This month’s open thread on climate topics. Many eyes will be focused on whether April temperatures will be the 11th month in row of records…
Note that we have updated the data and figures from the Nenana Ice Classic and Dawson City river ice break up pools (the nominal 13th and 5th earliest break-ups (or 15th and 4th, w.r.t. to the vernal equinox) in their respective records)).
And a quick note about moderation: If your comment is a personal attack on another commenter instead of a substantive argument, it will just be deleted. As will your subsequent complaints. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
CO2 goes Gobsmackingly Bananas in 2023 and remains so!
NOAA have published their MLO CO2 average for 2023, a new record high of 421.08 ppm.
The annual mean growth rate was 3.37 ppm — shattering the record of 3.03 ppm set in 2016.
MLO Yearly CO2 Growth Rates 1959-2023 GRAPH
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=4150.0;attach=407678;image
The first four months of 2024 were 3.85 ppm above the corresponding 2023 levels.
So much for the calls to rapidly reduce man-made and fossil fuels GHG emissions.
Not happening.
Following on EVs and looming tariffs, it’s important to be careful what you wish for. It;s also important now that there are so many lies and mixed in with that is all these others lies as well. And to be mindful what all those subsidies and tax creditis were all about within that massive IRA laws supposeldy to build out RE plant and infrastricture for the future asap.
For instance:
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
Let’s see… US car companies sold millions of cars in China in 2023 2.1mn cars for GM, over 600k cars for Tesla, over 400k cars for Ford , etc.) but there “are currently no Chinese-branded passenger vehicles for sale in the US”.
Is that what you call “China having free access to the American market with America having almost no access”?
Americans are the world’s most propagandized population…
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1789506074456084865
Then there is this one – even better:
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
Fantastically revealing exchange with Janet Yellen.
The interviewer asks her: “[Regarding China’s] overcapacity in advanced products, electric vehicles, batteries, all of those things. Is it possible we’re just being outcompeted by the Chinese in those fields?” [….]
You literally couldn’t make it up
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1789488343513969066
Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts. :-)
Generally speaking, eventually, every time, the appeals to authority fallacy will always falter and fail. imho the details matter. The facts matter more than who says something is right or wrong.
Appeal to authority fallacy occurs when we accept a claim merely because someone tells us that an authority figure supports that claim.
https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/appeal-to-authority-fallacy/
The converse is also true of course. Authority figures can also be right. But that is because of the facts and the quality of their analysis and not upon their status as an authority.
Kind regards ….
It is a bit more subtle than that. The appeal to authority fallacy occurs when we accept a claim merely because an IRRELEVANT authority supports that claim. If I make a claim relating to climate change and reference a publication by an expert in that field, that is not a fallacy but instead gives weight to my claim.
It is very generous of the world’s top climate scientists to provide this website for Ned Kelly.
Agreed. And distracting and unpleasant for the rest of us who have to put up with the SVR SOB (or is it GRU?)
Secular Animist: “ “It is very generous of the world’s top climate scientists to provide this website for Ned Kelly
;-) Good one. I hope Gavin sees it – as the ratio of obnoxious drivel to interesting content
has declined dramatically.
Particularly, that the guy inadvertently described both his method – rendering the forum useless by saturating it with polarizing drivel, i.e. an equivalent of “a denial-of-service attack targeted at human beings” – which he, ironically, have seen in ….others, not in himself,
and his likely motivation:
– either a paid Russian troll – see his Moscow line of equivalency of a brutal invader (Russia) and its victim (Ukraine): “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, yes?;
– or an attention whore:
“I am exhausted from answering all the questions being put to me today. What I say and think has never been so important to other people before in my life” (c) Ned Kelly
Jochen 2 MAY 2024 AT 6:16 AM “Sabine’s great video”. It’s OK. If one isn’t an old fossil Troll it’s good enough for learning. If one’s an old fossil Troll then Sabine’s brain farts (irrelevant to learning the topic) mixed in with her famous humour about shenanigans at night in the greenhouse are very good fodder for endless Trolling about irrelevant things (to push science into the distant comments) as is Sabine stating that a physicist (albeit non pracitising with research) took 3 attempts to understand the simple, obvious effect. What is good in Sabine’s is that she states clearly that the GHGs manufacture the radiation and not this “absorbed from surface, re-emitted random directions, 50% gets back to surface” drivel that’s in most explanations and cartoons I’ve seen. An “enderwiggen” (mostly) and I (spasmodically) have been responding to the random Trolls since that video posted but, as you know, there’s no actual point responding, it simply passes the time without needing to exercise.
BEF: What is good in Sabine’s is that she states clearly that the GHGs manufacture the radiation and not this “absorbed from surface, re-emitted random directions, 50% gets back to surface” drivel that’s in most explanations and cartoons I’ve seen.
BPL: There’s nothing “drivel” about it. If you think back-radiation doesn’t exist, get yourself an infrared thermometer and point it at the sky, especially at night. If it registers 2.7 K, you and Sabine are right and the rest of us are wrong.
In Re to Barton Paul Levenson, 14 MAY 2024 AT 7:51 AM.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/unforced-variations-may-2024/comment-page-2/#comment-822121,
and Barry E. Finch, 13 MAY 2024 AT 3:31 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/unforced-variations-may-2024/comment-page-2/#comment-822108
Dear Sirs,
It appears that you do not completely agree to each other in your evaluation of the explanation of the greenhouse effect of molecules absorbing and emitting infrared radiation in Earth atmosphere, as it was provided by Ms. Hosenfelder.
Could you please specify in more detail in which aspects you see her explanation correct / appropriate, and in which aspects you see it inaccurate or, perhaps, false / confusing?
Many thanks in advance and greetings
Tomáš
This video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqu5DjzOBF8
Re BPL I think you misunderstood what Barry E Finch meant. I haven’t watched the whole thing recently; from what I remember, some parts could be better, and there may be errors, but it was largely correct; she’s not saying there is no backradiation from the atmosphere.
what Barry E Finch may have meant:
1
The atmosphere doesn’t emit equally upward and downward – for globally representative conditions, the atmosphere’s emitted flux to the surface is larger than the atmosphere’s emitted flux to Space. The emitted fluxes up and down will shift to become equal if the atmosphere goes toward being transparent or isothermal, and that is the case for emissions from any layer. You can of course divide the atmosphere up into many such layers which do emit approx. equally upward and downward, but generally they can’t emit or absorb much individually because they are nearly transparent.
2
Any such layer doesn’t necessarily emit the same flux as it absorbs, especially at any one part of the spectrum (in pure radiative equilibrium (stratosphere and above for global average approx. (ignoring Brewer-Dobson stuff etc.) there is equality when integrated over the whole spectrum including solar, of course). The emission depends on temperature (as opposed to scattering, or fluorescence for that matter).
Sabine Hossenfelder uses the concept of effective emitting level (EEL) a lot. As the atmosphere becomes more opaque by adding well-mixed GHGs, the EEL for upward flux to Space moves upward while the EEL for downward flux seen from the surface moves downward; they eventually go past each other and the 2nd eventually approaches the surface.
—
I like EELs but I prefer visualizing an incandescently glowing fog made of many tiny blackbody particles (mathematically equivalent to the average effect per molecule (for any one type), cloud droplet, etc.) (which vary in size over the spectrum) because it captures the sense that what you’re seeing is coming from a range of distances and simultaneously provides an intuitive sense of the proportionality between absorption and emission.
… “The emitted fluxes up and down will shift to become equal if the atmosphere goes toward being transparent or isothermal, and that is the case for emissions from any layer” going toward being transparent or isothermal (which can be achieved by using thinner and thinner layers).
clarification/correction:
“The emitted fluxes up and down will shift [ toward being ] equal if the atmosphere goes toward being transparent or isothermal, and that is the case for emissions from any layer” going toward being transparent or isothermal (which can be achieved by using thinner and thinner layers).
…(thin layers) “generally they can’t emit or absorb much individually because they are nearly transparent.” – until GHG (and/or cloud particle, etc.) concentration (and/or absorption cross section ( σ_a ) size) gets large enough that layers sufficiently thin as to be approx. isothermal become significantly opaque.
Sabine being a PhD physicist ought to look at the recent articles analogizing the complex fluid dynamics in the atmosphere & ocean to topological solid-state behaviors. Besides using social media to try to simplify the understanding of climate to laymen, popular physicists should also should be providing interpretations of potentially breakthrough ideas. Take a look at someone like Terry Tao and his blog for example. He will tackle just about any challenging math problem (most of it way above my abilities,)
That’s a bit overkill for most readers though, don’t you think? Even for PhD level physicists. By the way, what do you think of Tao’s work on Navier-Stokes? I’ve always been interested in possible breakdowns of the continuum hypothesis at singular points such as shock waves. So I would somewhat hesitate to attach too much physical significance to general singular solutions of NS.
JD says:
I don’t think it’s overkill when one considers that most newsworthy advanced physics concerns intensely argued topics such as fundamental particles and string theory, etc. By comparison, condensed matter physics is rather tame, notwithstanding the difficulties with fluid dynamics. Hence, Terry Tao’s interest in trying to solve Navier-Stokes, which I give him props for. Sabine and other popular physics commentators such as John Carlos Baez have stated that condensed matter physics is a great example of unqualified success in matching theory to experimental verification, so it’s often a safer bet to explore.
I started getting interested in climate topics like ENSO, when now over 10 years ago I wrote a blog post comparing the general shape of a SOI time-series with a Bloch wave from solid state physics. A Bloch wave is essentially a wave that interacts with the periodic potential of a crystal lattice, as you would find in a semiconductor. The waveforms are often complex , which is appropriate for the erratic nature of ENSO. From there, I’ve tried to drum up interest in pursuing this association, noting that a few other physics groups, such as Marston at Brown U are also working this angle. I think the most interesting connection is to that of a Brillouin zone in solid state lattice theory. That model is of a spatial nature, and leads to standing waves that have wave numbers that fit into modes of a bounding volume. That’s well understood and not exactly applicable, but there is also the concept of a temporal Brillouin zone whereby a time modulation of the matter can induce a temporal periodicity that other forces can interact with. A stimulated wave in such a state will fold over with the modulated periodicity so as to appear as a reduced frequency using what’s called modulo arithmetic. When I was originally looking at this, I also applied it to the atmospheric QBO, which has a more distinct periodicity of about 2.3 to 2.4 years. The only tidal cycle that matches the wavenumber=0 mode of QBO is the 27.2122 day lunar nodal cycle interacting with the modulating annual solar periodicity on the ecliptic plane. Using the modulo arithmetic of the Brillouin zone, this comes out to a reduced frequency of (365.242/27.2122) mod 1 = 0.422, which taking the reciprocal is a 2.37 year period, matching that of QBO.
This also works for the oceanic indices such as ENSO but with a different tidal forcing.
Again, I started on this topic over 10 years ago and have presented and published on it, yet have seen it get little traction or acceptance. That’s essentially why I want to see physicists such as Sabine, Terry Tao, and Brad Marston do more. They know more physics than others practicing climate science, based on their education, experiences, and mathematical insight, and so are not afraid to apply foreign concepts to a related field. Who knows, they may also say that my analysis is misguided. The point is that you can’t make progress in a scientific discipline unless you explore the boundaries.
Well put. Unfortunately, too many think we’re busy being righteous when “there’s no actual point responding, it simply passes the time without needing to exercise.”
It’s not enough to be right if all one does is try to divide and conquer.
Short article published May 13th that includes comments from Dr. Simon Evans, Dr. Gavin Schmidt, Dr. Michael E. Mann, Dr. Peter Kalmus, and Dr. James Hansen:
https://www.salon.com/2024/05/13/is-most-to-for-climate-change-regardless-of-the-answer-global-cooperation-is-critical/
“Salon spoke to several climatologists about America’s role in both causing and solving climate change, and all of them agreed on two things: First, America is the world’s largest legacy climate polluter — that is, they have put more total carbon pollution into the atmosphere than any other nation; and second, a heavy burden therefore falls on America to take responsibility.”
This by Mann : “That’s what we saw during the Trump presidency, when the U.S. signaled to the rest of the world it was no longer serious about climate action.”
– needs correcting back to objective reality and away from sophistry:
“That’s what we saw during every presidency from Reagan in the 1980s onward, where the U.S. repeatedly signaled to the rest of the world it was NEVER serious about climate action.”
That’s the Reality people insist on denying right up to today.
This is Dr. Mann’s statement in its entirety:
“This means that it is absolutely essential that the U.S. take a leadership role in global climate action,” said Dr. Michael E. Mann, a climatologist at the University of Pennsylvania. He said this should include “reducing carbon emissions by 60% over the next decade. Without American leadership, it’s easy for other countries to come up with excuses and do less, and even back-pedal.”
Mann added, “That’s what we saw during the Trump presidency, when the U.S. signaled to the rest of the world it was no longer serious about climate action.”
.
.
Ned, I suggest you contact Dr. Mann and advise him that his future comments should first be cleared by you, such that he may speak the way you desire.
Sheesh…
Even tiny Vanuatu has shown more positive sane leadership to world on climate than the USA has!
Denial is not a river in Egypt.
Here’s a palate cleanser, a call to work together to help each other.
When The Levee Breaks feat. John Paul Jones | Playing For Change | Song Around The World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH0-WXUFY2k
zebra says
15 May 2024 at 7:36 AM
In replying to Jonathan David. SAID:
We see this all the time in the USA; banking is one area but utilities, insurance, fossil fuel subsidies, agriculture subsidies, health care, and so on, all exhibit such issues.
So, I’m not sure the problem has to do with the abstract nature of “financialization”.
It amazes me (although I understand the power of manipulation going on that this possible) that people separate out the massive Renewable energy EVs subsidies and tax breaks and regulatory exceptions allowed and the incoherent planning thereof … etc etc from the rest of the items listed above by Zebra.
Because these things the very same thing – the same degree of being Captured by the totally corrupted Fascist ‘lite’ Corporatism / Financialization system – it is the same thing being perpetrated by the same Elites who control the USA and Globalization
And where was mention of the Digital AI social media fascist monopolies who control the Laws passed by Governments everywhere for their benefit and not for the People or the Nations they are sucking dry and damaging?
Zebra is extremely myopic not including these two major aspects to the modern mafia operation of Concentrated Wealth via Financialization practices that control all Governments today.
It’s as naive as thinking there is any real difference between the Democrats running the US Govt and the Republican doing it…. or their approach to climate change beyond duplicitous narratives intended to manipulate the voter and the media.
