Climate science from climate scientists...
This month’s open thread on climate topics. The annual ranking horse race is in full swing, discussions of extreme weather abound, Arctic sea ice is reaching it’s annual minimum, and the future of evidence-based policy making seems dim. Oh well.
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John Pollack
re: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/unforced-variations-july-2026/#comment-850044
Ok, John, here we go. First, I applaud your desire to clarify definitions. That’s the first step in having a real scientific discussion, the second being agreement on what question we are trying to answer. First step:
JP: Energy in the system = the energy accessible to the climate system over the time period being considered, contained within the atmosphere, oceans and freshwater, cryosphere, and solid earth.
Energy storage = the change in the energy in the system over the time period being considered =
the integral of EEI over that time period.
z: I have no problem with the first part, but I’m not sure about your choice of the term “storage”. Are you saying that the “new” energy isn’t accessible to the climate system? That would be the conventional usage for the term “storage”, but obviously the “new” energy is partitioned (your term) in the system… similarly (if perhaps not identically) as is the “old” energy.
(That last part… the possible difference between the partition of energy in the system when EEI is “small enough to be called zero” rather than “big enough to cause the graph to look like a hockey stick”… is the motivation for my original questioning.)
All right, Zebra.
You have a point about what I am calling “storage” since it would also be energy available to the system. For the purposes of this discussion, I could call it “delta Es” to represent the change in system energy, if that seems better.
One of the implications of delta Es being a time integral of EEI is that every wiggle and wobble in the GMST temperature curve is potentially a change in the sign of EEI. This is what I meant by EEI seldom being zero, and my objection to calling it “close enough for government work.” I would expect both EEI and partitioning to be dependent on the particular time interval being examined, since energy can flow from one part of the system to another. In addition to an annual cycle, the oceans are capable of responses on a large range variety of time scales, for example. On a time scale of centuries or longer, if the average EEI is near zero, I would expect that most of the variability to be the tradeoff between ocean temperature and ice mass that I mentioned last month.
John, this is good. But I am easily distracted, so I have to ask: How are we detecting the “tradeoff” you mention, and what is the mechanism causing it? Why does the ice melt?
Whether we call it “average EEI close to zero” or “delta Es close to zero”, my problem all along has been trying to clarify my thinking about causes and effects. If we start with ice mass A and ocean temp B, what do we have at the end of the time period in question?
Have A and B changed even though we see very little delta Es?
Are we talking about global measurements or local/regional?
Is it “natural variation” or “forcing”?
Zebra, I’m glad we’re making some progress.
To me, the one advantage to looking at a long period (say, 0 to 1000 c.e.) where delta Es is close to zero is that it allows us to ignore a large number of short term processes and focus on a few things, namely A and B. In most realistic scenarios, I would not expect them to change much, either. What is clear to me is that if average EEI is near zero and the ocean cools, the extra energy must go mostly into melting ice. It is hard to imagine much of the reverse, where ice mass is building up while the ocean warms, but mountain glaciers could conceivably build that way. I can see where ocean heat could go mainly into melting ice during a glacial D-O event, with a large ice sheet dump into the ocean.
To throw in another real-world complication, I would consider ice/albedo effect. If the mid and higher latitudes cool, this would result in increased snow and ice cover. Glacial coverage increases slowly, but snow and sea ice cover are a lot more responsive to cooling and create positive feedback. However, the latter processes do not actually represent much immediate change in delta Es, since the quantities of ice and snow involved are relatively small. They don’t represent much in the way of partitioning, but they can have a strong effect on EEI.
in Re to John Pollack, 4 Aug 2026 at 9:53 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/08/unforced-variations-aug-2026/#comment-850285
Hello John,
I have a question with respect to your example of the supposed tradeoff between latent heat of ice thawing and cooling of the surface ocean temperature, as you proposed it in your comment of 16 Jul 2026 at 8:24 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/unforced-variations-july-2026/#comment-849799
which zebra likely missed.
Let us assume that the consumed latent heat will not be efficiently transfered into deep ocean but cools predominantly the surface ocean layer. Let us further assume that the decreased sea surface temperature (SST) and accordingly decreased longwave surface radiation (and decreased turbulent fluxes) will result in troposphere cooling and thus in a significantly negative Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI). Is it reasonable?
If you think so, I suppose that we could imagine also an opposite case. Let us assume that for whatever reason, the “conveyor” transporting the “excess heat” (the heat delivered by the present EEI that have been so far with a more-less constant rate storaged in the ocean) has suddenly slowed down. It would result in a quick warming of the surface ocean layer, and I suppose that the resulting increase in the surface infrared radiation (and increased turbulent fluxes) could warm the troposphere. If so, I would expect that the outgoing longwave radiation should increase as well and cause a measurable EEI decrease.
My question reads:
Were the global temperature extremes in the years 2023-2024 (and, perhaps, also in this year) accompanied with detectable peaks in global mean SST? If so, were these SST peaks accompanied by the supposed temporal EEI minima?
Greetings
Tomáš
P.S.
I reviewed the entire thread and came to a suspicion that zebra’s obsession with “energy partition” might have originated from imagination of energy as kind of a magic substance that, by its mere quantity or “presence” in some material entity, somehow “energizes” this entity.
In this regard, I remember despising directed in the book “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” to physics textbooks that raise in pupils this questionable imagination.
Tomáš,
It is important for you to keep in mind the framework I set up with Zebra. He was mainly interested in cases where EEI averaged over time is close to zero, over a long time interval. (I chose 1000 years based on the nearly flat overall GMST curve between 0 and 1000 c.e.) The tradeoff between latent heat in ice and ocean thermal storage only works because over that time period, the other sources and sinks make only a relatively small difference in average EEI.
I agree that this is a great simplification of how the climate system behaves on a time scale of decades or less, where the flux between partitions and within the ocean itself can be considerable, and EEI itself is unlikely to be steady.
As for recent changes in EEI, I am lacking the proper background to comment meaningfully compared to the experts on this board. I do note that oceanic heat content https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/global-ocean-heat-content/ has shown a fairly steady upward trend in recent years, especially when averaged annually or longer.
I will let Zebra speak for himself on his understanding of energy partition.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/unforced-variations-july-2026/#comment-850169
“B: Changes its mind when the science at the bottom changes”
Let us make a case study over this claim..
Inamdar, Ramanathan 1998:
In summary, lapse rate changes for the annual cycle are not a valid analog for longer timescale climate changes. However, for reasons given below, the discrepancy in lapse rate changes between observations and GCMs do not alter our conclusion on the role of water vapor feedback. The observed annual cycle warming decreases with altitude, the decadal-scale warming remains roughly constant with altitude, while the GCM warming increases with altitude. When atmospheric warming is not so large as the surface warming, the enhanced emission to space is not so large (when compared with the situation when the warming is about the same at all altitudes), which in turn enhances dGa/dTs, i.e., a positive feedback. However, at the same time, in a fixed relative humidity environment, smaller atmospheric warming implies a smaller increase in absolute humidity, which suppresses some of the increase in dGa/dTs from the lapse rate feedback. Because of these two competing effects, the lapse rate has less than 10% influence on dGa/dTs.
What happened here is that after publishing a number of papers using the seasonal variation of dOLR/dTs (or dGa/dTs) as proxy for climate change, someone told them it does not even work. One needs to see how delicate the problem is. In this “proxy” the lapse rate is doing the opposite of what they only assumed it would do. It does not raise the feedback parameter in the sense of a neg. feedback, but it lowers it in the sense of a pos. feedback.
For example the feedback parameter might be 2W/m2/K vs. some 3.3W/m2/K Planck Response. One might assume that to be a total pos. feedback of 3.3 – 2 = 1.3W/m2, with maybe 1.8W/m2 and -0.5W/m2 for WV and LR feedbacks respectively. But in this proxy the LR component is not negative, but positive, and hugely positive. About the entirety of that signal is just LR, with no or only a negligible WV part, like 1.3 = 0 + 1.3! The fact that the tropospheric temperature behaves sluggish relative to Ts has been taken as evidence of a strong WV feedback – that never was.
Another pillar for pos. WV feedback would be the regional proxy:
This result demonstrates the unsuitability of using variations in different regions in our present climate as a proxy for climate change.
(Dessler et al 2008)
Ok, that does not work either, for the same reason. Turns out there is not a single piece of evidence even suggesting WV feedback was positive. They all point in the opposite direction. And that is consistent with the insight of WV being a cooling agent with given concentrations.
Anyway, the interesting part here is about how climate scientists react to “changing bottoms”: as in the instance above, Inamdar and Ramanathan did not retract their previous papers. Notably they state it would not alter their conclusion on the role of WV feedback, implying that is just what it might. In the face of lacking evidence, they instead express their strong belief in pos. WV feedback.
And despite knowing that neither the regional nor seasonal proxy works, later papers like Chung et al 2010 would yet produce both proxies as evidence. It is a pattern I have seen so many times: “yes, we were wrong, but it does not change a thing”. In real science it does..
ES: Turns out there is not a single piece of evidence even suggesting WV feedback was positive. They all point in the opposite direction. And that is consistent with the insight of WV being a cooling agent with given concentrations.
BPL: No, it is not. We know water vapor is a greenhouse gas. We know it accounts for 50% of the greenhouse effect. That would be 161 watts per square meter at the surface. Latent heat accounts for 88. Net effect: warming.
Apparently BPL does not understand the GHE. Both in S10 and K97 the WHOLE GHE is estimated to be 155W/m2.
BPL may have been referring to (global time averaged) LW F↓ @ sfc. Do we need the GHE to be one-dimensional (LW F↑(sfc) – OLR)? Or should I ascribe some of what I’ve been including in the GHE to be LW-opacity effects more generally? Remember that when the GHE is introduced in educational situations, it is often explained that it tends to reduce the diurnal T range (and F↓ @ sfc has a role in that; although one way to look at it would be to use Martin Smith’s approach and trace a batch of energy through the system from a point in time where solar heating occurs; an increased GHE should tend to prolong the residence time (hence a net increase in stored energy PS re zebra – I use storage the way John Pollack did and I’ve seen it use the same way in a textbook).
There is a long list of different GHE explanations, and the list of wrong explanations is almost as long. The GHE is the difference between surface- and emission temperature, or surface emissions and OLR respectively. Anything else is not the GHE. I know it took the IPCC 5 assessment reports of settled science to kick out “back radiation” and get the GHE moderately right.
And from a personal pespective this is one of those instances where I thought, maybe it is not all that settled and possibly a critical review of climate physics might be worth it. Anyway..
The text books are full with wrong GHE explanations. If you google it with the picture search, you get all kinds of bad depictions. And even well respected scientists many times over do not understand it. I find it very interesting this is allowed to happen. I mean not from a legal side, but there should be some intolerance towards bad ideas and a consensus on something so fundamental.
And storing heat, or heat capacity, has nothing to do with it either. If so, btw., the primary GH-agent would be the oceans..
“And storing heat, or heat capacity, has nothing to do with it either. ”
Well, sure, hypothetically, we could consider a climate system with heat capacity C = 0, so that T instantaneously responds to forcings and feedbacks. But realistically, when a change in forcing is imposed, we get a nonzero EEI = ASR – OLR (a net total flux at TOA), which, given certain simplications, would tend to decay exponentially over time as the disequilibrium decays, ie. T approaches the new equilibrium T, and this happens because of the net gain in enthalpy H (which = the time integral of EEI, assuming no change in kinetic energy KE (which I believe is quite small in comparison to typical H values involved anyway)) – ie., there is nonzero storage. (the vertically-integrated storage term may be expressed as EEI = ∂H/∂t, or I suppose as ∆H)… The time scale of that decay would be proportional to the product of ECS and the effective C value.
”If so, btw., the primary GH-agent would be the oceans.” – you misunderstood what I meant, then (and perhaps vice versa); the above paragraph should make it clear.
Also, I’m not trying to argue for the primacy of F↓ @ sfc as being the GHE, just that F↑ (emitted or total) from sfc – OLR, while a good measure of GHE (maybe the best if we use a single value), is not the only thing associated with a GHE (physically, having a nonzero F↑ from sfc – OLR requires having a F↓ @ sfc); but I would be open to referring to these other things as “LW-opacity effects”.
Clarification:
…
Also, I’m not trying to argue for the primacy of LW F↓ @ sfc as being the GHE, just that
LW F↑ (emitted or total) from sfc – OLR,
while a good measure of GHE (maybe the best if we use a single value), is not the only thing associated with a GHE (physically, having a nonzero
[ LW F↑ from sfc – OLR ]
requires having a LW F↓ @ sfc); but I would be open to referring to these other things as “LW-opacity effects”.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/unforced-variations-july-2026/#comment-850170
1. “how does the “established physics” explain the arrival of a MALR?”
Here for instance:
https://hogback.atmos.colostate.edu/group/dave/pdf/Moist_adiabatic_lapse_rate.pdf
It is very simple: neither the dry- nor the moist adiabat are physically dependent on GHGs. Sure you could say WV is a GHG, but it is only considered as a condensating gas, not a GH-agent. And yes, it is established physics.
2. That contradiction is just the entry point to a much bigger issue. Then of course the question is if one wants to explore that, or seal the door. Your notion was like: that would make a contradiction, so it can not be, case closed, nothing to see here..
My take is of course a bit different. I know already what is behind the door, and before I knew, it was a fascinating and promising subject of research. So I went after it. Knowing already that WV is a strong cooling agent, positively correlated to temperature, it just had to be a strong neg. feedback. That is a conclusion in total contradiction to all the evidence climate science so far produced, as you would agree.
So I tasked myself with the challenge of finding out how all these pieces of evidence could be wrong, if they were. And that turned out to be surprisingly simple, also because well known scientists themselves in many instances already realized they were riding a dead horse. Like these two instances..
In summary, lapse rate changes for the annual cycle are not a valid analog for longer timescale climate changes. However, for reasons given below, the discrepancy in lapse rate changes between observations and GCMs do not alter our conclusion on the role of water vapor feedback (Inamdar, Ramanathan 1998)
This result demonstrates the unsuitability of using variations in different regions in our present climate as a proxy for climate change. (Dessler et al 2008)
There are many more of these instances. But again, they are indeed all wrong. I do not want to use harsh words, so let me put it like this: never in the history of mankind have there been more ressources spent for a less optimal result.
E. Schaffer,
You respond to my questioning of you in the July UV thread
(1) The question posed was “if the air is “not totally saturated with WV,” how does the “established physics” explain the arrival of a MALR? Surely the DALR would be the mechanism when condensation isn’t present and if the temperature has yet to cool to the point where the air is “not totally saturated with WV,” how does the WV condense?”
You respond by linking to a mathematical derivation of the MALR and some nonsense that it is “very simple” because the GHE mechanisms are not a consideration.
Your response doesn’t even begin to address the question I posed!!!
The linked MALR derivation is not of great length with a quarter of it presents a derivation of the DALR. Yet it still manages to use the word “saturated/saturation” nine times. This is because the MALR is the lapse rate for “saturated” air which, as it cools with altitude, is condensing out precipitation. This, of course, assumes it is rising air but what goes up must come down. And it does so dry as a bone. Surely this is “very simple.”
And within that linked MALR derivation, we can also examine the graphic ‘Figure 1: A plot of the moist adiabatic lapse rate, Γm , in K km-1, as a function of temperature and pressure. The troposphere pressure sits 100-200mb to 1000mb with a tropopause temperature of -55°C (220K) and a chilly -80°C (195K) over the tropics and surface temperatures +27°C (300K) tropics & -30°C (245K) polar.
So let’s take a rough mid point average of all that p = 600mb, t = 250K. What would the MALR be at that pressure and temperature? Looks like it would be 8.7K/km. So why would a value of 6.5K/km be an accepted average global Lapse Rate?
Answers please on a no-bullshit postcard.
(2) I would suggest that the “contradiction” you’re at last attempting to address needs a bit of ‘diction’ here as mind-reading is not a thing (a bit like x-ray vision through doors) while those who may have read the comments in the July UV thread are likely not blessed with eidetic memory.
The issue which you termed a “contradiction” is that (A) the Lapse Rate feedback is derived as -0.5Wm^-2/°C which, if extrapolated for a 33°C GHE, would suggest a -16.5Wm^-2 contribution to said GHE while (B) you insist the contribution is about 5x larger with the LR feedback = surface WV latent heat flux = ~80Wm^-2.
Strangely, on the July UV thread, you accused me of ignoring this “contradiction” even though I has raised the issue. And I have continued to point to your failure to provide any cogent reason why your -80Wm^-2 is correct and the entirely of climatology is wrong.
So where are we with your latest explanation presented above?
You insist this -80Wm^-2 leads to “a much bigger issue” because when the negative LR feedback is combined with the positive WV feedback (a combining which climatology is want to do), if the LR feedback were a five-times-bigger than that found by the entirety of climatology, the net WV/LR feedback would be negative not positive.
I would not disagree that it would be “a much bigger issue” if ‘the entirely of climatology is wrong’ on this matter. But where is the reason to think ‘the entirely of climatology is wrong’?
You present two exemplar quotes from the literature:-
Inamdar & Ramanathan (1998) ‘Tropical and global scale interactions among water vapor, atmospheric greenhouse effect, and surface temperature’ you accuse of some scurrilous work saying of them “After publishing a number of papers using the seasonal variation of dOLR/dTs (or dGa/dTs) as proxy for climate change, someone told them it does not even work.”
Your assessment here is just jibberish.
The ‘proxy’ adopted for the atmospheric greenhouse effect is a quantity Ga, “the radiometric definition of the atmospheric greenhouse effect … which is the difference between the surface longwave emission and the outgoing longwave radiation.” Why would anyone insist adopting such a ‘proxy’ is wrong, or specifically wrong wrt “the seasonal variation of dGa/dTs”. Who is saying it “does not even work”“? The paper’s conclusion runs:-
If you are trying to present some serious criticism of Inamdar & Ramanathan (1998), you have managed a very good job of hiding it!!!!
Dessler et al (2008) ‘An analysis of the dependence of clear-sky top-of-atmosphere outgoing-longwave radiation on atmospheric temperature and water vapor’
The paper discusses lapse rate in Sec 4.2.3 [para 39-41]. It is the final sentence of these paragraphs that you quote. In this final sentence, the paper is emphasising the point that regional variations in lapse rates prevent the use of a regional lapse rate as a proxy for climate change – a global analysis is necessary.
The actual finding presented in para 39-40 is that the changes in lapse rate induced by a change in surface temperature will increase climate sensitivity relative to an unchanged lapse rate. That doesn’t appear to assist your side of this “contradiction.”
(You also mention another exemplar paper“Chung et al 2010” of which there are two potential references that I can see ( & ). Your accusation against a “Chung et al 2010” runs “despite knowing that neither the regional nor seasonal proxy works, later papers like Chung et al 2010 would yet produce both proxies as evidence.”
I fail to see anything in the two potential Chung et al (2010) papers that shows they “produce both proxies as evidence.” Neither make mention of either Inamdar & Ramanathan (1998) or Dessler et al (2008). And both are analysing climate using models and data so their “evidence” was not reliant on some prior error.)
The more you run with this silly nonsense of a massively powerful LR feedback being ignored by all of climatology, the more silly and nonsensical you make it.
“Your response doesn’t even begin to address the question I posed!!!”
If you mean the question below, I have to admit I do not understand it..
“Perhaps I should ask that if the air is “not totally saturated with WV,” how does the “established physics” explain the arrival of a MALR? Surely the DALR would be the mechanism when condensation isn’t present and if the temperature has yet to cool to the point where the air is “not totally saturated with WV,” how dos the WV condense?”
However, you brought up the notion the adiabatic lapse rate was somehow due to GHGs, which it is not, and that is the important take-away here. Moreover because WV is a condensating gas it reduces the lapse rate and the GHE with it. None of that is a secret or would be seriously disputed. Also it is not “my position” so that I would even feel the need to defend it.
I only brought up the logical follow-up question on whether WV is warming or cooling, thereby pointing out this question tends to be illicitly avoided by just stating “WV is a strong GHG”. Clouds are a strong GH-agent too, yet they are believed to be cooling. Btw. we could probably agree that this question has not been even considered, which is bad enough.
Should you reject the physics behind the moist adiabat so to avoid said follow-up question, I would not try to convince you of established physics, but rather accept that as an answer.
“So let’s take a rough mid point average of all that p = 600mb, t = 250K. What would the MALR be at that pressure and temperature? Looks like it would be 8.7K/km. So why would a value of 6.5K/km be an accepted average global Lapse Rate?”
600mb is about 4000m up. Where do you take the 250K from? Where does anything look like 8.7K/km? I have not the slightest clue how you come up with these figures. What I can tell you is the theoretic MALR is smaller then the actual lapse rate, because yes, the former is perfectly saturated, while in reality that is not so.
Let us go back a little..
me:
“You brought this perspective up before and I ignored it. Sorry for that. It is actually a great perspective, but it escalates the issue, without answering the original question. Of course it tells us there is a contradiction between the role of WV within the GHE, and WV feedback. One of the two must be wrong.
I did not say you ignored it, I said I ignored it. What you argued, and still do, is to say that said contradiction would deny that latent heat cooling by WV..
“..but your conjecture that the LR feedback = surface WV latent heat flux = ~80Wm^-2 is certainly not sound”
I say that such a contradiction tells us at least one side should be wrong, but it does not tell us which one. Concluding it must the one that is less convenient is not good reasoning either. The fact that WV reduces the GHE by said magnitude of ~80W/m2 a simple logic consquence and you could not produce a single good argument why that was not so.
So, as far as the contradiction goes, we know the one that is NOT wrong. And that is what brings the LR-feedback as assumed in the models, some -0.5W/m2/K (down from -0.84 in AR4), into the cross hair. And that is where things become truely interesting.
“The actual finding presented in para 39-40 is that the changes in lapse rate induced by a change in surface temperature will increase climate sensitivity relative to an unchanged lapse rate. That doesn’t appear to assist your side of this “contradiction.””
Yes, that is what I have explained already. Only in the “proxy” the lapse rate emulates a positive feedback, as opposed to the expected neg. feedback. It is best explained in numbers. Planck Feedback minus Feedback Parameter = Feedback might go like 3.3 – 2 = 1.3. Now the assumption is those 1.3 might consist of 1.8 and -0.5 as WV and LR feedbacks.
If you check the literature it is widely agreed that there is “certainty” over the total FB of some 1.3, but uncertainty over the exact attribution. If the WV term is larger pos., the LR term is larger neg., or vice verse. And the idea is that while there is uncertainty over this question, it would not really matter. The sum is important.
The problem is, and that is what both sources above point out, that assumption can only hold true as long as the “proxies” represent climate change. In other words, as long as the lapse rate in the proxies does the same as it would do in the long run. But that is not true, rather it is the opposite.
The LR component is emulating a pos. feedback, like > +1W/m2/K in the seasonal- and ~+0.5W/m2/K in the regional “proxies”. The scheme of total feedback equating to WV+LR feedbacks then looks extremely different, like..
Assumption:
1.3 = 1.8 – 0.5
Reality:
seasonal:
1.3 = 0 + 1.3
regional:
1.3 = 0.8 + 0.5
In other words the evidence for a strong WV feedback of 1.8W/m2/K (that is the altitude part) is largely the difference between the assumed neg. lapse rate component and the actual pos. lapse rate component, but it was never real. The erring over the lapse rate behaviour in the proxy is the “evidence” for the large WV feedback – and eventually the reason why the total WV feedback is believed to be pos., while actually being neg.
The dry adiabatic lapse rate (DALR) for a parcel of air is actually not strictly a constant value (for gas of a given composition in a given gravitational field ie. @ g ≈ 9.81 m/s²); it actually depends on the environmental lapse rate (ELR). But when a layer is well-mixed without any H2O phase changes (unsaturated air), potential temperature θ is constant in that layer, so both ELR and DALR are the same and DALR ≈ 10 K/km or more accurately, g/c_p (from memory – did I get this right) ≈ 9.81 m/s² ÷ 1004 J/(kg·K) = 9.81/1004 m/s² ÷ [ kg m/s² m / (kg K) ] ≈ 9.77 E−3 K/m … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate#Dry_adiabatic_lapse_rate ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_specific_heat_capacities
More generally, DALR gives T as a function of θ ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_temperature ) and p : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exner_function , which can be converted to a function of z given ELR, T_0 and z_0 (describes a dry adiabat)
The moist adiabatic lapse rate (MALR – a part of me wants to put a D at the end and call it a duck) does not have a single value; it is a function of T and p. It gets smaller at higher T at a given p (this is of course related to the reason for a negative LR feedback(**) and I expect it would do so at a given T at larger p (notice I didn’t say higher p so as to avoid confusion with p getting smaller at higher z) because at smaller p at a given T, there’s more H2O vapor relative to the mass of air… but following a moist adiabat from the level where condensation begins, going upward, the cooling reduces the amount of latent heat released per ∆p of ascent (and therefore per ∆z, given a value of ∂p/∂z), and eventually the moist adiabat asymptotically approaches a dry adiabat, whose value of θ can be used to characterize the ascending saturated moist air. Of course, real moist ascent is not exactly adiabatic (adiabatic = reversable = isentropic) because of the effects of curvature for the smallest droplets, but also because of the difficulty of initiating ice nucleation (I also recall reading that phase nucleation delays also play a role in the mechanical/rheological(?) properties subducting slabs of lithosphere(?)) – and also a couple other things. (un-)Mixing of different air masses (the un- pertains to precipitation) and down-gradient diffusion (ie. conduction of heat, diffusion of H2O) are not adiabatic.
** ie more latent heat is released per m of moist ascent at higher T because more H2O condenses per m of ascent. This does not necessarily or automatically mean more H2O condenses per unit time; velocity could slow down (relating to the difference between convective heat flux and convective lapse rate).
