This month’s open thread on climate-related topics.
Reader Interactions
260 Responses to "Unforced Variations: Feb 2025"
Comment Policy:Please note that if your comment repeats a point you have already made, or is abusive, or is the nth comment you have posted in a very short amount of time, please reflect on the whether you are using your time online to maximum efficiency. Thanks.
The USDA has taken down most website pages that have references to climate change.
The Trump administration has ordered USDA workers to identify, archive, or unpublish materials mentioning climate change by “no later than the close of business this Friday.”
When does the firings of climate scientists begin?
USDA orders removal of climate change mentions from public websites https://abcnews.go.com/US/usda-orders-removal-climate-change-mentions-public-websites/story?id=118312216
Many of the scientists, if they work for the Federal Government, will probably be offered buyouts. Many will probably take it and cry all the way to the bank. Some may be put in other jobs where their skills can be used.
Poor, broke nations drowning in debt cannot help other nations – they cannot even help themselves. That is the path the USA is on. By cutting spending today, if the cuts are significant so that budge deficits are considerably smaller, it may mean we have a greater capacity to borrow money in the future.
Can you think of a situation in which a future administration that believes AGW is an existential threat may be happy to have a greater capacity to borrow money?
Trump and Elon doing us all a YUGE favor.
KIA said “Poor, broke nations drowning in debt cannot help other nations – they cannot even help themselves. That is the path the USA is on. By cutting spending today, if the cuts are significant so that budge deficits are considerably smaller, it may mean we have a greater capacity to borrow money in the future.”
Trump is not cutting spending today to shrink the federal debt or reduce the deficits. By most accounts hes cutting government spending, government jobs and welfare entitlements, to mainly give more tax cuts to rich people and corporates. So the federal debt will increase. Just like Trump cut taxes for the rich last time, and added a whopping great $8 trillion in federal debt. Biden borrowed trillions as well, but it appeared to be spent on welfare programmes for low income people, student loan repayments, and climate change initiatives and covid recovery. Trumps debt record:
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-did-president-trump-add-debt
nj, Here’s the truth – budget deficit by fiscal year (FY), who controlled the House and produced the budget, the calendar dates for the FY, and who signed the budget. (In the USA, the budget is controlled by the House per the Constitution, not by the President, although he does sign it.)
FIscal House Budget Fiscal Year Budget
Year Control Deficit Calendar dates Signed By
FY 2017 – Rep. 0.67 TRILLION – Oct. 2016 to Oct 2017 BHO
FY 2018 – Rep. 0.78 TRILLION – Oct. 2017 to Oct 2018 DJT
FY 2019 – Rep. 0.98 TRILLION – Oct. 2018 to Oct 2019 DJT
FY 2020 – Dem. 3.13 TRILLION!! – Oct. 2019 to Oct 2020 DJT
FY 2021 – Dem. 2.77 TRILLION!! – Oct. 2020 to Oct 2021 DJT
FY 2022 – Rep. 1.38 TRILLION – Oct. 2021 to Oct 2022 JRB
FY 2023 – Rep 1.70 TRILLION – Oct. 2022 to Oct 2023 JRB
FY 2024 – Rep 1.83 TRILLION – Oct. 2023 to Oct 2024 JRB
So, although DJT signed off on 7.66 Trillion in deficits, it was the Democrat controlled House that wrote 5.9 Trillion (77%) of those deficits FOR JUST TWO YEARS! Of course much of that was due to the COVID spending spree made worse by lower revenue due to Democrat shutdowns of the economy.
The “By all accounts…” comment is speculation. By all accounts Trump had no chance to win in 2016, and same in 2024. He won. My numbers are factual history, not speculation.
Sources:
Who controlled the House:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses#Party_divisions_by_Congress
US Deficits by year:
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/#us-deficit-by-year
US Deficits by year confirmed here:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/200410/surplus-or-deficit-of-the-us-governments-budget-since-2000/
More importantly, the truth is that DOGE is finding a lot of wasteful spending, and much of it is very embarrassing to Democrats, some of it may turn out to be unlawful. We know that DOGE is doing the right thing because of all the flak they are taking from Democrats. Can you imagine an entire political party screaming and yelling in protest at seeking out blatant waste of taxpayer dollars? That is exactly what Democrats are doing. What are they hiding? The truth of what they have been doing with our money – that’s what.
KIA,
“Here’s the truth – budget deficit by fiscal year (FY), who controlled the House and produced the budget, the calendar dates for the FY, and who signed the budget. (In the USA, the budget is controlled by the House per the Constitution, not by the President, although he does sign it.)”
Half the truth. The other half of the truth is the budgets were largely based on Trumps policies, he clearly liked the budgets and as you said he signed them off, so Trump is JUST AS COMPLICIT in the huge budget deficits and debt as the House
“FIscal House Budget Fiscal Year Budget….”
You are wasting your time. I’ve already acknowledged Biden spent Trillions. The point is that Biden spent the money on deserving things as per my list. Trump gave money to rich people and mega profitable corporations who clearly don’t need it. Its just greed.
“Of course much of that was due to the COVID spending spree made worse by lower revenue due to Democrat shutdowns of the economy.
Perhaps if Trump had had some commonsense restrictions on the economy early in the pandemic when it would have made a big difference, a million Americans might not be dead. Anyway the American Economy did spectacularly well under Biden according to The Economist.com a leading economics agency, that leans centre right. So what are you going to do? Put your hands over your ears and try to shut the facts out?
“The “By all accounts…” comment is speculation”
My comment was “by most accounts Trumps cutting government spending, government jobs and welfare entitlements, to mainly give more tax cuts to rich people and corporates.”
Not speculation. Here’s one account straight from Trumps mouth: “2 days ago · President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have made extending the 2017 tax cuts under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act a top priority this year. Work to pass a tax bill …”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-07/trump-tax-cuts-will-expire-in-2025-can-he-extend-them-who-benefits
And another: “Jan 10, 2025 · On Friday, the U.S. Treasury released a new analysis of the various ways that extending the expiring individual and estate tax provisions of Trump’s 2017 tax overhaul — …”
https://www.bing.com/search?q=Trump+intends+to+cut+taxes+and+extend+tax+cuts&cvid=494759d61ed2418cb377a69aeee9faf6&aqs=edge..69i57.20071j0j4&FORM=ANAB01&PC=U531
“More importantly, the truth is that DOGE is finding a lot of wasteful spending”
No they aren’t. DOGE is finding spending they don’t like, for various selfish, ideological and delusional reasons. That is a big difference from wasteful spending and providing actual proof its wasteful spending.
NOAA is not wasteful spending. DOGE just don’t like what NOAA says about climate change, so they are trying to shut them down. It’s like the pathetic, scared people who burned books by scientists such as Galilieo and Copernicus. The FBI is not wasteful spending it chases criminals. Foreign aid has benefits for not just those countries but America. Solar and wind power is not wasteful spending, because it’s not cheap energy outcompeting coal. The WHO is not wasteful spending. I could go on all day.
At best Trump might find a few genuine examples of waste, but I bet he wont cut that, he will cut all the things he just doesn’t like.
Even MAGA supporters are turning against Trump and Musk. They have figured out they have been deceived and will be hurt badly by Trumps foolish policies (tariffs, his government cuts, etc,etc.)
KIA, correction to typo. Solar and wind power is not wasteful spending, because it’s now cheap energy outcompeting coal.
KIA: DOGE is finding a lot of wasteful spending
BPL: DOGE was never established by congress, which holds the power of the purse strings. In any case, if you want to investigate wasteful spending, that’s the job of the GAO, which unlike DOGE, is a real agency.
P.S. The wasteful spending found in USAID by DOGE is mostly made up, and the rest is not wasteful. When are you going to stop listening to proven liars?
When Barack Obama came to office, GW Bush handed him a 1.4 trillion dollar deficit on his way out the door. After 127 months of continues economic expansion he handed Trump a 538 billion dollar deficit. Makes you feel nostalgic! The Bush Admiration got a leg up from being the worst in modern history.
Trump had the economic winds at his back when he came to office where Obama faced hurricane force economic winds. Trump promised to end budget deficits and upgrade our infrastructure which he did neither. In promoting his plan to overhaul of the nation’s tax system, President Donald Trump claimed “the rich will not be gaining at all with this plan.”. He and the Republican “deficit hawks” went for tax cuts first then they would get down to cutting spending; like that’s ever happened. The result turned out to be that Trump’s administration had us back to trillion dollar deficits at the end of his third year in office and they would continue after that That was before COVID. Then he fumbled the COVID response and the US economy lost 30% of it’s GDP the 2nd quarter of 2020. China’s economy grew 3% with a complete lock down. So when the consumers aren’t spending and the banks aren’t lending, Mr. Know It All thinks the government should not spend? By the way, Trump insisted that his signature should be on those Covid checks that Democrats took the initiative to help bring back the economy. Republicans would have felt justified in a great depression?
In the end Biden’ made important investments for our future. What did we get from Trumps deficits? When he left office unemployment was 6.5% with 3.3 million fewer jobs while our highways, rails, airports, bridges, ports, damns and other infrastructure didn’t see any major upgrades.
Trump’s Administration will be an Apprentice reality show that will most likely result in making China great again. Unless drill baby drill and the ice vehicles become the future. I think that’s a fools errand.
S: the US economy lost 30% of it’s GDP the 2nd quarter of 2020.
BPL: That doesn’t sound right. Source?
The US GDP does indeed to seem have fallen in real terms by about 30% in Q2 2020, but then grew by about the same amount in Q3 2020.
https://www.bea.gov/news/2021/gross-domestic-product-4th-quarter-and-year-2020-advance-estimate
In pretty much the greatest oxymoron of all time KIA states: “Here’s the truth.”
Given the evidence of many years one can only respond: “Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha…”
The truth is that Borrow and Spend Republicans added every dime to America’s debt load. George bush Jr. added almost 10 trillion himself as a result of his tax cuts to the rich and the pointless war crimes he lied America into committing in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Your table starts at 2017. so you miss the trillions Trump added to the debt with is tax cuts for the wealthy.
Why do feel a need to misrepresent the facts?
To anyone who is interested, google “Starve the beast economic plan”
You will find that creating a massive debt has been a multi-decade plan of the Republicans going back to the 70’s and 80’s who’s purpose was to bankrupt the government for the purpose of transferring as much wealth as possible from the middle and lower class to the wealthy, while at the same time providing an excuse for destroying social programs.
It is treason of course, but Republicans have been traitors for the last 100 years or more.
As usual, MKIA’s comment is a concatenation of crude, clumsy, clownish falsehoods and laughable nonsense.
Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for billionaires INCREASED the US national debt by TRILLIONS of dollars. Extending those tax cuts, as Trump intends to do, would add another $4.6 TRILLION to the national debit. In short, Trump — infamous as the “King Of Debt” — intends to BANKRUPT the USA.
Trump’s ILLEGAL dismantling of the Federal government — in particular of all the scientific and public health related agencies — has NOTHING to do with saving money. It is nothing more or less than an attack on the American people, on the United States as a constitutional democratic republic, as a functioning society, and as an international power.
https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-trump
https://www.budget.senate.gov/chairman/newsroom/press/extending-trump-tax-cuts-would-add-46-trillion-to-the-deficit-cbo-finds
“Trump intends to do, would add another $4.6 TRILLION to the national debt. In short, Trump — infamous as the “King Of Debt” — intends to BANKRUPT the USA.”
What he is doing is all-out ideological stupidity, but not because of debt. He can’t bankrupt the U.S. It can’t go bankrupt. Please study MMT and stop the debt scaremongering.
I guess, “Prepare America for its collapse into third world status” was too long to fit on a baseball cap.
Yes, China was already outcompeting us in many respects–most crucially STEM education and research. With American credibility as economic and security partner now, as Musk put it, “fed into the woodchipper”, a nasty round of inflation (at best) in the cards, and more national *dis*-unity than ever, it looks like we’re living in the Chinese century.
Too bad. I’m rather fond of democracy and the rule of law.
Not that I’m giving up. It’s not an option. But a hell of a lot of damage has been done, and there’s obviously more to follow.
Here’s where my head is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpH639hHjUc
America hasn’t been democracy for a long time.
As to rule of law.. Which rule are you referring to? The rule of international law where America promotes and supports genocide and threatens the ICC for finding genocidal criminals are actually genocidal criminals?
Or is it the rule of law for the American poor?
Or is it the rule of law for the American rich?
Or is it the rule of law where a rapist and multiple count felon is elected to the U.S. presidency?
All America had to do to stay on top was to act morally and ethically.
Instead it acted as a corrupt oligarchy, corrupted itself internally, externally and became one of the most hated nations on Earth as a result.
China on the other hand has acted admirably and has now accented to the be the new global leader.
American propaganda continues to push out the garbage view that China is America’s enemy.
China isn’t America’s enemy.
China is America’s replacement.
Long live the king, baby.
SN: China on the other hand has acted admirably and has now accented to the be the new global leader.
BPL: Admirably? China has 1.5 million Uighurs and Turkmen doing stoop labor in labor camps. They have invaded Tibet and are moving ethnic Han settlers in. They’ve taken back Hong Kong and turned it from a thriving democracy into a cowed subject province. They are still agitating to take over Taiwan. They are trying to intimidate Viet Nam, the Philippines, and Thailand to claim jurisdiction over much more of the ocean than they are legally allowed to do. They have pushed divisive propaganda in the west, though not as successfully as Russia. They have infringed on numerous western patents and copyrights. I could go on all day.
They do respect science and are doing their best to replace fossil fuels with renewables, for which my hat’s off to them. But don’t present them as some kind of paragon. They ain’t.
Scott Nudds, I largely agree with your criticisms of America, and I feel the Trump / Musk combination is just horrendously bad, but I’m not sure how you can claim China has acted admirably. Reasons: Unelected dictatorship, increasingly aggressive actions in the South China Sea, strict controls on free speech, suppression of minority groups, government sponsered cyber warfare. cheating the spirit of free trade by heavily subsidising its exporters, plenty of poverty and billionaires living the high life, this is just a few random examples.
Well, if we are addressing “legal ” claims to the South China Sea lets look at the reat of the Pacific Ocean. Note that New Zealand claims 4.4 MILLION Square kilometers of seabed as Exclusive Economic Zone — this with a population of less tjhan 5 million.
China — with of population of almost 1.5 BILLION — is supposed to be happy with a mere 877,000 sq km.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone#Rankings_by_area
One has to go back to the Opium Wars to see China being screwed like that by Churchill’s English Speaking Peoples. As land mineral deposits are exhausted, seabed mining is becoming a big deal.
Of course, New Zealand seems to also think the Cook Islands are a colony. ( 2 Million EEZ).
But the natives there are finding ..er.. interesting options:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/10/why-a-china-deal-has-set-off-a-cook-islands-new-zealand-spat
Of course, given a choice between the rowboat in New Zealand’s navy and a Chinese air craft carrier, I know where my bet would be placed.
In World War II the US fleet and Marines protected New Zealand when the Japanese showed up. In the subsequent decades, however, US warships were barred from New Zealand’s ports for fear they might be carrying Evil Nukes. Somehow I don’t think Trump will think we should disarm ourselves in order to pander to New Zealand’s moral sensibilities.
Don’t you have a Delta flight to catch?
They think they’re going to stop Climate Change….
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
(ROFLMAO)
Stupid doesn’t even begin to describe these people!
That’s a very clever argument, Chuck. I’m sure it convinced a lot of people.
Gee…a devotee and likely “grad” of the Nelson Muntz School of Science.
JCM 3 Feb 2025 “To Piotr, If you’re content with adjusting variables ad hoc to match observations, then at some point, the modeling exercise ceases to offer meaningful insights”
Sure – if we were studying an unconstrained chaotic system, in which small initial perturbation quickly evolves into massive error. But we don’t – if we did – global avg. temperature anomaly would have been swinging WIDELY from year to year, depending on whether this pesky Lorenz’ butterfly in Amazon flapped its wings left or right.
The GLOBAL CLIMATE and the general circulation models of it are nothing like that – because of the constraining forces, and the local short term variabilities pretty much cancelling each other when averaged globally and over climatological timescale of ~ 30 years. And the uncancelled tiny residual part is corrected for using the observational data that implicitely integrate the effect of ALL processes at play.
Because of the computational limitations – many (most?) of the atmospheric, oceanographic and biogeochemical processes affecting climate are simplified to the limited number of parameters, with values based on the first principles and/or observational data that implicitely integrate most of the underlying complexities.
In this case – to model our problem: “the increase in avg. absolute humidity (AH) with global T”, we have a few choices:
a) use the unadjusted first-principle (Clausius–Clapeyron) Delta AH= +7%/K
b) use the observational AH data = +6%/K
c) use a) adjusted once to reflect the observations – the major reason for the difference between 6% and 7% – is the fact 7% is based implicitely on the assumption of the unchanging relative humidity (RH).
However, both theory and observations tell us that avg. RH is decreasing with T. So we are not satisfied with just using b) – we could use instead the historic decrease in RH to do a one-time adjustment of a)’ 7% – which should bring to, or very close to 6%.
d) or we can go “all JCM” – throw our hands in the air and say that because there may be a decimal point difference between c) and b), and because on the purist grounds we also refuse to use just b)
– then …. then the results the global climate modelling “ cease to offer meaningful insights“.
And what’s your alternative JCM to my applying a single number
based on the observations, or the first principle,modified once for the reduction of RH? Incorporating in each grid and time step of the global circulation model …. the non-existing yet (if possible at all) blocks of code that would numerically (because you won’t have an analytical solution) try to reduce the … small^* uncertainty in the evaporation change signal ???
(^* small= small fraction of the 1% difference between 6% b) and 6.???? % of c) )
The conclusion – JCM uses the unattainable and/or utterly impractical “perfect” – to question the value of the well-working “good” (“ ceasing to offer meaningful insights“). By their fruits you shall know them.
On the Insidiousness of Bullshit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1RO93OS0Sk
If you’re content to tune global change in so-called ESMs to trace gases and aerosols, while fudging everything else with adjustments, that’s your prerogative. But surely, labeling such things as ESMs is misleading, and the audacious claim of the website host that climate science has subsumed all related disciplines is obviously more of an ideal than something in practice.
The entire enterprise by its nature must be designed to detect and attribute what you call “the uncancelled tiny residual part”. What is a 1% change in energy budgets, manifest exclusively through cloud radiative effects, if not precisely that – a tiny uncancelled residual?
CMIP computes a midrange continental ET increase of 0.4 mm/yr (1980–2020), potentially related to a fixed scaling. However, reanalysis and observational trends over the same period show starkly different results:
ERA5L trend: -0.2 mm/yr
FluxNET trend: 0 mm/yr
These discrepancies amount to a missing 5000 cubic km of water over 40 years after adjustment, equivalent to a 5–7% disparity for land, and 1% globally.
It is well established that coupled simulations overestimate water vapor trends. Observed global water vapor responses to surface temperature variability are consistently 4–5% per K across datasets.
Quick calcs based on 1980-2020 figures, a 1K temperature change, and applying a baseline 500mm continental ET:
CMIP
CMIP midrange trend (+0.4 mm/yr over land) → +16 mm over 40 years
This equates to a 3.2% increase in continental ET over that period.
Applying conventional 7% per K Clausius-Clapeyron scaling to oceans (0.7 area proportion) and 3.2% to land (0.3 proportion) yields a 5.86% per K increase globally.
This high bias in CMIP reflects the standard assumption that landscapes passively respond to trace gas and aerosol forcing. Evidently, CMIP fails to account for the perturbed landscape coupling to the atmosphere and the cascading consequences.
Reanalysis
ERA5L trend (-0.2 mm/yr over land) → -8 mm over 40 years
1.6% decrease in continental ET
Globally weighted, this yields a 4.32% per K increase, consistent with observed global near-surface specific humidity trends.
Observation
FluxNet flat continental ET over 40 years → 4.9% per K global vapor response, also in line with observed global water vapor response.
Reanalysis and observation capture a strong signal of increasingly limited continental moisture, invisible in global ESMs. It is glaring that the missing link is the direct human depletion of water tables, surface drainage, ecological destruction, soil deterioration, direct annihilation of fauna, reduced nutrient cycling, and the associated massive continental desiccation. I do not understand what motivates people to refuse this. It seems to be well known everywhere except on climate pages.
Summary:
There is no theoretical basis for why specific humidity should be decreasing across vast swaths of the continents, nor is there any uniform adjustment capturing persistent biases everywhere. As discussed at length – despite your efforts to obfuscate – deficiencies in global hydroclimate parameterizations introduce up to 0.5 K errors in temperature attribution and far more acute attribution problems for unnatural hydrological and temperature extremes.
For any serious practitioner, it is obvious that UNFCCC mandates fail to grasp the extent of ongoing eco-hydrological deterioration, which are captured only under other flimsy frameworks such as UNFCCD and UNCBD. This key issue is introducing significant attribution problems for observed global changes impacting real communities, real climates, and perceived factors of increasing environmental hazards.
The culmination of misguided policy advice, reductionist educational programming, and a dime-a-dozen army of smug, know-it-all, bias-infected, phony-environmentalist-bullshitters is unsettling
(to say the least).
in Re to JCM, 5 Feb 2025 at 12:22 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-829970
Dear Sir,
You are not alone who feels unsettled. A few days ago, Dr. Makarieva published on her blog a text
https://bioticregulation.substack.com/p/seeing-forests-through-clouds-a-300
of a brief to Science that – although it was not published by this respectable journal – might perhaps anyway deserve an attention.
The text of the brief is attached below.
Best regards
Tomáš
—–
Seeing Forests Through Clouds
Goessling et al. (1) link the record-breaking warming anomaly of 2023 to a global albedo decline due to reduced low-level cloud cover. What caused the reduction remains unclear. Goessling et al. considered several geophysical mechanisms, including ocean surface warming and declining aerosol emissions, but did not discuss the biosphere. We propose that disruption of global biospheric functioning could be a cause, as supported by three lines of evidence that have not yet been jointly considered.
First, plant functioning plays a key role in cloud formation (2–7). In one model study, converting land from swamp to desert raised global temperature by 8 K due to reduced cloud cover (8). In the Amazon, the low-level cloud cover increases markedly with the photosynthetic activity of the underlying forest (9).
Second, in 2023, photosynthesis on land experienced a globally significant disruption, as signalled by the complete disappearance of the terrestrial carbon sink (10). Terrestrial ecosystems, which typically absorb approximately one-fourth of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, anomalously ceased this function. This breakdown was attributed to Canadian wildfires and the record-breaking drought in the Amazon (11).
Third, Goessling et al. focus on changes over oceans, but their maps show that some of the largest reductions in cloud cover in 2023 were over land, including over Amazonian and Congolian forests. Another cloud reduction hotspot is evident over Canada. Besides, precipitation over land in 2023 had a major negative anomaly, −0.08 mm/day (12).
Growing pressure on forests is known to induce nonlinear feedbacks, including abrupt changes in ecosystem functioning (13–15). Feedbacks of similar strength in global climate models are unknown (16). The biospheric breakdown in 2023 may have triggered massive cloud cover reduction facilitating the abrupt warming.
If verified, the good news is that the recent extra warmth could wane if the forests partially self-recover. With the many unknowns remaining, we urge more integrative thinking and emphasize the importance of urgently curbing forest exploitation to stabilize both the climate and the biosphere (17,18).
Anastassia M. Makarieva, Andrei V. Nefiodov, Antonio D. Nobre, Luz A. Cuartas, Paulo Nobre, Germán Poveda, José A. Marengo, Anja Rammig, Susan A. Masino, Ugo Bardi, Juan F. Salazar, William R. Moomaw, Scott R. Saleska (authors’ affiliations at https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.17208 )
Cited references
1. H. F. Goessling, T. Rackow, T. Jung, Recent global temperature surge intensified by record-low planetary albedo. Science 387 (6729), 68–73 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adq7280
2. D. F. Zhao, et al., Environmental conditions regulate the impact of plants on cloud formation. Nat. Commun. 8 (1), 14067 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14067
3. T. Dror-Schwartz, I. Koren, O. Altaratz, R. Heiblum, On the abundance and common properties of continental, organized shallow (green) clouds. IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens. 59 (6), 4570–4578 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2020.3023085
4. S. Cerasoli, J. Yin, A. Porporato, Cloud cooling effects of afforestation and reforestation at midlatitudes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 118 (33), e2026241118 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas. 2026241118
5. G. Duveiller, et al., Revealing the widespread potential of forests to increase low level cloud cover. Nat. Commun. 12, 4337 (2021), https://doi.org10.1038/s41467-021-24551-5
6. R. Xu, et al., Contrasting impacts of forests on cloud cover based on satellite observations. Nat. Commun. 13, 670 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28161-7
7. D. Ellison, J. Pokorný, M. Wild, Even cooler insights: On the power of forests to (water the Earth and) cool the planet. Glob. Change Biol. 30 (2), e17195 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17195
8. M. M. Laguë, G. R. Quetin, W. R. Boos, Reduced terrestrial evaporation increases atmospheric water vapor by generating cloud feedbacks. Environ. Res. Lett. 18 (7), 074021 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acdbe1.
9. R. H. Heiblum, I. Koren, G. Feingold, On the link between Amazonian forest properties and shallow cumulus cloud fields. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 14 (12), 6063–6074 (2014), https://doi.org/10.5194/ acp-14-6063-2014
10. P. Ke, et al., Low latency carbon budget analysis reveals a large decline of the land carbon sink in 2023. Natl. Sci. Rev. 11 (12), nwae367 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwae367
11. J.-C. Espinoza, et al., The new record of drought and warmth in the Amazon in 2023 related to regional and global climatic features. Sci. Rep. 14 (1), 8107 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-58782-5.
