by Judith Curry
Interesting article in The Atlantic, but I’m still trying to figure out what is being ‘denied.’
The Atlantic has an interesting article How the New Climate Denial is Like the Old Climate Denial. Subtitle: Both are excuses for inaction.
It seems that I am the scientific poster child for the new denialism:
There has been a subtle shift recently in the rhetoric of many conservative pundits and politicians around climate change. For decades, the common refrain has been flat-out denial—either that climate change is not happening, or that any change is not caused by human activity. Which is why viewers might have been surprised to see Tucker Carlson of Fox News nodding along thoughtfully on January 6 as climate scientist Judith Curry, a controversial figure in climate science, explained, “Yes it’s warming and yes humans contribute to it. Everybody agrees with that, and I’m in the 98 percent [of scientists who agree]. It’s when you get down to the details that there’s genuine disagreement.” Carlson immediately turns to the camera and moots a multi-part series: “What do we know? What don’t we know?”
This rhetorical stance—yes, climate change is real, and yes, human activity is implicated, but we don’t know how much human activity is to blame—is fast becoming the go-to position for conservatives. In confirmation hearings last week, Senator Ed Markey asked Scott Pruitt, Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, if he agrees with Trump that global warming is a “hoax.” Pruitt replied that he does not. But later, under questioning by Senator Bernie Sanders, Pruitt refused to say how much change is caused by human activity. He would say only that the “climate is changing, and human activity contributes to that in some manner.” When pressed by Sanders on whether he agreed with 97 percent of scientists who have published in peer-reviewed journals that human activity is “the fundamental reason we are seeing climate change,” Pruitt equivocated. “I believe the ability to measure with precision the degree of human activity’s impact on the climate is subject to more debate.”
Well, I’m getting ready to declare victory here. What I have been trying to do for the last 7 years is to bring to ‘denying’ policy makers to a more rational position on the science of climate change. It seems like this has been accomplished (I’m humble enough not to take full credit :)
Uncertainty has proved a reliable tool to manipulate public perception of climate change and stall political action. In 2015, the Union of Concerned Scientists released The Climate Deception Dossiers, which describes a 1998 memo from the American Petroleum Institute that, according to the dossiers, “mapped out a multifaceted deception strategy for the fossil-fuel industry that continues to this day—outlining plans to reach the media, the public, and policy makers with a message emphasizing ‘uncertainties’ in climate science.” The UCS authors write that the memo (included in the report) states “victory” would be achieved “when ‘average citizens’ and the media were convinced of uncertainties in climate science despite overwhelming evidence of the impact of human-caused global warming and nearly unanimous agreement about it in the scientific community.”
Huh? Acknowledging uncertainties is ‘science denial’? Virtually no one denies that humans have an influence on climate. The key question is whether human causes have dominated the recent warming. Even the IPCC hedges on this one, with their highly confident ‘more than half.’
In his recent confirmation hearings, Rex Tillerson, ex-CEO of ExxonMobil and newly-minted U.S. Secretary of State, was asked to explain his “personal view” of climate change. Tillerson would say only that “after 20 years as an engineer and a scientist,” he had concluded “the risk of climate change does exist,” and “the consequences could be serious enough that action should be taken.” Senator Bob Corker then pointedly asked, “Do you believe that human activity, based on science, is contributing?” Tillerson dodged again, saying only, “The increase in greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is having an effect. Our ability to predict that effect is very limited.”
Our ability to predict the effect of increasing CO2 is very limited. The IPCC AR5 puts the value of equilibrium climate sensitivity between 1.5 -4.5 C, with ‘likely’ confidence, implying significant probabilities outside this range. Referring to this as very limited ability to predict the effect of additional CO2 on climate is not only defensible, but it is in accord with the IPCC’s own conclusion on this.
And now for the ‘logic’ of Gavin:
Tillerson can make statements like these because climate research is ongoing, and climate models are inherently imprecise. According to Schmidt, “To say that science isn’t settled on things people are still researching is totally irrelevant. There are lots of interesting things about climate change, and adaptation, and interactions between air pollution and clouds, but they’re just not relevant to the question, which is: Is what’s going on related to humans? And the answer is: Yes, it is.”
The Atlantic article concludes with this:
The recent shift in conservative rhetoric exploits legitimate scientific uncertainty that most scientists agree is irrelevant to crafting responsible climate policy. Despite overwhelming evidence, many conservatives are still willing to ignore scientific consensus and stall political action.
Scientists agree that legitimate scientific uncertainty is irrelevant to crafting responsible climate policy? What the heck do scientists know about crafting policy, let alone ‘responsible’ climate policy?
JC reflections
Back to my original question: exactly what is being ‘denied’? As far as I can tell, here is what is being ‘denied’: that the policies put in place under the Paris Agreement will on net be beneficial to global societies and ecosystems, and that they will have any kind of impact on the climate of the 21st century.
Climate denialism is no longer about science; its about action versus inaction – in particular, the UNFCCC’s preferred actions. It doesn’t seem to matter that the emissions targets are woefully inadequate for preventing what they expect to be ‘dangerous’ climate change; emissions targets are unlikely to be met; and the climate will show little change in the 21st century even if the targets are met.
Let me take this opportunity to redefine climate denialism: denial that the UNFCCC policies will accomplish significant improvement of the climate as defined by increasing human health, increasing human economic benefits, and improving the resilience of ecosystems.
At the risk of sounding indelicate: Screw humility. You did it.
AMEN ! :-)
George Devries Klein, PhD, PG, FGSA
YOU SHOULD BRUSH UP ON WHAT CLIMATE IS: -”there is no such a thing as ‘’earth’s global climate’’ – there are many INDEPENDENT different MICRO CLIMATES 1] Alpine climate 2] Mediterranean climate, 3] sea- level climate 4] high altitude climate 5] temperate climates 6] subtropical climate, 7] tropical climate 8] desert climate 9] rainforest climates 10] wet climate 11] dry climate, as in desert AND THEY KEEP CHANGING; wet climate gets dry occasionally b] even rains in the desert sometimes and improves. In the tropics is wet and dry -/- in subtropics and temperate climates changes four time a year, WITH EVERY season= migratory birds can tell you that; because they know much more about climate than all the Warmist foot-solders and all climate skeptics combined – on the polar caps climates change twice a year. Leading Warmist know that is no ”global warming” so they encompassed ”climatic changes” to confuse and con the ignorant – so that when is some extreme weather for few days on some corner of the planet, to use it as proof of their phony global warming and ignore that the weather is good simultaneously on the other 97% of the planet, even though is same amount of co2. In other words, they used the trick as: -”if you want to sell that the sun is orbiting around the earth -> you encompass the moon – present proofs that the moon is orbiting around the earth and occasionally insert that: the sun and moon rise from same place and set to the west, proof that the ”sun is orbiting around the earth” AND the trick works, because the Flat-Earthers called ”climate skeptics” are fanatically supporting 90% of the Warmist lies. Bottom line: if somebody doesn’t believe that on the earth climate exist and constantly changes, but is no global warming -> ”climate skeptic” shouldn’t be allowed on the street, unless accompanied by an adult. b] many micro-climates and they keep changing, but no such a thing as ”global climate”
Dr. Curry, thank you for your fine work.
The C in CAGW is based on speculation [In spite of no discernible degradation in any climate metric.], abetted by IPCC climate models.
Real scientific uncertainties, hopefully, will be explored under new management.
Pingback: The new ‘climate denial’ – Enjeux énergies et environnement
Judith, you’re going to get the blame from some, so you might as well get the credit from others. You have been a fearless voice in promoting a rational view while others were losing their heads.
And that was the end of the Bates story? What about the e-mails and documentation? Are they still under IRS audit and can’t be released?
After all was said and done, After people asked Bates the Tough questions.
He said:
“The Science paper would have been fine had it simply had a disclaimer at the bottom saying that it was citing research, not operational, data for its land-surface temperatures, Bates says.”
So what was wrong with K15? According to bates.. they needed to add a disclaimer that the land data was Research. But then every scientist reading the paper knew that.
or as Emily would say
Actually, no. If you had bothered to read Bates, what he said in big words, amounts to:
The whole thing was a political exercise. There was no detectable science involved.
Steven,
The E&E interview by Bates has to be one of the biggest walk-backs I’ve seen in a long time. Much Ado About Nothing.
I’ve learned to be careful about guest posts This is a reminder to investigate them thoroughly.
My take, to paraphrase Bates:
“Karl made a lot of ad-hoc choices which, in my opinion, confirmed his bias.”
Hooray, Mosher finally gets it. It’s about process.
And as regards implied understanding of the disclaimer, do you recall the Hide The Decline incident, Steven ?
There is a specific thread for the Bates topic.
Or are you just trolling Rune?
You deserve a lot more credit than you will ever receive. You are the “Voice of Real Climate Science”, in my view. I do not know you, but you come across as a scientist with high standards and a strong understanding of scientific method. It is so refreshing to read your arguments and to listen to a scientist that is honest and credible.
Glad to hear you are enjoying your new position.
I suggest you just keep being you! I am listening, reading and learning.
Dick Piland
Niwot, CO
*denying* the PHONY GLOBAL WARMING, hot denying climate:
YOU SHOULD BRUSH UP ON WHAT CLIMATE IS: -”there is no such a thing as ‘’earth’s global climate’’ – there are many INDEPENDENT different MICRO CLIMATES 1] Alpine climate 2] Mediterranean climate, 3] sea- level climate 4] high altitude climate 5] temperate climates 6] subtropical climate, 7] tropical climate 8] desert climate 9] rainforest climates 10] wet climate 11] dry climate, as in desert AND THEY KEEP CHANGING; wet climate gets dry occasionally b] even rains in the desert sometimes and improves. In the tropics is wet and dry -/- in subtropics and temperate climates changes four time a year, WITH EVERY season= migratory birds can tell you that; because they know much more about climate than all the Warmist foot-solders and all climate skeptics combined – on the polar caps climates change twice a year. Leading Warmist know that is no ”global warming” so they encompassed ”climatic changes” to confuse and con the ignorant – so that when is some extreme weather for few days on some corner of the planet, to use it as proof of their phony global warming and ignore that the weather is good simultaneously on the other 97% of the planet, even though is same amount of co2. In other words, they used the trick as: -”if you want to sell that the sun is orbiting around the earth -> you encompass the moon – present proofs that the moon is orbiting around the earth and occasionally insert that: the sun and moon rise from same place and set to the west, proof that the ”sun is orbiting around the earth” AND the trick works, because the Flat-Earthers called ”climate skeptics” are fanatically supporting 90% of the Warmist lies. Bottom line: if somebody doesn’t believe that on the earth climate exist and constantly changes, but is no global warming -> ”climate skeptic” shouldn’t be allowed on the street, unless accompanied by an adult. b] many micro-climates and they keep changing, but no such a thing as ”global climate”
“… legitimate scientific uncertainty that most scientists agree is irrelevant to crafting responsible climate policy.”
This sounds made up.
The most dangerous aspect of that statement is the defference to scientists on policy.
Science is only relevant to crafting policy when it is convenient to crafting politics.
Policy is nothing but politics in a rented suit.
Gavin is either in denial or the land of make-believe. Simply put, if there is uncertainty, you cannot craft policy. You only have to look at the myriad of unintended consequences of climate policy to see this.
If I recall my Science, Technology, Engineering, and Policy (STEP) training properly, the running consensus of many scholars in the science and technology policy community is the following:
1. Scientific knowledge is continuously evolving and is never complete.
2. There can never be enough scientific research that will complete the scientific knowledge and/or eliminate uncertainty about a given subject.
3. More expenditures on scientific research, to increase scientific knowledge and reduce uncertainty about a particular problem, is not necessarily warranted before making public policy.
4. Public policy must be made, even in the presence of scientific uncertainty and insufficient knowledge.
5. The greater the potential social impact of a particular scientific problem, the greater is the urgency for public policy action.
Based on my STEP research and experience, I will also add the following:
1. Doing nothing at all is in fact setting public policy.
2. Crucially, it should be understood that in some cases, imposed public policies can have, in the near term, more catastrophic effects on the public than that of a “scientifically predicted” future global problem (i.e. climate change and associated policies). The predicted effects of anthropogenic climate change are substantially different from the eminent effects of other pressing and impactful scientific problems such as the ozone holes, atmospheric pollution, known carcinogens, nuclear waste, etc.
3. If any public policy is to have a remote chance at having an effect on a global problem, then all nations contributing to the perceived problem must be subject to exactly the same policies without exceptions.
4. Often times being patient to obtain more knowledge and certainty through more scientific research is better than rushing to poor public policy implementations.
5. Assuming that scientific consensus means that 97% of all scientists fully understand climate science and agree to all of its technical parameters, assumptions, and means to measure or compute them is incorrect.
6. Scientific consensus really means “scientific pile-on” (my term), and is based on the acknowledgement of proven epistemic authority of scientists engaged in a particular discipline (i.e. climate science). This acknowledgement of epistemic authority places trust in scientists to produce information using acknowledged scientific methods, and that the peer reviewed results of the generated information are in fact accepted as scientific knowledge. Generally speaking, this is not significantly different from lay person acceptance of scientific knowledge.
7. This pile-on effect does not mean that scientists are qualified to make scientific assessments of a subject that is outside of their proven domain of epistemic authority. In fact, they are not really qualified at all, once outside of their domain of expertise.
“”Simply put, if there is uncertainty, you cannot craft policy.””
There will always be an unknown measure to uncertainty of any concept. Policy, however, must take action if consensus alarms concern.
The pit-fall is if consensus is politically driven and, by-the-way, paid for by the policy makers.
When the FUND integrated assessment model (IAM) is run using the Lewis and Curry analysis of climate sensitivity adjusted for the millennium warming cycle and the urban heat island effect, TCR = 0.85 C, warming 1916 to 2100 = 0.57 C, the model gives a best estimate of the social cost (benefit) of carbon dioxide fo US$ -16.7/tCO2, with a likely range of US$ -19 to -12/tCO2, assuming a 3% discount rate. That is, warming on a global basis, CO2 emissions are very beneficial when a realistic transient climate response is used.
Other IAMs PAGE and DICE fail to include the benefits of warming and CO2 fertilization and should not be used to estimate the SCC for policy making.
https://friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=2230
Typo just about JC reflections, “What the heck to scientists know about crafting policy, let alone ‘responsible’ climate policy?” Change ‘to’ to ‘do’.
My definition of skeptic.
I do not accept that human gaseous emissions are altering the climate. However i keep an open mind to scientific research proving me wrong. As yet there is nothing.
A skeptic is a denier with an open mind.
So little is known despite billions being invested. Now that is an issue that needs addressing. Such a poor return on investment.
Yes that’s how many credulous truebelievers feel.
The classic deniers are those who believe global warming is nothing but a hoax and a scare tactic.
Let me remind you, the “con” started out as “catastrophic global warming”, was reduced to “global warming” and has now degenerated into “climate change”. So who is again is using “scare tactics”?
Fact is we have no idea if CO2 is a real or imagined problem; exceeds our ability to figure out.
Instead of making the poor and middle class poorer to make elitists feel better, try using energy wisely and everything will work out just fine.
Has CAGW become CCCC (calamitous and catastrophic climate change)– all caused by… modernity? The idea of too much CO2 is all a part of the ‘con,’ right. Dr. Will Happer testified before the U.S. Senate that, “the planet is currently starved of CO2, and has been so starved for several million years.”
Gavin Schmidt, et al of his ilk are not scientists. He’s an activist masquerading as a scientist. Basic tenets of the scientific method and dispassionate, objective analysis, experimentation, transparency and debate have been betrayed by the emotional, subjective, secretive and often hysterical speculative claims riddled with uncertainty. And while science should inform what choices nations make (policy), there must be a firewall between those conducting the science and those that establish the policy by affecting all. The current alarmist, politicized view of climate science and policy is bereft of basic principles of risk management and a rational assesment of our ability to impact outcomes.
Wag,
“Political fraud” is a better phrase the “hoax”. Telling people your house has ghost in it for apolitical reasons is a hoax. Defrauding billions in an effort to control worldwide carbon incomes and power is something more then a “hoax”.
As for Dr. Curry, her denial involves the entire obvious polical culture surrounding her life and career in regards to the climate green movement. Even now the term “craziness” is a mere obfuscation of the grotesque science politization, largely associated to her own left wing roots that climate agenda has always represented. The narrative failure of the histography is epic in scale among many skeptics and likely will contribute to a revival of totalitarian climate science designs in the future.
Your absence hasn’t been missed cwon.
When has Dr. Curry’s political opinions ever played a part at this blog?
First that the Atlantic even published this almost quasi neutral article is a miracle. I guess they are facing reality and building a case to show how crazy the new EPA is…..EG No where in the article did it indicate millions would die because of JC’s stance…
Quasi-neutral!? It’s biased beyond belief. If this came from a SJW journalist I would consider it biased. It’s written by a person with expertise in science who repeats the 97% lie. She’s [the Atlantic author] sold science out to politics.
I have yet to identify a good science reporter! Is that an oxymoron?
Andrew Revkin at the NYT has been pretty good, I think, about giving attention to data which show that the answers to the attribution question and the sensitivity question are not cut-and-dried.
He’s about as fair as can be without being fired.
To be a good science reporter, one must first be employed by one who knows that science must be science. A tangled web thingy.
Dr Curry:
Shouldn’t “Let me take this opportunity to redefine climate denialism: denial that the UNFCCC policies will fail to accomplish anything significant regarding improving the climate as defined by increasing human welfare and the health of ecosystems.”
actually read
… denial that the UNFCCC policies will accomplish anything significant …?
I think it will have significant negative economic effect.
Steven Schueler
curryja (as revised) redefines “climate denialism” as:
It takes careful reading and parsing double negatives to determine who is the real denialist!
Climate alarmists/IPCC:
Climate realists:
i.e. the “premium is greater than the risk. Therefore do NOT insure!”
So Climate realists:
Accept that climate is warming (at least since the Little Ice Age).
Accept that CO2 absorbs and radiates heat and contributes to earth’s surface being warmer than without CO2+H2O absorbing/emitting gases. (missnamed as “greenhouse” gases.)
Accept that burning fossil fuels release CO2 into the atmosphere.
But:
Deny that UNFCCC mitigation will be significantly effective.
Deny that mitigation will benefit human health significantly.
Deny that mitigation will benefit human economic welfare significantly.
(Climate Alarmists denounce climate realists.)
curryja – ps “anything significant” is almost a negative, making it harder to understand. Suggest rewording to:
Her revised statement is much improved. I can now stand proud as a ‘denier’ per that definition.
Denials aside, the South Australian collapsing electrical grid is a poster child of UNFCCC’s preferred actions.
http://joannenova.com.au/2017/02/its-that-bad-talk-of-declaring-emergencies-and-nationalizing-south-australian-electricity/
CG even now they don’t really get it. They still don’t understand they need to burn stuff again for a reliable base, then they can sell to the other states
The Atlantic article appears to have been written by someone who got the assignment just before noon and had to rush it out before a hot lunch date.
The reason the author believes skeptics have changed is because he/she never went beyond the MSM simplistic characterization
of the vilified deniers. Life can be a breeze if you ignore the facts and accept the propaganda.
The real issue was obvious to me after just an afternoon of reading about the debate 8 years ago. Nothing has changed as to what skeptics are concerned about.
And Gavin, purposely or not framed the question not just to first grade level, but dropped it to pre-school. The Question, which is: Is what’s going on related to humans?
Really? That’s it? The establishment Brain Trust can’t do better than that? I’d expect a more high powered analysis from Madonna.
So to meet his standard of being a warmist all one has to say is “Yes, I am on board with AGW. I believe humans cause 1% of the warming. I’m with ya Gav’.”
Wow, The intellectual power of it all.
+
“The reason the author believes skeptics have changed is because he/she never went beyond the MSM simplistic characterization
of the vilified deniers.”
++
It is undeniable that we have changed the composition of our atmosphere in a significant way by increasing some of its greenhouse gases. We have increased CO2 by ~ 25%. We have done it without any consideration for what effect it could have.