The occurrence of moist convection can, by approximately establishing an ELR ≈ MALR, stablilizes the air to dry convection (while large-scale horizontal motion – eg. baroclinic waves / frontal cyclones – driven by geographical variations in solar heating can stabilize the air to localized vertical moist convection). It is helpful to map out the θ contours/surfaces ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_temperature ). Moist adiabatic ascent crosses θ going up, so a ELR = MALR means θ increases with increasing height z. Dry adiabatic motion drags θ values with it. In order to sustain a steady-state overturning, where precipitation removes much of the condensed H2O so the cloud base is high in the descending region, the dry descent must have diabatic (ie. a net flow of heat in or out of a volume/mass of air) cooling in order to cross the θ contours/surfaces. In clear skies, a net LW radiant cooling of ~ 2 ± 0.5 K/day is typical in the troposphere:
Jeevanjee & Fueglistaler, 2020 “Simple Spectral Models for Atmospheric Radiative Cooling” https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/77/2/jas-d-18-0347.1.xml
(some formatting lost in C&P:)
Sorry, I made that more complicated than it really is; upon farther thought, it’s just the profile T(p or z) that matters, which is obviously tied to ∂T/∂z but is not uniquely determined by it so anyway…
If DALR = Γ_d = g/c_p = DALR₀ when T(z) along a dry adiabat = environmental T(z), then more generally,
*I think*,
DALR (as a −DT/Dz) = DALR₀ · T_{parcel being displaced} / T_{environment}
because (assuming constant g and hydrostatic approximation) ∂p/∂z is inversely proportional to T_{environment}.
Hence/I assumed MA Rodger’s 8.7K/km is the MALR @ 600mb, 250K, though I didn’t verify the number for myself (didn’t have a skew-T chart). – wait, https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/upperair/skew-t-log-p-diagrams ,
https://www.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/2022-06/skew_t_fullsize.pdf …
Of course, the climate system is not generally in a steady-state even at a climatological equilibrium, but this still broadly applies; the dry air has to cross the θ surfaces.
net flow of heat in or out of a material volume; material; a material ___ is a ___ that moves with the material (I’ve never seen the term applied to volume but it’s a logical extension of familiar usage for material surfaces). PS I could use “warming” and “cooling” to refer to the material derivative of T (DT/Dt is dT/dt following the motion of the material) whether that is adiabatic or diabatic, and might also in general use for for the Eulerian derivative ∂T/∂t (occurs at a specific coordinate location as material moves through/by), but I use heating for a diabatic process; unfortunately there isn’t a clearly distinguished option for negative heating (“colding”?) which applies at all T (otherwise freezing could work for limited cases, but…).
So why doesn’t the tropospheric ELR always follow a MALR? Well, there’s the fact that convective cloud bases are often/generally a bit above the sfc. But also, there’s the “large-scale horizontal motion – eg. baroclinic waves / frontal cyclones – driven by geographical variations in solar heating can stabilize the air to localized vertical moist convection” and the temporal cycling that stabilizes the air next to land surfaces at night (when conditions allow), etc. The significantly superadiabatic layer sometimes found next to the surface due to the ineffectiveness of convection on such small scales (is it like a cm?) and the simple fact that convection mostly does not penetrate into the land or liquid water (there is soil porosity and sea spray, but… well, vegetation does extend the surface into a volume in a sense but when you get to individual leaves… etc.) … also there’s the matter of entrainment of dry air (but won’t that limit the extent of moist convection?). But also, even where, as I understand it(?), moist convection would tend to establish a near MALR profile (deep tropics), there is some horizontal variation in conditions; moist ascent tends to concentrate in some regions, and maybe (?) some different regions are producing different moist adiabatic profiles, which may reach upward to different heights… so when you take an average… (?)
Of course, there will (tend to) be (depending on local conditions including the occurrence of other clouds) LW diabatic cooling on the tops and also somewhat along the sides of clouds, but not so much inside thick towering cumulus.
——– —
E. Schaffer, your own quotation of Inamdar, Ramanathan 1998 ( https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/1998JD900007 , p 32,192 – wow, that’s quite a tome!), my emph. and [numbered points] list format applied.:
From their abstract (my emph. ):
I didn’t read the entirety (so don’t take my word for it), but it seems like they’re considering the changes in relative humidity (and specifically arguing against a hypothesis from Lindzen?). Real world data support for the LR feedback for longer term anthropogenic climate may come from other studies (including perhaps some from the last 28 years?), not this one. The time frame is different and maybe the spatial scale (in the regional study(s?)) also has an effect on ∆LR. I would be interested in seeing an explanation for why. Maybe something to do with SST’s having a longer response time? (relatively muted seasonal changes?). There’s also of course that the Northern & Southern Hemispheres are out of phase in seasons, and matters of atmospheric circulation…
While I do appreciate your dedication on learning about the MALR, I think it is way more effective to just take away what is needed. The moist adiabat is smaller than a dry adiabat, the GHE is a function of said lapse rate, thus WV reduces the GHE and that effect is also known as “latent heat”..
Tropical storms may serve as a showpiece for how strong this effect can be. The intense evaporation / condensation there drops the lapse rate to a minimum, creating a column of hot (relative to altitude) buoyant air, which sucks in more moist air, and so on..
To understand those statements, both IR98 and D08, one needs to consider what the changing lapse rate means as a feedback, and how it specifically behaves in the proxies. In the regional and seasonal proxy the lapse rate emulates a pos. feedback. Assuming lapse rate there was acting as a neg. feedback, the resulting difference was wrongly taken as evidence of WV feedback. Only in the interannual proxy the lapse rate does as it should, making that one even more interesting and kind of the “epicenter” of the issue.
In the real world of course the lapse rate remains a neg. feedback, and that is what you have in the models. Yet there is another problem, as discussed in Santer et al 2005, or pointed out by John Christy. The tropical lapse rate is not doing what it should, ie. the “hot spot” is missing. The lapse rate should shrink, but it refuses. There are related phenomena like stagnant pan evaporation, declining relative humidity, declining cloudiness, and so on..
These instances have provoked a lot of different reactions by “critical” people jumping to conclusions, like Christy, Lindzen oder Clauser lately. And while there is definitely something going on, I an assure you all these conclusons were wrong. I would rather go with P. Minnis there and not just consider artificial cirrus clouds, but also that they might be limiting the natural water cycle underneath, while at the same time heating the climate.
I didn’t read the entirety (so don’t take my word for it), but it seems like they’re considering the changes in relative humidity (and specifically arguing against a hypothesis from Lindzen?)
And yes, the IR98 statement is a rejection of a notion brought up by Lindzen, where he suggested more evaporation could trigger more precipitation which then somehow lowers humidity levels..? Does not make much sense..
ES: the GHE is a function of said lapse rate
BPL: Look again.
https://bartonlevenson.com/lapse.html
I forgot, there is the fact that unlike with dry convective instability, aside from the thin layer immediately in contact with the sfc., moist convective instability, ie. as in conditional instability, can build up substantially (producing large CAPE values) without being automatically released (and then when it is released, storm chasers can get some good videos). Eg. there is the occurrence of an elevated (dry/ ie. unsaturated) mixed layer. *From memory, I think these may form in a PBL (?) over dry elevated terrain (eg. U.S./Mexico desert plateau/mountains) and move over warm humid air (eg. coming from the Gulf of Mexico)
IR98: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/1998JD900007 :
That “for reasons given below,” was likely referring to material following the quoted section:
; the part I put into a numbered list is/are the reasons that, I believe, make the seasonal ∆LR unsuitable as a proxy for longer-period LR feedback.
But anyway, I’ve now read sec. 7 through to the end. (and the beginning up to somewhere in the middle, I think.)
p.13/18 (32,189)
Fig. 11 (next p.) is the same but for the globe and JJA – DJF. Note I think they excluded ice-covered ocean (for instrumental reasons?)
What I want to note is (hopefully I didn’t mess this up; feel free to double check):
Every level shown (sfc (judging by dotted line extension) to 200 mb)) has a positive ∆T, except global ocean (11a.), which has cooling above ~ 470 mb ish (visually est.).
∆Absolute humidity (based on ∆q) is positively correlated with ∆T in every layer (lower, mid, upper)
and |∆q| is larger than it would be for constant RH in the mid and upper layers (magnitude is larger for global ocean upper layer, but in that case it is negative, as is ∆T there layer (boundary of layers is not exactly aligned with ~470 mb but look at ∆q for constant RH)) – except for global land+ocean (RH decreases in all of the 3 layers), which I think they explained as making sense given that ∆T of land sfc (Northern Hem.) dominates the ∆T of the sfc in that case. But even in this case, q increases with warming.
So if this were a proxy for WV feedback, it suggests a positive feedback.
What I meant was that I try to reserve “heating” for diabatic processes (which don’t necessary result in a change in T because of phase changes etc.) while I use “warming” for any increase in T, adiabatic or diabatic.
re Barton Paul Levenson – good blog post, however that doesn’t seem to be E. Schaffer’s misunderstanding; rather he is recognizing that the variation in T (via variation in the Planck function B_ν at any given ν) over height is required to enable LW opacity to affect OLR (barring the effects of any deviation of sfc LW emissivity from 1). Also I think he at least partly recognizes that the concept of an effective emitting level (EEL) is a effective/weighted average (over the spectrum) of weighted averages (over direction) of weighted averages (emission weighting function, EWF). Setting aside that some OLR does come from the stratosphere, I think his main misunderstandings are 1. Apparently assuming that the deviation of a moist adiabatic profile – or actual tropospheric profiles? – from dry adiabatic is proportional to the convective flux of latent heat from the surface, and 2. (more important when making large changes) assuming the vertical (and horizontal?) extent of approximately-convective profiles (having near neutral stability – is that the correct phrasing?) basically doesn’t vary with LW opacity/the GHE.
– leads into said material; I was referencing “the quoted section” that was initially supplied by E. Schaffer and which I requoted with an edited format to highlight some things.
“re Barton Paul Levenson – good blog post” [ https://bartonlevenson.com/lapse.html ] “,however that doesn’t seem to be E. Schaffer’s misunderstanding;” …
Ie. He did indicate understanding that the effective emission height for OLR to Space was a function of the GHE ie. LW opacity (of the atmosphere). But I realised after posting that I gave him too much credit there: in addition to the two points, there’s the dismissal of “backradiation” …
(a term some of us don’t care for so much but Piotr made a good case for accepting it a month or two ago … PS energy is being cycled around the climate system, so in a sense it can be ‘re-emitted’ and ‘re-absorbed’ and ‘re-convected’ and ‘re-diffused’ and ‘re-conducted’, but I’ve never heard anyone saying “reconvection”, so I still shun “re-emission” (unless if maybe it’s when the molecule hasn’t exchanged or converted the energy since the last absorption…),
… a.k.a. LW F↓ @ sfc, and then what I just responded to below, and the maligning of some climate scientists…
PS: for anyone interested…
Given the convective coupling of the sfc and all levels within the troposphere, a baseline level approximate understanding is that there is a tendency for the T throughout that portion of the climate system to respond proportionately to SARF at the tropopause level …
(SARF = Radiative Forcing after Stratospheric Adjustment, and thus has the same value from the tropopause to TOA – there is no remaining RF acting on the stratosphere after SA)
…, except for the Lapse Rate (LR, a.k.a. Γ) feedback, of course. This works exactly for a simplified 1-D (single vertical column) model with convection parameterized simply by reducing the LR to a convective (convectively neutral stability) LR (Γ) wherever radiant heating/cooling would destabilize it (note the role of the distribution of net radiant heating in determining where this happens), and requiring the necessary convective heat flux to accomplish this, but of course, in the full 4+D system, the convective coupling (in particular, localized vertical coupling) is at least somewhat looser than that, disappearing in some parts of the system…
But anyway, even with the primacy of tropopause level and TOA radiative forcing, this *doesn’t* mean LW F↓ @ sfc (or LW F{↑,↓,net↑} generally anywhere within the troposphere) don’t have an effect (they shape the convective heat flux, and to the extent that the convective coupling is loose, they also shape the LR (Γ)), much less that they somehow don’t exist.
E. Schaffer,
D note that you begin to seriously try my patience.
Let us keep to the two lines of discussion initiated within the July UV comment thread. These two were (1) Why the Lapse Rate of the troposphere is roughly 6.5ºC /km, and (2) Why the science says the Lapse Rate feedback is -0.5Wm^-2/ºC when your “LR feedback = surface WV latent heat flux = ~80Wm^-2 would suggest a value 5-times-larger with a 33k GHE, thus our “contradiction”.
(1) The contention between us here is that you appear to see the 6.5ºC/km as resulting from MALR conditions while I say it is far far more complicated than that.
I do not see anything from you to demonstrate that the MALR would lead to a tropospheric 6.5ºC/km lapse rate. I have attempted to show in different why why there is a lot more going on than the appearance of a MALR.
Perhaps another attempt at explaining this complexity would be more successful.
If you recall, I suggested that the energy flux into the atmosphere from condensing WV was not the only energy flux that would have a bearing on the Lapse Rate. Let’s have another go at that.
You insist the WV energy flux is different because all the other fluxes are “put into atmosphere at the bottom and it all gets lost at the “top” (actually different altitudes within the troposphere).” And indeed, the WV carries insensible heat up into the troposphere causing heating through the height of the troposphere.
You thus insist this WV warming uniquely impacts the Lapse Rate, reducing it and thus also a strong negative feedback on the GHE.
But consider this. As well as WV, the GHE itself warms the troposphere.
Consider that Fig 7 Kiehl & Trenberth (1997) shows 324Wm^-2 of “Back Radiation”. Of course, the stupid air molecules have no sense of direction with this radiation. As well as their 324Wm^-2 coming down, there is also (almost) 324Wm^-2 going up.
But when we get to the top of the atmosphere, the IR radiation from the atmosphere out into space is only 195Wm^-2. We are missing (324 – 195 =) 129Wm^-2. Where did it go? Could it perhaps be “causing heating through the height of the troposphere” like the 80Wm^-2 WV flux? And with 129>80, more heating?
(2) (Just to explain the ‘ignoring-the-contradiction’ thing. You wrote back in July that I “brought this perspective up before and (you) ignored it.” You thus admitted to not picking up on my raising the “contradiction”“One of the two must be wrong. From there on we have different philosophies. You would want to solve said contradiction by ignoring and denying it – a well known pattern. As if contradicting perspectives would provide us with a choice what to believe. For me it was reason to analyze the contridication in find out why it exists.” [My bold] So has your analysis shown why the “contradiction”“contradiction” has been resolved saying “as far as the contradiction goes, we know the one that is NOT wrong.” The reasons given for this view is no more than that I “could not produce a single good argument why that was not so.” If you mean by “a single good argument” one which you judge to be “a single good argument” then you are probably correct. But we do not live in your solipsistic world. We exist in thr real world where science does a pretty good job of solving contradictions, the same science which you here insist is flat-wrong.
I’m happy to hear folk explain why some scientific thing is wrong. But in this matter, I see no serious or cogent explanation from you.
Our previous to-&-fro on (2) concerned two references, Inamdar & Ramanathan (1998) and Dessler et al (2008). You do not explicitly make response to my rebutal of your use of Inamdar & Ramanathan (1998).
Up-thread you quoted from Dessler et al (2008) Sec 4.2.3 [para 41] which ends saying “This result demonstrates the unsuitability of using variations in different regions in our present climate as a proxy for climate change.” This (& the Inamdar & Ramanathan (1998) quote) was apparently an exemplar of “scientists themselves in many instances already realiz(ing) they were riding a dead horse.”
I remain unable to see why this shows they would be “scientists … riding a dead horse.” Indeed, up-thread I pointed out the meaning of this Dessler et al quote and why it demonstrates no such thing. I also pointed to para 39-40 which contradicts your contention that increased evapo-transpiration (your 80Wm^-2 surface flux which will increase with surface temperature Ts) diminishes the GHE. It says “as Ts increases, so does the lapse rate, and the general effect of this is to reduce dOLR/dTs, and therefore (reduce) OLR, below what they would be if the atmosphere maintained a constant lapse rate.” Conversely, in your version of things, such adjustment of Lapse Rate would increase OLR and diminish the GHE.
Your response now to my comments on Dessler et al (2008) is surprising. You insist you have “explained already” and then regurgitate your understanding of not Dessler et al (2008) but Inamdar & Ramanathan (1998).
Regarding your understanding of Inamdar & Ramanathan (1998), the “proxy”** you talk-of is your description of the adoption of Ga as a measure of the GHE (Ga = OLR[surface] – OLR[toa]). What you appear to be saying is that you agree with their result but it is the adoption of this “proxy” that makes it all wrong.
(** Note that Inamdar & Ramanathan don’t themselves use the term “proxy”. Dessler et al (2008) does use the term but in a different context.)
Given this ‘It’s the proxy’s wots wrong!!’ assertion, the bulk of your ‘it-is-best-explained-in-numbers’ is setting out what the use of this “proxy” achieved*** with nothing describing why use of this “proxy” is allegedly all wrong.
(*** Inamdar & Ramanathan (1998) cannot provide a value for the Lapse Rate Feedback but does set out a value for the WV+LR feedback in a rather laborius way in eqs 5-to-8 which is where the ‘it-is-best-explained-in-numbers’ 3.3 – 2 = 1.3 comes from, the +1.3 for WV+LR being a problem for your insistence that WV+LR must be negative.)
Up-thread you set out your quotes from Inamdar & Ramanathan (1998) and Dessler et al (2008) adding “There are many more of these instances.” Perhaps those “many more … instances” contain papers that better illustrate your grand theorising.
I suggested up-thread that “If you are trying to present some serious criticism of Inamdar & Ramanathan (1998), you have managed a very good job of hiding it!!!!” Your attempts to now correct that situation are verging on incoherent bullshit. Translating (or more precisely ‘divining the meaning’ of) incoherent bullshit is never a precise conversion and ‘translating’ what it is you are trying to say in this interchange is not producing any outcome whatever.
I’d guess that the underlying gripe you are presenting continues to be that you still see the WV+LR feedback being calculated without consideration of the impact of the LR feedback on GHE processes other than ΔWV. But after all these words, that remains just a guess.
Consider that Fig 7 Kiehl & Trenberth (1997) shows 324Wm^-2 of “Back Radiation”. Of course, the stupid air molecules have no sense of direction with this radiation. As well as their 324Wm^-2 coming down, there is also (almost) 324Wm^-2 going up. But when we get to the top of the atmosphere, the IR radiation from the atmosphere out into space is only 195Wm^-2. We are missing (324 – 195 =) 129Wm^-2. Where did it go?
Ok, this is a profound problem, and I have seen it so many times over. We have that regrettable term “radiative flux” in climate science, suggesting that when there is radiation, there would also be a flux of energy. As a rule the opposite is true. There is just isothermic radiative exchange, with no (net) flux of energy.
This is for instance true for the radiative exchange between surface and atmosphere. There may be smaller differences, but over all the surface emits as much radiation into the atmosphere, as it receives in “back radiation”. It is a zero-sum game, not doing anything, and not causing the GHE!
I did some analysis with the help of modtran to assess how much atmospheric “back radiation” there even is. Bear in mind, most of it is re-absorbed within the atmosphere, only a tiny fraction reaches the surface. It will be around 100,000W/m2! And where does that go? Nowhere, it just circulates.
Of course, when that radiative exchange is not quite as isothermic, that may look a little different. And I think there is one great example for it. On Venus the lower 40km of the atmosphere are relatively clear. Large parts of the radiation gets absorbed, but some passes through, and given the hot surface, that is yet a lot. So to a certain degree the hot surface and the hazy atmospheric layer at 40km plus exchange radiation directly. That should reduce the lapse rate in theory, and indeed it is way smaller than a dry adiabat there, and smaller than above.
In this instance however there is a huge delta T and a specific optical opacity profile of the atmosphere. We have nothing like it on Earth. The optical thickness of the atmosphere is declining relatively constantly with altitude. The radiative exchanges occur at small distances with minimal delta Ts, with minimal effects on the lapse rate. Those 129W/m2 (or so) are gradually consumed over such micro-exchanges.
***
Well then, let me use a different wording: we still have the issue of WV reducing the lapse rate by a lot, which is exactly the issue I brought up at the start. The logical implication is that WV is barely warming, or rather cooling with the given concentration. And your notion was this WOULD imply a contradiction and thus “is certainly not sound”.
You did not not acknowledge the contradiction, rather you rejected the idea BECAUSE it would mean a contradiction. Given that, my wording was not inaccurate. Moreover, you are using deduction to tell what details can be true, or not: “Your grand theory sits in “contradiction” to the entirety of climatology”. I have no “grand theory”, I just do a deductive falsification, which probably has more gravitas anyway..
***
Just let me clarify that IR98 uses dGa/dTs instead of the more common dOLR/dTs. It is just a technicality. With dOLR/dTs a zero feedback response would equate to the Planck Response like 3.3, lower results mean a pos. FB and vice verse. With dGa/dTs zero feedback should be 2.1W/m2 (=4*288^3*5.67e-8 – 3.3), with higher results meaning a pos. fb.
“as Ts increases, so does the lapse rate, and the general effect of this is to reduce dOLR/dTs, and therefore (reduce) OLR, below what they would be if the atmosphere maintained a constant lapse rate.” Conversely, in your version of things, such adjustment of Lapse Rate would increase OLR and diminish the GHE.”
Ok, that clarifies that you still do not understand, and I would suggest it is because you don’t want to. D08 here describes what the lapse rate does within the regional proxy, as opposed to what it does in the real world and in the models. There is no “my version” of things. I could explain it one more time, but I think I’ll just leave it at that.
Generally there are flux densities F in all directions (the integral over a hemisphere of radiance L · cos(angle from normal/orthogonal/perpendicular to the area through which the flux is flowing)).
You are (presumably) specifically referring to net LW F. Away from TOA, the net spectral flux density (vertical: net F_ν↑ = F_ν↑ − F_ν↓) approaches 0 (final approach is toward saturation) in the most optically-thick parts of the spectrum (eg, close to ~15 µm for CO2 and deep into the H2O bands, etc., esp. near line centers) and in some conditions (inside a thick dense cloud). But there is marginal bandwidth where net F_ν↑ is significant outside of clouds (and within some depth into clouds and sfc materials (generally thin, I think, unless you’re counting the air space among some vegetation)); and then there is bandwidth in which the air is nearly transparent (except for clouds and humid airmasses in the lower & mid-troposphere (depending on region & weather)).
Each layer of air absorbs some radiation and emits some radiation so that F_ν↑ and F_ν↓ change over height, tending to approach the local π·B_ν(T), but lagging behind changes in π·B_ν(T) over height. The math is more clear-cut when considering spectral radiance L_ν{↑,↓} at a particular angle ϑ from vertical (ϑ = θ for ↓, π − θ for ↑ if the direction is that the radiance is coming from (where you look toward to see it)) (for non-PPIA conditions it may also be necessary to consider the azimuthal angle ϕ: L_ν{↑,↓}(ϑ,ϕ)); then you can just use Schwarzchild’s equation; then integrate over solid angle.
( https://scienceopinionsfunandotherthings.wordpress.com/2025/12/09/for-asymptotic-radiances-ppia-linear-and-general-cases-wip-awaiting-final-proofread-double-check-diagrams-pending/ ,
https://scienceopinionsfunandotherthings.wordpress.com/2025/12/24/for-asymptotic-radiances-ppia-linear-b%cf%84/ ,
https://scienceopinionsfunandotherthings.wordpress.com/2024/12/10/directionally-averaged-radiance-and-the-semi-gray-skin-temperature-wip-awaiting-final-proofread-double-check-diagrams-pending/ ,
https://scienceopinionsfunandotherthings.wordpress.com/2025/12/30/for-asymptotic-radiances-ppia-sinusoidal-b%cf%84-part-1/ ,
https://scienceopinionsfunandotherthings.wordpress.com/2026/01/01/for-asymptotic-radiances-ppia-sinusoidal-b%cf%84-part-2/ , … , https://scienceopinionsfunandotherthings.wordpress.com/2026/02/03/for-asymptotic-radiances-ppia-sinusoidal-b%cf%84-part-5/
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/12/unforced-variations-dec-2025/#comment-842771 ( “see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild%27s_equation_for_radiative_transfer – note they are [seem to be] using “spectral intensity” to refer to spectral radiance. **”) – https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/12/unforced-variations-dec-2025/#comment-842845 …
We have nothing like it on Earth. – Qualitatively, we do. Cirrus Clouds! In the atmospheric window. Yes, outside the coldest/dryest air masses, there is still some significant opacity from H2O, but you get to a certain height …
(~ 4 km mid-lat ? 5 or 6 km tropical? https://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/ – but I can find 700 mb air masses with very low RH (even down to 1% in one spot https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/700hPa/overlay=relative_humidity/orthographic=-289.80,-8.68,265/loc=80.898,-31.212 – …),
… there is little H2O optical depth (τ_{H2O} remaining above your POV, and the effective radiating surface below is distributed over a combination of the sfc and the volume of lower/mid tropospheric air above that, and in combination they exchange radiant fluxes with any overlying clouds (or stratospheric O3 near ~9.6 µm**??) Or consider stratocumulus and cirrus. Or consider (if the air is dry enough) the upside version: clouds at the top of an inversion layer …
** – I read somewhere that 90% of O3 is in the stratosphere; it didn’t specify whether this was globally or for mid-latitudes or whatever… it varies seasonally too. With line-broadening, much bandwidth would probably have ~
??? maybe half or more (10% * 600 mb / (10% * 600 mb + 90% * 10 mb??) = 60/69 ) [idk this]??? of τ_{O3} would still be in the troposphere (depends on line-spacing and the distribution over height);
OTOH, close to O3 line centers …
E. Schaffer,
It is entirely possible that you think your comment above is a rational response (rebuttal even) to my previous comment. Alternatively, it is also entirely possible that you know you are splurging-out gob shite. If it is the former, let me set out why your comment is but gob shite.
