that is done in the field of Metrology, then comes the weather stations (Meterologists) and the Climate Scientists may even need to go over the data again.
(How much of overlap there is between Metrology and Meteorology and Meteorology and Climate Science might depend on how it is handled and might be different in different nations – the climate scientists can tell you more about that. But coming from precision measurement electronics, I know that much know-how is needed to get accurate measurements and that you don’t get your devices sold to institutes, if they are not accurate and you can show a certificate, for which you must give error margings and point to potential systematic errors, drift values etc. Also devices must be checked each year and maybe be corrected, and corrections must be tracked. This is not only important for science. Even producing companies with hightech production facilities need high precision in their measurement devices. You can’t use babybath-thermometers from Woolw**th.)
Very true Hr G.(O.)
Wherefore I also recommend timeless wisdom and reliable natural constants that are not delivered from dubious human experts and firms.
Such as the body temperature of the snowmnan for instance.
Else, I often give it in handwidhs, armlenths, and fingerwidths also.
But we have certain quite practical things the melting points of pure metals. Tin, Lead, Zink, Aluminium, Silver, Copper and Iron. That can be guaranteed.
They managed brewery and bakery, smithwork and pottery, having hardly more than the cat, the candle, the sun, ones own skin and furs, and colour vision, for reference of temperatures.
I once had to examine high temperature termoluminescence , and had Copper- constantan termocoupple for thermometry. And an ice- bath. Then suddenly came to think that I should try a thermometer also. The bath was melting with clear water at the bottom, and the thermocoupple also down there. The termometer showed +4 celsius quite precisely. And a lot of measurements driven with 4 deg bias. ERRARE HVMAMVM EST, but such is life.
Wherefore I allways remind people of the body temperature of the snowman.
After all I have mounted a tungsten filament incadescent lamp on variable power to have colour reference for glow temperatures. It can be turned to match quite well with a burning candle that shines at about the melting point of pure copper. But turned up at highest white 2800K it is obviously below daylight on the snow outdoor even in grey weather..
But trained, colour vision is a quite practical chemical thermometer given good standard references for it. .. Wherefore also thetraditional blacksmith workshop is dark inside, and with a small open window to the daylight.
We see and feel the tiny differences and the relative magnitudes frappingly well, , but not so well the absolute magnitudes.
on “body temperature of the snowman”
It’s only the maximum temperature of the snow surface which is pinned. The snowman Ts is free to fall well below that, and it normally is.
Trusting our magnificent ability to sense tiny differences in relative magnitudes, the ice surfaces outside do not feel relatively warm when the air is -25C.
Myth comes from digging out a tight emergency Quinzhee in deep winter from a snow drift that is said to be warm because the walls achieve a maximum temperature around 0C when sealed and occupied, also with a candle or oil + wick ideally. The air inside can be even waarmer than that. At about 1m snow thickness it is practically sealed to the outside air and unrelated snowpack Ts outside.
Also in melt season or when snowpack cold-content is low, the associated liquid-content of snowpack must be higher and infiltrating to the base and maintaining around 0C max at some depth accumulating there in thaw-freeze while the exposed snow surface above is free to be colder than that.
I have personal obsession on the snows and it is about survival too. On living soils which is practically a steamy compost heap when snowed upon maintains a snowpack Tbase at its max 0C and biological activity is prolonged below. This is measured and logged by temperature probe.
Snowpack development process is to be encouraged by leaving standing residues on the fields which act like snow fence and drop it out of the air. Then it is literally a communal blanket of snow where Ts is low and Tbase is warmer having wrapped snugly the living, breathing, and shitting organisms. Compost period can be extended one month and soil organic matter renewal increased 10% annually.
Bare shaven pasture and missing stems accumulate less snow and soils shut-down and hibernate earlier in the season, and even direct dynamic sediment transport by winter winds can be enhanced for the missing snow shield. Then SOM development looks the opposite.
Best to keep the soils snug and protected for many reasons, including snow water equivalent reservoirs. The SWE is measured and logged too by simple weighing scheme. Estimate also the evapo-sublimation which is not inconsequential for that.
Generally speaking, the Ts of the snow is the coldest, and warms with depth for the liquids accumulating and biota below and resulting soil-snow interface 0C.
Funny.