The decades long political battle between those that believe that it will have dire consequences and those that believe it will have modest consequences is being affected by the evolution of the climate and meteorological phenomena during that time. Those that held the most extremist positions at both sides, whether denying any effect on climate, or fearing catastrophic outcomes in just a few decades are being reduced to vociferous minorities by a climate that continues warming but not nearly as much as feared, and a meteorology that if anything appears tame compared to historic extremes.
Science credibility is suffering for having taken a position too soon on the alarmist side with only circumstantial evidence and a precautionary principle to show.
Politicians credibility is suffering from decades of lack of significant action and global agreement. That the Paris accords are deemed a success when they commit essentially to nothing shows clearly that the world does not think we are in any near future danger. The public at large believes that the climate issue is just one of those moral issues that separates left from right, but that doesn’t have any impact in their lives.
As politicians move towards a more centered position. “Yes CO2 does have an impact. No, we are not in immediate danger,” scientists are bound to do the same. We are already seeing the unthinkable and alarmist scientists are debating among themselves on whether the hiatus is real or not, while skeptics watch amused.
If after the great El Niño temperatures return to hiatus (2003-2014) average for a few years we can expect this shift to both enhance and accelerate, with most people taking a more rational middle ground.
But we have to ponder how lucky we have been. If CO2 had turned out to be a lot nastier in the atmosphere than it is, we could have done an irreparable damage to the planet. We really ought to get our pollution under control.
Javier,
“We have increased CO2 by ~ 25%. We have done it without any consideration for what effect it could have.”
We have changed many things on a global scale, like the number of aircraft aloft, the annual production of maize, the area of land cleared for farms, the yields of ocean fish and many, many more.
It is not really valid to single out CO2 and then add the “without any consideration” bit. For myself, I considered this deeply in the 1970s and decided to put a lot of personal effort into a better way to make electricity, namely from uranium. Many colleagues considered likewise.
So, I disagree rather strongly. We were not into wanton damage.
Geoff,
“So, I disagree rather strongly.”
You can disagree as much as you want, but it is absolutely true that we have increased CO2 by ~ 25% and that we have done it without any consideration for what effect it could have. You can add to the list as many things as you want. I don’t think we can claim that the natural world is in a very good shape. Homo sapiens we are not. Homo imprudens perhaps.
Javier,
The natural world doesn’t care. It has no feelings. And ultimately either it’s human population will figure out how to exist at a level desired by most of us, or we will not. Either way nature will triumph.
We have changed 0.01% of the atmosphere. That is the change from 300PPM to 400PPM. But warmists never put it in the honest way because it isn’t scary enough.
You can tell that there is no honesty in their arguments because they fail to record temperature in degrees, instead using the scary word ‘anomaly’.
The fundamental problem is not that people aren’t trained in science, because that is not what the warmists are using. They are using propaganda. We all need to be trained in the recognition and countering of propaganda.
“We have changed 0.01% of the atmosphere. That is the change from 300PPM to 400PPM. But warmists never put it in the honest way because it isn’t scary enough.”
The oxygen and nitrogen molecules are transparent to thermal infrared so their large relative abundance is irrelevant to the net radiative effect from the greenhouse gases. There being lots of transparent molecules in the atmosphere doesn’t reduce the opacity of the greenhouse gas molecules. In fact, the abundance of oxygen and nitrogen molecules *increases* the effect from CO2 molecules somewhat because of pressure broadening of the spectral lines.
Have we? What I cannot argue with is that we have monitored an increase of 0.01% of CO2 in the atmosphere; what has caused this change has to be still open to question. We might have had some influence, but, with some 30% of our total consumption of fossil fuels occurring this century, and the rate in rise of CO2 barely changing from what it was 150 years ago, then could it not be possible that there are other factors involved in the increase in CO2?
Did you notice it’s snowing like crazy over SE Greenland?
Yes, Fernando. There is a very strong surface mass gain positive anomaly over Greenland, at the time there is a negative Arctic sea ice anomaly. It is probably tied to the unusual cold waves over Central and Southern Europe.
https://www.dmi.dk/uploads/tx_dmidatastore/webservice/b/m/s/d/e/accumulatedsmb.png
Looks like warm humid air is displacing cold Arctic air.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2017.png
Notice that something similar took place in 1976 when the world was significantly cooler (lower baseline).
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_1976.png
In my opinion all that heat in the Arctic during the winter has nowhere to go but to space, and the planet is losing more energy than it is usual. I wouldn’t bet on a significant warming after the past El Niño.
Javier, If it is losing more energy to space, why is it warmer during the winter?
Im not “Javier”. Im Fernando. Also known as the “21st Century Social Critic”
Javier,
This sentence doesn’t make sense:
The “evolution of the climate and meteorological phenomena” tells us nothing about whether the changes are net beneficial or damaging humanity and civilisation.
I have argued in many recent comments that there is a lack of valid evidence to show that increasing GHG emissions are harmful (e.g. here https://judithcurry.com/2016/11/25/week-in-review-science-and-policy-edition-3/#comment-826494). Richard Tol (2013) Figure 3 shows that, excluding energy consumption, warming would be net-beneficial to 4 C and beyond (free access to Tol’s 2011 Working Paper here: http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/climate_change.pdf ). This is from FUND, the most sophisticated of the IAMs. This explains why the energy cost in Tol (2013) Figure 3 may be exaggerated: https://judithcurry.com/2017/01/29/the-threat-of-climate-change/#comment-836115
IPCC AR5 WG3 Chapter 3 states repeatedly the evidence for the damage functions is sparse and they are highly uncertain.
GMST has average 7C warmer than now for the past 650 Ma according to Scotese (2016) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275277369_Some_Thoughts_on_Global_Climate_Change_The_Transition_for_Icehouse_to_Hothouse_Conditions and life thrived.
No one on CE has refuted any of these.
Javier,
Yes we should – but I am referring to real polution, not CO2. CO2 is not polution in the normal sense of the word. There is no valid evidence that CO2 is doing or will do more harm than good. But making energy more expensive than it should be – by government intervention to satisfy ideologues unjustified beliefs – will certainly do a great deal of harm and has done already.
CO2 is not pollution in any sense of the word. It is a pure unadulterated benefit. A benefit to plants, humanity (due to improved agricultural productivity), and to life on earth in general.
The GHG effect of CO2 is disputed. It could be between 9% and 26% of the total effect. The total GHG effect is said to warm the atmosphere at the surface by 33ºC [universally agreed]. A doubling of CO2 from 280 ppm to 560 ppm will add only 5% more to the CO2 GHG effect [mostly agreed]. Because the GHG effectiveness of CO2 falls off logarithmically with increasing CO2. Note: over 50% of the CO2 GHG effect is due to the first 20 ppm of CO2.
Let’s distil that down to get some rule of thumb climate sensitivity numbers.
Maximum CO2 CS = 33ºC × 5% × 9% = 0.1485 ºC
Minimum CO2 CS = 33ºC × 5% × 26% = 0.429 ºC
One may expect a climate sensitivity = 0.15ºC to 0.43ºC. i.e. That much warming with CO2 up to 560 ppm. Where did the IPCC get 1ºC to 2.5ºC from? Even the IPCC AR5 projections are large overestimates. They’ve been grossly over-exaggerating from the start and they still are.
Actually the increase in atmospheric CO₂ is (405-280)/280 ≅ 45%.
By around 2030 that figure will be 50% increase. That is, halfway to doubling pre-Industrial CO₂.
~ 25% increase in CO2 since mid 1940’s, when human emissions start to be significant and overwhelm any natural source. Prior to that most of the world was not industrialized.
Preindustrial times were the coldest period since the Holocene started 11,700 years ago. It can hardly be considered a default situation for anything.
Therealbernardj,
“You’re simply trying to fudge the numbers.”
We did not burn fossil fuels in earnest prior to the 1940’s.
http://jo.nova.s3.amazonaws.com/graph/chem/co2-emissions/global/global-co2-human-emissions-250-years-30-50-85.gif
90% of human emissions since 1940’s. One fourth of current CO2 levels are due to that.
atmospheric CO2 increase prior to 1940’s had almost as much natural causes as human’s.
Scary.
To children maybe.
Erm, Industrial Revolution. The accepted atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide prior to its commencement is ~280 ppm.
What you’re implicitly saying is that the first extra 30 ppm don’t matter… when in fact, due to the logarithmic nature of the response curve, the first 30 ppm have proportionately more effect than any other quartile of the CO₂ emitted to date.
Omitting the first 25% and it’s effect on temperature is very much fudging the numbers. But keep at it: your attitude is going into my archive of stupid denialist contortions to try to erased the human icontributions to global warming.
“Industrial Revolution.”
Socially its impact was huge, but atmospherically it took place in less than 1% of the planet surface and it had very limited impact until it expanded globally with the end of WW2. You might as well try to defend the atmospheric impact of all the bonfires of humankind since fire was dominated in the Pleistocene.
What you fail to consider is that the planet warmed naturally after the LIA, and that the warming produced a natural increase in CO2 and methane. It is a typical alarmist oversight to ignore or deny natural causes.
“What you’re implicitly saying is that the first extra 30 ppm don’t matter… when in fact, due to the logarithmic nature of the response curve, the first 30 ppm have proportionately more effect than any other quartile of the CO₂ emitted to date.”
What I explicitly say is that the first 10% of our emissions could not have produce the first quartile increase in CO2. If you say otherwise you should be able to say how that difference could have arisen. Has the airborne fraction changed so much? If so, why?
“your attitude is going into my archive of stupid denialist contortions to try to erased the human contributions to global warming.”
Like I could give a damn about what you think of me.
Who’s saying that the “first 10% of our emissions” did produce the first 25% of the increase in CO₂?! Certainly not me!
What I said is that from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution around 1750, when the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ was around 280 ppm, to the end of the second world war, when the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ was around 310 ppm, 30 pmm net of CO₂ was added. Given that the current concentration is around 400 ppm, the emissions of fossil carbon up to the mid 1940s represent 25% of the total net increase in emissions.
There’s no “10%” involved*. And the first 25% of our emissions are at least as important as any of the other quartiles of our total iemissions,
What has land area under industrialisation got to do with anything? Emissions disperse around the globe within about a year or so, so your arbitrary 1% is meaningless. In fact I would suggest that the area of the globe under industrialisation is still less than 1%, but we’re managing to FUBAR the climate nevertheless.
Two points here. First, the carbon in wood burning is already a part of the carbon cycle, so it’s not additional to the budget as is fossil carbon. Secondly, Bill Ruddiman hypothesises that human burning of wood has disturbed the allocations of non-fossil carbon in the carbon cycle, and had already left a fingerprint on Holocene climate prior to the Industrial Revolution:
http://www.humansandnature.org/william-ruddiman-and-the-ruddiman-hypothesis
No, I actually looked back over the last millennium (and more…) prior to the Industrial Revolution and noted that the Holocene is slowly cooling in concordance with the Milankovitch cycle model or orbital forcing. Further, most authorities understand that the rebound from the LIA does not last up to current times, and that the warming manifest over the last century or so is not a result of any such rebound. A few days ago I linked to the Bloomberg widget that demonstrates this – apparently you have a short memory:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/
This it just plain wrong. Climate scientists neither ignore or deny any forcings of climate. If you think they do, please point to any such omissions in the Bloomberg widget, for starters.
I didn’t say that it was anything to do with what I “think about [you].” I simply said that your incompetence with the facts supplied me with another example for my archive – what I think about you is neither here nor there in the scheme of things.
But for the record, I don’t give a damn that you don’t give a damn what I think about you. Your demonstrated inability to think scientifically at a functional level is a concern in terms of the implications of your contribution to ignorance in general, but what you think of me is water off a duck’s back because I know that for all my pointing out your errors here it won’t change your mind. I’ve already written you off as a lost cause.
My focus in this discussion is to ensure that third parties have access to actual facts to counter your alternative facts.
[*Unless you’re dividing the net increase in fossil CO₂ in the 1940s by the total concentration of atmospheric CO₂ then… But if that’s what you’re doing then you’re even more ignorant of the derivation of numbers than I previously assumed.]
I tried to post this in the last comment but it seems to have disappeared:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UatUDnFmNTY/maxresdefault.jpg
“We are already seeing the unthinkable and alarmist scientists are debating among themselves on whether the hiatus is real or not, while skeptics watch amused.”
Javier:
You cannot (without being hypocritical) look at the surface temp data record, and on one hand say there was a pause, whilst on the other the planet is not warming beyond the bounds of natural variability.
Are you?
I’m afraid you will have to state which data set is being “denied”, and at what level of “correction”. Actually the word is questioned, if this is scientific forum. The assertion re rising temperatures as a unstoppable upward trend depends on when you start, and at the longer term the planet is close to coldest it’s ever been, and the lowest CO2, etc. Only the hottest since the data set began, near the coldest ever in literal fact. May warmer times i since the last ice age. To even claim to understand global climate workings with simplistic empirical modelling and graph manipulation is simply arrogance. The assertion would fail a least squares high school maths question. To think we should do more that respond to the planet in the best way possible using the technologies at our command, which include moving and rebuilding as well as defending, is simply delusional. Dogger land is no longer there, etc. Nothing stays the same, and we need to adapt to survive and prosper without nation states and as the species levels off at 11 Billion or so. Trying to stay the same and resist the unbbelievable power of our changing global environment and distant sun we get all our non nuclear energy from, directly or indirectly, makes you a perfect target for extinction. Not at all environmental in fact. Just mental.
PS Let engineers take care of defending the real world from the very slowly changing climate we can only respond to relian bly. Climate scietists have done enoughdamage promoting bogus problems and supporting solutions that make those guesses worse in science fact. Stick to pointlessly and unprovably arguing about stuff in the academic bubble – the acedmic forecasts have been wrong, the data show very small effects, the IPCC does not consider climate change a major global problem, and predicting change decades away badly is of no practical use to anyone, unless there are large subsidies available now for snake oil remedies to non problems of course.
What ‘hiatus’?
Analysis please, or at least some peer reviewed references.
I am sure you can look that up yourself. Start with Kevin Trenberth.
No, I’m asking you. What’s the evidence for a ‘hiatus’?
From before the El Nino got under way, Lewandowsky et al 2015 points out that in addition to two 2014 special issues/sections of Nature journals devoted to the “pause” or “hiatus” (Nature Climate Change, March 2014, No. 149; and Nature Geoscience, February 2014, No. 157), and with the IPCC adopting the term “hiatus” in its Fifth Assessment Report ( Stocker et al., 2013), the number of scientific papers devoted to this alleged “hiatus” is large and growing rapidly (e.g., Allan et al., 2014, Balmaseda et al., 2013, Bao and Ren, 2014, Brown et al., 2014, Cazenave et al., 2014, Chen and Tung, 2014, Clement and DiNezio, 2014, Crowley et al., 2014, de Boisséson et al., 2014, Desbruyères et al., 2014, Dong and Zhou, 2014, Drijfhout et al., 2014, Easterling and Wehner, 2009, England et al., 2014, Estrada et al., 2013, Fyfe et al., 2013, Fyfe and Gillett, 2014, Goddard, 2014, Guemas et al., 2013, Haywood et al., 2014, Hawkins et al., 2014, Held, 2013, Huber and Knutti, 2014, Hunt, 2011, Kamae et al., 2014, Kaufmann et al., 2011, Kosaka and Xie, 2013, Laepple and Huybers, 2014, Lean and Rind, 2009, Lin et al., 2014, Lorentzen, 2014, Lovejoy, 2014, Lu et al., 2014, Macias et al., 2014, Maher et al., 2014, McGregor et al., 2014, Meehl et al., 2011, Meehl et al., 2013b, Meehl et al., 2014, Meehl and Teng, 2014, Palmer and Smith, 2014, Ridley et al., 2014, Risbey et al., 2014, Santer et al., 2011, Santer et al., 2014, Schmidt et al., 2014, Seneviratne et al., 2014, Sillmann et al., 2014, Smith, 2013, Solomon et al., 2010, Solomon et al., 2011, Tollefson, 2014, Trenberth, 2009, Trenberth and Fasullo, 2013, Trenberth et al., 2014, Triacca et al., 2014, Tung and Zhou, 2013, Watanabe et al., 2013, Watanabe et al., 2014 and Wayman, 2013).
L2015 does not claim that this list is exhaustive, and adds that ‘the IPCC represents the thoroughly vetted consensus view of the scientific community, and its treatment of the “hiatus” as a phenomenon worthy of explanation confirms that its existence has entered the mainstream scientific discourse.’
L2015’s explanation is that ‘contrarian memes’ have ‘seeped’ into mainstream climate science and effectively re-framed its position. Do those who believe the ‘hiatus’ is not real and physical agree with this explanation, or do they have a different explanation as to why the concept became part of mainstream climate science?
Simple question for you andywest2012 – which one of those papers indicates scientifically/statistically when the ‘pause’ started and ended, in the context of the signal and noise last 50 years?
therealbernardj, I haven’t looked at them and I don’t have the relevant expertise. However, L2015 points out that they are a significant part of mainstream climate science (i.e. not just a skeptic thing), and that the ‘hiatus’ is ‘a phenomenon worthy of explanation’, including by the IPCC, in Nature, etc, which discourse is ongoing.
This is the case whether their explanations for the ‘hiatus’ eventually turn out to be good, bad, or indifferent. So my question stands. L2015 has a proffered explanation as to why the concept of the ‘hiatus’ has become part of the discourse of mainstream climate science. Do those who believe the ‘hiatus’ is not real and physical agree with this explanation, or do they have a different explanation as to why the concept became part of mainstream climate science?
Forgot link to L2015 itself, which is below. All papers in the above list are linked inside it.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378015000515
amendment: This is the case whether their explanations for, and even definitions of, the ‘hiatus’ eventually turn out to be good, bad, or indifferent.
Ok Bernard, no hiatus. You do understand that by showing there really wasn’t a hiatus, that it was simply an artifact of the data, we also show there really hasn’t been any exceptional increase in the rate of warming. It too was an artifact of the data.
So how about you providing an analysis or peer-reviewed references showing the negative impacts of a warming planet?
The ‘pause’ is only an “artifact of the data” in the sense that there was a random sequence of data points that led to people eyeballing and cherry-picking dates in order to describe said “hiatus”.
In a more strict sense the ‘pause’ is not even an artifact: in the scientific sense an artifact is an error or a misleading outcome that occurs as a result of flaws in methodology or equipment. The ‘pause’ as identified by denialists does not arise from any experimental mistakes. other than their inability to understand statistics… In the rational scientific world such occurrences of data patterns are understood to happen randomly, and over sufficient periods of data collection they happen at predictable frequency. Discerning apparent patterns from real ones is one of the many reasons why statistical analyses are used…
Straw man.
I have never said anything about an increase in the rate of warming. And few scientists with expertise in the area suggest that there’s actually been an increase in the rate of warming, at least over the last four or five decades. Any “exceptional increase in the rate of warming” discussion is simply an artifact of your fallacious assertions.
To remind those who does understand the statistics of temperature time series, Tamino frequently looks at this idea and demonstrates that there’s no detectable change in the warming rate:
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/08/30/trend-and-fluctuation-one-more-time/
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/09/14/speedup-skeptic/
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/12/01/prolonging-a-non-slowdown-in-global-warming/
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/05/21/record-global-warming-or-warming-slowdown/
It’s important to emphasis that the current rate of warming may not change for the next century, but that at that current rate of warming we’ll have heated the planet by about 2.5 °C over the Pre-Industrial temperature by 2100. This is where the actual problem lies – and tilting at straw men distracts from the things that really matter.
therealbernardj,
“The ‘pause’ as identified by denialists does not arise from any experimental mistakes. other than their inability to understand statistics…”
Except that the hiatus was not identified by denialists. It was identified and is still identified by climatologists.
This is from a 2017 article, more than a year after Karl et al., 2015:
Farneti, Riccardo. “Modelling interdecadal climate variability and the role of the ocean.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 8.1 (2017).
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Riccardo_Farneti/publication/308916933_Modelling_Interdecadal_Climate_Variability_and_the_Role_of_the_Ocean/links/580f61f608aee15d4911ffe9.pdf
http://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/591836-1.gif
Notice how the hiatus is defined not only by surface temperatures, but also by AMO (AMV in the figure) and PDO.