Nothing short of revolution or a global war is going to fix these matters properly. And that is way off in the distance. It will get far worse in the meantime. And no one will be stopping increasing GHG emissions driving more warming and all that comes with it.
Because Concentrated Wealth Rules the World just like it did in the Dark Ages.
It’s amazing that people no longer understand what the terms fascism, capitalism, socialism and communism mean. it’s all a jumbled up mess. let’s make no mistake that when billionaires and corporations are setting the agenda that’s called fascism.
If your existence and lifestyle is determined by a personality, state or corporate, and not your wider community best interests you have a serious problem.
There are some stunningly ignorant people here advocating fascism on a daily basis while pretending to be progressive liberals and or leftists. You’re not a progressive on the left nor socially aware if you’re supporting billionaires and corporations and the US War Machine – let’s be perfectly clear about this. You’re a fascist, and many here have reactionary imperialistic tendencies as well. If that is you, then that is what makes you a fascist. No matter who you vote for at election time.
I hope that clarifies a few things. Best I can do. I understand this too will be not understood by the posters, bit hopefully the many more numbers of readers will recognise the truth of what is being said – and why no genuine or effective progress is being made or will ever made in addressing climate change and global warming while the status quo remains in power.
Warm Regards ….
in Re to Ned Kelly, 15 May 2024 at 9:51 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/unforced-variations-may-2024/comment-page-2/#comment-822169
and 15 May 2024 at 9:12 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/unforced-variations-may-2024/comment-page-2/#comment-822166
Dear Ned,
Some time ago, I tried to explain the sense of the Czech idiom “tlačit na pilu” (“push on the saw”), a metaphor for an intensive effort that becomes totally counter-productive. I think you are pushing on the saw very hard now.
Personally, I quite doubt that wars and revolutions have ever resolved any problem. Perhaps yes, very scarcely. I am afraid that the more any science turns into an ideology, the less is the potential that it brings any good, and the more is the potential that it brings a big harm. I think that marxism is a crystalline example therefor, but my personal opinion in not important.
More important is that, quite likely, almost everybody on Real Climate discussion fora already knows your views.
My friendly proposal to you is taking a month off. If you could, meanwhile, read some Timothy Snyder in addition to Marx, Lenin and their followers, you will do me a big favour.
Best regards
Tomáš
It’s increasingly getting worse, whatever topic I and others cover. The ideologues, the extremes on the bell curve will show up and criticize. It’s not everyone. There’s more positive comments than negative if you know how to gauge them. In this polarized social media, ideological, tribal, identity-laden world, how do we have a conversation and integrate the broader societal narratives, and suppress our identities, at least temporarily, in order to have a constructive discourse on the things that matter?
As I was saying about the Financialization of Nature………………
Debt From Above: The Carbon Credit Coup
Latin America is quietly being forced into a carbon market scheme through regional contractual obligations – enforced by the satellites of a US intelligence-linked firm – which seeks to create an inter-continental “smart grid,” erode national and local sovereignty, and link carbon-based life to the debt-based monetary system via a Bitcoin sidechain.
by Mark Goodwin and by Whitney Webb April 4, 2024
Unsurprisingly, most of Cities4Forests’ projects, such as those that would be built with GREEN+ funds, are similar to NACs in that they focus on using natural assets and “natural capital” to produce new financial and insurance products. Examples of Cities4Forests “conservation” projects include the development of a Forest Resilience Bond and the India Forum for Nature-based Solutions. One of the India-based forum’s “core partners” is the Nature Conservancy, which has been run by Wall Street bankers for years and has pioneered the modern iteration of the controversial “debt for conservation” swap among other “nature-based solutions.” The funders of Cities4Forest and its creator the WRI are also deeply affiliated with groups like the Glasgow Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) and UN-backed climate finance initiatives that openly seek to use debt imperialism to herd the global economy, with a focus on emerging markets, into a new system of global financial governance.
Thus, the “conservation” and “decarbonization” efforts that subnational governments must enact as part of their contractual agreements with GREEN+ will go towards projects tied to either the smart grid/smart city developer Community Electricity or a “conservation” organization backed by Western oligarchs, multi-national corporations and banks that seeks to financialize and monetize nature under the guise of conserving it.
in depth article
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2024/04/investigative-reports/debt-from-above-the-carbon-credit-coup/
30 mins interview whitney webb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_f96wbOcOM
2 hr interview Debt Slavery and the Carbon Credit Coup | Whitney Webb and Mark Goodwin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_trBBunj2WI
———————
A related bonus if curious … about recent chatter on ‘capitalism’ here
The Rich Have You BRAINWASHED: Capitalism is a Zero-sum Game, They WIN, YOU LOSE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSh6oVycuUs
Like Communism, Fascism, or Socialism, Capitalism is a method to allocate resources, means of production, and surplus. Capitalism uses the price signal in a free market (as opposed to central planning).
Proof that is zero sum: taking from the rich to give to the poor (taxation as progressive distributive justice) and taking from the poor to give back to the rich (regressive inflation, taxation, and asset bubbles).
But why, in an environment of growth is the game zero sum? Because of scarcity. The rich cannot reinvest all their income and so it is taken out of circulation to the poor (though it is still available to the businesses of the rich via the banking system). Another reason: depletion of natural resources.
These shortages are camouflaged by fiat money, debt, and the symbolic economy. But these are Ponzi schemes and they crumble periodically in cycles of boom and bust.
Tough night unfolding in Houston Texas and surrounding parts of Harris county with one million in the dark in Texas with 850,000 in Harris county alone along with extensive damage in neighborhoods and business districts (lots of blown out windows in Houston’s skyscrapers).
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/houston-texas-storms-damage-
US Leadership? Or 55th behind a long line of others?
Look for yourself, but here are some examples to Fact Check:
USA Overall rating Insufficient
https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/usa/policies-action/
Presenting the worst of the worst: USA goes home as Colossal Fossil
Let’s not forget that during the first week the US Envoy for Climate Change, John Kerry, announced the “Energy Transition Accelerator”, their inadequate plan to streamline carbon offsets in partnership with corporate philanthropic groups such as Bezos’ Earth Fund and the Rockefeller Fund. The expansion of carbon markets and the marriage of corporations and government is the epitome of a neoliberal agenda that does absolutely zero to reduce actual emissions globally.
https://climatenetwork.org/resource/the-colossal-fossil/
A Democratic president was in the White House. The Democratic Party held a majority of seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. But a single senator — a moderate Democrat from West Virginia — blocked the White House’s preferred climate plan.
Indeed, the last three decades of U.S. climate policy look like a graveyard of failed bills — According to the Climate Change Performance Index, the U.S. is 55th in the world when it comes to climate policy; another analysis by Yale University and Columbia University ranked the country 24th for environmental performance.
https://grist.org/politics/is-american-democracy-uniquely-bad-at-tackling-climate-change/
But when we consider how much people in power have known, for as long as they have known it, it is hard not to see how there are fundamental failures of leaders and leadership that have gotten us into this mess and also made it so very hard to get out.
https://climatechampions.unfccc.int/dr-katharine-wilkinson-the-climate-crisis-is-a-leadership-crisis/
The G7 leaders’ communiqué shows a serious disconnect with science. The G7 owes the Global South $8.7 trillion for the devastating losses and damages their excessive carbon emissions have caused. The G7, among the richest nations in the world, have once again proved to be poor leaders on tackling climate change.
https://climatenetwork.org/2023/05/20/civil-society-groups-slam-g7-on-lack-of-climate-leadership-and-backsliding-on-promises/
Remember Manchin? He replaced Byrd in the Senate displaying more Democrat leadership failures putting him there in the first place.
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2022/07/18/dealing-with-the-u-s-federal-governments-failure-of-climate-leadership/
How the United States can return to credible climate leadership
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/us-action-is-the-lynchpin-for-successful-international-climate-policy-in-2021/
U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement: Reasons, impacts, and China’s response
The withdrawal undermines the universality of the Paris Agreement and impairs states’ confidence in climate cooperation; it aggravates the leadership deficit in addressing global climate issues and sets a bad precedent for international climate cooperation.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674927817301028
Fact check: China pledged bigger climate action than the Obama’s USA; Republican leaders wrong
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/nov/14/fact-check-china-pledged-bigger-climate-action-republican-leaders-wrong
GW Bush kills global warming treaty 2001
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2001/mar/29/globalwarming.usnews
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/time-us-president-dumped-global-climate-deal/story?id=47771005
The U.S. and Climate Change: Washington’s See-Saw on Global Leadership
The new documentation presented here provides a nuanced picture of some of the continuities that characterized U.S. environmental policy from Reagan to Obama, but there is clear evidence that Reagan and both Bush presidents believed that greenhouse emissions and other problems were real and that even senior aides to George W. Bush sought actions “grounded in science” and designed to encourage renewed cooperation with other countries on restricting emissions.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/environmental-diplomacy/2018-09-24/us-climate-change-washingtons-see-saw-global-leadership
Ocean warming triggers Indo-Pacific heat waves: Study
An intense heat wave gripping South and South-East Asia since late March comes as no surprise to leading meteorologists who have been warning of steadily rising temperatures in the Indian Ocean.
Temperatures in the Philippines and Thailand have topped 50°C this month, while Bangladesh has recorded almost 30 days of heat waves, leading to deaths from heatstroke and school closures.
Scientists say the heat waves are directly linked to climate change and ocean warming, which are likely to bring even more intense weather events such as cyclones.
While the Indian Ocean has undergone basin-wide surface warming at a rate of 0.12°C per decade between1950 and 2020, models now show that greenhouse gas emissions will likely accelerate surface warming at a rate of 0.17°C–0.38°C per decade between 2020 and 2100, says Roxy Mathew Koll, top scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.
Temperatures top 50°C
So far this year, the highest recorded heat index in the Philippines reached 53°C on 28 April, still far off the record of 60°C on 14 August 2023.
In Thailand, temperatures have also topped 50°C, causing at least 40 deaths from heat stroke and playing havoc with orchards and poultry farms.
On 28 April, Bangladesh recorded 29 days of heat waves, surpassing the previous high of 23 heat wave days in 2019. Temperatures have since dropped sufficiently for authorities to reopen schools.
Jayanarayanan Kuttipurath, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology—Kharagpur, attributes the warming to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide as well as an increase of water vapor in the atmosphere.
“Our studies show that atmospheric water vapor has been increasing in India and across the world, amplifying the global temperature rise,” he says.
“There has been a continuous rise in atmospheric moisture, which amplifies warming and thus, heat waves,” says Kuttipurath. This is evident in coastal states like Kerala, Odisha, West Bengal, and also neighboring Bangladesh and Myanmar where temperatures touched 48.2°C.
https://phys.org/news/2024-05-ocean-triggers-indo-pacific.html
M.K. Roxy et al, Future projections for the tropical Indian Ocean, The Indian Ocean and its Role in the Global Climate System (2024).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780128226988000044?via%3Dihub
Does NL understand the distinction between surface air temperature and the heat index? The author of the summary that he partially quotes doesn’t bother to make it until over halfway through the article. NL doesn’t bother to correct it or point it out, even though he posts it. Instead, he highlights a misleading paragraph about temperatures in the Phillippines and Thailand.
More of that global US Climate Action Leadership in Action
Governor Ron DeSantis signs bill scrubbing ‘climate change’ from Florida state laws
(Florida) which just had its hottest year since 1895, will ban offshore wind power, boost natural gas and reduce gas pipeline rules
Climate change will be a lesser priority in Florida and largely disappear from state statutes under legislation signed on Wednesday by the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, in a move which experts say ignores the reality of Florida’s climate threats.
The legislation, which comes after Florida had its hottest year on record since 1895, also bans power-generating wind turbines offshore or near the state’s lengthy coastline.
Florida is facing rising seas, extreme heat, flooding and increasingly severe storms.
The legislation takes effect on 1 July and also boosts expansion of natural gas, reduces regulations on gas pipelines in the state, and increases protections against bans on gas appliances such as stoves, according to a news release from the governor’s office.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/16/desantis-climate-change-energy-bill
You can’t just wash your hands of Trump and Florida and deny they’re American and do not represent it.
More American Leadership? Trump went 25% Biden goes 100% – Biden is four times better President than Trump?
Biden announces 100% tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/14/joe-biden-tariff-chinese-made-electric-vehicles
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/15/china-biden-ev-tariffs-may-not-be-enough-to-stave-off-growing-threat.html
SKY UK — excellent summary graphs of key issues exports/imports
Why is US imposing 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PEcRiZPdvY
PBS segment
Treasury Secretary Yellen on why Biden is targeting Chinese manufacturing with new tariffs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtAGDcfCOpk
White House announces new anti-China tariffs:
Electric vehicles: from 25% to 100%
EVs batteries: from 7.5% to 25%
Solar cells: from 25% to 50%
Steel and aluminum: from 0%-7.5% to 25%
ICE Cars imported from China to the USA already have a 27.5% import tariff in place. With negligible numbers of imports.
Can Elon’s X and Tesla save the USA’s RE/EV industry?
IN Australia China cars and light trucks, ice and evs, are going gangbusters after a slow start. The quality is off the scale as good as Japanese and Korean marques, but cheaper. Zero Tariffs applied.
NK. Good links on EVs and tariffs.
“More American Leadership? Trump went 25% Biden goes 100% – Biden is four times better President than Trump?”
IMO Biden is not better than Trump as far as tariffs go.. Tariffs do not seem like a great idea, and free trade has been good overall despite its downsides (backed up by numerous studies). The public will end up paying for the tariffs in the end. But China subsidising its EVs isn’t ideal policy either, and doesn’t give America any good options.
However I would definitely prefer Biden over Trump as president. When it comes to political and economic systems and ideologies, and presidents and parties maybe its about the lesser of the evils. Winston Churchill famously said “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms …” :) Refer:
https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/
Thanks Nigelj. The problem is it’s hardly a real choice. The US is no longer a real democracy.
No choice is not a choice.
It is a much different world than when Churchill was alive. And he was a far from perfect, he was a politician who used such sayings for effect and advantage. A typically biased self-serving landed gentry elitist was he. Not a saint. He was no Nelson Mandela or MLK, or Robert F Kennedy or Franklin Roosevelt or Gough Whitlam or Jill Stein.
“The problem is it’s hardly a real choice.”
Oh, it’s a very real choice. One of the proofs of that is the sheer number of folks insisting it’s not–if it really didn’t matter, there’d be much less reason to insist so vehemently.
Vote for Biden, you get more constructive climate action. Vote for Trump, you get “drill, baby, drill.” It really is that simple, from a climate perspective.