I learnt in publicschool that the celsius- thermometer is best calibrated to “kram snø” that is new fallen 2 phase for rolling snowballs to make a snowman.
But the experts know this better I see,
Anders Celsius Upstairs at the University of Uppsala did it that way along with old academic wisdom and tradition Upstairs at the University of Uppsala, . instead of setting on alternatives.
For 100 celsius reference use pure boiling water and check up barometric pressure also, that shall be 1 Bar exactly. .
And keep the thermometer to be checked in the vapours above the boiling water.
Try and explain why that has been recommended from Kungliga Akademin Upstairs at the University of Uppsala.
In fact, Celsius himself scaled wet snow to 100 and boiling water to 0 and gave it to Professor Linnaeus Upstairs at the University of Uppsala both in Kungliga Akademin,…. for use in his greenhouses. Where Linnaeus found it unpractical and simply turned the Celsius- scale around, So what is commonly in use is actually the Linnaeus- scale, not the Celsius- scale.
I have referred to the body temperature of the snowman because I know it bites and hurts deeply on all those who cannot believe in such simple and practical things.
PS
I have also described the fameous snow- lamp “Snøløkt” made as an igloo of snowballs with a lit candle in it at night,……………..to study and for the discussion of multiple diffuse reflection, called “gjenskinn”
And not not “back. radiation”, which is is a linguistically primitive and scietifically misconsceived . conscept of the same.
For proper and due “Snøløkt” you need 0 celsius “Kram snø”.
so why deny zero celsius?
The clearly scientific and alchimistic Snøløkt- EXPERIMENTA is Very fine for Lucia and for Christmas by the way, for the discussion of Gloria in exelsis and in dulci jubilo and all that. DS.
on the temperature of melty snow
o i c the packing snow used to create a snowman in the first place in the afternoon. yes that is melty and to dispute that it obviously nonsense! it’s a small pleasure to be greeted by a snowman arriving home each evening after dark. We light up his eyeballs!
Melty snow” that is a good word. We say Kram snø. Packing snow is also to the point.
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It’s always necessary to apply mathematical methods and reasoning on the raw data, so that systematical errors can be detected and as far as possible corrected.
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No it is not always necessary.
You can take raw data, display it, stand a few feet away and squint, this can give you a perfectly good feel for what the data is doing, without the need to tinker with the data at all.
Tinkering with the data can help, as long as it isn’t done in a way that introduces bias into the result.
This is why its critical that raw data is available, since it isn’t just easy to introduce a bias by accident, but so many people introduce a bias on purpose, so as to colour the data to say what they want it to say.
I have done a few experiments myself in that field, where I presented the exact same data in different ways, and people thought that two results meant the opposite, when in fact, they both said the exact same thing !
Since it can be super easy to fool people without even altering the data, imagine what fun you could have, if you really tinkered with the data.
Of course, you can go further and make sure you cherry pick the data you want in the first place, so you don’t have to tinker with it. :-)
Like randomly asking members of the public questions, making sure you ask them at the right time of the day in the right place, to get the answer you want, since you can’t just go around asking really random people, or who knows what answers they will give !
And yes, I have asked people in the street when doing my own surveys to get a better understanding of local statistics.
Did you know for example that there is an almost 50/50 balance of genders who visit sex shops !
Your understanding of data collection is either incredibly primitive or completely ridiculous. For God’s sake, simple typos and misreads abound in your supposedly “pristine”, supposedly pure and untouched, raw data let alone more subtle sources of bias*. I lean towards #2. For example, do you REALLY expect that your “sex shop gender counts” would agree with any other observer’s counts who was standing right next to you? I would bet a lot of money they would not as your gender ID counts would almost certainly be different from another observer’s regardless of the “true” ratio.
Even Mendel who was a reasonably honest observer by all accounts tended to classify his edge cases to make the counts come out right. Or he cheated and lied. I lean towards #1 in that case.
Your notion of some multigenerational, multinational conspiracy involving 100s of thousands of collaborators over hundreds of years using independent measurement methods doesn’t cut it except maybe with your peers (of which on this subject you have only a few here, vic being perhaps your closest one). As well, experts in each field really do know how to ID cheaters. Takes a while sometimes, especially in fields with relatively few workers. But even there they tend to get caught out when other experts start looking. Nature simply is to intricate. Contradictions will arise because there WAS cheating.