You are simply trying to rewrite history. Combined with your biased used of science and empirical evidence, that makes you untrustworthy in climate issues.
> Except that the hiatus was not identified by denialists.
“Identified as” may not mean what you make it mean, Javier.
One really has to be patient with some of the denizens here, and type particularly slowly, as they don’t seem to be very fast in catching on to basic concepts.
Point 1. I used the word “arise”. That is, I was saying that the notion of a ‘pause’ arose with climate science denialists. When I asked for evidence that it instead arose in the climate science arena, I wasn’t anticpating that a 2017 paper could be used as evidence of first instance…
Point 2. In previous threads I commented that some people working in climatology responded to the meme of a pause, and in doing so inadvertently gave it credibility, but that their approaches were mostly involved in either understanding the factors that dictate the properties of the ‘noise’ in the temperature signal, or demonstrating that there is no scientific basis for claiming a pause.
The ‘pause’ is a zombie meme that will not die, because it chills deniers to the bone to let go the notion. If there was never a ‘pause’, then it’s warming, and if it’s warming then we need to confront the rest of the implications of the science. That is disturbing to the denying mind.
It’s not as though the denialists haven’t been repeatedly told though. Skeptical Science drew attention to the invalidity of the claim over five years ago, in 2011:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/going-down-the-up-escalator-part-1.html
and I remember posting a graph somewhere about a year earlier showing various upward-stepping ‘pause’ intervals since the 70’s, when the “no warming since 1998/no warming for 12 years” canard was just staring to gain traction. And time and again since, there have been countless defensible statistical analyses showing that latter rates of temperature increase were insignificantly different from decadal rates right back to the 70s.
I’ll make a prediction. The ‘pause’ will still have currency here in one, two, and even three or more years hence, even in the face of continued warming, and that currency will swell every year that the annual global average temperature does not set a new record. The ‘pause’ will then still be as imaginary as flying pink unicorns, and its “proof’ or otherwise scientifically-demonstrated existence will still be as assiduously avoided as it has been on the last few threads here.
“I’ll make a prediction.”
So will I.
You are wrong, right across the board.
This will become apparent sooner rather than later.
therealbernardj:
“I commented that some people working in climatology responded to the meme of a pause, and in doing so inadvertently gave it credibility…”
Including IPCC acknowledgement, plus the Nature articles and 60 papers listed in L2015 above, stretching from 2009 to 2014?? (And more since I presume, L2015 was out in Feb I think, so will only have covered to about end 2014).
Whatever the eventual judgment, as L2015 notes this discourse is within the climate science mainstream. And definitely some mainstream names from the consensus in there, as well as a bunch I’m not familiar with.
So does your quote above imply agreement with L2015, i.e. you believe the presence of the ‘pause’ concept in mainstream CC literature is due to seepage from ‘contrarian memes’?
apologies for repeat, I thought the 1st one was lost so rewrote, but it appeared on screen refresh…
Fine.
Point to the paper or other work that proves scientifically that there was a ‘pause’.
I’ve said a number of times now that this body of work comes from several premises. Many were indicating, in response to the instigation of the meme, that there’s no statistical significance in the change of rate of warming from decade to decade, and others were looking at the nature of the noise to see if they could account for some the factors that lead to the magnitude as it is generally calculated, and thereby reduce it.
As it happens they can. Javier’s post at February 12, 2017 at 9:18 am unwittingly indicates what has always been known – that oceanic/atmospheric cycles are a component of the noise, and even though there has been no statistical change in the rate of warming on the scale of time in which deniers claim a ‘pause’, when the cycles’ influences are accounted for there’s even less credibility for any notion of a ‘pause’.
Tamino’s been pointing this out for a long time: his latest effort is here:
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2017/01/19/the-pause-that-never-happened/
https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/big4.jpg
Still allowing the visual of mid-1970’s to end of the 20th Century to dominate short-term graphing, eh? Throwing in the 2014/15/16 N. Pacific Blob and Super El Nino at the end and you have a propagandist’s dream.
therealbernardJ: “I’ve said a number of times now that this body of work comes from several premises. Many were indicating, in response to the instigation of the meme, that there’s no statistical significance in the change of rate of warming from decade to decade, and others were looking at the nature of the noise to see if they could account for some the factors that lead to the magnitude as it is generally calculated, and thereby reduce it.”
Hmmm. Not to mention those trying to explain it, which would include the IPCC (from AR5 WGI Report):
‘In summary, the observed recent warming hiatus, defined as the reduction in GMST trend during 1998–2012 as compared to the trend during 1951–2012, is attributable in roughly equal measure to a cooling contribution from internal variability and a reduced trend in external forcing (expert judgment, medium confidence). The forcing trend reduction is primarily due to a negative forcing trend from both volcanic eruptions and the downward phase of the solar cycle. However, there is low confidence in quantifying the role of forcing trend in causing the hiatus, because of uncertainty in the magnitude of the volcanic forcing trend and low confidence in the aerosol forcing trend.”
therealbernardj: “…there has been no statistical change in the rate of warming on the scale of time in which deniers claim a ‘pause’…”
So are the IPCC deniers too?
Do you agree with L2015’s reason for why the hiatus concept entered mainstream Climate Science, or do you have a different explanation?
You make a lot of sensible points, and articulated them well. However, the “without any consideration” part is rather overstated. It’s fairer to say that we considered CO2– which is (a) non-toxic (b) a thing that animals exhale and (c) stimulates plant growth and the concomitant oxygen–relatively benign compared to all the other pollutants which we have been striving to reduce. We knew about its effects 40 years ago, and starting thinking about it as potentially harmful, but we didn’t think the downside was a bad price to pay for the amazing transformation that the use of fossil fuels had on human economic and cultural development. We were much more concerned about global cooling, and … wait for it … *running out* of oil.
The *best* reason, IMO, to transition from fossil fuels is that someday we will run out, and if we’re not ready with plentiful, reliable, and affordable energy, humanity is screwed big-time.
*running out* of oil — a meme pushed by Luddite/Malthusian greens.
One of reasons we are not ready with an alternative to fossil fuels is because these same Luddite/Malthusian greens spiked nuclear power by regulating it to death and making it almost impossible to develop better, safer, more utilitarian reactors.
Who is Michael Mann’s hero? Apparently Paul R. Ehrlich, Mr “Population Bomb” himself. Obama’s science advisor? John Holdren :- Ehrlich’s bosom buddy.
There’s an awful lot of circumstantial evidence here that the fossil fuel panic is just another attempt by Luddite/Malthusian greens to destroy Western civilization.
If temps do back to the pre-El Nino, i.e. hiatus levels and stay there for several years, despite rising CO2, or even drop, the need to answer the question of whether CO2 actually has any effect on temps or climate becomes even greater. The ‘CO2 must have some effect’ notion is still just an assumption, has no basis except as hypothesis (consensus?), and is looking increasingly false. There’ll be no middle ground then, and the 1-2% pointed to as the ‘deniers’ out on the fringe will be vindicated.
“”You can disagree as much as you want, but it is absolutely true that we have increased CO2 by ~ 25%””.
There have three (3) studies of the Carbon Cycle that I am aware-of, that “calculated” from Atmosphere, Ocean and Soil sinks and exchanges – with all the estimated sinks and exchanges showing vastly different amounts. Yet, all three (3) come up with the same “25%” results.
In my opinion, all three (3) simply did a reverse math based on the CO2 measured (daily) and a starting value. Taking the measured value and subtracting the starting value and dividing by the number of years between both, and thus determine (by magic) the amount of CO2 emitted by humans to accomplish the “25%” number (~6 – 9 GIGA tons of Carbon annually).
The more interesting value is the starting number that is claimed to be the value of CO2 in the atmosphere for the past few thousands of years prior to the burning of fossil fuels. And that value is determined by ice cores.
You know, if you take an ice core to the depth of 2008 (example) you do not read the amount of CO2 that was measured in 2008. It is some what lower. However, apparently, if we wait 100 years, and re-drill back to that 2008 point it some how, now, measures what was measured in the atmosphere in 2008. How can this be?
A water droplet falls as a crystal and lands on the surface of a blowing snow scape and 100 years later holds on to the precise value of CO2 that was measured 100 years earlier. Tree rings.
Is this like a thermos bottle? You put cold in it and it keeps it cold! You put hot in it and it keeps it hot! How does it know?
Smiles. AL
… We have increased CO2 by ~ 25%. We have done it without any consideration for what effect it could have …
That certainly is not true. We’ve been navel gazing over this for over 100 years. Since Arrhenius said average surface atmospheric warming from doubling CO2 would be 5½ºC, then 15 years later: 4ºC. People like Arrhenius, James Hansen made their calculations and got them very wrong.
I now consider climate sensitivity to be about ½ºC. The extra CO2 in the atmosphere will be a massive boon to life on earth. Moderate warming from CO2 is a good thing. All indicators say the warming will be moderate. I’ve been a bit obsessed with this for 3½ years – so your claim: “without any consideration” I’ll leave for you to further refine or withdraw.
This is what very likely more than half looks like.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/attribution.jpg
To base policy on the peak of this distribution is the most justifiable course.
Naw a better guess would be 100 billion gazillion percent is man made. Maybe more!
Jim D, you are a denier of natural climate change. That’s worse because we have evidence for over 500 million years of it. Apparently it stopped around 1950 when we started measuring CO2.
CO2 has increased the forcing by nearly 2 W/m2 since 1950. This is several times as much as the sun can do over centuries, so no wonder it shows up in the temperature. If you can think of a natural variation stronger than the sun’s, have at it. Nothing has been put forwards yet.
If mankind is the cause of 110% of the observed warming, this means that natural causes account for -10%. There was a natural cooling effect (mainly solar) that has been swamped by a 11 times larger anthopogenic warming effect. Mainstream climate science acknowledge both the natural and the anthropogenic components to climate change. Natural climate change can cause both warming or cooling on multi-decadal time scales. It just so happens that, in all likelihood, the natural contribution to warming was negative in recent decades. It was a mildly mitigating effect. It is the skeptics who strangely deny a priori that the natural contribution could possibly have been negative in recent decades if the net effect (natural+anthropogenic) was positive. Skeptics don’t explain why it is, in their view, that the natural effect (including a known negative trend in solar irradiance) could not possibly have had a mitigating effect on anthropogenic warming as observation suggests.
CO2 has increased the forcing by nearly 2 W/m2 since 1950.
Modelled/speculated, or has heat specific to added CO2 now actually been directly measured in absolute terms?
Jim D
“CO2 has increased the forcing by nearly 2 W/m2 since 1950.”
So it is claimed by some people, but since they cannot demonstrate the climate sensitivity to CO2, that number is so uncertain as to be meaningless. Your argument is a moot one, as it is based on our ignorance about how the climate operates. That we cannot properly explain natural climate changes doesn’t mean it has to be CO2.
Pierre-Normand,
“There was a natural cooling effect (mainly solar) that has been swamped by a 11 times larger anthopogenic warming effect.”
Your position is clearly wrong. You must not be a scientist because you are falling in a very simple fallacy. Absence of evidence does not constitute evidence of absence (argumentum ad ignorantiam). We absolutely do not know that there has been a natural cooling. We do know however that solar activity has been above average for the entire second half of the 20th century.
http://www.coyoteblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Slide90.png
Javier wrote: “We do know however that solar activity has been above average for the entire second half of the 20th century.”
Most of the recent warming has occurred since around 1960 while total solar irradiance was already beginning to decline. It’s true that it had been increasing earlier in the 20% century but it is well acknowledged by climate science that the Sun contributed about half the warming that occurred in the fist half of the century. This is quite consistent with the models. If you think the Sun is mainly responsible for the recent warming also, you would have to provide an explanation for the mechanism whereby the warming rate accelerates sharply as soon as total solar irradiance reaches maximum and begins to decline. Such a mechanism seems much more speculative than the well understood forcing from the enhanced greenhouse effect.
Pierre-Normand,
“This is quite consistent with the models.”
The models do not constitute an explanation for anything, as they have been tailored ad hoc to last century climate changes. The evidence is very clear that they must have solar forcing and greenhouse forcing incorrect as they cannot reproduce Holocene Neoglacial period.
http://i.imgur.com/z07TBhB.png
Black curve is temperature reconstruction. Blue curve is methane, and red curve is CO2. Green curve is the average of 3 climate models (CCSM3, FAMOUS, and LOVECLIM) from Liu et al., 2014. It is EVIDENT that climatologists have the forcings seriously incorrect.
Liu, Z. et al. 2014. The Holocene temperature conundrum. PNAS 111, E3501-E3505.
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/34/E3501.full
Javier wrote: “The models do not constitute an explanation for anything, as they have been tailored ad hoc to last century climate changes.”
What is your evidence that they have been “tailored”? And why would any tailoring be needed? You only have to add up the known forcings — greenhouse, solar, volcanic and aerosol — and find that the observed surface temperature evolution follows this total forcing curve quite closely, assuming only a transient climate response around 2°C per CO2 doubling equivalent. You would actually need quite sophisticated “tailoring”, and some new exotic physics, in order to make this consistent with a significant positive solar contribution over the last 60 years (though, maybe, uncertainty about aerosol forcing offers some moderate leeway).
JimD, “CO2 has increased the forcing by nearly 2 W/m2 since 1950. This is several times as much as the sun can do over centuries, so no wonder it shows up in the temperature. If you can think of a natural variation stronger than the sun’s, have at it. Nothing has been put forwards yet.”
I am looking to buying a new cooler with 2X the forcing of my old one. Know where I can get one?
Très drôle – we know that the Pacific warmed the planet from 1975 and turned a little cooler since. The cloud radiative effect from 1984 to 1998 was some -2.4W/m2. Much more than CO2 forcing in the same period. The net was 1.8W/m2. The signs get reversed by convention with net up being warming.
https://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/zFD/an9090_TOTnet_toa.gif
We know it happens – just need a dynamic mechanism.
https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Iriai/posts/1182549161861344
Pierre-Normand,
“What is your evidence that they have been “tailored”?”
They were caught red handed doing it by statistic methods:
“6. Tuning to 20th century warming ?
The reality of this paradigm is questioned by findings of Kiehl (2007) who discovered the existence of an anti-correlation between total radiative forcing and climate sensitivity in CMIP3 models: High sensitivity models were found to have a smaller total forcing and low sensitivity models a larger forcing, yielding less cross-ensemble variation of historical warming than otherwise to be expected. Even if alternate explanations have been proposed and even if the results were not so straightforward for CMIP5 (cf. Forster et al. 2013), it could suggest that some models may have been inadvertently or intentionally tuned to the 20th century warming.”
Hourdin, Frederic, et al. “The art and science of climate model tuning.” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 2016 (2016).
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00135.1
Forgot to add this.
“In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.” IPCC
Equivocal evidence btw the way is spot cloud cover estimates over the US – just the wrong place to look.
https://i2.wp.com/watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/clement-et-al.png?ssl=1&w=450
Other than that it is all a rehearsal of the same damn memes. I’ve got memes – let’s play.
https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Iriai/posts/1182829681833292
OK, some numbers.
Various datasets demonstrate the the warming since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is 1.0-1.2 °C. Split the difference and say 1.1 °C.
The trajectory of the global temperature in the 1,000 years preceeding the Industrial Revolution was such that it had dropped by 0.4 °C over that millennium, as understood and expected in the Milankovitch cycle progression to the next glacial maximum. This works out to an expected further average global temperature decrease of ~0.1 °C since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Superimpose this on the amount of warming since the beginning of industrialisation and the value for realised warming is 1.2 °C.
Assume that CO₂ increased from 280 to 400 ppm since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and assume a logarithmic transient climate response to the increasing concentration of CO₂. This gives a TCR of 2.33 °C per doubling of CO₂.
For those who don’t grok the significance I’ll spell it out in words: the very mathematics and empirical data available to date indicate that climate sensitivity is at the very least 2.33 °C. It’s basic physics and simple arithmetic. It must be remembered though that the transient response is only a proportion of the realised response at plateau, and Hergel & Knutti (2008) estimate that the transient climate response = 60% of the equilibrium climate sensitivity. Using again some simple arithmetic, the ECS based on the data to date is 3.9 °C.
Now, given that the emissions of CO₂ have been occurring at a significant rate for over a century one could* propose that some of the transient response is now embedded as a part of the equilibrium sensitivity, and this that the actual ECS is less. How much? Well, that could be discussed at length with probably little resolution, but given that the time to plateau is probably on the order of magnitude of a good fraction of a century anyway, and that most of our emissions have been in the latter half of the Industrial Revolution period, the ECS is probably closer to 3.9 °C than it is to 2.33 °C.
But let’s be simple, and parsimonious, and again just split the difference. This give an equilibrium climate sensitivity – based on the measured emissions of CO₂ and the actual, realised warming – of 3.1 °C.
The protestations of Judith Curry’s post aside (as well as the unevidenced opinions of many of the commenters here…), the professional scientific literature contains an enormous amount of work that indicates that such a warming is severely risky for the integrity of global human society, and that it will inevitably have very serious impacts on the planet’s biosphere.
No amount of wishful thinking and motivated reasoning will alter the facts. Even the new paradigm of ‘alternative facts’ will not alter the facts.
Don’t say that you weren’t told.
[*Whether they should is a different matter…]
And then there are models. “Atmospheric and oceanic computational simulation models often successfully depict chaotic space–time patterns, flow phenomena, dynamical balances, and equilibrium distributions that mimic nature. This success is accomplished through necessary but nonunique choices for discrete algorithms, parameterizations, and coupled contributing processes that introduce structural instability into the model. Therefore, we should expect a degree of irreducible imprecision in quantitative correspondences with nature, even with plausibly formulated models and careful calibration (tuning) to several empirical measures. Where precision is an issue (e.g., in a climate forecast), only simulation ensembles made across systematically designed model families allow an estimate of the level of relevant irreducible imprecision.” http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.full
So they are certainly tuned and then thousands of feasible solutions diverge exponentially through time.
Below is a perturbed physics model using a nid-range no mitigation emissions scenario. It shows thousands of diverging solutions that is the defining property of these chaotic models that have at their core nonlinear equations of fluid transport. The thick black line is temperature observations. The thick blue lines are the one standard deviation limits. The red lines are the IPCC range derived by an entirely different method. The range of the perturbed physics ensemble (PPE) is even greater than the IPCC range.
The IPPC opportunistic ensemble uses a single solution from 50 odd models – a solution arbitrarily chosen from 1000’s of plausible solutions, graphed together and a fake statistics fabricated over the top. They have known this (e.g, IPCC TAR 2001, McWilliams 2007, Slingo and Palmer 2011) since Lorenz in the 1960’s. It is as crude as that. The use of this method strongly suggests incompetence or fraud.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/ngeo1430-f1.jpg
Figure 6: A perturbed physics climate model – source – Rowland et al, 2012
So let’s go with the PPE that has an even broader range – and a complete absence of a way to calculate a probability density function over the range. There is no way of telling a priori the solution – if any – that is most likely. The other problems are that there is no way to model abrupt changes in the Pacific state and actual emissions are overwhelmingly likely to diverge from IPCC emission scenarios. Climate will continue to diverge from models – almost certainly cooler.
So you have a choice – keep arguing silly memes learned in meme factories or discover for yourself how chaotic models really work.
http://www.physicsplanet.com/articles/chaos-theory-simplified
Therealbernardj,
“Various datasets demonstrate the the warming since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is 1.0-1.2 °C.”
They demonstrate nothing of that sort. Temperature measurements were woefully inadequate for that task. You can spin those numbers any way you want with algorithms, that it won’t make them any more real. The uncertainty is such that it could easily be half of that. Climate proxies fail to show such big warming.
“The trajectory of the global temperature in the 1,000 years preceeding the Industrial Revolution was such that it had dropped by 0.4 °C over that millennium”
Again you are using assumptions and estimates to reach a number that is meaningless. We do not know the cooling that took place between the medieval warm period and the LIA. It could easily be of a similar magnitude to the warming between the LIA and the 20th century. That is what climate proxies indicate.