“One of the proofs of that is the sheer number of folks insisting it’s not” …. entire nations can be stupid all at once Kevin. America is one of them.
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
— Marcus Aurelius
A side-bar for the record folks, from the writer of Don’t Look Up …. on Twitter
Adam McKay @ZombiePanther2 5h
I’m also offended by calling the movie “liberal.”
Ha.
DiCaprio’s character was supposed to be a take down of liberal half measures!
————————————————————————————-
https://nitter.poast.org/ZombiePanther2/with_replies
Let that one sink in for a while. (smile)
Planet Earth was totally destroyed, remember?
DR. Schmidt responds: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/much-ado-about-acceleration/comment-page-2/#comment-821961
What is required, like the above by Gavin here, is to take a much more nuanced truthful approach to the climate debate. Some of us aren’t swayed by the profiteering NGO/think tank/corporate green-washing arguments. Many are not swayed by the IPCC CDR assumptions put into those SSR fantasy story line-based scenarios, and the fantasy Net Zero by 2050 or that the warming instantly stops even if that was achieved and it certainly will not be.
So, why even present such fantasies as legitimate science based future projections or goals when they are clearly unachievable. While misinforming about our grand Agency we do not posses, while you’re at it? The IPCC authors and many climate scientists no matter what they say publicly know this for a fact, and that plus 3C is their majority view. The outliers are outliers, and some might even be lust plain liars.
But there is a growing silent majority of the public who are also not willing to get sucked into the black/white – up/down – my way or the highway – you’re with us or against us – you’re 100% on the Hopium side or you’re an evil fossil fuel shill a denier or a doomer so you can go to hell you’re evil – this is the trend or no that is definitely the trend – this is the science and not that – false binary demonizing way of discussing these matters.
Previous longtime posters here and everywhere who are otherwise seemingly quite intelligent people on balance were perfect examples of this patently wrong kind of discussion. Could not separate the partisan politics and economic social ideologies from the objective and clearly often uncertain output of the science and the haughty academic fantasy scenarios masquerading as scientific when they are not.
Myself, I’m interested in reducing carbon pollution sure, and finding genuine practical workable solutions sure as well as trying to suss out fact from fiction. And there sure is a mother load of fantasy fictions to sort through.
For more insights and thoughts from Gavin see
“More about “Much Ado About Accelerating Warming interview with Climate Scientist Gavin Schmidt”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhvNVihv5Ww
or https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/much-ado-about-acceleration/comment-page-2/#comment-821952 and scroll down for misc quotes.
NK: But there is a growing silent majority of the public who are also not willing to get sucked into the black/white – up/down – my way or the highway – you’re with us or against us – you’re 100% on the Hopium side or you’re an evil fossil fuel shill a denier or a doomer so you can go to hell you’re evil – this is the trend or no that is definitely the trend – this is the science and not that – false binary demonizing way of discussing these matters.
BPL: Sentence breaks are your friend.
In two and half years Nate Hagen’s – the Great simplification network has accumulated over 100,000 followers.
Non-Political content focused upon the foundational aspects of our present situation which is Energy, Ecology and Human Behaviour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u0B709Ayw8
Here Ken Wu explains the difference between primary forest and plantation from a naturist POV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp3iL72wy4A
The contrasts are striking: primary forests are rich in ecosystem dynamics, with active rapid nutrient and moisture cycling, whereas plantations lack these vital processes and biodiversity, leading to an ecologically stagnant (slow) and dysfunctional environment.
Generally speaking, a primary forest is an ecosystem where natural processes remain largely undisturbed. In contrast, managed plantations lack effective nutrient and moisture cycling, resulting in low biodiversity and a dry impaired system.
Currently, estimates suggest that only 10-20% of forest cover remains as primary forest, while 80-90% of current forest stands are ecologically impaired globally. In British Columbia, although it appears “green” from space, 80% of natural forest is missing, leaving behind stands of what are essentially ecologically dormant carbon stocks. https://thenarwhal.ca/b-c-old-growth-data-misleading-public-ancient-forest-independent-report/
On a school field trip to the local nature park, for a deficit of residual natural forest available, it is almost certain the children are taught to perceive the plantation as an example of the nature. That is quite alarming considering even extremist NGO organizations are now confusing a plantation as “nature” in their public comms. https://twitter.com/EcocideLaw/status/1774833331500208551/photo/1
Under the framework of the so-called Climate Action, forested lands are now counted in terms of carbon sticks in ecological accounting and valuation. This approach promotes the maximization of “tree cover” without regard for the essential natural processes of nutrient and moisture cycling. Natural Asset Corporations operate globally where the business uniformly aims maximize the production of ecosystem services evaluated in terms of carbon sticks.
Under this half-baked scheme, the essential natural processes have been displaced with teaching a linear concept of growth and waste, where it is supposed that “utilization of waste biomass is generally preferable to letting it decompose”. Such “wastes” are to be harvested from the landscape and subsequently injected, contained, boreholed, and removed from the ecology. Then we are left only with dormant and ecologically dysfunctional stands of carbon sticks to bolster commodity markets. https://frontierclimate.com/assets/biomass-sourcing-principles.pdf
Similar perspectives are dominant in the agricultural landscape, where crop residues are often deemed as waste. Is this what is to be interpreted as the logical outcome from the earth system process climate models?
A faith or reliance on carbon emission framework becomes a convenient substitute for remedying the large-scale disappearance of soil genesis, fungi, animals and for many kinds of subsidies for vast acreages of dysfunctional water and nutrient cycling process.
I question where one might find “waste” in a natural system; does nature produce a waste? It is perhaps a philosophical question, but personally I would lean towards no. If one seeks to document the eons of natural “waste” accumulation, where might it be found? The concept of the natural waste today, I think, must be a consequence of bad teaching. Therefore, in considering the recent profound ecological disturbance of the 20th and 21st centuries, it goes unnoticed on nature walks (or even from space) that vast swathes of Earth systems are profoundly impaired, with the associated climate forcing not limited to foodcrop lands, but across vast swathes of the the planet.
An UNQUESTIONING faith or reliance on carbon emission framework becomes a convenient substitute for remedying the large-scale disappearance of soil genesis, fungi, animals and for many kinds of subsidies for vast acreages of dysfunctional water and nutrient cycling process.
When all you have is a Theoretical Hammer, then everything becomes an Imaginary Nail.
Of course it is Myopic. What is being promoted and done is also anti-Scientific and Irrational. The course is set, the destination unavoidable.
They cannot help themselves think straight, and they certainly are not helping Humanity.
Out come the Hammers! Again!
https://www.sustainableviews.com/the-antidote-to-doom-is-doing-ac97ab67/
No, it doesn’t. We don’t only face one ecological problem. Nobody is claiming that redressing GHG pollution will solve all the other harms that we’re inflicting on the environment. It’s “necessary, but not sufficient.”
Fascinating new working paper, not yet peer-reviewed, that arrives at a MUCH steeper economic cost arising from each 1°C rise in global temperatures. Links to the work & the Guardian story that alerted me to this paper:
.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w32450?utm_campaign=ntwh&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ntwg1
.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/17/economic-damage-climate-change-report
Yes, thanks! I saw that story too, and intuitively–not that my intuition is necessarily anything to brag about–it seems a lot more credible, given the fundamental yet difficult to quantify, importance of the ‘ecological services’ we take so much for granted, and also the multiple, intertwining and often (I expect) mutually reinforcing threats climate change and the other anthropogenic environmental stressors pose to both human and natural systems.
More on the Renewable energy products debacle over Chinese exports to the US. A deep dive into the tariffs and US political framing by a professional economics and political expert on the issues
THE ESSENCE OF CHINESE ‘OVERCAPACITY’
Zheng Yongnian (郑永年) – April 2024
Position: Founding director of the Institute for International Affairs and X.Q. Deng Presidential Chair Professor, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
Formerly: Director of the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore (2008-2019); Research director of the China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham (2005-2008); Researcher at Singapore’s East Asian Institute (1996-2005)
Research focus: International relations; Chinese politics and society; Nationalism
Education: BA-MA Beijing University (1981-1988); MA-PhD Princeton University (1990-1995)
https://www.sinification.com/p/prof-zheng-yongnian-on-chinese-overcapacity
Enjoy becoming enlightened and educated (if you dare.)
There are other verified evidence based ways of viewing the world of geopolitics. One can take the RAND and Dick Cheney view or … they can go looking for actual facts of history.
Neoliberal Russophobes like Timothy Snyder have nothing but historical revisionist propaganda to offer, and everyone knows that Wikipedia is untrustworthy when it comes to controversial subjects that have explanations that differ from establishment narratives.
1997 “Russian commentators welcomed this development, viewing it as a positive shift in the global correlation of power and as an appropriate response to America’s sponsorship of NATO’s expansion. Some even sounded gleeful that the Sino-Russian alliance would give America its deserved comeuppance. However, a coalition allying Russia with both China and Iran can develop only if the United States is shortsighted enough to antagonize China and Iran simultaneously.”
― Zbigniew Brzeziński, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives
aka the Outlaw US Empire of Lies and Despotic Totalitarian Autocracy
2014 Quote
Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University.
he documented it all until his death September 18, 2020 as he was trying to prevent this war. you can read it all here: https://www.thenation.com/authors/stephen-f-cohen/
FEBRUARY 12, 2014
Distorting Russia
How the American media misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/distorting-russia/
In class lecturing – Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine. Class 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8&t=982s
NATO-Russia John Mearsheimer & Timothy Snyder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyT-krDx9Q0
Steven Cohen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-B1vWFdPXo
https://youtu.be/r0rtr-I0Zjc?si=S9_NVrBd4A-I40Dz&t=482
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6xIYhSd2gg
debate between Stephen F. Cohen and Michael McFaul (ex-Russia ambassador and professor)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUWAsTij9yg&t=6199s
In Re to Ned Kelly, 20 May 2024 at 10:32 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/unforced-variations-may-2024/comment-page-2/#comment-822267
Dear Mr. Kelly,
Saying that Ukraine is “in the heart of Russia’s historical civilization” is similarly stupid as saying that Muscovy is “in the heart of Polish historical civilization” or “in the heart of Mongolian historical civilization”, and no chair at any university can return the person reproducing this core part of Russian imperial propaganda back among ordinary decent people.
Please be so kind and STOP.
Best regards
Tomáš Kalisz
In desperation some are still fighting to keep their version of Hopium and ‘power to the people’ Agency alive.
Short version reality: everyone is failing. But why? People don´t set the important policies. We get to vote on some parties policies they won’t stick to, but that is different. That’s not action, that’s not agency. It’s nothing but more of the same.
We all get the same news and messaging about climate – pro or con. They tell us that changing things to fight AGW would cost so much money. It would lose all kinds of big interests money. Big oil and gas (including some state companies) but many others too. In fact it should lead to a more egalitarian world with a lot less pollution. Some claim. People vote on the electoral cycle if they have elections, but the elites, the mega wealthy, the political lobbyists and grifters have access all the time 24/7. We do not. That´s why banks hedge funds, big tech and oil and big chem and big ag, big food and big med, big weapons, big trucks big retailers big importers big Unis and big RE plant and big property developers and big wars all get their special treatments.
People want things to not get worse so they vote for some person they think they can trust after being entrained with narratives and spin and outright lies, but no one ever addresses the lack of ecological or energy sustainability.
It´s not just AGW that is badly managed. Everything is. Plastic and chemical pollution and aquifers being drained. Same goes for population decline and aging and immigration. Did mention health care and basic housing needs?
I think the under 20 year olds will be the ones who might bear the brunt of this combined lunacy, to be forced to step up to the plate and deliver the actions we today refuse to take….. it will be 30-40-50 years far too late but they are likely to be the next great generation. We all surely are not. They will have to work hard at it… I wonder what they will think of us? Probably something along the line of how could they be so stupid. In fact, a vast majority of people in this and everywhere are saying such things out loud now.
Personally, I have resigned to the fact that we are losing this global ‘economic consuming civilization’ at the very least within 20 years (which places us at 2040 the Limits to Growth timing for serious dysfunctions) and this collapse will continue until this type of living we have is but a distance memory in the history books (assuming the unborn manage to keep enough things going to have history books then. ) They could not do any worse surely.
It’s very possible that the younger folks will indeed be the “next great generation.”
But I hope you’re not suggesting that we leave it all to them–as we leave the GHG, ‘forever plastic’, and other burdens to them. We older folks still have work to do–alongside under 30s.
Energy & Water – South Africa’s Transition to Democracy Left Neoliberalism in Place
The water shortages and blackouts sweeping the country today are a direct result of that failure.
This year, 2023 South Africa has seen its worst period of planned blackouts, which the country’s government has taken to euphemistically refer to as “load shedding,” since the advent of multi-racial democracy. According to some studies, the average citizen spends 27 percent of the year without power. Meanwhile, some 15 percent of South Africa’s water supply systems are in poor condition and seventy million liters of drinkable water are lost daily as a result of poor-quality infrastructure.
https://jacobin.com/2023/11/south-africa-apartheid-water-energy-crisis-neoliberalism-privatization
-But why daddy?
-It’s because Colonialism never ended Wendy. It was simply replaced with Neo-Colonialism instead. Here, let me show you how it works: It’s also why nothing concrete can be done to stop global warning or ecosystem destruction either.
Who Rules America > Neoliberalism as a New Form of Corporatism & Fascist Totalitarianism
Neocolonialism is Financial Imperialism and an Alliance of Transnational Elites
Neoliberalism is inseparable from Imperialism and Globalization
https://softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Neocolonialism/index.shtml
Rich countries drained $152tn from the global South since 1960
Imperialism never ended, it just changed form.
By Jason Hickel, Dylan Sullivan and Huzaifa Zoomkawala
Published On 6 May 2021
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/5/6/rich-countries-drained-152tn-from-the-global-south-since-1960
Imperialist appropriation in the world economy:
Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X
No one in power in the global north is being serious about solving the energy or the climate crises … especially in the global south.
NK: It’s because Colonialism never ended Wendy. It was simply replaced with Neo-Colonialism instead.
BPL: Right. We have to stop Chinese and Russian exploitation of Africa.
Big implanted beliefs run silent and run deep. Winston Churchill
This week on The Big Picture, we sit down with British-Pakistani writer, political activist and public intellectual Tariq Ali. Ali published his own biography, titled ‘Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes’. In it, he paints a different portrait – one of a self-obsessed, ruthless and deeply racist colonial leader, who lost little sleep over his crushing attempts to maintain Britain’s rule. In particular, his actions in Ireland, Kenya and Bangladesh led to some of the most horrific atrocities of the 20th Century.
skimming the propaganda narratives looking for a little truth in under an hour
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbsfynApnVg
Collectively we know so little – most of what we do know was little more than fantasy fictions planted in our collective minds …. much like today.