In fields like weather and climate research which have always been well staffed due to its central importance to so many economic activities, it really simply isn’t possible.
__________
*bias is the real problem, simple errors really are not in terms of expectations so long as they are truly errors which are random by definition.
@ jgnfld
You are allmost totally misconsceived on this.
Mr Smith standing ahead of things observinhg and judging and telling- teaching about it , especially of Sex shops, is a largest contamination and bias as such. of rawdata especially in the form of sexshops and lacks of traffics there..
I can largely agree with the criticism towards this norwegian paper. It reads like a standard summary of common positions of the critical side, and certainly not the most substantiated ones. The only “innovation” is that it comes from a government outlet. It is a typical phenomenon, the argumentation is scope-, not science driven.
What really shocked me however are a couple of lines in this article that weirdly seem to line up..
“We are receiving 342 Watts per square meter of Earth surface in back-radiation from the greenhouse effect..”
“The physics behind the greenhouse effect and the gases that cause it have been understood since the 1800s..”
“Is it sheer incompetence or is it politically motivated?”
Sorry, but “back radiation” and GHE are UNRELATED!!! You could just read the IPCCs definition of the GHE, which is perfectly fine since AR5. For good reasons they kicked out “back radiation”. It is one great and notable evolution for climate science to finally have gotten over the “back radiation” fallacy, something that certainly took way too long. Equally this means the greenhouse was not well understood since the 1800s, instead a proper consensus has only been reached recently. Accordingly painful it is to read how a leading climate scientist does not understand this evolution, nor the GHE itself. Really it makes me want to ask, how you can be a climate scientist, if you do not understand what the GHE is? And maybe this question is somehow the answer to the quoted question above.
ES: “back radiation” and GHE are UNRELATED!!!
BPL: Without back-radiation there would be no greenhouse effect. It’s not exaggerating to say the two are the same thing.
The energy balance for the surface is:
Frad = Fsolar + Fgreen – Fconv
where the terms are flux densities in watts per square meter. From left to right, radiation emitted by the surface, absorbed from sunlight, absorbed from atmospheric back-radiation, and lost from the surface by conduction/convection/evapotranspiration. For preindustrial Earth, I estimate 376 watts per square meter, 165, 323, 112. Thus, given a longwave emissivity of 0.98, the mean global annual temperature comes out as 286.8 K.
In the absence of greenhouse gases and clouds, solar input would be about 240 W/m^2, the convective term would go to zero, and the surface temperature would be 255 K.
Well, here is the definition by the IPCC:
Greenhouse effect: The infrared radiative effect of all infrared absorbing constituents in the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases (GHGs), clouds, and some aerosols absorb terrestrial radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface and elsewhere in the atmosphere. These substances emit infrared radiation in all directions, but, everything else being equal, the net amount emitted to space is normally less than would have been emitted in the absence of these absorbers because of the decline of temperature with altitude in the troposphere and the consequent weakening of emission. An increase in the concentration of GHGs increases the magnitude of this effect; the difference is sometimes called the enhanced greenhouse effect. The change in a GHG concentration because of anthropogenic emissions contributes to an instantaneous radiative forcing. Earth’s surface temperature and troposphere warm in response to this forcing, gradually restoring the radiative balance at the top of the atmosphere.
I do agree with it and so I feel confident of not having an outlying position here. “Back radiation” was part of the definition up to AR4, but has been dropped thereafter. And there are good reasons for that.
There is a myriad of perspectives pointing out how “back radiation” is unrelated to the GHE, but people love to hold on to the few erroneous ones. The surface energy balance is such an instance. The fact that the energy balance must be balanced (at least in the long run) is pure formalism. It will not tell us why there is a certain temperature prevailing. Equally “back radiation” is depending on prevailing temperatures. Just over the day/night cycle one can easily see how “back radiation” goes up and down.
Let us simply follow the thought and see where it leads us. Here is another quote from the article above..