“assume a logarithmic transient climate response to the increasing concentration of CO₂. This gives a TCR of 2.33 °C per doubling of CO₂.”
Why would I assume such value? You have abandoned the realm of evidence long ago.
“the very mathematics and empirical data available to date indicate that climate sensitivity is at the very least 2.33 °C. It’s basic physics and simple arithmetic.”
No, the empirical evidence does not indicate such a thing. It is all a construct based on a pile of assumptions.
“the professional scientific literature contains an enormous amount of work that indicates that such a warming is severely risky for the integrity of global human society”
The scientific literature contains also an enormous amount of work that indicates that present climate variability is within the limits of Holocene climate variability and therefore the conclusion that it possesses a severe risk for the integrity of global human society is not warranted.
“No amount of wishful thinking and motivated reasoning will alter the facts.”
Your facts are actually not facts at all, but interpretation based on assumptions.
I’m not talking about computer models.
I’m simply looking at the measured emissions to date of CO₂, and the concurrent warming to date of the planet, and using the understanding of a logarithmic response and some simple arithmetic to let the planetary system tell us – from what it has manifested – what are the lower bounds for climate sensitivity.
The only variable in the process is to what extent the values obtained might lie on the transient climate response side or equilibrium climate sensitivity side of the equation. There are strong arguments for the former, and very weak ones for the latter, but I took parsimony and simplicity and went for the middle.
And guess what? That says ECS is ~3.1 °C.
That’s what the planet is telling us…
Javier at February 11, 2017 at 7:46 am.
Your argument is effectively to ignore all the science. There can be no discussion with anyone whose strategy is so ridiculous. (As an aside you cannot argue for cooling, ‘pauses’, or any other climate trajectory if you eschew the very same science.)
If you disagree with my simple approach all you have to do is:
1) provide the best evidence of how much the planet has warmed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution,
2) provide the best measurement of the increase in CO₂ since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and
3) provide a justification why the climate response to CO₂ is not logarithmic.
Go!
“Your argument is effectively to ignore all the science.”
Absolutely not. I’m a scientist. We should consider ALL EVIDENCE, but we can only build knowledge over solid empirical evidence, and you are providing none. We did not measure temperatures on the planet 100 years ago. We are not even measuring them effectively now. Proxies do not agree with our temperature reconstruction.
“If you disagree with my simple approach all you have to do is:”
That’s the thing. I don’t have to do anything. Proxy reconstructions more or less agree on the following:
http://i.imgur.com/Vg59Mh7.png
And what you say doesn’t fit. So it is you who is ignoring all the science.
Jim isn’t a denier. He’s a true believer. Which allows him to make faith based comments on a wide ranging series of topics despite any real knowledge or understanding of them. Like pointing to a graph and informing us how policy should be based.
Pierre,
Perhaps you should take another look at the graph Javier posted. Your comments do not align with the information presented by the graph.
You state:
“Most of the recent warming has occurred since around 1960 while total solar irradiance was already beginning to decline.”
Not according to the graph. It illustrates an increase in solar irradiance starting prior to 1950 and staying positive until rather recently (i.e. the last few years.)
“It’s true that it had been increasing earlier in the 20% century”
Perhaps my understanding that 1950 would be the midpoint of the century, rather than being “earlier in the … century” is in error. Or maybe you need to provide spin for your point to stand.
Bernard,
Your math exercise at 2/11 7 AM assumes that all other factors remain constant, right?
PNH,
In a nutshell which explicit numerical process and which observations now allow quantitative separation of natural from anthro? I thought this was the holy grail.Did not know it was solved. Convince us.
Geoff
Geoff, you can’t separate anthro from natural, but you can separate forcing from natural internal variations which amounts to the same thing.
Did u draw that in Paint?,
“CO2 has increased the forcing by nearly 2 W/m2 since 1950.”
Alleging this does not make it true. CO2 does not work as advertised either in the present or the past. The very fact that it has never worked according to 2 watt expectations–that we don’t know why it doesn’t work–is the more reason to discount the argument that we can’t think of anything else to explain warming.
1 C at 2 W/m2 is as expected from AGW, which is a big problem for the skeptics who didn’t expect this to happen so fast. They are fighting against the visible evidence here. I don’t know why.
What is expected from hypothesis and the data, both paleo and current, indicate; do not coincide.
It has warmed way faster than this before without any help from human CO2. There exist no data to support any assumption that current warming is not predominantly natural.
It has never warmed this fast globally without a forcing change. Find a record that shows it has done so. I don’t know what you are referring to, but it sounds made up.
Globally? There are no global paleo records, nor historical records. Surface temperatures are not even global today.
The only truly global records are from the satellite era.
So you are saying that the skeptics have nothing when they say this has happened before. We should focus on what we can quantify from the last century where at least we know all the main forcing changes going on as well as the global temperature trends, and the current imbalance leading to the ocean heat content steadily increasing decade by decade. Argue based on the data you have, and there is plenty of it, not the data you wish existed some time in the foggy past.
I am saying that neither skeptics nor Carbonists have GLOBAL data before the satellite era. You can stick your head in the sand and say, “I won’t look at anything but satellites”; but this strikes me as excessively limiting.
We have very good local evidence from widely dispersed points that there was a hell of a lot more ice sitting on continents more than a dozen times in the last 2.5 million years. Pretty reasonable to assume it was globally colder without GLOBAL evidence.
We can’t core the mile of ice that sat on the Great Lakes, we can only core the local ice that remains. We have drilled the ocean sediments fairly extensively, but not GLOBALLY.
This is what the overlap between averaged benthic 18O and Vostok CO2 looks like:
https://geosciencebigpicture.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/vostok-co2-vs-d18o.png
Same ole story, CO2 following temperature like a poodle on a leash.
There is not even local evidence that CO2 has EVER controlled temperature on this planet.
Your fundamental assumption that it MUST be doing it now is pulled from thin air.
Are you one of the people that think temperature can’t follow CO2? How about with the volcanic eras in paleoclimate, such as at the end of the Permian, where CO2 increased and the earth became warmer as a result? What we are doing now is very comparable to that because those volcanoes also released deeply stored carbon into the atmosphere. Much of paleoclimate is explained by cycles of release and sequestration of carbon.
I am one of the people who believe there is no evidence it ever has.
dpress.com/2016/01/temperature-and-co2-half-phanerozoic2.png
Your numbers are wrong, The trend from 1944 to 1998 was – rounding up – 0.1C/decade. So 0.5C for 2.5W/m2 – assuming it is all greenhouse gases..
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/berkley-trend1.png
Talking ECS, not surface trend. Conflating these two, as the numerical range is tuned for similarity, is the logical fallacy of Carbonism. The underlying assumption-“it is all greenhouse gasses”-is contradicted in the ice and benthic cores where CO2 is dragged kicking and screaming by temperature down a 95kyr slide in each and every interglacial/glacial transition since the MPT.
Don’t know what you’re talking about but what I was talking about was a transient climate sensitivity. What it assumed was that natural variability cancelled out over the very carefully selected period of integration.
I was talking about ECS, that weird thing based on “doubling” from some random date and ppm.
Your carefully selected period may be useful for cancelling out AMO/PDO scale variability, but there is obviously something more fundamental going on in longer time scales.
Let’s look at the 30-year temperature.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:120/mean:240/plot/gistemp/from:1985/trend
I would say the current rise is far more significant, and this time the sun is in a similar state to where it was in 1910, so we can rule that out, unlike 1910-1940 where the sun intensified to the mid-century peak.
This is all true but a woefully tiny perspective. Take the Berkeley Earth series deconstructed.
https://geosciencebigpicture.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/component-analysis-berkeley-earth.png
Even 1750 is a trivial time frame for what I’m talking about. What strikes me about this series is the enormous unexplained variation early on.
My point was that Jim’s number – the one he clings to with scant regard for anything else – was far unrealistically extreme. And it always seems to be the end point problem. The 30 year wood for dummies graph I am not looking at is tainted by natural warming.
The upwelling changes in the Pacific have quite tight periods – 20 to 30 years. But there is much more variability over many millennia.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2017/01/12/an-earnest-discovery-of-climate-causality/
And it has warmed 10C regionally in as little as a decade.
‘What defines a climate change as abrupt? Technically, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause. Chaotic processes in the climate system may allow the cause of such an abrupt climate change to be undetectably small.’ https://www.nap.edu/read/10136/chapter/3
They rattle about in their brains like Chicken Littles and have little capacity left to see outside the circle.
.
Cheers!
ALARMIST BALDERDASH!
Pure and simple.
CO2 GHG warming hardly shows up in temperature rises. Warming from doubling CO2 is projected by many at only 0.15ºC to 0.43ºC. This is less than the warming seen in the 20th century, yet CO2 addition from pre-industrial times in 43% more not 100% more. The atmosphere does not retain extra heat well. The effectiveness of more CO2 as a GHG is way over-hyped. The GHG effect only keeps the heat a fraction longer. The 2016 El Nino showed this. The Pacific oscillation injected extra warming into the atmosphere from the ocean. Peaking in February 2016, by December the average surface atmospheric temperature had fallen by 0.6ºC. That heat was radiated out to space. It was not kept by a CO2 GHG effect. The GHG effect only slows its loss. It does not stop the loss. 10 months and it’s gone.
This indicates that recent atmospheric surface warming mostly originates with ocean oscillations such as El Nino. Yet when large amounts of heat are injected into the atmosphere from the oceans, the atmosphere fairly quickly gets back to a balance.
IPCC CO2 GHG warming projections are so high because they add an amplification factor due to more water vapour. Their amplification factor is larger than the CO2 effect itself. Yet no extra water vapour has been observed in the atmosphere. There is no evidential base for amplification. Amplification is made up.
curryja. Compliments
That humans change climate is obvious – every time you see a hawk soaring on the thermal of a ploughed field – or feel how much warmer the concrete jungle is than the rainforest.
It is similarly obvious that more CO2 is “increasing human welfare and the health of ecosystems”, especially helping subsistence farmers in developing countries feed their families. NASA reports:
increasing atmospheric CO2 is fertilizing growth and greening the planet while fossil fuel use is contributing to that.
Greening of the Earth and its drivers
Now what will it take to reduce the enormous uncertainties enough to bound the contribution of humans closer than 1% to 99%?
The Right Climate Stuff Apollo era NASA engineers and scientists help by quantifying:
Executive Summary, Bounding GHG Climate Sensitivity for use in Regulatory Decisions February 2014
Bounding GHG Climate Sensitivity for use in Regulatory Decisions February 2014
+1
Discover the 3 factors that match average global temperatures 98% 1895-2015 at http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com
CO2 is not one of them.
You get a better correlation to temperature with human wealth, than you do with CO2.
Dan Pangburn
Good argument on thermalization.
However, please clarify/fix your ref to “CO2 BAND” vs “water FREQUENCIES”.
Is this what you are referring to for CO2 radiation bands?
http://www.ice-age-ahead-iaa.ca/scrp/lnga018.htm
Use apples to apples comparisons.
e.g., the 15 um “CO2 band” has many frequencies similar to water.
Dav – Because various refs might use microns or wave number (cm^-1) or even terahertz I have gotten used to seeing the various units used and to convert from any one to any other. 15 microns is 667/cm. WV has absorb-emit bands at this high a wave number and higher. Each of the 170+ WV bands has a pressure etc. broadened distribution similar to the one you show for CO2. At very low pressure, each of the ‘bands’ narrows to a spectral line.
Judith Curry, you are only controversial to people that don’t bother to read what you actually say.
It is funny how the anti-religious left likes to create demons.
Methinks that being painted a demon is high flattery.
It occurs to me that you may be responsible for many of us biting the apple of climate knowledge.
This thought gives me new perspective on the issue of women in science.
:)
OK. So answer me this. What is the “Ideal Climate State” from which we have changed? And if our efforts are somehow successful to “Change it back” or “Fight climate change (as it is so often defined)”, how will we know? And Oh woe, what if we overdo it? That Ideal Climate State is a colossally vague entity.
Mike,
I’m guessing the state they have in mind is the one which existed during the time individual human existence was brutish and short. That pares the population down to Mother’s carrying capacity (usually something under a billion, sometimes far under) and the right thinking enlightened folk can experience a paradise on earth, with the benefit of an environment trending back towards pristine, while maintaining their use of modern technology.
Word of advice – in that world you want to be among the enlightened. Not the serfs they will need to perform those tasks they have know understand of. Unless they expect robots to fill that role.
For 29 years advocates for public policy changes to fight climate change have struggled to convince the US public to support their agenda. They have failed. Polls show it ranks near the bottom of American’s policy priorities, and the increasingly dominant Republican Party has little interest in their recommendations.
It’s taken a while, but it looks like these activists are nearing the end of working through the process of accepting their failure. Paul Rosenberg’s January 2 article at Salon and now Meehan Crist’s article at The Atlantic suggest activists are moving into the fourth stage, depression — and their leading edge is moving into acceptance — and finding new crusades to wage.
I will believe that when I see it. The Atlantic article is more about definition, softening the words to encapsulate more individual’s positions. There is a need to reinstate the denial position. Or both parties will just move closer to the centre singing kum bi ya
In 1992 President Bush called Al Gore the Ozone Man. Bush laughed at Gore, and just about the entire world laughed with him.
Only the maroons are still laughing.
1992 (Ozone Man) to 2016.92: slope = 0.0212751 per year
The pause has made complete fools of a lot of very smart people, and they do not want to admit it. It’s embarrassing. So they resort to anger and bullying and telling big fibs… like MacBates’s much ado about nothing.
January 2017 had a higher anomaly than most of the months of the 2014-2016 El Niño. It’s too far away to mean much, but the odds of a 2017 El Niño are now 48%, and the odds have been climbing steadily.
The climate did not shift in 1998; it shifted much earlier than that. Natural variation has been masking ACO2 warming for decades. Call it the real stadium wave. The climate has shifted to a new regime. In this regime La Niña events will have a minimal affect on the GMST. You just experienced one. The lowest monthly anomaly during the 16-17 La Niña was .81 ℃, which is hot. The next La Niña will likely be even warmer.
You can forget about returning to the annual means seen before the 2013 regime shift. If a 2017 El Niño were to develop, which is still not likely, 2017 could end up the 4th warmest year in a row.
Well, climate change discussion is centered on global temperature. Sure, there are other metrics than can show a shift, but global temperature shifted in 1998. Not sure what “shift” you are talking about. Here is temperature. Why don’t you illustrate the metric that shows this “shift” to which you refer?
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6
There was no climate shift in 1998. The PDO index had been sinking since 1985, and it entered of period with lots of negative numbers… after 1998 it slipped into persistently negative numbers. The shifts are in 1985, to negative, and 2013, to positive. It’s called a stadium wave… downward, then upward.
Dr Curry,
I also agree with Steven Schueler that your last sentence should read:
… denial that the UNFCCC policies will accomplish anything significant …
otherwise it does not make sense.
I’m not scientifically sufficiently qualified to enter discussions on this blog but I do know enough to be able to say that as far as those countries setting big targets for windfarm and solar energy generatiion, the big story in the 21st C is not about global warming and whether you are on-song or a denialist, however that may be defined, but rather the big story in the 21st C for these countries will be the security and cost of energy and whether such countries can support a major portion of their manufacturing base.
High reliance on windfarms spells disaster.
If you are in any doubt on this point have a look at this story: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/chris-kenny/south-australias-quixotic-approach-to-energy/news-story/ded1f167051c7555f91e481733a3e2a2.
When I was a young person in the 1950s and 1960s power outages occurred regular. It appears we are regressing back to those times but paying far more for whatever electricity is to be supplied. In the state of Victoria, later this year a brown coal generator supplying 22% of the state’s electricity supply is to be closed all because of the increasing incursion of highly variable wind farm electricity.
This is what happens when the Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidts of this world with their doomsday scenarios, get into the ear of politicians all too happy to embrace moral virtue years before the painful effects of their policies become apparent.
““Yes it’s warming and yes humans contribute to it. ” “the question is: Is what’s going on related to humans? And the answer is: Yes, it is.”
Virtually no one denies that humans have an influence on climate.”
I’m confused. This doesn’t sound like the views of a sceptic, and a number of the statements expressed in the article seem contradictory. I would appreciate it if 1] Ms Curry could elucidate on which human activities she attributes to global warming, other than just locally, i.e. deforestation, concreting of large areas, and 2] how does this square with scientists attributing the recent warming to a strong El Nino, which has now apparently ended, giving rise to a cooling La Nina, or before that the 17yr pause? Or is it her view that the earth’s warming simply because we’re in an interglacial, emerging from the last ice age?
It seems to me that many of the statements flying around at the moment can mean simply what the reader interprets them to mean.
Pingback: The New “Climate Denial” | Transterrestrial Musings
No denying that anyone who disagrees over the certainty that man is the primary cause of global warming and/or questions the policies for mitigation must be marginalized, demonized and ostracized.
One need not do that harkin to get labeled a denier. One can agree with everything the 97% consensus covers, yet question if there is evidence for any of the negative impacts which are regularly thrown about and still be called a denier.
Still not sure what I’m denying. Am I denying a 10 to 70 meter SLR by end of century? It hasn’t happened, so there is nothing to deny. Doubt? Plenty, particularly when observations say 8 inches.
Timg56, you have a cite for a credible alarmist who says 10 to 70 meter sea level rise by end of century?
Didn’t think so!
You are lowballing what observations would predict, assuming rates stay the same for the increase by 2100. Either that or you are bad at math.
And discounting what observation of past sea levels when CO2 was above 400 and temperatures at or above where they are now.
The consensus is the hoax.
There’s really no need to try to break it down much further…the hoaxsters and the profoundly duped have a whole litany of talking points to avoid rational discourse.
we have been witnesses to the biggest pseudo-scientific hoax that humanity has ever seen. It has been remarkable.
“Scientists agree that legitimate scientific uncertainty is irrelevant to crafting responsible climate policy?”
Errr … NO.
Some hard scientists insist that scientific uncertainty, legitimately calculated, is a key to understanding the science that must be understood before the doors are opened to the policy arena. Pretty self-evident.
Geoff
Exactly. The measurement of risk is basic to the policy response in order to manage the risk. The risk of an event is its uncertainty weighted by its consequences (at the time the event occurs). Science should help with both, and note estimation of the uncertainty is central.
Where science needs to bow out and pass over to the political process is when it comes to valuing the options for managing the risk, weighing the costs and benefits. Unfortunately use of things like reporting the extremes and applying precaution (that seems endemic in this area of science) are applying value judgements by stealth, and have no place in the science.
I should add that, contrary to what many scientist activists claim, when it comes to the option of delaying action while getting better information to improve the quantification of risk can often be the optimum risk management technique.
+ many.
I very am sceptical that any climate policies proposed so far will be beneficial. I see no valid evidence to support the belief that any ‘climate policy’ being proposed by climate alarmists will be beneficial. I suspect they will do more harm than good.
Well it has been proposed – by millions. I assure you it is not my idea I’m just a groupie. With immense benefits that have nothing to do with climate change.
https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Iriai/posts/1182630071853253
And 21st century energy is surely a great blessing.
https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Iriai/posts/1182638705185723
“The recent shift in conservative rhetoric exploits legitimate scientific uncertainty that most scientists agree is irrelevant to crafting responsible climate policy. Despite overwhelming evidence, many conservatives are still willing to ignore scientific consensus and stall political action. ”
In a similar endeavor where truth is sought to decide on adequate and justified response the innocent remain just that if there is any real uncertainty. In my opinion the “overwhelming evidence” remains mostly circumstantial and uncorroborated as well as widely contested and refuted by several lines of authenticated evidence. If they can’t prove that Fossil fuel CO2 is guilty of causing damage (not possible future damage) it shouldn’t be sentenced as a criminal nor should we who produce it be held as accessories.
“Huh? Acknowledging uncertainties is ‘science denial’? Virtually no one denies that humans have an influence on climate. The key question is whether human causes have dominated the recent warming. Even the IPCC hedges on this one, with their highly confident ‘more than half.’”
https://youtu.be/3GDBP1gx2f8?t=21m13s
Weirdly, faced with someone who denies that humans have an impact you did not answer his question about how much. You did not, for example, Cite your own research on ECS which Precludes a “tiny tiny effect”. you did not question his certainty that it might be a tiny tiny effect. You ignored his over certainty.