Not that disimmilar to all the promises made in Glasgow COP by the British Government which soon one by one have been walked back.
If they lied to us yesterday why do we keep believing what they tell us today ….. Net Zero by 2050? Ya reckon!
It does not matter how you frame, how you slice it …….. the answer is the same.
We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
Albert Einstein
Here’s a great example of the evidence plain as day:
Read the rest here — browse the website
https://crashoil-blogspot-com.translate.goog/2024/04/el-marco-mental-del-enemigo.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
The cost of denying degrowth
Ugo Bardi sums up things nicely here back in 2011 …. thinking of a world ahead to circa 2040 and beyond.
Entropy, Peak Oil, and Stoic Philosophy
And Thermodynamics, Systems Dynamics, the Limits to Growth 1972, Newton’s apple, Simple physics and complex systems, modelling the economy, Hubbert’s curve / peak, and the inescapable Hubbert Law, the Economic system, and Facing collapse.
https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2011/05/peak-oil-thermodynamics-and-stoic.html
Realism, it’s not unfounded Hopium nor Sophistry – what it looks like – Bardi moved to Substack this year.
The Philosophy of Collapse: the Seneca Effect
Ugo Bardi
“It would be some consolation for the feebleness of our selves and our works, if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.”
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
https://senecaeffect.substack.com/p/the-seneca-effect-a-philosophical
A Concise History of the Global Empire
Ugo Bardi
Like all past empires, the Global Empire has gone through its parable of growth and glory and is now starting to decline. There is not much we can do about it; we must accept that this is how the universe works.
https://senecaeffect.substack.com/p/a-concise-history-of-the-global-empire
“Massive amounts of wastes are generated by wind power plants:
“1.35 Million Tonnes of “Hazardous Material”, Germany Admits No Plan To Recycle Used Wind Turbine Blades
…, there’s also the problem of the massive steel reinforced turbine foundations, which are simply being swept under a layer of dirt as well. These too will forever have an impact on ground and ground water.”
A recent report on ZDF German public television explains that currently there’s no plan in place on what to do with the turbine blades, which weigh up to 15 tonnes each. There’s no way to recycle them to use as raw material for new blades.
Currently the old blades are being shredded and the chips mixed in with concrete. “You need too much energy and power to shred them,” says Hans-Dieter Wilcken, the operator of a German recycling company. Burning them is also not an option.”?
https://energyeducation.se/massive-toxic-wastes-from-wind-power-plants/
Actually, there is now a way to recycle wind turbine blades for raw material. It’s still apparently in the lab demonstration phase, so it may be a while to get into the field, and a while longer to scale up. But it does work, apparently:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-36183-4
In Re to James Charles, 22 MAY 2024 AT 3:29 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/unforced-variations-may-2024/comment-page-2/#comment-822291
Dear James,
It appears that you take the assertion about “toxic waste” as a matter of fact.
As a chemist, I have, however, some doubts about the alleged toxicity of insolluble polymer composite materials used for the rotor blades.
It appears that neither ZDF nor “Energy Education” cited any observation supporting the assertion about negative environmental effects (such as an “impact on ground water”) / or even about toxicity of such materials.
I am not sure that “Energy Education” is a source of useful information / an example of good journalism.
Greetings
Tomáš
With the end of the merry month of May approaching fast, the daily Copernicus ERA5 re-analysis data at Climate Pulse allow a confident announcement that May 2024 will be yet another ‘scorchyisimo!!!’ month, the twelfth in a row.
The previous record May anomaly was +0.49°C set in May 2020.
The May 2024 anomaly to the 20th averages +0.63°C, and the wobbles suggest a full-month-average of perhaps +0.60°C.
To prevent a ‘scorchyisimo!!!’ May 2024, it would require an average for 21st-31st May below +0.17°C. An 11-day average below +0.17°C was last seen as recently as January 2023 but with the latest reported anomaly presently +0.55°C, such a sudden drop in daily anomalies is ridiculously unlikely, seen occurring only three times within the whole 83-year of ERA5 re-analysis data.
The ERA5 global anomalies have been dropping since the 2023 ‘bananas’ at a rate of roughly +0.043°C/month. This is 85% due to falling Northern Hemisphere anomalies (a split calculated on the shorter anomaly base used by the Uni of Maine Climate Re-analyser).
Given this rate of decline in the ERA5 global anomalies**, the anomaly for June 2024 could more-likely-than-not also manage ‘scorchyisimo!!!’-status, the present June record global ERA5 anomaly being the +0.53°C set last year. (**See graphic of rolling averages of ERA5 daily anomalies here – graph first posted 15/12/23)
As pointed out by the Copernicus monthly update for April, this ERA5 twelth-in-a-row is not a record run as back in 2015-16 there were 15 ‘scorchyisimo!!!’ months in a row.
And by such a reckoning, the 15-month 2015-16 run will likely remain the record as the ‘bananas’ anomaly of July 2023 (+0.72°C) will probably bring the present run of ‘scorchyisimo!!!’ months to an end.
(Perhaps an alternative reckoning would be more appropriate although requiring a bit of a wait for a comparison. That would be using the length-of-run of the months that exceed anomalies set pre-El Niño. Back in the 2015-16 El Niño, the first anomaly to drop below its pre-2015 record was Jan 2018, so by this reckoning a run of 31 months.)
MA Rodger: – “And by such a reckoning, the 15-month 2015-16 run will likely remain the record as the ‘bananas’ anomaly of July 2023 (+0.72°C) will probably bring the present run of ‘scorchyisimo!!!’ months to an end.”
And how many months in that “15-month 2015-16 run” were at or above the +1.5 °C GMST anomaly threshold (relative to the 1850-1900 baseline)? Were there more than 10 months? Were they consecutive?
Meanwhile. Prof Eliot Jacobson tweeted on May 29:
https://x.com/EliotJacobson/status/1795455386088083912
The Earth System is remaining longer above the +1.5 °C GMST anomaly threshold. I’d suggest that’s far more important in the scheme of things than the “15-month 2015-16 run” record.
Tropical Atlantic heat buildup before Katrina in 2005 vs now 2024 an all time new record.
https://i0.wp.com/yaleclimateconnections.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/SST-comparison.png?resize=1024%2C485&ssl=1
More info
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2024/05/what-you-need-to-know-about-record-breaking-heat-in-the-atlantic/
In response to the interesting discussion of hydrological monitoring by Tomas, BPL, David and Kevin:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/unforced-variations-may-2024/#comment-822255
Part 1:
In my view the Copernicus program offers the state of the art web-tools
https://climate.copernicus.eu/precipitation-relative-humidity-and-soil-moisture-april-2024
Similar to USA, EU is all-in on remote sensing in Earth System Science with its strengths and weaknesses. Copernicus’ tag line is “Europe’s Eyes on the Earth”.
Two thirds down the page plots of Monthly global land surface air relative humidity is found.
Some useful interpretive text is provided, including:
“””Global land-averaged relative humidity has decreased over the last 40 years and has remained low since the early 2000s. In April 2024, global relative humidity was below the corresponding 1991-2020 average.”””
“””The relationship between precipitation, relative humidity, and soil moisture, evident in the maps of anomalies, can be seen to hold for the area averages on time scales up to a year or more. However, average precipitation does not show the marked longer-term decrease seen for relative humidity and soil moisture.”””
“””Surface hydrological variables are more difficult to observe and analyze than surface air temperature, with for example, soil moisture data currently being of qualitative rather than quantitative value.”””
“””Relative humidity averaged over Europe shows a higher degree of variability, but in general a net decline over time is seen. The drying detected is not associated with a substantial reduction in precipitation, as shown below for four European regions. It is understood to be related to a larger rise in surface air temperature over land than over sea.”””
Remarking on the final sentence: “It is understood to be related to a larger rise in surface air temperature over land than over sea.” – in my view this is an out-dated hypothesis.
in case this did not post:
Part 2 a:
Z&L 2023 in “The Role of Interactive Soil Moisture in Land Drying Under Anthropogenic Warming” offers a good discussion, while limited to the idea of atmosphere-first for unknown reason.
https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL105308
“””The land RH decrease was previously attributed to influences from ocean, but here we propose an alternative explanation. We first show that the land RH decrease is coupled with the soil moisture (SM) decline. Then, by excluding interactive SM and ocean influences respectively in warming simulations, we illustrate that interactive soil moisture (i.e., soil moisture is fed by precipitation minus evaporation and can in turn affect evaporation through moisture availability) is necessary and may be sufficient to produce a drier land under anthropogenic warming.”””
“””We propose a new explanation for the projected decrease in land relative humidity…”””
“””The RH decrease over land was once explained as a result of the amplified land warming compared to ocean (O’Gorman & Muller, 2010; Simmons et al., 2010). This however appears to be a circular explanation as the amplified warming itself arises from the drying land (Byrne & O’Gorman, 2013a, 2013b). “””
“””Here, we present modeling evidence to show that interactive SM is necessary and may be sufficient for the land to become drier under anthropogenic warming.”””
Under the AGW it becomes a half-baked hypothesis limited by the pre-determined problem definitions, not one of nature.
Part 2b:
In the summary press-release:
https://eos.org/editor-highlights/warming-reduces-relative-humidity-through-soil-moisture
“””This study identifies the important role of land surface processes in controlling the RH response to warming and underscores the need for further research to understand the mechanistic pathways for how soil moisture adjusts to changes in surface fluxes to reach a drier equilibrium state.”””
Personally I would consider, rather than ongoing ad hoc rationalizations through the exclusive frame of trace gas forcing, to recognize the nature of soil moisture, global change, and the associated partitioning of surface fluxes, rather than limiting investigations to the perspective of the Anthropogenic Warming. The AGW tag-line has become a hand waving reductionism of the system by artificially imposed problem definitions, which is obviously leading to blind-spots, biased interpretations, and reduced scientific rigor.
It’s unfortunate the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program was shut-down in 2015, as this framework had the potential to provide extensive ground-based monitoring of reality and the factors influencing global change.
Part 3:
Recently, Rob Lewis has distilled some of the history of the subject from the perspective of “Mystery of the Missing Mediterranean Storms” and his interactions with Spanish meteorologist Millan Millan.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2024-05-21/the-climate-beneath-our-feet/
Millan was Director of the Mediterranean Center for Environment Studies, overseeing meteorological monitoring throughout the Mediterranean. In 1973, he was asked by the European Commission Community to be the main adviser in environment and climate.
“”””“The idea was that both greenhouse gases and land use contribute to climate change,” Millan wrote me, speaking of “two rates of climate interaction and two basic mechanisms. For land change, the mechanism is both biological and hydrological, resulting from damage to the water cycles because of land disturbance…. For greenhouse gases, the mechanism is physical, the absorption by greenhouse gases of outgoing long wave radiation, now streaming upward from the sunbaked soil…. a “two-legged climate:” one leg for CO2 and the greenhouse effect, another leg for water cycles and the effects of land damage. ”””””
QUOTE
“”””While Millan had taken the two-legged climate to heart, using it to solve the mystery of the missing Mediterranean storms, the scientific bureaucracy took a different path, adopting an essentially one-legged understanding of climate. It’s not hard to trace the pathway, which began in 1979, when two very different climate reports came out.
The first was produced by the World Meteorological Organization in conjunction with its first World Climate Congress: A Conference of Experts on Climate and Mankind. As in the MIT report, the two legs are seen side by side, with the conference’s keynote address neatly summing them up: “We now change the radiative processes of the atmosphere and perhaps its circulation by emission of the products of our industrial and agricultural society. We now change the boundary processes between earth and atmosphere by our use of the land.”
From there we encounter repeated references to land change as a human cause of climate change. The first paper, for instance, under a discussion of “the impacts that are of the most relevance to the subject of climate,” places “the transformation of the land surface of the planet by forest clearance, the ploughing up of the steppes and great plains, land reclamation, etc.” at the top of the list.
The report’s next section, Influences of Mankind on the Climate System, includes a paper coauthored by none other than Ted Munn. Munn’s paper, Human Activities that Affect Climate, lays out, as in the MIT book eight years earlier, the two-legged approach. “The subject of this paper is clearly of very wide scope and accordingly presented in two main parts as follows: Part I, By Munn, covers the main human impacts on climate, excluding mankind’s interference in the atmospheric carbon dioxide (C02) balance; and Part II by Machta (his coauthor,) deals comprehensively with those aspects of climatic change which are related to the carbon dioxide balance.”
There you have it; the two legs of climate. But another report soon followed which proved far more influential, effectively christening CO2 as the sole matter of climate. Called Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment, it’s otherwise known as the “Charney Report,” named after its lead author, the mathematician Jules Charny.
Charney led an ad hoc group of scientists in reviewing all the modelling on CO2 to date, essentially averaging the results, producing a slim, 22-page report. Unlike the WMO report, which though comprehensive, offered no clear prediction regarding CO2, this report provided the closest thing yet to a firm prediction. If CO2 concentrations double, it said, global temperatures will increase 3 degrees centigrade.
It was a bombshell. Media had an attention-grabbing headline and grabbed it, with petroleum interests and environmentalists lining up on either side of its conclusion, one attacking, the other defending. Suddenly the CO2 leg stood in the spotlight, with the land-change leg hidden in shadow, lost in the uproar.
You can imagine where this left the WMO and the other international organizations. The Americans had come out with a strong statement on CO2, while they were far from such scientific consensus. The CO2 train had pulled out of the station and there they were still sorting through the luggage of various uncertainties, often related to land change. What to do?
In a series of workshops and conferences held between 1980 and 1988, leading international climate organizations, such as the WMO (World Meteorological Associate) UNEP (United Nations Environmental Program) and ICSU (International Society of Scientific Unions) attempted to resolve their uncertainties around the CO2 leg and articulate their own consensus. Meanwhile, an organizational structure for international climate cooperation was needed, out of which two organizations were created.
One we’re all familiar with: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. The other, the International Geosphere Biosphere Program, or IGBP, hardly anyone’s heard of. The pesky land leg, with all its complex, difficult-to-model processes, was filed there, but in the context of different language. Rather than dealing with “climate change,” this group’s work was placed under the much vaguer term: “global change.”