Your first point is actually arguing that the troposphere is not warmed by the GHE. Such a notion denies the existence of a rather obscure law of physics called the conservation of energy. The radiation flying round within the bottom of the atmosphere is 324Wm^-2 but by the time we get to the (radiative) top of the atmosphere where it’s considerably colder, that radiation is reduced to 195Wm^-2 which duly escapes off to space. That reduction in Wm^-2 is how the GHE works. And you know that!!!
Where did the (324 – 195 =) 129Wm^-2 go?
Perhaps there is a bit of a flaw in your logic. Perhaps your assertion that the troposphere is “isothermic” (which would result in “no (net) flux of energy”) is a tad awry. But, hey, I’m sure the troposphere being 288K at the bottom and 233K at the top means it’s as good as “isothermic”. But if it is, where did that 129Wm^-2 go?
Perhaps the 129Wm^-2 was, as you put it, “gradually consumed over such micro-exchanges” and disappeared as rounding errors “with minimal effects on the lapse rate.” So the effect of the 80Wm^-2 of insensible heat carried aloft by the WV would be even less, wouldn’t it?. So the “effects on the lapse rate.” of your 80Wm^-2 would be even more “minimal”. If not, perhaps you could explain why not?
Your second point seems to argue that because I acknowledge that there is a “contradiction” and, yes, it was me that has been bashing on about this “contradiction”. Then the “contradiction” exists (which is true) and you must be right and the entirety of climatology wrong.
But what I was bashing on about was that you are in “contradiction” to the entirety of climatology. And you have yet to set out any cogent argument to support your “contradictory” idea. Calling it “the logical implication” doesn’t make your illogical arguments logical.
You say you “have no “grand theory” but ” just do a deductive falsification, which probably has more gravitas anyway.” What? “Do”? If this is all you can manage, I would suggest your “deductive falsification” is properly done for.
Your third point attempting to ‘clarify’ Inamdar & Ramanathan (1998) simply shows your lack of grasp of the paper. dOLR(toa)/dTs = the rate of change of clear sky OLR relative to surface temperature. It is not an equatable substitute for dGa/dTs as a measure of anything. dGa/dTs = dOLR(surface)/dTs – dOLR(toa)/dTs. The surface term could be called the ‘Planck Response’ or the Temperature feedback and if you know Ts you can calculate it. IR1998 arrive at dOLR(surface)/dTs = 5.5Wm^-2/ºC. And they also have a value for dOLR(toa)/dTs = 3.3Wm^-2/ºC, this arrived at from a model which has not factored in the WV+LR feedback. So if the measured dOLR(toa)/dTs complete with real-world WV+LR feedback is less than 3.3Wm^-2/ºC, the value of the WV+LR feedback will be positive. And arriving at the problem with data for dGa/dTs, if dGa/dTs is greater than 2.2Wm^-2/ºC the WV+LR feedback again will be positive. The data shows dGa/dTs > 2.2.
Then, without pause (a fourth point?), you say that Dessler et al (2008) 4.2.3 para40 is not addressing “what the lapse rate does within … the real world and in the models” but are examining “what the lapse rate does within the regional proxy.” Indeed, Dessler et al do use Ts (=Tsst) as a proxy for latitude which is an added twist to their use of ‘Jacobians’ to examine the mechanisms of the GHE. But this [paras 39-41] is your chosen portion of your chosen rabbit hole.
So what is it saying in Para 40?
It references Fig8a and says “As Ts increases, so does the lapse rate.” And we both agree the consequence of an increase in Lapse Rate is a strengthening of the GHE.
Your version of this is that in Ts Dessler et al are talking solely of the proxy for latitude so when it says “Ts increases” it is saying ‘latitude decreases.’ If that is so, it’s not just a rather banal comment, it’s also completely arse-about-face. The lapse rate (in the form of MALR which you insist is the dominant factor here) decreases with increasing temperature, be that actual temperature or with a “regional proxy” for latitude.
“Arse-about-face”? Golly!!! It seems we have another “contradiction.”
So if this simply Ts is being used here as a “regional proxy,” how can this second “contradiction” be reconciled.
In my view, the sensible interpretation is otherwise – that when their models are run with Lapse Rate fixed at prior values, you get less GHE than if you let the modelled Lapse Rate change. (Note the model is running with Ta increased by 1ºC so in your book it is a warmer world with a decreased MALR and thus, in your book, an increased Lapse Rate yielding a decreased GHE.)
Of course, given the paucity of description in Kessler et al (2008), I could be wrong. And whatever the actual meaning, do recall <a href="https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/08/unforced-variations-aug-2026/#comment-850258.
“Turns out there is not a single piece of evidence even suggesting WV feedback was positive. They all point in the opposite direction. And that is consistent with the insight of WV being a cooling agent with given concentrations.” How does Dessler et at’s Fig5b square with that bold assertion?
So far in this lengthy interchange between us you have left quite a trail by failing to provide a sensible reply to pretty-much every enquiry I have presented. So your grand theory remains as it was, an unexplained “contradiction” between, on the one hand you and on the other the entirety of climatology.
Clarification:
PS if you graph B_ν over vertical optical depth τ_{vc} (see my https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/unforced-variations-july-2026/#comment-850156 ) the situation you had in mind may look like a staircase ie., (approximately/nearly) transparent layers of any sizable ∆p or ∆z are compressed into (approximately/nearly) zero optical thickness, while relatively higher-opacity-layers (eg. clouds) are stretched out, and if B_ν doesn’t vary much through them (eg., if because they are thin over ∆p or ∆z), in ‘optical/τ-space’, you get relatively flat steps with sharp drop-offs between them.
—- —-
A straight-line T(z) profile becomes convex over atmospheric mass path mp (approx. proportional to p), and thus over the mp of WMGHGs like CO2.
(to the extent they are truly WMGHGs – I believe/have the impression that N2O and CH4 and the CFCs drop off going up through the stratosphere and maybe even starting lower than that? Meanwhile, the major CO2 sources and sinks being at the sfc, it’s concentration, I think (?) can be perturbed (how much?) in the PBL and especially in certain environments (under forest canopies?), though that wouldn’t have much effect on the GHE at least in terms of OLR…)…
And then there’s the line-broadening effects. But also the nonlinearity of B_ν(T), increasing toward higher ν.
The bottom-heavy H2O distribution will tend to make the profile even more convex, stretching out the lower-troposphere, and outside the strongest/(er?) parts of it’s absorption spectrum, may make the upper-troposphere and above almost nonexistent in τ-space.
— — —
Re all my links: I was trying some different notation systems there. Fd ≡ F, and if I used θ in L{↑,↓}(θ), it means ϑ (the two symbols look identical in some programs(fonts?) – I think ϑ (“Greek Theta Symbol”) is \vartheta in Latex, while θ (“Greek Small Letter theta”) is \theta . ϕ on my iphone looks like \varphi, which is what I was going for; on my computer it just looks like \phi. There are of course the options \Theta and \Phi, the later of which already has distinct conventional meanings (flux, and in a different context, gravitational potential)
My https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/12/unforced-variations-dec-2025/#comment-842771 is a good place to start (besides the Wikipedia link, of course, and any other sources; I just mean a good place to start within my own work (or do I?)).
Looking at the Modtran graphs https://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/ the quantity graphed is labelled “Intensity” (a word with multiple uses in this subject matter; It also gets used for radiance, though technically I think it’s supposed to mean the product of radiance and an effective area facing the direction of said radiance; and for line strength (eg. [m²/(mol·cm¯¹)] ) – in this case the units are for spectral flux density:
“looking down”: F_ν↑ (upward):
“looking up”: F_ν↓ (downward)
For any profile, other input parameters (eg. CO2 ppm), and height, you can run it, then you can click the “Save This Run to Background” button, and then click the “looking down”/“looking up” button to flip the direction, so you can see both F_ν↑ and F_ν↓, and thus you can see the difference between them, net F_ν↑ = F_ν↑ − F_ν↓. The area between the curves is the spectral integral, net (LW) F↑.
Generally, doublings of CO2 eat into net F↑ from the side. The climate response to forcings (changes) are T changes to adjust net (LW) F↑ to return to balance with solar heating and convection (global time-average, or including storage and horizontal advection terms otherwise).
I would like a version where you can simultaneously show this for multiple heights or conditions, and/or graph net F_ν↑, and/or animate with sliders to continuously adjust input parameters. Also a bigger graph with thinner lines to see more detail (sometimes where the two curves overlap, you can notice different details if you switch which one is the background). And a comparison to π·L_ν values (…
Re E. Schaffer (again) – I took your use of “isothermal” to describe the conditions on the scale of the effective* mean free path of photons, and that is generally a good approximation *when that scale is* from less than ~ 1 m to 10 m, maybe even a bit more (aside from next to a dry barren rocky surface in the sunlight etc.), but as I was pointing out above, there is plenty of LW bandwidth which is less opaque than that. (and then going higher up you have to go farther in m to get the same mass path, etc.)
*My use of “effective mean free path” is meant to be based on “total absorption”, ie. direct absorption – stimulated emission; the actual mean free path based on direct absorption will be shorter.
*I believe that’s what’s being plotted in the graph*. ( https://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/ )
I do highly recommend this!
and feedbacks…
I actually half-way know how to do that, though only with simplied absorption spectra (eg. Jeevanjee & Fueglistaler, 2020 “Simple Spectral Models for Atmospheric Radiative Cooling” https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/77/2/jas-d-18-0347.1.xml ), and it would take me a long, long time. ( https://happycoding.io/tutorials/p5js/ – I learned how to do this (not everything, just the basics) back in ~2024 and started working a similar related concept in the 1st part of 2025, but I took a break from it about a year ago.
The part that (mostly) works is graphs over mass path or optical depth (with τ_{vc} gridlines every unit, fifth of a unit, 1/25, and 5, 25 … depending on the scale, animated so the move with opacity changes (unless the optical depth is selected as the coordinate – in that case, the profile compresses etc.), but I didn’t get around to creating a legend: If I remember right (been a few months since I last tried it) graphing:
↑ blue, ↓ red (and dashed), net↑(F) purple/violet ; F (thick lines) and L (thin lines) @ ϑ = 0 (solid,higher contrast), acos(2/3), 60°, acos(1/4), and L_{2π hemispheric average) (↑ cyan-ish, ↓ orangish, complex dash pattern):, L_{4π} average bright green, and net radiant cooling (cool blue thin line with areas filled in light blue-cyan (+cooling), yellow(−cooling, ie. +heating) both per unit mass and per unit optical depth; F and net cooling values were scaled by ÷π for direct comparison to L values…
– a set of preset profiles including sinusoidal and simple line segments…
Major glitch: you have to restart the program in order to swich to a different profile.
But the dark mode checkbox works! Most of the others don’t do anything; my ambitions exceeded my patience… (link pending)
Calculating the values was the easy part, figuring out how to display it was hard…
patrick o twentyseven,
Chicago Uni’s MODTRAN is perhaps too useful for its output format. But that output does include the actual numbers available with the ‘Show Raw Model Output’ button. And if MODTRAN’s graphed output as provided is a tad small, thick-lined and shows only one run-at-a-time, that ‘Raw Data Output’ can be used in a spreadsheet to overcome such shortcomings. A couple of quick cut-&-pastes into a version I have lurking yields the graphic HERE Posted 14th August 2026, (with the MODTRAN version inlaid for comparison).
…The profiles were each a particular Planck function profile and the calculated values were monochromatic values; I also wanted to graph over log₂k of some component of opacity (where other components might be ‘background’ constant) (animate over height), and maybe graph over both height and log₂k with some color/shading fill (For net radiant cooling) and contours (for net F↑, etc.), and then also graph L over direction, and then show actual heat vision visual fields (upper and lower hemispheres as circles area scaled by cos(ϑ) or solid angle, or as rectangular plots with θ on the vertical axis and height or log₂k on the horizontal axis (animate over the other one), and then the idea I had was you could double click on a spot and it would show a circular cross section through a line of sight (LOS) with absorption cross sections displayed (orthographically projected along LOS) (so you could see that the shade of gray looking up from some place in the stratosphere may be (depending on where and k) a consequence of a mix of brighter cross sections not completely hiding the cold black of Space. I had actually done a series of such absorption cross section displays using Excel spreadsheet back in 2023 for ~ 6 heights in a ~tropical profile for ~12 or 13 µm but I messed up a part and Excel is not really built for that type of thing , and anyway it had no variation in line broadening over height, so I gave up on that for a while, but p5 is a good fit for that sort of thing.
Easier visualized than programmed.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/08/unforced-variations-aug-2026/#comment-850433 Correction:
re MA Rodger – Thanks! I actually knew about the “Show Raw Model Output”, and took the 6 different clear sky results looking down from 100 km (I noticed that sometimes if I just use the 70 km Tropical default without changing anything, some of the raw output is messed up), C&P’d into column A in different spreadsheets, and used some of the text functions to parse it out into columns as I wanted. I thought maybe I could use it as input in my own (yet to be constructed) simplied spectra model sometime (I would just insert cloud layers optionally); but I was confused by some of the column values – … long story.
The two curves in your graph – are they F_ν↑ @ TOA and tropopause?
patrick o twentyseven,
The two graphed curves?
I wasn’t paying that much attention other than making sure the there were noticeable differences between the two traces. (My actual worry was that the old steam-power spreadsheet had stopped working since last I used it and needed a tweak.) However the traces were, as you say, F_ν↑ at with the default setting (70km) & apparently 20km (as the cut-&-pasted Model Output says “H1 = 20.000 KM”).
MAR 4 Aug 2026 at 7:36 AM “while (B) you insist the contribution is about 5x larger with the LR feedback = surface WV latent heat flux = ~80Wm^-2.” The main very-simple reason why the ES WV latent heat effect on lapse rate is overstated by a factor of 3.4 (looks like maybe you have climate scientists having it still more overstated but I’ve not time to study yours) is simply that ES has chosen this PARTICULAR form of energy that all gets converted into “heat” in the troposphere as not having that GHE applied to it so the entire ~80Wm^-2 goes to Outer Space. That’s an arbitrary (almost-certainly intentional) separation of that energy source even though they all get bundled and molecules do not know which came from where so of the 88 w/m**2 WV latent heat (Hartmann text book) 55 w/m**2 return to surface as LWIR and must be removed from lapse rate calculations (also maybe ~7 w/m**2 as sensible heat but I’m highly unsure on the actual quantity of that one).
Barry E Finch,
While my responses to this E. Schaffer character run to some considerable length, the absence of anything serious yet to appear within his arguments (even half-serious) means the actual situation remains quite simple.
Science shows the Lapse Rate feedback is negative (cooling) and about -0.5Wm^-2/ºC. This value is usually wrapped up with the Water Vapour feedback which is positive and larger (WV feedback = +1.8Wm^-2/ºC ؞ WV+LR feedback = +1.3Wm^-2/ºC).
E. Schaffer is arguing for an absolutely massive Lapse Rate feedback insisting the LR feedback is equal to the surface evaporation energy flux** which is generally given at something like 80Wm^-2. For a total 33ºC Greenhouse Effect, that would average (-80 / 33 =) -2.4Wm^-2/ºC, five-times what all the scientific studies are saying and big enough to make the combined WV+LR feedback negative.
His notion that the LR feedback = surface evaporation flux** (or that this would still hold for incremental increases under AGW) is pure fantasy.
(** Of course everybody knows the value of the Lapse Rate feedback is actually equal to the price of frozen peas in the shop down the end of my road, negative because when I buy frozen peas my bank balance drops by £0-50p/kg.)
The “Chung et al 2010s” here & here
ES: neither the dry- nor the moist adiabat are physically dependent on GHGs.
The value of the lapse rate doesn’t, but whether the atmosphere is actually tending toward the lapse rate does depend on GHGs. Without them you get an isothermal atmosphere.
ES: Sure you could say WV is a GHG, but it is only considered as a condensating gas, not a GH-agent.
BPL: Absolutely wrong. Every model of Earth’s greenhouse effect has to include water vapor as a greenhouse agent. Every single one.
E. Schaffer: “WV is only considered as a condensating gas, not a GH-agent.”
BPL: “Absolutely wrong. Every model of Earth’s greenhouse effect has to include water vapor as a greenhouse agent. Every single one.”
Including those to which E. Schaffer ….. has referred here: Schmidt et al. 2010, Table 1: H2O (Vapor) 39.0% to 61.9 % of GH effect – “Each Absorber Being Removed (Minimum Effect) vs. That Absorber Acting Alone (Maximum Effect).
What’s the point of explaining to ES complicated details, when the guy can’t understand even the most obvious things in what he reads?
1. Yes, theoretically likely true. However, that is an extreme assumption where the troposphere was devoid of anything absorbing / emitting radiation. No GHGs, no clouds, no aerosols. Practically their concentration is irrelevant..
2. No, not wrong, but right. I was talking about the calculation of the MALR, and not climate models.
E. Schaffer: “ No, not wrong, but right. I was talking about the calculation of the MALR, and not climate models.”
Then – who cares? We make climatic projection and provide information to the society based on highly advanced, complex climate models looking combing input, and spatial and temporal variability, of MANY DIFFERENT processes affecting climate.
You can’t invalidate them by making cherry-picking a few numbers from the climate models
and putting them in one narrow concept (MALR), using massively simplifying assumptions and rejecting any criticism of them by calling the critic “nihilistic”…
On the Arctic sea ice minimum — the 2026 melt season has been unusual with the persistent warmth in the Kara and Beaufort seas. Will be interesting to see how the final September extent compares to recent years once the numbers stabilize. The evidence-based policy concern is timely given how many decisions are being made without reference to the underlying physics.
(Cont. from https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/unforced-variations-july-2026/#comment-849838 … )
Trying out different wordings:
Hot and cold abs. cross sections (σ_a) will, due to the first glowing brighter than the second, have a net radiant flux from hot to cold (“from point of emission to point of absorption”**), but only to the extent of their size and number, and to the extent that they can see each other.
(** https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/08/unforced-variations-aug-2024/#comment-823976 )
When opacity is increased, you can’t see as far, and so, at any given location (POV), the (spectral) radiant flux densities (F_ν) and (spectral) radiances (L_ν) in various directions depend less on more distant conditions and more on conditions nearby.
I found a new source for climate science information based on this post on Bluesky:
https://bsky.app/profile/arepublic86.bsky.social/post/3ms6bzvba4c27
This resource reminds me a bit of Wood for Trees
https://www.woodfortrees.org/
with the options available for prioritizing the information to make more meaningful graphics.
https://showyourstripes.info/
This particular graphic shows the increase in hot summers over the past 130 years, and my favorite, temporary, hottest year on record, 1998 – in medium dark red.
https://showyourstripes.info/c/northamerica/unitedstatesofamerica/all
My area of SoCal is in the middle of a ten-day streak of triple digit temperatures, the new normal. Stay hydrated.
Tomas: 1 Aug. “I do not think, however, that comparing JCM with “E. Schaffer” is appropriate.
Why not? BOTH are anything-by-GHGs deniers. BOTH build up their ego on their belief that they, despite being lay people, are so brilliant that they discovered something that thousands of professional climatologists failed, or refused, to notice. NEITHER is willing to submit their dearly-held belief to the test of submitting their work to a peer-review paper.
And most importantly – by their fruits you shall know them – by trying to discredit the climate science and diverting the attention of the society from the urgency of the mitigation our GHG emissions, BOTH of them help to delay and diminish this mitigation, and make the AGW worse. Consequently, BOTH bear moral responsibility for their share of the additional deaths and suffering, and species extinctions caused by the delay/weakening our actions to reduce GHG emissions. Plus BOTH are “useful idiots” of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other petro-dictatorships, whose economies, wealth of their oligarchs, ability to wage wars, support terrorism, and repress their own population is DEPENDENT on the world continuing to buying their oil and gas.
So any differences between E. Schaffer and JCM are cosmetic, different tools, but the same goals and the same fruits of their actions, as listed above.
If anything – in his attempts to discredit science and central role of GHG mitigation – JCM went much further than E. Schaffer – dismissing climate modelling as “imaginary process mechanisms [with] rules about how things ought to be [according to their authors]“.
and blaming climate scientists for “up to 40% of planet’s land degraded”:
“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])
So, on the second thought, perhaps you are right that JCM is not as bad as E. Schaffer – he may be worse.
E. Schaffer 1 Aug: “Sure I could explain the solution of said dissent, which I happen to know”
I will not hold my breath. After all, you were incapable to answer a simple yet fundamental question to your claims: namely: “So what?”. See for instance my earlier post:
=====
Piotr to E Schaffer: “So what?
– being a passive feedback, NOT a forcing – it does not drive AGW, nor can we do anything about it. Meaning that it has NO societal value of informing the society on mitigation of AGW.
– nor does it improve our understanding of the climate, since changes in lapse rate are already calculated in climate models which “dynamically resolve or parameterize vertical temperature profiles, convection, and radiative-convective balances”.
Because of that – what difference would it make to, say out of the projected by models 2C of warming – +0.5C or -0.2C was the result of lapse rate feedback?
So far no answer other than clicking your famous ruby red slippers three times while wistfully whispering “ES: Well, it is exactly about improving our knowledge, and decisevely so! ”
===
And until you can answer the “So what?” question, what’s the point in engaging you in technical details of something the societal or intellectual relevance you yourself can’t identify?
I do understand you use a deductive approach, while I am doing induction. You would say some detail is not so important, but the bigger picture is. I would say the bigger picture is the result of all the details.
You are not alone in this, rather it seems everyone is doing so. Everyone is looking at the details as far as they fit the bigger picture. And if one detail contradicts the it, it must be wrong. It will be considered as far it fits, and if not it gets ignored, downplayed, or tampered with. Then of course you will end up with a large quantity of evidence, with poor or zero quality, and a bigger picture that is based on nothing eventually.
The problem however starts way earlier. I should add I also have some background in quality assurance. If there is even one single detail contradicting the bigger picture, that is code red already. There is no such thing as a tolerable or negligible exception. If you ignore it, it is only going to get worse, and inflationary so. Think of the 737MAX story – the rules are there for a reason.
ES, you aren’t even following your own logic. For example, last month, I brought up several “details” about your incorrect assumptions. These included not allowing for changes in the tropopause height or temperature, so that a lower lapse rate would necessarily result in colder surface temperatures. You accused me of being “nihilistic.” Ignoring the “details” that I and others raise ought to be code red for you, by your own professed standards. Instead, I expect that you will not only tolerate own your false assumptions, but work out a way to obfuscate, minimize, or ignore the objections to them.
My “own” logic is the one that scores a 100% on IQ tests. I am fine with that.
You questioned what lapse rate I mean. I clearified it was the tropospheric one. And you argued “so what”, which I referred to as nihilism. You did not bring up a single “detail” that would even suggest anything incorrect.
Yet there is one “detail” I did not respond to, because it misses the point: Yes, as the troposphere warms more to a shrinking lapse rate, it should also hold more WV. This will NOT change the neg. lapse rate feedback, but it is a vital factor in WV feedback as it enhances it.
That is an important detail if you use radiative transfer models to assess WV feedback. If you check modtran it will underestimate WV feedback just because it holds the lapse rate fixed. Modtran would give you 1.2W/m2 (US std) and 1.73W/m2 (trop) of WV feedback with clear skies. Allowing for clouds and stratosphere, these figures drop significantly, like 0.7W/m2 and 1W/m2. That is a long shot from some 1.8W/m2 of global WV feedback, and ~3W/m2 in the tropics, which are central estimates within models. Said enhancement is badly needed to increase WV feedback and get it closer to central estimates. Yet it is not nearly enough. You might get like 0.9 to 1W/m2 globally and ~1.4W/m2 in the tropics.
You might think the effect of the lapse rate reduciton is something that comes on top, a luxury problem, but actually it is already included – and overestimated. Also with it included, WV feedback is far too low.
in Re to “E. Schaffer”, 7 Aug 2026 at 6:27 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/08/unforced-variations-aug-2026/#comment-850303
Sir,
I do not understand what you try to demonstrate by your comparison of some modtran simulation with a “central estimates within models”. I suppose that modtran is also a kind of model, a simple one, isn’t it? Could you clarify?
Furthermore, if in your comment of 28 Jul 2026 at 8:16 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/unforced-variations-july-2026/#comment-850162 ,
the paragraph “Yet in my understanding, the “radiative exchange between surface and atmosphere” should not include the atmospheric window. There the atmosphere can not receive nor emit radiation, so it is not taking part in such an exchange..”
should have perhaps represented your reply to my objection of 23 Jul 2026 at 6:23 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/unforced-variations-july-2026/#comment-849972
that you are not allowed to subtract the energy flow through the “atmospheric window” from the surface radiation, because you would thus incorrectly minimize the net radiation,
it appears that instead replying to clear arguments presented by JCM, you decided to introduce a new concept “radiative exchange between surface and atmosphere”.
I would like to ask why do you think that replacing clearly defined net radiation with your new concept is useful? What new understanding brings your magic “radiative exchange between surface and atmosphere” to climate science?
Best regards
Tomáš
ES: My “own” logic is the one that scores a 100% on IQ tests.
BPL: IQ tests aren’t graded in percent. They are arranged so that a large population gets a mean score of 100 with a standard deviation of 15. Or are you saying your score is 100?