12. R. F. Adler, G. Gu, Global precipitation for the year 2023 and how it relates to longer term variations and trends. Atmosphere 15 (5), 535 (2024), https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos15050535
13. D. C. Zemp, et al., Self-amplified Amazon forest loss due to vegetation-atmosphere feedbacks. Nat. Commun. 8, 14681 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14681
14. A. M. Makarieva, et al., The role of ecosystem transpiration in creating alternate moisture regimes by influencing atmospheric moisture convergence. Glob. Change Biol. 29 (9), 25362556 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16644
15. B. M. Flores, et al., Critical transitions in the Amazon forest system. Nature 626 (7999), 555–564 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06970-0
16. W. R. Boos, T. Storelvmo, Reply to Levermann et al.: Linear scaling for monsoons based on well-verified balance between adiabatic cooling and latent heat release. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 113 (17), E2350–E2351 (2016), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1603626113
17. W. R. Moomaw, S. A. Masino, E. K. Faison, Intact forests in the United States: Proforestation mitigates climate change and serves the greatest good. Front. For. Glob. Change 2 (2019), https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2019.00027
18. A. M. Makarieva, A. V. Nefiodov, A. Rammig, A. D. Nobre, Re-appraisal of the global climatic role of natural forests for improved climate projections and policies. Front. For. Glob. Change 6 (2023), https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2023.1150191
thanks for this Tomas.
Goessling clearly shows the most significant reductions in low cloud fraction over land. However, in ASR anomalies, the relatively minor cloud changes over the ocean stand out more due to the underlying surface properties, drawing the most (or only?) attention. Goessling failed to make any remark about it.
It could be argued somewhat that the patterns of cloud cover change qualitatively resemble Lague’s CESM idealized landscape experiments in: “Reduced terrestrial evaporation increases atmospheric water vapor by generating cloud feedbacks.”, which emphasized the importance of remote ocean connections in generating amplifying water vapor feedback stemming from continental desiccation. An outcome some still find paradoxical. But, of course, there are many human related factors at play in addition to large scale circulation changes.
Interestingly, for those focused on shipping aerosol impacts, clear-sky ASR anomalies over the ocean from 2013–2022 are non existent This suggests that direct aerosol effects are not apparent, which poses a challenge to Hansen et al.’s conclusions.
I suspect in the end, somewhat cynically, that unexpected cloud changes will be simply attributed to generic emergent warming feedback, with constraints adjusted accordingly.
JCM: “ On the Insidiousness of Bullshit: https://www.youtube.com…
Who needs Youtube, when we have … your body of work?
JCM: If you’re content to tune global change in so-called ESMs to trace gases and aerosols, while fudging everything else with adjustments
A classic denier’s insistence on calling the GHGs mere “trace gases” – to imply that if they are “trace gases” then they must have “trace” influence on the climate. Ask yourself – if JCM offered you a tea and assured you that polonium-210 was present there only in “trace” conc. – would you drink it?
(1g of it is enough to kill 50 mln of people – assuming 60kg per person thats 1/300,000,000,000.
That’s 0.0000000003% vs. 0.04% of “trace” CO2.
And isn’t JCM hobby horse – water vapour – on average only about 6 times more abundant than CO2? And to make it better – its contribution to AGW – is entirely dependent of the influence of …these trace gases – more Co2 warms Earth – water vapour makes the warming larger, less Co2 cools the Earth – water vapour makes the cooling larger.
And while humans HAVE a major influence on “the trace gasses”, they have practically no influence on water vapour, which residence time in air, and thus the influence on the climate – is measured in DAYS, compared to DECADES for CO2.
So yes – when studying AGW – it makes sense to concentrate on the DRIVERS of AGW, and represent the non-drivers through a combination of simple first-principle functions, and observations – which our dear JCM tries to discredit as “fudging everything else“.
To my question: “And what’s your ALTERNATIVE, JCM “? – no answer- for some reason didn’t suggest a BETTER (and workable!) alternative in which all biogeochemical processes that might affect climate could be explicitly modelled in every grid element and in every time-step of a global circulation model.
But it all makes sense from the psychological point of view – if I, JCM , can see problems that Gavin and other top climate modellers in the world can’t, or won’t, then I, JCM, must be very, very, very smart!
In Re to Piotr, 9 Feb 2025 at 12:48 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-830074
Hallo Piotr,
I do not think that people serving “Russian tea” with polonium would tell you. I am, however, quite sure that JCM does not belong to them.
As regards your belief that “its (water vapour) contribution to AGW – is entirely dependent of the influence of …these trace gases – more Co2 warms Earth – water vapour makes the warming larger”, I would like to remind you that there is at least one publication (Lague et al, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acdbe1 ) suggesting that it is not as simple as you describe it in your post. This work suggests that the vapour (and cloud) response may (both) depend not only from intensity of back-radiation from the sky due to increased CO2 concentration, but also from water availability for evaporation from the land.
There are hints that during holocene, humans strongly interfered with land hydrology. If so, your belief that humans “have practically no influence on water vapour” may be incorrect as well, because the residence time of water vapour in atmosphere does not have a fixed value but strongly depends also from water availability for evaporation.
For these reasons, I am afraid that if climate science will treat water availability for evaporation as a fixed parameter and not as one of climate drivers, it may hamper further progress in its understanding how the climate works.
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomas Kalisz: I do not think that people serving “Russian tea” with polonium would tell you. I am, however, quite sure that JCM does not belong to them.
Def. “metaphor”: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.”
Hint- I didn’t suggest that JCM is killing his opponents with polonium 210 – I illustrated by a METAPHOR the fallacy of JCM implication that “trace” substances can have only “trace” impacts – which he then used to justify his attacks onto climate modelling:
“ It’s hard to imagine denying or actively minimizing the consequences to realclimates due to an artificial fixation and overemphasis on the outputs of trace gas and aerosol forced model estimates ” [(c) JCM, June 2024]
TK As regards your belief that “its (water vapour) contribution to AGW – is entirely dependent of the influence of …these trace gases – more Co2 warms Earth – water vapour makes the warming larger”
A “belief”? No, it’s a falsifiable argument that neither you nor your fellow “anything but GHGs” deniers were able to DISPROVE by offering a MECHANISM in which direct (I.e. not the result of GHGs increasing T) human CHANGES in evaporation could mitigate a significant portion of AGW.
TK: I would like to remind you that there is at least one publication (Lague et al, 2023) suggesting that it is not as simple as you describe it in your post.
I would like to remind you” ;-) No need – we do remember the eggs on your and JCM’s faces after you tried to use that Lague et al, 2023 in support of your “anything but GHGs” denialism and your attacks on the credibility of the mainstream climate science.
In fact, I and others have used the very paper you speak of – to quantify the laughably small “AGW reduction return on investment” of human interventions in evaporation, namely,
– I have shown the idiocy of Tomas Kalisz’s modest proposal of spending … tens of trillions of dollars annually, for hundreds of years, to achieve, after ignoring resulting GHG emissions …. a fraction of 0.3K reduction in AGW (your Sahara irrigation scheme). The proposal so absurd that even your JCM was at pains to distance himself from you.
– patrick and I used Lague et la. numbers to show that even if we abandoned ALL AGRICULTURE – the cooling effect of the increased evaporation would be a fraction of a fraction of 0.3K, and that ignoring concurrent warming from the decreased land albedo (forest being darker than soil or crops).
Unable to falsify this – your JCM … threw his own source ( Lague et al.) under the bus, tried to discredit Lague et al, and by extension, ALL climate modeling as: “ imaginary process mechanisms ” using “ rules about how things ought to be” (c) JCM July 2024.
All of which was already explained to you – see my 20 Jul 2024 post:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/06/unforced-variations-july-2024/#comment-823334
But thank you for reminding us of your and JCM intellectual capacity and integrity.
With friends like you, who needs enemies?
In Re to Piotr, 11 Feb 2025 at 11:15 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-830130
Hallo Piotr,
Thank you for your feedback, to which I would like to add a few additional remarks.
1) metaphors
I have nothing against metaphors showing that trace components may still exhibit significant effects. Nevertheless, I would prefer a metaphor that does not associate JCM with poisoning people.
2) human influence on water vapour concentration in atmosphere
Previous discussions suggest that there is no reliable global reconstruction of past climate yet as regards precipitation and its distribution between land and sea. Accordingly, it is also difficult to assess the influence of human preindustrial activities thereon.
There are hints that human activities contributed to land desiccation / desertification in some regions. I therefore consider both (i) past land hydrology as well as (ii) possible human contribution to its past changes for still open questions
It appears that there are no studies yet, clarifying the open question if climate sensitivity towards GHG concentration may depend on land hydrology. The single modelling study by Lague et al, suggesting the influence of water availability for evaporation from the land on global climate, may be in my opinion seen as a hint that the above mentioned open questions deserve more thorough research. I doubt that this single publication justifies your bold conclusion that human influence on global climate through interferences with land hydrology is/was negligible. In this respect, I am afraid that your conclusion may be premature.
3) proposed spendings
Actually, the research directed to above mentioned open questions is the sole thing which I proposed. I hope that trillions USD are not necessary therefor.
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomas Kalish I would prefer a metaphor that does not associate JCM with poisoning people.
Which part of NOT “literal” in the definition of the metaphor you don’t understand? Nobody “associated” JCM with “literally” poisoning others with polonium 210, as you accused me in your original reply:
TK “ I am quite sure that JCM does not belong to the [people poisoning the opponents with polonium 210)”
So no, I didn’t say that JCM tries to poison you with Po-210. My METAPHOR illustrated the intellectual dishonesty of the deniers using the phrase “trace gases” to suggests that “trace gasses” can have only “trace effects” on the climate by showing that even a “trace amount” of a toxin can have not-trace effects (1 g of Po-210 could kill 50 mln people).
And if you want to discuss the _metaphorical_ poisoning – the “anything but GHGs” deniers like JCM and you – do try to “poison” the minds of people, and by doing so – help the fossil fuel interests to delay and weaken mitigation of the GHGs. Consequently, both JCM and you, are morally responsible for supporting the actions that would cause ADDITIONAL future deaths from the delayed/weakened GHG mitigation.
And another parallel is in the question: “who benefits” – both the actual poisoning, and your “anything but GHGs” denial – serve the interests of Russia – yours because Putin’s power, economy and ability to wage war on others DEPENDS on the world continuing to buy their fossil fuels. Whether you serve the imperial interests of Russia as deliberate agents, or as Russia’s “useful idiots” who do it for their ideology and/or psychological needs ( I am a fiercely independent mind, that can see what the world’s top climate scientist can’t or won’t)
is of a secondary importance.
By their fruits, not their motivations, you shall know them.
TK: 2) there is no reliable global reconstruction of past climate yet as regards precipitation and its distribution between land and sea
Irrelevant to your claim that we can affect the FUTURE AGW by modifying TODAY’S patterns evaporation.
And what a strange argument from the mouth of somebody who just few days ago … didn’t need “the reliable global reconstruction of past climates”, I quote:
TK “ I would like to remind you that there is at least one publication (Lague et al)
[supposedly refuting my argument – P.]”
even though that Lague et al. has …. NO “reconstruction of past climate” AT ALL.
Do as I patronizing lecture you, not as I do?
Doge staffers enter NOAA headquarters and incite reports of cuts and threats: Members reportedly sought access to IT systems at agency that Project 2025 has called ‘harmful to US prosperity’ – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/04/doge-noaa-headquarters
“They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,’ and they’re looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former Noaa official who is now a fellow at the University of New Hampshire. “They will have access to the entire computer system, a lot of which is confidential information.”
Project 2025, written by several former Trump staffers, has called for the agency to be “broken up and downsized”, claiming the agency is “harmful to US prosperity” for its role in climate science.
Rosenberg noted it’s been a longtime goal of corporations that rely on Noaa data to prevent the agency from making the data public, instead of giving it directly to private corporations that create products based on it, such as weather forecasting services.
Are we at peak obscurantism and anti-science yet? It’s a critical time to resume the discussion started by Gavin on science as value free and expand it to scientists must be engaged in advocacy and elected office. Advocacy for what? For science as foundational to knowledge, to human civilization, to modernity, to survival of our species and of the biosphere. For science as foundational to democracy and policies for the common good. For protection against obscurantism and ignorance. If not, we will be soon “reality free”.
I cannot access at the moment the Mauna Loa Observatory website, but NOOA’s main website is still accessible.
Is anybody archiving all the government data that is now being taken down? I tried to use the wayback machine for Mauna Loa Lab, but cannot find recent data. Probably because I don’t know how to search. Can anybody help?
I poked around without much success.
FWIW there’s this
https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20220523044300/https://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/earth/gcdc/
and this
https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20220523090339/https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.php/acd/campaigns/mauna-loa
Entering
“mauna loa observatory” “data archived”
in Google gives an AI generated list of places data is archived… officially
https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/
Today I was unable to access two NOAA websites –
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/ (SSTs, OLR, etc.)
and
https://gml.noaa.gov/grad/solcalc/ (NOAA solar calculator)
The Trump staffers and his entire administration are acting like fascist thugs, and the ancient book burners.
Shoud the last paragraph read like this: “……. instead, giving it directly to private corporations that create products based on it,…….”
Seems to make more sense if you remove the “of” between instead and giving.
I’ll bet that data is backed up at least daily to a remote location.
Be optimistic: 16 days down and ONLY 1,445 to go. That’ll go by in a flash!
KiA: “16 days down and ONLY 1,445 to go”
why so pessimistic? If Putin could have removed constitutional presidential term limitations – so can your Idol.
He has everything Putin had to do it – support of the country’s oligarchs, control of the Supreme Court, control of the media through their oligarch owners, country’s administration, intelligence and armed forces led by the people whose only qualification is the blind loyalty to the Great Leader, a ruling party that when asked to jump, ask only “how high?”, opposition persecuted and chased from their position of influence replaced by the party loyalists and large segment of the population for whom he CAN’T do no wrong – because either he advances and defends “Christian values” and removes separation of the religion and state, or because he restores the past imperial glory to their country, and one who appeals to their national and individual egoism at the expense of the vilified “others”.
So if Trump’s role model, somebody he called a “genius” with whom he has “great relationship” could do it – why not his pupil?
The outrageous removal of public information is proceeding at an astonishingly rapid pace. I was a more than a little staggered by a suggestion that scientists
unpublish
anything mentioning climate change/global warming
https://thinc.blog/2025/02/01/problem-solved-trump-begins-purging-climate-change-from-us-websites/
Also, an order has gone out to stop the installation of electric charging stations!
Musk benefits from getting rid of government help with charging stations, as they are in competition with him.
Same with the Consumer Financial Protection Board. There are many other instances of Trump’s removal of safeguards and public benefits which benefit Musk as well as many other profitable industries, fossil and financial, pharma, etc.
His trip to the Superbowl cost $11 million; the latest of his continuous use of US funds for personal projects.
SA,
Yes, indeed. To which I’d add that if you only look at the situation from the perspective of climate, you might get the impression, that other safeguards might be in place to help “bounce back” at a later date. I think that’s doubtful.
As we’re in a time where we need to turn to comedians for perspective that the msm doesn’t normally provide, check Seth Myers last night on what Musk/Trump (Mump?) are up to and how they benefit from dismantling the government.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxMFqzoKU20
(~12 min.)
Also, you have to wonder; What do you do if you’re emotionally stunted and have enough money and power to buy the world’s richest and most powerful country? What’s left to do? It must be an awful bore… Might as well get in touch with your inner juvenile delinquent, have a big party, and throw everything into the wood chipper. These are some seriously sick f***s.
I would suggest Trump has some form of narcissistic personality disorder. Google the symptoms. Musk has Aspergers syndrome and takes ketamine for severe depression. Both severe depression and ketamine can affect cognitive decision making and create paranoid delusions..
I have a ton of sympathy for people with these conditions but having Trump and Musk in high levels of government is incredibly dangerous. Their policies are mostly completely irrational or very self interested and to hell with ordinary people or the natural environment.
>”Doge staffers enter NOAA headquarters and incite reports of cuts and threats…”
Am I the only one who finds the title and the entire situation utterly surreal? For anyone who understands Musk’s infatuation with cryptocurrency, it’s pretty clear what the “Doge” – a government agency that isn’t really government agency – is a reference to and after seeing this – https://web.archive.org/web/20250121062633/https://www.doge.gov/ – it’s even more obvious. In other words: there are now a bunch of cryptobros in key positions of power with little understanding of the problem domain whatsoever lead by a divorced funny dog cryptocurrency space guy who just so happens to own one of the largest social media platforms in the world and is a right-wing accelerationist.
What the hell is happening?
Did the simulation break on January 20? Suddenly, climate scientists have troubles explaining extra heat, US president is doing blatant crypto scams, Hansen declares 2C dead, random people are roaming the governmental agencies… and it hasn’t even been a month.
It’s just so bizarre.
“Surreal.” While you were sleeping…
Julian, you’re not alone. My first go-to was “absurdist.” Last night on Washington Week the word was “Dadaist.”
One night, years ago, I was sleeping in my apartment and suddenly woke up to a bright orange light shining through my curtains. I went out to make sense of it, and imagine my confusion and shock when confronted with a wall of flames.
Turns out some college students had been barbecuing on a porch of the complex next door. When they were done, they had just dumped the hot ashes into the shrubbery below and, long story short, their building burned down. (Fortunately ours didn’t catch.)
AOC: “What’s Happening & How You Can Take Action”
…take a deep breath and self-regulate…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVgNJf6CsBA
It’s off-the-cuff and runs long, but she has a respectably analytic turn of mind in her approach to the matter, imo, no doubt due in part to her early interest in science (sp. microbiology).
And where were the physical bodies to prevent them from entering and touching he keyboards?
No where. Why?
Cowards everywhere.
The choice is to resist or lose all of your country.,
So far the choice has been to lose your country.
Personally I don’t care if you lose your country or not. It’s just entertainment to me to watch the American people and American scientists who know better, cower before fascists.
Back to climate science. Today class, let’s look at the California wildfires:
Victor Davis Hansen on the leadership failures:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7VwqPIhI5y4
Victor Davis Hansen explains the Central Valley Project:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jb8MFevyDvA
Victor Davis Hansen on questions raised by the fires:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NN5wgyJzmys
Victor Davis Hansen on the CA wildfires and DEI:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BJldyWx-4xY
The above short videos are all part of a much longer video – the CA wildfire discussion starts at about 25:00 in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-1RZML5FnE
The DEI stuff is especially obnoxious, but the whole thing is basically crap.
S: the US economy lost 30% of it’s GDP the 2nd quarter of 2020.
BPL: That doesn’t sound right. Source?
Stranger: The coronavirus pandemic triggered the sharpest economic contraction in modern American history, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.
Gross domestic product — the broadest measure of economic activity — shrank at an annual rate of 32.9% in the second quarter as restaurants and retailers closed their doors in a desperate effort to slow the spread of the virus, which has killed more than 150,000 people in the U.S.
In that case, the US economy lost 32.9%/4 (i.e., 8.22%) of it’s GDP during the 2nd quarter of 2020 and not 30%.
Victor Davis Hansen appears to be a historian, classicist, and conservative commentator. He has no expertise in science, forest fires, management of forest fires or in urban design or in technolgy. Sorry Im not going to waste my time on his videos.
He understands the water supply of California very well. His family has farmed there for several generations. That is what he was discussing, not climate science. He also understands the politics because he lives there and pays attention. You don’t have to be a scientist to understand that the information he presented is irrefutably true.
If he’s such a California farm expert, then I’m sure he knows that flooding fields now and having much less reserve water for later in the season–for FARMERS–and having none of that water get to LA is a pretty stupid idea.
Apparently you do not.
KIA: He understands the water supply of California very well. His family has farmed there for several generations.
BPL: So farmers are experts on the physics of climate and hydrology? Who knew?
BPL: “ So farmers are experts on the physics of climate and hydrology? Who knew?”
It’s actually better – it’s the “historian, classicist, and conservative commentator.” who is KiA’s expert on the physics of climate and hydrology, because … his ancestors were farmers.
It is as if somebody touted his mental competency because ….he was related to an MIT professor. Nobody could be such a naked idiot, right? Right??
“Trump Touts Cognitive Skills Citing He’s Related to an MIT Professor“
I had a comment on your videos, but it didn’t get posted.
The talker is a pseudoscientist and a Youtube video is not peer reviewed.
Uh, VDH has no scientific background or training. Of COURSE you would get your “scientific climate information” from a highly trained classicist!
I’m sure the answers to all your climate questions are in a scroll somewhere! For the rest of us, well we’ll look at rather more rational sources.
Hey, right! I mean, wasn’t Monckton a (partially) trained classicist? And his information on climate was so–er, exemplary!
Victor Davis Hanson was a well-known scholar and writer who wrote about military history at the end of the last century and into the beginning of this century. After taking a foolish position in favor of George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq, and praising Donald Rumsfeld (!), he lost a lot of credibility as an independent thinker and currently thrives in the wingnut welfare environment of National Review, the Claremont Institute and the Hoover Institution. He has no expertise in climate science of course, and the above cited videos are useless to all but the most stubborn deniers.
Meanwhile, the dumbest man to ever hold the presidency (and the subject of a book written by the above cited VD Hanson) opined that California simply had to turn on a valve, located somewhere in the state, and the water would flow from the Pacific Northwest, downhill to Southern California. North is up on a map, South is down. To prove just how little he knows about California water, he ordered the military to release a couple billion gallons of water, allotted to farmers in the central valley for irrigation use next summer, where it uselessly flooded fields 200 miles away from the LA fires, a week too late.
https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/california-reservoirs-lose-water-trump-20147181.php
To the “How did I get to this point?” question: after citing an arguably pro-segregationist political position that is being used to eliminate positions held by minorities and women, Trump is obviously mentally ill and VD Hanson is getting paid to opine with clicks and views, but just making a science blog worse for everybody else can’t be all that fulfilling. Better to speculate about all the new land that Trump says will be created by rising sea levels.
After all the years on Real Climate, you still resort to non-science, non-peer reviewed work. Further proof that you are not hear to learn a thing. And reflecting very poorly about your failure to learn the scientific method. Or your ability to ascertain facts and not just scientific ones (see your vile comments after the Pittsburgh synagogue shootings for exhibit A).smdh
The answer sadly, is the reason that nazis were handed power. The rest of the Weimar politicians were either complacent, afraid, or thought they could take advantage. Or worse, they believed what the Nazis were selling. Either way they let the cancer spread until it was too late.
Tomáš Kalisz: “ If […] how JCM several times mentioned”
and here is your problem.
In re to Piotr, 4 FEB 2025 AT 10:32 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-829931
Dear Piotr,
Thank you for the detailed explanation of your view. If the amount of an “adjustable” surface energy flow (that is in each specific model distributed arbitrarily among latent heat, sensible heat and radiation, to achieve a fit with reality) is as high as about 20 W/ m2 – how JCM several times mentioned – then I would agree that there are constraints but I would not say that the range is “tiny”.
Greetings
Tomáš
zebra (comment @UV January),
The detail of the annual CO2 cycle is indeed an attractive set of data for those wanting to see what is afoot in the carbon cycle but any grown-up analysis does need some considerable respectfulness.
For instance, just consider that the rate of the annual CO2 rise relative to the size of the annual wobble is three-times more today than in 1959. This will itself have a big effect on timing of those annual max and min (which Curran & Curran are analysing). Thus, if the annual cycle were a constant sine wave atop the rate of CO2 increase, we would expect to see the max arriving 7-days later and the min 7-days earlier. What we actually see in the MLO data is the max arriving later during the period 1959-2000, roughly 10-days later, but after 2000 perhaps tending to arrive earlier by a handful of days. And the minimum has been tending to arrive later throughout, again by about 10-days.
Such complications as this mean any simplistic approach just won’t hack it.
Mind, with the area of natural biosphere ever-shrinking and plant-life experiencing CO2 levels they haven’t met for 15 million years, this on top of the many effects AGW is imposing onto it, the ability of the biosphere to absorb its share of the ever-increasing levels of carbon should not be assumed.
MA, here’s that article again:
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.7668#msdynttrid=UeW6EaXg5nRRG7_TUg_rzg0GFx9MuZrUFfE1EukXHbY
They are only talking about the value of the difference (d in fig.1 ), I don’t see any reference to timing. I don’t think anyone disagrees with the physics of NH vegetation being the primary factor in that d number.
You seem to be talking about the length of seasons, which I don’t think anyone questions as undergoing change.
WRT your last paragraph, here’s a well-written discussion:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332223002476
zebra,
Indeed, they are “only talking about the value of the difference”; that is the difference between the annual peaks and dips in the Keeling curve. And they also do it very badly. My presenting the timing of those peaks & dips was to show an example of the many reasons not to use the peaks & dips in such a simplistic manner.
For the record, I have uploaded a graphic here “First Posted 1th Feb 2025” plotting the “value of the difference” as well as the “terrestrial sink” numbers from the Global Carbon Project 2024 budget, the latter showing the “value of the difference” triples over the period, as does the anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
MA, I know the danger of eyeballing graphs, but look at the Global Carbon plot you present… seems like a very clear flattening that coincides with what the Curran boys are saying. Remember, they are concurring with the long term increase, just suggesting it has slowed/slightly reversed.
(And yeah, their plot exaggerates the effect a little, but come on.)
BTW did you read the reference about various potential mechanisms?
ebra,
You ask if I had read “the reference about various potential mechanisms.”