What happened to the two-legged approach to climate? The land leg proved “incommodious,” as Millan puts, so the two were split. The CO2 leg, championed by the IPCC, strode into the climate spotlight to save humanity, while the land-change leg, housed under the IGBP, remained behind for further research. There it was funded at 10% of the IPCC, ignored by the climate press and in 2015 shuttered.
The conventional climate community has yet to take up Millan’s insights, and the models barely see them. But the relationships he saw between land and atmosphere play out everywhere. Land is either contributing vapor and cloud nuclei to the atmosphere or it’s not.””””
END QUOTE
Much ado about the silence on aerosols that we set out here has become self-fulfilling. Because the current toolkit is largely blind to this climate risk, much of the community has come to view aerosols as largely unimportant.
Earth Energy Imbalance rapid increase the last 3 years – video with graphs at World Water Forum 2024
https://nitter.poast.org/JuanBordera/status/1792897024083530186#m
21 November 2022
Aerosols must be included in climate risk assessments
Estimates of impending risk ignore a big player in regional change and climate extremes.
By Geeta G. Persad et al
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03763-9
6 June 2023
Rapidly evolving aerosol emissions are a dangerous omission from near-term climate risk assessments
G Persad et al
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2752-5295/acd6af/meta
February 2, 2024 Lecture Video
Speaker: Geeta Persad, Assistant Professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences,
The University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences
Title: Anthropogenic Aerosol as a Driver of Climate Risk
Abstract: Anthropogenic aerosol emissions are expected to change rapidly over the coming decades, driving strong, spatially complex trends in temperature, hydroclimate, and extreme events both near and far from emission sources. Under-resourced, highly populated regions often bear the brunt of aerosols’ climate and air quality effects, amplifying risk through heightened exposure and vulnerability.
However, many policy-facing evaluations of near-term climate risk, including those in the latest IPCC assessment report, underrepresent aerosols’ complex and regionally diverse climate effects, reducing them to a globally averaged offset to greenhouse gas (GHG) driven warming. In this talk, I and my collaborators argue that this constitutes a major missing element in society’s ability to prepare for future climate change.
https://ig.utexas.edu/utig-seminar-series/2024/utig-seminar-series-geeta-persad-ut-austin/
NK: much of the community has come to view aerosols as largely unimportant.
BPL: Which is hard to reconcile with the thousands of hits you get on Google Scholar about “aerosols.”
Yep, and secondarily, extensive discussions here as well.
To NK and BPL,
I’ve noticed that climate model hindcasts often predict larger temperature swings following major volcanic eruptions than what is observed in reality, such as after the Pinatubo and Chichon eruptions. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
It has been shown that fitting temperature response to volcanic aerosol forcing yields an inferred climate sensitivity far too low to be realistic. It seems that the temperature effect of external aerosol injection is significantly overestimated, potentially by more than double. https://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/documents/STM/2007-11/ce0711151415Boer.pdf
Previously Tomas mentioned Kleidon’s comments on how increased aerosol forcing might limit the energy available for moisture cycling. Impeding solar radiation reduces the surface energy available for moisture-related dynamic stabilizing feedbacks. This means less energy coming in with increased aerosol but also less going out, resulting in a dampened temperature response compared to what one might expect. If this energy limitation for moisture cycling isn’t considered, it could lead to an overestimation of temperature changes following alterations to aerosol forcing.
In an unusual scenario like the Tonga-Hunga eruption, assuming similar magnitudes of water vapor forcing (+) and aerosol forcing (-), the inferred feedback characteristics suggest amplification of the water vapor injection and dampening of the aerosol effect. This results in a net positive temperature change due to the different feedback mechanisms, even though the forcings seem to offset each other. Back-of-the-envelope calculations that sum a greenhouse forcing and aerosol forcing and then apply a sensitivity parameter could be misleading.
Following on from that conjecture, assuming that aerosol forcing is indeed associated with a dampened temperature response, the prevailing ideas obsessively parroted by people like Leon Simons could be totally wrong. Additionally, it requires filling a void of missing longer-term trends in the factors of temperature change, and careful consideration of the roles of energy limitation and moisture limitation in radiative feedbacks.
For example, currently it is implicit in any climate communication that the vast destruction of global watershed catchment process has no effect whatsoever on temperature or climates, I think partly because a 2x too strong aerosol effect leaves no room for that in the modeled temperature accounting. In other words, if the fraction of GHG forced temperature change ‘cancelled’ by aerosols is only 1/2 of that currently assumed, it opens the door to much more interesting questions.
JCM says
26 May 2024 at 12:28 AM
re “—assuming that aerosol forcing is indeed associated with a dampened temperature response, the prevailing ideas obsessively parroted by people like Leon Simons could be totally wrong.”
Yes indeed. And right or wrong the obsessively parrots ideas denote a one trick pony as well, one that doesn’t provide clear explanations of what when how or when or why.
the issues surrounding aerosols, and clouds, and how they manifest in the models etc, the discussions of same re 2023/24 temps and the IMO reductions as well as other significant reductions and heat responses in India, western europe, China and the recent suggested Nth America interconnections, and the distinct lack of credible reliable data raises all manner of “interesting questions.” Especially about ECS issues as raised by Hansen et al, 4.8C and another papers that said ECS midpoint was lower than 3c – both supposedly based on paleo-climate analysis JCM.
So far there has been much rhetoric and very little science to consider who is right or wrong about anything lately. Except more GHG more heat all other things being equal. The system of SST monitoring seems credible as does GSAT and PPM CO2 levels …. Maybe this might change.
JCM: climate model hindcasts often predict larger temperature swings following major volcanic eruptions than what is observed in reality, such as after the Pinatubo and Chichon eruptions.
BPL: I remember the Pinatubo prediction as being on the nose, but maybe I got that wrong. Here are some references that talk about it:
Hansen, J. A. Lacis, R. Ruedy, and M. Sato 1992. “Potential Climate Impact of Mount Pinatubo Eruption.” Geophysical Research Letters 19, 215-218.
Soden, B.J., R.T. Wetherald, G.L. Stenchikov, and A. Robock 2002. “Global Cooling After the Eruption of Mount Pinatubo: A Test of Climate Feedback by Water Vapor.” Science 296, 727-730.
Thank you for these references.
However, with respect to the “official” hindcasts, I note what I perceive to be a persistent bias related to the temperature response from an aerosol forcing over time, up to a factor of 2.
It’s most evident in the spaghetti:
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/near-term-climate-change-projections-and-predictability/figbox11-1-1-2/
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/near-term-climate-change-projections-and-predictability/fig-11-25-final-postplenary-mjp-2/
https://archive.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-8-1-figure-1.html
https://www.realclimate.org/images/h88_proj_vs_real.png
https://www.realclimate.org/images/cmp_cmip6_nice-600×417.png
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ronan-Connolly/publication/373205213/figure/fig1/AS:11431281183768316@1693042736995/Summary-of-the-detection-and-attribution-hindcasting-experiments-presented-by-the-IPCC-in_W640.jpg
please accept my apologies for referencing a work from Connolly and co. It was simply a convenient graphic.
It’s somewhat more obscured in the published AR6 depictions, but I think it’s still there. It seems to me it’s unavoidable that the aerosol effect on temperature (not necessarily the forcing) has been overestimated.
The global energy balance from a surface perspective involves both the available energy and moisture limitation. When a diffuse sun-shade is introduced the intensity of the atmospheric heat transport must be impacted. For example, the heat transport is roughly proportional to surface solar absorbed at about 1/2 (160 ASR vs 80 LE). The sustained atmospheric heat transport involves the latent portion of turbulent flux as previously mentioned in the work of Fajber.
The optimal depletion of the greenhouse effect intensity through atmosphere heat transport involves both moisture limitation and the surface available energy through ASR. Logically: no ASR at surface, no latent flux. Similarly, no moisture at surface, no net heat transport away from surface.
However, recently an unnamed author at Copernicus has speculated on other reasons for the too strong aerosol effect, mainly through a forcing rather than feedback perspective https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/aerosols-are-so2-emissions-reductions-contributing-global-warming
I think the blather from bushwacker Ned here needs correcting.
The fool Ned Kelly misinterprets a graphic mashed up by the blunderful Leon Simons.
This Simons mash-up begins life as a graphic (Shackleton et al [2023] fig3c) showing EEI over the last 150,000 years derived from the Benthic δ18O record. Greatly smoothed, the EEI record wobbles through one-&-a-half ice-age cycles, generally between peaks of EEI +/-0.2Wm^-2. The positive EEI periods are shown associated with Heinrich events (gray shaded stripes), ‘when icebergs broke off North America’s Laurentide Ice Sheet into the ocean’, and with the biggest positive EEI periods (>+0.2Wm^-2) associated with the deglaciations.
And it is well know that AGW is more rapid than deglaciation warmings so the EEI of today will always be running greatly higher than the peak +0.3Wm^-2 shown in that Fig3c.
Simons then annotates the Shackleton et al graphic and plots onto it +1.4Wm^-2 which he says is the average EEI recorded by CERES “over the last 3 years.” (The average over the last 36 months of data used by Simons actually averages +1.26Wm*-2 so he probably thinks the 24 months 7/2021-6/2023 is 3 years-worth.)
Quite why Simons chooses his 3 year period isn’t explained. Why not the +1.2Wm^-2 of the last 6 years? Or the +1.0Wm^-2 of the last 12 years? Or the +0.8Wm^-2 of the full CERES data set of the time? Presumably he is wanting to be dramatic relative to the +0.48Wm^-2 1971-2020 from von Schuckmann et al (2023) which Simons also adds to his annotations.
But in adding the 197-2020 EEI Simons blunders into the counter-argument** of his (& Hansen’s) ‘It’s the aerosols!!’ argument (although in his twittering of Nov 2023 Simons appeared to be blaming the slowing AMOC for the sky-rocketing EEI). The counter-argument is that the data derived by von Schuckmann et al isn’t showing any dramatic increase in the EEI since 2010 and indeed shows EEI pretty flat over the period 1995-2020. (That is the increase in Total Energy is a pretty-constant 1995-2020 at +11.5Zj/year = +0.72Wm^-2/yr. Von Schuckmann et al give the 2006-20 EEI as to 0.76Wm^-2)
(**This is the basis of the Mann’s second rebutal-point for Hansen’s Pipeline paper where he shows linearity back to 1990, although only using OHC.)
And after all this, the fool Ned Kelly talks of the EEI’s “rapid increase the last 3 years.” The EEI measured by CERES does show an increase but that increase is at a constant rate for the full data period 2001-24*** and not some post-2010 phenomenon (as per Hansen) and not post-2020 (as per bushwacker Ned). Further, the 2001-24 CERES data increase is mirrored somewhat by OHC data which, being a longer record, suggests the increase is not some recent unprecedented phenomenon appearing; not the doomy result of a slowing AMOC, nor aerosol reductions since 2010.
(***An increase of roughly +0.045Wm^-2/year.)
I notice the link above to Leon Simons’s twittering wasn’t operational.
I thought to show what a proper job graphing out comparisons for the CERES data would look like. I post a very red graph here posted 30th May 2024 comparing EEI from CERES (2001-23) & the planetary Heat Content assessment of von Schuckmann et al 2023 (which runs 1960-2020).
The two data sets do show things that would theoretically be equal if measured accurately.
Prior to 2001, (not graphed in ‘red’, but see this ClimateChangeTracker webpage) the ERBE 1985-99 data show some strong positive EEI years (+1.17Wm^-2 1996-97) as well as strong negative EEI prior to 1994, this presumably involving some measurement inaccuracies in the ERBE, but the increasing EEI is not so greatly different to the Heat Content assessment’s increase.
The Heat Content assessments stop in 2020 so the last three years comparison is absent. (And that with the maritime pollution/aerosols being post-2020.)
While the Heat Content numbers do show an increasing EEI, this isn’t as sharp a rise as the CERES increase, even with 5-year measurements potentially something like a half the rate of increase. Longer term, the Heat Content increase is certainly a fraction of the increase shown in the CERES data (CERES data has been running at +0.045Wm^-2/y), perhaps a third, a sixth?
The implications of the lower Heat Content increase tend to work against the Hansen aerosol theory. And plotting EEI change against global temperature does suggest there is a big dollop of albedo feedback at work and such a big feedback may well be still consistent with lower ECS values.
For Saturday (05/26):
If you have family or friends who live or will be visiting central and eastern Kansas, western Missouri, much of central and northeast Oklahoma, and parts of northern Texas, please have them keep an eye on the sky. I can not speak highly enough of the work the folks at the NOAA Storm Prediction Center do and suggest visits to their website for anyone seeking additional information.
.
https://www.spc.noaa.gov/
.
“Several strong to violent tornadoes, extreme hail, and corridors of widespread wind damage are forecast over parts of the central and southern Plains from late Saturday afternoon into the night… The end result will be a rare combination of instability and shear across the Moderate Risk area, with potential for particularly strong tornadoes, wind, and extreme hail.”
This paper doesn’t come as a surprise to me after watching the cryosphere for the last 15 years. No doubt, Guv’nor Ron can declare it “woke” and “unChristian”, so it won’t affect Florida. But for others in coastal areas not so divinely protected, it may be bad news.
Research Article
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Open access
Share on
Widespread seawater intrusions beneath the grounded ice of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica
Eric Rignot https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3366-0481 erignot@uci.edu, Enrico Ciracì https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4332-3929, Bernd Scheuchl https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5947-7709, +2 , and Christine DowAuthors Info & Affiliations
Contributed by Eric Rignot; received March 7, 2024; accepted April 18, 2024; reviewed by Richard R. Forster and Erin C. Pettit
May 20, 2024
121 (22) e2404766121
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2404766121
Significance
We present evidence for seawater intrusions occurring at tidal frequencies over many kilometers beneath the grounded ice of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica, a major contributor to sea level rise. The results call into question the traditional approach of modeling a fixed, abrupt transition from grounded ice to ice floating in the ocean with no ice melt at the transition boundary. We delineate a tidally controlled grounding zone, 2 to 6 km in length, and additionally irregular seawater intrusions extending another 6 km inland at spring tide. The rushing of seawater beneath grounded ice over considerable distances makes the glacier more vulnerable to melting from a warmer ocean than anticipated, which in turn will increase projections of ice mass loss.
Ned Kelly says
23 May 2024 at 2:29 AM
Kevin McKinney says
22 May 2024 at 1:14 PM
Just a small add on re LCOE and EROEI, they can be useful for sure when applied properly. But they generally do not guide business or finance decisions to build a new power plant. The biggest item being the ROI based on long term profitability (and it’s projected stability). with renewables much is always outside the “control” of the owners.