E. Schaffer 7 Aug: My “own” logic is the one that scores a 100% on IQ tests.
Then perhaps it’s time to stop taking the IQ tests for the 5-th graders? ;-)
Or the tests Trump bragged about acing (telling an elephant from a tiger and a giraffe!) ?
John has pointed to the contradiction between what you declare about yourself in one post (an inductive mind building a big picture from careful consideration of minute details) and what you do in another post – i.e. dismissing the details of your major simplification, that if accounted for – countering your “big picture ” findings, and calling such considering of the real world “details” as ….”nihilism”, I quote:
===============
– ES: Holding other things constant, this smaller lapse rate reduces the GHE and provides a cooler surface
– JP So what? Other things aren’t constant. You get more water vapor into the lower atmosphere by warming the surface, not cooling it.
-ES “sure, but nihilism is not going to provide insights”
=================
So not only you are incapable to see the contradiction between what you say and what you do, your are still unable to see it even after John has pointed it to you.
This tells us more about your intelligence than your assurances how very intelligent you are.
By their fruits, not by their declarations about themselves, you shall know them.
@Tomas
Modtran is a radiative transfer model, like hitran, and basically gives the same output, though less precise. Although they are climate related models, they are no way “climate models” in the common sense. They try to give the best possible emulation of radiative transfer. And I am just pointing out, these models give a WV feedback only half the magnitude assumed as central estimate.
Try for yourself..
https://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/
JCMs definition of “Rlw” was a bit ambiguous. But if it meant to be the radiative exchange between surface and atmosphere, it should not include radiation that goes from the surface through the atmospheric window right into space, because there is no exchange with the atmosphere.
However, it smells like the old “back radiation = GHE” fallacy anyhow.
in Re to “E. Schaffer”, 8 Aug 2026 at 1:19 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/08/unforced-variations-aug-2026/#comment-850329
Sir,
You have not responded to my question: “What you try to demonstrate by your comparison of some modtran simulation with a “central estimates within models”?
In other words: You admit that modtran is a radiative transfer model, much simpler than complex climate models. Considering this difference, why you wonder that “these models give a WV feedback only half the magnitude assumed as central estimate” (estimated by modtran, I assume)?
Furthermore, I am pretty sure that JCM has not discussed “radiative exchange between surface and atmosphere”, because it seems to be a pretty new concept introduced by you. You failed to respond to two simple questions that I asked in this respect:
Why do you think that replacing clearly defined net radiation with your new concept is useful? What new understanding brings your magic “radiative exchange between surface and atmosphere” to climate science?
Best regards
Tomáš
ES: Modtran is a radiative transfer model, like hitran
BPL: HITRAN is a database, not a model.
re: Schaffer:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/08/unforced-variations-aug-2026/#comment-850329
The surface energy balance between solar radiative input, turbulent heat transfer, and LW radiative transfer is not ambiguous. Rsw = J + Rlw.
or, equivalently, surface net radiation equals the turbulent flux J (latent + sensible heat). Temporary imbalances can be closed by adding a storage term.
The solar radiative heating exceeds the LW radiative cooling of surface. The balance is closed by fluxes of latent and sensible heat and storages changes. You can imagine integer values of 3K/day solar radiative heating equivalent against -2K/day turbulent transfer and -1K/day LW transfer.
In other contexts I am happy to discuss the partitioning, including the sensible and radiative heat transfer, the dependence of radiative transmission on optical depth, the governing relations of latent flux through gradients of saturation vapor pressure, and the analytical constraints that link temperature profiles to observable heat flux.
As far as atmosphere goes, adding a post hoc adjustment to MODTRAN is regressive. Hartmann provides a clear discussion of how a relaxed lapse rate increases the water-vapor path (VPP) above a given level relative to a steeper lapse rate. The associated atmospheric adjustment places the surface deeper below the effective level from which the planet emits to space, as illustrated well in Figure 1C: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/35/19/JCLI-D-21-0861.1.xml
In other words, at the same altitude and temperature, the local radiative cooling rate is smaller under a 4 K/km lapse rate than under a 7 K km/km lapse rate because the vapor path above that level is greater. In planetary energy balance, warming and the adjusted atmospheric profile are coupled equilibrium outcomes: the warmer conditions help sustain the altered profile, while the altered profile changes the relationship between the surface and the mean level from which radiation is transmitted to space. They go hand in hand. It is physically inconsistent to delete warming while sustaining the altered profile.
@Tomas
I am not sure I would out it that way. Radiative transfer models (one may also call them data bases, if that feels better), have their scope. With that, they should be pretty accurate. CO2 forcing is very much consistent with these data. I would wonder why WV would not be. In fact there are plenty of publications simply quoting these models..
On the other side, I tend to believe climate models do not even include such radiative transfer calculations. They just use parameters determined elsewhere..
Tomas:
I am pretty sure that JCM has not discussed “radiative exchange between surface and atmosphere”
JCM:
„and net longwave radiative exchange between surface adn atmosphere, Rlw“
in Re to John Pollack, 4 Aug 2026 at 10:15 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/08/unforced-variations-aug-2026/#comment-850286
Hello John,
I would like to ask if I understood correctly that you spoke about environmental lapse rate?
And yet another question came to my mind. If changes in latent heat flux and/or water vapour content in the air column change both the surface temperature as well as entire troposphere temperature profile and tropopause height, is it correct to assume that the tropopause height exhibits some temporal fluctuations? I would expect that e.g. above hurricanes with their intensive latent heat flux, tropopause height might exhibit a “local extreme”?
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomáš,
Yes, I was speaking of environmental lapse rate. The tropopause height exhibits large temporal fluctuations outside the tropics, and (usually) smaller changes within the tropics. The overall height in the tropics is set by thunderstorms, which release heat mostly in the lower levels of the troposphere, but create strong updrafts that push up the height of the tropopause. As you note, the most extreme case is above a tropical cyclone.
Just looking at the balloon soundings over the U.S. and southern Canada this evening, I see tropopause heights of 13 to 13.6 km in parts of the southern U.S. At Tampa in southern Florida, the sounding contains full tropical moisture, and is nearly saturated from the surface to the 13.3 km tropopause, where the temperature is -68C. In the desert Southwest, the soundings are close to dry adiabatic up to 600 mb, and not as steep higher up. Tropopause temperatures are around -65C. Cloud top temperatures in hurricanes can be colder than -80C. On the other hand, there is a cool cyclonic mid tropospheric circulation over central Canada. One sounding that samples this cool cyclone is dry adiabatic up to around 800 mb, weaker than moist adiabatic above that, and the tropopause is 8.8 km, where the temperature is around -40C.
ES, moist convection allows a decreased lapse rate near the surface, but results in a deepening of the troposphere, so that temperatures at the tropopause are actually colder over the tropics than at higher latitudes. That is why not considering the height of the tropopause is a “detail” that you shouldn’t ignore.
in Re to John Pollack, 7 Aug 2026 at 9:46 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/08/unforced-variations-aug-2026/#comment-850309
Hello John,
Many thanks for your instructive response!
Honestly, I must say that so far, I imagined the atmospheric layers as something static, just like the static diagrams / illustrations thereof in textbooks. Actually, the entire troposhere as well as the layers above are very dynamic, variable, irregularly pulsating entities.
Are you aware if this aspect is already being reflected in modern educational materials (videos, variable graphics / computer animations …)?
Greetings
Tomáš
ES: if not it gets ignored, downplayed, or tampered with.
BPL: It’s a CONSPIRACY!
Piotr: “And until you can answer the “So what?” question, what’s the point in engaging you in technical details of something the societal or intellectual relevance you yourself can’t identify?”
E Schaffer: “ I would say the bigger picture is the result of all the details. ”
You still understand nothing. If you can’t answer the most fundamental question to your “big picture” namely: “So what?” – if you can’t answer this most fundamental question to your supposed “big picture” what’s the point of discussing the details of that supposed “big picture”?
And here again are these fundamental questions that you can’t dismiss with your blabbering how your evading an honest answer to these question is your presumably admirable “inductive reasoning”.
=====
Piotr to E Schaffer: “So what?
– being a passive feedback, NOT a forcing – it does not drive AGW, nor can we do anything about it.
Meaning that it has NO societal value of informing the society on mitigation of AGW.
– nor does it improve our understanding of the climate, since changes in lapse rate are already calculated in climate models which “dynamically resolve or parameterize vertical temperature profiles, convection, and radiative-convective balances”. Because of that – what difference would it make to, say out of the projected by models 2C of warming – +0.5C or -0.2C was the result of lapse rate feedback?
So far no answer other than clicking your famous ruby red slippers three times while wistfully whispering “ESchaffer: Well, it is exactly about improving our knowledge, and decisevely so! ”
===
Particularly that you based your attack on climate science on your staggering ignorance on how their models work (E. Schaffer: “W Vis only considered as a condensating gas, not a GH-agent”)
See your post above.
UAH have posted July’s TLT numbers with a global anomaly of +0.48ºC, a tad up on the June anomaly (+0.46ºC). May2026 remains the highest anomaly of the year-to-date, Jan-to-May running +0.35ºC, +0.39ºC, +0.38ºC, +0.39ºC,ºC,+0.53ºC.
The warming June→July was all NH (+0.54ºC → +0.68ºC) with cooling in the SH (+0.38ºC → +0.27ºC).
… … … UAH July anomalies
… … … … Global … … NH … … …SH
2023 … +0.56ºC … +0.58ºC … +0.53ºC
2024 … +0.73ºC … +0.85ºC … +0.61ºC
2025 … +0.36ºC … +0.49ºC … +0.23ºC
2026 … +0.48ºC … +0.68ºC … +0.27ºC
The ranking of warmest Global TLT Julys in UAH puts 2026 +0.48ºC strongly in 3rd place, ahead of 4th 1998 +0.38ºC, 5th 2025 +0.36ºC, 6th 2022 +0.32ºC, 7th 2020 +0.30ºC, 8th 2016 +0.26ºC,
…
And I should also admit a “wrong glasses” moment with the July ERA5 SAT numbers.
I reported a July global anomaly of +0.70ºC which was actually +0.67ºC making July 2026 (shock-horror) slightly below both July 2023 (+0.72ºC) and July 2024 (+0.68ºC) but with all three still well above 4th-place 2025 +0.45ºC, 5th-place 2019 +0.40ºC, et al.
For those interested in the on-going temperatures of 2026 & the potential for 2026 becoming hottest-year-on-record (which is looking less than likely with ERA5 SAT), I have added a graphic of year-on-year daily & 30-day average ERA5 SAT comparing 2023, 2024 & 2026 to the collected graphics at The Banana!!! Watch.
Plotting temperature against CO₂ rather than against time has a property I haven’t seen exploited: it puts the deep-time reconstructions, the observed record, the CMIP6 SSPs and the CMIP7 ScenarioMIP pathways on one set of axes. Normally you have to look at those in four different places, and you can’t see how they relate to each other while they’re apart.
Together, a few things become visible. Where the modern excursion sits relative to the relationship the two variables held for the last 66 million years. How far a projection is from that relationship, and in which direction. And how the two scenario generations line up — Medium and SSP2-4.5 are nearly indistinguishable through the end of this century, then diverge on mitigation timing rather than on ambition.
That last one may be the most immediately useful, since it’s a concrete answer to the suggestion that the new scenario set represents a change in expectations rather than a normal update.
My latest effort at combining and comparing these records and projections can be found here, https://justdean.substack.com/p/climate-sensitivity-the-most-contestable
I’d welcome feedback and being told if it is less useful or novel than it looks.
Dean Rovang, proposing: “ Plotting temperature against CO₂ rather than against time – a few things become visible. Where the modern excursion sits relative to the relationship the two variables held for the last 66 million years. How far a projection is from that relationship, and in which direction”
A few points:
1. your approach removes the very variable that may explain this “modern excursion” – given the thermal inertia of system the very recent in geological terms spike in Co2 didn’t have enough time to have the full effect on temperature.
2. sensitivity of T to changes in Co2 would be different in periods when your have ice in polar regions and when you don’t (different room for ice/snow albedo amplification of the CO2 effect)
3. in the last 66 mln the concentrations and the role of non-CO2 GHGs may have been different – which is ignored if we plot T vs CO2 only.
4. when plotting over large range of Co2 – one should plot T against logCO2 rather than CO2
And last but not least …. it has already been done:
– in short time scale – since preindustrial see for instance visualisation: <a href= "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXHOc2rmSPM", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXHOc2rmSPM
– over geological time-scale – I see Judd et al. 2024 as most reliable – showing on the same graph of BOTH T and Co2 against time, and T vs Co2 graph, showing a nice correlation in Paleozoic and Cenozoic, and discussing potential reasons for the lack of correlation in Mesozoic (possibly my points 2-4 and some others ) – see graph 4b from Judd et al. 2024 the end of : <a href=" https://skepticalscience.com/new-favorite-graph-opposite.html", https://skepticalscience.com/new-favorite-graph-opposite.html
I have hesitated to reply because I was hoping that others might offer their opinion.
Sometimes it is hard to convey information via comment sections, and I would like to try and introduce and explain my work in more detail from the standpoint of originality. Yes, I am aware of the plots by Berkeley Earth, and I am also aware of the caveats they place on their plots with regard to ignoring other GHGs and forcings.
1. I am not of aware anyone else that has added regressions of three datasets of ice age records as a comparison to the Judd data and then used that data to construct an equilibrium band of the last 66 million years. https://justdean.substack.com/p/checking-my-own-work
2. I am not aware of anyone else that has plotted the modern data alongside that band illustrating how it departs form the equilibrium band at the start of the industrial era. https://justdean.substack.com/p/checking-my-own-work
3. I am not aware of anyone else that has combined those along with ScenarioMIP projections from Van Vuuren and a physics-based model to construct what I refer to as “The Anthropocene Loop.” As a reference of I also data for the PETM on the same plot. https://justdean.substack.com/p/the-anthropocene-loop
4. Finally, I used the recent work by Rockstrom et al. to help people visualize the effect of different values of ECS on those same axes and then compared both to the Medium Scenario. https://justdean.substack.com/p/climate-sensitivity-the-most-contestable
As for the using linear plots vs log plots, I find that linear plots work best communication with the broader on Substack.
The essay and link for Item #2 above should be https://justdean.substack.com/p/the-ground-they-wouldnt-fight-on .
Dean Rovang:
“1. I am not of aware anyone else that has added ….
2. I am not aware of anyone else that has plotted …
3. I am not aware of anyone else that has combined …”
When I have an idea that I am not aware somebody else had before: then if I can’t find a problem with my idea, I check that nobody else had a similar idea. Your idea -“Plotting temperature against CO₂ rather than against time” – is not particularly “novel” – has been done many times in the past, see for instance Judd et al. 2024, who not only did it before you – but they did it much better – their graphs are over much longer time scale, they compensated for the gaps in the data and the need to use proxy data – by running models alongside the proxy data.
So your “novelty” seems to be:
– running … it over shorter time scale,
– comparing apples and oranges – the sensitivity of GMST to CO2 during the periods of glaciations with the sensitivity before the northern hemisphere glaciation or absence of glaciation at all (hence the ice-albedo completely different between these periods)
– using a CO2 instead of log CO2 for the X- axis, with the former failing to reflect the fact that the warming effect of CO2 is much closer to the logarithmic than to the linear.
– comparing non-equilibrium relationship with the equilibrium one, an approach that ignores the time dimension – unlike Judd et al. who in addition to the GMST vs logCo2, have ALSO graphs in which both GMST and Log Co2 are plotted on the same graph against time – thus retaining the time-dimension information – making the interpretation of the results more informed. These three variables are also plotted on the same graph against the extent of ice – thus providing the information on the differences in ice-albedo feedback in different periods, the differences your approach ignores.
To sum up, you are inventing a wooden square wheel, when others already drive on their circular wheel with inflated tires.
And if you are unaware of anybody else doing what you do – shouldn’t you ask yourself a question- why? WHY nobody has published on that? Surely, I am not so much more brilliant than the experts on the cutti9ng edge of science, so Occam’s razor suggest that others have come by this idea before me, but hadn’t pursued it , because it is a dead-end or doesn’t offer any particularly valuable new insights. E.g:
D. Rovang: 1. I am not of aware anyone else that has added regressions of three datasets of ice age records as a comparison to the Judd data and then used that data to construct an equilibrium band of the last 66 million years.
And …. what useful insight you got, other than the trivial observation that when there is a lot of ice (last ~ 3 mln yrs) and there is a strong amplification of the CO2 signal by the ice-albedo feedback during “ice age”, and when there is much less or no ice at all (3-66 mln ago), then the ice-albedo amplification the of the CO2 signal is, surprise, surprise – much weaker or non-existent?
D. Rovang: 2.the modern data alongside that band illustrating how it departs form the equilibrium band at the start of the industrial era.
that’s comparing apples and melons – Given the climate inertia – we already know that the non-equilibrium Delta GMST/Delta CO2 is much smaller than Delta GMST/Delta CO2 during the preindustrial period where the system had had enough time to achieve equilibrium after the last glaciation.
D. Rovang: 3. I am not aware of anyone else that has combined those along with ScenarioMIP projections from Van Vuuren and a physics-based model
So what “novel” and _useful_ insights have you gained from that?
To Tomas re: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/unforced-variations-july-2026/#comment-850229
thanks
To the thread more generally: I can’t resist discussion of water cycling so I will drop some more thoughts here.
As climate warms and tropospheric temperatures move to lower pressures, the cooling rate (K day−1) increases. ok.
Atmosphere is in approximate equilibrium where the radiative cooling is balanced by the convergence of the upward flux of energy by atmospheric motions.
energy.
Allow for some warming to happen:
warmer parcels holding more water vapor, per unit mass.
Each kilogram of ascending air able to condense more water vapor, per unit distance.
Masses of air rising some distance containing an increasing fraction of water vapor. A local, per-unit mass effect. Local parcel scale thermodynamics. Depending on temperatures and slope of saturation vapor pressure curve. ok
Contrast that with what moist adiabatic lapse rates do not depend on (global scale energetics):
Total atmospheric mass flux
Total condensation
How much upward flux of energy is occurring for the globe.
In steady state, the integral of condensation (precipitation) is equal to the evaporation, called the latent flux.
These are constrained by energy budgets, not local temperatures. We are interested in the convergence of upward flux by atmospheric motions to close the balance of radiative cooling of atmosphere.
We can constrain the rate of radiative cooling of atmosphere and latent flux in steady-state using surface budgets.
Surface net radiation = flux of sensible and latent heat.
Increasing temperature 1K may be associated with a change of LW down – LW up, say perhaps +1 W/m2, assuming both terms increase and the net is +1.
A representative increase of 1 W/m2 per K in available surface energy.
so we allow +1 = H + LE, and for simplicity partition 10-20% to sensible heat flux and 80-90% latent heat flux at current temperatures (by the slope of saturation vapor pressure curve and psychrometric constant, called equilibrium partitioning.)
That is up to 0.9 W/m2 increasing latent flux per K, or say approximately 1% increasing moisture cycling per K.
It may be less if atmospheric solar absorption should increase and take away from surface budgets, and it may be more if increasing surface solar absorption is associated with global warming.
So we have 1% increasing energy throughput on atmospheric motions per K against ascending parcels carrying up to 7% more moisture per unit mass…
With warming, each kg of ascending air is capable of condensing substantially more water over a given vertical distance than would be implied by the small increase in globally integrated latent heat flux
The rates are reconciled in part by a weakening of the convective mass flux (kg per m2 per s). Each kg of ascending air condensese more water and releases more latent heat, which is why moist lapse rates become shallower. Through the energy budgets we can see the constraint: fewer kilograms of moist air are ascending per unit time, because the column-integrated global latent flux does not rise at the same rate.
It can also be visualized as an increasing depth of convection, and increasing water vapor duration. Or as a decreasing frequency along with a possibility of increasing intensity.
The relaxation of moist adiabats with warming is a local thermodynamic property of the air that rises; and the heat flux is an energetic integral over how much air rises.
The latent heat flux is about how many kilograms of air are rising per unit time and how much latent heat each kilogram releases. An integral over the entire global circulation.
The moist adiabatic lapse rate is a local thermodynamic property: it depends only on how much latent heat a single saturated parcel releases as it rises through a given vertical distance.
More on the specifics of radiation in this context is available in The Vertical Profile of Radiative Cooling and Lapse Rate in a Warming Climate from Hartmann
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/35/19/JCLI-D-21-0861.1.xml
For the first time, this new website—together with the ten linked scientific papers—sets out a physically rigorous explanation for climate behaviour across the Solar System. The same framework correctly accounts for observed temperatures at Earth’s surface, Venus’s surface, and the full range of tropospheric, surface and even sub‑surface temperatures on planets and moons. Every step is based strictly on long‑established physics, without ad‑hoc assumptions, and the results are internally consistent and reproducible.
The full explanation is available here: https://climate-change-theory.info
Something that has been puzzling me – I am hoping someone can shed light on the apparent contradiction.
How is growth in biomass, ‘greening’ and vegetation currently taking in more CO2 than it releases reconciled with prior deforestation?
I admit it seems to me that ‘greening’ would not have recovered all the carbon stores lost to prior deforestation. I’ve seen an estimate of around 1 billion ha of forests lost since 1900 and deforestation and land use changes currently being a significant source of emissions. Does the claim that biomass is growing depend on when the baseline is drawn? Or is it indicative of other changes, e.g. decreased snow and ice cover and warming Arctic?
I know air conditioning is controversial, but living in SE England and having to endure what is the sixth heatwave of the summer coming up next week and my house venting strategy only working up to a point. I wondered if the following could mitigate a good portion of the carbon footprint:
1. Get battery storage for my solar PV.
2. Install air conditioning.
3. Use air conditioning only in the evening to cool the house before sleeping and only when using a fan to blow hot air out of the house isn’t working (e.g. when it is still 26C at midnight).
4. As I live in a village, the issue of contributing to urban heating is far less significant.
My thinking is that I am primarily powering the air conditioning using energy harnessed from the natural phenomena that is causing me to want to use it.
The underlying issue is that UK houses are not designed for a Mediterranean climate which is what we have effectively had this summer. After two-three consecutive days of 27+C, the building becomes a giant storage heater, releasing some of that stored heat overnight and making the bedrooms uncomfortably hot for sleeping, only to be topped up again with the next 30+C day. There is a reason why buildings in the Mediterranean have thick walls, stone floors, shutters and are painted white.
I’ve been experimenting with the “cooling the house in the evening” concept and it really doesn’t work. (This is for a section of the house which is actually better insulated.)
What does work (in the older, less insulated section) is having a mini-split… the smallest one available… for each bedroom. They are extremely quiet, so you can have them on at night, and they are very efficient.
Think about the physics. It makes far more sense to cool enough air to make your body comfortable than to deal with the total thermal energy that has been absorbed by the structure.
And, of course, if the AMOC goes bad, and you end up going from hot summers to cold winters, you will be prepared.
I am unconvinced of the apocalyptic scenes sometimes pictured as to what would happen if the AMOC shut down. The Gulf stream would still be at least somewhat operational as that is largely wind driven, the prevailing winds across Europe will still come off the ocean, I would expect average winter conditions in the UK to be comparable to the colder winters of the 1960’s to the 1980’s, not a mini ice age. I doubt it would even get cold enough to start firn and eventual glacier formation on the highest Scottish mountains.
AL: I would expect average winter conditions in the UK to be comparable to the colder winters of the 1960’s to the 1980’s, not a mini ice age. I doubt it would even get cold enough to start firn and eventual glacier formation on the highest Scottish mountains.
BPL: Based on what?
I’m sure we can best go with the computer simulation Modeling for British Isles, Western Europe & Scandinavia if the AMOC stops.
Adam, have you considered a whole-house exhaust fan that vents out through the attic? It would remove the hot air from the attic that helps keep the upstairs very warm at night, and draw in cooler air through the windows. These can be fairly effective in climates where hot weather is uncommon and sporadic, and dew points generally remain well below 20C even in hot weather.
Both the energy usage and the cost should be lower than AC.
Adam: “I know air conditioning is controversial, but living in SE England and having to endure what is the sixth heatwave of the summer coming up next week”
John: “Both the energy usage and the cost [of Installing a fan system] should be lower than AC”
Adam, I would suggest you look at the (air) heat pumps. If there is enough heating to be done in winter – then the heat pumps provide BOTH efficient heating in winter (using much less electricity than traditional electrical heating), and with a flip of a switch – becomes air-cooling system in summer (plus it allows to control humidity in the house and does filter some dust out of the indoor air).
The financial cost-benefit of the switch would depend on the prices of electricity and the local climate – in the very cold temps the savings from a heat pump get smaller, although if to believe a 2023 study “Coming in from the cold: Heat pump efficiency at low temperatures”
“even well below 0°C, heat pump efficiency is still significantly higher than fossil fuel and electric resistive heating systems”. (If they didn’t work in very cold temps 60% of households in Norway would not have heat pumps …)
.
Given where you live, Adam, I don’t think this will be an issue, even if AMOC shuts down hard it could be more of an issue in Norway than in SE England …. ).
If one is on central heating, the switch to heat pumps heating may not be a decision an individual person can make, but since you live in a village – I don’t think this applies to you either.
So if you have enough winter heating to be done and you experience heatwaves in summer – a heat-pump may be the best solution – environmental (particularly in regions with a higher penetration of renewables in the electricity generation) and economic – particularly when there are government programs helping you with the switch: given the death toll of the heat waves in Europe this summer that could have been reduced with a wider penetration of heat pumps – there maybe a stronger push for these – not only to reduce GHG emissions, but also as the public health safety issue).
If the capital costs of installing heat-pump (and perhaps upgrading the electrical system) are prohibitive and you could wait – wait for the time when you have to update/fix/ overhaul your existing heating/cooling system anyway.