Failing to point out that he was over certain about the effect, hiding your own published results, well.. I don’t know if that qualifies as denial.. but omitting to state what you do know, just to give voice to uncertainty is form of something.. obsfucation? denial? word doesnt really matter. The practical result is the same. he came away from that interview Knowing Less than he could have known, had you merely spoke clearly about your published results.
Tiny, tiny? That’s technical talk for ECS .01. Tiny? That’s .2. Now, small, that’s .5 and getting downright reasonable. You can probably tell I’m a less than half guy…just trying to clarify the range.
If you want to clarify the bottom of the range for climate sensitivity with the certainty that is provided by empirical data and simple arithmetic, you can ponder that the transient climate response as it has manifested to date is 2.3 °C, and that the equilibrium climate sensitivity is very likely (to borrow a phrase…) somewhere between 3.1 °C and 3.9 °C:
https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/10/the-new-climate-denial/#comment-838174
I don’t think that there’s any room in that for “tiny”, let alone “tiny, tiny”…
Agree. There is room for “small”.
She sounds like she has pneumonia. You sound like a quibbling fool.
Just sayin’
I’m actually concerned, as Mosher isn’t sounding like his normal self.
Steven, I do hope you are well. I pay attention to your comments (well, except when they get repetitive or over cryptic) and you would be missed.
BTW – congrats David on the accuracy of your election threads predictions. Several made me take a closer look and swung me over top believing you were likely going to get it right.
Mosher,
Start looking for a new career. This one’s over. You backed the wrong horse.
I think he already has, actually.
He’s
playing computer games withproducing models of the modelled mortality rate caused by the emission of PM2.5 in cities.That was an interesting exchange on the aerosol-spraying conspiracy theory. I think at that point Judith realized this was a conspiracy show and was looking for a way out.
‘Denial’ remains the dirty accusation it always has in discourse on the Current Warm Period. I find it always refreshing to see that a portion of human contribution to the warmer climate acknowledged by climate ‘deniers’ (includes land use, UHI, industrial emission of CO2); but conversely I find it always frustrating/irritating that those who seek to place blame on Industrialised societies on the warmer climate consistently fail to acknowledge the natural contributions of the various ocean-atmosphere oscillations. They simply deny natural causes of this Warm Period. Oh give or take a volcano. The recent warming that is known to be El Nino is proudly shown on HADCRUT overlays of CHMP models (ala Zeke) as if the appearance of the 2016 peak within the confidence limits of the models verifies the models. As I noted on twitter the Null Hypothesis of the models should be stated to ensure a viewer can have a feel for what is being compared. CO2 related IR warming is the model, ENSO?AMO etc is the observation.
The concepts regarding Uncertainty is clearly not being understood or reported with veracity, and it is appalling that the value of equilibrium climate sensitivity between 1.5 -4.5 C, with ‘likely’ confidence, is being used to guide policy. I am all for a broadening of energy generating methods, and happy these are being arranged in my homestate of NSW in Australia, but not because of (as Aussies pronounce it because of how a former PM did) daynjerrous cloimat change.
On a #heatwave day in Sydney today – yes it is hot due to blocking Highs, and 40+C in UHI western suburbs – being hyped up by the usuals, and the Climate Council saying – on the ABC of course – (and I am paraphrasing here: ‘this is what we get with 1degC warming, so in 30 years time it will be sooooo much worse’ – I strongly say – I *deny* these claims of #climatechange, #globalwarming and the rest. In this respect I will happily call myself by their derogatory term, “denier”.
It’s a Warm Period and the opportunity to study it has been consumed with anti-Industrialised society attacks and Orwellian DoubleThink.
Please, Dr Curry, keep the steady dialogue going regards determining a realistic response to CO2 conc increases, but also the firm role of natural variability.
cheers,
John
It strikes me as irrational that people who are inclined to label others as “deniers” seem to believe the climate would not change if we stopped using carbon based fuels. Its idiotic! The so-called hoax is labeling and demonizing people as “deniers” because they understand that natural variability and human activities both contribute to climate change. George Orwell would not believe it possible.
Coincidentally – I just finished this. I was giving it a rst for a few days before a final review.
https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Iriai/posts/1182829681833292
That should be – all the climate science that’s not fit to print – I changed it.
The Contrarian Matrix haz many more levels than Do Not Panic and Do No Harm:
http://contrarianmatrix.wordpress.com
I am looking for the most exhaustive list possible.
Suggestions welcome.
I’ve got a suggestion…
The bottom line on climate is impressively simple. There is an instantaneous rate of increase (nominally – see below) in greenhouse gas forcing of 1E-9 W/m2 – set against a background of immense natural variability. The 97% consensus on the first point is a misdirection intended to deceive the public that 97% of climate deniers don’t believe this. Simply not even close to true. The disagreement was always about the scope and depth of natural variability, on the point where data adjustments become statistical manipulations, on gaps and uncertainties in data, on the proper use and limitations of climate models and on chaos in climate and models. But far and away – disagreement was always about energy and development. In every instance we have been on the right side of science and policy… https://watertechbyrie.com/2017/02/11/a-primer-for-climate-science-deniers/
Thanks, Chief, but that’s crap. It goes all over the place. Focus.
I want something more serious.
I value your opinion willardo – as always – but you were looking for an exhaustive list? Not that it isn’t exhausting keeping up.
To quote again from today’s post on denier science.
The performers are a cabal of self-appointed arbiters of science, swarms of followers who confound the discourse with dissimulation, trivialities, diversions, denigration and abuse – climate memes learned by rote and strategies honed in echo chambers – and a political class exaggerating risk to justify societal and economic transformation. They can, of course, be all three. The personal investment of scientific credibility, self-image and political ambitions is enormous – and then there is the gravy train. Motivated performers are hardly likely to be moved until ideology and reality diverge sufficiently such that the strange superstructure of climate activism collapses.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2017/02/11/a-primer-for-climate-science-deniers/
You know they come here to count coup on deniers – and willard is one of those without the slightest clue about anything technical – and then to return to their enclaves – where deniers are not allowed – to whine about how impossible we are, to boast about their victories and to strategize. You’re very welcome I’m sure wee willie.
The bottom line on climate is impressively simple. There is an instantaneous rate of increase (nominally – see below) in greenhouse gas forcing of 1E-9 W/m2 – set against a background of immense natural variability.
Do you mean that GHG ‘s forcing some are practically instantaneuos, that is that say a 400 level of CO2 must produce the expected warming each day the sun comes up as quickly as the heat input increases?
This throws a spanner in the works of watching monotonic CO2 increase as opposed to natural temperature variability.
Hi,
Add a greenhouse gas – the incoming energy doesn’t change but the heat content of the planet increases with less IR emission. The planet warms at light speed and emits more energy proportionate to T to the fourth power.
https://i1.wp.com/watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/gw-photons-animated.gif?ssl=1&w=450
The change in heat content happens with photon/molecule interactions. It seems to me to be not a slow process.
> you were looking for an exhaustive list
You haven’t clicked on the link, Chief, have you?
I think I already have these talking points. What I need is news ones, with references. One line. One reference. Hopefully a line in a formal text.
Look what I already did.
I will check back in a few days.
Did you click on mine? Much more enlightened – and let’s face it – honest reading material.
Yes I did, Chief. You rant to no end simply to end up plugging BI’s crap.
What else is new?
Yes of course wee willie.
The performers are a cabal of self-appointed arbiters of science, swarms of followers who confound the discourse with dissimulation, trivialities, diversions, denigration and abuse – climate memes learned by rote and strategies honed in echo chambers – and a political class exaggerating risk to justify societal and economic transformation. They can, of course, be all three. The personal investment of scientific credibility, self-image and political ambitions is enormous – and then there is the gravy train. Motivated performers are hardly likely to be moved until ideology and reality diverge sufficiently such that the strange superstructure of climate activism collapses.
Rants against world government conspiracies is all well good, Chief, and yours are well above Denizens’ par. Only WAG does it better than you.
It still ain’t an argument that I could cite in the Contrarian Matrix. If you can get someone of Judy’s caliber on record I’m interested. She did mention a world government in her recent interview with Lizard Icke’s investigator, but I’d rather cite a real text.
The urban dofus hipster vision involves narratives of moribund western economies governed by corrupt corporations collapsing under the weight of internal contradictions – leading to less growth, less material consumption, less CO2 emissions, less habitat destruction and a last late chance to stay within the safe limits of global ecosystems. And this is just in the ‘scholarly’ journals.
Now I’m just a humble little sanitary engineer – but it seems it is rich economies wot saves the world.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/income-and-lpi.png
They seems quite taken with using global warming to overthrow democracy and capitalism.
Dateline ‘3 February 2015 – The Top UN Climate Change Official is optimistic that a new international treaty will be adopted at Paris Climate Change conference at the end of the year. However, the official, Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of UNFCCC, warns that the fight against climate change is a process and that the necessary transformation of the world economy will not be decided at one conference or in one agreement.
“This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history”, Ms Figueres stated at a press conference in Brussels.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution. That will not happen overnight and it will not happen at a single conference on climate change, be it COP 15, 21, 40 – you choose the number. It just does not occur like that. It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation.” UNRIC
I can’t parody them as well as they do themselves. It is just hilariously inept. As are you wee willie.
Thanks for the kind words, Chief.
Not sure why you’d epilogue on ineptitude while failing to reference your argument, but that was beautiful.
Willard might hurt himself complying with it.
Chief,
As a sanitary engineer you have a leg up on the rest of us in dealing with some of the more organically wasted types.
Keep contributing.
(I brought out the pom poms just for Willard.)
A humble sanitary engineer. I’ve lost track of what argument I was supposedly not making – but its wee willie – who really cares.
Thanks to your cheerleading, I’ve added “high energy planet” on Level 4, Timmy Boy:
https://contrarianmatrix.wordpress.com/future-is-bright/
If that’s the best Chief got, that’s the best he got.
I also added your name to the Colophon, Chief.
I am surprised att the persistence of the sobriquet. Chief Hydrologist was a pop culture reference from the earlier more enlighened days of the CE eSalon. Cecil Terwilliger (brother to Sideshow Bob) was Springfield’s Chief Hydrological and Hydrodynamical Engineer. He opined that this was a sacred vocation in some cultures. The more I thought about this the more it resonated with me. I am an hydrologist by training, profession and (much more) through a deep fascination with water in all its power and beauty. Given the importance of water to us practically and symbolically, there is more than an element of the sacred.
The other bit on another thread entirely was on the success of COP21 to lock in energy emission increases of 3.7 billion metric tonnes to 2030. That’s OK with us. We chose a high growth and high energy planet because the benefits are greater than the risks. The Breakthrough Institute argues on ethical considerations.
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/our-high-energy-planet
If that’s the best wee willie can do – it’s a pathetic loser ploy.
Chief
“The change in heat content happens with photon/molecule interactions. It seems to me to be not a slow process.”
If the IR/molecular in’s impact is at the speed of light, doesn’t that also apply to IR/molecular out? All seems a little crazy given that the daily impact upon weather and day and night temperatures respond so quickly yet the climate seems to change so slowly?
Obviously, I can’t argue climate science in this august group, but I can argue that energy efficiency–the cleanest, cheapest, quickest solution to GHG reduction–and the Internet of Things trumps these scientific debates.
You can argue the diagnosis and I want to talk about global solutions!
Hi RiHo08
If you put a plug in a sink – you don’t get anything out until the sink overflows.
And I too am fundamentally interested in solutions. We may talk endlessly about technicals and risks and benefits – and that seems quite likely. We can move on from the obviously failed Kyoto and COP21 process and we can move on to the great project of the 21st that has immense promise for people and the planet.
Out of the backblocks of the climate blogosphere – it is happening in many countries and with millions of people.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2017/02/08/the-climate-problem-and-the-solution/
Ribbit! Your own Lamar Alexander (Rep: Tennessee) explained many years ago what the US need to do to properly address any AGW, and the then more believable, but again wrong in fact, fear of imminent fossil energy exhaustion. He wrote a series of papers grouped now as “Going to war in sailboats”, a homely American title, which explained the physics in down home terms for backwoods Tennesseans, that even climate changing renewablists could check for themselves – and called for a new Manhattan project :-)
If’n y’all be-lieve in science fact, ah figure “Lamar Alexander is right!” (i)
Ref: (i) Paraphrase Howard Johnson – Blazing Saddles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NaQxUEfxt0)
Dearest Buckley
You come across as flash as a dunny rat with a gold tooth – but you will find that it is more down under than down home. It seemed like a good idea – back in the day – when we invented global warming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zjRkigAGMo
It is now dry as a dead dingo’s donger and I begin to wonder if things have gone without rhyme or reason – beyond shadow’s doubt – across to the lair of the rainbow serpent. Stoned crows – man do not live by physics alone – but by an unreasoning faith in the future where the rains fall on the Earth and the cockatoos don’t fly backwards to keep the dust out of their eyes.
For now we are holding fast. Next week we vote on a Bill of Rights that provides for – inter alia – that no man shall make a regulation on:
Water vapor
Carbon dioxide
Methane
Nitrous oxide
Sulfur hexafluoride
Hydrofluorocarbons
Perfluorocarbons
Any other substance subject to, or proposed to be subject to regulation to address climate change.
We have workshopped this night and day with Lamar Alexander – who has been a great boon for us. It is the any other substance that has me inspired. Like Diogenes with his tub – and amidst the clamour and strife of the climate war – I have taken it upon myself to perversely invent any other substances that we may not regulate just to see if it’s possible. I’ll get back to you on that.
Yours
> I am surprised att the persistence of the sobriquet.
I am less surprised by the persistence in commenting that got you a few times on a short leash already, Chief.
Also, your previous sock puppets don’t reflect that persistence as well as “Chief”.
I don’t have sockpuppets. There are word games I play for fun – such as with my best friend Buckley above who – unlike with the linguistic contortions of wee willie – is actually capable of constructing a frivolous, charming and amusing little story. Whether I have succeeded in response in this quiet little corner – that I imagined would go unnoticed – is for Buckley to judge.
Unlike me – wee willie intends to deceive with wee willful misrepresentation and invidious insinuation. By all means look at wee willies compendium of his version of ‘climate clowns’. A very sad little obsession it seems to me.
Wee willie comes here to count coup on climate deniers like me – and then retreat to ‘and then there’s physics’ to boast of victories, to whine about how impossible deniers are and to strategize on future panty raids. Yes I have peeked once or twice. The difference there is that I am not allowed to speak.
That he imagines that this is a proper occupation for a man is incomprehensible – but it is instructive on the mindset of the author of the Atlantic article.
> I don’t have sockpuppets.
Saying so may make Captain Kangaroo sad, Chief.
Between you and me and Timmy Boy, Sir Rud had a point yesterday.
It would be a pity to see you go again.
No need to rip off your shirt, and thank you again for the kind words.
T.Rex
Originally published May 27, 2015
Exxon, Chevron opt out of European Big Oil’s climate huddle
The biggest U.S. oil producers have dismissed the prospect of joining their European peers in forging a common stance on climate change, with Exxon Mobil’s CEO saying he doesn’t intend to “fake it.”
Snip
Exxon Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson was more blunt in remarks to reporters after his company’s annual meeting in Dallas on Wednesday. A shareholder who’d praised the European companies for at least paying “lip service” to environmental concerns drew this response:
“No, thank you, that would not be us,” Tillerson said. “We’re not going to be disingenuous about it. We’re not going to fake it. We’re going to express a view that we have been very thoughtful about. We’re going to express solutions and policy ideas that we think have merit.
“Speaking out to be speaking out about it doesn’t seem particularly helpful to me,” he said.
Snip
Climate models that seek to predict the outcome of rising temperatures “just aren’t that good,” Tillerson said, reiterating a position he has publicly advocated at least since his promotion to CEO in 2006. The company is wary of making efforts to reduce emissions that may not work or that will be deemed unnecessary if the modeling is flawed, Tillerson said.
“Mankind has this enormous capacity to deal with adversity. Those solutions will present themselves as the realities become clear,” he said. “I know that is a very unsatisfying answer for a lot of people, but it’s an answer that a scientist and an engineer would give you.’’
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/exxon-chevron-opt-out-of-european-big-oils-climate-huddle/
ExxonMobil CEO mocks renewable energy in shareholder speech
05/27/15
The CEO of one of the world’s largest oil companies downplayed the effects of climate change at his company’s annual meeting Wednesday, telling shareholders his firm hadn’t invested in renewable energy because “We choose not to lose money on purpose.”
“Mankind has this enormous capacity to deal with adversity,” ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson told the meeting, pointing to technologies that can combat inclement weather “that may or may not be induced by climate change.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/exxonmobil-ceo-downplays-climate-change-mock-renewable-energy-118330
Renewable energy isn’t ready for prime time. The problem faced by large oil companies is their inability to find new oil fields, or to exploit known resources at competitive prices.
I’ve worked in industry committees with both American and European companies, the effort is quite stressful given their political and cultural differences, and it doesn’t make any sense for a company like Exxon to be roped into a joint statement with BP, Total, and Statoil. Tillerson was right.
@Fernando. Yes there are cultural differences which would not be obvious to industry outsiders. An irony is that Exxon has historically taken most of the heat as the prototype (to warmunists) of Big Bad Oil Climate Denial. However they are arguably the most principled on this issue.
cheers
brent
Exclusive: BP-Exxon impasse blocks renewal of giant Azeri oil deal
Exxon’s position began to toughen after 2014, and one source close to the discussions said the Tillerson-Dudley relationship had complicated matters. “It could have been sorted out at the very top level. But Rex and Bob have had frosty relations for years,” the source said.
Sources pointed to several events over the past years which had soured matters between the two Americans.
Sources pointed to several events over the past years which had soured matters between the two Americans.
After BP’s deadly 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster, Dudley said it was “one-in-a-million occurrence” and that BP did not act in a negligent manner. Tillerson, however, called the biggest oil spill in U.S. history “a breakdown of management oversight” and called Dudley’s remarks “a great disservice to the industry”.
A year later, BP lost a deal to drill for oil in the Russian Arctic after a surprise decision by its long-time local partner Rosneft to chose Exxon
Then last year, BP was among a group of top oil firms that made a rare joint appeal in support of the United Nations-backed Paris climate deal. Tillerson refused to sign, saying he didn’t want to be “disingenuous” or “fake it” as far as his long-standing scepticism on the issue was concerned.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bp-exxon-azerbaijan-idUSKCN0ZH4LJ
The Union of Concerned Scientists says there is overwhelming evidence of the impact of human-caused global warming and nearly unanimous agreement about it in the scientific community.
Since the attribution issue is very far from resolved, perhaps they should be renamed the Union of Lying Scientists.
I thought they were the Union of Concensus Scientists.
Wasn’t their motto:
“If you lie when we tell you to, we will leave you alone”?
I like Union of Lefty, Wussy, Snowflakes better.
“Despite overwhelming evidence, many conservatives are still willing to ignore scientific consensus and stall political action. ”
Reality : Despite overwhelming evidence that the scientific consensus is politically funded, and that this funding source (government) has a vested interest in fomenting climate alarm, many liberals are still willing to ignore this bias and push for political action.
Pingback: CEH: Climate Flap Echoes Political Divide
I’ve never had a problem with the term denier.
I deny that anyone on the planet knows the global average temperature to within a tenth of a degree on any day, at any time.
I really deny that anyone on the planet knows the GAT trend, to within tenths (let alone hundredths) of a degree over any period of time, long or short.
I deny that anyone on the planet knows the trend in global average sea level rise within millimeters.
I deny that anyone knows the global average temperature to within tenths of a degree a hundred years ago, let alone a thousand.
I deny that anyone can predict with any accuracy what the global average temperature will be in 30, 50, 100 or 200 years within tenths of a degree, or even within a degree or two.
Take all that denial and triple if for ocean temps.
Oh, and I deny that the fact that the greatest claimed warming is occurring where there are the fewest temperature measurements is a coincidence.
None of the above is science, so I am not a science denier.
I am a post-modern-statistics-dressed-up-as-science denier.