And that is where RES generally fall down for varying reasons depending on the market and the location and other constraints including govt subsidies but also overall market regulations and management. Many proposals are made, few finally are built.
In the EU eg Germany took on the responsibility and costs of providing whatever new infrastructure / distribution was needed at their cost. In the US the new plant owners have to do that at their cost (so I’m told) which precludes some projects due to costs. Nothing is plug and play in a grid systems that must be balanced 24/7 every minute of the day.
I suspect until and unless all grid systems are returned to State ownership and control and responsibility the increase in RES supply will remain problematic and unsustainable. While the IRA is generating new projects now it’s at the cost of almost paying 100% of building costs via Tax Credits and the like. And will they be built. I heard in some cases there’s a 5 year lag between application and final approval.
If RES plants were highly profitable naturally (as some people incorrectly believe the LCOE suggests they are) then companies and finances/banks would be all over these new projects. But they are not. Not even with huge subsidies. It’s an indicator of how risky as investments they are, and underpinning that is unreliable profitability of the projects. That lower profitability is founded upon the technical constraints such as storage and intermittency and the interconnects due to long distances.
We are have been in a stage of grabbing the low hanging fruit first. AS the % share increases finding profitable now project locations becomes increasingly difficult. And most of these issue I mention are swept under the rug as the rhetoric remains stuck on notions of “we need to cut ghg emissions, and we have to stop the fossil fuel companies” – which is wasted nonsense rhetoric achieving nothing.
Until the profit motive is removed and power supply (the while system nationally/regionally) becomes a public service like water, roads, sewage, health housing etc should be then the lack of RES supply and it’s inability to replace FF energy will remain. imho. And the chances of that happening are very slim. As is a genuine price on ghg emissions that would tend to make RES more profitable / favorable in comparison.
The future is one of increasing wholesale and retail prices for electricity the greater the share of RES is deployed. Which indicates the assumptions made on LCOE and EROEI numbers are counterintuitive, ie wrong – a RE SYSTEM is not actually cheaper at all.
Beyond the current issue of a lack of profitability and higher future prices for the end user, is the bigger question of is a 100% RES market even feasible technically without suffering major ongoing outrages and being unable to provide the demand required by the “market”? At this point, no one is addressing the bigger issues about where everyone thinks we’re heading is going to solve the “cause” of global warming problem — the end of FF companies and their shareholders.
I think we are going no where fast while spinning our wheels on make believe unworkable solutions everywhere. Gavin makes more sense on these matters than anyone else I have heard from this year.
Anyway, no big deal. Whatever is going to happen will. Nothing I can do about it.
Ned, I don’t think you are paying attention to what is happening, because quite a lot of RE is getting built right now. 40 GW of RE and storage added in 2023, and a projected 60 GW. It’s not yet as much as we need, but it’s a very long way from insignificant. And as you note, much of the capacity coming online this year probably predates the IRA or BIL funding. Which means that the 60 GW/yr is likely to increase.
https://www.wri.org/insights/clean-energy-progress-united-states
One of the reasons is that several mechanisms have been developed and widely deployed to provide the stable income stream you mention.
“The future is one of increasing wholesale and retail prices for electricity the greater the share of RES is deployed.”
Pure unsupported assertion–an apparent case of assuming what you should rather attempt to prove. It’s quite likely that the “assumptions” regarding LCOE and EROEI are quite correct, and that with a more technically efficient system, costs will be relatively stable, or even decline over time.
Kevin, look, what you believe I am paying attention to is of no consequence. Facts is you do not know.
So let’s deal with that you do know and what we do not. . “Pure unsupported assertion–an apparent case of assuming what you should rather attempt to prove.”
which is comments like this – “One of the reasons is that several mechanisms have been developed and widely deployed to provide the stable income stream you mention.” and ” costs will be relatively stable, or even decline over time.”
Well, there are multiple studies but these problem are not good enough for you either.
So how about you find me the DATA that supports your assertion of a “stable income stream” and one that is PROFITABLE and meets expectations iow the original Business Plan?
Just one example would be a start. (smile)
Try this then as well – Please find me a region/city where RES has been introduced where (costs will be relatively stable, prices decline over time) the CONSUMER PRICE of Electricity Supply has FALLEN below previous FF/Nuke only supply Prices from a decade or two ago pre-RES deployment.
This should be easy to find as the introduction of RES has been significant almost everywhere across the USA. USA only data will be acceptable. I will wait your reply acknowledging you are unaware of any such Data which supports your own made up assertions to imagining you won a debate.
I provided info to assist knowledge and further research – not to engage in fruitless arguments and “dick measuring contests”. They endlessly disappointing and a waste of my time – which I will no longer engage in.
List of Refs – not going to waste my time.
Time will tell …….. soon enough. ;-)
Ask and ye shall receive, Ned:
Plans providing stable income streams:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_purchase_agreement
“More than 137 firms in 32 countries reported the signing of power purchase agreements in 2021.”
Now, I questioned your lack of support for your assertion that “The future is one of increasing wholesale and retail prices for electricity the greater the share of RES is deployed.”
This is directly contradicted by numerous studies, including for example this one:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62892013
Meanwhile, you still haven’t provided any support for your claim, saying only that you were “not going to waste [your] time.” (Oh, and some sort of hoohaw about “fruitless arguments and “dick measuring contests”.” Whatever.)
So, again–evidence for your assertion, please?
HINT try Texas where Wind deployment was way over the top ….. are the wind providers profitable, meeting Budget expectations before the build out, and are Consumer Electricity Prices less or more than before deployment in Texas?
What about in California that Bastion of Green Digital Techno-knowhow?
(smile)
Of course my comments were about the future. Based on today’s knowledge. YMMV
The answer to your first question appears to be yes, going by the example of Duke Energy, which owns and operates numerous wind farms in Texas, including the state’s largest “Los Vientos.” In the first quarter of this year their electricity utility operations turned a billion $ USD profit.
https://s201.q4cdn.com/583395453/files/doc_financials/2024/q1/Q1-2024-Earnings-Release-Final.pdf
FWIW, they claim elsewhere that they are on-track “meet its interim 50% carbon emission reduction target by 2030.” (Their net-zero target is 2050.)
https://investors.duke-energy.com/news/news-details/2024/Duke-Energys-annual-Impact-Report-shares-progress-toward-a-cleaner-tomorrow-that-includes-affordability-and-reliability/default.aspx
As to your second question, I’d say it’s badly posed. It’s hardly likely that in an environment which has just gone through a bout of elevated inflation *anything* will have declined in price. However, the Texas Comptroller’s office says that “Today, CREZ lines serve as an example of how private investments in infrastructure can spur further energy development for the benefit of consumers, who are estimated to have saved $31.5 billion on wholesale power prices between 2010 and 2022 due to the inclusion of low-cost renewable energy.” (CREZ being, I gather, a transmission upgrade partnership initiative.)
https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/economic-data/energy/2023/wind.php
Argh. That should be “a projected 60 GW for 2024.”
Back when notions about global warming first arrived in 1990 world population was 5 billion. Today it is just above 8 billion. UN projections put it at 9.3 billion by 2040 – only 15 years away now. While projections expect China;’s population to stabilise just below 1.4 billion for several decades Europe is only region where populations significantly fall, everywhere else, the US included rise significantly out past 2050 to 2100.
The Limits to Growth scenario suggested that collapse will begin circa 2040 when among other things populations begin to fall away and the global civilization collapses in upon itself.
This is the model created 50 years ago at MIT that is tracking the closest to reality.
(LTG) System dynamics modeling is impressive.
https://nitter.poast.org/McAffee/status/1522971516853358592#m
https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2011/05/peak-oil-thermodynamics-and-stoic.html
At the same time there’s a belief that all land transport can be successfully converted from oil based to electrification, iirc doubling electricity demand globally were this to occur, all other things being equal including ongoing economic GDP growth. There are assumptions that this massive growth in electricity demand will be supplied by RES plus some hydro, biomass and minor nuclear inputs.
Simultaneously we are faced with the near term possibility of a Peak Oil Gas situation, that initially will spike prices and then limit supplies regionally. There will haves and have nots. Many bullish FF proponents say it;s not that bad, yet those also say the future energy demand will primarily rest upon Nuclear expansion and not RES.
How all this is supposed to occur one can only imagine or hazard a guess. Today Africa still suffers disproportionately from energy poverty, with more than 570 million sub-Saharan Africans accounting for 75% of the world’s population without access to electricity.
https://www.theafricareport.com/314827/power-africa-10-biggest-projects-in-10-years/
A basic truth: foundational innovation, once adoption proceeds at scale, is followed by an epic increase in energy consumption. It’s an iron law of our universe.
Mark P. Mills The “Energy Transition” Won’t Happen
Foundational innovation in cloud technology and artificial intelligence will require more energy than ever before—shattering any illusion that we will restrict supplies.
May 23 2024
[ Clearly US-centric as always and not global / universal ]
The laptop class has rediscovered a basic truth: foundational innovation, once adoption proceeds at scale, is followed by an epic increase in energy consumption. It’s an iron law of our universe.
To illustrate that law, consider three recent examples, all vectors leading to the “shocking” discovery of radical increases in expected electricity demand, now occupying headlines today.
First, there’s the electric car, which, if there were one in every garage, as enthusiasts hope, would roughly double residential neighborhood electricity demands.
Next, there’s the idea of repatriating manufacturing, especially for semiconductors. This is arguably a “foundational innovation,” since policymakers are suddenly showing concern over the decades-long exit of such industries from the U.S. Restoring American manufacturing to, say, the global market share of just two decades ago would see industrial electricity demand soar by 50 percent.
And now the scions of software are discovering that both virtual reality and artificial intelligence, which emerge from the ineluctable mathematics of machine-learning algorithms, are anchored in the hard reality that everything uses energy. This is especially true for the blazing-fast and power-hungry chips that make AI possible. Nvidia, the leader of the AI-chip revolution and a Wall Street darling, has over the past three years alone shipped some 5 million high-power AI chips. To put this in perspective, every such AI chip uses roughly as much electricity each year as do three electric vehicles. And while the market appetite for electric vehicles is sagging and ultimately limited, the appetite for AI chips is explosive and essentially unlimited.
Consider a recent headline in the Wall Street Journal: “Big Tech’s Latest Obsession Is Finding Enough Energy”—because the “AI boom is fueling an insatiable appetite for electricity.” And, as Reuters reports, “U.S. electric utilities predict a tidal wave of new demand . . . . Nine of the top 10 U.S. electric utilities said data centers were a main source of customer growth.” Today’s forecasts see near-term growth in demand for electric power three times as great as in recent years. Rediscovery of the iron law of growth inspired an urgent Senate hearing on May 21 entitled “Opportunities, Risks, and Challenges Associated with Growth in Demand for Electric Power in the United States.”
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-energy-transition-wont-happen
Then consider the implications of the commentary of Jason Hickle on Degrowth I will post next here, and others like him say Kevin Anderson, and James Hansen, and …….
I think the issue is that sooner than later something is going to have to give. Or it is going to break, or more likely totally break down and collapse. I can easily see next decade building brand new coal fired power stations again. Others see nirvana breaking out.
NK. You mention accelerating demand for electricity and potential problems of this. If demand for electricity is going to be accelerating (which seems likely as you mention) and supply struggles to keep up with demand, prices will rise and some people will have to reduce their electricity use, presumably those on lower incomes. Its gonna hurt them. I would suggest the electricity issue will most likely be about the laws of supply and demand.
It could lead to a collapse of the socio economic system (depending on how you define collapse). Its really impossible to say because of the huge number of variables and uncertainties. I think it will most likely just be painful for lower income people rather than a collapse as such. However that pain is not an acceptable situation.
Such a scenario could happen under a fossil fuels system with peak fossil fuels, or under renewables if renewables struggle to provide enough supply.
The question is whether high demand for electricity would bring coal fired power back on the market. Impossible to really know. Depends on how determined society is to mitigate the climate problem and costs of renewables.
Renewables are currently lowest cost generation but as market penetration gets above about 30 % solar and wind, you need transmission line upgrades and storage or overbuild which pushes the effective cost of renewables back up. However renewables are clean energy and have fewer health costs than fossil fuels. Studies paint optimistic scenarios about renewables but nobody can be sure of this because the world has never done something like this before. Only time will tell.
The other issue is even without the climate problem we will run out of fossil fuels. So we have no alternative than to build a new energy system of some sort. Renewables have their downsides, but there really doesnt seem to be a better option right now or for the forseeable future. So it seems that we have to build renewables and deal with problems as best we can. I’m not ignoring the downsides and risks or renewables, and something could indeed ‘break’. I just don’t think there’s a better option and society does have a history getting through problems and renewables have several advantages and upsides.
The other ‘solution’ is to simplify and make voluntary cuts in per capita levels of energy use and do this sooner rather than later. This is an organised approach but it will still hurt, and could also precipitate a collapse of the transport grid (IMHO) and severe unemployment as demand is sucked out of the system. Given the addiction to energy use it seems unlikely more than a small minority of people would support such a plan anyway.
I think it most likely that we would only make significant cuts to energy use if its forced on us by supply shortages and costs.
No perfect options I’m afraid.
Ned wrote:
Hardly. The US projection has a very big confidence interval, with the top boundary estimate for 2100 sitting at 520 million or so–more than merely “significant”–and the low value put at ~300 million–a decrease of about 10%. The median estimate is for a peak population at or just after 2100, with about 380 million Americans alive. “Significant” would be fair for that, IMO, but by definition half the probabilistic projections fall below that.
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Line/840
And to cite another case, the estimate for Latin America and the Caribbean is much for optimistic–or pessimistic, depending which lens you view this through–with the median estimate for 2100 sitting at roughly the present population, following a peak around 2060 or so.
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Line/904
Canada, now–that’s another case. There, the bottom boundary of the +/- 0.5 child confidence interval sits at roughly the present population; the median for 2100 comes in at 53 million or so; and the high boundary shows a projected total of over 70 million. It seems mostly to be due to higher Canadian projected life expectancies.
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/124
In a world where everything is interconnected ….. and there are no coincidences:
Campaigners for degrowth have thrown into question the dogma that holds that a growing economy is always a sign of progress. In Less is More, anthropologist Jason Hickel argues that only degrowth can steer the world away from its worsening ecological crisis. We sat down with him to discuss his new book and ask what degrowth would mean for relations between the Global North and South.
Green European Journal: One of the most compelling critiques of degrowth is that it is an idea for comfy Westerners with little relevance for the Global South. Less is More takes a different view, arguing that degrowth is about global justice and decolonisation. Could you explain?