I’m not sure if you mean Penuelas (2023) <‘Decreasing efficiency and slowdown of the increase in terrestrial carbon-sink activity’. But if you do, he doesn’t himself say a great deal of interest and I wasn’t very impressed with his numerical pronouncements** although he does cite references (which I haven’t read) that maybe do tackle their numbers properly.
(**Penuelas (2023) kicks-off boldly tells us “Recent estimates suggest that human activities emit around 40 billion tonnes of CO2 each year, with approximately one-third absorbed by land-based ecosystems, one-half remaining in the atmosphere, and the rest absorbed by the oceans, this suggesting a 50%, 33%, 17% split between Af, Terretrial & Ocean. GCP numbers put it 45%, 30% 25%. And if we do ever manage to get round to properly reducing our CO2 emissions, both the Af & Terrestrial will soon sink to zero while Ocean will shoot off above 100% and “to infinity and beyond.!!”
MAR and zebraL For a moment, I read that as the “value of indifference”!
Tomáš Kalisz (comment @UV January),
In answer to your quesition “Am I right?”, no, you are wrong.
In their various papers, Curran & Curran did not strive “to “delineate” (in the Keeling curve, from each other) the contribution from fossil fuels combustion and the contribution from other sources, usually summarized as “land use”.” Anthropogenic emissions comprise Fossil Fuel Use (usually quoted as including “Industrial Processes” which are basically ‘cement production’) and Land Use Change. The increased biosphere carbon sink due to the elevation of atmospheric CO2 and global temperature & longer growing season due to AGW, which is what Curran & Curran were considering, is not seen as ‘anthropogenic’ and is accounted separately from Land Use Change.
This being the case, your further questions are not meaningful.
In Re to MA Rodger, 6 Feb 2025 at 5:40 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-829992
and 6 Feb 2025 at 5:45 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-829993
Dear MA Rodger,
Many thanks for your explanations.
Best regards
Tomáš
P.S.
I am still curious about methods enabling that the non-anthropogenic “changes in the carbon sink” are separated from anthropogenic CO2 emissions due to “land use change”.
And, of course, about methods enabling that both of these contributions to the observed changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations are separated from CO2 emissions due to athropogenic fossil fuel combustion (and cement production).
Can someone advise?
MA Rodger: clear and uncomplicated:
“Am I right” no, you are wrong …. This being the case, your further questions are not meaningful.
This may not be the case in other extended arguments, but when it is, that should be the end.
It’s remarkably quite in here….
Silence == Complicity.
Back to climate science it is: the latest –03 Feb 2025, Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?, from JE Hansen, et al https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00139157.2025.2434494
The paper Hansen et al (2025) ‘Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?’ runs to 20,000 words although this is including a 4,000-word Jim Hansen ‘Epilogue’. I would suggest such a presentation is not the best way of setting out apparently new science, which it seems to purport to be.
I am somewhat sceptical of the thesis that the “bananas” temperatures of 2023/24 can have resulted from a climate forcing but maybe there is something buried within those 20,000 words that stacks up enough to support this climate forcing theory.
Also note the 2023 study Global warming in the pipeline
https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889?login=false and see the related video https://climatestate.com/2024/07/01/climate-scientists-discuss-research-on-global-warming/
In my opinion Lovelock was spot on in 2009 when he showed his temperature chart and the sudden jump, but with a potential jump to 8 or 10C around 2050. https://climatestate.com/2015/09/02/abrupt-climate-change-theory-lovelock-and-white/
chris: “In my opinion Lovelock was spot on in 2009 when he showed his temperature chart and the sudden jump, but with a potential jump to 8 or 10C around 2050.”
And how would you know that the “jump to 8 or 10C around 2050” is “spot on”? Driven a time-machine lately?
.. with a potential of a second jump later … but Lovelock is spot on!
You have a long record of scientific reticence and an equally long record of being wrong due to that reticence. Hansen, OTH, has been the most accurate climate scientist for nearly 40 years.
His paper from 2015 actually UNDERestimated ice melt, yet was rejected by the IPCC. Egg on faces.
Increase in energy imbalance doubled in 10-14 years. I warned about this, and the general expectation of doublings and tripling propagating in the climate system within this time frame back in 2007.
So, uh, yeah… maybe we won’t take your serious underestimations very seriously?
This is not a criticism, BTW, or even a critique, it’s just observations because our Dear Readers need to know to whom to listen, and that simply is not you. That said, skeptics are part of the balance of discourse, which is why I do not take umbrage at your post, merely pointing out it’s actual value.
Cheers
Killian says : “You (MAR) have a long record of scientific reticence and an equally long record of being wrong due to that reticence. ”
I don’t recall MAR having a long record of being wrong due to his reticence. Could you please provide copy and paste quotes by MAR where you claim he is wrong, and give your reasons why you think he was wrong. Big claims criticising other people need proof – copy and paste quotes and dates and times.
My recollection is that MAR seems to subscribe to the middle range climate projections or a little bit higher. It should be noted that thus far warming has been following middle range projections and SLR slightly above middle range projections. Refer to the model data comparisons on this website. So it’s not clear how MAR has been wrong.
Warming over 2023 and 2024 is obviously a short term acceleration that could herald a step change in warming, maybe due to AGW or aerosols reductions, but the data is too short term to be conclusive, and it was influenced by el nino. I think that the warming this year will be very revealing on whether there has been a step change especially as its a la nina. year so should be cooling. Regardless of all this the general warming trend since the 1970s looks dangerous.
As per the above I posted, well, here is a perfect example:
Warming over 2023 and 2024 ***is obviously a short term*** acceleration that ***could herald a step change*** in warming,
Both cannot be true. GIGO. Try this:
Warming over 2023 and 2024 is ***potentially*** a short term acceleration that ***could herald*** a step change in warming,
Or just… Shhhh. I mean, it’s been since 2016. Isn’t 8+ years enough GIGO?
Killian, I’m not seeing any inconsistency in what I said. The warming rate over the two years 2023 – 2024 looks steeper than the warming over 2018 – 2020 to me (NASA GISS land and ocean, just eye balling the graph but its fairly obvious) so this would signify an acceleration (change in rate) relative to those previous couple of years. Given its proving hard to see how the unusually high temperatures in 2023 – 2024 could be just due to short term natural variation, it looks like it could herald a step change in anthropogenic warming, meaning towards an ongoing higher rate of anthropogenic warming than previously. Two years is much too short term to be certain of course.
The trend in the NASA GISS land ocean index 2019 – 2024 is steeper than 2011 -2019 (just eye balling but its rather obvious), meaning warming accelerated after 2019 relative to the previous 9 year period, and this seems largely due to the temperatures in 2023 – 2024. Again this steeper trend could possibly continue. The trend from 2011 – 2024 also looks slightly steeper to me than 1994 – 2011, meaning an acceleration started around 2011. Tamino confirmed this in an analysis.
Made a post on this extensive paper.
Study: The acceleration of global warming may cut off key ocean current by 2050 https://climatestate.com/2025/02/07/study-the-acceleration-of-global-warming-may-cut-off-key-ocean-current-by-2050/
Can someone summarise how the sea level rise works in response to AMOC slowing and or shutdown?
From the new Hansen study
The current rate of SLR is increasing (NASA atm 3.4mm/yr) and will progress for some time after we stopped all emissions, the only constraint appears to be the bedrock topography, see also (watch from ca59mins in) https://climatestate.com/2019/07/24/is-antarctic-ice-sheet-disintegrating-summary-1990/ Barclay Kamb said hundred of meters a day surge can move the ice out on the order of decades.
A non-linear process, because discharge-surge progression is abstract, depends on the ground below.
The best analog we have is MWP1A
chris The best analog we have is MWP1A
Another one who uses scientific terms and data, understanding nothing what they mean.
“Meltwater pulse 1A” would be “ the best analog we have” to the current and near future SLR – only IF we had today a giant body of water from recently melting several km thick N.American ice sheet, water trapped behind the remnants of the ice sheet, and waiting to be released into the ocean.
Without that, MWP1A is not the best, but one of the worst analogs to the modern SLR. And a false analogy is worse than an admitted ignorance – it’s a negative knowledge – it uses the appearance of being grounded in science to promote the OPPOSITE to what the science implies.
The deniers (Kalisz, JCM, KiA, Woollard, etc.) and doomers (chris, the various Dharma’s personalities) are using science as a drunkard a lamp post – not for illumination, but for support (and/or target of their urination -when they try to discredit climate science).
The question is also if it is feasible, possible to build anti surge barriers at the grounding line.
Having got halfway through reading the 20,000-word paper Hansen et al (2025) ‘Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?’, (with a further 10,000 words of Supplementary Material) I have some understanding of where it is going and what it is wielding to support that journey.
Below is a first installment of comment.
The Hansen et al thesis rests on established understanding that the climate-impacts of SO2 pollution are poorly quantified and thus have in turn prevented Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity being accurately assessed. Such a view has been widely accepted for decades. The reduction in such pollution since the 2000s, and thus since 2010 this has included new IMO maritime regulations 2010-20, has been expected to add to the on-going GHG-forced AGW.
The “bananas” global temperatures of late-2023 have yet to be explained. As do others, Hansen et al are arguing for a big “bananas”-causing input being from the reduction in marine SO2 pollution from 2020. Hansen et al (2025) cite Jin et al (2018) to demonstrate the 2010 SO2 situation and present support for the argument that the “bananas” largely result from the IMO regulations lowering maritime SO2 emissions since 2020 and argue for much less from the 2022 Hunga eruption. (From text squirreled-away in the Supplementary Material “The unprecedented leap of global temperature in the past two years is fully accounted for, about equally, by the modest El Nino and the ship aerosol forcing, with a smaller contribution from the present solar maximum.”)
So is the supporting evidence for this big IMO “bananas”-contribution convincing?
The first evidence is the CERES albedo data 2000-to-date which Hansen et al show has been declining since 2010 (-0.5Wm^-2 to 2024) but without showing any exceptional post-2020 decline relative to 2010-20 (fig 6). But Hansen et al then point to the PDO (fig 7) describing it as “the largest source of natural variability,” it being a “large-scale” ENSO and point to an apparent coupling between PDO and North Pacific albedo for the period pre-2020 but a large divergence post-2020. (There is no mention of the Atlantic in this regard.) The increasing absorbed solar 2020-23 relative to 2000-10 is mapped (fig 8) with the N Pacific & N Atlantic (15N to 60N) calculated as providing a global forcing of +0.42Wm^-2 with the statement of it speculatively being perhaps all due to aerosol. However, their fig SM8 caption seems to be saying the global forcing from reduced albedo in these regions amounts to just +0.1Wm^-2, this a combination of albedo and cloud feedback..
A further step in this evidence would have been to show the SST anomaly for each ocean. The GISS (2023-24 relative to 2000-10) does indeed show a significant SST increase matching the Pacific shipping lanes. One point to note is the absence of a similar SST ‘track’ in the Atlantic which perhaps would be expected to be there. The Atlantic SO2 emissions were similar (as per Jin et al fig1 although when natural dimethyl sulfide emissions are included, the percentage shipping sulphate shown by Jin et al (2018) is less in the Atlantic (as per Jin fig2e reproduced in Hansen’s fig sidebar5b). (Hansen et al make the general statement that they “expect, contrary to the IPCC, that aerosol forcing is more nonlinear” which may be applicable for the Atlantic’s lower percentage, although I’ve yet to track down the basis for their “more nonlinear” assertion.) The weakening AMOC may have a role in the pattern of Atlantic SST anomalies.
A second point to note is that the PDO is itself a measure of Pacific SSTs (and more), and specifically w.r.t. SSTs, including an area of the Pacific pretty-much containing these Pacific shipping lanes so it is no surprise to find the PDO and SST for this region in close negative correlation 1979-to-date. It can be seen 2020-24 that the SSTs are rising and the PDO falling, while PDO and local albedo diverge, all to unusual levels post-2021.
And a third point to make is that emissions, even short-lived ones, do not stay put but move down-wind. Hansen et al’s fig SM8 (mentioned above) maps CERES Clear-Sky Absorbed Solar Radiation 2020-2023 relative to 2000-10. But the map is perhaps suggestive of a change in land-emissions rather than ocean emissions.
I will continue with the reading of Hansen et al but I am not expecting their thesis to be anything approaching a ‘slam-dunk’ and wonder if it is robust enough to actually stack up.
MAR, Hansen wrote some commentary suggesting that the anomalously high temperatures 2023- 2024 were due to sulphate aerosol reductions from shipping and industry since 2010, causing the oceans to gain heat and it was released suddenly during the 2023 – 2024 el nino. I can’t find his commentary now, but perhaps its also in the study you are quoting somewhere. His idea seems superficially quite convincing. The simplest and most obvious explanation for the high temperatures would seem to be aerosol reductions.
The problem is the unusually high temperatures have continued now into a la nina phase which seems to be undermining Hansens theory a bit. And as you point out there isnt a good match between the atlantic shipping lanes and the warming fingerprint. But what do you think of Hansens basic idea that I mentioned?
Nigelj,
Hansen’s commentaries & publications are linked HERE.
So far two commentaries for Feb 25 are shown which concern the ‘Are the United Nations and the public well-informed?’ paper. These two both address various criticism of the paper. I’ve not read either as I’m not at the ‘criticism’ stage yet. ‘m still reading, assessing what it says and thus what it doesn’t say.
I do get rather pigged-off with Hansen’s habit of burying his arguments in big long papers, not quite of biblical proportions but if one did start “1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. it would have the same effect.
For the record, my prior opinion has been that blaming the ‘bananas’ of late-2023 (or a significant part thereof) on climate forcing and thus on the IMO shipping regs doesn’t immediately stack up. But without some more convincing alternatives (which don’t seem to spring readily to hand), the IMO regs cannot be ignored.
MAR, I had a quick scan through “‘Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed? “. I thought it was very easy to read and made good points and would be useful for the general public, but rather strange for a scientific paper, being so wordy, and full of photos and unrelated issues like super storms. It was more like an introduction to global warming than a paper.
But his method didnt seem so hard to find. He seemed to be saying that when you add his calculation of all the forcings including shipping aerosols it neatly fits the total forcing, all a logical process, but I suggest there may be a temptation to fiddle with all the forcings and related assumptions to massage the whole thing so that it all adds up neatly. A bit too neatly. But if I had to bet money on the whole 2023 – 2024 issue, I would still go with aerosol reductions I think.
I agree completely with this: “But without some more convincing alternatives (which don’t seem to spring readily to hand), the IMO regs cannot be ignored.”
FYI:
“A run of record-breaking global temperatures has continued, even with a La Niña weather pattern cooling the tropical Pacific. The Copernicus Climate Change Service said last month was the warmest January on record, with surface – air temperatures 1.75C above preindustrial levels.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/06/hottest-january-on-record-climate-scientists-global-temperatures-high
I am wondering by “how much” climate change, as a whole, increased the severity of the LA wildfires:
1) World Weather Attribution says that
*”Compared to a 1.3°C cooler climate this is an increase in likelihood of about 35% and an increase in the intensity of the FWI of about 6%.”* https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/climate-change-increased-the-likelihood-of-wildfire-disaster-in-highly-exposed-los-angeles-area/
This kind of statement is often confusing; readers believe that an event becomes both 35% more likely AND 6% more intense. As in other cases, my first impression is that it is one OR the other – the first statement is about the probability at constant FWI and the second is about the increase in FWI at constant frequency (see figure 3.2 – peak January FWI vs return period).
A confirmation that this is indeed the correct understanding, even if it looks obvious, would reassure me.
2) The 6% increase in FWI is not negligible, but it does not seem huge (not being an expert in this I only make a simplistic comparison to other regions/seasons). Is this the “full picture” regarding the link with climate change? FWI accounts for drought, but could other factors contribute to the disaster – in particular, a long-term degradation of the forests/vegetation which could be partly connected to climate change, as suggested for other regions? And/or possibly other (non-climate) changes due to human activities?
In conclusion : is an assessment of the “compound” role of climate change, beyond what is in the FWI, possible – or maybe already available?
Thanks for responses (and possibly reading suggestions!)
Phillipe, last month I offered an alternative way to present this topic, which might be more useful to “the public”. Here are the definitions:
1. We define “climate” as the system state of the climate system.
2. We define “the event” as a specific complex system of measurable phenomena.
3. There are two planets, identical except for the energy content of their respective climate systems. A (that’s us) has considerably more energy than B as a result of GHG and other anthropogenic factors.
It seems to me reasonable, then, to say that the event (“the fire”) was caused by the anthropogenic difference in energy… that it would not have happened on planet B.
I offer this in response to your question because, while science is the most noble endeavor, and can produce unintended benefits, I just don’t see the utility of the nuanced probabilities and attempt to produce detailed, precise, causal narratives. What can we do with the information? What might we generalize from it?
If the goal is to motivate “the public” to act, it’s necessary to offer explanations which they can understand and internalize. The simpler the better.
PM, think they mean climate change has caused a 6% increase in intensity of forest fires not ‘the’ 6% increase in intensity.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology names the major factors in climate change contributing to increasing bushfire risk in Australia:
http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/australias-changing-climate.shtml
The same page has a map showing the change in the number of days with dangerous weather conditions for bushfires between July 1950 to June 1987 and July 1987 to June 2024. It has increased across almost all of the continent.
Unusually warm water near the west coast of Australia has been producing extremely humid heat along the coast. The most extreme readings I’ve seen so far are reported from Port Hedland airport on Feb. 7. At
0430 UTC they had a temperature of 43C / dewpoint 18C. The arrival of a sea breeze at 0500 UTC produced a considerably more uncomfortable combination of 40/28. By 07 UTC it was 35/29. As of Feb. 8 0330 UTC they were up to 39/28, so it may get worse than yesterday.
The January TLT anomalies have been posted by UAH and NOAA STAR, both showing a significant drop from the December anomalies (UAH Dec +0.62C, Jan +0.46ºC drop – 0.16ºC,STAR Dec +0.61ºC Jan +0.47ºC drop -0.14ºC) and in both the lowest TLT anomaly seen for 18 months. Unlike the SAT anomalies, the TLT anomalies had not shown any earlier significant decline from the “bananas” values (sitting in the range +0.95ºC-to-+0.70ºC) until Nov24 from when some sort of decline seems to have set in. The STAR numbers are properly published and show the decline is a southern hemisphere (also global ocean) thing which is back down to pre-bananas temperatures while the northern hemisphere (& global land) numbers remain high.
Note this continuation of “bananas” TLT global temperatures thro’ to October-last is not what is seen in the SAT global records.
The ERA5 re-analysis for Jan has been reported on the media as the “hottest January on record” but this possibly may not be repeated with the measured SAT records, even though they all had a cooler Jan24 down -0.13ºC on adjacent months. The SAT records saw the “bananas” anomalies continue to Feb24 (bar the dip in Jan 24). March-May the anomalies were dropping but then began creeping back up again Jun24-Dec24. Will this ‘creeping back up’ continue into Jan25 for one-or-all of the SAT measured records (as seen in ERA5 re-analysis) and thus also to yield them a ‘scorchyisimo!! Jan25? That remains to be seen.
NOAA staff have reportedly been threatened with “mass layoffs of 50 percent of the workforce and 30 percent of the budget” as Elon Musk’s government efficiency taskforce visited offices this week seeking access to internal information.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
OK, Scott. What’s your plan? Do you think that expressing outrage on RC is going to tip the balance and start the revolution?
The problem is well understood, and it has been for a long time. We started studying the psychology behind the Nazi thing after WWII, and it has been successfully exploited by various actors to gain power.
We don’t need lots of moralizing; we need effective strategy and tactics, and moralizing tends to interfere with that. It wouldn’t have taken much at all to change the outcome this time, so maybe calming down and working on a coherent political approach is the best chance we have to save things in the future.
Well said, z. Climate realists won’t win by fighting the last war. Climate change is In some ways “like” the Nazi Holocaust, and in other ways unique. Don’t let the metaphor control the decarbonization struggle. Strategic denialism has come a long way since 1945.
zebra wrote: “maybe calming down and working on a coherent political approach is the best chance we have to save things in the future”
With all due respect, that statement reflects a complete failure to understand what we are facing: an organized crime enterprise, masquerading as a political party, has seized control of all three branches of the Federal government, and is RIGHT NOW engaging in blatantly unconstitutional and illegal acts, all of which are part of a detailed plan (the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025) to DESTROY the United States as a constitutional democratic republic, a functioning society, and an international power. A gang of psychopathic megalomaniac billionaires, bigots, rapists, drunks, embezzlers and paid agents of hostile foreign powers — the most corrupt cabal of crackpots and crooks since the Third Reich — is now dismantling the government of the United States.
The reality is that for four years the Biden administration actually IMPLEMENTED a “coherent political approach” — which among other things rescued the US economy from the COVID crash and took stronger action on global warming than ALL previous administrations combined — and in 2024 Biden and then Harris RAN on one of the biggest economic success stories in modern US history, offering a “coherent political approach” for continued advances.
Meanwhile, for four years the billionaire-owned so-called “mainstream” media relentlessly badmouthed Biden and buried the news of his administation’s accomplishments, and then throughout the 2024 campaign attacked Biden and Harris with grotesque double-standards and false equivalences — while they sanitized, normalized and legitimized Trump’s projectile diarrhea of lies, hate, and demented right-wing extremism.
We TRIED a “coherent political approach”. It failed. We are now in the position of fighting to survive what promises to be one of the most horrific totalitarian regimes in human history — a regime of NIHILISTS who fully understand that their drill-baby-drill, anti-renewable energy, global warming denial policies will DESTROY HUMAN CIVILIZATION — and they DON’T CARE.
Secular Animist, as usual it’s all about definitions. Here’s my “coherent political approach”:
1. Biden accepts being one-term President.
2. The primaries choose a reasonable White male candidate.
I keep asking, with no response so far, how come the assault on democracy failed against Biden, and only barely managed to beat a woman, and then a Black woman, despite there being little difference in policies each time. We’re supposed to be the science folks; look at the data. Trump would have lost.
And look at the science about Authoritarian psychology. Politics and governing are not the same thing. It’s not “the economy stupid”. Do I have to offer up LBJ’s quote one..more..time?
“Hell, give [him] somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
This applies to the whole spectrum of potential voters.. not just White males WRT Blacks. Our current Nazis created a narrative to influence those people whose group identity status is threatened. They are not “voting against their own interests” because that status is their primary interest.
Governing (even exceptionally well) is not politics. So I ask the same question I ask Scott: What’s your plan?
Zebras theory seems to be that Kamala Harris lost due to being a black woman therefore racism. It’s not convincing. Obama a black man won by a reasonable margin.
I think Harris lost partly due to inflation. This has destroyed leaders everywhere including the UK, NZ, and elsewhere, even if it’s not their fault. The inflation was a delayed effect of covid in 2020.
Harris poor record on immigration was undoubtedly another key reason for losing. I’m pro immigration but Harris let in too many immigrants too fast so infrastructure can’t cope and it antagonised many people. Democrats need to regulate immigration better and have a better plan next election.
I think that in other ways Biden and Harris did well as Secular Animist said but the media ganged up against them.
The authoritarian personality group identity thing thing is correct. Trump used
this. It’s very hard for the Democrats to counter. But people sometimes eventually see they have been manipulated.
The Trump Musk combination is terrible and insane like a delusional hostile takeover. I feel for you guys hurt by it. I hope people see how wrong it all is.
The trend to vote conservative is probably ingrained during hard times, when people resort to things which the brain keeps as it worked in the past. The focus in centered on the present time.
N: I think Harris lost partly due to inflation. . . . Harris poor record on immigration was undoubtedly another key reason for losing.
BPL: 4 million people were purged from voting rolls in the last 4 years. Want to guess how many were Democrats? Then there were ballot drop boxes removed from heavily black and student areas. I could go on.
BPL , I’m sure you would be right that Harris lost partly due to purging of voting rolls. All I’m saying is it’s obvious her immigration policy wasn’t great and contributed to the loss. You haven’t shown my comments on immigration are wrong. To be clear I like Harris it’s meant to be constructive criticism.
I’ll throw in my 2 cents here. Trump is following a practice that’s been going on for decades in “conservative” circles. However, he has gone many steps further and pumped up the ‘agit’ in agitprop to near saturation and flooded the zone with it. Democrats, true to form, have consistently been a day late and a dollar short in terms of responding to that, making it by now very difficult to counter. The image for many seems to of a boneless gray, lackluster party of feckless ne’er-do-wells destroying America with their festering godless stupidity and deserving of a good ass kicking… or worse.
Now I’ve sort of been of the opinion that politics should be made boring in order to weed out unserious people, but the truth is that that is just not realistic. I suspect that there is a significant portion of the population that has little idea of what’s going on and is instead moved to line up along prevailing currents of energy (so to speak) without much regard for content. Calling it “vibe” diminishes the effectiveness of agitprop and grievance, imo, which is now well entrenched our society. It is problematic.
Oh, for some charisma!
Nigelj,
“Zebras theory seems to be that Kamala Harris lost due to being a black woman therefore racism. It’s not convincing. Obama a black man won by a reasonable margin.”
This is America, racism ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes. The truth is, the civil war has never been fully resolved here. And has been pointed out from time to time, we only began to fulfill our mandate as a democracy with the civil rights era– not that long ago.
In my lifetime there were still people alive who had been born into slavery, not to mention lynchings.
——-
“A republic, if you can keep it.” Benjamin Franklin
Two good comments in a row, Radge. I too was born when (overt) lynchings still happened.