“And yes, also the increase in back-radiation towards the Earth surface from the CO2 greenhouse effect is a measured fact”
The same reasoning is to be found in Plass 1956 (P56) for instance, which I happened to read recently. Yes, if you add CO2 you will get more “back radiation” at any given temperature. In P56 that would have been an erroneous 8.3W/m2 for 2xCO2. But we can also stick with the canonical 3.7W/m2, which of course are NOT derived from an increase in “back radiation”. Anyway. Increasing CO2 will enhance “back radiation”, and so will an increase in temperature, be it due to CO2 forcing or anything else. Now if “back radiation” was the forcing mechanism, you would get more of it because of CO2, but even more of it because of the increase in temperature. This would mean a feedback otherwise unaccounted for. In fact for a 1.1K increase in temperature you will get about 5W/m2 increase in “back radiation” (because ((289.1/288)^4 -1) *320 = ~5). It follows the feedback then is stronger than the forcing, meaning a perfectly unstable system.
You could try to safe this reasoning by saying enhanced “back radiation” from CO2 has another effect than from elevated temperature. But I see no merrit there.
The point is, “back radiation” is just a part of the radiative exchange between two objects of similar or identical temperatures. This happens everywhere around us (and even inside us) and does neither add nor remove energy. And that is where the term “radiative flux” is so misleading. Just because there is radiation will not mean there also is a flux of energy.
As I understand it, the issue is convection, which is what largely drive the lapse rate. It’s obviously rather complex, because humidity as well as temperature is involved, and both quantities are quite variable at particular places over time. But invoking a ‘spherical cow’ assumption that lapse rate tends to average out to a relatively fixed value, what happens if you see more back radiation due to more CO2?
Well, the surface warms. But because the lapse rate ‘wants’ to stabilize, that drives a further warming throughout the air column, theoretically all the way to [notional radiative] TOA. And if TOA warms, then it also radiates better, ideally equilibrating things, presumably including the lapse rate. I’ve read pieces describing this phenomenon as the lapse rate “clamping” surface to TOA. It’s usually been in the context of explanations that it’s really TOA effects that drive the GHE–as inferred by John Tyndall with his 1859 “dam” analogy, and yet more explicitly by Nils Eckholm in a 1901 paper:
(I write about that paper, “On the variations of the climate of the geological and historical past and their causes,” and about Eckholm’s life and times, here: https://discover.hubpages.com/education/Global-warming-science-press-and-storms.)
This is in contrast to the formulation by Guy Callendar, from his 1938 paper and on.
Where I’ve ended up on this is that while the TOA argument seems convincing, it’s rather artificial to try and separate the two effects. CO2 is, after all, “well mixed,” so the resultant changes in optical depth and temperature are going to be roughly the same at TOA and surface. So back radiation must be, at the least, a decent proxy the for GHE–at least insofar as the “spherical cow” can keep munching figurative grass.
I’ve seen other denialist quibbles about the term ‘back-radiation’ not being correctly applied to the greenhouse effect, e.g. one that Barton may recall: realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/08/how-to-spot-alternative-scientists/#comment-773122. A quick’n’dirty search reveals that ‘back-radiation’ is frequently used for IR energy radiating up from the earth’s surface that’s absorbed by greenhouse molecules in the atmosphere, and subsequently re-emitted back toward the ground; as Barton explains quite well, ‘back-radiation’ is a concise description of a key mechanism of the GHE. ScienceofDoom has written multiple posts about it: scienceofdoom.com/roadmap/back-radiation. Like so many denialist memes, “‘back radiation’ and ‘greenhouse effect’ are unrelated” is persistently rebunked, years after being decisively debunked by climate science.
I should add that E. Schaffer doesn’t seem to be here as a climate-science denialist, but does rebunk an undead denialist meme. That’s why it must be re-debunked whenever it appears, in hope of slowing its propogation among the merely misinformed.
E. Schaffer,
It is difficult not to see, even from the Abstract, the numerous reasons for concluding that Dagsvik & Moen (2023) is an eye-poppingly bad paper. I would suggest it is a waste of time pointing to the bad climatology and instead restrict criticism to the statistical nonsense.
I note one rather strange point – the test for stationarity they chose to use in their initial serving of nonsense was that of Cho (2016). Now, I am no expert on stationarity but it does appear odd that this first serving of nonsense from Dagvik & Moen, (Dagsvik
et al 2020) was first submitted for publication September 2016 (and 01 Sept according to comment upthread) and had previously been cited in Norwegian newspapers in August 2015, when Cho (2016) is shown accepted for ‘publication’ only 3 October 2016 (and that on the arXiv archive service). While using a hot-off-the-press statistical test shows a certain eagerness, using pre-publication methods does need explaining away (but probably not by Dagvik & Moen who acknowledge in this 2023 paper it was not they who did “the empirical analysis” but their co-author from 2020).