– Doubting your own hypotheses and accepting their independnent validation by your critical peers is scientific method.
– Accepting consensus in unprovable hypotheses is science method denial.
– Enforcing a belief to promote phony solutions that must make the supposed hypothetical cause expensively worse in science fact, is simply old fashioned snake oil fraud – on the science facts.
– However real AGW is we need an electrical energy supply that works best, most sustainably, and , why not?, with lowest possibe CO2, at 3 times todays energy levels – to energise transport and heating after fossil. On the engineering facts.
– What people, particularly climate change supporters, believe works, can’t, in most countries. . Energy science is proven, and doesn’t care what you believe. On the facts. No room for opinion there, either.
This is why the renewable dogma for subsidy profit is simply chanted as the religious solution to CO2 reduction by those fraudulent climate scientists with agendas and grants to maintain, who studiously avoid the facts of the very simple grid generation models that these supposedly hot shot physicists of climate science could solve in hours. But would rather not.
Because the realities of lowest carbon sustainable energy generation are not renewables, for most developed countries’ grids. Energy supply isn’t a loosely hung together bunch of relationships being extrapolated into the unknown climate science hypothesis, that anyone can argue – but never validate. Energy generation is hard and proven science the grid has to deliver every day.
Climate scientists are enitled to their own opinions on the climate, but not to their own facts on generation.
FACT: AGW does not support renewable energy as a substantively and sustainably decarbonising grid energy source, for the developed nations who are producing the most emissions. It’s a lie. And the poster boy wind, wave, barrage, renewable enrgy sources are far to weak, intermittent and resource intensive to produce enough energy in most countries. Bio fuels involve massive land use on mono culture we could use for food, and their burning produces more CO2 per KWh than coal. etc. (“Renewable” CO2, apparently). But that’s only the science facts. The esoteric, and ultimately unprovable in our lifetimes, climate science the more arrogant tenure holders and actual science deniers of academe can have long and ultimately pointless academic debates on, at the actual current and growing expense of humanity at large in science fact, is far more unprovable and tenure filling. They don’t like the cold logic of proven energy science up ’em.
J’accuse!
Eur Ing Brian RL Catt CEng, CPhys, MBA, find me in the Parliamentary library, etc)
I had to check – no it isn’t all uncertainty.
https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Iriai/posts/1182630071853253
Pingback: Judith Curry: The New ‘Climate Denial’ | The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
“Climate denialism is no longer about science; its about action versus inaction – in particular, the UNFCCC’s preferred actions. It doesn’t seem to matter that the emissions targets are woefully inadequate for preventing what they expect to be ‘dangerous’ climate change; emissions targets are unlikely to be met; and the climate will show little change in the 21st century even if the targets are met”
J.C.
They may be “inadequate” – but sceptics are resisting even that. It is a plan of action that has enough measure of support to be *voted* through.
Also: So little change in climate “in the the 21st century” is a reason for not considering impact reduction for those that come after us in the 22nd?
The COP21 shadow proclamation, on the other hand, results in an increase of energy emissions of 3.7 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions to 2030. Liars and dissemblers proclaim a victory and cling to faint hopes of a comeback. Like Kyoto it is a failure even in its limited objectives – and will continue so.
As usual, you have the wrong end of the stick – little change in climate trajectories as a result of COP21 emission commitments.
The alternative?
Returning 100 billion tonnes of carbon to soils and ecosystems has major benefits that are utterly unrelated to global warming. Restoring soil carbon stores increases agronomic productivity and enhances global food security. Increasing the soil organic content enhances water holding capacity and creates a more drought tolerant agriculture – with less downstream flooding. There is a critical level of soil carbon that is essential to maximising the effectiveness of water and nutrient inputs. Global food security, especially for countries with fragile soils and harsh climate such as in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, cannot be achieved without improving soil quality through an increase in soil organic content. Wildlife flourishes on restored grazing land helping to halt biodiversity loss. Reversing soil carbon loss is a new green revolution where conventional agriculture is hitting a productivity barrier with exhausted soils and increasingly expensive inputs.
Increased agricultural productivity, increased downstream processing and access to markets build local economies and global wealth. Economic growth provides resources for solving problems – conserving and restoring ecosystems, better sanitation and safer water, better health and education, updating the diesel fleet and other productive assets to emit less black carbon and reduce the health and environmental impacts, developing better and cheaper ways of producing electricity, replacing cooking with wood and dung with better ways of preparing food – thus avoiding respiratory disease and again reducing black carbon emissions. A global program of agricultural soils restoration is the foundation for balancing the human ecology. Many countries have committed to increasing soil carbon by 0.4% per year. As a global objective and given the highest priority it is a solution to critical problems of biodiversity loss, development, food security and resilience to drought and flood. Fifty countries and millions of people have joined the cause since Paris in 2015.
But this is a right wing rant by a Trump acolyte – right?
” little change in climate trajectories as a result of COP21 emission commitments.”
By *your* measure of “trajectories” only.
Which I would suggest is the one shown by UAH TLT (not forgetting the V6.05 bit).
A data series that is a far cold outlier and with many structural problems.
As I’ve shown several times.
CO2 emissions will continue upwards and unabated regardless of speculations on effects of fossil fuels. The prevention of the upward climb would be disastrous.
This question was for J.C…..
So little change in climate “in the the 21st century” (a big IF but anyway) is that a reason for not considering impact reduction for those that come after us in the 22nd?
Hint: It involves invoking a none selfish grey-cell or two.
You completely miss the point again. COP21 locked in a 3.7 billion tonnes increase in energy emissions to 2030.
We will have 21st century energy sources by then. But the only way to reduce it is the Alt-COP French initiative that now has 50 mermber countries and millions of people on board.
But you don’t know any of this do you?
> The alternative?
Is it? It may be a false alternative unless you argue that biosequestration and regenerative agriculture alone would suffice to mitigate AGW. With serious references.
***
> this is a right wing rant
It’s more Polyannish techno-pop for now. Victim playing is boring.
We do need Big Breakthroughs. Mainstream projections already presume a a big impact by them, BTW. Ask Kevin Anderson what he thinks about that choice to include them in our projections.
God – I have supplied hundreds of references on this. Rattan Lal is a global leader. He works here.
http://cmasc.osu.edu/pageview2/Home.htm
More broadly the goal is an increase in soil carbon of 4 parts per 100 per year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY9YVwJZDvw
And this and other videos were in the post.
https://youtu.be/YBLZmwlPa8A
I’m sure you could put some effort in – but your picayune contributions hardly inspire me to assist.
Quoting out of context is tedious in the extreme – and after that I don’t have a clue what you are saying. Try standard Enlish.
> I have supplied hundreds of references on this.
“This” being sequestration itself, not an argument according to which sequestration could replace reduction commitments and other mitigation efforts. Breakthrough armwaving does not count as an argument.
Focus on making an argument, Chief. Handwaving at stuff can’t compensate.
You continue to insist on trivial diversions.
http://4p1000.org/understand
That’s the game plan for the urban doofus hipster collective. It’s the only game you play.
What you call a “trivial diversion” cuts through your false alternative, Chief.
Not bad for a diversion.
But I’m glad to see that the science is finally settled.
It will take a lot more than wee willies babble to cut through this alternative.
https://youtu.be/sBeCHZNf2L4
YOU SHOULD BRUSH UP ON WHAT CLIMATE IS: -”there is no such a thing as ‘’earth’s global climate’’ – there are many INDEPENDENT different MICRO CLIMATES 1] Alpine climate 2] Mediterranean climate, 3] sea- level climate 4] high altitude climate 5] temperate climates 6] subtropical climate, 7] tropical climate 8] desert climate 9] rainforest climates 10] wet climate 11] dry climate, as in desert AND THEY KEEP CHANGING; wet climate gets dry occasionally b] even rains in the desert sometimes and improves. In the tropics is wet and dry -/- in subtropics and temperate climates changes four time a year, WITH EVERY season= migratory birds can tell you that; because they know much more about climate than all the Warmist foot-solders and all climate skeptics combined – on the polar caps climates change twice a year. Leading Warmist know that is no ”global warming” so they encompassed ”climatic changes” to confuse and con the ignorant – so that when is some extreme weather for few days on some corner of the planet, to use it as proof of their phony global warming and ignore that the weather is good simultaneously on the other 97% of the planet, even though is same amount of co2. In other words, they used the trick as: -”if you want to sell that the sun is orbiting around the earth -> you encompass the moon – present proofs that the moon is orbiting around the earth and occasionally insert that: the sun and moon rise from same place and set to the west, proof that the ”sun is orbiting around the earth” AND the trick works, because the Flat-Earthers called ”climate skeptics” are fanatically supporting 90% of the Warmist lies. Bottom line: if somebody doesn’t believe that on the earth climate exist and constantly changes, but is no global warming -> ”climate skeptic” shouldn’t be allowed on the street, unless accompanied by an adult. b] many micro-climates and they keep changing, but no such a thing as ”global climate”
Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and cement production – from 1750 to 2011 – was about 365 billion metric tonnes as carbon (GtC), with another 180 GtC from deforestation and agriculture. Of this 545 GtC, about 240 GtC (44%) had accumulated in the atmosphere, 155 GtC (28%) had been taken up in the oceans with slight consequent acidification, and 150 GtC (28%) had accumulated in terrestrial ecosystems. A critical metric is the losses from soils and forests.
Most of that was cribbed from the IPCC. You want an argument that some of that dan be returned to soils and forests? We ae way beyond but feel free to research it.
We have contracted for reduction of 150 million tonnes of greenhouse gases for $1.5 billion over the past couple of years.
But that’s not the answer you wan’t is it wee willie.
Actually none has accumulated in the atmosphere. A common misperception. Our emissions are gone in a few years. The unproven claim is that our emissions are causing that CO2 increase. They do not compose it in any case. It is a complex attribution problem, not a simple accumulation.
Better to say it accumulates in the atmosphere and ocean. We shouldn’t forget acidification is the other consequence.
We have carbon emerging from deep sequestration. It is partitioned in various stores – including the ocean if you read a little harder Jim. That there is a multi-compartment carbon cycle is beside the point.
I think we are agreeing. The only reason it is getting higher in the atmosphere is that it is also getting higher in the ocean. This is an equilibrium.
I’d never do something like that Jim.
https://i1.wp.com/watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/ncomms13428-f1.jpg?ssl=1&w=450
“we should forget that acidification is the other problem”
And that fact was settled when?
You do know that we have very little data on ocean pH, right? In fact NOAA and U of Washington ran ( or perhaps the contest is still running) a contest for ocean pH monitoring devices, in an effort to address the dearth in real data.
So how can you “know” acidification is a problem when science currently lacks the means to collect meaningful data?
Half the added CO2 has gone into the ocean. It acidifies as a result. That’s chemistry.
Less than a third has gone oceans – and the chenustry isa lot more complex.
Chemistry.
Not at all Banton – it is according to IEA energy emission projections of COP21 commitments. These guys are not good at reality.
Politicians and bureaucrats love voting for something that doesn’t commit themselves to anything.
I recommend you watch some soap opera Tony. Might give you better insight into COP 21.
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Are we overthinking things with obvious exceptions? Is life a Fermi problem?
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/large/public/2016-07/climate-forcing-figure1-2016.png
This implies a doubling of forcing in 60 years from 1990 – at a warming rate of 0.1C/decade. At most. So a sensitivity of 0.6 degrees C? Courtesy of my 30 year old Casio scientific calculator.
Who will rid us of these motivated idiots?
They claim a strong positive feedback. You need to get rid of that.
Also, forcing is not warming. Increasing CO2 need not cause warming.
“They” might claim anything – usually erroneously. The Fermi transient calc uses temperature records which include the short term feedbacks.
Adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is warming. If you know of any circumstances where it isn’t please enlighten me.
Reblogged this on Tallbloke's Talkshop and commented:
In a world of soundbites a two-word label is about the limit before people mentally switch off.
The climate movement only partly embraces the precautionary principle. United Nations seems to have forgotten that the precautionary principle also applies to the ideas pushed by United Nations. This is Wikipedias explanation of the principle:
«The precautionary principle or precautionary approach to risk management states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is not harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking an action.»
These are the kind of changes United Nations want to bring about:
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution,”
– Christiana Figueres, who headed the United Nations’s Framework Convention on Climate Change until 2016
“The tools that you design, the financial structures that you develop, the blends that you are able to put together, all of that, in the next five years, will decide the quality of certainly the energy and certainly the quality of the global economy for the next thirty-five years, and hence the quality of life for everyone else for hundreds of years.”
– Christina Figueres
The New Yorker – The Climate Summit of Money
I can think of a few others who intentionally brought about radical changes to a society or developed financial structures which seemed to work well inside somebodies head. It didn´t always turn out well.
Judith, it’s not so much with media like this (Atlantic) what it is you or anyone else is denying or the details of studies, but it is the all-out control of media as to how we should march to a concerted approach (the media’s approach of course) to dealing with it. Good find, but with the sloppiness of articles like this one, one wonders whether it is worth wasting time addressing it.
It strikes me that global warming is a straw man argument.
To call for reducing CO2 means the burden of proof is to demonstrate:
* that increased CO2 will cause detriments in the foreseeable future
* that the net of detriments and benefits is negative in the foreseeable future
(Tol says it will remain positive for some time)
* that the net detriments will be larger than the range of harmful events that can occur naturally
* that the risks from climate change will be significant compared to the risks humans regularly and willingly expose themselves to
The burden of these proofs is very high and proponents of action can’t demonstrate them, so they revert to an increase in global mean temperature.
So they find the few opponents of the theory of radiative forcing, demonstrate warming and conclude they are correct in calling for action.
But assuming their fears correct and acting without evidence is quite similar to primitive peoples making human sacrifices because they assumed there were angry gods.
Yup.
Assuming that this isn’t simply semantics (as it probably is) the point being made in the article is that the those who once denied that AGW was happening might now accept that it’s happening, but still deny that there is any real need to do anything about this. Essentially, they’re still letting their policy preferences significantly influence the scientific evidence that they’re willing to accept. It’s hard to see how this can be regarded as progress.
Semantics? No, it’s only politics.
There is just about zero “scientific” evidence that this extra, man-generated CO2 will be NET harmful. There are many benefits to a higher level of CO2, the primary one being the cheap energy available for use.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2a.jpg
jim2,
This is nonsense, and largely illustrates what I was suggesting.
You’re the one spouting nonsense ATTP.
Here’s a paper that discusses changes in wet bulb temperature. Here is a paper by Richard Tol that says:
Didn’t even take me long to find. You don’t have to agree with them, but claiming that there is just about zero “scientific” evidence that this extra, man-generated CO2 will be NET harmful would appear to be obviously not the case.
In what sense do you consider these scientific? Were experiments run with controls?
You’re obviously unfamiliar with the extensive scientific literature in many disciplines that consider global warming impacts. Visit your local university or government research institute and talk to ecologists, agronomists, political scientists, physiologists, immunologists, virologists, parasitologists, gerontologists, cardiologists, and heck, even the more clued-in economists, and you’ll discover that there is evidence aplenty.
That you’re not aware of it speaks only about you, and not about the apparent lack of evidence.
Until it runs out, and then the planet’s back to square one, with the added complications of a buggered planet and a few billion more hungry people wondering what to do when the carbon is all oxidised.
Your definition of what constitutes science has to be pretty lame.
Sorry, that should have been “Your definition of what constitutes science has to be pretty loose.”
This is nonsense, and largely illustrates what I was suggesting
It would be more convincing, if that is your goal, to actually identify what frightens you so. I challenge you to list as many threats as you can.
TE,
I’m not trying to be convincing and I didn’t say anything about things that might frighten me.
So you can’t meet the challenge?
The most obvious threat is water.
Water damages are on the rise.
Changes in water cycles already influence crops.
Most vulnerable areas aren’t ready for these changes.
There are securities issues too. I have heard that these warrant shutting down the legislative branch of the government.
What about you, Teddie?
What challenge?
Willard
Water damages are on the rise.
Citation please.
Bernard,
You do understand the difference between experts in other fields being given a fixed scenario and then being asked to provide expected outcomes and having the experts provide results of actual negative impacts they’ve discovered due to warming to date, right?
And if I recall correctly, most virologists and parasitologists called BS on the claims that malaria and other tropical diseases would increase and expand their range in a warmer world.
“I’m not trying to be convincing and I didn’t say anything about things that might frighten me.”
I bet you played a lot of dodge ball when you were a kid Ken.
> Citation please.
I vaguely remember having given you one already a while ago on that subject, Kid. You then went silent.
Supposing I misremembered, breadcrumbs:
http://claimscanada.ca/the-problem-with-property/
W
No, if you had given me something as insignificant and off target, I would have remembered it.
This link is just regurgitation of some insurance statistics, including information on sewage backups and could very well include toilet overflow causing water damage to apartments below, poorly repaired roofs and broken sump pumps.
Gotta do better than that.
Then why would I give you my good stuff if you keep forgetting it, Kid?
A more recent tidbit:
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southeast/2016/02/08/397857.htm
There’s even more recent and closer to you, if you know what I mean.
“In what sense do you consider these scientific? Were experiments run with controls?”
Do tell me jim2:
How pray do we run an experiment involving the planet?
It’s a tad difficult to get into a laboratory.
Just typical of the 100% certainty demanded of naysayers,
and with just a mere soupcon of wit, they would realise that that is impossible.
Tony,
Indeed, if the only things that can be regarded as scientific are experiments that are run with controls, then there would be large numbers of research areas that would be regarded as unscientific.
jim,
As I said, you’re kind of illustrating the point I was making. You appear to want to ignore what most would regard as evidence because you think that it doesn’t satisfy your definition of scientific. Well, this is just a form of semantics. We have plenty of information as to what would happen if we continue to emit CO2 into the atmosphere. Some of that information indicates that the changes that could occur could be net harmful – in fact, there is information suggestion that it is almost certainly going to be net harmful, but that the amount of net harm – and our ability to deal with this – will depend on how much we emit in the future. Deciding that this information shouldn’t be called “evidence” doesn’t suddenly make it go away.
“Deciding that this information shouldn’t be called “evidence” doesn’t suddenly make it go away.”
And calling colored squiggly lines “evidence” doesn’t make them evidence.
Andrew
It’s not a form of semantics. It’s a form of reality. The reality is that speculation is the best we have when it comes to the effects of fossil fuels. It’s not convincing and certainly not good enough to implement draconian policies. Adaptation is a much more rational and doable approach.
In fact, it’s the only response that will actually happen because the world has and will continue to consume more fossil fuels until the price of the fuel becomes too high. The rational thing to do is replace 24/7 fossil fuels with nuclear power.
jim,
You say this as if it is some kind of definitive truth, rather than your opinion based on what appears to be a rather poor assessment of our understanding of the impacts of continuing to emit CO2 into the atmosphere.
You say this as if it is some kind of definitive truth, rather than your opinion based on what appears to be a rather poor assessment of our understanding of the impacts of continuing to emit CO2 into the atmosphere.
You claim harms as some kind of definitive truth, rather than your opinion.
TE,
No, I didn’t. Come on, you really can do better than this. I’ve never taken you as someone who willfully mis-represents what others say, but maybe I’m wrong?
Note that “Draconian ” is applied as fact, with no acknowledgement of uncertainty
“You claim harms as some kind of definitive truth, rather than your opinion.”
No, I didn’t.
Sure you did and do. Anyone claiming the need for policy does.
It is implicit in the claim for the need for action that there is or will be harm.
But Tol says to the best of his assessments, there will be net benefit for some time to come. Probably no one can know these things very well.
I can enumerate benefits of fossil fuel use:
Fossil energy benefits human development and has built human civilization.
Photosynthesizing life benefits from greater CO2.
Every cell in your body depends on CO2 in the atmosphere.
Increased water cycle from global warming means increased fresh water.
A higher global mean temperature may well mean reduced temperature extremes.
I can put context on climate change:
Weather and climate are not even on the list of causes of death.
The major causes of premature mortality and morbidity are preventable and due to individual choices of smoking, drinking, eating, driving and fornication. Therefore, humans are a much greater risk to themselves than climate change is ( remember weather/climate are not significant as a baseline, so changes in weather/climate are less significant than the total ).