I think it is important to understand that the Authoritarian playbook for the New Nazis incorporates race as one of the categories about which one can feel resentful for getting “uppity”.
Consider both Hillary and Harris, women who are accomplished and assertive. And then there is Michelle, on whom I place considerable blame for whipping up the frenzy… she had the audacity to present a truly classy (Black) First Family, and has certainly been the most popular First Lady of recent times.
So, White women who are in the subservient role of “TradWives” are just as vulnerable to the Fox News propaganda about their perceived loss of status… to women… as various categories of men are.
Radge Havers, ok I accept that racism may have had a part to play in Harris losing, but I struggle to believe it was a hugely significant number. I suspect the authoritarian playbook with its misogyny and racism (which I loathe) is appealing to the conservatives who would vote for Trump anyway. Im not sure it would be winning over many liberals or undecided voters. Those types dont like racism and are swayed more by rational arguments.
You still have to counter the authoritarian playbook with its veiled racism and misogyny, which is really hard. However maybe The Democrats need to take a much more concise clear stand bluntly stated that racism, bigotry and misogyny are wrong. The Republicans are good at one thing keeping the message simple. The Democrats get lost in buzzwords and detail.
I still think a key reason Harris lost the election, or at least lost a lot votes, relates to the inflation. Voters in countries with high inflation after covid have expressed huge concern about the economy as their number one priority. These countries have seen huge changes of government during that period even when that inflation is starting to fall significantly. Examples are New Zealand and the United Kingdom and its just obvious people have had enough of inflation and are so desperate they will vote for another party promising miracle cures. I believe this would have hurt Harris, as she is associated with the period of inflation. Its not her fault because the causes go back to the early stages of the covid pandemic, and its containment measures but people dont grasp this. The following related to America:
“Johns Hopkins political economist David A. Steinberg explains how rising costs dampened enthusiasm for Kamala Harris and played a key role in Donald Trump’s victory.”
https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/11/20/how-inflation-impacted-2024-election/
And I still think her immigration policy lost her a lot of votes. Letting in huge numbers of immigrants so fast is crazy in every way. Many voters expressed concern about this. Only someone in deep denial would not see that. It’s important because it’s something the Democrats can fix. They can have a much better policy next time that promotes strong immigration but has a system of regulations to cap numbers each year at something sensible.
Apart from that I think the Democrats had a lot of good policies, eg inflation reduction act with its climate focus, helping workers, etc, and it would be a shame to make a mistake and compromise those, perhaps to hope to get votes, by not recognising the things the Democrats genuinely got a bit wrong, both as ideas and from a vote winning strategy perspective.
nigel,
Well, I don’t want to take up a lot of space on this, so I won’t go into American realpolitik except to remind that policy and the perception of it are two different things in politics. In terms of art, it’s about controlling the narrative, momentum, and levels of enthusiasm.
You wrote “Those types dont like racism and are swayed more by rational arguments.
Not necessarily by rational arguments in general. And don’t underestimate unconscious bias, misogyny or, broadly speaking, othering. Also keep in mind we’re dealing with an accumulation of positions in an election with relatively thin margins. And as and aside, note that hate crimes in America have been on the rise.
Regarding inflation, true; but as you point out, there was the Inflation Reduction Act in response, in part, to inflation brought on by COVID, which was exacerbated by Trump’s b.s. You might attribute Harris’s failure to an inability to sell that. True enough I suppose. It’s also true that that would be a hard sell in the best of times. The electorate wants their money YESTERDAY, end of story. Add to that that the zone was already flooded by you know who.
You wrote “Letting in huge numbers of immigrants so fast is crazy in every way.”
Now that just sounds like you drank the Kool Aid, which is understandable given that this is a complicated issue and that you live an ocean away in a very different world (New Zealand, no?). I hardly know where to begin. I’ll point out a few things in another comment, and let you fill in the rest yourself if you’re interested (you’ve got your work cut out for you).
In general I’d say that, given the circumstances, Harris’s message was more carefully crafted than you suggest. If you were to say however that some of the burden for those circumstances was of Democrats’ own making, I’d tend to agree. I’d also tend to agree if you said that Harris’s campaign was not nimble in response to Republican attacks and that her coffers were probably not well spent.
Nigel,
Immigration. So, first I was going to do a summary comment on the current situation, how we got here, and why it’s so difficult to deal with. Then I realized that would take too long, so I was just going to post a list of references categorized by issue. Then I realized that would be too long, so I’m just going to say a couple of things and be done with it; pointing out that migration due to climate change is really the portion of the problem that could be relevant to this site.
You wrote, ”And I still think her immigration policy lost her a lot of votes. Letting in huge numbers of immigrants so fast is crazy in every way.”
Look, note that not long before the election, there was a bipartisan deal supported by Biden on immigration giving Republicans much of what they wanted that was sabotaged by Trump so that he could campaign on border insecurity.
As for Harris, her roll in the administration was to address the problem at the root on diplomatic missions to the major source countries. You know, addressing cause and effect, as opposed to only relying leaky band aid solutions because of cynical political exploitation of the problem.
When it came to election time Harris was generally in a rhetorical double bind because she couldn’t be seen as either breaking with the Biden administration (by Democrats) or not breaking with it (by everyone else) without threading a fine needle with a fat thread in the midst of Trump’s hyperbolic onslaught of noisy confusion, lies, distortions, race baiting, fear mongering, othering, and all the rest of it.
Bottom line, I think a good portion of this narrative problem is likely due to Biden hanging on past his sell by date…
Anyway, shall we move on to something else?
Radge Havers
“In general I’d say that, given the circumstances, Harris’s message was more carefully crafted than you suggest. If you were to say however that some of the burden for those circumstances was of Democrats’ own making, I’d tend to agree.”
Yes I’m saying that. I just feel that the Democrats had a lot of good policies but they did a few dumb things in terms of policies and political strategies, and if the Democrats dont admit that to themselves and change tack, they will loose again. I mostly support a Party similar to the Democrats and it really frustrates me when they are too proud and stubborn to admit they messed up, and just go on repeating the same mistakes.
“Look, note that not long before the election, there was a bipartisan deal supported by Biden on immigration giving Republicans much of what they wanted that was sabotaged by Trump so that he could campaign on border insecurity.”
Yes Im aware of that. I know Harris did try hard to fix the immigration problem, and sometimes other people got in the way. But overall it still looks like The Democrats in general and Harris in particular lack a sensible, cohesive plan / ideology / policy / set of regulations on immigration. The Economist.com say the same and they lean liberal. The public certainly seem to perceive it all that way. If you guys don’t change the plan, or at least the public perception of what plans you have, you could loose the next election.
“Anyway, shall we move on to something else?”
Yes sure. I don’t want to debate immigration or politics in depth on a climate website, which is why Ive kept the above very short and general. I only raised all this because The Trump Administration version 2.0 is so shocking and wrong its hard to avoid some discussion on political issues right now. Its all constantly in our news in NZ. And I don’t think we are a million miles apart on the issues.
n: I just feel that the Democrats had a lot of good policies but they did a few dumb things in terms of policies and political strategies, and if the Democrats dont admit that to themselves and change tack, they will loose again.
BPL: I don’t think you understand the situation. 4 million people were purged from voter rolls over the past four years. Ballot drop boxes were removed from heavily black and student areas. Mail-in votes were discarded for minor clerical errors. The president is overriding or ignoring both congress and the courts. The Democrats can’t win again, ever. The new regime is not conservative, it is fascist, right down to the Leader principle. All opposition parties will be streamrollered.
Scott and others have noted the parallels between Nazi Germany in the 1930s and the present Trump/Musk situation. Fascist interests suppress the media then. That is easier this time because many of the owners of much conventional and social media are on side with the current administration. Perhaps encouraging dis-information is a modern refinement.
Then they came for the scientists ….
Graham
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/02/PP_2024.2.7_views-of-trump_1-01.png
Does Climate Science actually believe water vapor was warming the planet?
I know WV is usally named to be the most significant GHG. The GHE, and the role of WV within it, is a restricted look at the emission side. It comes with the energy budget as given and the lapse rate as given. On top of that it assumes the surface to emit like a perfect black body, which it is not and it does not, but that is a different story.
Evidently WV has a strong effect on the lapse rate, and the lapse rate is crucial for the magnitude of the GHE. The other GH-constituents would excert a much larger GHE if it was not for WV reducing the lapse rate. So WV does not only warm the planet by elevating the emission layer, thereby adding to the GHE, but also reducing the GHE at the same time.
Schmidt et al 2010 names 60..5W/m2 (net) and 96W/m2 (gross) contribution by WV to a GHE of 155W/m2 in total. The NASA earth energy budget on the other side has latent heat at 86.4W/m2. That is latent heat removed from the surface, in other words cooling of the surface by WV.
There is plenty of reasons to discuss these figures, but I will skip that for convenience. Taking these figures as given, if you hypothetically remove WV from the system, you would lose a 60.5W/m2 of heating AND a 86.4W/m2 of cooling. In other words, without WV Earth should be a lot hotter, based on these figures, if you add up 1 and 1.
Why would WV yet be heating?
The 86.4 W/m2 of cooling by evaporation from the surface is released as heat in the atmosphere during condensation i.e. the water vapour is contributing to the transport of heat from the Earth’s surface to the atmosphere. I don’t see how you can estimate the water vapour contribution to GHG warming and conclude there is no net contribution by only consider the cooling effect of evaporation and ignoring the heating effect of condensation.
If you compare the Sahara desert to the equatorial rainforest region further south, the surface temperature of the desert is much hotter in summer because of the lack of cloudiness and the rocky/sandy surface heats up more than the damp cegetation covered surface of a rainforest. The lapse rate in the desert is very close to the dry adiabat whereas in the rainforest the lapse rate is close to the moist adiabat. When you get to around the 700 mb level, the air temperature over the desert is lower than over the rainforest (i.e. the N/S temperature gradient reverses) which is a consequence of humid air having a lower vertical rate of temperature decrease than dry air, because cloud formation warms the atmosphere. This reversal in temperature gradient over Africa is what results in the African easterly jet, from which perturbations spawn easterly waves that move westward into the Atlantic and can develop into tropical cyclones under the right conditions.
Well thanks.
I think there are two ways to look at the latent heat issue. One is like the “arrow” in the energy budget diagram, which is certainly a bit ambiguous. I mean in this way it is just heat moved from the surface into the atmosphere, but not getting lost for the whole system.
The more consistent view is probably on the effect it has on the lapse rate, like portayed in an emagram (see below). Then it will be true that the larger the lapse rate (within the troposphere), the larger the GHE. Equally an isothermic troposphere would mean no GHE. Like in that emagram the dry adiabatic (unstable?) troposphere would be ~10.8K/km, instead of just 6.5K/km we have. The GHE then would be like 155 * (10.8 / 6.5 – 1) = 102W/m2 larger. This is figure not so different from the 86.4W/m2 the energy budget claims.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emagram#/media/File:Emagram.GIF
E. Schaffer (and Adam),
In order to have a useful scientific discussion, everyone has to agree on what the words mean.
Your use of the term “warming” is more than “a bit” ambiguous. What the GHE does is increase the energy in the climate system. That energy takes various forms and has various effects that affect us.
Raising the global mean surface temperature is only one of those effects, and as an average, actually does not affect us at all. It has been used as the best available proxy for quantifying the GHE (increase in system energy). Newer technology offers more direct real-time measurements.
So, the picture of surface thermal energy transformed to latent heat in water vapor and relocated in the atmosphere is quite correct.
Again, the GHE (“global warming”) shows up in many ways other than GMST.
I totally appreciate your notion to be precise. I indeed think poor terminology, vague assumptions and general imprecision of language are indeed primary drivers of confusion within climate science.
To name one example: “What the GHE does is increase the energy in the climate system”
That is exactly what it does not!!! This statement is as wrong as it possibly could be, a 180° opposition to reality.
The GHE consists of two vital components. That is a) the emission altitude and b) the more or less adiabatic lapse rate. I totally appreciate the IPCC for getting this right, since AR5. Another venerable mention would be Gavin, who obviously learned from his 2004 mistakes. Or Rasmus who hopefully recovered from his 2016 guessing.. (see links below)
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/why-does-the-stratosphere-cool-when-the-troposphere-warms/
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/02/what-is-the-best-description-of-the-greenhouse-effect/
I do not want to play the climate-nazi, but guys, you got to be better than this! And to finally answer your issue, the GHE is not about “increasing energy in the system”, because the “heat” is eventually communicated downward from the emission layer by adiabatic compression. And that is a process that, per definition, does NOT increase energy. It is also the reason why the atmosphere causes a GHE, but not the watersphere.
Sorry for falling out of my role and adding too much intellect, precision, explicity and subtlety to this comment. ;)
You have yet to define GHE. Come on, just a short sentence.
ES: To name one example: “What the GHE does is increase the energy in the climate system”
That is exactly what it does not!!! This statement is as wrong as it possibly could be, a 180° opposition to reality.
BPL: No, that’s incorrect. The GHE raises the temperature of the surface and the atmosphere. The thermal energy content is H = m cp T where H is energy content in joules, m mass (kg), cp specific heat capacity in J/K/kg, and T temperature in K. Higher T, higher energy content.
My two cents:
From a radiative-convective perspective, latent flux depletes total radiative greenhouse effect by about 1/3.
155 W/m² Ramanathan-style GHE magnitude in radiative-convective equilibrium (RCE) can be converted approximately to pure radiative equilibrium (RE) by:
RCE 155 + latent flux 86.4 = ~240 W/m²
Considering the “convective” part of RCE is already baked into observation, removing this would have GHE producing not merely 33K but closer to 48K.
This convective depletion is also visible in the lapse rate, where the environmental one is exactly 2/3 the dry adiabatic rate (6.5K/km vs 9.8K/km). We know the lapse rate by radiation equilibrium alone is always steeper.
It’s implicit in simple plate models that surface emission should be 2 × TOA flux (F) by radiation alone (see Hartmann 1994), and so the convective adjustment renders surface emission temperature:
σTs^4 = 2(σTe^4) – heat transport
e.g. 2x(240) – 86.4 = surface emission temperature
For clarity,
F = absorbed solar radiation = OLR,
σTe^4 = planetary effective emission temperature,
σTs^4 = surface emission temperature.
Pardon me for not worrying about emissivity and omitting the residual sensible heat flux.
GHE ≈ 2/3 F in RCE. It could be inferred that the only free variable is cloud fraction control on TOA flux F, and GHE must scale automatically at 2/3 F irrespective of the nature of forcing, but I digress..
To recognize the full potential of the WV greenhouse effect, in what’s a 60.5 W/m² net contributor (39% in RCE), add back in the latent flux in proportion:
60.5 W/m² + 0.39(86.4) to extract the purely radiative effects. Heat transport is put into motion by the effect of all greenhouse agents.
And so we have, on the warming side, a 48K greenhouse effect in radiative equilibrium, and on the cooling side, 15K through latent flux, producing a net 33K in radiative-convective equilibrium, associated with F = σTe^4 = 240 W/m².
By way of the figures in your article, you should not RE-subtract the lapse rate effect from the “net” figures, because it’s already baked-in. else it’s a double accounting and you’ve deleted WV GHE.
Net WV GHE + Net Cloud GHE – Cloud albedo = 35.2 W/m² net TOA radiative forcing (warming) in RCE.
Should TOA flux (F) change, perhaps by cloud fraction, the total forcing should scale by dF + 2/3 dF (or 5/3 dF) towards equilibrium. Embedded in the 5/3 F automatically is water vapor feedback, lapse rate, and LW cloud radiative effects.
For the sake of example:
Adjusting TOA equilibrium from F = 240 W/m² to F + 10 = 250 W/m² (for any reason), holding trace GHGs constant:
RCE GHE = 2/3 F (250 W/m²) = 166.6
Change in surface emission = 5/3 dF (10 W/m²) = +16.6
In this hypothetical scenario with F = 250W/m² , using empirical constraints, greenhouse effect is 35K, planetary emission temperature is ~258K, and Ts ~ 293K.
In such a case, the increase in greenhouse effect (+2K) between equilibrium F = 240 and equilibrium F + 10 is completely owing to WV feedback.
This thought experiment produces a net radiative feedback of -2 W/m²/K, assumes a temperature (SB) response of -3.3 W/m²/K (stabilizing), and so suggests WV feedback is about +1.3 W/m²/K (positive).
“Considering the “convective” part of RCE is already baked into observation, removing this would have GHE producing not merely 33K but closer to 48K.”
Yes, I think you are right on this one. It is kind of an ex nunc / ex tunc issue. The figures from S10 are based on the lapse rate as given, while the energy budget names the “backed in” effect WV has on the lapse rate.
I will have to dismiss the “σTs^4 = 2(σTe^4) – heat transport” formula. I have seen it before, but it is meaningless. Just because you come up with seemingly appropriate numbers does not mean it works. Specifically the “2” is an arbitrary choice. If I recall it right, the idea is the atmosphere would emit half the radiation up- and downward, which it does not.
“To recognize the full potential of the WV greenhouse effect, in what’s a 60.5 W/m² net contributor (39% in RCE), add back in the latent flux in proportion”
Why just in proportion? The latent heat, or rather lapse rate effect, is affecting the whole of GH-agents. If we subtract the 60.5 from 155, we are left with a GHE of still 94.5W/m2. If you add a 50% to 66% to it, depending on what dry lapse rate you assume, somewhere in the 9.8 to 10.8K/km range vs. 6.5K/km, you still end up with 142W/m2 to 156,87W/m2 GHE. It is then still true that the GHE barely shrinks by (hypothetically) removing WV.
ES: the GHE barely shrinks by (hypothetically) removing WV.
BPL: That doesn’t sound right at all. WV is a powerful greenhouse gas.
Thank you for your input
“””Why just in proportion? The latent heat, or rather lapse rate effect, is affecting the whole of GH-agents.”””
Yes, very interesting. I tried to touch on it but I could have been more descriptive. It’s a two way street where there is mutual influence.
WV contributes 39% to greenhouse effect in S2010, and so it contributes 39% to the heat transport.
A useful way to consider the heat transport is to recognize that it’s generated from the differential radiative heating at the surface and the outgoing radiative cooling to space. This difference creates a thermodynamic disequilibrium that drives flux of heat, mass, and momentum. The driving gradient between surface and the planetary radiative cooling produces the convective motion.
On the one hand, a steeper gradient between Ts and Te will increase the turbulent flux exchange. On the other hand, increased turbulent flux reduces the driving gradient through a continuous transport of heat.
This flux-gradient feedback and the related trade-off results in an optimal limit that we observe in RCE.
An important caveat (among many) is that the latent heat flux is primarily driven by the gradient in specific humidity. Since saturation-specific humidity depends approximately exponentially on temperature, latent flux is naturally the most effective agent for heat transport in atmosphere.
So, to answer your question, the proportion of WV GHE from Schmidt 2010 provides for 39% of the driving thermodynamic disequilibrium. For its GHE, it’s compensated by 0.39(86.4W/m2) latent flux. This turbulent flux response depletes ~1/3 of its greenhouse effect.
In the case of WV + Cloud + CO2, S2010 lists 90.8%. For their combination they are compensated by 0.908(86.4) heat transport. This is ~1/3 of their greenhouse effects.
In the case of total atmosphere, 100%x(86.4) depletes 1/3 of the driving differential heating.
JCM: WV contributes 39% to greenhouse effect in S2010
BPL: 50%
JCM WV contributes 39% to greenhouse effect in S2010
I do not think [S2010] means what you think it means, my dear Vizzini:
1. You: “39%” vs. S2010: “just over half the present‐day total greenhouse effect”.
2. You ignored S2010’s explanation about the ROLE of WV (and clouds) in climate CHANGE,
I quote:
S2010: ” Note that the values given for water vapor and clouds are calculated equivalently to the other diagnostics for reference but cannot be considered “radiative forcings” in the same sense [as GHGs], since their concentrations adjust rapidly to changes in the other constituents.”
3. You ignored S2010 pointing WV – it is NOT “a forcing”, but a mere “feedback” that does not drive but only AMPLIFIES the effect of the forcings (GHGs). And therefore S2010 stated, if we reduce GHGs, the resulting cooling will be much larger than if WV didn’t amplify this cooling.
In other words – the large effect of WV make the climate MUCH MORE VULNERABLE to our changes in the … GHG emissions, not LESS vulnerable, as the “anything but GHGs” deniers IMPLY when they denounce the climate scientists for:
“It’s hard to imagine denying or actively minimizing the consequences to realclimates due to an artificial fixation and overemphasis on the outputs of trace gas {GHGs]” [(c) JCM].
And that’s even before the fact that we while CAN CHANGE significantly conc. of GHGs in atmosphere – JCM and Kalisz were UNABLE to offer any realistic way for humanity to change evaporation enough to significantly reduce AGW. Which is not a surprise, given that the avg. residence time of extra WV in the atmosphere is about a week, while of the extra CO2 – DECADES.
All the above have been explained to JCM and TK again and again – but each time it bounces off their heads like off a concrete wall.
Piotr, yes thank you very interesting.
In my discussion with Schaffer regarding the net positive contribution of water vapor to moist static energy, the principle itself should not be controversial. I thank you and BPL for the correction that the contribution via greenhouse effects is closer to 50%. From this lens, I take it as a mark of respect that you chose to engage with me and I gather that you do not consider Schaffer as deserving acknowledgement in spite of his extreme characterization of greenhouse effects as “defects” which I suspect should be far more triggering for you.
Far be it from me to offer superficial input, so I will refrain from repeating arguments already discussed in sufficient detail with ample citation. However, if you are experiencing rage-induced amnesia, I will simply reiterate that when continents become desiccated, the system adjusts by reducing cloud fraction and increasing water vapor duration, which raises temperatures and reinforces a positive water vapor feedback kernel, along with amplifying hydrological and temperature extremes. At no point do I recall suggesting that water vapor acts as a radiative forcing in the same way as well-mixed trace gases, whose role in that regard is indisputable. If this position has been misrepresented, it may stem from a strawman argument, the manifestation of a self-reinforcing feedback of hostility in your mind.
Nevertheless, I consider here an opportunity to celebrate our shared recognition of positive water vapor feedback and our shared passion for earth system stabilization.
Previously I targeted 3 specific land surface parameters in LSMs that most strongly influence global mean temperature through land-atmosphere coupling. These were drawn from Zarakas’ “Land Processes Can Substantially Impact the Mean Climate State”, and this aligns with the call from respected climate scientists in “Reimagining Earth in the Earth System.”
Personally I dedicate my passion to conservation stewardship – collaborating with rural landowners to implement best management practices, an effort I believe provides tangible benefits through a meaningful and impactful contribution deserving of respect. While this blog is flooded with hostility, I find reassurance in the real world, where we are well-positioned with unprecedented interest in practical workshops this winter, a growing number of engaged participants, and exciting implementation projects planned for the upcoming season. This progress is only possible through genuine and productive dialogue, and coming to terms with those who might not ordinarily seem interested in earth system stabilization.
I do not quite understand what you mean.
“WV contributes 39% to greenhouse effect in S2010, and so it contributes 39% to the heat transport.”
What heat transport? The 39% refer to the (net) reduction in OLR thanks to WV, not a transport of heat. What can be considered a transport of heat is latent heat, but that is something done exclusively by WV, as it is the only condensing gas within the atmosphere. So WV does a 100% of that.
JCM: “I take it as a mark of respect that you chose to engage with me”
I wouldn’t read too much into it – we regularly respond to other deniers too – T. Kalisz, Mr. KiA, Ken Towe, Keith Woolard, Victor etc – not exactly because we respect them for their intellect and ethical integrity.
JCM In my discussion with Schaffer regarding the net positive contribution of water vapor to moist static energy, the principle itself should not be controversial
Hence neither me nor BPL commented on that. We did commented on “the controversial” claims instead:
– JCM confusing % absorption of LW radiation (Table 1 In Schmidt et. al. 2010) with the greenhouse effect (net effect on the TOA outgoing radiation; Table 3 there).
– ESchafer claiming : “the GHE barely shrinks by (hypothetically) removing WV” – the S2010
indicates ” – while S2010 “ We conclude that water vapor is responsible for just over half, of the present‐day total greenhouse effect. (GHE) “.
“Removing just over half” is NOT: “barely shrinks”.
Finally. I have challenged the central fallacy of the deniers who take the importance of WV to background GHE, and apply it to the human change in GHE in which only the changes in the non-WV GHS are the drivers), to bitterly complain about “ artificial fixation and overemphasis on the outputs of trace gas“. [(c) JCM]:
1. WV is may be ~ 50 % of the total GHE, but it is mainly background GHE. For the CLIMATE CHANGE only things that CHANGE matter and the concentration of non-WV GHGs increased MUCH MORE than that of WV – CO2 by +50%, CH4 by +200% – compared to ~7? 8? % in WV. And that only as a result of the warming DRIVEN by Co2 et al.
2. Human increases in CO2, CH4 and other GHGs are the FORCINGS of the AGW – while WV is …just a passive follower. As stated explicitly in S2010 that JCM used to support his claims: S2010: ”Note that the values given for water vapor and clouds are calculated equivalently to the other diagnostics for reference but cannot be considered “radiative forcings” in the same sense [as GHGs], since their concentrations adjust rapidly to changes in the other constituents.”
3. This means that AGW is DRIVEN by changes non-WV GHGs. WV merely AMPLIFIES the effect of CO2 et al. – CO2 warms the climate – the resulting increase in T increases WV that makes the warming stronger; reduction in CO2 cools the climate – the resulting decrease in WV makes the cooling stronger.