It was my case – I had to change the furnace oil tank, and in a few years , probably the oil furnace – so instead I just replaced both with the mini-split heat pumps, and good timing – there was government funding that covered significant part of the costs available (part of the GHG emission reduction program in my province).
And on top of that, I got a nice reduction on my home insurance premium (no longer increased fire hazard from fossil fuel heating).
And the unanticipated bonus this year – smugly smiling seeing the prices of the furnace oil rising high due to Trump’s war on Iran.
A heat pump is worth considering if/when the gas central heating fails to the point of needing replacing, if I am still living in the same house by then. A heat pump is the same thing as an air conditioner with the additional ability to move heat into the building as well as out of it.
Adam Lea: “A heat pump is the same thing as an air conditioner with the additional ability to move heat into the building as well as out of it. ”
– and thanks to that – instead of “I know air conditioning is controversial” – there is not much controversy about heat pumps – it provides comfort /safety during heat waves AND is typically most cost effective and least emitting form of heating in winter. And works well even in cold climates reducing somewhat its thermal efficiency (60% of households in Norway has them).
Our ductless mini-split heat pump works great–though it is getting a bit long in the tooth, I’m afraid. It has a resistive heating mode for when temps get really low, but I don’t know if it’s ever been called into play here in SC or not.
No I haven’t considered that. At the moment, I open the bathroom and bedroom windows which are on opposite sides of the house, open internal doors, position the fan to blow air out of the bathroom window on its highest speed, this draws cooler air in through the bedroom window and is effective at cooling the bedroom to comfortable levels, but not when the temperature after sunset is still in the mid 20’s like it was in one of the previous heatwaves. Recent nights have been cooler and the venting has worked reasonably well, it even made the bedroom a touch chilly one night.
Dave Borlace at Just Have A Think did us a favor by watching a recent Steve Koonin performance in front of the reactionary “Alliance for Responsible Citizenship”. Koonin continues, of course, promoting the misrepresented view his Hoover Institution and fossil-fuel ‘think tank’ relationships want and expect.
How Climate Data Is Manipulated to Mislead You.
Just Have A Think, August 9, 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu1Qke38AdI
It’s always cherry-picking season for Koonin. Glad to have Dave Borlace, the RealClimate contributing scientists and others working to counteract the tide of manure.
Have you ever seen a credible evidence based analysis of future energy consumption [real world not ipcc modelled assumptions] that showed total oil gas and oil consumption was less in 2050 that it is in 2025?
I’d like to see that to evaluate how credible n realistic n fundamentally sound it is.
Robert Shule’s Climate Change Substack
Hydro’, Bio’-fuel, and other energy sources not otherwise specified are not expected to change dramatically in the near future.
Oil, Gas, and Coal projection for 2050 was made by subtracting the sum of the other energy source’s energy outputs from the total energy projected for 2050; in other words oil, gas, and coal makes up the remainder for what may be required. By this calculation hydro-carbon fuel industry grows 29% by 2050, at a rate of about 1% per annum. The industry will still provide over 70% of the global energy. This is consistent with the growth the hydro-carbon industry has been realizing over the past fifteen years.1 Review of oil and gas company literature suggests they have no intentions of reining in their growth for the future.7 It is expected here that global oil, gas, and coal production and consumption will continue to increase at present rates for the foreseeable future should no extraneous interventions be made on oil, gas, and coal industry activity. It should be expected that global carbon dioxide emissions will also continue to increase respectively.
Page 3 of 4
https://helmetdestroyer570.substack.com/p/world-energy-projection
any thoughts? given for decades here and the ipcc have repeated the chant “must reduce ghg emissions from fossil fuels the above does not suggest this will ever happen as growth of total fossil fuels consumption may well continue growing.
all 1971 club of rome scientists still alive engaged in the limits to growth papers agree the above trajectory is the path humanity is still on. Seems like cmip7 and ar7 will again amount to nothing of value unable to change a thing.
i’m reminded the definition of insanity is …..
ps once upon a time this blog used to attract thinkers. and high number of views. i believe this reflects the above take aways being realized by more and more people who used to care and believe change was possible and believed climate scientists will be the difference. they no longer do. so many / most no longer listen to them
many others now represent reality more accurately — Robert for one Sarah is another https://sarahwilson.substack.com/ — and of course Jim keeps trying to break thru the media/science cabal’s “cone of silence” https://jimehansen.substack.com/p/beware-media-hype-its-not-the-el
My comment captures a deep frustration that many are feeling today when engaging with established climate science platforms. I’m pointing out a perceived tribalistic culture where debate is stifled, and have raised a critical, uncomfortable question no one wants to deal with rationally: if fossil fuel consumption projections show growth, what is the path to reducing emissions really worth?
The other is engaging respectfully with Nabil Swedan and his new ENSO paper an open mind, when no one else would even acknowledge them.
These concerns about the dynamics on climate blogs are universal perceptions now—they are supported by research. Academic studies on climate blogs, including those with strict moderation like Real Climate, have found that comment sections often function as “insular” communities.
They are dominated by a small group of like-minded individuals who focus on “attacking opponents rather than developing political policies around issues,” with commenters “focus[ing] on who was making the argument and how rather than the substance of the issue being debated”. This “contractive nature” means that engaging with opposing views is rare, reinforcing a dynamic where “different views were not heard”. This aligns with the overwhelming experience of others seeing reasonable questions met with attacks and assumptions of guilt. Complicity or worse.
My critical underlying point about the stark reality of fossil fuel projections is also echoed elsewhere. The discourse is shifting away from the singular focus on the (now clearly unachievable) 1.5°C target for 2050 and towards the concept of “systemic collapse” as a more realistic framework for our current trajectory. This is not just a fringe viewpoint.
Author and activist Sarah Wilson, whom I reference, has articulated this perspective clearly. She states that “the energy transition and the net zero ambition simply does not stack up” and that “we can’t do it in time, not without doing further damage to the planet”. She argues for moving beyond “hopium” and finding ways to live meaningfully in a world facing systemic failure.
Academics like Dr. Clive Hamilton have also concluded that the steep emissions reductions needed to limit warming to two degrees “are simply unachievable given continuing disputes… backsliding… and the enduring power of the fossil fuel corporations”. He argues for a “rebalancing of our priorities” towards adaptation.
Even prominent climate scientist David Karoly has acknowledged that “1.5 is gone” and that the Great Barrier Reef is “doomed,” though he argues it is “never too late” to reduce emissions.
The voices people are turning to—such as Robert Shule, Sarah Wilson, and Jim Hansen—are part of a growing broader movement that is beginning to “metabolize” this new reality. They represent a shift away from a debate about the existence of climate change and even the efficacy of the IPCC process, towards a conversation about how to live through the consequences that now seem unavoidable.
The decisions of masses of pro-climate pro-science environmental action people, including the scientists and academics, to disengage from platforms like Real Climate is a recognition that these spaces may no longer be conducive to the type of open, honest discussion that the gravity of the situation now demands.
The discourse is moving on, and millions are finding their “tribe” is elsewhere.
References –
Stop Chasing the Matrix: How to Live Fully in a Collapsing World (w/ Sarah Wilson)
From Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff
https://www.podscan.fm/podcasts/team-human-with-douglas-rushkoff/episodes/stop-chasing-the-matrix-how-to-live-fully-in-a-collapsing-world-w-sarah-wilson-1
Chanting to the choir: the dialogical failure of antithetical climate change blogs
Jennifer Metcalfe https://jcom.sissa.it/issue/77/info/
Overview of blogs and comments studied
SS has a tighter moderator’s policy3 than JN and states that all comments must be
on topic, that there is to be no politics, sloganeering, ad hominem attacks or cyber
stalking. JN’s ‘Rules & Legal’ section,4 has a much freer policy, and says they
welcome constructive comments and questions and that the site relies on
commenters “to use logic and reason”. The site also says: “If you are good-natured,
funny or entertaining as well, you’ll get away with breaking all the rules above”.
Comments are most likely to be deleted if they are “unnecessarily repetitive, rude,
lazy or mindless, about administration/moderation, or too boring”. The different
moderation policies of both blogs create an interesting point of contrast, which this
study takes into account.
Discussion and conclusions
In this study, I set out to examine the comments on two climate change blogs to
determine how the conversations generated by these comments reflect the potential
of blogs for two-way deliberative dialogue. The analysis of comments indicated
that most commenters engaging with both blogs wanted to disseminate
information and knowledge or express an attitude, which is more reminiscent of
one-way communication. Discourse analysis also showed that most comments
were contractive in nature with commenters proclaiming or disclaiming and not
listening to the views of others.
The blogs examined appeared to create and maintain their own publics as a small
number of dominant commenters sought and reinforced information congruent
with their own views. This is a similar finding to an analysis by Collins and Nerlich
[2015] of commenters to online Guardian articles on climate change. With each blog
having a core group of commenters tending to dominate the dialogue, there is even
less likelihood of significant deliberation amongst commenters. This is not
surprising given science bloggers often aim to create publics with similar political
and ideological points of view [Luzón, 2013].
Commenters for both blogs did not engage deliberatively with those of opposing
views. They were unwilling to explore alternatives or new ways of thinking about
climate science knowledge. Rather, commenters in any debates on both blogs
sought to advance their own rhetorical and ideological objectives. When an
outsider joined the conversation, there was a tendency for commenters to focus on
who was making the argument and how rather than the substance of the issue
being debated.
However, the strong partisan flavour of JN’s blog and her freer
moderation policy means the conversations often degenerated into attacking
people and institutions rather than being reasoned discussions about the science.
Both blogs failed to meet the five perceived benefits for dialogical engagement in
science described at the beginning of this paper. Different views were not heard or
valued by commenters on each blog. The voices of a mix of publics did not appear
to be heard in each blogsite, as each developed their own insular publics. Those
engaging in each blogsite narrowed their discussion rather than broadening their
perspectives.
https://jcom.sissa.it/issue/77/info/
KM: if fossil fuel consumption projections show growth, what is the path to reducing emissions really worth?
MS: It’s worth doing.
KM: They represent a shift away from a debate about the existence of climate change and even the efficacy of the IPCC process, towards a conversation about how to live through the consequences that now seem unavoidable.
MS: If you mean they represent you (plural) shifting away from a debate about the existence of climate change, etc,, then, yes, that IS happening. You (plural) ARE finally accepting what climate science has been showing all along, that: 1. Global warming is real; 2 Global warming is caused by burning fossil fuels and land use practices, and 3. Global warming will be/is bad for the human race.
KM: …towards a conversation about how to live through the consequences that now seem unavoidable.
MS: But we always knew “the consequences that now seem unavoidable.” to you (plural) are unavoidable. Those consequences now seem unavoidable to you (plural) because we have been trying to tell you they are unavoidable for at least 30 years.
But now I am confused about what you really mean when you refer to liviung through the consequences. Are you really saying we should stop ICE with EVs? Should we stop building wind turbines and solar panels? Should we stop developing new battery technologies, new nuclear power generation technologies… keep burning more fossil fuels and just learn to live with the consequences?
What exactly is your plan (that were not listening to) for stopping anthropogenic global warming?
MS: If you mean they represent you (plural) shifting away from a debate about the existence of climate change, etc,, then, yes, that IS happening. You (plural) ARE finally accepting what climate science has been showing all along, that: 1. Global warming is real; 2 Global warming is caused by burning fossil fuels and land use practices, and 3. Global warming will be/is bad for the human race.
KM: Me, singular, accepted the climate science in the 1990s and ever since. So you are not talking to nor about me Martin. Sharpen your pencil. Did you run my comment through your AIs to check if you understood what I was saying? Because from your response here I can easily tell to do not understand it at all.
I’ve no interest in fighting strawmen that cover your comment. Nothing you say applies to me personally.
People frequently misunderstand what KM is saying. Its because he doesn’t write clearly. Have told him before, but he just keeps on writing in the same way and being misunderstood over and over. A definition of insanity is doing the same experiment and expecting different results (Einstein?)
KM: I’ve no interest in fighting strawmen that cover your comment. Nothing you say applies to me personally.
KM: if fossil fuel consumption projections show growth, what is the path to reducing emissions really worth?
MS: It was YOUR strawman, KM, so you can’t claim you have no interest in fighting it, and then it does apply to you personally.
What is your plan (that we’re not listening to) for stopping anthropogenic global warming?
Martin Smith says 13 Aug 2026 at 12:21 AM
About
KM: if fossil fuel consumption projections show growth, what is the path to reducing emissions really worth?
KM: I’ve no interest in fighting strawmen that cover your comment. Nothing you say applies to me personally.
MS: It was YOUR strawman,
KM: No it wasn’t a straw man. It was a probing question to evoke deep thinking.
A straw man fallacy occurs when someone changes or exaggerates another person’s argument to make it easier to knock down. Instead of dealing with the real point, they attack a fake, weaker version of it—like fighting a dummy made of straw instead of a real person
Martin, if you can agree with that definition, then show us here who was the other person/article making an argument I am alleged to have been exaggerating or changed to make it easier to knock down.?
That, is a rhetorical question. But it does show what you’re doing here.
My long comment Martin replied to started with :
KM says 9 Aug 2026 at 9:50 PM
My comment captures a deep frustration that many are feeling today when engaging with established climate science platforms. I’m pointing out a perceived tribalistic culture where debate is stifled, and have raised a critical, uncomfortable question no one wants to deal with rationally: if fossil fuel consumption projections show growth, what is the path to reducing emissions really worth?
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/08/unforced-variations-aug-2026/#comment-850352
And that referred to this comment:
KM says 9 Aug 2026 at 7:12 PM
Have you ever seen a credible evidence based analysis of future energy consumption [real world not ipcc modelled assumptions] that showed total oil gas and oil consumption was less in 2050 that it is in 2025?
I’d like to see that to evaluate how credible n realistic n fundamentally sound it is.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/08/unforced-variations-aug-2026/#comment-850351
And that included the probing phrase — ” i’m reminded the definition of insanity is …..
And I notice all the references I provided are being ignored completely in this exchange with Martin who is only being disagreeable over one question I put.
Why ignore this peer reviewed paper?
Chanting to the choir: the dialogical failure of antithetical climate change blogs
Jennifer Metcalfe https://jcom.sissa.it/issue/77/info/
And not discuss the implications of that or even future emissions trajectories? Why play the man with straw men fallacies instead of focus on content — is probably self-evident here.
KM: My comment captures a deep frustration that many are feeling today when engaging with established climate science platforms. I’m pointing out a perceived tribalistic culture where debate is stifled, and have raised a critical, uncomfortable question no one wants to deal with rationally: if fossil fuel consumption projections show growth, what is the path to reducing emissions really worth?
BPL: If debate is stifled, what are you doing here?
Criticizing your posts is not equivalent to debate being stifled.
KM: Martin, if you can agree with that definition, then show us here who was the other person/article making an argument I am alleged to have been exaggerating or changed to make it easier to knock down.?
MS: You were both person, KM. You wrote this: “if fossil fuel consumption projections show growth, what is the path to reducing emissions really worth?”
I read that as implying that the path to reducing emissions isn’t worth following, or at least that it might not be worth following. That’s a strawman because the obvious value of following the path to reducing emissions is the reduction of emissions. What we have done already with EVs and wind and solar generation has reduced the increases in emissions, which is, effectively, a reduction of emissions. The fact that total emissions are still rising and are projected to continue rising for a long time doesn’t make slowing down the increase valueless, but that is your implication.
If we stop making EVs and stop building wind turbines and solar panels, emissions will get a lot worse. I believed that you surely couldn’t mean we should do that, but then what is the point of your question about the value of reducing emissions? That’s why I asked for your alternative plan. Let’s say the computation shows there is no value to trying to reduce emissions by building EVs, wind turbines, and solar panels. Then what should we do instead?
re KM – “Have you ever seen a credible evidence based analysis of future energy consumption [real world not ipcc modelled assumptions] that showed total oil gas and oil consumption was less in 2050 that it is in 2025?”
– Wouldn’t that require time travel? We don’t have real world data from the future.
“if fossil fuel consumption projections show growth, what is the path to reducing emissions really worth?”
Depends on feasibility. IMO, The main problem is politics.
patrick: “Wouldn’t that require time travel?”
I think that was just awkward grammar on the part of Multi-troll. The real problem with its argument lies elsewhere. At the core of doomism (and of deniers attacking attempts to curb CO2) – is the “All or Nothing” fallacy – if the renewables, EVs and carbon pricing cannot reduce absolute emissions soon – then why even bother with them.
The corollary of their “All or Nothing” fallacy is the implication that a world with, say, 1000 ppm of Co2 would not be worse than the world with 500 ppm – i.e. that the world in which we gave up on the existing ways to lower our CO2 emissions – won’t be worse than the world in which we used all the tools we have, even if they didn’t dropped the absolute Co2 emissions immediately.
Furthermore, the Doomers – by attacking the very sense of existing decarbonization technologies and policies, and by sowing the apathy in the societies (if we are doomed anyway – why bother?”) – objectively HELP to materialize the WORST possible future scenario. Their doomism is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Some of them may do it unwittingly and for noble reasons – hoping that by painting the picture of the doom they may wake up the societies into actions. But with likely consequences of their doomism being shown to opposite to that (discouraging action and thus promoting apathy in the face of the inevitable doom)- they no longer can claim ignorance nor noble intentions. By their fruits, not their good intentions, you shall know them.
Martin Smith to K. Maru: “ What exactly is your plan (that were not listening to) for stopping anthropogenic global warming?
Since K. Maru, surprise, surprise, did not answer this question AGAIN, let me fill in for him, based on the posts of K. Maru posted under dozens of different names.
1. Changing the Human Nature – creating a Homo sovieticus, willing to sacrifice himself and his family for the good the nation, the ruling class, and the future of the humanity. Current people are notoriously unreliable on this.
2. Global Revolution aimed at overthrow of the market economy and the capitalist and democratic institutions and laws. To build their Utopia they need first raze the old world to the ground.
3. A genocide of several billion of people to reduce the human population to the sustainable size
(0.5 billion? 100 mln?). Given the urgency of the CO2 reductions – in the next few decades- genocide is the only tool left – since they can’t count on the demographic transitions as too slow and nowhere near radical enough.
Short of all three would be choosing the good over the Doomer’s perfect. In such a case – K. Maru’s contingency plan:
a) sow distrust to climate science and statements about the urgency of the GHG mitigation and
b) promote the apathy (if we a Doomed anyway – then let’s leave with a bang – using all fossil fuels Republicans, Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia want us to use)
then the Doom becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and the Doomers – the badly maligned Prophets who despite not being scientists – could see things the climate science couldn’t, or due to its corruption, wouldn’t see.
Did I get all the details of Your Plan and its contingencies right, Kobe?
Don’t worry, it’s gonna get worse before it gets worse.
The summer of 2026 will go down in history books as the hottest, driest and most deadly set of heatwaves Britain has ever experienced. This weather isn’t normal – but it is predictable according to a global consensus of scientists. And yet this summer, according to the science, will be one of the coolest summers we ever have again. Things will only get hotter from here.
Aaron Bastani Interviews Professor Kevin Anderson UK
Oil-Engineer Turned Climate Whistleblower: We Face COLLAPSE
“We are richer as a country virtually every single year. Yet we still talk about a cost of living crisis, which is deliberately fabricated. That is a choice of how we hand out society’s resources. That is an active choice of our politics.
We’re somewhere between the sixth and the tenth richest country in the world, and we’ve got just 0.84% of the world’s population. So we’re an incredibly wealthy country, but that wealth has been privatized to relatively small groups of people but we mustn’t ask questions about that (sarcastically.) Well, we must—from a climate point of view–we have no choice, because that’s where the lion’s share of resources are going (to the wealthy.) And when I say ‘resources,’ what I mean is materials, means, labour—the skilled labour in our society.
But unless we ask these deeply fundamental questions, we are going to fail on climate change. And if we fail on climate change, then society fails.”
In depth interview early August https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBFos_T7cT0
Kevin had been generally quiet for some time. Long 1:45 hrs video in which he really cuts loose.
Copernicus has reported ERA5 re-analysis numbers for July 2026 and, as per the daily numbers from ClimatePulse, show July SAT as the =2nd (or 3rd) hottest July on record. Being “Europe’s eyes on Earth”, Copernicus point to the exceptional high temperature across Western Europe although the cooler temperatures across Eastern Europe makes the ‘pan-Europe’ numbers for July ” notably smaller” than for the top-5 hottest Julys.
The 60N-60S SST, the warmest July on record, remains more exceptional. They point to the daily 60-60SST numbers “rapidly approaching all-time records” in absolute terms. This may not arrive so rapidly. The 60-60 SST absolute numbers have two peaks in the annual cycle, mid-March & mid-August. The current ‘all-time record’ sits at +21.09°C, set back in March 2024. The “rapidly approaching”.value has been stuck at +21.05°C for the last ten days and that mid-August peak in the annual cycle will soon be past and working against setting a new “all-time record.”
While this weeks ENSO Status report is yet to post, the latest NINO3.4 weekly has with an anomaly of +2.6°C. This is a bit of jump up from last week, indeed also a jump up from the start of last month (+1.7°C). The number used to define the strength of an El Niño is now based on RNINO3.4 which runs some 0.5°C below NINO3.4. So the jump up to NINO3.4 = +2.6°C would put us into “very strong”El Niño territory.
These high SSTs for July suggest the SAT/SST instrument records will have no trouble setting clear records for July 2026.
Aaron Bastani Meets Kevin Anderson
Oil-Engineer Turned Climate Whistleblower: We Face COLLAPSE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBFos_T7cT0
Commentary on Kevin Anderson’s remarks – and a critique of the climate science community’s political abdication
50.00 I’m not interested in what Bill Gates has got to say about climate change…. these are the people that shape the global and the national priorities [economic capitalist systems] … NO, We choose them to shape it. I don’t think these people have power unless we allow them to have power. I think the real skill of the Gates’ of this world and that whole neoliberal agenda is to break the world into individual components as individuals. We have very little power — as collectives we have far far more power than Gates Musk Bezos the PM.
50.50 those people who want to maintain power is to make sure the rest of us just continue as [separated isolated[ individuals not as collectives.
51:26 these sorts of [elite power oligarch] people try to maintain the status quo because they’ve done remarkably well out of it and one of the tricks that they use is to make sure everyone else sees themselves as a competing individual rather than a citizen in a collective, in a community, in a society, in a country. So I do not hold that they have the power only because we have allowed them to have the power by allowing them to reduce us [psycholgically/morally/politically] to individuals. We can take that power back anytime we want to do.
Kevin Anderson’s points at 33:00, 34:30, 39:06, 41:07, 41:37, and 50:00–51:26 are, as ever, bracingly clear. He identifies the core drivers of emissions not from the average citizen, but from the affluent minority — the frequent flyers, the owners of multiple homes, the SUV drivers, the corporate executives — alongside the industrial and infrastructural systems that serve them. He also rightly notes that most people working in the oil and gas industry are decent people like he was as an engineer; it is the executives and the systems of power they command that are the problem.
But Anderson goes further, and this is where his analysis becomes genuinely radical and important: he insists that the power of the Gates, Musks, Bezoses, and the wider neoliberal elite is not intrinsic or unassailable. It is power we allow them to have, by allowing ourselves to be reduced to isolated, competing individuals rather than organised citizens in a collective. As he puts it, we can take that power back anytime we choose to.
That is a crucial insight. And it exposes a profound failure in the mainstream climate science community over the past three decades.
For too long, prominent climate scientists on Twitter, X and BlueSky, or on RealClimate for two decades — Gavin Schmidt, Andy Dessler, Michael Mann, Zeke Hausfather, Kevin Trenberth, and many others — have framed the climate fight narratives as one in which they are noble, truth-telling underdogs, perpetually beaten back by the monstrous power of scientist and academic climate deniers, fossil fuel interests, oligarchs, and media barons. This narrative has become a self-fulfilling prophecy and, worse, a political cop-out.
By endlessly repeating this “oh poor us, they’re too powerful” rhetoric, they have done exactly what the elites wanted: convinced the public that ordinary people and the climate scientists themselves are powerless.
They have reinforced the very separation and individuation that Anderson warns against. They have not used their enormous credibility, their media access, their platforms, or their moral authority to actively organise, empower, or mobilise the public. Instead, they have hidden behind the IPCC’s supposed restrictions on policy prescription, claiming it is “not their business” to advocate for specific political action; and remained mute.
That is bullshit.
Every citizen has a moral and ethical right — indeed, a responsibility — to speak out against injustice. Climate scientists are citizens too. When they stand before a camera or a parliamentary committee and refuse to say “this is what we must do,” when they soften their language to avoid “scaring the public,” when they acquiesce to the framing of climate change as a technical problem rather than a political and moral one, they are not being neutral. They are being complicit.
They have abdicated their duty. They have empowered the wealthy and the elite by disempowering the rest of us. And they have done so for over thirty years — at AGU meetings, at COP summits, in op-eds, in IPCC reports, in media appearances, on blogs. They have played the role of the well-behaved expert while the world burns.
Anderson is one who, much like Jim Hansen for 40 years, is of the few climate scientists who refuses that script. He names the system. He names the elite. And he reminds us that we are not victims — we are citizens, we are collectives, and we can choose to act. And so can the working climate scientists in and out of Government roles. Or do what Hansen did and quit — rather than serve the system that is destroying the planet and all of us!
The question is whether the rest of the climate science community — now maybe 80,000 strong — will finally stop playing the victim, stop empowering the powerful, and start telling the truth — in public, in private, and in every forum they have.
Frankly I can’t see it happening. Do you?
PS it’s a very good interview of Kevin Anderson. He’s been quiet for too long. I’ve made a few other extracts from the transcript I might drop here, though I can hardly see how it would help at all. Watch it or don’t.