Thus given these Norwegian jokers Dagvik & Moen are so useless in the field of climatology, it perhaps does need checking that their statistical methods are not likewise useless. And that is before their explanation for their choice of data, of using HadCRUT3 (now a decade out-of-date) in a 2023 publication (a point made upthread) and why they ignore the post-1979 temperature record when considering Moberg et al (2005) whose Fig 2b plainly shows the post-1979 NH climate data is wildly different from their 2000-year reconstruction (and that as seen in in 2005).
Hr. E.Schaffer
This comment characterizes your mentality or lack of the same rather in a nutshell.
” “Back radiation ” and GHE are UNRELATED!!!”
Levenson has also commented on it.
“Backtradiation” is a linguistically poor anglicism. We say Gjenskinn commonly known as diffuse reflection. that goes not only “back” as from a plane mirror….. but in all directions.
Gjen is a- gain, and skinn is shine.
It shaines again and not just back. So we are linguistically logically scientificilly above you, you see.
The way we teach it is by the snowball lamp. For the children. An igloo of snowballs with a lit candle in it in the snow at nioght. Then the children see gjen- skinn all the way, quite impressive and educative.
White clouds high and low and dusty comet tails are also the same …… gjenskinn. The moon also shows obvious Gjenskinn. No back- radiation, being not a metallic mirror.
To see whether it is gjenskinn or fluorescence, you need a spectroscope.
You are probably lacking orderly highschool there due to the Party Quote privileges, and never learnt that of diffuse reflection.
Then the question of wether diffuse “gjenskinn” from above can further light up in IR, (IR being invisible light at longer wavelength) the IR emitting hot ground below.
That is denied and ridiculed by the surrealists., showing to “the 2nd law!”
But it works each time here at my writing desk where I can make Gjenskinn by a white paper onto the dark wall behind the halfway cowered lamp.
“But, it willl not heat further up the white hot metallic tungsten wires in that incadescent lamp bulb at 2800K to make the lamp shine out even brighter in watts That is Perpetuum Mobile, smile smile!. ”
Then you havent followed WUWT slaying the slayers 1 &2 probably adviced by Roy Spencer, in a traditional electrician workshop in the USA. They did find even exacty that, scientifically.
And I tried it in my own lab.
Itook a 10 w 12 volt halogen lamp mounted it on Stab.power with a precise digital amperemeter in series. Let it stabilize, it flickers in the 4th digit.
Then with a sublime little hat of aluminium foil over the lamp, let it stabilize again the current flickered down 2-3-4 digits repeatedly in the 4th digit.
Explain scientifically. That will show us who you are, and you are due to know that tungsten filament is a metallic conductor, that means a NTC Negative Temmperature Conducting resistor. Thus useful also as a scientific Thermometer, a resistance- termometer, and often used as such.
The lamp got a higher temperature thus shone out brighter in watts ….. at slighty lower current drain in amperes. At constant voltage. WUWT actually found that also explicitely.
So your situation is that you must invent show and proove “Free energy” in watts on r laboratory level and in show. Not even Nicola Tesla could do that, Einstein absolutely not. And to teach of what works in the lab and in nature that it is t against the 2.ndd law is to teach falseness. It is immoral.
The easier way out to save your furs and your reputation is to resign on contrarian arguments claiming that “Back radiation” not being responsible for the fameous “Greenhouse effect”
Hr. Levenson:
I have thought out but not yet tried 2-3 other and more dramatic desktop experiments also rather by heat conduction in metal rods and plates that show clearly that heat in watts travels also upwards against positive temperature gradient, and that only the conductivity of the field decides. This being the very nature of heat.
Bolzmann must be corrected there. . It sits by the definition of heat. Heat rather being something that we measure in watts. and not what warms up the colder place from the warmer place as Bolzmann defined it..
It is essencial for understood administration of heat and temperature everywhere in life and in technology.
A consequense of this is what we allways believed, that it actually warms us (as we say), to take on a good pullover and anurak in the winter, We can then relax and eat less bread and lard- fat in the winter and still keep warm.
and save coal and electricity also the same way.
This has been known since stoneage that was especially long, humanity would not have survived stoneage without knowing such elementary things of heat and fuel and how to dress.