4. This means that the WV makes the climate MORE sensitive to changes in CO2 at al. not LESS sensitive, as the deniers imply (see Lindzen below).
5. JCM’s “artificial fixation and overemphasis on the outputs of trace gas” is based on the implication that “trace gases”- can have only a “trace effect”. The points 1-4 show the fallacy of that – trace gases have quite strong influence on background climate, and much more so – on the climate CHANGE. Further, the fact that they are in “trace amounts” means that it is easier to increase their relative conc. (CO2 by 50%, CH4 by 200% etc), while it takes MUCH more H2O to have the same % increase or decrease in WV.
6. Worse still – added WV stays in air for a WEEK, added CO2 stays for DECADES.
Therefore, your, JCM, claims of artificial fixation and overemphasis on the outputs of trace gas {i.e. non WV-GHGs]” would not have warranted response if you were not just one in the long line of “anything but GHGs” deniers, harking back to the revered elder of the denier’s
community, Richard Lindzen, and as such need to be challenged:
=====
R. Lindzen, in his House testimony, ridiculed the need to reduce GHG emissions by being on record with : “ recall that CO2 contributes only about 1% to the greenhouse effect and model errors are far larger than this”. and “water vapor and layer clouds account for over 98% of the greenhouse effect.”
For a comparison, Schmidt et al. 2010: the effect of WV and clouds is ….COMPARABLE to that of GHGs: WV = net warming by 59.7 W/m2 ; clouds = net cooling by 25.5 W/m2 => WV+clouds = 34.2 W/m2, while “all non-WV GHGs” = net warming by 34.8 W/m2
So the ratio is ~ 50:50, instead of the 98:2 claimed by Lindzen. And that’s for total GHE, not for climate CHANGE, which is driven, for all practical purposes, ONLY by the GHGs.
So much Lindzen sycophants claiming: “ [prof. Richard Lindzen is} probably the scientist most loathed and feared by the climate alarmist establishment. That’s because he knows the subject rather better than they do and has never been bested in argument.” ;-)
And it is the repeated lies and disinformation by the deniers that is the reason I am replying to you, JCM, not my respect for you.
In Re to Piotr, 14 Feb 2025 at 12:09 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-830220
and 14 Feb 2025 at 11:00 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-830260
Dear Piotr,
I am afraid that framing this discussion as the question “Is water vapour cooling or warming Earth?” is confusing and therefore somewhat unfortunate.
I think that with respect to global mean surface temperature, it is important to distinguish
(i) the greenhouse effect of water vapour, which is generally warming,
(ii) effects of clouds, which, depending on cloud type, may be warming or cooling, and
(iii) the effect of latent heat flux, which is cooling.
As suggest the results published by Lague et al,
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acdbe1
there may. in fact, be a quite counter-intuitive relationship between latent heat flux on one hand and water vapour concentration (and its greenhouse effect) on the other hand. Namely, the modelling experiments described in this article suggest that water vapour concentration may be HIGHER on Earth with dry continents providing little water for evaporation, in comparison with Earth wherein the land is water-rich and thus provides lot of cooling latent heat flux.
In this respect, I think that your strong belief that
“the large effect of WV make the climate MUCH MORE VULNERABLE to our changes in the … GHG emissions, not LESS vulnerable”
may be, in fact, misleading.
I still think that if other state-of-art climate models confirm the results of Lague 2023, it is well possible that better availability of evaporation from the land may in fact IMPROVE Earth climate stability, in the sense that Earth with intensive continental water cycle can be indeed LESS vulnerable to rising atmospheric concentrations of non-condensing GHG than present Earth with significant proportion of continents in an arid hydrological regime.
It would be, of course, better if these speculations were confirmed or disproved by respective modelling studies, properly designed for clarifying how the climate sensitivity towards GHG depends on water availability for evaporation (instead of just on “water vapour”).
I do not think that our dispute on this blog can resolve this open question and provide a trustworthy conclusion.
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomas Kalisz [Lague et al.] suggest that water vapour concentration may be HIGHER on Earth with dry continents providing little water for evaporation
The higher abs. humidity was not caused there, Genius, by the lack of evaporation on continents, but by higher temperature, which means that more WV advected from the oceans can stay over land without condensing into clouds. Which may seem “counterintuitive” only to somebody who refers to Clausius-Clapeyron without having the slightest idea what are its implications to AGW.
And who is so full of himself – that he does not realize that he keeps shooting himself and his idol JCM, in their feet, with the very source (Lague et al.) that JCM brought up in support
of JCM and Kalisz’s “anything but GHGs” denialism:
TK “Given [Lague] I think that your strong belief that
“the large effect of WV make the climate MUCH MORE VULNERABLE to our changes in the … GHG emissions, not LESS vulnerable”
may be, in fact, misleading.”
No Mr. Kalisz – mine is a falsifiable argument: supported not only by your own sources, but also by Clausius–Clapeyron, the observed increase in WV, and the CERES data.
It is the deniers like you or KiA, who through the ignorance and/or confirmation bias – promote your strong beliefs, pre-determined by either by Russia’s and other oil interests funding, and/or by your ideological or psychological needs.
SInce you can’t get it through your head: if we warm the Earth with GHGs – there will be more WV in air without crossing into supersaturation and thus condensation of WV into the clouds The increase in WV with temp can be seen.
– in your own source – Lague, Fig. 6) ,
– in the 7% per K increase the max. capacity of air to hold WV in Clausius- Clapeyron
– in the 6% per K increase in the _observed_ WV in your other source
And since the removal of W V cools the Earth (see Schmidt et al. 2010, Table 3), the increase of WV would have the warming effect. Ergo:
“the large effect of WV make the climate MUCH MORE VULNERABLE to our changes in the … GHG emissions, not LESS vulnerable”
Hence your response to the above with a claim that the above is, I quote “ In fact, misleading” a lie, made better by the author of the lie accusing me of “ misleading others.
And since you brought up the clouds – the same rule that rule that warmer air can hold more WV without condensation of it into the clouds: means that as we the warming of the air due to human emissions of GHGs – will be AMPLIFIED NOT ONLY by the extra warming from the increased WV conc., but would be FURTHER AMPLIFIED by the warming by the reduced cloudiness: seen both in:
– your Lague et al. – See Fig 7.
– and in observations (CERES data)
Therefore, making the climate even MORE vulnerable to human actions than it would have been to the increase in WV alone.
Thus making your original lie and your misrepresentation of the results of Lague et al., as supporting your claims – even more blatant.
In Re to Piotr, 20 Feb 2025 at 5:09 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-830418
Dear Piotr,
As you raised your objections also in another parallel post of 19 Feb 2025 at 9:29 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-830378 ,
I tried to reply and explain primarily in a direct reply to this post, on 21 Feb 2025 at 9:14 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-830450
Herein, I would like to repeat only that it was not my intention to assert that you are going to mislead anyone. I rather meant that YOU might BE mislead by your own beliefs and/or axioms, such that land hydrology is a mere feedback to changes in atmospheric concentrations of non-condensing greenhouse gases (GHG), or that land hydrology may be reduced to the “water vapour response” to changing GHG concentration(s).
Furthermore, I have not asserted that your belief that
“the large effect of WV make the climate MUCH MORE VULNERABLE to our changes in the … GHG emissions, not LESS vulnerable”
IS wrong; I just tried to present reasons why I think that it MAY be an improper framing of the problem and why I believe that my question (if a rich water cycle on the land, with a high water availability for evaporation and accordingly high latent heat flux from the land, rather decreases the climate sensitivity against rising GHG concentration than increases it) may be a more appropriate formulation of a corresponding, yet unresolved scientific problem.
In this respect, I think that neither Schmidt 2010 nor Lague 2023 studied this question.
Greetings
Tomáš
correction: WV contributes 39% to greenhouse effect in S2010, and so WV GHE contributes 39% to the conditions driving heat transport.
Thank you Schaffer,
“””I do not quite understand what you mean.”””
yes I see how this could be misinterpreted.
In a greenhouse system, solar radiation is primarily absorbed at the surface, while infrared radiation is emitted from the atmosphere to space. This spatial separation of radiative heating and cooling establishes a temperature difference between the surface (Ts) and the effective emission temperature (Te), which drives heat transport processes.
It is important to recognize the distinction in units and therefore the different mechanisms at play
units of specific humidity in grams/kg
units of latent heat of vaporization in joules/kg
units of latent heat flux in W/m2
In a non-greenhouse system, there is no spatial separation of radiative heating and cooling, there is no temperature difference between Ts and Te, and so there can be no sustained heat flux. For there to be a heat transport there must be a delivery from one place to another. “Latent heat” of vaporization in Joules/kg is not a heat flux, nor is the specific humidity in g/kg. The sustained flux only occurs owing to the full hydrological cycle, including vaporization at surface and condensation aloft. The 80 or so W/m2 manifest as a heat flux is free to vary independently of specific humidity; specifically, it is not unphysical to suggest specific humidity could increase while latent flux goes down.
There can be little dispute that the addition of IR active gas should drive the planetary surface toward greater optical depth. Then a radiometer in space observes the balancing radiance less from the surface and increasingly from atmosphere.
With no greenhouse effects, the balancing radiative cooling can only occur from the surface, planetary emission temperature = surface temperature, and there is no gradient depleting heat flux sustained from surface to atmosphere.
A similar and perhaps easier mechanism is the circulation that exists to balance the differential heating of equator and poles. Since more energy is absorbed in the tropics than is emitted, and more energy is emitted than absorbed in the poles, there must exist a transport of energy between the tropics and the poles. This work is derived from the difference in radiative heating between the warmer equatorial regions and the colder polar regions. In a case of no heat transport in which emission to space is equal to the absorption of solar radiation at each latitude, the tropics would be notably warmer, and the poles colder.
On Earth the humidity in grams/kg moisture in air contributes a large proportion of greenhouse effects, and therefore it contributes a large proportion of the driving vertical radiative heating difference. More radiative energy is absorbed at the surface than emitted to space, and more radiative energy is emitted than absorbed in atmosphere.
The hydrological cycle and the sustained, continuous heat flux from the surface to the atmosphere, relies on the existence of greenhouse properties including the grams/kg water vapor in air. Without greenhouse effects, there would be no radiative-driven temperature gradient to sustain the depleting heat flux in W/m2.
However, I think you are right in certain respects that the hydrological factors Net WV GHE + Net Cloud GHE – Cloud albedo = 34.2 W/m² net TOA radiative forcing (warming) in radiative convective equilibrium RCE, which includes already the latent flux baked-in, deserves attention more than mere ad hoc adjustment.
The Net WV GHE and Cloud Radiative effects are obviously free to vary independently.
For example, for a perturbation that impacts cloud fraction negatively – this should result in a net TOA radiative effect that is positive – where S2010 lists WV GHE as -59.7 W/m2 (positive), and clouds 25.5 negative (cooling). Hypothetically, halving cloud fraction reduces the cooling influence of cloud, which should be reflected in more warming and even more WV GHE. By simple conservation of mass, the hydrological cycle must manifest as increased hydrological extremes (precip occurring from less cloud fractional area).
This was analyzed in great detail using a CESM idealized experiment in “Reduced terrestrial evaporation increases atmospheric water vapor by generating cloud feedbacks” Lague et al 2023. There it is shown how WV GHE increases and cloud fraction decreases by artificially limiting surface available moisture from continents.
The obvious implication is that climate sensitivity to trace gases must depend heavily on continental moisture regimes, meaning sensitivity isn’t a fixed value to “discover” — it’s dynamic and contingent on land-atmosphere interactions. Yet, for some reason which I find difficult to reconcile, this critical factor often gets sidelined in the pursuit to fixate on CO2 effects. If by way of deducing an “emergent constraint” depends on various aerosol estimates, it seems also essential to contemplate how observational constraints depend also on terrestrial properties. By omitting such factors it seems physically impossible to pin down climate sensitivity to a resolution better than 2K within the reasonable range of land surface parameters.
For more on the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of heat flux please review Axel Kleidon’s analytical framework.
@JCM
That is quite a lot and I had to wrap my head around it first. A couple of things..
1.
The notion of GHGs being responsible for the (adiabatic) lapse rate. I have read this many times over, but I never agreed with it. I assume predominantly it comes from Manabe’s work.
I am confident Manabe with his “back radiative” heating of the surface was wrong, for two simple reasons. For one it does not correspond to the current definition of the GHE by the IPCC. For the other, if the surface was constantly heated in this way and this heat would constantly have to escape by convection, then where is this convection? As soon as the sun is gone, there are no thermals rising from the surface. Even more so, the surface temperature falls below the air temperature every night and we get inversions. I could go into the many reasons why “back radiation” does not heat anything, but I think that is understood by now.
Yet there is still the idea sunlight heats the surface and GH-constituents cool the (upper) troposphere, thus providing the temperature gradient. I think there is a grain of truth to it, because the lapse rate on average is a bit larger than adiabatic, or “unstable”. The dominant adiabatic component of the lapse rate however should be independent of GH-constituents.
We have like 8 objects in our solar system all with adiabatic tropospheres (Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune & Titan). They differ strongly with regard to the concentration of GHGs. The gas giants and Titan basically have no CO2, only an abundance of methane. Methane however has its main absorption band <8.5µm, irrelevant with the very low temperatures there. "Adiabatic" seems to work independently of GHGs, and it should, as it is simply a property of gases.
I do not see with the atmosphere would become isothermic in the (theoretic) absence of GHGs. Beyond that there are still clouds and aerosols adding to the IR-opacity of the atmosphere.
2. With "latent heat" I do mean the full hydrological cycle.
3. "More radiative energy is absorbed at the surface than emitted to space"
Wait a moment! What is radiative energy? I know the term "radiative flux" is used a lot in the literature, and it always freaks me out. It is the short term for "radiative energy flux" and it insinuates that whenever there is radiation, there was also a flux of energy. That is not true!
Typically molecules of identical temperature exchange radiation, like those in your body. It is nothing to worry about, it will not heat or cool you. There is no flux of heat or energy, unless you would want to argue there are two (or numerous) opposing fluxes neutralizing each other. The same is largely true for the surface and the atmosphere close to the surface. They just exchange radiation, it does nothing.
The surface receives ~160W/m2 or solar radiation and an input of energy. The rest is all just back and forth radiation, with no energy flux involved. But Earth emits ~240W/m2 into space.
4. "Without greenhouse effects, there would be no radiative-driven temperature gradient to sustain the depleting heat flux in W/m2"
As for all the above I will strictly reject this claim.
E Schaffer Does Climate Science actually believe water vapor was warming the planet?
Not only “believes”, but actually quantified it – see for instance Schmidt et al. 2010 (JGR VOL. 115, D20106, doi:10.1029/2010JD014287), which follows Gavin’s earlier post on RC. Specifically Their Table 3 give: the net effect of removal of WV on the TOA Adjusted Radiative Forcing = -59.7 W/m2. Hence yes – the Climate Science actually has shown that water vapor is warming the planet.
Why do you ask ?
More info was released by JE Hansen & P Kharecha related to the Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed? Paper. The two-page release — Global Warming Acceleration and Recovery, 06 Feb 2025 is at: https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2025/Acceleration.06February2025.pdf
Thanks for pointing out the new info.
Wonder what the climate scientists at this site think of the opinions voiced by Hansen/Kharecha.
Thank you @Raven and @John P for your help. The waybackmachine links sent by Raven give me an error, but I am saving all the data I can on the Mauna Loa lab GHG trends site at every weekly update, as long as it is accessible. I hope many others do that, even better, archive everything from all government websites.
Thank you @Susan for your comments and alerts. Thank you all who are posting scientific, pertinent, valid, valuable content.
It is more critical than ever that each of us, who live in reality as is, as described by one of our best inventions, science, adopts the most effective solutions to the climate emergency. The most consequential: stop using fossil fuels for anything, easy or not, do it. Share with us your solutions and success stories.
I am curious about the mandate to lower overhead expenses on NIH contracts. They do seem to be higher than the normal nonprofit contract, but maybe scientific experimentation requires that. Can somebody with experience with such contracts shed some more specific light on why those levels of overhead are required?
“Can somebody with experience with such contracts shed some more specific light on why those levels of overhead are required?”
No one responded to this yet … maybe because it’s so obvious.
Money makes the world go round. Without that overhead, all USA university research will slow to a crawl Buildings, maintenance, lab space, utilities, etc — it all goes into this. Think about it — is a professor really equipped to calculate the overhead required for every proposal they write? They can maybe estimate grad student funding and experiment funding, but that’s about it. Overhead is an average of everything that enables a research institution to keep operating.
To add to what Paul said, you also need to understand how universities in particular are operating. Although they are producing research results with that money, that is not their only product. They are also producing students who are trained to carry on the field. They are also often tackling more fundamental problems rather that simply applying existing techniques to a problem at hand. This differs from an industrial lab where narrow research results are the emphasis.
I also heard an excellent point made–the facilities likely to be hurt most by these reductions are state universities. States have reduced support to universities well below what is needed to run them. NIH and other research grant organizations are filling this gap. An institution like Harvard or Yale could likely absorb the costs. A red-state university will not be able to. They are going to be hurting badly.
Contrast to scientific research in Pierre-Simon Laplace’s time in 1776. He came from wealth and became a professional mathematician. With sufficient funding and little teaching load and probably never making any research expeditions, he formulated the equations of fluid dynamics that are still being used to try to solve ocean behavior today.
That happens once in history ,,, now it gets hard.
Keep throwing money at the problem, or work smarter? Is it possible that some other breakthrough will occur? Maybe through AI? Can anything be done in basic climate research with minimal funding?
FYI:
“The world is set to blow past its goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C, new research shows.
“Last year was the first to measure roughly 1.5 degrees warmer than the preindustrial era, though the world has not yet officially surpassed the 1.5-degree target set forth in the Paris Agreement, which will be judged according to the average temperature over 20 years. But with emissions hitting new highs, this target is almost certainly out of reach, according to two new papers published in Nature Climate Change.
“Scientists used modeling to show that just one year at 1.5 degrees C likely heralds a future breaching of the Paris goal. The papers suggest that last year’s record temperatures mean world will probably exceed the 1.5-degree threshold over the next 20 years.”
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/1.5-goal-threshold-research
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02247-8
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02246-9
We already know about Trumps terrible cuts to NOAA. Now we have this: “So much for lowering costs’: Outrage grows over Musk’s death wish for consumer protection”
https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/other/so-much-for-lowering-costs-outrage-grows-over-musk-s-death-wish-for-consumer-protection/ar-AA1yK8As?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=da70a2cd2b5a4a51827cee9953e046ff&ei=22
And this: “Former Republican Bill Kristol believes that President Donald Trump will regret taking a hatchet to the National Institutes for Health.”
https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/other/the-politics-are-bad-ex-republican-warns-trump-just-made-a-huge-blunder/ar-AA1yLuNI?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=a7901ace0b8942c396041db4de2b677f&ei=37
I appreciate that sometimes government departments / organisations can get too big, and need to be downsized, or have hiring freezes, but what these guys are doing is total destruction. There is something wrong in the head with these two characters. Both seem to have psychological issues if you google them. Now I have sympathy for that but they are in positions of incredible power, and such issues become crucially important.
There is also a good deal of self interest with Musk removing consumer protections and regulations as this would certainly help Musks companies make more money, at the expense of the general publics safety. Sorry if its partly off topic, but the issue is so huge and serious I thought it justified. It’s also important to understand what’s motivating these two guys, to get some idea of how to counter them especially on the climate issue.
What’s motivating them is the deliberate destruction of the USA’s dominant position in the world economy. Trump has been working for Russia since 1987. The result of his administration will be 1) an imperial president who can’t be voted or subpoenaed, 2) the destruction of higher education, 3) the destruction of the social safety net, 4) the destruction of all US trade agreements, 5) withdrawal from all US alliances, and 6) the destruction of our intelligence agencies. Russia has, at second hand, invaded and is in the process of destroying the US.
BPL, I agree with your points 1 – 8.
Of course the Trump Team (and GOP) feel they are making America more dominant in the world economy, but It looks like it will backfire on them. Tariffs perhaps made sense in Americas early history, but not in today’s world. things have changed too much and become very interconnected and hard to untangle. Its notable that Trump’s tariffs last time he was president lead to a decrease in manufacturing jobs, the exact opposite of what he intended. Refer:
https://econofact.org/factbrief/did-the-trump-tariffs-increase-us-manufacturing-jobs
The highest tariffs tend to be in poor countries but after many decades its not improved their economies. Trump never learns a thing.
“voted” above should read “voted out.” Trump is ruling via the Fuhrer principle.
I should have added, 7) the crippling of our national defense establishment. By getting women out of combat and leadership positions, he leaves holes which he can fill with party loyalists. What Stalin did to the Red Army in 1937, Trump is doing to the US armed forces in 2025. And that’s not a coincidence.
Did I forget tariffs? Add 8) the destruction of the modern US economy.
The Potsdam Institute published today a study which was conducted over the past four years and concluded that carbon capture and storage with BECCS is constraint by available land, or alternatively requires to use farm land, which is often used for meat production. A translated version https://climatestate.com/2025/02/12/study-little-potential-for-climate-plantations-within-planetary-limits and the official PI release https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/little-potential-for-climate-plantations-within-planetary-boundaries
My thought, the study does not factor in the change of environmental climatic zone, forest turn to brush lands for instance, and hence offer new possibilities for BECCS. The study introduces the new term climate plantations, since BECCS only accounts for CO2? However, I rather keep using the established term and add that it now also includes the addition to account for the four constraints (deforestation, freshwater consumption, nitrogen input through fertilization, and the loss of the integrity of the biosphere).
It is good that this is studied but the conclusion lacks with not accounting for a new climate reality in which existing biological systems migrate to a different state (i.e. forest become tundra).
FYI:
“The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) has placed onerous new restrictions on its scientists that people within the agency say could hamper the quality and availability of the world’s weather forecasts, among other key services … ‘My expectation is that it’s going to be a crackdown on climate,’ said a senior Noaa scientist. ‘People are just somewhere between disturbed and terrified’.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/12/noaa-restrictions-climate-science-forecasts
Study up on what Harper did to science and in particular science communication to the public in any forum whatsoever including journals and conferences without “permission” in Canada a few years back. He attended all the same workshops then as the propagandists now in power in the US.
Many references.. I will mention the time when a salmon researcher who had the _cover article_ in an issue of Science was not allowed to speak to reporters about her article without permission of the prime minister;s office which they refused to give.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/canadian-scientists-open-about-how-their-government-silenced-science-180961942/
Prepare for the same in the USA: Autocrats ALWAYS try to control information flow. This has been true since time out of mind. The Framers realized this and attempted to provide safeguards to always allow information flow but these safeguards are clearly failing under the money and political power onslaught.
Oh, and I personally witnessed the destruction of one of the science libraries Harper destroyed. Trucks by the dozen lined up to dump all the materials into the landfill. Pretty much the emptiest feeling of my life.
Sadly many of our resident deniers would likely have clapped and cheered to see that horror.
I suspect the science deniers feel scared and hurt by what science says, so they lash out. They burn books. They halt information flows. They bad mouth scientists. They lie, and mislead. Their deliberate stupidity becomes hard to distinguish from real stupidity, and a big part of them might become permanently stupid.
I STRONGLY disagree. This is NOT “stupidity”. It is as expertly planned as any Bolshevik agit-prop operation or Nazi putsch ever was. It has clearly been going on for decades to anyone with eyes and a brain as ever-so-clearly here by the concerted denier campaigns we see here for that matter.
The destruction of any information flow except that which happens with Dear Leader’s approval has been the goal of authoritarians since long before Hammurabi.
He!!, it’s the same strategy and tactics used by every petty abuser in every dysfunctional family to maintain control within just a nuclear family group for that matter. Say or hint or even seem to think the “wrong” thing and the hammer comes down. We’ll be seeing a lot more of that anon.
I not know how to deal with my grief over the mounting losses to humanity piling up hour by hour. Many of us will not know what we lost until it’s gone. It’s a good time to be old. [I started with we or one, but decided I should own this personally.]
jgnfld
Your last paragraph is very important. After years of trying, I came up with a shorthand description of the process that develops Authoritarian personality.
You are born into a family where, if you ever use the word “why?”, the answer is…
“because I said so!”.
So the child grows up conditioned to think that this is what it means to be an adult. And, in the traditional patriarchal paradigm, they see the elemental hierarchical structure… dad mom kid, and they internalize that this is how society should be ordered.
But the point you are missing is that this is not “dysfunctional” in some general sense. Heck, your tribe can conquer the world using it.
To those of us whose position on the spectrum is more bonobo than chimpanzee, of course, it is truly distasteful. We like to compete as individuals, not form groups to dominate others. But here we are, eh.
jgnfld, I didn’t say stupidity. I said “deliberate stupidity”, which would apply to their embracing of climate science denialism and to their NAZI like planned campaign to destroy and control. information.
Maybe Zebra should just read the research:
Right-wing authoritarianism appears to have a genetic foundation
https://www.psypost.org/right-wing-authoritarianism-appears-to-have-a-genetic-foundation/
Couple of excerpts:
New research provides evidence that political leanings are more deeply intertwined with our genetic makeup than previously thought, specifically linked to two core ideological traits: right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. Unlike the conventional belief that our political stances are merely extensions of our personality traits, this study suggests that our views on hierarchy and social dominance have their own distinct genetic foundations. The findings have been published in the Journal of Personality…..