“Climate scientists are citizens too. When they stand before a camera or a parliamentary committee and refuse to say “this is what we must do,” when they soften their language to avoid “scaring the public,” when they acquiesce to the framing of climate change as a technical problem rather than a political and moral one, they are not being neutral. They are being complicit.”
Climate scientists should be publicising the best approximation to reality in terms of what is happening and what is likely to happen given XYZ scenarios moving on from here. It is up to civilisations across the world to decide how we move on given those facts. What is happening and what might happen is a scientific analysis, what we do about it is a collective values judgement.
Adam Lea says 14 Aug 2026 at 4:57 AM
It is up to civilisations across the world to decide how we move on given those facts. What is happening and what might happen is a scientific analysis, what we do about it is a collective values judgement.
KM: Not when those judgements are being based on and corralled by “what is likely to happen given XYZ scenarios “
Those IPCC SSP/IAM scenarios are not Facts – nor are they based upon Facts — they are massaged assumptions determined by a few self-selected elites created inside “black boxes” .
Those judgements are not being made by the tens of thousands of experts active in doing climate science.
Many here have now repeatedly emphasized there is no Vote in forming a consensus among climate scientists. Thank you to all who insisted on this — it was the acknowledgement of the process I was seeking.
There is no Vote by climate scientists especially of what can and could be done to solve global warming and reduce it’s most dire effects. No Vote on how global warming relates to the other planetary boundaries being breached.
Let alone how bad climate driven responses might be upon the people of the world in the short and long term.
Maybe there should be a Vote – in particular on the efficacy and accuracy of the IPCCC ARs — a Vote open to all climate science and technical experts and not only a small few “IPCC authors.”
Whose personal priorities may not be as global as we’d like them to be.
The point being, no one knows.
KM: The point being, no one knows.
BPL: No one knows what?
formatting fixed, please delete prior version (which I may have double posted?; oops)
Modeling the likely outcomes (and the risk of dangerous less-likely outcomes) of various options available. That is how one makes informed decisions.
Models are theories and possible choices are just that, but the output of a particular model for a given input is a fact. (In fact, statements of opinions and subjective experiences can be factual, but I digress…)
Aside from the info you supplied about Zeke Hausfather somewhere else on this thread…
– which I’m reserving judgement on because there’s misinformation and things being taken out of context to watch out for (and that would be an interesting counterpoint to the matter of the dangers of climate scientists speaking to matters outside there expertise – yes we’re all people; ideally a person should be able to take their ‘expert hat’ off for the purposes of publically opining on other matters – also it’s possible for people to become well-informed outside of their ‘homebase’ of expertise; I’m grateful to those scientists who speak up as such (not to those who are speaking out of ignorance, eg. some climate (and COVID/vaccine/etc.) deniers who may be good at other things…) but I understand that this can carry risks (like people perceiving a conflict of interest or pro-clean energy bias) and I think Adam Lea & Nigelj made good points…)
… I think perhaps these are not the elites you are looking for(?). What is actually wrong with the scenarios? We could conceivably make up for lack of DAC/CCS/etc. with a stronger push in clean energy and clean land-use/etc…
KM: “Climate scientists are citizens too. When they stand before a camera or a parliamentary committee and refuse to say “this is what we must do,” when they soften their language to avoid “scaring the public,” when they acquiesce to the framing of climate change as a technical problem rather than a political and moral one, they are not being neutral. They are being complicit.”
When climate scientists find themselves standing before a camera or parliamentary capacity its normally in their work capacity, which is about the science. Speaking out about how we mitigate the problem and related political issues, and their personal views on that may violate their employment contracts. Maybe you are retired or have never worked or something. Please have some semblance of understanding of the positions good family people are in. I fully agree with Adams comments.
Sorry to interrupt, but I would love to hear some input on the current fire situation that seems to be engulfing Europe and the western United States. Obviously it’s a trend that seems to be intensifying quickly. With Trump doing everything he can to destroy the environment is there any way we survive this century and beyond?
“But what happens when those drops have no effect? When, as a pilot working the massive Gironde Fire just west of Bordeaux, France, described it, “The environment above the fire is so hot that my payload of 10,000 liters of water evaporates in the air.”? Mathieu Jomain, a commander and 26-year veteran in Gironde’s fire service, compared the fire’s intensity to “a meteorological nuclear bomb.””
*This is the new reality of wildfires in the 21st Century: they hit different. And, too often now, the water doesn’t hit at all.*
https://time.com/article/2026/08/08/what-happens-when-the-world-is-on-fire/
is there any way we survive this century and beyond?
No.
And stop personalizing the dilemma by foolishly blaming Trump for what has been a multi-century explosion of extraction and industrialization on the back of cheap abundant fossil fuel energy and the wanton ecosystem destruction by generations of human activity and consumption. Followed a lack of practical responses.
Trump did not block the Rio Earth Summit. Didn’t stop the UNFCCC being formed. Didn’t block the IPCC. Trump didn’t shut down nasa-giss or not launch satellites in the 1990s or since. Didn’t block climate models being developed and used. Trump’s got nothing specific to do with todays climate impacts — any more than any other rich wealthy control freak and the western middle classes consuming energy and resources like they cost nothing at all and do not matter.
Ignoring the real cause/s of global warming and ecosystem destruction and breaching our collective planetary boundaries. Humanity has breached seven of the nine scientifically defined planetary boundaries that maintain Earth’s stability and life-support systems, moving well outside the safe operating space required for modern civilization.
Humanity not just Trump. America is not the World.
KM: And stop personalizing the dilemma by foolishly blaming Trump
BPL: Data centers. Drilling. Shutting down wind projects. Removing subsidies for solar and for electric vehicles. I feel I can justifiably blame Trump for that.
KM: “And stop personalizing the dilemma by foolishly blaming Trump. Trump’s got nothing specific to do with todays climate impact”
BPL “Data centers. Drilling. Shutting down wind projects. Removing subsidies for solar and for electric vehicles.”
and the list goes on:
– entrenching in the tens of millions of Americans who voted for him and in Republican Party he controls his view that “ The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
– defunding and degrading climate science in NASA and NOAA,
– using DoE and EPA to question the existence/threats of climate change
– threatening to hurt American universities financially if they pursue directions of research contrary to Trumps agenda that includes climate change
– trying to scuttle international efforts to reduce CO2 emissions by
– withdrawing US from Paris accord
– encouraging others to follow the suit (if the US that has 4.7% of global population but is responsible for 1/4 of cumulative emissions of CO2, withdrew from the emission reductions, then why on Earth would the rest of the world do anything when their per capita emissions are typically several times LOWER than those of the US, and reducing their emissions would put their manufacturing at the competitive disadvantage compared to their US counterparts exempted from these costs?)
– by questioning value of rule-based world and international cooperation on the actions that would benefit all – and replacing it with the appeal to national egoism – seeing CO2 mitigation as a zero-sum gain – China’s gain at the US loss.
For a true extremist, the real enemy is never the opposite extremist – but those in the middle, moderates – seeing the same problems, but not going to the extreme on them as does the extremist. That’s why the doomer’s attacks are not focused on the deniers, but on mainstream science. The Doomers see themselves as badly-maligned prophets – brilliant to see the future, but not believed until it was too late ( (e.g. “ “ I have been telling you this for over a decade[…] but you never listen“ )
For a similar reason, Christians persecuted Jews more than other religions because “Jews were given a chance to welcome Our Lord, Jesus, and they rejected Him” . And the Islamist fundamentalists may tolerate Christians in their midst, but a conversion of a Muslim to Christianity must be punished by death.
For both the left and right-wing extremism – the main target are not each other, but the democracy and the moderates
And that’s why Doomers so often land in the same bed as Deniers – here with both Mr. KiA and Mr. Multi-troll – defending Trump and seeing the problem in Trump’s critics.
And they both need each other – Deniers need Doomers to help them discredit the mainstream science and people relying on its advice. And conversely, Doomers need Deniers – for the same thing.
Additionally, Trump and other deniers, by delaying and weakening mitigation of Co2 emissions by increasing the chance that the worst scenario gets realized – help the Doomers with what they crave most – to be right For a Doomer – the worse the future for humans, the better for his ego – You all got what you deserved – I was warning you for years, but you never listened. Who is laughing now?!”
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-rwe-wind-farms/
“In August 2026, the Trump administration paid German energy company RWE $1.2 billion to stop building wind farms.” True.
…
God Damn Mother F_cking good-for-nothing Worthless Piece of Shit!
(And that’s just this issue.)
Yes, I get that Trump (Biffigula / Don QuiTrumpte / He who must have his name on buildings) wouldn’t have this power without the misinformed and apathetic voters, and those in power who guided/manipulated them. Though I’d like to think that some fraction of that vote was a cry for help, analogous to deliberately cutting oneself.
Reply to patrick o twentyseven 14 Aug 2026 at 6:27 PM and the others engaged in these useless circular arguments.
The RWE / Trump reports are more Prima facie evidence the strategy (the Path) to achieve the goal to reduce emissions and remain below a “safe level” of +2C is not working because it has always been fundamentally flawed.
This shows — “The strategic value of a system-wide path that is demonstrably failing to lower global emissions. Martin is answering at the tactical level—”but EVs and solar are better than nothing!” “
Here we are now with Trump’s USA intervention that RWE spending $1.2 billion in wind generation is not better than nothing — it amounts to nothing!
I am speaking to the efficacy of the whole approach. The whole shebang — the UNFCCC, the IPCC, the Assessment Reports, the way Authors are assigned and do their work, the Paris Treaty, the COP meetings, The CMIP RCP SSP IAM modelling scenarios; what they they claim to show and what they achieve as part of the Plan, the Path, the Strategy to rapidly reduce emissions. Amounting to the Failure of the NDCs.
The Failure of a lack of enforcement upon any nation – such that the USA can do what it does, including exiting the Paris Treaty with no Penalty and Zero consequences.
I wrote this: “if fossil fuel consumption projections show growth, what is the path to reducing emissions really worth?”
That Trump has the ability to do what he has done with RWE proves it’s worthless. But Trump is not the cause of this. Because the System allows this, it is the cause of this. The System left that gate open for the horse to bolt.
It’s was destined to happen and all over the world that is exactly what is happening today. The USA is only the worst example. There are many others.
The whole system created to address climate change and global warming, including the climate science the how and the why that is being integrated within the system the strategy, is dysfunctional and not fit for purpose.
Has been for over 30 years. Stop blaming individuals like Trump when thousands of others are at fault here.
The RWE – Trump “deal” is not an anomaly; it’s the logical conclusion of a path that was always too weak. The system allows it. The system promotes it. All these kinds of things keep emphasizing how correct the Climate science IPCC UNFCCC COP whistleblowers like Kevin Anderson and James Hansen have always been.
We have breached seven of nine planetary boundaries. We are watching a tragedy unfold in slow motion. To blame the final act on one minor actor who just stepped on stage in one nation is to ignore the playwrights, the directors, and the producers who wrote the script.
We need to stop arguing about the symptoms of a broken system and start addressing the root cause of the disease.
KM: We need to stop arguing about the symptoms of a broken system and start addressing the root cause of the disease.
MS: You’re the one arguing about the symptoms, but every time you say we should address the root cause of the disease and I ask you to tells us your plan for addressing the root cause of the disease, you are unwilling to show it, or you say you have already shown it. But I’ve never seen your plan for addressing the root cause of the disease, so what is your plan?
For Europe Stefan Rahmstorf asserts that the ocean Cold Blob is establishing cyclones that bring air from east tropical Atlantic north to Europe, so not exactly the same. Also, I’ve been a bit bemused the last 14 years (since I started) that I never heard mentioned any place, certainly not on Radio, TV & Internet Media, that CO2 is the only source of wildland fire on Earth. There’s even a ubiquitous “Denier” meme “Greening up”.
I’ll stick to the fire situation.
My understanding is that part of the overall problem is fire suppression practices in the 20th century that resulted in a large buildup of potential fuel to the point that fires could no longer be contained. Count that as a contributing factor.
The phrase “a meteorological nuclear bomb” is apt. WWII warfare, including both firebombing and nuclear bombing, was informed by the 1923 Tokyo earthquake and subsequent firestorm. It burned a substantial portion of Tokyo and killed over 100,000 people. There have been other very large fires following earthquakes, and also under extreme fire weather conditions, such as the Chicago Fire and concurrent Peshtigo, Wisconsin forest fire fueled by sloppy logging practices.
Climate change is undoubtedly making things worse. The combination of drought and other formerly unusual weather events results in more dead trees, so there is more fuel available. One of the changes that I find noteworthy is the increasing incidence of strong mid latitude excursions of the subtropical anticyclones (“heat domes.”) These create both drought and unusually high temperatures. As they reach higher latitudes, they also occur in closer proximity to the subpolar jet stream to their north. The interaction frequently results in strong surface winds and intensely hot and dry weather as cyclones pass to the north of the hot area. While this sort of weather pattern wasn’t unknown in the past, it is clearly becoming stronger and more frequent in both Europe and the U.S. I haven’t seen any research yet, but it is my impression that there has been a fairly abrupt uptick since around 2020 in interior western North America. This is clearly visible in numerous heat records that exceed previous norms. I don’t know if the same is true for Europe or the NH as a whole. Since this has happened relatively abruptly, I would attribute it to atmospheric adjustment to an underlying warming trend, combined with some sort of “regime change” that makes the subtropical anticyclone excursions stronger and more lasting. These occur somewhat irregularly, and then go away for a while, possibly to reappear later. The U.S. 1930s Dust Bowl would be an example. Heat waves were observed in multiple years, but that particular pattern simply disappeared after 1940.
John; “The combination of drought and other formerly unusual weather events results in more dead trees, so there is more fuel available.”
Further combined with the warmer winter allowing more pine beetle to survive to the next spring allowing the insect population start next season from much higher starting point. As a result, the boreal forest, already flammable because of all the resin and flammable wood, now becomes super flammable when they die standing, and dry out over time.
Hence instead of the regular, natural fire, we get new much more intense forest fires with diffrent:
– spreading (creates its own weather, with updrafts lifting up ambers and even burning branches and dropping them down ahead – often behind the fire breaks – natural like river or a lake or artificial the artificial created by humans by prescribed burning and plowing the soil to stop the fire spread.
That’s why the 2016 fire destroyed 2,400 homes and buildings in Canada’s Fort McMurray even though most of them were far behind the belt of fire-brakes created to stop the fire from entering the city.
-the difference in the effects on ecosystem – regular fire is a natural mechanisms and is in fact needed for the renewal of the forest – the pine seeds there won’t germinate UNLESS exposed to elevated temperature and high CO2 – which make sense as the fire would have killed big trees stealing their light, and their cremated bodies would provide the fertilizers the seedlings need to grow. But if the fire is too intense – it will kill not only the trees but also the seeds in the ground. And potentially the symbiotic fungi in the ground, critical for the growth of the seedlings.
There is an anecdote from Aaron Bastani who said during his interview with Kevin Anderson words to the effect that: In July 2026 London had +30C temperatures over 24 days.
This was far above the number of days London broke 30c during the whole of the 1980s decade.
Were you to research into the modern day dynamics of mega heatwaves and unprecedented wild fires behavior you will likely find the extremely high winds are more often aligned with the localized firestorm weather systems they are creating in the process of widespread burning landscapes. Happened in Greece, Australia sth America Spain Canada and nth America.
Hot dry windy conditions amplify the resulting fires which then create their own localized weather system of extreme high winds exacerbating what was already occurring. It’s well documented now coupled with firefighters observations.
John Pollack: “My understanding is that part of the overall problem is fire suppression practices in the 20th century that resulted in a large buildup of potential fuel to the point that fires could no longer be contained.”
yes, but to explain the change in the forest fires we look for things that have changed.
And the contribution of the fire suppression practices, while real, may be limited in US/Canada:
– in the States fire suppression has been done for _many_ decades – yet the intensity of fires increased more recently.
– in Canada many of the recent fires happen in very distant, isolated places, – in the Rocky Mountains and/or in the North – i.e. without the road access, a few if any people, hence hardly any fire suppression practices there, so the only thing that changed there – is the climate.
Which in the North, changed disproportionally more – thanks to the Arctic amplification.
Aaron Bastani Meets Kevin Anderson
Oil-Engineer Turned Climate Whistleblower: We Face COLLAPSE
Part One extracts
On incompatible narratives with exponential growth and collective arrogance
From 17:10 – https://youtu.be/mBFos_T7cT0?si=px6Iwk37wVJ5Dyj4&t=1040
Kevin Anderson speaking:
People like myself and others who look at this then ask: how do we stay below two degrees centigrade? We come up with these sorts of levels of reduction which are phenomenally fast, and cannot be dealt with, and cannot be delivered either in the cosy narratives that the expert community pretty much tells the public and the policy makers.
Well, certainly not in those sorts of narratives, but also with any sort of business-as-usual framing of contemporary society. It’s completely and utterly incompatible.
And if you talk to Nigel Farage and others — and I’m not, okay, I have my own views on Farage and some of the other senior people in Reform, but like all political parties, I’m sure there are good people voting for Reform and there probably are some good MPs in Reform. I don’t know any of them individually. But we have to somehow convince people from the science, that civilisations have collapsed in the past, and they all thought they weren’t going to — until they did.
If you just look at the CO₂ plot for us today, if you look at our population today, if you look at our levels of consumption — everything you would plot: microphone consumption, television consumption, population, emissions, car ownership, tarmac on roads, number of buildings — every single thing would be pretty much following exponential growth. Any other species out there, you look at it and say it’s going to die out.
And we’re so arrogant. We think we’re not going to. Despite the fact that we can look at all previous civilisations — how many of them eventually collapsed, quite a few of them because of some climate-related issue as well — but we’re so arrogant, we’re just going to carry on.
And I think we have everything we need intellectually, from a reductionist point of view, to chart with exquisite precision now our own demise. We seem to lack completely any ability to step back and look at the system. So we’re wonderfully clever at looking at the small parts of something, but the collective of the small parts — the system, the ecosystem — we’re appalling at that. And I would argue that’s true in economics as well.
I think it’s one of the reasons we’re failing on climate change: because we have a reductionist form of economics that parrots physics, and it’s not physics. We have not stepped back from it and looked at this sort of system — the political economy, if you like.
end
I’m not here to deny the science. I’m here to question whether the institutional response to it has failed, and to explore what that means for how we live now. Most people either shout or surrender. I do neither. If you think my information is wrong, show me—with evidence. I’m genuinely open to being corrected and learning something new, and better.
I’m not a rival climate scientist. I am not jockeying for funding or publications or career advancement. I’m just a person who pays attention and follows the evidence where it leads. That should my testimony here more realistic and credible, not less.
Aaron Bastani Meets Kevin Anderson
Oil-Engineer Turned Climate Whistleblower: We Face COLLAPSE
Part Two Extracts
Summer heatwaves and fires will become the best of times, climate academics selling soft stories the climate change says cannot be true
From 28:36 https://youtu.be/mBFos_T7cT0?si=YP-Kdr549hX69W77&t=1711
Kevin Anderson speaking
We’ve got the fire over the back of Glossop, and these fires were coming together, putting smoke over the city of Manchester. So our university is recommending that anyone with health conditions should not go to university or go to work.
It’s not a shock to see it. I think probably it’s depressing — that’s probably how I see it. It’s deeply depressing to see my own community really struggling with the fires we’ve had on the moors around us, and knowing that they’re just going to get worse and worse. We know what we can do about this, but we are choosing not to do it.
And very quickly we’ll have forgotten this — the media will have moved on, we’ll be talking about something else altogether.
Aaron Bastani: What I find interesting with the media is that Ed Miliband was being touted as a potential challenger, and the entire London Westminster press pack basically said Ed Miliband has been discredited because of his positions on climate change. And I’m thinking: it’s not rained for three weeks — that should be an advert for the guy. But it’s almost like they’re living in a parallel reality.
Now, that doesn’t mean you have to agree with absolutely everything he says on climate change and what we have to do about it. But it is sort of weird and wild, actually, that so many people with influence in the media refuse to accept it even as a salient issue.
Kevin Anderson: Yeah, I mean, actually the way Ed Miliband talks about these things — indeed his advisers and other people on this — I’m deeply critical. Not particularly of Ed, because he’s a political figure, but certainly a lot of the advisers — he gets a lot of my academic colleagues — is that we’re selling a soft story. We’re not selling it as it is. Privately I hear that all the time. They say we can’t scare the public. That’s an arrogant view. How about just telling the public what we judge and what we say in private? Say it in public. Let the public — they’re adults — let them make up their own minds.
So I think the situation is much, much worse than Milliband is really putting across here. But surprisingly — well, is it unsurprisingly? — the elites in our society are kicking back against something they know would question the position they’re in. Isn’t history awash with that? They’re protecting themselves. If you’re serious about climate change, you have to do all sorts of things that the people who are seen to be the movers and shakers in our society will not like, because it’ll change how they live their life, it’ll change their value structures, it will change how other people see them.
And I’m not only talking about my own community–where there are lots of climate academic professors who are desperate to get an MBE, an OBE, or a gong, or whatever, or to receive more funding, or to get called into events in parliament and with the Today programme. The prestige part is hugely important there. And if we sell a story that aligns with our analysis, you’re not going to get called into those things, because it’s deeply depressing and it does not fit with the status quo.
That also changed the funding mechanisms we get. The funding bodies are the people doing the research. We might do objective research, but what we research on has been deeply influenced by a status quo that is unprepared to accept the climate situation we’re in today. The media — the media barons — certainly don’t want any questions raised about this, because that will raise absolutely fundamental questions about how they live their lives, their norms, how they see society, the world views they have held for a long time.
So I think climate change is asking us — and I don’t think it’s just climate change; climate change, amongst a suite of other ecological challenges we face, is asking really deep, searching questions about contemporary society. And contemporary society is saying we don’t want those questions asked. They’re uncomfortable. We like the deep inequalities we have now. We like the elite structures we have today. We want them to continue. And climate change basically says they can’t. [32:30]
end
KM: I’m not a rival climate scientist. I am not jockeying for funding or publications or career advancement.
BPL: Because climate scientists are constantly doing those things.
KM: I’m just a person who pays attention and follows the evidence where it leads.
BPL: Just like Galileo! And just as persecuted.
Barton Paul Levenson says 11 Aug 2026 at 6:58 AM
–
Predictable. Play the man. Ignore the content from the Climate Scientist speaking.
Barton is saying: we don’t want those questions asked. They’re uncomfortable. We like the deep inequalities we have now. We like the elite structures we have today. We want them to continue.
KM: Barton is saying: we don’t want those questions asked. They’re uncomfortable. We like the deep inequalities we have now. We like the elite structures we have today. We want them to continue.
BPL: No, that’s what you would LIKE me to be saying. Straw man argument.
Aaron Bastani Meets Kevin Anderson
Oil-Engineer Turned Climate Whistleblower: We Face COLLAPSE
Part Three extracts
On civilization collapses and the dominant misguided economics
From 19:08 — https://youtu.be/mBFos_T7cT0?si=Q3_vVPgAtzYEvO9j&t=1146
Aaron Bastani: In terms of collapse, one of the great historical episodes for me which really helps clarify all of this is the Bronze Age collapse. All sounds very dramatic. Are you familiar with the Bronze Age collapse?
Kevin Anderson: Not in great deal. I wasn’t there, even at my age. But yes, I’m familiar with how these things — the localised climate signal that often fed into collapse …. Aaron Bastani: was part of the picture with the Bronze Age collapse.
Yes. And same with the Egyptians as well — a big change in Egyptian civilisation because of how they used the Nile, how that changed their local weather, their local climate. And these climate signals, remember, these are from a population point of view very small numbers of people, and from a consumption point of view it’s hardly anything. Now we’ve got what — eight, heading for 8.5 billion people — and on average very, very high levels of consumption, which is deeply unequal. But a lot of the poor people are rightly now expecting to have levels of consumption of the average person. So nothing is pointing in the right direction.
Aaron Bastani: On the Bronze Age collapse I’ve spoken to Jo Quinn about this, who is the Professor of Ancient Civilisation at Cambridge. And she talks about how all these civilisations before the Bronze Age collapse all shared a court language — Akkadian. From parts of Greece, the Mycenaean civilisation, the Hittites, all the way through to modern-day sort of Iraq, Iran region — they had a shared courtly language. And this collapse is so bad that the Greek-speaking civilisation — they forget how to write for 500 years. You get this break between Linear A and Linear B. You have a civilisation that stops writing for several centuries. That’s how bad it is.
Now, there are different reads on this. Some people say, well actually it’s because there was a complete collapse in social relations, and poorer people didn’t want to write because that meant they were taxed, it meant they were administered by people they didn’t want to be administered by. So actually it was that they didn’t want these technologies.
But I think that’s a really good way of just seeing how bad things can get — that you can have a very advanced civilisation that literally forgets how to write as a social act for about half a millennium, that didn’t happen. And I wonder what the equivalent would be in the 21st or 22nd century. I mean, it doesn’t bear thinking about, frankly.
But this hubris — like you say, “well it can’t happen” — it has happened. That’s a shocking thing.
Kevin Anderson: Yes, it has happened repeatedly to previous civilisations. So it’s all major civilisations have come to some collapse in the end. And I think most of them were sufficiently arrogant they thought it wasn’t going to happen beforehand. but I don’t think they understood their collapse as well as we understand ours. I think that’s something the post-Enlightenment has allowed us to understand and chart with exquisite precision our own collapse.