There are surely some people who are terrified of climate change but still smoke. How crazy is that?
You, on the other hand, will struggle to identify precisely what harm you think you’ll prevent to anyone.
TE,
Come on, this is nonsense. Policy doesn’t require showing that “harms are a definitive truth”. You can consider policy on the basis of probabilities, rather than definites. In a sense, nothing is ever definite, so any decision we ever make is based on balancing risks, not on acting only when we are certain of an outcome.
I can give skeptics things like this to read on impacts, and they will just say, so what, I’ll be fine. It’s a mindset.
http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm
Policy doesn’t require showing that “harms are a definitive truth”. You can consider policy on the basis of probabilities, rather than definites.
Right, that’s why the line “Never waste a crisis” exists. Humans, being emotional, will react irrationally by being scared.
I would be happy if there were a list of probabilities of harm. Unfortunately, those aren’t forthcoming either, because unverifiable climate predictions don’t count.
Gee Ken, thanks for this. I never would have understood it on my own.
Actually, maybe you are the one needing assistance. There is no point to the Atlantic article other than perhaps keeping the label climate denier front and center.
I can see why you might not like that.
Reblogged this on The Ratliff Notepad.
Given all the “green” energy hype, one would think it is supplying a significant portion of the world’s energy. I predict this trend will continue until fossil fuel resources become scarce enough to make the price prohibitive. Here is the reality:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2a.jpg
“The stadium wave signal predicts that the current pause in global warming could extend into the 2030s,” said Wyatt, an independent scientist after having earned her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in 2012.
Curry added, “This prediction is in contrast to the recently released IPCC AR5 Report that projects an imminent resumption of the warming, likely to be in the range of a 0.3 to 0.7 degree Celsius rise in global mean surface temperature from 2016 to 2035.”
http://www.wyattonearth.net/images/560_wave_regime.png
It must be seen as an inconvenient truth that after the press release went out back in 2013, every year since has been a global warming record.
The loser scientists completely missed their wave… sad. The real stadium wave was caused by a prolonged and persistent cooling trend in Eastern Pacific… that climate regime lasted from roughly 1983 until 2013… 30 years.
It masked ACO2 warming.
In the oughts of the 21st century it caused a brief and insignificant warming paws which is now like road kill… run over and completely killed multiple times.
This is the real stadium wave.
We are now in the positive regime of the stadium wave:
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2017/anomnight.2.9.2017.gif
The AMO appears to correlate better with temperature:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/jisao-pdo/from:1985/compress:24/normalise/plot/gistemp/from:1980/compress:24/normalise/plot/esrl-amo/from:1985/compress:24
A tale of wishful thinking on your part, JCH.
I’m not a scientist. I’m on a fairly long run at nailing exactly what the climate is about to do… mostly because I recognized the AMO is a feckless ocean cycle. Its current act, since around 1970, is to mimic whatever the GMST does, and there is absolutely no sign it’s going to change its act. There isnot going to be a negative phase of the AMO. It’s a pipe dream.
You call it correlation; I call it a fraud ocean cycle.
The Eastern Pacific is the beast; the climate is actually fairly simple.
JCH: Also with endlessly repetition of your claim (AMO:hitchhiker of GMST…) it won’t be more true!
The fraud AMO steaming up the chilly GMST in 2012:
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2012/anomnight.7.30.2012.gif
You guys are sweet, giving JCH the opportunity to paste some of his favorite graphs.
Now, ask him about his dad. Maybe he’ll tell you how todays climate scientists are just like his father and the rest of the Marines who landed on Iwo. I know Michael Mann certainly thinks so.
How can a statistically insignificant measurement be hailed as a “record?” False science on your part.
It is known that the powerful Pacific subsystem cooled the planet to 1976, warmed the planet to 1998 and topped out since.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif
It is all to do with more or less upwelling in the north-eastern and central Pacific. The 20 to 30 year regimes are a feature of the Pacific state over the past 1000 years at least. The next Pacific climate shift is due in the 2018-2028 window. We should continue with more intense and frequent La Nina and a more generally negative PDO until then – climate memes notwithstanding.
My hypothesis is that – with a cooling Sun – El Nino activity will nosedive off a thousand year high.
https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Iriai/posts/1182549161861344
And it really is impossibly silly to focus on the surface temp record as the sole metric of climate.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v9/n12/images_article/ngeo2828-f3.jpg
You clearly imagine that this means something to me.
Judith Curry:
”Acknowledging uncertainties is ‘science denial’? Virtually no one denies that humans have an influence on climate. The key question is whether human causes have dominated the recent warming. Even the IPCC hedges on this one, with their highly confident ‘more than half.’”
I have written in my comment https://judithcurry.com/2017/01/09/skin-in-the-game/#comment-834222 : ”Judith Curry, you are right, as you focus on weather events and natural climate changes instead of minimal climate warming caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions. However, the key question is, how you can make even politicians as decision makers believe that they are wrong.” As I see the issue, the CO2 cuttings regarded as useful for climate will cause only losses, and that is why for instance the Paris agreement must be replaced by adaptation to natural climate changes and weather events.
IPCC was set up by UN politicians in order to clarify scientific background of recent global warming believed to be caused by CO2 emissions from fossile fuels. Already in the Rio conference 1992 there was stated that any final evidence was not existing, which could prove that the recent climate warming could be caused by CO2 emissions from fossile fuels.
All the climate change is too complicated to be understood by politicians as laymen. They mainly seem to believe in the anthropogenic warming stated by instutional scientists without any evidence in reality. Even one-sided – and otherwise biassed – scientists seem to have difficulties in understanding truths on multiscientific climate changes.
Further, in my comment above I have written: ”The Paris agreement is not based on any evidence in reality. I agree that the influence of model-based anthropogenic CO2 emissions on climate warming is overestimated and deeply uncertain. For instance, as far as I am aware, Svante Arrhenius has not regarded climate sensitivity – i. e. any doubling of CO2 content in atmosphere – as any threatening climate warming. Judith Curry et al. have halved the climate sensitivity adopted by IPCC by using observed temperatures instead of climate model results. Scafetta and Lindzen have claimed that climate sensitivity is less than 1C or 0.5C. According to Wojick, Arrak and Cripwell it can not be distinguished from zero.”
Tom V. Segalstad has written in in his article http://www.CO2web.info/ESEF3VO2.htm : ”Chemical and isotope equilibrium considerations and the short CO2 residence time (lifetime) can fully explain the carbon cycle of the Earth. The conclusion of such reasoning is that any atmospheric CO2 level rise beyond 4% cannot be explained by accumulation of CO2 from Man’s burning of fossil fuel. An apparent CO2 rise can only come from a much larger, but natural, carbon reservoir with much higher delta-13-C than the fossil fuel pool, namely from the ocean, and/or the lithosphere, and/or the Earth’s interior. CO2 degassing from the oceans instead of IPCC’s anthropogenic accumulation is indeed made probable by the measurements of a larger CO2 increase in Atlantic surface waters than in the contemporaneous atmosphere (Takahashi, 1961; 1979). Kondratyev (1988) argues that: “The fact is that the atmospheric CO2 content may be controlled by the climate” and not the opposite.”
I have been thinking how you can make even politicians as decision-makers/laymen understand that in the recent increase of CO2 content in atmosphere the share of anthropogenic CO2 from fossile fuels has been only 4 % at the most.
I compare any increase of CO2 content in atmosphere to any flooding of lake. They are analogous to each other, since, according to natural laws, striving for dynamic balance is related to both of them.
Flooding of lake is taking place as total amount of water reaching a lake is more than total water leaving the lake. Surface level of lake is rising untill amounts of waters coming to the lake and leaving the lake are equal.
Analogically CO2 content in atmosphere is increasing as total amount of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere is more than total amount of CO2 absorptions from the atmosphere to other environment. Dynamic balance between CO2 emissions to atmosphere and CO2 absorptions from atmosphere can be reached as change of CO2 content in atmosphere makes CO2 emissions from atmosphere be as large as CO2 absorptions from atmosphere.
CO2 CONTENT IN ATMOSPHERE INCREASES AS TOTAL AMOUNT OF CO2 EMISSIONS TO ATMOSPHERE IS MORE THAN TOTAL AMOUNT OF CO2 ABSORPTIONS TO OTHER PARTS OF ENVIRONMENT.
ACCORDING TO STATISTICS, IN THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF RECENT CO2 EMISSIONS TO ATMOSPHERE THE ANTHROPOGENIC CO2 CONTENT FROM FOSSILE FUELS HAS BEEN ABOUT 4 %. THIS PROVES THAT IN THE RECENT INCREASE OF CO2 CONTENT IN ATMOSPHERE THE SHARE OF CO2 FROM FOSSILE FUELS HAS BEEN ABOUT 4 %, TOO, AT THE MOST.
In the same way as a small ditch has only minimal influence on lake flooding compared to all the amount of water coming to lake, the small amount of 4 % CO2 from fossile fuels in the total CO2 emissions to atmosphere has only minimal influence on total increase of CO2 content in atmosphere.
This proves that CO2 from fossile fuels has recently conrolled only about 4% of the total increase of recent CO2 content in atmosphere at the most; https://judithcurry.com/2011/08/04/carbon-cycle-questions/#comment-198992 . In the same comment I have proved that warming of sea surface water in oceans – especially on the areas where sea surface CO2 sinks are – dominates the recent increase of CO2 content in atmosphere.
In addition, the more minimal influence of total CO2 content in atmosphere on climate warming has been proved by the observations, according which increase of CO2 content in atmosphere follow climate temperature and not vice versa i.e. according to geological observations during last 100 million years in 10 million years periodes CO2 contents in atmosphere have followed changes of climate temperture; during glacials and interglacials trends of CO2 content in atmosphere have followed trends of temperature changes in climate; and the last nearly two decades prove that CO2 content in atmosphere has been increasing by lag after climate warming. This all should make anyone true that climate sensitivity is so minimal that it can not be distinguished from zero.
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The Atlantic article is about denial of complexity and the abhorrence of uncertainty. Many people prefer to think there are only two possibilities regarding an issue — true or false. Climate is changing or not. Man is causing it or not. Climate change is a disaster or not. There are no part measures in those minds. People are cast accordingly as believers or deniers. Being on the correct side is virtuous and being on the wrong side is evil. To be uncertain is abhorred because it is seen as wavering between good and evil. To be certain signals your virtue.
The Atlantis sets up a straw man – and you know what happens next.
The bottom line on climate is impressively simple. There is an instantaneous rate of increase (nominally) in greenhouse gas forcing of 1E-9 W/m2 – set against a background of immense natural variability. The 97% consensus on the first point is a misdirection intended to deceive the public that 97% of climate deniers don’t believe this. Simply not even close to true. The disagreement was always about the scope and depth of natural variability, on the point where data adjustments become statistical manipulations, on gaps and uncertainties in data, on the proper use and limitations of climate models and on chaos in climate and models. But far and away – disagreement was always about energy and development. In every instance we have been on the right side of science and policy.
My contention over the past 2+ decades has been that global warming is greatly exaggerated and would be slightly beneficial. The only things which have changed are that warming has been much lower than expected, it has been negligibly beneficial, co2 fertilization has shown to be significantly beneficial, and the only cost that seems plausible is a slight increase in storm surge from sea level rise. Even the increase in sea level is questionable as there is little evidence and increased precipitation over land and retention of water in the land, biosphere, and aquifers will dampen sea level rise (I wonder if sea level rise would be decreasing if it weren’t for increased human water use.)
There are perhaps better things to do with anthropogenic carbon dioxide that leave it in the atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and cement production – from 1750 to 2011 – was about 365 billion metric tonnes as carbon (GtC), with another 180 GtC from deforestation and agriculture. Of this 545 GtC, about 240 GtC (44%) had accumulated in the atmosphere, 155 GtC (28%) had been taken up in the oceans with slight consequent acidification, and 150 GtC (28%) had accumulated in terrestrial ecosystems. A critical metric is the losses from soils and forests.
Returning carbon to soils and ecosystems has major benefits in addition to offsetting anthropogenic emissions from fossil fuel combustion, land use conversion, soil cultivation, continuous grazing and cement manufacturing. Restoring soil carbon stores increases agronomic productivity and enhances global food security. Increasing the soil organic content enhances water holding capacity and creates a more drought tolerant agriculture – with less downstream flooding. There is a critical level of soil carbon that is essential to maximising the effectiveness of water and nutrient inputs. Global food security, especially for countries with fragile soils and harsh climate such as in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, cannot be achieved without improving soil quality through an increase in soil organic content. Wildlife flourishes on restored grazing land helping to halt biodiversity loss. Reversing soil carbon loss is a new green revolution where conventional agriculture is hitting a productivity barrier with exhausted soils and increasingly expensive inputs.
Aaron, there is no detectable change in rate of SLR since about 1900. So slightly increasing storm surge cannot be blamed on AGW. Essay Pseudoprecision in ebook Blowing Smoke provides many amusing further details, including warmunist attempts to explain supposed deceleration when the religion requires acceleration.
Pure denial. It is an uncontroversial fact that the rate of sea level rise is clearly more than double over the short term compared with the long term.
Fabius Maximus does an excellent job of exposing the inconsistencies in the Atlantic article. The most glaring is the idea that there is a scientific consensus on what policy to follow. Another is that Schmidt also seems to be unaware that gravitational theory is vastly more precise and has dramatically better predictive power than climate science. It may just be a good idea to ignore the popular press on the climate debate as their “work” in this area is usually flawed.
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2017/02/11/the-climate-change-debate-is-ending/
another + many
YOU SHOULD BRUSH UP ON WHAT CLIMATE IS: -”there is no such a thing as ‘’earth’s global climate’’ – there are many INDEPENDENT different MICRO CLIMATES 1] Alpine climate 2] Mediterranean climate, 3] sea- level climate 4] high altitude climate 5] temperate climates 6] subtropical climate, 7] tropical climate 8] desert climate 9] rainforest climates 10] wet climate 11] dry climate, as in desert AND THEY KEEP CHANGING; wet climate gets dry occasionally b] even rains in the desert sometimes and improves. In the tropics is wet and dry -/- in subtropics and temperate climates changes four time a year, WITH EVERY season= migratory birds can tell you that; because they know much more about climate than all the Warmist foot-solders and all climate skeptics combined – on the polar caps climates change twice a year. Leading Warmist know that is no ”global warming” so they encompassed ”climatic changes” to confuse and con the ignorant – so that when is some extreme weather for few days on some corner of the planet, to use it as proof of their phony global warming and ignore that the weather is good simultaneously on the other 97% of the planet, even though is same amount of co2. In other words, they used the trick as: -”if you want to sell that the sun is orbiting around the earth -> you encompass the moon – present proofs that the moon is orbiting around the earth and occasionally insert that: the sun and moon rise from same place and set to the west, proof that the ”sun is orbiting around the earth” AND the trick works, because the Flat-Earthers called ”climate skeptics” are fanatically supporting 90% of the Warmist lies. Bottom line: if somebody doesn’t believe that on the earth climate exist and constantly changes, but is no global warming -> ”climate skeptic” shouldn’t be allowed on the street, unless accompanied by an adult. b] many micro-climates and they keep changing, but no such a thing as ”global climate”
Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. The shift in the PDO can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems, and global land temperature patterns. #8220;This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation ‘cool’ trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin,” said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The persistence of this large-scale pattern [in 2008] tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean.”
Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.” http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703
You should really just accept this as fact – and move on.
You’re the one who refuses to accept the PDO.
From the paragraph to which he has linked seemingly dozens of times:
According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”
So how often have you heard this guy openly state that the PDO can hide warming caused by human activities?
Anyone who believes that the catastrophist delusions of the AGW pseudo-religion is going to have any influence on the consumption of fossil fuels any time soon is delusional.
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/eia-forecast-fossil-fuels-remain-dominant-energy-source/
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/china-will-continue-to-use-coal-as-a-major-generating-source/
Our use of fossil fuels will diminish when the innate ingenuity and imagination of our engineers produces a genuinely cheaper, more efficient replacement, and that entirely excludes the current catastrophic addiction to utterly counterproductive “Unreliables” such as wind and solar in their current forms.
Meanwhile, mankind’s ability to influence the climate to any significant extent is no greater than mankind’s ability to significantly alter the sun rises and sets.
In any case, an increase of a degree or two in the Earth’s temperature is most likely to be an almost unmitigated benefit, whereas a similar decrease will be utterly catastrophic and lead to the death of billions.
Meanwhile, the rising atmospheric CO2 concenterations have proved to be nothing but beneficial.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
The “when we get back to 2014 anomalies” fairy tale:
2017 Feb 0.582 – current month to date
2017 Jan 0.486
2016 Dec 0.391
2016 Nov 0.48
2016 Oct 0.419
2016 Sep 0.475 – La Niña begins
2016 Aug 0.428
2016 Jul 0.414
2016 Jun 0.369
2016 May 0.471 – El Niño ends
2016 Apr 0.635
2016 Mar 0.783
2016 Feb 0.839
2016 Jan 0.664
2015 Dec 0.621
2015 Nov 0.513
2015 Oct 0.567
https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/www.moyhu.org/2017/01/ncar.png
Now for the fairy tale:
2015 Sep 0.368
2015 Aug 0.306
2015 Jul 0.164
2015 Jun 0.204
2015 May 0.275
2015 Apr 0.169
2015 Mar 0.287
2015 Feb 0.271
2015 Jan 0.209
2014 Dec 0.212
2014 Nov 0.106 – El Niño begins
2014 Oct 0.281
2014 Sep 0.241
2014 Aug 0.226
2014 Jul 0.145
2014 Jun 0.13
2014 May 0.315
2014 Apr 0.23
2014 Mar 0.213
2014 Feb -0.01
2014 Jan 0.198
Dynamics aside,
When the observational adjustments to the ice-melt sensitivity are applied, this indicates that CMIP5-based GMSL projections for the year 2100 should be revised upwards by between 13 and 16 cm across the RCP scenarios (Table 4, Fig. 1, compare orange and blue to black). …
CMIP5 has already been discredited. Growing discrepancy between observation and model T prediction. Even Santer’s erroneous methodology new paper could not erase the glaring tropical troposphere hotspot problem. So observational corrections to bad models ‘forecasting’ 83 years ahead means nothing. Another GIGO pal reviewed paper.
As for ice melt sensitivity, ice melts at 0 C. Did you know that if one looks at C rather than anomalies, the CMIP5 ensemble disagree by about +/- 3C. No way do they ‘know’ when ice actually melts because they don’t agree about C, let alone where and when 0C. Essay Models all the way Down in ebook Blowing Smoke, citing Mauritson et.al. 2013. Graphed from the paper.
Nothing that is happening agrees with the nonsense you write. SLR has been above trend for a record number of months in the satellite record.
SB sea level rise since 2015 has been above trend… it was reverting to the mean, but with the last update, the spike is back.
Abstract
Tidal flooding is among the most tangible present-day effects of global sea level rise. Here, we utilize a set of NOAA tide gauges along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts to evaluate the potential impact of future sea level rise on the frequency and severity of tidal flooding. Using the 2001–2015 time period as a baseline, we first determine how often tidal flooding currently occurs. Using localized sea level rise projections based on the Intermediate-Low, Intermediate-High, and Highest projections from the U.S. National Climate Assessment, we then determine the frequency and extent of such flooding at these locations for two near-term time horizons: 2030 and 2045. We show that increases in tidal flooding will be substantial and nearly universal at the 52 locations included in our analysis. Long before areas are permanently inundated, the steady creep of sea level rise will force many communities to grapple with chronic high tide flooding in the next 15 to 30 years.
What the unproven hypothesis of CO2 warming the atmosphere is nothing compared to what humans have done in other areas to affect the climate.
Draining of the Aral Sea, and the diversion of natural water courses, have far greater effects than the nonsense blathered on about with CO2 by intelligent people who should know better.
In 600 million years there is no evidence that CO2 caused any global warming, even when CO2 levels where above 6,000ppm there were still ice ages and when CO2 was as low or less than now the earth was warmer.