These findings challenge some traditional views in political and social psychology, particularly those that emphasize the role of upbringing and social environment in shaping political ideology. Instead, the results support a more nuanced view that acknowledges a significant genetic component to political attitudes, alongside and sometimes even above personality traits traditionally linked to political orientation…..
The ‘deliberateness’ is in the service of political power and money and is smart from that perspective.
It may well be–surely is, even–stupid in the long term, but the oligarchs figure they can survive in their redoubts/HVAC’ed cities and couldn’t care less about the peons.
This has been a consistent sci-fi/speculative fic trope forever. We are just seeing it in action.
jgnfld
“The ‘deliberateness’ is in the service of political power and money and is smart from that perspective.It may well be–surely is, even–stupid in the long term, but the oligarchs figure they can survive in their redoubts/HVAC’ed cities and couldn’t care less about the peons.This has been a consistent sci-fi/speculative fic trope forever. We are just seeing it in action.”
I absolutely agree. I was pondering this example a few days ago. Elon Musk is a clever creative guy and not a stupid person apart from a few brain implosions along the way in things hes done. (Some very bad design features his Tesla cars that everyone sees except Musk. ) Perhaps that was a warning that the man is rather unusual.
Musk is now destroying government agencies that serve sensible purposes, in my view and I would suspect in most people’s view. NOAA, The consumer protection agency, The FBI, The Foreign Aid organisation, The EPA etc,etc. And hes doing it all in a very clever way . Its very fast like a NAZI blitzkreig, thus not giving people time to react. And no doubt he doesnt care about the impact on ordinary people – because he thinks his billions will insulate himself as you alluded to.
But why the hell is he doing these things? Some possibilities:
1) It would advantage his companies so from that narrow perspective hes being clever, although ultimately its stupid from a society perspective AND some of it could backfire on Musk himself. Its hard for even clever people to see every possibility.
2)But there may be other motives. He seems to lean towards very small government libertarian views which many regard as an ultimately stupid ideology. This may be deliberate stupidity or perhaps hes just hardwired to think that way and really believes in it all.
3) Musk also takes powerful medications (ketamine) for sever depression which can affect cognitive functioning so he might be acting slightly crazy. And I do have huge sympathy for people that suffer from severe depression.
4) He likes “breaking things”, and has taken this type of economic ideology too far, due to being power mad and slightly crazed by his medications or his clinical depression.
Maybe its some combination of these things. Excuse my rant. I did basic psychology at University hence my interest.
Nigelj,
I guess I can’t help commenting…
It’s hard not to draw a parallel between D.O.G.E. and the Venetian Doge. Whether there’s some intentional connection Musk has layered onto the doge dog meme or not, it fits nicely with the actual situation, because Musk is certainly acting like the chief magistrate of an oligarchy (that is, aside from the irrational exuberance of tech bro culture and Musk’s apparent mental instability).
Trump has so many flaws I’m inclined to just label him a malignant solipsist and move on. You can delve into his dysfunctional upbringing etc., but it may be more instructive to look at his social development in the 1970’s culture of NYC, and in particular his connection to Roy Cohn, his mentor, who among other things was one of the architects of the McCarthy era, lawyer (consigliere, if you will) to notable Mafia figures, and advisor to Ronald Reagan.
FYI:
“Musk’s ‘efficiency’ agency site adds data from controversial rightwing thinktank … At the top of the website’s regulations page, Doge used data published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a libertarian thinktank that claims to fight ‘climate alarmism’ … The thinktank has extensive ties to the far-right network formed by the fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch and his late brother David. In 2020, the network provided some $900,000 to CEI … likely an underestimate, as it does not include ‘dark money’ contributions which need not be disclosed. CEI also accepted more than $640,000 from the Koch network between 1997 and 2015. Its other donors have included the nation’s top oil and gas lobbying group, American Petroleum Institute, and the fossil fuel giant Exxon.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/12/trump-musk-doge-website
I was horrified to see this Zack Labe BlueSky post, 3 hours ago (11 pm, 13 Feb)
“I really cannot believe my childhood career dream might end like this. Feeling so small and lost.”
https://bsky.app/profile/zacklabe.com/post/3li3whyqguk2i
Did a little checking, and indeed GFDL is part of NOAA, and many scientists who work in academia with government support are likely to be defunded.
https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/ – Princeton Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory [NOAA]
It is ironic, because cutbacks at NSIDC meant Dr. Labe stepped in to provide information we lost there because of Trump and Republican science denial, with an assist from people like Judith Curry.
Idk what is going on with Bluesky, they banned my account which basically just reposted a little, and I cannot view your Zack Labe post, requires to sign in. Zack Labe provides among the best data visualizations, I hope he continues!
Rechecked, it’s there (yesterday). I provided, as is my habit, the content as well (bold italic). For some reason this tore my heart.
In other climate news:
Lee Zeldin’s EPA discovers shady $20,000,000,000 climate change slush fund:
https://techstartups.com/2025/02/13/epa-chief-uncovers-20-billion-in-taxpayer-funds-laundered-to-climate-ngos-7b-sent-to-climate-united-fund-case-referred-to-doj/
Atmospheric physics primer on climate science:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/02/all_you_need_to_know_about_atmospheric_physics.html
And for those above now in their 10th year of bawling and squalling about Trump (that would include many of you), realize this:
With DEI now removed from the Federal Government, Reverend MLKs famous dream has finally come true – people will be judged on merit, not on physical characteristics, all thanks to President Donald John Trump, aka 45 & 47.
Hi there, Mr. KIA.
A couple of points regarding your comment:
1. Lee Zeldin seems desperate to prove his worth to your cult leader, as any good cult member does, by finding seemingly large amounts of money spent by the previous government and declaring them fraud, hoping that large numbers coupled with the right adjectives will add to the fuel of right-wing hysteria and cement him as a loyal servant. I hear it’s a popular tactic these days.
Your comment shows that he is correct in his assessment. I’d like to add that facts are, unfortunately, not on his side, but that might be not as unfortunate now, as facts seem to matter less and less as we descent into this era of ignorance. Nonetheless, let me be the one to take part in the thankless task of validating reality.
1.1 No evidence was provided that the grants given by EPA were fradulent, shady, or improper in any way, except for the fact that they were large numbers given to climate organisations, which is apparently enough these days. All of this information was public before Trump was in office.
https://weareclimateunited.org/news/climate-united-award
Here you go. April 4th. Incredible work by Mr. Zeldin in uncovering this fraud that anyone with the access to the Internet could google, truly outstanding work.
1.2 Zeldin claims that it is highly unusual that a government agency uses a bank as financial agent of the Treasury. To say that this claim is laughable is not enough, it is simply a childlike lack of an understanding of one of the most basic functions of government. The treasury has had the authority to set up private banks as financial agents going back to the mid 1800s, and is standard practice which has been used for all sorts of transactions where an agency needs to maintain oversight while providing more flexibility to leverage private partnerships.
2. The short article by Bill Ponton which you’ve linked is an unremarkable entry into a long list of denialists’ attempts at sowing doubt about climate science by vaguely referencing a well known fact, the fact that the water cycle affects global temperatures and is an important element of climate. To think that physicists studying the climate for years have somehow missed this is again, laughable.
Anyone who has even a cursory understanding of the subject knows that mainstream science is concentrated on GHG emissions due to their longevity, and human causality. The scientific consensus, backed by extensive research, clearly indicates that human-induced GHG emissions are the main cause of recent global warming.
In both cases the source of your knowledge seems to be based primarily on seeing numbers which you perceive to be big or small, and then making an emotional appeal based on your perceived meaning of the size of these numbers, without taking even a moment to think more deeply about the subjects you’re taking time to off-handedly dismiss to feel better about yourself.
I don’t blame you, since effort would probably make you realize that your worldview is as thin and fragile as a cardboard box. I can only hope that you’ll eventually grow enough to feel shame for being a party to this proliferation of ignorance and stupidity.
Disgusting lies do not contribute to knowledge. This political provocation does not belong here. Nobody appears to be monitoring these comments.
The politics got started with comment #1 for this month’s UV. A rough count shows about 50 or 60 comments involving politics. I can assure you that the comments are monitored and censored – many do not get posted. I checked the Bore Hole – they don’t go there either.
Your post is nothing but slavish regurgitation of laughable right-wing denialist BULLSHIT, topped off with a bit of racist, misogynist, white male supremacist WHINING.
It has been laughably obvious for a long time that the only purpose of your posts on this site is to annoy people with BULLSHIT. Because that’s how sick, sad trolls get their kicks.
You are an embarrassment to the human species.
“Lee Zeldin’s EPA discovers shady $20,000,000,000 climate change slush fund:”
Lots of allegations. Precisely zero evidence of wrongdoing. Get back to us when you have something worth reading about. Which is very unlikely.
And as regards allegations of lack of transparency, how about Trumps secret negotiations by phone with Putin that excluded NATO and the Ukraine participating? How about Trump telling us all he didn’t support Agenda 2025, while he is now busy implementing it? So don’t lecture us on lack of transparency.
“With DEI now removed from the Federal Government, Reverend MLKs famous dream has finally come true – people will be judged on merit, not on physical characteristics, all thanks to President Donald John Trump, aka 45 & 47.”
Uh-huh. And a snapshot of that is the Trump cabinet, which on balance is the most spectacularly un-meritorious bunch of sycophants ever dredged from the second-line studios of ‘reality’ TV. (No disrespect intended to the puppy-shooting governor of North Dakota, of course.)
“With DEI now removed from the Federal Government, Reverend MLKs famous dream has finally come true – people will be judged on merit, ”
Yeah, the merit was on the mind of the Musk posy firing
“ 400 workers from the The National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA), agency responsible for “overseeing America’s nuclear weapons stockpile. NNSA employees are responsible for designing and maintaining the nation’s nuclear weapons, as well as for producing and dismantling the weapons, providing the Navy with nuclear reactors for submarines, and responding to nuclear emergencies. The agency also plays a critical role in counter-terrorism and transporting nuclear weapons around the nation. In addition, employees at NNSA headquarters write requirements and guidelines for contractors who build nuclear weapons.”
“The workers were fired because “no one” had “taken any time to understand what we do and the importance of our work to the nation’s national security,” one source told CNN.”
But heck – who needs NNSA workers, when we have the meritorious Trump and Musk’s interns in charge … “MARA-Lago” boys rules! .
—
^* Make America … Radioactive Again!
KIA: Atmospheric physics primer on climate science:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/02/all_you_need_to_know_about_atmospheric_physics.html
BPL: American Thinker is not peer-reviewed.
KIA: With DEI now removed from the Federal Government, Reverend MLKs famous dream has finally come true – people will be judged on merit, not on physical characteristics, all thanks to President Donald John Trump, aka 45 & 47.
BPL: “Merit” to this regime means “white male.” The head of the Coast Guard was fired simply because she was female. People are being appointed for political loyalty rather than competence. It has nothing to do with actual merit.
Reuters article:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-fires-coast-guard-commandant-over-dei-security-fox-news-reports-2025-01-21/
Excerpt:
“Acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamin Huffman, in a message posted on the Coast Guard’s website, confirmed Fagan had been relieved of her duties after a “long and illustrious career.”
Huffman had terminated Fagan from her position because of “leadership deficiencies, operational failures, and inability to advance the strategic objectives of the U.S. Coast Guard,” a senior Department of Homeland Security official said.
One of the reasons, the official said while speaking on the condition of anonymity, was Fagan’s “excessive” focus on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies.”
The specific deficiencies they allege include mainly having outdated equipment and not recruiting enough staff. However this was because of underfunding by the federal government, so its not her fault, and she still managed to recruit more staff than previous heads of the coastguard. The accusations against her are thus mostly unjustified, and are just scapegoating. She was kicked out because they just dont like her and because she is a woman.
Also from the cited article:
“Acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamin Huffman, in a message posted on the Coast Guard’s website, confirmed Fagan had been relieved of her duties after a ‘long and illustrious career.”
And:
“Trump has vowed to eliminate DEI programs in federal government agencies. The goal of the programs had been to increase diversity throughout the armed forces to better reflect the American population they serve to protect.”
And:
“The Coast Guard, in particular, has faced scrutiny in the past for sexual assault complaints but also allegations of racism and hazing.”
Very much like Trump, Musk, and their supporters to want to return the country, and specifically, the military branches, to the glory days of “sexual assault, hazing and racism”. When they tell you who they are, believe them.
Fun and ironic fact: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion promotes the hiring of more women. :)
For the umpteenth time, you refer to non-peer reviewed crap. There is no excuse for you to have not learned the scientific method by now. None at all. smdh
Ah yes. More mis/disinformation. Just what society needs about now.
Let’s see, Mr. Ponton is a media consultant for venture caps. His firm advertises their expertise as follows:
“About PVA
PVA is an advisory group specializing in venture management consulting in the digital media, communication and cable industries. ”
Not a word about physics knowledge.
And American “Thinker” is hardly known as a source of non-propaganda as the delivering of propaganda is its specialty.. I do see they quote that other well known source of propaganda CO2 Coalition.
FYI:
“For the past few years, scientists have watched, aghast, as global temperatures have surged — with both 2023 and 2024 reaching around 1.5 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial average. In some ways, that record heat was expected: Scientists predicted that El Niño, combined with decreasing air pollution that cools the earth, would cause temperatures to skyrocket.
“But even those factors, scientists say, are not sufficient to explain the world’s recent record heat.
“Earth’s overall energy imbalance — the amount of heat the planet is taking in minus the amount of heat it is releasing — also continues to rise, worrying scientists. The energy imbalance drives global warming. If it rises, scientists expect global temperatures to follow.
“Two new studies offer a potential explanation: fewer clouds. And the decline in cloud cover, researchers say, could signal the start of a feedback loop that leads to more warming.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/02/14/global-warming-acceleration-clouds
https://www.science.org/stoken/author-tokens/ST-2289/full?cookieSet=1
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-5050391/v1
George Tselioudis in two of the links posted was interviewed by Dan Miller (Climate Chat) last month on his findings. The interview is around an hour and a half long, posted on you tube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suFZb2ViHoA
Great example of the communication problem.
“global temperatures have surged” “temperatures to skyrocket”
“record heat”
“But even those factors, scientists say, are not sufficient to explain the world’s recent record heat.”
“Earth’s overall energy imbalance — the amount of heat the planet is taking in minus the amount of heat it is releasing — also continues to rise, worrying scientists. The energy imbalance drives global warming. If it rises, scientists expect global temperatures to follow.”
“Two new studies offer a potential explanation: fewer clouds. And the decline in cloud cover, researchers say, could signal the start of a feedback loop that leads to more warming.”
Warming, global warming, heat, record heat, temperature, energy… how do we expect anyone to understand this stuff??
The problem with being educated is that we are taught, when writing, to use different words if possible… not to repeat. But that really doesn’t work with science; that’s why we have organizations that decide on definitions.
Failing to use, and require the use of, consistent definitions, is a disservice in educating the public. We see that even here, as in the water vapor discussion, which aids the cause of the vaporhead denialist trolls. If people with relevant science backgrounds play along, how are the journalists supposed to avoid misinforming the public?
From Wikipedia:
“In thermodynamics, heat is energy in transfer between a thermodynamic system and its surroundings by modes other than thermodynamic work and transfer of matter. Such modes are microscopic, mainly thermal conduction, radiation, and friction, as distinct from the macroscopic modes, thermodynamic work and transfer of matter.[1] For a closed system (transfer of matter excluded), the heat involved in a process is the difference in internal energy between the final and initial states of a system, and subtracting the work done in the process.[2] For a closed system, this is the formulation of the first law of thermodynamics.”
But after decades of this being a public issue, we still see this:
“Earth’s overall energy imbalance — the amount of heat the planet is taking in minus the amount of heat it is releasing — also continues to rise, worrying scientists. The energy imbalance drives global warming. If it rises, scientists expect global temperatures to follow.”
Ridiculous.
You are correct, of course, but we can’t escape that lots of words are both technical terms well defined AND everyday words with much more ambiguous meaning. People in general are not well educated about thermodynamics but they do know the everyday meaning of words like “heat”.
The Wikipedia article you quote also says:
‘In common language, English ‘heat’ or ‘warmth’, just as French chaleur, German Hitze or Wärme, Latin calor, Greek θάλπος, etc. refers to either thermal energy or temperature, or the human perception of these.’
Merriam-Webster lists several meanings for the word “heat” including
“a condition of being hot : warmth”,
“a period of heat”,
“physics : added energy that causes substances to rise in temperature, fuse, evaporate, expand, or undergo any of various other related changes, that flows to a body by contact with or radiation from bodies at higher temperatures, and that can be produced in a body (as by compression)”,
” physics : the energy associated with the random motions of the molecules, atoms, or smaller structural units of which matter is composed “.
The meaning of a word is context dependent whether we like it or not.
IG, I appreciate your response. but your last sentence is kind of what I was trying to say.
We have a context, which is climate change. The topic is based on physics, including thermodynamics. And for the purposes of educating “the public”, there’s no reason not to be consistent and correct, because the public, if they are interested in getting educated, is perfectly capable of understanding it.
However, by not being consistent and correct, we create doubt and confusion, and play into the hands of the people doing it intentionally.
The WAPO writer, Shannon Osaka, is actually better than many. But consider what she says in introduction to the topic of reduced cloud cover.
“Scientists predicted that El Niño, combined with decreasing air pollution that cools the earth, would cause temperatures to skyrocket.
But even those factors, scientists say, are not sufficient to explain the world’s recent record heat.
Earth’s overall energy imbalance — the amount of heat the planet is taking in minus the amount of heat it is releasing — also continues to rise, worrying scientists. The energy imbalance drives global warming. If it rises, scientists expect global temperatures to follow.”
This is just wrong. If you would like to try to interpret it somehow, be my guest.
(BTW, your comment mentioning hysteresis in bows was interesting. A long time ago I had an old-fashioned recurve, and you got me searching a little, and I was amazed at all the fancy equipment that exists now.)
in Re to zebra, 17 Feb 2025 at 10:44 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-830321
Sir,
Could you explain more specifically what you see plainly wrong in your citation from an article written by Ms. Osaka?
She says clearly “The energy imbalance drives global warming.” I think it is a correct message.
In the cited paragraphs, I have not noted anything what might cause confusion, perhaps with an exception of the following sentence:
“If it rises, scientists expect global temperatures to follow.”
I think that this sentence could indeed become misleading – if someone would have construed it the way that
“(only) if the energy imbalance rises, the global (mean) temperatures rise as well”.
If it was your objection, I would agree that in this sentence, Ms. Osaka was not precise enough. I guess she was going to say something like “If this energy flow imbalance that drives global warming rises, an accelleration of the observed global warming may be reasonably expected. In this case, there is a really poor prospect that the global warming will stop or reverse soon”. If she expressed her concerns this way, I would perfectly agree to her view.
Greetings
Tomáš
Three quotes about the significance of the continuing temperature anomaly. A climate journalist very much informs but then minimizes; a climate journalist hedges an apocalyptic message; and a climate activist jumps to outlier conclusions – who do you think is right? Who informs and who misinforms? Whose quote is most useful?
If the cloud changes are part of a feedback loop, scientists warn, that could indicate more warming coming down the pipe, with extreme heat for billions of people around the globe. Every hot year buttresses the idea that some researchers have now embraced, that global temperature rise will reach the high end of what models had predicted. If so, the planet could pass 1.5 degrees Celsius later this decade. Shannon Osaka
I am not saying that we are doomed, but a simple linear projection of the current warming trend would deliver us to the +2.0-degree-Celsius world by early next year. That is far from certain, of course, but it has definitely entered the realm of possibility. A wiser civilization would be discussing emergency measures right now, even if actions take longer. Gwynne Dyer
Since 2021, the Global Mean Surface Temperature has gone up by +0.5°C IN JUST 3 years (2022/2023/2024). That averages out to a Rate of Warming of about +0.17°C PER YEAR over the last 3 years… If the Rate of Warming follows the pattern of the last few years. Then La Nina years should warm about +0.1°C per year. With “spikes” during El Nino years of +0.2°C up to +0.4°C PER YEAR.
With 2 El Nino’s per decade and about 6 La Nina years we may be looking at a RoW of roughly +1.2°C of warming PER DECADE now. We could hit +2.8°C over baseline by 2035. Richard Crim
Bill Henderson
Bill, they all misinform. Focusing on GMST at this point is about as practical as divining from the entrails of pigs.
GMST has been useful in demonstrating the increase in climate system energy over the last few hundred years because it is sensitive. The instrument has been refined and made more precise with great effort. But that doesn’t mean it is useful for making long-term projections from short-term data for a system that has become destabilized (if not officially chaotic). Rather, the opposite.
How about this. We explain in terms that are both correct and consistent and understandable to the public:
1. We have solid data that the climate system has been and is currently gaining energy.
2. When you add energy to any complicated system like our climate, the system will destabilize, and there will be changes in the sub-systems, which will result in more extreme effects.
3. One such effect is an increase in local temperatures. In some locations, that will cause harm… sometimes directly as lethal heat waves, or by causing drought which leads to wildfires, and other effects.
4. Those local increases are what cause the increase in the average surface
temperature. Until our current instrumentation was developed, that was the best indicator of the energy increase.
5. There are many different changes that result from the energy increase. like worse storms and flooding and so on. Some of them, called feedbacks, may even add to the energy increase. Scientists are working to figure out the details, but it is clear that the effects will almost all be negative for human society.
6. The energy increase is primarily the result of adding gases to the atmosphere by using fossil fuels, and the consequences of the effects are going to get worse as long as that continues.
Now, I know that an editor would complain that I haven’t used sufficient different words or more sciency words or maybe some numbers with percents after them. Why, it’s almost as if a high school graduate who lives on their phone could take a minute to read it, and feel that it actually makes sense in relation to what they’ve been seeing on the news(feed).
Any corrections?
zebra Focusing on GMST at this point is about as practical as divining from the entrails of pigs.
Witty saying proves nothing. with you analogy you assign zero value to GMST, actually worse than that – FALSE knowledge that pretends to be a real one. I disagree – there is a value of GMST
it is a measure of the energy in this part of the system that it has the most direct influence on human health and on ecosystems directly supporting human civilization (as opposed to say, changes in energy in stratosphere or in the deep ocean). T is familiar and intuitively understandable concept to the lay people and to the policy-makers.
I suspect not many can relate to you going to the doctor and complaining:
“My bronchioles have felt obstructed for the last few days, I may have 560 kJ more thermal energy than usually “.
(The doctor: ” Please look to the side and cough” ?)
Nor may can relate to you deciding whether to put on a warm coat or not, based on the forecast of the …. morning outdoor energy you heard on the radio.
But if you insist that “GMST at this point is about as practical as divining from the entrails of pigs”
please share with us what insights of comparable value (orig.; “ as practical as“) have you divined from the entrails of pigs lately?
In Re to zebra, 18 Feb 2025 at 9:21 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-830339
Dear Sir,
I appreciate your efforts to find ways how climate science can be communicated to the public “in terms that are both correct and consistent and understandable”.
Unfortunately, I am afraid that your present attempt is neither.
1) It appears that you believe that a gain in “energy” is something what necessarily provides a system with more vigorous internal dynamics. If you, however, look on following example, you will see that this may not necessarily be the case. Let us assume a closed vessel filled with a gas. If we put the vessel in a hot bath, the thermal energy of the gas inside will undoubtedly increase. Nevertheless, the only change which we will likely observe is an increased hydrostatic pressure exhibited by the closed gas on the walls of the vessel.
2) If you will analyse a few such examples, you will rather conclude that the energy gain alone is not a prerequisite for the internal dynamics you strive to explain. It rather appears that you need that your system is inhomogeneous, and intensively exchanging energy with its surrounding (“far from thermodynamic equilibrium”).
3) If you will heat your gas-filled vessel from one side and cool it from another side, you might observe gas turbulences inside, e.g. by movement of hanging paper stripes installed in the vessel. This way, you can indeed artificially model the sought internal dynamics in your system.
4) By exploring such an experimental arrangement, you could arrive at the observation that even if the system has not changed its energy, because you exactly compensated the increased heating by more intensive cooling from the opposite side, the turbulences inside the vessel intensified.
5) It may be thus something else than just the energy of the system what in fact causes the dynamic drama that you observe inside.
6) Actually, it rather appears that more intensive atmospheric phenomena observed on warming Earth may be caused by higher thermal gradients between warmer Earth surface and upper atmosphere that emits waste heat into Universe and thus works as the radiator of a giant “Earth heat engine”. This is at least the view that is in my opinion more consistent with physics than yours.
7) You may look at some materials provided by prof. Axel Kleidon, e.g.
https://www.mpg.de/21167302/W002_Visit_To_042-047.pdf
or https://www.socgeol.it/files/download/portale%20dottorato/Lectures-Kleidon_June.pdf
and consider if your explanations indeed achieved the goals you set therefor.
Greetings
Tomáš
We have Zebras idea of talking about anthopogenic global warming not with using temperatures, but as an increase in energy in the system using presumably joules. People will probably want to know how do you arrive at things like ocean heat energy content. (I wondered myself and googled it). To calculate ocean heat content, the formula is: “OHC = sea water density * Specific heat capacity * integrating the temperature over this depth” (using integral calculus). I think most of the public would struggle to understand all this. And if you DONT get into that level of detail, its all just meaningless generalities and over simplifications about energy. In contrast temperatures are detailed and specific and easy enough to grasp as Piotr points out.
BH, possibly, but it’s difficult to read too much into 2023 – 2024 because it might have just been an unusually warm el nino. If this year is ALSO unusually warm, I would say we are seeing a step change in warming that will continue into the future, all due to reducing aerosols and / or some sort of increase in the underlying AGW forcing. This year and next year will be very revealing on our future.