But it doesn’t appear to have given us the intellectual capacity to look at it from a system perspective. And that’s why I remain — and I hope I’m wrong on this — but I wonder whether we will literally be cul-de-sac, we will be that little blip in the fossil record. And you’ll see us because of lots of things — lots of plastics and pollution and so forth — you’ll spot that quite importantly in the fossil record or in the ice cores and so forth. You’ll see where we were. But at the moment, I’m not convinced that we have the ability to step back, identify what we can measure and see and witness and live through, and do anything about it.
Now, I hope we can, and that’s why people like me and lots of other people work on these issues — because perhaps we can. But there’s not a lot of evidence to suggest that we can. As I say, if you plot almost everything you plot for us, it goes in the wrong direction, and we still think we can just carry on.
And we’re sold all this — just look how dominant astrologers are in our government — Economists, whatever you call them — they’re the same thing in my view, they’re astrologers. You look how dominant they are in the discourse on almost whatever it happens to be. This hasn’t always been the case. They’ve sort of taken over to some degree. And they kind of say you can always have growth, you can carry on forever. The physics doesn’t see that. The physics just gives us a round planet with certain constraints on it. But in the modelled world that contemporary society seems to be influenced by, it’s completely abstract from the real world in which we live — the physical real world in which we live.
So there’s an economic world out here. At least a modern form of economic world — I mean political economy has a lot to offer. The modern form of economics, I think neoclassical economics, has nothing. I would go as far as to say I think it has nothing to offer. And I think it has really misguided society, and the longer that we have it and the larger our populations get, the more it misguides it I think.
[24:00 mins]
end
KM: And we’re sold all this — just look how dominant astrologers are in our government — Economists, whatever you call them — they’re the same thing in my view, they’re astrologers.
BPL: But you’re not anti-science…
BPL: But you’re not anti-science…
KM: No, I’m not anti-science I am very pro-science especially as a tool for ethical decision making.
The same as Kevin Anderson is pro-science.
You know, the climate scientist doing the speaking you quoted: “And we’re sold all this — just look how dominant astrologers are in our government — Economists, whatever you call them — they’re the same thing in my view, they’re astrologers.”
The study of economics is not a science. It is a discipline that uses the output of several scientific fields.
TF: The study of economics is not a science. It is a discipline that uses the output of several scientific fields.
BPL: I think most people refer to it as a science. It is the study of how goods and services are produced and distributed–who gets what, and how.
Thomas Fuller: “ The study of economics is not a science. It is a discipline that uses the output of several scientific fields”
You see somebody putting a paper bag with feces at your neighbour doors, sets the bag on fire, rings the door-bell, and runs away. Having seen just that – you don’t side with your neighbour, but instead lecture him on the proper definition of the word “feces”.
In other words, Kobe Multitroll (KM) said economics is not a science NOT to make a fine distinction: say: “ in my definition it is not a science per se, but it uses the output of several scientific fields“, BUT TO EQUATE the credibility of economics with that of astrology, I quote:
KM: “ And we’re sold all this — just look how dominant astrologers are in our government — Economists, whatever you call them — they’re the same thing in my view, they’re astrologers.
See? And the reason is simple – in the KM’s recipe for avoiding the climate Doom – the three pillars are: in addition to changing the nature of Man, and genocide of the billions to cut the population down to the sustainable size, the third pillar is the Global Revolution, an overthrow of market economy, and political and legal systems supporting it. For that, the economics HAS to have the value of astrology.
Actually I think KM (or the one he quotes) has something of a valid point here. Astrologer fits for those who see endless growth without much question; more generally it may be a bit harsh; there are some who perhaps treat economics as an exercise of applied common sense (include, at least sometimes, myself, admittedly), and so they argue against certain policies because of the unintended consequences/moral hazard/other term that I can’t think of right now.
(And some economists have ideological blinders on (Thomas Sowell, perhaps) and some are just frauds or idiots (Peter Navarro) and some are just…)
( Unlearning Economics: “Thomas Sowell Is Worse Than I Thought” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZjSXS2NdS0 , “Thomas Sowell and the American Dream” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yC0dsTtRVo )
But economists who have continued to study reality have uncovered cases that seemingly defy that common sense (eg. employment not harmed by minimum wage as expected) – is it that humans are not actually always rational, self-interested particles – do they sometimes really act like irrational* or unselfish waves? (actually I think we know that one.) Or are there hidden variables that haven’t been accounted for?
(“The Death of Economics 101 ft. Mexie” Unlearning Economics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4epQSbu2gYQ )
(*I would argue for the consideration of informed reasoned decision making capacity as a scarce resource/capital good which must be invested in and allocated based on the expected importance and difficulty of the decision, which itself requires… etc.
*A person may judge actions to be irrational and or not self-interested simply because they don’t know what another actually values.
*Acts that appear selfless could actually be self-interested and maybe even vice-versa.)
And on that point, there is the – measurement fallacy? – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies – eg., forgetting that not all goods/services/things of value consumed/used/possessed/provided/present are bought and sold (a problem when using GDP/capita to compare standard of living/quality of life across space and time…; also GDP in a region may include earnings/profits(?) by those not living in said region; there’s the impact of inequality, including that, while I’ve never been one to ‘keep up with the Jones’s’ (I want what I want and need what I need and don’t bother following trends or adopting the lifestyles of the cool kids) ( How Hustle Culture Finally Died – According To Nicole https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFaHdmPh4Cg ) , I recognize that improving the conditions of everyone else can have a harmful effect on those left behind. ( “Steven Pinker and the Failure of New Optimism ft. We’re in Hell” – Unlearning Economics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo2gwS4VpHc )
But getting back to the example of minimum wage: even if employment is reduced, that’s not necessarily a net cost(*?). At least people make more for the time they work, and if they can work less, maybe they don’t need as much money (eg. for childcare) or have more time to study etc. (*?)Of course there is the consumer end… but anyway…
The Laissez Faire (Lazy Fairy) free market is not God; we can choose not to obey.
“How Amazon Inflates Prices EVERYWHERE” – According To Nicole https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIOWoNK4Xz4 (Break Up Monopolies!) (Beware how concentrations of wealth and power distort the fabric of spacetime – I mean the market)
“The Death of Free Trade” – Unlearning Economics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsOYGt7EKG8
“Free Stuff is Good, Actually” – Unlearning Economics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQIxbwfMVlM
“The 40-hour Week was Meant to be Temporary” – Nicole Rudolph https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ss002M6J9Q
“The Part Of Ensh*ttification That Nobody’s Talking About” – According To Nicole https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3DA-9xGD5k
“How Private Equity Ruined Everything – with Hettie O’Brien” – Unlearning Economics Live https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyNFosOFUDM
(I’ve watched all of these videos except the last one; hope to see it soon)
OTOH, maybe the bigger problem is not some of the more ideologically-minded economists but rather politicians wrapping/hiding their neoliberal ideology in economics.
(anyway, as I was saying, if we all boycott Amazon, Jeff Bezos should evaporate by Hawking radiation over the next quadrillion years…)
Me @ https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/unforced-variations-july-2026/#comment-849537 :
– or, … maybe not?
https://scienceinsights.org/what-is-broadened-collision-spectral-lines-explained/ – the explanation given here is what I’ve been familiar with;
but these sources give different explanations, which might result in the familiar one when simplified or … or not??:
https://faculty.kfupm.edu.sa/PHYS/magondal/Phys608/Lecturedetails/3.3.pdf (relatively easy read, but long; I read ~ p.4 through 14 (and then to p.25, then I skipped over to ~ p.30, read a few more pp., … but reading 14-25, 30-? Was on my phone and that version didn’t have any figures – wait, neither does the one on the computer … )
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/pressure-broadening
https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Astronomy__Cosmology/The_Fundamentals_of_Stellar_Astrophysics_(Collins)/14%3A_Shape_of_Spectral_Lines/14.05%3A_Collisional_Broadening
https://bklein.ece.gatech.edu/laser-photonics/broadening-mechanisms/
and then there’s this one, which I haven’t looked through much (not that I’ve gone through any of these thoroughly)
https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/University_of_California_Davis/Chem_205%3A_Symmetry_Spectroscopy_and_Structure/02%3A_Electronic_Spectroscopy/2.03%3A_Broadening_Mechanisms
…
A few things I’ve learned… I think…
Elastic collisions: leave the quantized states (ie. rotational (I presume this is included), vibrational, electronic, nuclear (just covering the bases)) unchanged in a categorical sense, but during the collision, the field(s) of the colliding matter smoothly shift the energies of said states (they are a function of the relative arrangement of the subject molecule and the interacting matter) and thus potentially the energies of any transitions that would occur (as well as the Einstein coefficient A_{i,j} for spontaneous emission (the source https://faculty.kfupm.edu.sa/PHYS/magondal/Phys608/Lecturedetails/3.3.pdf didn’t discuss absorption but the other coefficients would have to change, too, I’d think, unless this is an effective change in the real component of the refractive index…) (this is actually (a part of?) what defines a collision in this context).
Inelastic collisions cause such changes (in internal quantum states: vibrational/etc.).
If a transition occurs in such a short time frame that the relative arrangement is nearly constant during it, then that leads to quasi-static broadening.
If a transition is interrupted by many elastic collisions, each causes a shift in the phase of the emitted photon, breaking the wave train up into segments that are not coherent with each other, contributing to broadening.
https://faculty.kfupm.edu.sa/PHYS/magondal/Phys608/Lecturedetails/3.3.pdf p.14 (of the file)
(Given something Ray Ladbury said about photons not having individual (me: trackable?) identities, I wonder if the broken-up photon segments from interrupted emissions & absorptions (including due to inelastic collisions) end up combining to make new whole photons.)
https://faculty.kfupm.edu.sa/PHYS/magondal/Phys608/Lecturedetails/3.3.pdf :
PS p.11-12 (of the file): the duration of a collision may be ~ 2 ps (2 E−12 s) (for the parameters considered) (this is *not* the mean period between collisions). P.12 has a seeming contradiction: they say the typical duration of an electronic transition is much less than 2 ps:
And yet, above that on the same page (some formatting may be lost in C&P):
– and they’re referring to isolated atoms so presumably these are electronic states and transitions (PS I don’t remember offhand if this is based on Earth’s atmosphere or not…)
…
I’ll also note that I think I’ve seen this now in multiple places: the quantum uncertainty effect of broadening the line due to finite durations is not applied directly to the photon (duration of emission or absorption process) but to the excited state’s lifetime.
https://home.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~emr/stralingsprocessen/les12.pdf :
p.3/20: ∆ν·∆t ≈ 1/(2π) (quantum uncertainty relation)
apply to ∆t ~ 2 ps, ∆ν ~ 10¹²/π Hz ~ 0.3 THz
∆t ~ 1 % of 2 ps : ∆ν ~ 10¹⁴/π Hz ~ 30 THz
p.5/20:
∆ν ~ 10⁸ Hz = 0.1 GHz = 0.0001 THz
Lyman α transition ν = 2500 THz
Context:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum#Regions :
visible spectrum: λ ~ 700 nm to 400 nm ; ν ~ 480 to 750 THz , E ~ 1.77 eV to 3.1 eV (read off table)
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/10/unforced-variations-oct-2024/#comment-826352 :
@ λ 15 µm , ν ≈ 19.986 THz , E ≈ 0.082 656 eV = 82.656 meV
And E/(kT) ≈ 3.1973
(cont. from https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/unforced-variations-july-2026/#comment-849941 , https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/unforced-variations-july-2026/#comment-850145 , https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/unforced-variations-july-2026/#comment-850148 , https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/unforced-variations-july-2026/#comment-850179 …)
re Tomáš Kalisz @ https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/unforced-variations-july-2026/#comment-850227 – see my https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2026/07/unforced-variations-july-2026/#comment-849537 :
ie. not accounting for stimulated emission would give effective absorption areas (cross sections) that are too large.
rate of stimulated emission / rate of direct absorption @ LTE/LEDNLIE = exp[−E/(kT)] =
at 15 µm:
300 K : 4.087 %
250 K : 2.156 %
200 K : 0.8263 %
at 50 µm:
300 K : 38.32 %
250 K : 31.63 %
200 K : 23.72 %
at 100 µm:
300 K : 61.90 %
250 K : 56.24 %
200 K : 48.70 %
I think lasers involve a ratio greater than 100%. It’s produced in a situation where LTE is incomplete; the population distribution between the energy levels involved fits a negative temperature (it’s so hot it’s gone past infinity, through 1/0, −infinity, … etc.) ie. a population inversion. (This math makes sense if you take the real number line and connect the ends to make a circle (you can take the complex number plane and make it into a sphere) You can describe curvature by a radius of curvature; the radius is 1÷0 when you’ve got a straight line.)
“ie. not accounting for stimulated emission would give effective absorption areas (cross sections) that are too large.”
But don’t be alarmed by the lack of mention of stimulated emission by others; I think people, in the context of GHE and perhaps radiant heat flows in general (at least whenever the LTE approximation works well), when they refer to “absorption”, are (I believe) typically referring to “total absorption”, so the effect is included. And given the line strengths and broadening, or absorption cross sections (σ_a) and/or other measures (absorption coefficient, mass absorption coefficient, emissivity of a surface, etc.), people can do calculations and construct numerical and conceptual models without needing to know much about the quantum mechanical details that underpin it.
@ T = 300 K (why do I keep forgetting to specify that!)
Both GISTEMP and NOAA have reported for July, with the GISS global July anomaly the warmest-July-on-record but not by any great margin. (GISS July26 = +1.23ºC topping July24 +1.20ºC. NOAA’s July26 only manage an =1st spot with July24.)
The July26 anomaly shows an increase from June26 although year-to-date July’s anomaly only makes 3rd-highest-month (2nd-highest in NOAA while actual-highest in ERA5 SAT) for the year-to-date. (GISS 2026 Jan-July runs +1.08ºC, +1.24ºC, +1.32ºC, +1.17ºC, +1.13ºC, +1.18ºC, +1.23ºC.)
With GISS/NOAA records a combined SAT/SST measure, I had expected a larger increase for July given the 60N-60S SST in the ERA5 re-analysis have been running at record levels since mid-June.
In all (GISS, NOAA & ERA5), the June→July anomaly-increase is mainly a NH thing with smaller SH increases.
The Copernicus report for July mentioned their 60N-60S SST which has been hottest-on-record-for-the-day since mid-June was “rapidly approaching” the all-day absolute record of +21.09ºC set back in March 2024. This “approach” has a bit of a shelf-life as the global absolute-temperature cycle sees cooling set in mid-August. An update – as of 10th Aug the 60-60SST anomaly remains stuck +21.05º.
MA Rodger says
… warmest-July-on-record but not by any great margin.
… NOAA’s July26 only manage an =1st spot with July24
… year-to-date July’s anomaly only makes 3rd-highest-month
… 2nd-highest in NOAA
… the June→July anomaly-increase is mainly a NH thing
… the 60-60SST anomaly remains stuck +21.05º.
MK: That sounds like it’s the good news.
If you’re seeking a better than average review of the current hot weather climate trends then you should check Dr. James Hansen’s regular communications — not linked with others at the top unfortunately. Might be too technical for some but his reports are credible, much better than the mainstream, but that is only my subjective opinion.
> Jul 23, 2026 Beware Media Hype. It’s Not the El Nino! (driving the record heat, yet)
Abstract: Emerging climate extremes should draw public attention to human-caused climate change. We expect unusual sea surface temperature (SST) and global warming the rest of this year to make 2026 hotter than 2024, despite 2024 being a peak El Nino year, while 2026 is only the lead-in year of an emerging El Nino (building to Dec into 2027.)
Global SST in 2026 (red curve in Fig. 7) is now at a record high for the date. We compare 2026 with the record warm 2024, shown by the heavy grey curve in Fig. 7. Correlations of land, ocean, and global temperature anomalies (Fig. 8) show that the land anomalies lag the ocean anomalies by three months.
The 2026 global SST surpasses the 2024 global SST by mid-June; thus, given the lag, 2024 might remain warmer than 2026 in July, but the final five months of the year should have 2026 as warmer than 2024. We expect the gap in the stretch run (November, December) to be so large as to (unfortunately) make 2026 the hottest year – until 2027, which will be even hotter.
There are reasons to hope that the warming rate might slow down. For one thing, in 2023 solar irradiance was rising toward solar maximum of the ~11year solar cycle, while in 2026 the solar irradiance is declining. [We will present data for all the known climate forcings in an upcoming communication.] The solar variations are small, but not negligible. The maximum global temperature anomaly caused by the solar cycle occurs about a year after the maximum irradiance, which was about a year ago. O.K., so we were grasping for straws. We didn’t really have good news.
–
https://jimehansen.substack.com/p/beware-media-hype-its-not-the-el
> Aug 05, 2026 HEAT the Master Variable
wheat that stops growing at 27 degrees;
the dairy cow that simply stops making milk;
a French cornfield cooked in a two-week heat dome;
2024 was the hottest year in the instrumental record,
the first full calendar year more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial baseline,;
the hottest ten-year stretch ever measured in the history of humankind.
2025 came in second or third (depending on how temperatures are measured)
the three-year average has now crossed 1.5°C for the first time
the heat waves that swept Europe, Asia, and North America were, by the reckoning of the scientists who study them, the deadliest weather events of the year 2025.
in several cases, roughly ten times more likely than they would have been only a decade ago.
single European summer put land temperatures past 46°C on the Iberian Peninsula
and is estimated to have killed on the order of 16,000 people…..
KM: All this before the 2026 heatwaves droughts and wildfires of the northern summer.
Note: Figure 7 and 2026 conditions. Western and Central Europe: a record late-June heat dome and repeated heatwaves cut the 2026 harvest, with COCERAL’s out-of-cycle forecast lowering EU-and-UK grain by 23.4 million tonnes and French maize near 9.4 million tonnes (its lowest in decades), and EU JRC MARS bulletin reductions for grain maize and sunflower. United States: USDA Agricultural Weather Highlights on record Northern Plains heat (about 105°F at Bismarck, North Dakota) and Plains drought (June–July 2026). China: reporting on the early-August 2026 heat wave across northern and eastern farming regions (Bloomberg, citing Vaisala). South and Southeast Asia and Australia: Reuters and ABARES on El Niño-driven heat and below-normal rainfall affecting India, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Australia. Country shading marks where heat-driven crop stress was reported, not sub-national extent; figures are as reported through early August 2026.
–
https://www.4hunger.org/p/heat-the-master-variable-how-extreme
KM: Don’t worry, it’s gonna get worse before it gets worse. What is the context and what’s in the News?
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes in southwestern France and Spain as extreme wildfires intensify.
https://theconversation.com/the-fire-has-such-power-why-the-wildfires-gripping-france-and-spain-are-off-the-charts-288507
Heatwaves and raging fires mark Europe’s ‘dystopian’ summer
“What climate will this boy grow up in?”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-02/europe-fires-fingerprints-of-climate-change/106967040
‘Extremely scary findings’ show climate crisis is supercharging Europe’s wildfire weather
Latest study says global heating has made hot, dry and windy conditions in Spain at least 20 times more likely
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/31/wildfires-extreme-weather-europe-spain-france-climate-crisis-analysis
SIX LESSONS FROM A WORLD ON FIRE
5 August 2026
Right now, wildfires are burning simultaneously across the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Crete, Canada, the United States, Norway and North Africa. As former fire and emergency chiefs, we’ve spent our careers analysing unfolding disasters. Here’s what it’s telling us
https://emergencyleadersforclimateaction.org.au/resources/six-lessons-from-a-world-on-fire/
NYTs Europe’s Summer of Reckoning Is ‘Just the Beginning’
29 July 2026 … The continent is experiencing some of its biggest fires and highest temperatures ever. Residents are fleeing, leaders are struggling to …
28 July 2026 … Europe has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the globe. The fires in France and Spain are a consequence of extreme heat this summer, …
29 July 2026 … Parts of Europe, North America, North Africa and South America are facing severe heatwaves and wildfires. Many broke records before peak fire …
31 July 2026 … “What’s unique about [the July fires in Spain and France] is that it’s still early in the season – and with another heatwave looming, these …
29 July 2026 … The fires facing Spanish and French firefighters are harder to put out – and much more intense.
Wildfires are burning across Europe and the US. Here’s the part of …
13 July 2026 … Wildfires rage across more than 1 million acres in US and Canada … What Aren’t they telling us about these California wild fires ?
UNICEF Canada on Instagram: “Wildfires. Heatwaves. Storms. Just …
30 July 2026 … Children across northern Ontario are indoors again today. Smoke from 191 wildfires blankets more than 30 communities. The smoke is also …
How bad are the Canadian & US wildfires, and what is the air … – BBC
18 July 2026 … Cities across north-eastern Canada and the US are continuing to suffer from intense smoke brought on by hundreds of wildfires burning across …
6 Aug 2025 … Wildfires burning across the western U.S. and Canada are creating health concerns for millions of Americans, impacting air quality across …
Context is everything, well almost everything.
KM,
So your message is “Forget everything else! Just listen to honest Jim Hansen. He tells it as it is!!”
And what is his latest communique saying?
The latest on the list is from Hansen et al three weeks ago entitled ‘Beware Media Hype. It’s not the El Nino! And the messaging which you cut-&-paste from that communique can be more succinctly put – While 2026 is expected to become hottest on record (in terms of SST), we should not be comparing 2026 with 2024 but with 2023, a pre-El Niño year like 2026. And the “It’s-not-the-El-Nino” bit is so we don’t forget the AGW and also don’t forget that the IPCC version of AGW apparently can’t be trusted coz it suffers “a fly in the ointment.” And a final message of potential “good news” is cynically admitted as being “grasping for straws.”
I note they now have a continually updated website showing the state of AGW. I’m not very impressed, both by the ‘continually updated’ aspect of it and by the ‘showing’ aspect of it. Hey, they might learn something about both aspects with a visit to ‘The Banana!!! Watch’
The ‘warmest year’ thing cannot help but compare 2026 (a pre-El Niño year) with 2024 (an El Niño year) which is of course presently the ‘warmest year’. But ‘warmest years’ are frequently dependent on the record chosen and not always El Niño years (‘Warmest years’marked bold in the lists below)
GISTEMP
1998, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2020, 2023, 2024.
NOAA
1998, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2020, 2023, 2024.
ERA 60N-60S SST (quoted by Hansen et al)
1998, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2020, 2023, 2024.
As pointed out by Zeke Hausfather with this late-July graphic, it is close enough in 2026 that again your choice of data set will likely make a difference, calculating the chances of a 2026 ‘warmest year’ with quite a spread:-
66% (BEST), 65% (GISS), 35% (HadCRUT), 24% (NOAA), 13% (ERA5), 9% (JRA-3Q).
The last two are not really apples-to-apples comparisons with the rest as the ER5 & JRA-3Q re-analysis numbers are SAT while the others are SAT/SST records.
And the SST dimension, at the bottom of his BEST July update from a couple of days ago, Rohde & Hausfather talk of ” a disconnect in 2026″ between land & ocean, putting the BEST global chances at ~69%, BEST land-only chances at 99%.
That is quite a “disconnect.”
My own analysis considers how warm the rest of 2026 would need to be to become ‘warmest year’ and as per the Hausfather analysis, the choice of temperature record is looking to be a big part of the yes/no outcome.
Using NOAA/GISS/ERA5 SAT/ERA5 SST numbers:-
The first part of 2026 was running (Jan to July) warmer than 2023
(+0.10ºC, +0.16ºC, +0.12ºC, +0.12ºC)
and cooler than 2024
(-0.11ºC, -0.09ºC, -0.15ºC, -0.08ºC)
but 2023/24/26 are now expected to swap positions. 2023 was (Aug to Dec) warmer than 2024
(+0.09ºC, +0.07ºC, +0.09ºC, +0.12ºC).
If Aug-Dec 2026 were to simply match Aug-Dec 2023, 2026 would fall just short of ‘warmest year’ status
(-0.03ºC, -0.02ºC, -0.05ºC, -0.00ºC).
But if the 3-years of AGW since 2023 is added to Aug-Dec 2026, the ‘warmest year’ status appears by a slender margin in NOAA & GISS but not in ERA5 SAT
(+0.01ºC, +0.01ºC, -0.01ºC, +0.02ºC).
The ERA5 SST has a smaller AGW trend so that +0.02ºC projection is doubly big. And added to that, mid-year, the 2026 ERA5 SST is already running +0.08ºC above the 2023 numbers which is more than 3-year’s worth of AGW SST. But do note than this ERA5 60N-60S SST has in the past repeatedly had pre-El Niño years as ‘warmest year’.
That’s the end-of-July numbers.
August is looking pretty lively so far. But perhaps fire-watching is more fun.
Something got garbled in the BEST warmest year percentages with my use of ‘more-than & less-than symbols.
Hausfather talk of ” a disconnect in 2026″ between land & ocean, putting the BEST global chances at ~69%, BEST land-only chances at less-than 1% & BEST ocean-only chances at >more-than99%.
That is quite a “disconnect.”
MA Rodger says 16 Aug 2026 at 3:17 AM & 16 Aug 2026 at 3:11 AM
What can I say?
Yes. That is, all up, quite a disconnect.
Readers, if you’re seeking a better than average review of the current hot weather climate trends then you should check Dr. James Hansen’s regular communications — not linked with [the] other [refs] at the top, unfortunately. Might be too technical for some but his reports are credible, much better than the mainstream, but that is only my subjective opinion.
–
It mainly depends on what you are seeking, and why. https://jimehansen.substack.com
K. Maru: ” If you’re seeking a better than average review of the current hot weather climate trends then you should check Dr. James Hansen’s regular communications”
Would that be …. the same Dr. James Hansen whom your new friend Swedan destroyed for … not knowing the basic of physics and for promoting “the so-called greenhouse effect” which according to Mr. Swedan “is a fiction”?