Jason Hickel: Who’s driving the ecological crisis? It is overwhelmingly the rich countries of the Global North: the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. These countries are collectively responsible for 92 per cent of excess emissions. They have colonised the atmospheric commons for their own enrichment. Meanwhile the entirety of the Global South – all of Asia, Africa, Latin America – is responsible for only 8 per cent, and that’s from just a small number of countries. Most countries in the Global South are still well within their fair share of the safe carbon budget and have therefore contributed nothing to the climate crisis.
The same can be said for resource consumption. Rich countries consume on average 28 tonnes of material stuff per person per year – which is about four times over the safe per capita boundary for the planet. Most Global South countries are well under that boundary. In fact, many low-income countries need to increase resource use to meet human needs. The ecological crisis is being driven overwhelmingly by rich countries using too many resources and too much energy.
We also have to keep in mind that resource use in the Global North is in large part net appropriated from the Global South, through what are effectively patterns of imperial power. Nearly half of all resources consumed in the Global North every year are net appropriated from the South. Resources that could be used to meet human needs – to build hospitals and produce food – are used instead to service growthism in the Global North.
Degrowth is therefore a demand targeted at the Global North. It is a demand for global justice, and it has been articulated from the South now for several decades.
https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/degrowth-is-about-global-justice/
We live in a world where 10% of the wealthiest people on earth (ie all of you here) and who are mostly found in the global north’s Golden Billion, are directly responsible for 50% of all GHG emissions ….. and 50% of the world’s population are only responsible for maybe 10% of all GHG emissions. (See K Anderson, Hickle et al)
Choosing to Fail for 30 years , with Climate Scientist Kevin Anderson
https://youtu.be/tVFSJINGueM?si=DiASGt9oebI_cMts&t=2518
—————–
Capitalist accumulation has always depended on cheap labor and resources extracted from the Global South (including from China right now). To end this violence we need a post-capitalist transition—otherwise, as climate breakdown accelerates, the ceaseless search for profit will drive us further into barbarism.
by Jason Hickel
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/12/the-age-of-imperialism-is-not-over-but-we-can-end-it
—————–
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/WLD/world/population
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/china/population
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/eur/europe/population
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/IND/india/population
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/LCR/latin-america-and-the-caribbean/population
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/population
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/AFR/africa/population
Dennis Meadows: “Limits to Growth turns 50 – Checking In”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCfnKTzx9FA
Reaching the end of offshored industrialization
Posted on May 21, 2024 by Gail Tverberg
https://ourfiniteworld.com/
20% of what is generally called and reported as Oil is made up of NGLs, natural gas liquids that does not come from Oil nor the refining processes of Oil.
Real genuine Oil production is decreasing. There are no new sources to be drilled, bar a few shale oil locations that won’t make any difference. Meanwhile US Shale Oil and Gas is rapidly being depleted with technology being used create ‘bigger straws’ to drain it even faster.
Arthur Berman why Much Higher Energy Prices are coming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AfIw8LmHjg&t=12s
Arthur Berman: “Within 2-3 years the World will be very aware of the Problem”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeM5m2uUnr8
Above extracts In Full – Art Berman: The Perfect Energy Storm -World Oil Production Decline
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J9vmQYoiSg
(recommended for the extensive and detailed information)
Art Berman – Getting Honest About the Human Predicament | 2024 Teacher Workshop
Texas Envirothon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQm2wt7-kPU
US oil 2023
https://x.com/aeberman12/status/1741469704458318102
U.S. oil production declines at about 39% per year
https://x.com/aeberman12/status/1765774839619453197
Will RES electricity replace all this energy supply going forward and keep up with the rapidly increasing energy demand as population grows and the global south wants to live lifestyles the same as yours?
It appears that the point here is that degrowth is a policy that should target the “Global North” to enable the “Global South” to grow and attain lifestyles comparable to the more affluent citizenry of the “Global North”. But what difference does decreased energy usage in the “Global North” make, if there is corresponding increased energy usage in the “Global South”? Considering the populations of India, China, Nigeria, etc. it”s difficult to see how this would not result in a considerable global net increase in energy usage. In any case, it can’t happen. The totality of global resources simply will not make this possible. Energy is only one such problem along with potable water availability, ocean fishery depletion, arable soil degradation, etc.
NK: I suspect until and unless all grid systems are returned to State ownership and control and responsibility the increase in RES supply will remain problematic and unsustainable.
BPL: Arise, ye prisoners of starvation, arise ye wretched of the Earth! For justice thunders condemnation, there’s a new world in birth!
Actually, government plays a big role in the “control” of the grid.
Not saying the extant system is particularly logical or satisfactory, but it’s far from unregulated capitalism.
It would have been considerably more satisfactory, were it not for our partisan, corrupt Supreme Court:
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/how-does-us-power-grid-work#chapter-title-0-5
Ned Kelly 23 MAY “Piotr says 9 , 11, 14, 16, 20 and 22 May” [then … not a single word of what I actually said there] but instead … a couple screens of:
“ The celeber cavilla fallacy involves categorizing and condemning individuals for thinking differently, not through mere categorization, but by misusing these categories without evidence or context to intimidate neutral observers. This fallacy combines elements of ad hominem attacks, the Truzzi fallacy, negative stereotyping, associate condemnation, false authority claims, and the fallacy of composition .”
and so on, and on and on, without … a SINGLE WORD of proof that all that applies to me.
Let me answer with a quote from Ned’s another post:” What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence (Wikipedia,Hitchens’ razor)” They never think their pontifications may apply to them …
P.S. What did you do with the other Ned Kelly:
“ I make excellent contributions on the topic of climate change/science and related issues. I intentionally ignore false accusations and reject the character assassinations”
Ned Kelly 16 MAY
A few years back I was following Tim Garrett via twitter quite regularly. A new video interview with him just appeared from Planet Critical which is a really good source for metacrisis climate issues.
The Thermodynamics of Degrowth | Tim Garrett
23 May 2024
What’s the relationship between our energy consumption, our material footprint and our economies?
This is the “holy trinity” as Tim Garrett and I refer to these three components in our conversation. Tim is a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah, and over two years ago, he joined me to discuss the thermodynamics of collapse, where he explained his research into the behaviour of snowflakes and how you could extrapolate the behaviour of economies and civilization using the laws of thermodynamics. He’s back on the show to explain how we use our energy, the necessity of a surplus of energy and how all of this relates to a society’s growth and health.
In this conversation we discuss questions like: Will renewables facilitate an increased consumption of fossil fuels? Can we reduce inequality by reducing energy consumption? How can we organise a wave-like civilisation, which grows and decays within safe boundaries? Can we decline in order to recover before crashing completely?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M01Q3ZR-Mzs
previous ref resources I found quite good:
Jevon’s Paradox: Why increasing energy efficiency will accelerate global climate change. Tim Garrett
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM8pQmA7wos
The Thermodynamics of Collapse | Tim Garrett
What snowflakes and physics can teach us about the economy, civilisation and crisis.
https://www.planetcritical.com/p/the-thermodynamics-of-collapse
Tim on Twitter / X
https://nitter.poast.org/nephologue/
Long-run evolution of the global economy – Part 2:
Hindcasts of innovation and growth
T. J. Garrett
https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/6/673/2015/esd-6-673-2015.pdf
TJ Garrett research
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5Bb8nQQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
REGARDING The Thermodynamics of Degrowth | Tim Garrett
In this conversation we discuss questions like: Will renewables facilitate an increased consumption of fossil fuels? Can we reduce inequality by reducing energy consumption? How can we organise a wave-like civilisation, which grows and decays within safe boundaries? Can we decline in order to recover before crashing completely?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M01Q3ZR-Mzs
At times difficult to follow and parse, but he explains it more as the discussion unfolds – an outlier woith little support – doesn;t mean he must be wrong. Aligns well with ideas from Steve Keen, Jason Hickle etc.
Some video notes
Tim Garrett
Civilization is a Heat Engine of (Human) Networks (like brain networks) which requires Energy.
Where there is energy there is Matter. Earth radiates energy to space. Energy is converting the material earth’s crust into civilization including more people which dissipates Energy = the laws of thermodynamics tada = eg the phase transformation of habitat, forests into farmland, gold mines polluting rainforest streams, fossil fuels get burned where carbon is transformed (while dissipating energy), food gets eaten we dissipate energy. CO2 closes the window to radiate energy to space, world warms up from the material transformation of matter using energy to access this material to create Networks to generate energy, CO2 pollution/waste, and build civilisation by transforming the material makeup of the world which is becoming less hospitable for us… Entropy.
Why can’t we transformation to renewable energy to replace this system (thermodynamics)? Why didn’t we replace coal when we found oil and gas? Because we were able to grow faster. So we burnt more coal, because there was more of us needing more energy.
It is only a theoretical ASSUMPTION that RES will replace Fossil Fuels, which are still useful. RES will in fact and already has facilitated more growth (energy / material consumption to feed the civilisation system) and increased further material transformation of the earth’s crust and to also use even more fossil fuels as well (eg the addition of unconventional shale after the major price hikes and rapid rise supply constraints of Peak Conventional Oil in the mid-2000s when OIL HIT $145 brl the first time) .
Using more RES may well be only pretending we are saving the planet when it is really what we’ve always done which is destroy it. (ouch) https://youtu.be/M01Q3ZR-Mzs?si=MeK9_3YI8xuYkpdv&t=1405
32 minutes 3 components of the Thermodynamic system = Matter – Energy – Economy (E=MC2) Matter is Finite! Growth paradigm GDP is unsustainable limited SO is a Steady cyclic state possible? Everything is trying to process energy and matter. see Lotka’s Wheel. Humanity is no different than anything else. Humanity did it bigger and Faster than anyone else…. if there is a surplus of energy and matter. Adult’s are to maintain steady state, using 2500 calories per day, need some energy, not a lot. Our daily needs are ~300mbo equivalent (100mbo daily + the rest f all energy consumption)
WHAT DRIVES THE GROWTH IS A SMALL EXCESS OF ENERGY – the fatter a human gets the more energy they need for maintenance. More excess energy (food) makes them grow even fatter – the same is how the economy works – CULTURAL INERTIA (Systemic Thermodynamics) drives Energy Demand / Material Consumption to feed Growth and Maintenance of the Economy
(and NOT Fossil fuels company Executives and Shareholders!)
The growing economy is like a growing child, excess calories grows the child. Once you grow you build more networks, and need more energy to maintain life – GDP maintains and gains = growth. Comes from a slight excess of energy/material than is required to maintain. LOTKA’S Wheel grows, and grows, and grows. More RES will provides an excess of energy which leads to more growth, and more FF energy use to maintain what civilisation.
IT IS NOT THE EVIL FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES – IT IS THE SYSTEM DRIVEN BY INERTIA/CULTURAL NORMS and THERMODYNAMICS.
The Inertia is driven by our culture … this is what we do, and have done for centuries since very cheap abundant FF arrived on the scene. Embedded in who we are from the past.
56 mins the 1% redistribute the flow? No, everywhere same distribution rich/poor exists in nature (??) We have an extremely consumptive civilisation (on steroids due to Capitalist Ideology / Religion. Total wealth created the 1% mega wealthy. 1:13hr Economists vs climate (egos) are not interested in solving problems let alone even seeing them. 2.4% growth today is a doubling of demand/resource use in 30 years time.
(Switching to 100% RES will drive a 60% (?) growth in Mineral/Resources extraction over the next 20 years — both things are impossible physically. Just for Copper needs for a RES transition requires an additional 4 new mines the size of the world’s largest in Chile – such material resources do not exist.) 1970 growth was only 1%, so it’s exponential growth now at 2.4% on a far bigger economy pie. SO We’re headed to a collapse not just a decline. No one (few) are looking at civilisation collapse where it’s going, or how to turn it around. Decisions need to be made based on psychics and thermodynamics, oscillating wave function vs crash on the beach? What kind of world/life do we want, can be done? Less energy use means more egalitarianism, equality, equity, less extremes. Betterment of the world? Air travel, those into betterment of themselves/wealth/industry are more open to confront issues about collapse – FASCINATING 1:23HR
SEE Coal historical UK Graph — https://i0.wp.com/ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/wrigleyfig1-e1346123057549.gif?ssl=1
ME – WHY DO WE NEED AI? HAVE TO HAVE IT? WHAT DIFFERENCE WILL IT MAKE EXCEPT MAKE A FEW MUCH MORE RICH POWERFUL EXTRACTIVE OF PEOPLE AND BURN UP EVER MORE FOSSIL FUEL ENERGY AND EARTH’S RESOURCES? Sounds clinically Insane. Because it is insane. A Cancer for Cancer’s sake.
There is a profound disconnect between Physics and Economic theory (and human needs) AND MARKETING SALES – WE NEED EQUITABLE SOLUTIONS FOR THESE CRISIS TIMES
See Joe Tainter – more complex a civilisation the closer it comes to collapse.
Arrrgghhh maybe I shouldn’t be so cynical when there are wonderful people like Rachel speaking up for me and my beliefs and values all over the world?
Even The Millionaires Are Fed Up
How to speak to a hostile crowd
So off I went to the Swiss Alps—by train, of course—to calmly and assuredly explain to a hostile audience that the excellent economic forecast provided was awfully narrow in scope when you factor in resource scarcity, geopolitical instability, nuclear war, climate tipping points and the illusion of material decoupling. In sum, we’re heading for economic collapse by 2050, I said.
The banker disagreed. I told him perhaps he should look at the data before forming an opinion. He recoiled as if I had slapped him, and I wondered how often he is around people who disagree with him. The economist from the WTO offered a middle ground, focusing on the necessity of economic development, and using it as a reason to warn against the injustice of degrowth. I smiled wanly and gave the correct definition of degrowth as a redistribution mechanism to develop the majority world whilst reducing the output of the global north.
Then someone from the audience, fed up with my negative outlook, shouted out that he didn’t necessarily disagree with everything I was saying but he wanted solutions! He’s a capitalist, for god’s sake! What, did I just want to throw away capitalism?
Well, yes. “I agree that capitalism provided benefits last century, but it’s time for something new, and I think that’s exciting rather than limiting.” He shrugged, and the host took the opportunity to close our panel. We left the stage and a woman grabbed me: “You were great, I agree with everything you said!” I listened to her analysis of the state of the world while watching the banker and economist swap business cards.