The extreme positive 500 mb height anomaly near the north pole reached 5 sigma today near the northwest tip of Greenland. This linked map gets updated, though.
https://psl.noaa.gov/map/images/ens/z500anom_f000_nh.html
I would like to initiate a discussion on what the phrase “tipping point” actually means. I always interpreted as the point where even if humanity decarbonized, greenhouse concentrations in the atmosphere would continue increasing anyway because of the feedback mechanisms that our emissions had triggered. And recent news from the Arctic would seem to indicate we are as close to that point as we are to formally reaching the 1.5* threshold. Unless there are negative forcings elsewhere to counter the Arctic news.
But I have recently seen many comments from climatologists critical of the very concept, and I don’t really understand that. Part of it seems to be that it doesn’t necessarily indicate some sudden sea change in the progression of forcing. OKay, so what? If we reach a point where decarbonizing no longer stops the process, that means we reached the tipping point.
As with the discussion of “doomers” it seems that there is more interest in not sounding too negative. Or am I missing something? I have not seen anything indicating that the positive feedback would not occur, so doesn’t there have to be a tipping point based on my definition above?
The concept of ‘tipping point’ arose in physics to study phase changes–that is, areas along some scale where a very small change in some input parameter can completely change the state of some system as in going from -.5C to +.5C around water. Phase diagrams and the notion of critical points goes back to the dawn of modern science.
In math, the same arises in dynamical systems routinely in bifurcation theory.
Back in the 60s-70s, the term was co-opted by a number of fields (a) partly as computers made working with such systems much more possible (Feigenbaum, for example, produced his earliest bifurcation diagrams on a _calculator_ point-by-point!) and (b) partly as a metaphor or analogy without specific math underpinnings.
This last is, where I suspect, some of your/others’ confusions may arise. I even ran across a math prof once who wanted to collaborate to quantify the probability of panic reactions in stressed individuals using dynamical equations. There is absolutely a very quick phase change if you’ve ever seen/experienced such, but the input parameters along some sort of scale are quite difficult to quantify, of course. It is much more metaphor than strict theory.
So, when used mathematically or physically to describe measurable systems, there really isn’t so much to “discuss” as there is so very much to go out and measure.
In climate there are any number of known, partially known, and as yet unknown variables that when measured may have areas along their input scale(s) that clearly lead to phase changes. So, climate tipping points make a quite reasonable subject for study when studying, say, glacier collapse,
Or, consider polar land and sea ice changes for example. Or how permafrost melt effects the state of the polar tundra and black spruce areas through a number of tipping points sometimes behaving these areas to act as a source and sometimes to act as a sink (note this research is a specific counter-example to your erroneous statement of only hearing about negatives and not positives).
See: https://inq.ulaval.ca/en/The-Canadian-Arctic-carbon-sink-or-source and also a recent PNAS article https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2414539121
When used as a metaphor, well, maybe that’s where your “discussion” may be required. However that’s not science so much as policy analysis and politics.
jgnfld: “ I even ran across a math prof once who wanted to collaborate to quantify the probability of panic reactions in stressed individuals using dynamical equations.
Yes, math profs are effective in stressing individuals with dynamic equations, with the panic reactions highly probable during the last night preceding a midterm or final exam.
jgnfld: “It is much more metaphor than strict theory”
Exactly. And as Gavin pointed out in 2006
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/07/runaway-tipping-points-of-no-return/.
“it seems more appropriate to view the system as having multiple tipping points and thresholds that range in importance and scale from the smallest ecosystem to the size of the planet. As the system is forced into new configurations more and more of those points are likely to be passed, but some of those points are more globally serious than others. An appreciation of that subtlety may be useful when reading some of the worst coverage on the topic.”
Unfortunately his pointing this out didn’t turn out to be a … tipping pointy – the appeal to nuance and subtlety has been lost on our D&D (Deniers and Doomers) community.
Gavin 2006: “Much of the discussion about tipping points […] implicitly assumes that there is just ‘a’ point at which things tip and become ‘dangerous’. This can lead to two seemingly opposite, and erroneous, conclusions that nothing will happen until we reach the ‘point’ and conversely, that once we’ve reached it, there will be nothing that can be done about it. i.e., it promotes both a cavalier and fatalistic outlook. ”
BTW, I’ve thought that doomers were more of the recent development, but Gavin obviously saw them frequently enough already in 2006 to list them next to their deniers brethren.
Dean, the issue with your definition is magnitude. If you have a source of CO2 like permafrost, its output is distributed over the entire planet.
If, by “decarbonizating” you mean stopping the increase in carbon GHG from fossil sources, that frees up a lot of natural mechanisms to absorb it.
I don’t know what numbers you are referring to in the Arctic, but I do recall that stopping our fossil output would result in any continuing energy increase being absorbed, primarily into the oceans. They’ve saved us so far, so I would not be so pessimistic. (Although I’m quite pessimistic about actually achieving decarbonization any time soon.)
Here I think I might be able to contribute. Many regulars here know a lot about tipping points and the math behind. But my post here might be useful for for some, including the ignorant lurkers that I from personal experience know is here. So despite that I am generally ignorant I have gathered this:
In the context of climate change it’s not “the tipping point” but “a tipping point”. There are several of them.
The concept of tipping point is connected to the concept of hysteresis. It is also connected with the concept of positive feedback. Hysteresis is when the path to a state of some physical system is different when moving towards that state compared to moving away from that state and back to the starting point. And positive feedback is when some process is self-amplifying.
Example: Increasing levels of carbon dioxide makes atmosphere absorb more heat from the sun and get hotter. Polar sea ice and ice sheets are melted by rising temperatures. Less ice means that dark water and dark land absorb more heat from the sun. More heat makes ice melt faster. Less ice makes the heat increase faster. That’s positive feedback. When the ice is gone it’s not enough to lower the carbon dioxide levels to what they where. The larger area of dark water and land will still absorb more heat than the ice once did. So to get the ice back carbon dioxide must decrease to a lower level than what it was. That’s hysteresis. And that is a tipping point for polar ice. Once it’s gone it’s hard to get it back.
Positive feedback is a concept from control theory. I myself learned about feedback when I studied how to design amplifiers. Feedback is maybe not everywhere but in lots of places.
Hysteresis is an interesting phenomenon. Recently I have started doing archery and discovered there is hysteresis in a bow. I didn’t expect that. I already knew that hysteresis was in my tape recorder. So hysteresis is also in lots of places.
Much better descriptions of these concepts can be found on Wikipedia.
For control theory and positive feedback see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_theory
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback
For tipping points see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis
(If you search for “tipping point” you get redirected to Hysteresis.)
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climate_system
I have noticed that there is often some confusion about positive feedback and ‘runaway’ processes. Some might say that if the climate warms because of positive feedback then we will get runaway warming and end up like on Venus. Some others might then say that no, that is wrong, warming on Venus is runaway but warming here will not be a runaway process because of some limiting factor that is not present on Venus. But positive feedback is always ‘runaway’ until it reaches some limiting factor that is always there. Venus is now in an equilibrium, but one that is several hundred Kelvins hotter than here on Earth. And if positive feedback first increases temperature by some amount (let’s say 8 Kelvin, or whatever) and then hits a limit it’s still ‘runaway’ until the limit is hit. The only exception that I (think) I know of (might be more because I’m ignorant) is the singularity in a black hole where the increase in density and decrease in volume is without bounds. OTOH, nobody has ever seen such a singularity. So maybe that has some limit too.
I made an annoying error when I claimed that in a black hole the volume of the singularity decreases without bounds. The volume can’t decrease to less than zero which is a limit and therefore a bound. (Unless the actually volume goes negative. But we don’t need to assume it does.)
IG: you are far from ‘ignorant’. Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
Once we pass even one ‘tipping point’ we face serious difficulties in our lives. That’s a fact.
We don’t need extreme examples. We are looking to survive, and that means facing the truth.
I know that I am at least a lot more ignorant than I want to be. I am aware of some large gaps in my knowledge-base – and lots of small ones. My education level is not very impressing either. Might as well admit it so that I don’t look like some know-it-all.
But thanks for your kind words.
Here is a starter (btw +1 mil views) https://climatestate.com/2025/02/12/the-tipping-points-of-climate-change-and-where-we-stand/
There are various TPs, constraint by the planetary boundaries, and this is fine tuned, constantly updated.
The 1.5* threshold was breached recently … the scientific discussion currently evolves around the breach is short-lived or a trend / acceleration, while some invest into framing acceleration as alarmism https://climatestate.com/2025/02/08/january-2025-was-the-warmest-on-record/
Dean Myerson 15 Feb 2025 “ I would like to initiate a discussion on what the phrase “tipping point” actually means.”
As is done in sciences, I would suggest starting with reviewing the existing literature – in this case, the RC archives, so we don’t have to reinvent the square wheel.
See for instance Gavin 2006 post on tipping points:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/07/runaway-tipping-points-of-no-return/
which anticipated your question 19 years later:
DM 2025: “ OKay, so what? If we reach a point where decarbonizing no longer stops the process, that means we reached the tipping point.”
by responding with:
gavin 2006: “Much of the discussion about tipping points […] implicitly assumes that there is just ‘a’ point at which things tip and become ‘dangerous’. This can lead to two seemingly opposite, and erroneous, conclusions
– that nothing will happen until we reach the ‘point’
– and conversely, that once we’ve reached it, there will be nothing that can be done about it.
i.e., it promotes both a cavalier and fatalistic outlook. ”
But as it is with Gavin, he does not limit himself to criticism – he also offers a constructive advice:
Gavin 2006 ” However, it seems more appropriate to view the system as having multiple tipping points and thresholds that range in importance and scale from the smallest ecosystem to the size of the planet. As the system is forced into new configurations more and more of those points are likely to be passed, but some of those points are more globally serious than others. An appreciation of that subtlety may be useful when reading some of the worst coverage on the topic.”
As for your:
DM: “ I have recently seen many comments from climatologists critical of the very concept, and I don’t really understand that” and
DM: “As with the discussion of “doomers” it seems that there is more interest in not sounding too negative”
see, for instance, Gavin’s 2019 post on the related issue of the worst case scenarios:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2019/02/the-best-case-for-worst-case-scenarios/
Gavin 2019: “There are basically three (somewhat overlapping) reasons:
– The credibility problem: What are the plausible worst cases? And how can one tell?
– The reticence problem: Are scientists self-censoring to avoid talking about extremely unpleasant outcomes?
– The consequentialist problem: Do scientists avoid talking about the most alarming cases to motivate engagement?”
with the last linking to the demobilizing effect of the doomer’s philosophy – i.e. to the (self-fulfilling) “fatalistic outlook” identified in his 2006 post. Then he discusses in detail each of the 3 problems.
Hope this helps.
Dean Myerson,
Perhaps the IPCC can be tasked with defining what the term “tipping point” is meant to mean. They do this in AR6 Annex VII – Glossary. Thus:-
This does not mean a ‘Tipping Point’ will precipitate a climatological bad outcome but sadly the ones we find listed do tend to be bad. For instance, of those in the infographic on this 2023 ESA webpage there is one that is actually described as “involv(ing) positive change.” But there are fifteen that are not. (And in that infographic sub-sea Arctic clathrates don’t get the mention they perhaps deserve.) The “positive” one is the Greening of the Sahel described thus:-
One aspect of the Greening of the Sahel which perhaps isn’t so “positive” is the role the Sahara plays in fertilising the Amazon rain forest and the greening may well have deleterious consequences for that fertilising process.
The idea that we could be poking cascades of “tipping points” with one of them kicking-off further “tipping points” is not entirely fanciful.
You mention human decarbonisation in your “tipping point” discussion (human decarbonisation meaning either net zero or net negative, the latter being human activities to decarbonise the atmosphere which will likely be necessary beyond net zero) and thus suggesting that we could still be subject to “tipping points” with our CO2 climate forcing halted. This would certainly apply to the slow irreversible “tipping points” (such as the melt-down of the Greenland ice sheet and the resulting 6 metre SLR) if we had already crossed ‘the point of the tipping’. The general view is that once net zero is achieved, the drawdown of CO2 into the oceans will be reducing the CO2 climate forcing and this would (crossed fingers) balance with the remaining energy imbalance and, if so balanced, there would be no further temperature rise to drive us past any further “tipping points.”
One exception to such reassuring blather may be the melting permafrost which is one of those slow melty processes. And wrapped up in this process is the threat of a percentage of these permafrost carbon emissions appearing as CH4 which can sound very worrying, although so far the melting permafrost appears to be emitting carbon overwhelmingly as CO2. (Beyond highly technical papers, Climatologists tend not to explain properly the mechanisms of this CH4 threat which does leave the door open for doom-laden accounts.)
MAR: The general view is that once net zero is achieved, the drawdown of CO2 into the oceans will be reducing the CO2 climate forcing
With caveat that the ocean (and land) have been taking up more atm CO2 when atm. CO2 was on the way up, then they were able to take them on the way down.
The ocean: it has two combined mechanisms – biological pump and physical (solubility) pump.
Biological pump – I don’t think we know enough to predict changes in it – if I were to guess – warmer ocean tends to decrease primary production due to the reduction in nutrient supply by the increased stratification, and increase respiration and bacterial decomposition that return org. matter back into CO2. In this case biological pump today would be weaker than it was in past.
The physical pump is made up of two parts – uptake of CO2 by the surface ocean and uptake of CO2 being transported from the surface to the deep ocean via AMOC.
During the increases in atm. CO2 both mechanisms work in the same direction – together resulting in drawing down 25-30% of the emitted CO2, However, with the CO2 going down – they would start countering each other – the AMOC would continue the drawdown of CO2, while the surface waters, which had equilibrated with the previous higher CO2, will turn into the net source of CO2 to atm.
So the size, or even the sign of the uptake. would depend on the relative magnitude of these mechanisms.
Things would get more complicated if:
– the surface ocean temperature continues to rise, with warmer water holding less CO2 – would increase the ocean CO2 source part,
– the AMOC weakens – which would reduce the ocean CO2 sink part.
As a result, the ocean uptake of atm CO2 during the decrease of atm Co2 would be somewhat? much? smaller than, it was when the CO2 was still going up.
The remaining part of the natural uptake – is terrestrial – mainly via improved primary productivity in the boreal forests. Now it depends on whether the main cause of it are the temperatures (longer growing season) or CO2 fertilization – the former sink should continue unchanged (unless pest kills and forest fires more frequent in the warmer climate don’t cancel it), while the CO2-fertilization sink should start weaken as the CO2 drops. Unknown here are possible changes in the local precipitation/evaporation – whether they can increase the primary productivity or reduce.
I don’t think that greening of the hot dry areas (deserts and semi-deserts) is a CO2 sink comparable in size to that of the boreal forests, furthermore with it depending only on the CO2 fertilization – should weaken with dropping CO2, unless a change in the air circulation would bring more rains onto these areas.
Finally there is a (small?) carbonate and silicate rock erosion CO2 sink. Anyway dropping atm CO2 would weaken this sink.
So yes – If we stop adding CO2 – the natural net sinks will start drawing CO2 down, but a lower rate than they operated when the CO2 was going up.
Piotr,
I find the caveat you present a little odd.
The Atmospheric Fraction (Af) has been roughly constant for the last half-century or more, this when the CO2 emissions were accelerating, so an accelerating “way up” accompanies an accelerating set of CO2 sinks, ocean and terrestrial. And when our CO2 emissions do reach net zero, the ‘way down’ for atmospheric CO2 will be the result of those same ocean and terrestrial sinks. These sinks will diminish with time. The “way down” will decelerate with the oceans draw-down lasting the longest, it continuing to reduce atmospheric CO2 over a millennium. The terrestrial sink will reach equilibrium much more quickly (in a decade?) so at some much earlier point, the atmospheric CO2 will drop down to a level where the terrestrial ‘sink’ gives up and become a terrestrial ‘source’.
You point out the ocean sink is a combination of biological and solubility processes. I can’t say I know how much such considerations played in the calculations of a decade-back (eg Archer et al 2008) but while there are recent assessments of the where and how the ocean sink operates (eg Mathis et al 2024), I haven’t clocked any such assessments being used to revise the decade-old calculations which suggested 70% or more of our FF emissions will be drawn from the skies on a multi-century timescale.
Of course it is the sub-century timescale which will have the big influence on peak AGW temperatures (along with other anthropogenic GG emissions/sinks) and the ocean and terrestrial CO2 sinks will become smaller when the CO2 emissions shrink towards net-zero.
MAR: Piotr, I find the caveat you present a little odd. [CO2] on the ‘way down’ for atmospheric CO2 will be the result of those same sinks”
I am not sure. MAR, what you mean by the “same” sinks –
– if that the LIST of the players in carbon flux mechanisms (deep ocean via AMOC, surface ocean, biomass and soil on land, erosion of rocks) – will be the same – then nobody claimed otherwise
– therefore if by the “same” you rather meant the same rates (in Gt/yr) during ramping up CO2 and during ramping down CO2 – then no: they are not “the same sinks”, because:
1. surface ocean carbon sink turns (immediately) from a sink to a source:
P: “ the surface waters, which had equilibrated with the previous higher CO2, will turn into the net source of CO2 to atm. ”
the effect made worse by warming of the surface waters that makes the surface waters a STONGER source of atm. CO2 than they were a sink when the CO2 was going up, but surface water temps were lower.
Other may become weaker sinks than they were on the way up. This would happen, e.g. if the global warming confounds the effects proportional to Delta CO2 (anthrop.) [ = Co2(t)- CO2(preind.)], you are talking about (AMOC and CO2 -fertilization), namely:
2. if AMOC weakens or shuts down – the sink into the deep ocean will weaken or stop
3. if warming of the boreal forests (Arctic amplification) weakens or reverses boreal forest sink: by increasing retrun of Co2 into the atm. via increased respiration and bacterial decomposition, increased forest fires, and increased pest insect die-offs of forests
4. if the biological pump in the ocean weakens as a result of warming – causing increased stratification that reduces supply of nutrients thus reducing the primary production in the ocean, while warmer temps. accelerate respiration and bacterial decomp, of it, thus reducing the particulate carbon flow into deep ocean
So my “little odd caveat” is that the natural sinks are not symmetrical – when the CO2 goes down they will be SMALLER (in Gt/yr) – see points 1-4., than they were (in Gt/yr), when the CO2 was going up (over the same atm. CO2 range).
MAR: “ You point out the ocean sink is a combination of biological and solubility processes. I can’t say I know how much such considerations played in the calculations of a decade-back (eg Archer et al 2008)
The paper mentions “biological” and “biogeochemistry” several times but only in the context of the earlier literature. More importantly , Archer’s is a complete different time scale – theirs goes 10,000 years into the future, while I am talking about the near future (decades to couple of centuries). And at different time scales different processes have different relative importance . .
MAR “ but while there are recent assessments of the where and how the ocean sink operates (e.g. Mathis et al 2024)
not very applicable again, although for another reason – this paper is about the coastal ocean thus only a small part of global ocean, and with the biological sink driven primarily by the supply of nutrients by rivers from land – again a condition not extrapolatable to the open ocean.
MAR: I haven’t clocked any such assessments being used to revise the decade-old calculations which suggested 70% or more of our FF emissions will be drawn from the skies on a multi-century timescale.
Again – very different time-scale, and therefore very different relevance to the current and the next several generations. And any errors/wrong assumptions/changing inputs – done at the start – might propagate over multi-century timescale. to the extent likely rendering quantitative estimates meaningless.
Which may be the reason why nobody rushes in with revisions – revisions would have their own, growing with time, “uncertainty envelope”; the timescale is too long to check whether the revisions performs better than Archer, and the social relevance of either, as discussed above, is questionable.
In Re to MA Rodger, 18 Feb 2025 at 7:42 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-830337
Dear MA,
Thank you for your comment and for provided useful references. My particular attention caught your sentence
“The terrestrial sink will reach equilibrium much more quickly (in a decade?) so at some much earlier point, the atmospheric CO2 will drop down to a level where the terrestrial ‘sink’ gives up and become a terrestrial ‘source’.”
It appears that the models consider the “land sink” as a reservoir having a basically constant size, at least with respect to area that is capable of biomass production, am I right? It further appears that the mechanism of “CO2 fertilization” is somehow implemented, wherein the rate of CO2 uptake into this reservoir rises with rising CO2 concentration and rising temperature. Oppositely, the rate of the decay of dead biomass rises with the rising temperature as well. Anyway, it is my understanding that the quick disappearance of the “land sink” following the peak CO2 atmospheric concentration maximally a few decades afterwards, is based on the assumption that the land sink is basically represented by actually existing forests, actually existing grassland, actually existing soil biomass, which only start growing quicker when we inject more CO2 into atmosphere. Is it correct?
If so, I would like to note that this situation may change significantly if we allow that under specific circumstances, vegetation cover on the land might not be constant and, instead, either shrink or expand significantly. In case of vegetation cover shrinkage, the decrease of the reservoir capable of further carbon uptake may prevail over the increasing CO2 uptake rate, and no apparent “land sink” may be observed. Oppositely, in case of vegetation expansion, the “land carbon sink” might persist much longer than decades after the assumed peak of atmospheric CO2 concentration, perhaps for millennia.
I assume that the prerequisite for these different scenarios may be land hydrology. In case of land desiccation, I would expect the land vegetation coverage and thus land carbon reservoir shrinkage. In the opposite case of land humidification, I would expect that land vegetation cover will expand and so will also land carbon reservoir. Am I wrong?
Should the above picture be basically correct, I would expect that human interferences with land hydrology may be crucial for the future of the land carbon sink.
Greetings
Tomáš
TK: under specific circumstances, vegetation cover on the land might not be constant and, instead, either shrink or expand significantly.
BPL: I don’t think anyone working with it thinks the land biomass is constant.
The phrase “tipping point” is not a scientific term and hence has no precise definition.
Instead it is a phrase intended to convey a concept of an abrupt and largely unpredictable change in the state of a system caused by nonlinear dynamics within the system.
The term implies the new state is quasi-permanent and reflects a new operating mode for the system provided the inputs to the system remain unchanged, and even if the inputs are perturbed back to their state before the state change happened.
People assume, and most science is predicated on linear change, at least in an approximation where the change in inputs are reasonably small. That is there is a presumption that output = k*input. When you have a system composed of subsystems where output of each subsystem = some nonlinear function of input then the output of the combined system is a nonlinear function – say exponential of a series of nonlinear functions of the inputs (say some sin function of selected inputs and some tan function of some of the inputs, who knows, anything but o=k*i)
In such a system the nonlinearities interact in complex ways that can drive the state of the system all over the place in more ore less unexpected ways.
In systems which operate in states which are quasi stable, the properties of chaos are often present. What this means is that the system state is very sensitive to the input states of it’s subsystems which are often very sensitive to their inputs.
Such systems often exist in a quasi stable state, where given no change in the inputs, the system varies over time in a manner which is unpredictable yet constrained to some restricted state of properties. Such a system is typically seen to cluster around some central region of “state space” always changing but seldom or never changing the semi-stable region that it moves around while always being sensitive to even minute changes in the systems state.
The precise evolution of such systems is long term unpredictable due to the sensitivity to initial conditions. Even minute changes to such a systems state cause the system to evolve along a slightly different path that grows ever distant than it’s initial unperturbed state.
Many chaotic systems have numerous islands of quasi-stability and as the system state evolves, orbiting around one of these islands it may come close enough to one of the other states that it is perturbed enough that on subsequent orbits it gets closer to that state or another nearby state, and be captured by that state and begin to orbit it.
This quantized jump between islands of quasi-stability is what is being referred to when the phrase “tipping point” is used.
It should be realized that the next quasi stable state the system may end up orbiting may not even be immediately local to the initial state. The system may be orbiting state A, be pulled away by state B and then pulled from there by state C, and then D and then E. So the final state of the system may be quite different from the initial state.
It should also be realized that the location of these stable islands is not fixed but will in part or whole also change along with the inputs to the system. Each system is going to be different. Islands of stability may even orbit other islands of stability in the same way moons orbit planets that orbit the sun.
Most complex systems display this kind of behavior, at least at some scale.
The climate system is such a system. Predictable on the short term but sensitive to initial conditions, and orbiting an island of stability.
Changing the climate system’s inputs perturbs the system in such a way that it may jump to a new stable attractor which represents a new mode of operating and one that will be considerably different than it’s original state.
The Biosphere and Human civilization is implicitly dependent on stability for it’s survival. You can’t grow wheat without water, and you can’t grow wheat in a temporary lake. You can’t grow apples in regions prone to drought, or where there are late frosts that kill the ovaries that will become the fruit.
So human society is also sensitive to the initial conditions that drive the state of the climate. New climatological modes mean that human society must enter a new mode of existence. Perhaps where 100 million people in Bangladesh must evacuate and enter the surrounding countries in order to survive. Perhaps where 40 million Americans must leave their farms due to the ongoing desertification of their states.
Food production is lowered, and people starve. Land is lost and people are displaced. Hunting and fishing grounds change location and people lose their ability to make a living prompting the political problem of mass immigration.
Tipping points = bad news. Always.
“Tipping points = bad news. Always.”
Unless they tip to something better?
Here is a tipping point demonstration in a physical system.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yspSvbIpTBA?feature=share
Now imagine the pendulum orbiting each magnet multiple times before it zips off into some new operating mode.
Carbon capture more costly than switching to renewables, researchers find.
SRE: Indeed.
Facts matter. Reality is real. Lies are not equivalent to truth, no matter how hard it is bullied.