Since wanted to learn more about Mr. Swedan work: “ Hello again Nabil, I’d really like to know more about your work.” – how about them apples:
– Nabil Swedan, on Judith Curry’s blog: “This is a nonsense. There is no greenhouse gas effect; it is a fiction.”
– Nabil Swedan commenting on “Dr. James Hansen” et al. and their 2015 paper that concluded “that 2 ◦C global warming is highly dangerous”, I quote:
” Again, the work presented in [Dr. James Hansen et al.] paper is based on a climate computer model that has incorrect physics.. The energy balance of these climate models is based on the radiative forcing approach of the so called greenhouse gas effect. This effect is a fiction and the radiative approach violates the laws of thermodynamics..”
Author: Nabil Swedan, in Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 15, C5268–C5269, 2015, http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/15/C5268/2015/ =========
KM: “Hello again Nabil, I’d really like to know more about your work”
Be careful what you wished for …
glad you arnt campaining about doing something about Climate Change. Geez, nothing out of the ordinary.
Aaron Bastani Meets Kevin Anderson
Oil-Engineer Turned Climate Whistleblower: We Face COLLAPSE
KM: The video interview is long 1:45 hrs but both Aaron and Kevin are very good at bringing the science implications down to an everyday society practical level many more people might understand better where the real solutions or improvements lay. I wish there were hundreds more climate scientists the last 30 years who spoke realistically and guided by their morals to the public in this way.
Part Five Extracts
On EVs 1-on-1 replacement critique, thinking differently, efficient cheaper public transport, life-saving rational Regulations, timely technologies, Committee on Climate Change
From 1:31:10 – https://youtu.be/mBFos_T7cT0?si=1LH8_SUbpbYA_YyZ&t=5468
a few quotes:
So, we’re all going to move to EVs? There are roughly 35 million cars in the UK. 33 million are basically petrol and diesel, with a few hybrids. The rest – about two million – are electric. We’re going to swap them all to electric, as the Committee on Climate Change broadly says. That’s another 33 million electric cars. Let’s imagine they’re £30,000 each, which is probably about average for new electric cars – and goodness knows there aren’t many second-hand ones; they’re going to have to be new. That’s roughly a trillion pounds we’re going to spend if we follow the government’s and the Committee on Climate Change’s transport agenda.
Roughly a trillion pounds on new electric cars? And then if you look at how often the cars are used – about 96% of the time they’re idle. So cars are used between 4 and 5% of the time. Society is going to spend one trillion pounds of its resources on a technology that is only going to be used for about 4% of the time. It could alternatively spend it on trams, buses, local planning, moving factories and industries to near where people live – all sorts of other things we could do. Instead, we’ve normalised business as usual and no one’s questioning it–an EV just seems to be good. I’m not against EVs. If you’re going to buy a car, buy an EV, not a petrol or diesel one. But the idea that you just swap them out one-for-one – and the rest of the world tries to follow that – is utter nonsense.
——
A lot of what we’ve talked about here comes down to the idea that government has to have the guts to put regulation in place. My argument to ministers and MPs is: when the financial directors of any organisation come to you, put your fingers in your ears. Let them squeal, and then let them go away. Just don’t listen to them. Listen to the engineers – by and large the engineers will deliver if you put the regulations in place. Everyone will moan at the time, and then people afterwards will say, “Would you like to go back to what you had before?” – “No, we like the level playing field.” So regulations are always opposed, but often welcomed afterwards, as long as they’ve been well thought through.
So there’s a real role for regulators, for policy makers, to put regulations in place that drive society from a technical point of view towards these timely technologies – the ones we know work and are affordable and are actually very good both for society and from an employment point of view as well.
So that’s why I come back to – I’m sounding too hopeful for myself here. There are things we know we can do. We know how to do them. We have the timeframe – just about to put them in place. So what is it we’re lacking to make us make that change?
Now, as I said from the beginning, I’m not an optimist. I’m not a pessimist either. I’d argue I’m a realist. I don’t think we’re going to do this. But I can see how we could do it. I just don’t know why we aren’t. And that’s not my forte – other people would know about that. I mean, you would know more about why we’re not doing these things than I would.
——
If you go to the global level, we kill about 1.2 million people a year in cars. 1.2 million a year. So I think more people have been killed in cars since the car was invented than in war since 1800. It’s extraordinary. We’ve normalised slaughter in our form of transport.
And when you think about it – I weigh 82 kg. I might get in a car that weighs somewhere between 1,600 and 4,000 kg depending what sort of car I might have – and then drive a handful of kilometres to pick up some groceries. And we’ve normalised that. Everywhere I go, I carry 2,000 kg of metal with me called a car. We just don’t question it. We’ve got car parks taking real estate, huge roads everywhere that destroy our cities, housing estates where kids can’t go out and play football on the street anymore because of the bloody cars everywhere.
So the climate agenda again asks that question: is that a normal, reasonable thing to do? Is that a reasonable use of society’s resources – to spend a trillion pounds on a technology we hardly ever use, and when we do use it, it kills huge numbers of people? It does give us freedom and so forth, but a lot of that freedom is spent in queues. So are there other ways we could organise a transport system? All we’re thinking about with the Committee on Climate Change and the UK Government is: no, we can just swap and carry on with more and more cars that are going to be bigger than the old cars – and we’re going to build more roads on an island that hasn’t got any bigger.
[end 1:38:48]
KM: It is an epic interview. Kevin Anderson is one of those rare voices who combines technical rigor with moral clarity, and he’s been saying these uncomfortable truths for decades while the mainstream has either ignored or actively sidelined him. His point about “normalised slaughter” via cars, and the sheer absurdity of spending a trillion pounds on objects that sit idle 96% of the time, is the kind of systems-level thinking that cuts through the greenwash. And the hogwash.
And what makes him “gold” is that he’s not a doom-monger — he’s a realist who can see the path forward, but is brutally honest about our collective failure to take it. That tension — “I can see how we could do it, I just don’t know why we aren’t” — is the most devastating part.
James Hansen is similar and is the reason I respect him so much over and above the quality science he and his team are doing. I wish there were more like them.
Keven Anderson makes some perfectly valid criticisms of the automobile culture, and asks about alternatives. Not sure what alternatives he means but buses may be one.
In my view the problem is the alternatives are not looking great especially buses. In many cities bus services just arent very good. You often need to get two buses to go where you want, which people mostly seem find unacceptable. Only a minority of people use the buses. And its hard to see how this changes much.
Many of our cities were designed around the car and are low density. Making public transport work well in that situation is very challenging. A truly flexible bus network would be very expensive to build. Then they could potentially either be too expensive to use compared to the car, or they would require massive tax payer funded subsidies. So politically it may not be viable. The same would apply to building a complete brand new subway network under these vast well established cities. The costs are horrendous. Anderson doesn’t seem to have considered these issues.
In the older, compact high density European cities buses work quite well, and you have subway networks as well. Im talking about the spread out cities you get in parts of America and Australia etc, etc.
Anderson talks about regulation. He isnt specific but perhaps he means literally forcing people to reduce car use, or governments telling bus services how to operate (?) But obviously this would get huge public push back. I don’t think he’s thought any of it through.
I own a car and I use buses regularly, generally whenever its practical. So I’m not anti buses. Just highlighting the huge difficulties finding practical alternatives to the car. Driverless cars might offer the equivalent of a cheap taxi service. But we dont know yet.
Bottom line: Public transport is great in my view. Making it happen so that it hugely expands is very difficult. Cities have been trying to improve public transport and get people out of their cars for DECADES. It generally hasn’t worked very well, so its not clear to me why that is going to ever change. I guess we should try to close the gap and get a few more people into buses, but I suspect the car will remain a major form of transport , at least in the very spread out cities.
Aaron Bastani Meets Kevin Anderson
Oil-Engineer Turned Climate Whistleblower: We Face COLLAPSE
Part Four Extracts
On information flooding · media manipulation · academic complicity · carbon capture · negative emissions · pseudo-technology · delay tactics · oil & gas greenwashing · funding bias · status quo maintenance · expert class failure
From 1:22:15 – https://youtu.be/mBFos_T7cT0?si=s31HVRMQYEjdaJt8&t=4910
A couple of quotes:
Aaron Bastani: You know, there’s a term for this. It was coined by — well, there’s a phrase coined by the RAND Institute after the Gulf War, about information war. You just flood the public sphere with these kinds of things, and you might get a response, a denial — even the denial makes it that little bit more real. And that is how we should look at lots of the media.
——
Kevin Anderson: Can I pull something out of that? This doesn’t just happen in politics — in my [academic climate science] realm, I think that is one of the biggest concerns I have. Many of my academic colleagues — how many of those will postulate all sorts of future technologies — they flood the climate space with carbon capture and storage, negative emission technologies [CDR carbon dioxide removal technologies] — all these things that out in the future are going to solve climate change for us, so we can maintain business as usual today.
That agenda has not only flooded the discourse on climate change — there are huge numbers of papers on these things — but if I go look at what my colleagues work on, far more people are working on carbon capture storage and negative emission technologies. Almost no one is working on radical emission reductions for climate emergency. Virtually no one I know works at that sort of level. But at the other level, all these technologies — whole swathes of technical people, social science people, all sorts of people — are working on those. So you’ve normalised a narrative about technology that barely exists. And I mean literally barely exists — it’s just out of the laboratory, most of this stuff. And we normalise it as if it exists.
——
And I can give you the numbers on this. There is virtually no carbon capture storage globally. It’s 0.03% of all fossil fuel emissions that have been captured, after 30 years of the industry telling us it’s just around the corner and it’s affordable. Now, we do need it on things like cement — and we haven’t got into that detail, but there are things where it would be useful. On the oil and gas industry, it’s a scam to maintain the oil and gas industry.
And the academic community has fed into that by doing all this work on it, by pretending it’s there, by creating these scenarios and narratives. And the Committee on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency, and all these other groups — which then feeds into the global justice report, following the IEA scenarios — all these scenarios that have wedded into technologies. Technologies that are pseudo-technologies. They’re delaying technologies. They’re designed to delay legislation. They’re not designed to deliver.
[end 1:26:10]
——
KM: Anderson describes a structural problem: academic ‘experts’ flooding the discourse with narratives about CDR, CCS, and NETs that barely exist, normalising them as if deployable, delaying real action.
This is not about any individual. But the public roles of certain individuals align precisely with this pattern.
Zeke Hausfather serves as Climate Research Lead for Stripe/Frontier – a corporate fund with over $1.8 billion committed to scaling the very technologies Anderson critiques. He evaluates CDR technologies and informs the science behind corporate advance market commitments. Meanwhile, he is also an IPCC AR6 and AR7 author, analysing and promoting CDR in future IPCC scenarios.
These are structural questions about impartiality, funding, and the normalisation of unproven technologies – not accusations of personal misconduct. The IPCC assumes impartiality from all authors. Whether a lead for a $1.8 billion corporate carbon removal fund can be impartial about the technologies he is paid to evaluate is a reasonable question.
Sources:
Come join my team at @stripe / Frontier and help us spend a billion dollars to scale permanent carbon removal technologies! https://x.com/hausfath/status/1856116133289738665
Stripe Climate is the easiest way to help promising permanent carbon removal technologies launch and scale. Join a growing group of ambitious businesses that are changing the course of carbon removal. “Blackthorn will contribute 1% of your purchase to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere.” https://stripe.com/en-sg/climate
https://trellis.net/article/stripe-pledged-1-million-to-carbon-removal-in-2020-now-it-manages-1-billion/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Climate
https://research.contrary.com/report/stripe
Zeke Hausfather Papers 2025-26 CDR CCS
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=Chq-VAIAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate –
KM: The IPCC has a policy of conflict of interest disclosure, it primarily excludes direct fossil fuel industry employment. The IPCC just assumes impartiality from all authors.
If Hansen is right about higher sensitivity, faster warming, and more warming in the pipeline, then the scenarios Hausfather is actively helping to craft for CMIP7 and IPCC AR7 are dangerously optimistic. And Hausfather’s corporate role in funding the technologies those scenarios rely on means he is not a neutral observer — he is part of the system that benefits from the status quo.
That’s not an accusation of misconduct. It’s an observation about structural entanglement and institutional bias. It warrants some attention. So far there has been none.
As Anderson puts it: “— it’s an issue of the expert class as well. And we’ve swallowed this hook, line, and sinker in the climate realm. I hold the academic community as culpable for this as I do the media.”
The issue is mostly political as the technologies now exist but it’s stated that the EV is made by a country whom the west doesn’t like much so it’s a threat. They spy on you, they threaten western car companies survival because they didn’t bother with them except for Tesla but they are expensive so for the few etc.
We have turbines and solar but again mostly made in China so it’s cheap but why bother because China uses coal to make them and they use a lot of it. In fact why bother at all because of chinas huge emissions.
Rare earth elements dominated by China because we have it up due to the pollution produced and now again it’s a threat because they dominate.
Battery storage, mostly Chinese but not exclusively so but again it’s not economically viable although on. Texas and California it’s working. Mixed messages politically and economically, it’s too expensive, it’s not worth it due to China enormous coal emissions etc
I’m not following you Pete. Your comments do not relate to my comment and information provided. Not that I can recognize.
Peter, is this a dig at your friend, Multitroll KM – who in the past questioned the value of renewables? Then again – he held China and Russia as an example to the corrupt West – so perhaps not.
Since the deniers like to repeat some or all arguments you assembled, for the future reference, let me show why their arguments are dishonest:
“ We have turbines and solar but again mostly made in China so it’s cheap but why bother because China uses coal to make them and they use a lot of it. In fact why bother at all because of chinas huge emissions. ”
A classic “perfect is the enemy of the good” fallacy – disparaging the good by demanding the impossible perfect:
Not only deniers dismiss the good at home – that China:
– is installing at home more photovoltaic than the rest of the world combined
– produced in 2025, 32% of global renewable electricity, while the country that is responsible for almost the quarter of the surplus CO2 currently in the atmosphere – goes all “drill, baby, drill”, eliminates the subsidies to EVs and pays out billions of taxpayer dollars to abandon the already approved wind farms
– massively cut their transportation emissions from what it would have been otherwise (65% of the current sales of passenger cars are EVs!)
but they ALSO attack China for …. making possible/economic for _other_ countries to reduce their emissions, and for the GHG costs accruing to China, while the buyer gets only the benefit part of the ledger (reductions in GHGs emissions). China is the largest, by far, exporter of cheap EVs and cheap PV panels, particularly to Africa, where given rapid increase in population – the demand for electricity and for transportation – increases dramatically.
Next denier trick is comparing apples and oranges – complaining about energy, mineral use and pollution in manufacturing EVs, as if ICE vehicles didn’t require these, and not only in manufacturing but also in subsequent use of the vehicle. Not surprisingly the only honest way of comparison, the comparing of apples not to oranges, but to other apples – Lifecycle (=cradle-to-grave) analysis,
is for some reason …. not very popular among the deniers.
Finally – what’s their alternative – that we …. don’t switch to renewables and don’t switch to EVs until they can be produced …. WITHOUT GHG emissions? But where would you find these new low-emission energy – if we …. stopped making renewables in the first place?
yes China is the way, I am talking about Kevin Anderson and using peoples arguments about doing nothing about GHG emissions. They use tonnes of Coal so no point etc.
Kevin Anderson has been banging on for years about everything that is wrong with the climate science and what to do about it. Academics especially the political ones really get his goat by advocating for technologoies that dont exist – CDR, BECCS, CCS etc becuase it still allows for emisisons to continues whilst we research new things. Truth is we have new things only it comes from China! USA 100% tariffs on EVs from there becuase they spy on us, Winf turbines and Solar also from there so its not very good or not economically viable, Barrery storage, too expensive and cant store enough electricity etc etc etc
China has the solutions mostly but the USA in particular does not appear to want thjem due to spying (Remember 5G). Gathering data on you, being uncompetetive because they were state sponsopred. So the list of excuses to do little goes on.
Simultaneous fire emergencies are breaking out across six countries and three continents. When everywhere is burning at once, no one is left to come to anyone’s aid. Our fire agencies and warning systems are already being outpaced.
Pyroconvective (fire generated) storms used to be considered “black swan” events.
Between 1978 and 2018, there were 60 recorded across Australia. During Australia’s Black Summer, a Royal Commission heard that there was a “flock of these Black Swan events” recorded (25, later revised up to 45) (Abrams et al, 2020; Binskin et al, 2020; Sharples in UNSW 2025).
In Canada’s horror 2023 fire season, when 15 million hectares burned, 142 of these formerly rare events were recorded (Khaykin et al. 2025). France just recorded its first (Bowman, Williamson and Cunningham, 2026).
Fire-generated storms create fires that can’t be fought, and are a clear signal of the worsening fire weather driven by climate change.
After Black Saturday in 2009, Australia had to introduce a new category of fire danger — Catastrophic — because the previous scale that topped out at 100 couldn’t describe the increasingly common fire weather conditions that far exceeded this threshold.
We are seeing the same pattern globally: existing thresholds, warning systems and preparedness levels are being exceeded, not once, but repeatedly, across multiple countries in the same fortnight.
The frequency and severity of today’s wildfires is unprecedented and worsening. Make no mistake: this is driven by climate pollution from the burning of coal, oil and gas, making the world hotter and drier, fuelling more severe and frequent fire weather.
https://emergencyleadersforclimateaction.org.au/resources/six-lessons-from-a-world-on-fire/
KM: The frequency and severity of today’s wildfires is unprecedented and worsening. Make no mistake: this is driven by climate pollution from the burning of coal, oil and gas, making the world hotter and drier, fuelling [sic] more severe and frequent fire weather.
BPL: You’re right. I have nothing to add.
BPL: You’re right. I have nothing to add.
KM: Not me, these guys >
https://emergencyleadersforclimateaction.org.au/who-we-are/
The only thing I did was post a quote.
In April 2019, 3 former emergency service leaders led by former commissioner of NSW Fire and Rescue Greg Mullins, wrote to the Federal Government, alerting them to the threat of “increasingly catastrophic extreme weather events” and calling on both major parties to recognise the need for “national firefighting assets”, including large aircraft, to deal with the scale of the threat. ELCA launched a joint statement in The Australian and The Age Newspapers.
https://emergencyleadersforclimateaction.org.au/statement
Making comments online is easy. My opinion, right or wrong, doesn’t rate much if at all.
Tomáš,
This is to address your question about variable and dynamic layers near the tropopause as opposed to your impression (seemingly also ES’s) that this layer was relatively static.
I have not delved into the available instructional materials in many years. This subject was certainly covered in my college meteorology education, and it was well-known that the tropopause region was quite active. I received further instruction as a forecaster. I no longer remember when, but it was explained that there is usually a “tropopause fold” associated with an active jet stream. Tropospheric air rises higher on the equatorial side of the jet, and stratospheric air descends on the poleward side. This information was encoded in a very old forecaster’s “cookbook” forecasting tool of looking at 200 mb warm advection to gauge the intensity of an oncoming weather system associated with a jet stream maximum. The stratospheric air is warmer than the tropospheric air found at that pressure level. This is because the tropical tropopause is located above 200 mb, while the subpolar tropopause is well below that level.
As numerical weather prediction advanced, the location and intensity of the lift generated by the models became more accurate, and the diagnostics were more advanced. By the time I retired, isentropic potential vorticity became the tool to distinguish stratospheric from upper tropospheric air, and also gauge the intensity of the weather system.
Potatoes are literally boiling in the ground.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/13/asia-heatwave-south-korea-potatoes-boil-ground-record-heat-hong-kong-japan
Food shortages are coming soon…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/13/britain-food-crisis-government-summer-weather-war-stockpiles?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
KM: Will enough, ever be enough?
Famine, Affluence, and Morality is a classic essay written by Peter Singer in 1971.
(Jump to the full text)
It has been very influential both in shaping humanitarian ideas and in inspiring the modern effective giving movement. It’s also often referenced within effective altruism.
Below, we’ve summarised the core arguments and explained their reception.
Summary of Famine, Affluence and Morality
Main argument
Peter Singer’s core argument in Famine, Affluence and Morality is as follows:
“if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.”
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/videos-books-and-essays/famine-affluence-and-morality-peter-singer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine,_Affluence,_and_Morality
RELOCATING >> Martin Smith says 14 Aug 2026 at 10:55 AM
KM: Martin, if you can agree with that definition, then show us here who was the other person/article making an argument I am alleged to have been exaggerating or changed to make it easier to knock down.?
MS: You were both person, KM. You wrote this: “if fossil fuel consumption projections show growth, what is the path to reducing emissions really worth?”
I read that as implying that the path to reducing emissions isn’t worth following, or at least that it might not be worth following. That’s a strawman because the obvious value of following the path to reducing emissions is the reduction of emissions. What we have done already with EVs and wind and solar generation has reduced the increases in emissions, which is, effectively, a reduction of emissions. The fact that total emissions are still rising and are projected to continue rising for a long time doesn’t make slowing down the increase valueless, but that is your implication.
If we stop making EVs and stop building wind turbines and solar panels, emissions will get a lot worse. I believed that you surely couldn’t mean we should do that, but then what is the point of your question about the value of reducing emissions? That’s why I asked for your alternative plan. Let’s say the computation shows there is no value to trying to reduce emissions by building EVs, wind turbines, and solar panels. Then what should we do instead?
—
KM replies:
This is quite funny to me. Oh the vagaries of communications and biases. It’s like me saying: “This bridge is collapsing.” And Martin replying: “Oh yeah? Show me your blueprints for a better bridge then!!!”
I’ll repeat there is no Strawman on my part. It’s all on you Martin. So I’ll add a few things and will again leave you with the Last Word.
Category Error (or Levels-of-Analysis Mismatch) I am and was addressing the strategic value of a system-wide path that is demonstrably failing to lower global emissions. Martin is answering at the tactical level—”but EVs and solar are better than nothing!”
I am speaking to the efficacy of the whole approach. He’s talking about incremental improvements within that approach. These are different categories of question. He can’t see my question — due to blind spots even when pushed.
Martin accused me of a strawman, but ironically he’s creating one by reducing my point to: “Are you saying we should stop building EVs and solar?”
That’s not what I said. I asked about the worth of the path given the projections and lack of success to date. That’s a perfectly legitimate question. He’s reframing it as an all-or-nothing binary. Either we value the path or we abandon it entirely. That’s a false choice! That is not what I said. That’s why Martin is guilty of the Strawman fallacy here! Not me.
Some people can’t easily step up from concrete examples to systemic critique. To entertain my question accurately as put — what if the whole system approach being deployed today is insufficient? — would likely threaten his worldview. It does others.
It raises the question, which my comment was addressing generically — What if Kevin Anderson is actually correct?
Reducing my argument to an absurd extreme (“so we should stop building renewables?”) is reframing the debate to Martin’s terms, while ignoring my own. I started the conversation, I set the parameters myself.
There is a large Philosophical Blind Spot here. The difference between Consequentialism vs. Intentionalism. I am asking “What is the actual outcome of this path? Is it working?” that’s Consequentialist.
Martin’s is doing something different he’s arguing: “But we’re doing the right things, and they help!” that’s Intentionality / Virtue-Signaling toward action.
I am measuring by results. He’s measuring by intended effort. And never the twain shall meet. He’s stuck at the operational/tactical level (EVs, solar, wind) and can’t—or won’t—ascend to the strategic/systemic level where my question lives.
My question is perfectly clear: “If the whole strategy (the path) still leads to rising emissions, then what is the strategy really achieving?”
That’s a devastating question. And he can’t answer it and so his blind spot demands that he pretend I asked something else.
KM: My question is perfectly clear: “If the whole strategy (the path) still leads to rising emissions, then what is the strategy really achieving?”
MS: That was not your question, KM. This was your question. At least, it was the question I answered:
“if fossil fuel consumption projections show growth, what is the path to reducing emissions really worth?”
See how different your two questions are. Your question that I answered was about emissions projections showing that emissions will continue to increase as we convert from ICE’s to EV’s and as we convert from burning coal and gas to make electricity to using wind, solar, and nuclear. It is hardly remarkable that increasing emissions will continue for years to come, even a few decades, but you seem to believe, and your comment implied, that because emissions will continue to increase for the near to medium term, why try to slow the increase down at all? Obviously, the progress we are making with EVs, batteries, and solar and wind power generation the value.
But now your question is quite different. Now you are saying that the strategy of trying to convert from fossil fuels to renewables and nuclear “still leads to rising emission,” i.e. our strategy of converting to renewables and nuclear is causing higher emissions.
What kind of argument is that?
Martin Smith says 16 Aug 2026 at 10:03 AM
See how different your two questions are. — But now your question is quite different.
KM: Martin, they are semantically identical.
Martin, you didn’t understand it the first time, or second or third time. All the context included with multiple comments does not seem to help any. You still can’t understand it with clearer phrasing.
Maybe AI could help you? I certainly cannot.
KM : “That’s not what I said. I asked about the worth of the path given the projections and lack of success to date. That’s a perfectly legitimate question. He’s reframing it as an all-or-nothing binary. Either we value the path or we abandon it entirely. That’s a false choice! That is not what I said. That’s why Martin is guilty of the Strawman fallacy here! Not me.”
If KM is asking about the worth of the path given the lack of success to date, what is he suggesting if not that the path should be abandoned? And try something else entirely? Why keep it if its worthless?
Or is he trying to say keep the current path building renewables and evs, and try something else as well in parallel? Can he please answer that and elaborate,?
Hes wrong anyway about the current path, because we have reduced the rate of emissions growth. Coal use is declining.
Hes been making the same sort of statements for the last ten years under multiple names, carefully ignoring the progress we have made or denying it in the most absurd ways. Piotr and MS are just the latest guys to challenge him (and quite well)