Strangely enough, lots of them wanted to swap cards with me, too. I spent the next fourteen hours speaking with a range of attendees and was shocked to learn that most of them agreed with me. They applauded my “bravery” for facing a hostile crowd, and thanked me for speaking with them calmly: “You really know what you’re talking about.” I tried patiently to explain that it is simply my job to know this and speak of it and that I was equally grateful for the invitation. But the men insisted on my “huge balls”, whilst the women rolled their eyes at the industry’s “macho dick-swinging”.
The man who had shouted at me from the audience apologised, and spent ten minutes with me lambasting carbon credits. Another, who earlier onstage had, to my horror, called aviation “the life-blood of Europe”, told me he’d been gassed by the police for protesting against Exxon. One told me he’d been so disillusioned after studying international development that he felt the only thing he could do was make a lot of money to protect his family and then buy some influence. None of them felt empowered, and all of them blamed the billionaires.
Frankly, the conversations I had were not that different to the rhetoric of my peers, except these were backdropped by the most glorious view over the Swiss Alps.
read the rest here
https://www.planetcritical.com/p/even-the-millionaires-are-fed-up
Improvements in the GISTEMP Uncertainty Model [new Gavin Schmidt publication]
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018JD029522
I have lost patience with the grievance-filled Ned Kelly annexation of this comment section.
If anyone is interested in the periodic outbreaks of extreme weather in the US, this is a very fine live blog providing warnings and meteorology to help actual victims of storms in progress. This is today’s; there was another live blog yesterday, and there have been many recent days of storms: for summary info, here: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/reports/today.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fITfYtCMd98
I would like to see an animation of the NOAA SPC reports day by day. This year has been incredible. And I am also observing a real shift in attitude towards climate change by those suffering from heat in the southern US.
Some more sources for info on EROEI especial about Oil .. and looming price hikes and supply constraints.
Global Oil Depletion | Alister Hamilton – HIGHLY Recommneded
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r79rxfOFJJY
Discusses cases where extracting Oil becomes net negative on energy required to extract the Oil, in the UK, Norway circa 2030 … and brings in other global inputs already underwater energy wise.
4 Apr 2024
When do you think we’ll run out of oil?
2050? 2100? Never? That’s understandable given the IPCC models access to oil until 2100; politicians like Rishi are betting big on North Sea deposits. Petroleum is the life blood of our global economy, and it’s difficult to imagine it drying up. More often, when we talk about transitioning away from fossil fuels, it’s because of the necessity to limit global warming—not because we run out.
But a team in Scotland are warning exactly that—we’re running out. Fast. Alister Hamilton is a researcher at the University of Edinburgh and the founder of Zero Emissions Scotland. He and his colleagues self-funded research into oil depletion around the world and the results are shocking: We will lose access to oil around the world in the 2030s.
They calculated this by establishing the Energy Return On Investment (EROI) and found that whilst there will still be oil deposits around the world, we would use more energy accessing the oil supply than we would ever get from burning it. This is because we’re having to mine further into the earth’s crust to access lower-grade oil. According to their calculations, the oil in the North Sea will be inaccessible—in a dead state—by 2031, and the oil in Norway by 2032. Around the world, oil reserves see the same trend through the 2030s.
Petroleum is the life blood, and we haven’t yet built out a different circulatory system to support renewable energy—in less than a decade, the world as know it could crash.
===================================
Peak Cheap Oil? almost here now, anytime. US shale production stresses, with Arthur Berman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1LsMiuFzoI&t=17s
ART BERMAN DECOUPLE – Vaclav Smil 4 pillars of civilisation all require fossil fuel- steel cement plastics ammonia fertilizer – transition to what? RES cannot provide those 4 critical pillars for our current civilisation and the hundreds of years of “culture” that built it to be like this. So yes, transition to what?
https://youtu.be/h1LsMiuFzoI?si=2eVyt98AVNZDeP8N&t=1706 28 ins
SMART PEOPLE SAY DUMB THINGS ABOUT NET ZERO – climate change tunnel vision cut emissions that’s it – lose track of reality, just check boxes to lower emissions on a deadline but what does all this do to the bigger environment (species ecology loss, resource limits/4 pillars) – a scientist describes things as they are now – Govt throwing money at ideas – use less energy emissions go down human enterprise stops destroying the planet – have lower economic growth or you wanna die? OR nature will impose the solution upon us, nature will conspire a situation/s to bring on a crisis (supply chains collapse, weather etc contractions, wars) we will be forced to scale back our activity …
https://youtu.be/h1LsMiuFzoI?si=QKiV6Ai2m0j_CHyS&t=3335
=====================
Per capita for Americans is around 1200 tonne of carbon over their lifetime, the IEA plan is around an average person born in the 1950’s is they emit 350 tonne and the plan is for a baby born in 2020 to emit 34 tonne over their lifetime.
This is more than emotions, this is a complete change with very few ideas how to keep what we have going without dramatic change that very few can achieve in the current system. People can imagine living on Mars more than they can see a system change. SO ‘no change’ is what is coming.
I am a card carrying member of the Disgusted Party – SIGN UP TODAY!
Fundamentally as human beings do we have respect for each other as human beings trying to figure out these big challenges that we’re facing of the species? That’s often the big question: Who is committed to doing so, or is there main motivation one of supporting their ‘tribe’ no matter what? How do we find the genuinely useful humans and and how do we connect them instead of the reprobates who only want to denigrate and dismiss out of hand with nary a thought going on between their ears?
Sometimes we actually can discover some folks start talking back and forth and what I found when I say the word ‘tribe’ is the moment you actually sort of engage in any sort of dialogue at all there’s almost like a preconceived set of words they want you to say. As well as a preconceived set of ideas they like to say and get out as soon as possible into the discussion.
I’ve observed a number of higher level conferences recently and I found the language people used force themselves into a tribe where they just discount everything being said. So they self-disqualify themselves from looking at solutions. So I’ve recently come to the conclusion that the mitigation work up until this point might be
useful but what’s required is the really serious ones have got to leave those safety nets (of institutions/clubs/tribes) and strike out on their own and do something that’s unprecedented and an attention-setter.
If we were to meet these problems head on, if we were to actually bring together the actual proven science knowledge and innovative solution ideas that could really change things what would that look like? But the first roadblock everyone will hit are the senior people advising governments and industry, you know the senior strategy makers in the resource world. What were they thinking? Where were they wanting to head toward? Most would scare the hell out of us ‘normal people in the public’ tribe. I have heard some things that scared the hell out of me and that’s what has motivated me to do the sharing work that I do. Because the Paradigm of the people who control our society, their mindsets and values, well they’re on a different planet! Worse, they
don’t necessarily care about Human Society at large in the least. They are more like automatons or robots.
But they are the one’s who have the ears of governments, political parties, financiers, and the corporate world of today’s powerful elites. The two go together as anti-humanists, anti-society and anti-community. In other words, fundamentally disinterested in human well being on any level.
This is the message they create but then market to the public and the politicians using sophistry and nice sounding words that makes it sound like something else.
The communications systems have quite broken down and this shows up in endless polarization of ideas and discussions. What is acceptable to be said and what is not in different circles, or tribal norms. It seems because we don’t have integrative framework with which to understand like ‘the big picture’ of how everything interconnects, everybody is sort of coming at different pieces of information from their own lens or from
their own angle and thus might miss what their colleague has to contribute given that they’re coming from a different angle themselves. This raises the question of why don’t two people agree to even what the problem even is, like why is there this polarization when you’re looking at the same models the same data?
From what I have seen over the last two decades and some, I think the simple answer for me is I’ve developed a methodology that hasn’t been used before. I was part of the world that looked at the Academia, the peer reviewed ‘science’ and the Models and everything. There’s checks and balances right? No, wrong. I absolutely agree with the idea that we’ve become all siloed, we call it the silo when everyone’s in a specialist area and no one likes (or say they don’t like) to talk outside their silo, even though they usually always will.
In addition to that we become very ideological over the last 50 years (especially the last 20 years post the internet social media cultural changes). A a debate used to be, in the sense of the ancient Greeks, was where we were supposed to learn something from others, and a debate was supposed to be an education and you come away from thinking that was really good. I am better for having engaged in that process. Now today the
debates around us seems to be very much Conquest based. I’m right, you’re wrong, I will now beat you into submission in a debate.
I really think that’s a terrible mistake for science, for institutional science, for scientists in general. Especially when engaging with the public, and across public venues and those scientific engagements presented via video streams. If they, if it doesn’t get out of that more of science is going to lose its relevancy. Not because it has no value or is wrong but because it will be rejected as inappropriate, unsatisfying and distasteful to be around. There will be an increasing loss of credibility where the data and findings no longer matter to people.
Self-centered tribalism and self-righteous indifference are not endearing features that are attractive. They’re hard to cover up as well.
SO while the um left is looking for traitors the right is looking for recruits! Well to me it seems that there’s kind of this sort of similar thing going on in like the energy space or the Climate / Eco-space you know. It’s like people who care, people who really really care and understand the difficulty of the situation that we’re in, who understand the danger of this situation that we’re in, and don’t want us to make a wrong move, don’t want the
world to make a wrong move, don’t want themselves to make a wrong move, and it seems a shame to me that we see these kinds of, like you know, the fact that there’s this green growth versus degrowth battles, like these different camps, these Tribes what have you, that are kind of like losing their minds at each other all the time on Twitter and on forums everywhere.
It’s like madness, but we are fundamentally in the same Ecological Camp – even if Camp is like “okay things have got to change” – like surely we should find it easier to speak to one another and surely those are the bridges that we should be building with one another so that when we go to really cross that massive ideological divide to people who don’t want to dismantle neoliberal capitalism or don’t believe that people (or whole nations elsewhere) need to be or should be treated fairly and equitably.
And who think that fossil fuels are going to be with us forever. Like we need to be one big side to confront that because right now those are still very deep ideological opinions that are embedded within the systems of elite power and so to get to a place of understanding to get to a place of seeing the transition as a real genuine possibility to transition everything, the organizing and management system not just the Energy System, the economy, everything, how we organize ourselves as worthwhile communities.
And how we treat one another. Our Global relationships our relationships with the planet as well as our neighbours for real and online. To someone like me it just looks like opportunity – an opportunity that is an uphill battle yes – and so it’s a shame it’s a big shame when I see these people who care, obviously really really care, but who are getting lost in the weeds of these technical conversations and winner take all debates, not out of I think genuinely not really out of ego or anything like that, but who have a sense of Care and Duty.
And yet we’re sort of doing this you know fighting with one another over the details where other people in control who are currently taking massive risks and gambles with the planet and all our lives because they really don’t care at all or give a flying phuck! Somewhere along the way to survive we need to get our priorities straight and our heads screwed on properly or the crazies are going to remain driving the planet and us and the future over a cliff.
I have just got back from the NW highlands of Scotland after hiring an electric car for 10 days and thought I’d give my perspective of driving an electric vehicle for the first time.
After arriving at Inverness on the sleeper train I picked up a Tesla model 3 long which I recall was stated to have a 375 mile range on a full charge. My experience of driving it around is that it is considerably easier to drive than a conventional fossil fuel vehicle. No gears other than drive, reverse and park, so effectively drives like an automatic. I don’t know if this model is a performance or sporting model but the car seemed to have superb acceleration, to the point where I quickly learnt to be gentle with the pedal otherwise it felt like a jet taking off. I also liked the idea of not having to use the brake pedal, when I took my foot of the accelerator the car decelerated quite quickly due to regenerative braking. On one section of road which drops around 180m in a little under three miles, the charge in the battery actually increased by 0.5-1%, gravitational potential energy converted to electricity and stored in the batteries.
I would definitely buy an electric vehicle when the time comes based on the driving experience. Some other issues were less good though. One of which was my ignorance in how to recharge. I naively assumed it would be like a PAYG petrol pump where you can insert a credit card, plug in, then drive off when ready. Sadly that is not the case. There are no PAYG charging stations in the Scottish highlands, at least none near where I was staying. I found out I either need an RFID card which I don’t have because I’ve never heard of such a thing before, or I have to set up an account with ChargeScotland and use their app, which worked but not all the time (due to sketchy mobile reception). As none of the charging stations near me were fast chargers I had spend considerable time charging the car (i.e. hours) which took time away from hillwalking, which was a nuisance as I was there attempting to walk 100km and climb 10,000m over ten days to raise money for ShelterBox. That is partly the reason I failed the climbing part of the challenge. Another noticable feature was the range appeared to be cxonsiderably less than advertised, despite my attempts to be frugal with the onboard power (there is an indicator which shows the rate at which power is being used or added to the batteries). I put this down to the topography. Although the roads there follow the valleys there are plenty of undulations and passes which involve a fair bit of climbing, and when it comes to climbing, the car has to carry the batteries up and over the passes.
I think if I holiday there again I would probably not hire an electric car for the practical inconveniences listed above, although getting an RFID card is a possibility.
Cost: £618 for 10 days car hire, £570 for the sleeper train (London to Inverness), £44 return rail ticket from my home town to London, total £1232 for transportation. This is by far the most expensive way to travel on vacation. If I drove there in my own car and broke the journey in a budget hotel each way it would cost at most a third of the price. Even flying and hiring a conventional petrol car would be much cheaper. An example of how trying to put a lid on one’s carbon footprint results in getting punished in the wallet.
The following recent comment is shadow-banned from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXDWpBlPCY8 (The stylish author tells me he see’s it, but nobody else does):
@grindupBaker Some Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) estimates from 3 climate scientists:
== 4.8 degrees James Hansen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXDWpBlPCY8 at 5:55 from 7 degrees of “ice age” warming.
== 3.3 degrees Andrew Dessler.
== 3 degrees (actually 2.8 which Jim said elsewhere) James Hansen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTTlAAiwgwM at 8:00
from 5 degrees of “ice age” warming.
== 1.6 degrees Richard Lindzen.
== 1.2 degrees Roy Spencer.
== 2.8 * 7/5 = 3.9 and 25 of the 31 PALEOSENS proxy analyses have 3.6 degrees.
The following comment is not shadow-banned from that video above:
@oskarvikstrom229 If the models don´t correspond with the data, adjust the data. And you will get more funding.
The reason for this is 2nd physical science comment is succinct, it’s pithy and pointed and conveys crucial science information in 17 words, the former is long-winded blustering. My comment is obviously just a caution just in case somebody isn’t being pithy, succinct and doing less than 10 sentences per month. I’ve no idea because I never look at these comments, it’s a “just in case”.
Barry:
YouTube does not allow links to outside sites in comments. This is not shadowbanning but standard YT practice over the years. Your 2nd comment got through as it had no links.
Unless discussion on scientific topics have the same rules for everyone, these social forums remain weak,