Surrealism and denialism , flat earthers and blind believers in the scriptures, are fighting our very identity as a species by such alternative political propaganda..
Paragraph
Is back radiation (downward LW flux (at surface or in general?)) *the* greenhouse effect? No. Is it part of the GHE? Yes. GHE is a multifaceted/multidimensional thing.
climatologically equilibrium Surface and tropospheric temperatures generally warmer than without atmospheric LW opaqueness: tends to depend on forcing at tropopause level after stratospheric adjustment. This can involve both reduced upward LW flux and increased downward LW flux.
Locally/temporally surface temperature is more dependent on radiation because of stable air.
Smaller diurnal temperature range at/near surface, esp. at lower elevations, with clear dry air – that is more directly related to backradiation at the surface.
Also it’s interesting to consider GHE’s role in mean temperature’s elevation dependence.
Please have a look at the following additional paper. Il looks going in the same direction and I believe the paper could face the same critics, for instance it do not consider (nor it has any intention to consider) any physics at all.
If you could look and analyse it would be very helpful.
https://www.mdpi.com/2413-4155/5/3/35
Hr S.Fabi
Here we have it again, the hen and the eg, now even in greek, as a cetrtain Plutarch seems to have invented the problem.
The worst error of the problem, to my opinion, is that it forgets or even hides His Highness the Rooster!
Thus is really less greek. It is discriminatory against men.
As a matter of ClimateBall 101, carbon exporting nations tend to contain fossil fuel lobbyists, economists and resource statisticians. that are as reliably mission oriented as professional and amateur climate activists
In the beginning there was McIntyre, and he’s still around as a role model for those who want to obfuscate statistics unhelpful to the cause of maximizing exports.
Given how little analytical clout API has at its disposal, and it is a flagship lobbying outfit, it is not surprising that fuel exporters in smaller nations have even less— in this case, Scandinavia seems to be Cam]nanda writ small.
Stefan:
With the conclusion of COP-28, I suppose someone there at Real Climate will be posting a piece soon on the takeaways.
While the COP-28 host and delegates from many leading petrochemical-producing countries succeeded in averting language promoting a complete “phase-out” of production, their engagement with the process (and the relevant sciences of climatology) begins to suggest that outright “climate denialism”–while not dealt a death blow–took a considerable hit, to the extent that parties conceded that a “phase-down” in oil production over the next twenty-five years is all but inevitable. This said: there is little doubt that echoes of climate science denialism will persist over the short term.
How long “the short term” lasts remains to be seen. COP-29 is tentatively scheduled for November 2024. Whatever momentum in public discourse builds (from whichever quarter, from all combined) between now and the convening of COP-29, and whatever climatological data and their analyses begin to show over this interim, I cannot see how “climate science denialism” has quite so much room for growth (becoming a more popular position, that is), even though I have no doubt denialism will persist and will still be fed by existing sources.
Nevertheless, I think that the concession of “phase-out” is or may be significant, especially by the time COP-29 arrives. Now that some of the planet’s most invested oil producers are conceding that climatological sciences ARE revealing that Technogenic Climate Change (as I prefer to call it) is not a matter of poor analysis or incomplete data, et cetera, some kind of “climate realism” may have a chance–finally–to emerge, if not by the time of COP-29, then surely in its aftermath, since climate scientists will be sure to gather and analyze as much relevant data prior to COP-29 as possible and assuming present trends continue (if they are not in fact aggravated or worsen).
I remain concerned with the discourse coming from “climate catastrophists” and “climate eschatologists”, though, for this reason: such misreading of the available data can breed fatalistic acceptance of “climate degradation facts” which in turn can yield such attention to overarching political and economic responses that comparative neglect ensues when the matter is no less a matter of individual response–what can each of us do, on our own, regardless of government or industry response, to minimize climate degradation. Climate catastrophism and eschatology, while they may provide emotional relief in assigning blame where no doubt much of it goes, perhaps do not focus altogether clearly on what steps individuals can take even when politicians and industrialists at high levels are not as nimble in their responses.
Just as the period 2025 to 2030 now is being set up to look like a critical five years of transition to whatever may lurk on the other end, so 2024 (the next eleven months, at least) will be a critical period in getting as many uncommitted publics of citizens and voters and residents worldwide to take available climate sciences seriously and to begin to consider for themselves how both individual and collective (political) actions will need to be undertaken if we tell ourselves that we plan to take the threats posed by the advent of Technogenic Climate Change seriously.