Facts no longer matter in Conservative land. They manufacture their own facts and live in their own fantasy universe.
Doing so will ultimately kill them and their country and the people around them who do not live in La La land.
Once captured by their conservative fantasy they will live their lives in that fantasy bubble.
Death is their only release from their life of self imposed ignorance.
So against that truth… What is your plan?
BPL
“I don’t think you understand the situation. 4 million people were purged from voter rolls over the past four years. Ballot drop boxes were removed from heavily black and student areas. Mail-in votes were discarded for minor clerical errors. ”
I found this: “Four Million Denied Voting Rights Due to a Felony Conviction”
https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/locked-out-2024-four-million-denied-voting-rights-due-to-a-felony-conviction/
Wouldn’t that include a mixture of democrats and republicans? So its bad for the democrats but not as much as you seem to imply.
“The president is overriding or ignoring both congress and the courts.”
Yes I’m aware of what’s happening. We are getting it all on our news every night. IMHO Trumps actions ignoring the courts and congress, are terrible and obviously fascist.
“The Democrats can’t win again, ever. The new regime is not conservative, it is fascist, right down to the Leader principle. All opposition parties will be streamrollered.”
Yes its fascist, but you are sounding rather doomy to suggest the Democrats can never win again. To override the courts completely or to alter the constitution wouldn’t Trump need the support of the republican senators and member of congress ? I think this might get difficult, because his policies will hurt a lot of their constituents and cause inflation, and even the GOP will have its limits to what craziness it will tolerate.
If the democrats indeed can’t win an election ever again you are heading towards a revolution. Bashar al-Assad is a fascist dictator of Syria overthrown recently.
IMO Trumps attacks on government organisations are unjustified and its shocking the scale and speed of whats happening. Its like a third world coup detat. Or the NAZI blitzkreig attacks, that used speed to take people by surprise. Its beyond fascist. I think most of Trump’s policies are terrible and will cause massive problems. Musk is no better. He seems to have gone power mad destroying good government agencies. I suspect its some combination of self interest, libertarian craziness, and the side effects of the ketamine medication he takes for depression.
Democrats must launch some sort of strong counter attack. Haven’t seen any sign of it so far. While its possible Trump may destroy himself and his own support, silence by the democrat’s would be unwise
For gods sake don’t take my response personally. Im generally in agreement with the majority of what you post on this website..
Tipping point demonstrated:
https://www.fatherly.com/health/center-of-gravity-tiktok-challenge
:)
Real tipping point demonstration
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yspSvbIpTBA?feature=share
Many thanks to those who responded to my request re tipping points.
1. The definition and history of tipping points as applied to something like phase changes is a good argument to not use it as I suggested.
2. Since I finished and filed my taxes via TT today (!) I had the time to go back and read Gavin’s 2006 post that a number of you linked to. So “point of no return” is the more applicable phrase to what I described, and that phrase is well understood by the public. But it was also interesting to see his discussion of Hansen using the phrase tipping point and saying we have ten years left – in a post that is nine years old. Hansen always seems to be pushing the envelope – for almost 40 years now! And I always appreciate links to good sources to save you typing the same in.
3. I qualified my tipping point comment by saying unless there is some other contrary process, and a number of you said that oceans are expected to provide exactly that – though at great cost to ocean chemistry and life. The oceans as sink are not a cost-free dumping ground.
4. While I certainly never had the opinion that we didn’t need to do anything prior to the “point” of no return, I have been leaning to think that the various processes in the Arctic in aggregate turning to a source probably meant we were close to a point of no return where future actions on our part might be meaningless, and maybe the oceans will save us from that, maybe.
5. And lastly, even if we did get to some true point of no return where short of pulling vast gigatons of carbon out of the atmosphere, we were destined for warming of 3, 4, or 5* C, how fast we get there matters very much. The deniers toss around the term adaptation as if adapting to that level of warming is like adapting to Netflix where you are used to the Prime interface. Nonetheless, more time will give at least some species a chance at survival and the same goes for some of us humans. If it comes to managing the decline, that is still important. Adaptation can be a truly brutal process, but more time for it will never be bad, if that is what it comes down to.
DM, just fyi the link below is a global map of various regional tipping points, and at what temperature they are likely to be triggered. It’s from a wikipedia article “tipping points in the climate system.” I’m just a layperson but i found this useful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climate_system#/media/File:Tipping_points_2022_list.jpeg
“While I certainly never had the opinion that we didn’t need to do anything prior to the “point” of no return, I have been leaning […] we were close to a point of no return where future actions on our part might be meaningless”
So in Gavin’s taxonomy you are the second type – the fatalistic: “once we’ve reached [the tipping point]”, there will be nothing that can be done about it.” one”
Gavin 2006: “ This can lead to two seemingly opposite, and erroneous, conclusions
– that nothing will happen until we reach the ‘point’
– and conversely, that once we’ve reached it, there will be nothing that can be done about it.
i.e., it promotes both a cavalier and fatalistic outlook. ”
Since you said “ I had the time to go back and read Gavin’s 2006 – should we conclude that you DON’T agree with him that the fatalistic outlook is erroneous too? And that you rejected his arguments why it is erroneous?
https://bsky.app/profile/drkimwood.bsky.social/post/3liexuv3to22e
$1.38 billion spent on NWS.
$102.1 billion returned in estimated public value.
Those values produce a return on investment (ROI) of 73.98.
Full report (135 pages) – https://www.ametsoc.org/index.cfm/ams/policy/studies-analysis/communicating-forecast-uncertainty-cofu-2/
Yet NOAA has long been **underfunded** as Scott Rayder noted last year: NOAA’s budget is too small. That’s costing the US billions of dollars – https://www.federaltimes.com/opinions/2024/04/30/noaas-budget-is-too-small-thats-costing-the-us-billions-of-dollars/
SA: NOAA has long been **underfunded** as Scott Rayder noted last year: NOAA’s budget is too small. That’s costing the US billions of dollars
BPL: It will only get worse under the new fascist regime.
more: Rick Spinrad, Ph.D., NOAA Administrator, 2021-2025, February 20, 2025
Save a Nickel, Kill a Thousand: The Pennies-Wise, Lives-Foolish Effort to Eliminate NOAA
https://media.licdn.com/dms/document/media/v2/D4E1FAQEUn9YmfoqfNw/feedshare-document-pdf-analyzed/B4EZUj1CDMGYAY-/0/1740062862977?e=1741219200&v=beta&t=goE5PuR5mEKeKxoVqKAnc5kQBltMQmxNNRZ7TbBahzg
—
We have to stop bringing casseroles to this massacre.
Here is a fine example of the ideology at work.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Global_News_Hub/comments/1iurvgm/trump_is_planning_on_abolishing_income_tax_and/?share_id=2SsvH4YcxXw_cLNxJJRxk&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=2
Chinese products are generally purchased by the poor. Trump’s tariffs are said to bring in revenue of 100 billion a year, allowing for tax cuts for the wealthy.
So 100 billion tax on the poor, and tax cuts for the wealthy.
Libertarian/Republican ideology at work.
All you have to do is read their publications. It’s all out in the open.
“Scott Nudds: “So 100 billion tax on the poor, and tax cuts for the wealthy. Libertarian/Republican ideology at work.. All you have to do is read their publications. It’s all out in the open.”
Yes and despite all this, and despite Trump being a convicted criminal and a proven spreader of multiple lies, and an obvious fascist, many poor people chose to vote for him anyway. Silly fools. I’m losing sympathy and patience with these people.
Didn’t seen anyone mention:
“Russia Sets New Arctic Shipping Record, Transports 38Mt in 2024 via Northern Sea Route”
Putin’s oligarchs *benefit* from an ice-free arctic, oil is their entire economy.
Unstable petro-state dictators depend on selling every drop.
Billionaires and trillion dollar corporations, can only get richer if they devour the government.
It’s almost remarkable the recent US election was even allowed to happen…
Maybe Repub seniors will wake up when social security and medicare are affected?
Best case – french revolution, worst case – hellish dystopian serfdom.
Be careful out there – over 100 record low temperatures may fall TODAY:
https://www.wunderground.com/video/top-stories/record-cold-blast-wind-chills-temperature-forecast
Nice snow in upstate NY:
https://www.wunderground.com/video/top-stories/winter-storm-jett-lake-effect-snow-oswego-county
It’s so cold people have resorted to violence to stay warm:
https://www.wunderground.com/video/top-stories/winter-storm-harlow-snowball-fight-virginia-tech
Tropical pacific ocean temperatures running cold this year:
https://www.wunderground.com/video/top-stories/la-nina-update-noaa-neutral
“Be careful out there – over 100 record low temperatures may fall TODAY”
Interestingly, Climate Reanalyzer shows that today was in the top 3 or 4 warmest GLOBALLY in the extant record. Why lie about it? Do you think you fool anybody at all here?
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/?dm_id=world
“Tropical pacific ocean temperatures running cold this year:”
Interestingly, Climate Reanalyzer shows that today was the 2nd highest 60N-60S value GLOBALLY in the extant record. Why lie about it? Do you think you fool anybody at all here?
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/?dm_id=world2
That said, Climate Reanalyzer is still using NOAA data. I expect them to have to switch to Euro sources soon enough.
KIA: over 100 record low temperatures may fall TODAY
BPL:
1. Weather isn’t climate, weather isn’t climate, weather isn’t climate.
2. Hot records are still outrunning cold records 2 to 1.
More important, however, it’s been 48 years since we’ve had a “colder than average year”.
A useful link before the idiots in the White House destroy it:
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/2024-was-warmest-year-modern-record-globe
Serious question: Why do you never learn? You’ve been told many times that weather is not climate. Yet you continue to post idiotic things like this. What do you get from flaunting your ignorance of science? Yes, we do laugh at you if that makes you feel better to get attention. smh
His purpose here is NOT to learn but rather to disrupt and to throw mis/disinformation up against the wall hoping some sticks.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology is showing lower values of the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) for January and forecast for Feburary, putting conditions just outside a La Niña event. But its forecasts show it rising in March-July, heading towards, but still below, El Niño conditions.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ocean/outlooks/?index=nino34
The SOI bounces around. There’s a reason why they put “oscillation” in its name.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/?ninoIndex=nino3.4&index=nino34&period=weekly#overview-section=Monitoring-graphs
prl,
Your links don’t point to SOI data but to NINO3.4 data which is used to calculate ONI data and it is ONI that is usually used to define ENSO conditions.
SOI uses the pressure difference between Darwin and Tahiti and such data allows records running back to 1875. It does reflect ENSO conditions with negative SOI indicating El Niño conditions and positive values La Niña conditions.
The NINO3.4 graphic you link to shows a Feb-to-date average of -0.8 but I’m not sure how up-to-date it is. The average 1feb-17-feb is -0.5. The values shown for March and later are the ACCESS model which features in the ENSO forecast graphic published by Columbia. This graphic always presents quite a spread of ONI values and ACCESS is showing as one of more-positive predictions. The base Columbia ENSO Forecast webpage is currently showing through to November “ENSO-neutral conditions are slightly favored in the earlier period, while La Niña conditions are slightly favored in the later period.”
FYI:
“Melting glaciers have caused almost 2cm of sea level rise this century alone, a decades-long study has revealed. The research shows the world’s glaciers collectively lost 6.542tn tonnes of ice between 2000 and 2023, causing an 18mm (0.7in) rise in global sea levels … so far this century, glaciers have lost approximately 5% of their total volume. Regional losses were highly variable; the Antarctic and subantarctic islands lost 2% of their volume but central Europe’s glaciers lost 39% … A stark contrast in the amount of ice lost each decade was also discovered, with 36% more ice having melted between 2012 and 2023 compared with the previous decade.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/19/melting-glaciers-cause-almost-2cm-of-sea-level-rise-this-century-study-reveals
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08545-z
Tomas Kalisz: Dear Piotr, I am afraid that framing this discussion as the question “Is water vapour cooling or warming Earth?” is confusing and therefore somewhat unfortunate”
Complain to your water-cycle guru, JCM. It was HIM who wrote:
“ WV contributes 39% to greenhouse effect in S2010”
where “ contribution to greenhouse effect = “warming the Earth”. I merely replied to him WITHIN his own argument.
TK “ I think that with respect to global mean surface temperature, it is important to distinguish
(i) the greenhouse effect of water vapour, which is generally warming,
(ii) effects of clouds, which, depending on cloud type, may be warming or cooling, and
(iii) the effect of latent heat flux, which is cooling.”
The JCM’s source -S2010 = ” Schmidt el al 2010″ – uses GISS ModelE4 – so your iii) (the latent heat) is represented there, while i) and ii) are evaluated explicitly in Table 5 – by looking at the changes in the TOA outgoing radiation (aka “greenhouse effect”) of i) removing WV or ii) removing clouds.
So your insinuations that I mislead the reader by hiding the cooling effect of the latent heat and effect of clouds – are false on more than one level – it wasn’t me but JCM, and his source didn’t do anything of the sort.
In fact that it was JCM, not me – should give you a pause:
Why oh why would my fellow “anything but GHG” denier want to MINIMIZE … the cooling component of our favorite “anything but GHG” factor – water cycle ??? Why would JCM HIDE the very reason why he argued climate models should concentrate on water cycle INSTEAD of the “ artificial fixation and overemphasis on the outputs of trace gas {GHGs]” [(c) JCM]?
While a quick check of JCM’s source – S2010- would have confirmed that S2010 was NOT hiding/ misleading either – all misleading here is only by you., Mr. Kalisz.
in Re to Piotr, 19 Feb 2025 at 9:29 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-830378
Dear Piotr,
I stepped into the “water vapour warming or cooling” debate with my post of 15 Feb 2025 at 5:27 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-830284
because you mentioned me in your preceding post of 14 Feb 2025 at 11:00 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-830260
and because I thought that the original question asked by E. Schaffer on 9 Feb 2025 at 2:43 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-830088
“Does Climate Science actually believe water vapor was warming the planet?”
was too condensed, thus potentially misleading and therefore unfortunate.
My post, trying to explain in more detail why I think so, read:
“I am afraid that framing this discussion as the question “Is water vapour cooling or warming Earth?” is confusing and therefore somewhat unfortunate.
I think that with respect to global mean surface temperature, it is important to distinguish
(i) the greenhouse effect of water vapour, which is generally warming,
(ii) effects of clouds, which, depending on cloud type, may be warming or cooling, and
(iii) the effect of latent heat flux, which is cooling.
As suggest the results published by Lague et al,
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acdbe1
there may. in fact, be a quite counter-intuitive relationship between latent heat flux on one hand and water vapour concentration (and its greenhouse effect) on the other hand. Namely, the modelling experiments described in this article suggest that water vapour concentration may be HIGHER on Earth with dry continents providing little water for evaporation, in comparison with Earth wherein the land is water-rich and thus provides lot of cooling latent heat flux.
In this respect, I think that your strong belief that
“the large effect of WV make the climate MUCH MORE VULNERABLE to our changes in the … GHG emissions, not LESS vulnerable”
may be, in fact, misleading.
I still think that if other state-of-art climate models confirm the results of Lague 2023, it is well possible that better availability of evaporation from the land may in fact IMPROVE Earth climate stability, in the sense that Earth with intensive continental water cycle can be indeed LESS vulnerable to rising atmospheric concentrations of non-condensing GHG than present Earth with significant proportion of continents in an arid hydrological regime.
It would be, of course, better if these speculations were confirmed or disproved by respective modelling studies, properly designed for clarifying how the climate sensitivity towards GHG depends on water availability for evaporation (instead of just on “water vapour”).
I do not think that our dispute on this blog can resolve this open question and provide a trustworthy conclusion.”
By the words “may be misleading”, I have not meant that you or Dr. Schmidt strive to mislead anyone. I rather meant that your beliefs may be misleading primarily for you.
In view of your further comments in your parallel post of 20 Feb 2025 at 5:09 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-830418 ,
wherein you return to your sentence
“the large effect of WV make the climate MUCH MORE VULNERABLE to our changes in the … GHG emissions, not LESS vulnerable”,
it appears that you still do not admit that the message of Lague 2023 can be construed the way that (at least with respect to land hydrology and land climate) the effects (i), (ii) and (iii) of the water cycle may be in a broad range independent from each other, due to limited water availability for evaporation from terrestrial surface and due to water vapour transport from the ocean.
I do not disprove that the greenhouse effect (i) of water vapour in the atmosphere will amplify the greenhouse effect of non-condensing greenhouse gases. The prerequisite for this amplification, known as “water vapour feedback” is, however, a global mean surface temperature increase which – if the model used by Lague et al reflects the reality correctly – may be (perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively) lower in the “wetland” case in comparison with the “desertland” case.
I do not know it – I guess only, in a quite bold extrapolation of the conclusions made by Lague et al, who showed that the global climate in the “wetland” hydrology regime was cooler than the global climate in the “desertland” hydrology regime, although atmospheric concentrations of non-condensing greenhouse gases (GHG) were the same in both cases.
Based on these (still unique and therefore possibly questionable) modelling results, I boldly assumed that, by analogy, if global mean temperature response in the “wetland” to the same rise in GHG concentrations will be smaller than in the “desertland”, then the water vapour amplification of this response could be also smaller in the “wetland” in comparison with the “desertland”.
If so, climate sensitivity to rising GHG concentrations would be lower in the “wetland” than in the “desertland”, contrary to your conclusions that seem to be still based on the direct greenhouse effect (i) of the water vapour only and not considering the possibility revealed by Lague et al. that the effect (i) can be reversed by effects (ii) and (iii). I do not assert that I am right and that my bold extrapolation of Lague et al to climate sensitivity is correct – I only think that this is still an open question that is potentially relevant and therefore might deserve attention of climate modellers. In this respect, you do not need to assign this idea as a “lie”.
Best regards
Tomáš
P.S.
I have not seen any reason to anyhow mention Schmidt 2010, because it is still my understanding that the model used in this work assumed a fixed land hydrology and thus did not touch the question if (and how) climate sensitivity towards GHG concentrations may depend on water availability for evaporation from the land.
P.P.S.
It is still my understanding that Lague et al have not made in the cited 2023 publication any modelling experiment with changing GHG concentration and that their study was not directed to the question how the climate sensitivity towards GHG concentration may depend on water availability for evaporation from the land.
On February 8, German newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported that the Max Planck Society—one of the world’s top scientific research institutions—is experiencing an uptick in applications from American scientists. Its president said the society regards the U.S. as “a new talent pool” at a time when the Trump administration seeks to cut billions in funding to the National Institutes of Health. There’s a deep historical irony in these recent developments: During the Third Reich, it was the Max Planck Society—then known as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society—that lost its best and brightest to the U.S. and other countries, including Albert Einstein.
https://bsky.app/profile/katharinehayhoe.com/post/3linsppgdzc2c
https://www.axios.com/2025/02/20/us-delegation-pulled-climate-science-meeting
U.S. to pull delegation from UN climate science meeting [Maria Curi, Andrew Freedman]
The State Department delegation’s plans to travel to China for the meeting have been denied, sources said.
– The contract for the technical support unit was also recently terminated by NASA, meaning it will also not be traveling to China or supporting the IPCC process moving forward, sources said.
– State declined to comment. NASA officials didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The IPCC is set to meet in China Feb. 24–28 to determine the scope and focus of its next series of reports.
– The IPCC is also working on a methodology special report for carbon removal technology and carbon capture use and storage.
– The U.S. had an obligation to provide technical support for the assessment, but State’s technical support team will also be absent.
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/21/us-paris-withdrawal-effects-second-time
America’s second Paris withdrawal is not like the first [Andrew Freedman is a veteran climate reporter]
America’s withdrawal from Paris doesn’t take effect immediately, although the executive order notes the administration will treat it as such.
– The executive order was written to be far-reaching, cutting off funding for the UN climate organization that oversees annual climate summits and facilitates activities under Paris and other climate agreements since 1992.
– It would also squelch American contributions to international climate financing that would help countries adapt to climate impacts and boost clean energy production.
– To become official, it takes one year after U.S. diplomats submit a document to the UN climate bureaucracy notifying them of an intent to withdraw (last time Trump withdrew, it took longer due to a feature in the then-young agreement’s provisions.)
….
The main beneficiary of a U.S. withdrawal and pro-fossil fuels policies domestically could be China, which already leads the U.S. in the clean tech space.
Very useful article in The Conversation about where to find the climate and environmental data currently erased or hidden. Of course, one cannot erase reality and its consequences.
https://theconversation.com/how-to-find-climate-data-and-science-the-trump-administration-doesnt-want-you-to-see-249321?
FYI:
“The Trump administration is stripping away support for scientific research in the US and overseas that contains a word it finds particularly inconvenient: ‘climate’. The US government is withdrawing grants and other support for research that even references the climate crisis.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/21/trump-scientific-research-climate
Does it matter? The science is settled according to environmental wackos. So, if it’s settled, why waste tax money continuing to polish the turd? It’ll still be a turd. Time to stop whining, stop doing climate science and start doing USEFUL WORK that will solve the problem.
KIA: The science is settled according to environmental wackos.
BPL: Some things in science are settled. There’s always more work to be done.
KIA: So, if it’s settled, why waste tax money continuing to polish the turd? It’ll still be a turd. Time to stop whining, stop doing climate science and start doing USEFUL WORK that will solve the problem.
BPL: We don’t stop doing science because we understand some things. There is always more to learn. Unfortunately, you and the deniers have won because you’ve elected a government that is forcibly shutting down the science. Congratulations.
Lysenkoism hurts everybody, but it hurts any country practicing its principles first and worst.
A partial digest from Columbia Law School, referenced by Stefan Rahmstorf – https://x.com/rahmstorf/status/1892265421526434008 – It is disturbing how the Trump regime is silencing and crippling science. We had a paleontology online seminar scheduled next week on Permian fossils and environments in Grand Canyon – but the US colleague planning to present has suddenly been sacked.
Silencing Science Tracker – https://climate.law.columbia.edu/Silencing-Science-Tracker [this appears not to be up to date for last 10 days]
2025-02-10: Nearly $900 Million Cut from the Education Department’s Research Arm
2025-02-07: Trump Administration Cuts $4 Billion from Medical Research Funding
2025-02-06: Weekly CDC Report Resumes without Information on Bird Flu or mPox
2025-02-06: EPA Employees Working on Environmental Justice Placed on Administrative Leave
2025-02-05: NOAA Employees Ordered to Stop All Contact with Foreign Nationals
2025-02-04: EPA Demotes Staff Overseeing Scientific Research
2025-02-04: Mentions of Climate Change Removed from Federal Agencies’ Websites
2025-02-04: National Science Foundation Threatened with Mass Layoffs
2025-02-03: EPA Staff Threatened with Mass Layoffs
2025-01-31: Ohio Legislature Considers Bills Requiring Universities to Remain Neutral on “Controversial” Climate Change
2025-01-31: North Dakota Legislature Considers Bill to Include “Intelligent Design” in Science Standards
2025-01-31: CDC Removes Data Sets, Whole Pages from Its Website
2025-01-31: CDC Orders Retraction or Pause in Publication of Research Manuscripts
2025-01-30: Trump Administration Terminates National Nature Assessment Weeks Before Publication
2025-01-30: USDA Employees Ordered to Delete Web Pages Discussing Climate Change
[I counted 30 items relevant to Trump administration; pace is much slower before that, and less slash and burn-ish.]
Hmmm. Having beaten the “Climate Change Caused the LA Wildfires” meme to death — in order to distract the voters and evade responsibility — the Democrats are at last addressing how their incompetence was the real reason for that disaster. Now that no one is watching. It is a political truism that one does these things on Fridays when everyone is focused on enjoying the weekend and ignoring the news.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/us/los-angeles-fire-chief-removed.html
Of course, honest Democrats angry at seeing their fellow Americans die were acknowledging the truth many weeks ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5S8rhNCBnc
DW: the Democrats are at last addressing how their incompetence was the real reason for that disaster.
BPL: Stop spreading lies.
Piotr asked “Since you said “ I had the time to go back and read Gavin’s 2006 – should we conclude that you DON’T agree with him that the fatalistic outlook is erroneous too? And that you rejected his arguments why it is erroneous?”
As I think Gavin intended, I am not fatalistic because it is too late to do anything, I am fatalistic because it looks like we won’t do anything.
Aside from spending some time as a layman learning about climate science as far as I reasonably can, I have also spent time reading about the decline of human civilizations, and there are plenty of declines to study. Some of the largest and most advanced human civilizations did not decline because they ran into a problem they couldn’t solve. They simply refused to solve solvable problems, they rotted from the inside out. Their polity became dysfunctional for a variety of reasons, and they went into extended (i.e. it took a long time) decline because they _refused_ to solve these problems.
Some have described the need/lack of a “Pearl arbor moment” to catalyze action. But after watching how we as a society reacted to COVD, it seems to me that we are almost beyond such a thing being possible. I think the current place of Anthony Fauci in the public perception is a strong – and very bad – symbol of where we are. And it leaves me deeply fatalistic that we will do what we clearly are capable of doing, and for which there is still time. But I don’t think that is a kind of fatalism that Gavin was referring to.
As bad as that sounds, I am not personally succumbing to that fatalism. In my small town of 16,000, I was at the weekly rally in front of the post office yesterday, opposing what is going on and I am involved in many other ways. The thing is we thought that after the 2018 midterms, the 2020 election, and J6, and some of the achievements of the previous administration, that we had basically won. And yet they came back stronger than ever. The damage being done to our institutions now, and some of you are feeling that personally, is deep and that damage is far more serious than some very bad policies.