Keep up all good work.
Sincerely,
Edward Burke
Reasons to adjust temperature readings from meteorological stations:
1. Readings are taken at different times of day at different stations. Insolation varies with time of day, so to compare you need to correct to standard illumination.
2. Readings are taken at different latitudes. Again, insolation differs, this time all through the day (Lambert’s cosine law).
3. Readings are taken at different altitudes. They have to be corrected to a standard elevation, such as sea level (local lapse rates and their daily variation are important here, so a lot of weather information is needed for this correction).
4. Readings are taken in both urban and rural environments. They have to be corrected for the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. (AGW deniers think this is never done, or that if it is done, it’s a new change due directly to their nagging about it. In reality, it’s an old, old technique).
5. There are probably other reasons I haven’t listed because it’s not my area of specialization. More complete explanations are listed on sites which give temperature data. Some good sources are:
Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, M. Sato, and K. Lo, 2010: Global surface temperature change. Rev. Geophys., 48, RG4004, doi:10.1029/2010RG000345.
Lenssen, N., G. Schmidt, J. Hansen, M. Menne, A. Persin, R. Ruedy, and D. Zyss, 2019: Improvements in the GISTEMP uncertainty model. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 124, no. 12, 6307-6326, doi:10.1029/2018JD029522.
P.S. Using the raw, unadjusted data to find temperature trends results in a faster warming trend than using the adjusted data. AGW deniers think it’s the reverse. They don’t like actually doing the math.
The global temperature record from 1880 – 2020 (approx) using combined land and ocean index had adjustments made to the raw data that actually REDUCED global warming. Most of the big adjustments was early to mid last century. Adjustments since the 1980s seem almost insignificant. Detailed account below:
https://variable-variability.blogspot.com/2015/02/homogenization-adjustments-reduce-global-warming.html
Perhaps there is an evil plot to understate global warming! Or more likely its just scientists doing the best they can to be accurate. The reasons for the adjustments seem very convincing.
I write to raise a couple of omissions in your graph, which I’m sure are just an oversight. Your temprature Hockey Stick graph does not clearly define the difference between proxy data (mostly from tree rings) and instrumental data, at the end. Those in the know will know, but others will not, I’m sure you can correct this omission,
You also omit to mention the Divergence Problem whereby the proxy data divert downwards post around 1980 and fail to correlate with the spliced on instrumental data. I know you have a full scientific explanation to this, but failing to mention it willl damage your credibility.
Peter: – “I write to raise a couple of omissions in your graph, which I’m sure are just an oversight. Your temprature Hockey Stick graph does not clearly define the difference between proxy data (mostly from tree rings) and instrumental data, at the end. Those in the know will know, but others will not, I’m sure you can correct this omission,”
NOAA’s Carbon Tracker periodically updates its animation of the history of atmospheric CO₂. The most recent animation available is for the period from about 800,000 years ago until January 2022, in the YouTube video titled Carbon dioxide pumphandle – 2022, duration 0:02:46, published 31 Jan 2023.
Time intervals:
0:00:00 to 0:01:26: Instrumental atmospheric CO₂ data from multiple locations from Jan 1979 to Jan 2022;
0:01:26 to 0:01:37: Keeling instrumental atmospheric CO₂ data working back from Jan 1979 to Mar 1958
0:01:37 to 0:02:15: Ice core proxy atmospheric CO₂ data working back to 800,000 years ago.
0:02:24 onwards: credits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7jKxO4nKZc
I’d suggest there’s a clear data attribution for the respective time periods in the YouTube animation.
In the PNAS paper titled Pliocene and Eocene provide best analogs for near-future climates, published 10 Dec 2018, includes Fig. 1 showing a multi-timescale time series of global mean annual temperatures for the last 65 million years, and recent and projected warming trends out to 2200.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1809600115
In the Oxford Open Climate Change paper titled Global warming in the pipeline by James Hansen et al., published 2 Nov 2023, includes:
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfclm/kgad008
Peter: – “You also omit to mention the Divergence Problem whereby the proxy data divert downwards post around 1980 and fail to correlate with the spliced on instrumental data.”
Evidence/data?