CO2 causes runaway global warming is piffle, a myth!
“than the nonsense blathered on about with CO2 by intelligent people who should know better.”
Err, they do know better and only someone seriously afflicted with DK syndrome would say otherwise.
The GHE of CO2 is an empirical fact my friend.
And
It’s an equivalence thing: different planet.
Cooler Sun
Different landmass configuration.
And besides the process then was natural, driven by orbital changes such that CO2 was the feedback and driven by NH albedo and hence temp changes.
The present is not natural (unless there were large volcanic outgassing).
BTW: have you considered how Earth would escape a “iceball” scenario?
Were it not for non-condensing GHG’s?
And science is not saying there will be “runaway” warming in the sense of evaporating the oceans. The Planck -ve feedback would intervene way before that.
No, the Earth is not Venus.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/positive-feedback-runaway-warming-advanced.htm
Nice THEORY!
Reality says otherwise. CO2 help cool the stratosphere and that is all it can do.
Whatever you eventually come up with make it fit with the lack of the required IR frequency for CO2 at ground level (below the tropopause) when the CO2 in the stratosphere has already filtered it out.
https://chiefio.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/stratosphere-radiation-by-species-1460.jpg
or
http://wind.mit.edu/~emanuel/Lorenz/Lorenz_Workshop_Talks/Shepherd.pdf page 11
and the caption that went with it —
CO2 down here at ground level does nought but feed the plants.
“CO2 down here at ground level does nought but feed the plants.”
The world waits with bated breath for your Nobel winning paper my friend.
In the mean time I’ll just pop you in the box that says “Sky-dragon slayer”.
There are a few on here, and long may you reign, as you are the best “advert” for science advocates.
tom0mason,
The cooling rate (negative heating rate) chart is apt and worth considering.
But that’s only part of the story.
The cooling rate is for a given point.
The radiative flux is for a given volume.
It is the change of radiative flux ( for the volume of the troposphere ) that implies heating. ( I ran an old radiance model to try to understand this here ).
The extent and significance of this warming are greatly exaggerated, but it is physically sound.
Tony, the GHE of CO2 pales in comparison to the GHE of water vapor. Throw in the water cycle, convection, clouds and whatnot and you wind up with a trivial CO2 GHE.
Go flog another expired equine.
“Tony, the GHE of CO2 pales in comparison to the GHE of water vapor. Throw in the water cycle, convection, clouds and whatnot and you wind up with a trivial CO2 GHE.
Go flog another expired equine.”
David:
Ah, splendid, another Slayer.
Don’t you think that climate scientists know the relative strengths of H2O and CO2’s GHE?
(Rhetorical Sarc)
Both are present in the atmosphere.
There are dry regions
Deserts, poles, aloft.
CO2 is dominant there.
It has a sig absorption at 15micron (Greatest Terrestrial LWIR emission) which overlaps H2O and a completely independent one at 4 micron.
It is non-condensing (at Earth temps).
H2O is.
Apart from being empirical science dating back ~150 years, it has been spectroscopically measured on the Earth’s surface…..
It is increasing.
Up 40% since pre industrial.
Said basic radiative physics gives that an extra 2 W/m2 of forcing.
https://phys.org/news/2015-02-carbon-dioxide-greenhouse-effect.html
Try giving up your alt facts via education.
The way the world works physically is not governed by ideology.
It works via physics, in this case basic radiative physics.
Take your hand-waving and shove it …..
But there is no tropical tropospheric hot spot, as one example, Tony.
Additionally, AR5 had to use “expert judgement” to cool the too-hot CMIP5 climate models.
I could go on, but I assume it wouldn’t mean anything to you.
It’s tough when physicality belies mathematic structuring.
Tony, the GHE of CO2 pales in comparison to the GHE of water vapor.
That is true in absolute terms – of the molecules from which the last emissions to space take place, the majority are H2O molecules ( solid/liquid/gas ).
However, relative to change of CO2, increased CO2 does increase radiative forcing. And at least in the infrared, this forcing is mostly ( though not completely ) independent of water vapor and clouds below.
My considered opinion is that global warming is real but exaggerated.
Arguing that warming is unreal distracts from its exaggerations.
TE, I never denied warming was occurring. It is just not warming at the rate alarmists insist. Additionally, the atmosphere is not responding as the modelers insist.
Climate “scientists” are using the ramping up and peaking of an approximate 60 to 70-year cycle to paramatize their speculative models. In doing so, they miss the prior ups and downs of the slow warming since the Little Ice Age.
CO2 arguably has an impact on global temperatures. It’s just that it doesn’t explain the similarity of the warming rates of the beginning and end of the 20th Century. Certainly not enough to fundamentally change our society, economy and energy systems.
This is a political fight against socialists, one-worlders, social justice warriors, tin-pot dictators, profiteers, turf-protecting academics and bureaucrats and a whole host of professional do-gooders. And, like all other delusional social movements, it will eventually peter out, leaving untold wreckage in its wake.
I’m reminded of Prohibition and the War on Drugs. Well meaning people and the politicians and profiteers that take advantage of them.
Warming at the beginning and end of the 20th century, similar? Like this?
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:240/mean:120/plot/gistemp/from:1985/trend:120
I can see one important difference. It is 0.8 C in five decades instead of 0.3 C in three decades.
As for the hotspot, that would be a negative feedback that is missing, likely because the tropical ocean is warming less and the land more than expected. You have to ask yourself why temperatures are so much warmer than a century ago when the only difference is CO2 levels. This is what skeptics still call a headscratcher.
“You have to ask yourself why temperatures are so much warmer than a century ago “
No you don’t.
Because they aren’t.
As a matter of interest, have you ever heard of the Little Ice Age?
When do you think it ended?
The LIA was part of the Milankovitch millennial-scale downward trend that should be still going on. Guess what? It isn’t still cooling. It was reversed by something else far more powerful.
In fact the LIA ended around 150 years ago and was nothing whatsoever to do with the Milakovitch cycles, beinn a product oa an ~1,000 year oceanic overturning cycle. That cycle is currently in a positive phase, hence the continued warming from the LIA.
Superimposed over that is another cycle of ~60 years which appears to correlate quite well with the North Atlantic Oscillation. That cycle is in a negative phase, hence the ‘pause’/’hiatus’. When the cycle changes sign in ~2025-2030, the warming will recommence.
There is no visible correlation at any point with the atmospheric CO2 concentration curve.
Mankind’s CO2 emissions can no more significantly alter the Earth’s temperature than significantly change the time the Sun rises and sets.
There are no 1000 year ocean cycles. We don’t even have 1000 years ocean data to support one cycle. That is pseudoscience. However, there is Milankovitch and we should be in a cooling phase. You and skeptics tend not to believe in forcing changes, but that is what Milankovitch is, though it is rather weaker than the anthropogenic forcing we have had for a while now.
Jim D:
“You have to ask yourself why temperatures are so much warmer than a century ago when the only difference is CO2 levels. This is what skeptics still call a headscratcher.”
Comparing X to Y. The one variable answer.
“But there is no tropical tropospheric hot spot, as one example, Tony.”
David:
Sorry but there is ….
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/5/054007/meta;jsessionid=EA8492E81C328BA85859CE2CBC8B4343.c4.iopscience.cld.iop.org
“The warming patterns shown in the revised dataset are similar to those shown in the original study except that expected patterns now appear somewhat more clearly. These include a near-moist-adiabatic profile of tropical warming with a peak warming rate of 0.25–0.3 K/decade near 300 hPa since either 1959 or 1979. This is interesting given that (a) many studies have reported less-than-expected tropospheric warming, and (b) there has been a slowing of ocean surface warming in the last 15 years in the tropics. We support the findings of other recent studies (Po-Chedley et al 2015) that reports of weak tropospheric warming have likely been due to flaws in calibration and other problems and that warming patterns have proceeded in the way expected from models. Moreover our data do not show any slowdown of tropical atmospheric warming since 1998/99, an interesting finding that deserves further scrutiny using other datasets.”
And you do know that it would occur with any cause of tropical warming?
So are you saying there is no warming as well?
I could go on, but I assume it wouldn’t mean anything to you. (not your quote)
It must be tough having to deal with the way the world works when it belies your ideology.
… and the study SAID (apologies to Family Feud): “Second, as shown in previous studies, tropospheric warming does not reach quite as high in the tropics and subtropics as predicted in typical models.”
Misdirection is dishonesty, Tony Banton. Your comments indicate it IS a political knife fight.
It is manifest that IPCC climate models are unfit for the purpose of fundamentally changing our societies, economies and energy systems.
… and the study SAID (apologies to Family Feud): “Second, as shown in previous studies, tropospheric warming does not reach quite as high in the tropics and subtropics as predicted in typical models.”
Misdirection is dishonesty, Tony Banton. Your postings indicate it IS a political knife fight.
As is manifest, IPCC climate models are unreliable for fundamentally changing our societies, economies and energy systems.
“…the unproven hypothesis of CO2 warming the atmosphere …”
A textbook case of denial. Your host was trying to tell you in this very post that the science is not in question. She’s is trying to get you to understand the very basic fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
“overwhelming evidence of the impact of human-caused global warming and nearly unanimous agreement about it in the scientific community”
This scientific community that denies what proportion of global warming is due to natural variability, and cannot say anything certain about what human-caused global warming would do to the natural variability that we primarily need to know about. And never will while believing it to be all largely ‘internal’. They are just getting in the way of what the task requires.
Typo: The paragraph beginning “Tillerson can make statements like these” should be italicized.
They say:
“There has been a subtle shift recently in the rhetoric of many conservative pundits and politicians around climate change.”
They should have said:
There has been a subtle shift recently in warmists understanding of the rhetoric of many conservative pundits and politicians around climate change.
To drive my point home;
“This rhetorical stance—yes, climate change is real, and yes, human activity is implicated, but we don’t know how much human activity is to blame—is fast becoming the go-to position for conservatives”
They actually think that people that denied basic science have flipped to believe science but simply doubt the rate of change. As if creationists will all of a sudden become evolutionists.
Dr. Curry, you state :
“Let me take this opportunity to redefine climate denialism: denial that the UNFCCC policies will accomplish significant improvement of the climate as defined by increasing human health, increasing human economic benefits, and improving the resilience of ecosystems.”
I think this goes back to your two definitions of climate change (scientific vs political). Warmists are only now accepting that denialists have accepted the scientific definition. Clearly they want to pin the difference on denialists changing their position when it is in fact the warmists that are changing theirs.
“Let me take this opportunity to redefine climate denialism: denial that the UNFCCC policies will accomplish significant improvement of the climate as defined by increasing human health, increasing human economic benefits, and improving the resilience of ecosystems.”
More to the point: to the extent that valuable human and environmental resources are diverted, the availability of energy is decreased while its cost increases, the UNFCCC policies are detrimental to human health and economic benefit, and the ecosystem harmed.
It’s not happening
It’s not important
It’s not enough
It’s too late
Eli welcomes those here to stage 2 and 3
eli
You forgot to mention stage 5 ‘Hysteria’. Whilst some of your colleagues appear to be on this stage and indeed well on the way to creating an as yet specified stage 6, you, being a sensible rabbit, are presumably on stages 2 and 3 with other rational people?
tonyb
You’re not being rational.
Here are some measurements we can use politically
They aren’t very good, getting worse
The other side has better solutions!
Scream louder!!
Eli has been stuck on stage four for a decade.
Like what?
anything beats trying to heat houses in Maine in the winter with solar panels. The climate alarmed are the most active against nuclear power and natural gas, the less-than-concerned are most supportive.
The Rio summit was in June 1992. Which means in four months Team Eli will officially have spent 25 years doing eff-all but preen for partisans about the issue you’ve been claiming (for 29 years) was “urgent.” And they’ll board private jets to go ask for silly things again.
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Talk about Denial, California is experiencing its costs right now.
Hey California!!!, Wind and Solar Don’t Work in a Flood
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/02/13/hey-california-wind-and-solar-dont-work-in-a-flood/
Problem in CA is they didn’t maintain the dam not that they are short of energy
Eli
Serious question. Here in the UK rivers and ditches went through a phase of not bei9ng maintained and dredged for two reasons. Firstly is that it was considered more environmentally friendly to wild life to leave them alone and secondly it was considered we were entering a period of much reduced rainfall and therefore the capacity of the rivers could be reduced.
Is the lack of maintenance of the dam due to all eyes being focused on plan ‘A’ whereby as drought was the new norm the reservoirs would carry less water?
tonyb
Tonyb
Actually they did not maintain the dam because it was a low priority due to the endless drought of the masters CAGW theory.
Instead they spend $100 billion on a high speed rail system from SF to LA. Also $10 billion to bypass the SF Bay delta to take more water from the Orreville Dam. During the 50 year relicense hearings from 2002 to 2005 to approval in 2007, arguments to pave the hillside scoured by the never used bypass estimated to cost $0.200 billion. Other priorities cost CA more water down the bypass and spillway than estimated to be saved by the new tunnels.
Bad decision making. But now we can reorder priorities in CA.
Scott
Tonyb
One more thing. The new Carlsbad disalination plant near San Diego CA cost $$1 B roughly for 50,000,000 gal day output.
Scott
Scott
Thanks for that
Our leaders can be very short sighted when they are totally convinced they are correct. The powers that be (but not the ordinary person) were totally convinced we would vote against Brexit and had no Plan B in place for what actually happened.
Similarly with climate change there seems to be no alternative plan because of the overwhelming belief in the models and that it will be /Hotter/drier etc etc.
The temperatures in Britain have decline one third of a degree C this century so you would reasonably expect there to at least be discussion about a Plan B, but no, we are totally fixated that there can only be one outcome. This appears to be the reasons for the potential failure of the dam.
tonyb
tonyb
We all pray it does not breech. It is raining today and expected for the next few days..
200,000 people in danger of the breech and release of 100s of feet high wall of water.
Not to mention all the wildlife and domestic animals that can’t be evacuated. Plus it would destroy the existing river system. One can look at the badlands in Idaho and Eastern Washington that they name the scab lands that result from walls of water rushing from a breech. That was from recovery from the ice age.
All we can pray is to be lucky this time and then reorder priorities.
Scott
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Talk about “Climate Denial”, the whole world is experiencing the damages the activists are doing. It is the climate alarmists and activists that are the true deniers (of the relevant facts).
The relevant facts are there is a lack of evidence to support the belief that GHG emissions are harmful.
Richard Tol’s Figure 3 here http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/climate_change.pdf shows that, excluding energy consumption, a 4C, or more, increase in GMST would be net beneficial for the world.
However, the energy costs may be grossly over estimated https://judithcurry.com/2017/01/29/the-threat-of-climate-change/#comment-836115 .
In which case, even including energy consumption, a 4C increase in GMST may be net beneficial for the world.
There seems to be a dearth of valid evidence to support the “GHG emissions are bad” meme.
Too late Peter, we are all doomed to catastrophe in 2026:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/10/looming-climate-catastrophe-extinction-in-nine-years/
So we might as well ignore emissions and do as we please. Though the author suggests “It is at this stage of the game either too late to stop, or we should be embarking on a global crash program to reduce carbon emissions the likes of which humanity has never known or contemplated.” So zer0 GHG emissions for nine years and we’ll stop catastrophe? I fear that the author is an ignorant alarmist.
Amazing how religious the anti-religion green zealots are, eh?
Ah, this debate reaches its natural level of reasoned argument. Never mind the small change by 2100 that even the IPCC says is not a major global problem, THE SKY IS FALLING.
They don’t need passes at climate change conferences/rallies, they need Sandwich Boards.
Climate change will stil be promoted by climate “scientists” when hell freezes over, during the next warming pause/ice age, perhaps.
You can’t make it up, that’s their job..If’n y’all want to see a State in the US that knows what to do, read the link, or just the picture of the model with %s for climate “scientists”. A real engineero ing and resource led, environmentally friendly, CO2 and emissions friendly solution, now and sustainably “forever”. No Bad Science (BS). At least until the growing red giant evaporates all our water a few thousand ice ages down the line, at least, and if humans make it to the next inter glacial warm spell as more than the “New Neanderthals”. Enjoy this rare ray of hope. POliticians allowed reason to happen? Remarkable. Can imagine the Soprano like meeting about the Long Island windmills in a few years. Subsidies gone? “forgetaboutit”.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/10/nyregion/how-new-york-city-gets-its-electricity-power-grid.html?_r=0
Richard Tol’s contributions to this discussion were error-strewn and worthless, even after he finally published a substantial correction:
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.28.2.221
I’m pretty sure that the impartial and objective among us are under no illusions that older and uncorrected versions of Tol’s work are of any value whatsoever.
Craig Thomas,
Thank you. Your link does not refer to Tol 2013. I realise the paper was criticised and Tol wrote a subsequent paper. However, I am not aware if he has made any changes to Figure 3 in Tol 2013. It is the bottom panels of Figure 3 that I am interested in, particularly the energy consumption curve. Do you know if this figures has been changed? If so, can you give me a link to an update of it?
I looked at the site. Where to begin? “It’s possible, yes” – as Feynman said of Flying Saucers. A lot of pseudo science hokey that anyone can make up, But I ask one simple question , on the known scientific evidence. Why did disaster not occur when Arctic ice melted to this extent or more in other recent and historical documented times, say the 1930’s or Viking periods, in and out of industrialisation – since the last ice age? World didn’t end then. These sort of people (inaccurate generalism/opinion) are so narrow minded in their beliefs and SO selective of their science. I suggest that scientific method says historical facts trump speculative pseudo scientific prediction based on no data. Such science is “more likely the product of irrational terrestrial intelligence” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLaRXYai19A
Cold kills civilizations. I mean, look at North Dakota. Before global warming, all they had was pastures and hayseeds. Now they’re Saudi Arabia.
JCH
When was the last public amputation of a hand or a head in North Dakota?
When were women last forcibly prevented from escaping a burning building due to being inappropriately attired for going outside, in North Dakota?
Absurd. They produce a lot of oil.
But, when I was a kid there were places in North Dakota where women and girls were not allowed to eat with men and boys. May have changed, but I doubt it.
Right. Not eating with men is a lot like being buried up to your head then stoned. Right.
Seriously… LLLLLMMMAAAAOOO.
I am guessing they shun insidious little twits in North Dakota, to this day. That has been known to cause antipathy.
Many forms of denial are prevalent in contemporary climate science:
Denial of complexity
Denial of chaos
Denial that a dissipative open thermodynamic system subject to a mixture of positive and negative feedbacks will inevitably generate strong internal chaotic-nonlinear oscillations
Denial that chaotic-nonlinear internal climate variability does not require external forcing
Denial of the existence of Benoit Mandelbrot, Ilya Prigogine, Mary Cartright, David Ruelle and all the other discoverers of chaotic dynamics
Denial of the existence of David Bellamy
Denial of the existence of Hubert Lamb
Denial that the ocean is deep and mixes chaotically over decadal, century and millenial timesales
Denial of water’s large heat capacity
Denial that 97% of climate heat is in the chaotically mixing ocean
Denial of ice ages and Milankovitch cycles
Denial of the presence of water vapour and clouds in the atmosphere
Denial that Greenland is located on planet earth
Denial that Antarctica is cold and getting colder
Denial of palaeo climate data (except when ironed flat and with instrumental data tacked on to the end)
Denial of photosynthesis
Denial that CO2 is the foundation of the biosphere and that the more there is of it in the atmosphere, the better the biosphere thrives
Denial that Donald Trump is POTUS
Denial of Karl Popper’s laws of scientific epistemology and the primacy of the deductive over the inductive
Denial that computer models are not the real world
Denial of the scientific principle of parsimony and a grotesque inversion of Occam’s razor
Adjustment of climate data means denial of climate data
etc……..
Bugger! I SO wish I had written that post. Damn you for doing it first, Ptolemy2.0. But good job. 10/10, with a star.
PS Just for me and Newt Gingrich, you could have added a succincter than moi “denial of proven energy physics that is prescribing renewable energy as a cure for AGW, that is in fact increasing CO2 emission from the grid versus preferring gas to coal and nuclear to both, while jeopardising our sustainable energy future from electricity at 3 times today’s electrical energy use for heating and transport, after fossil becomes a reserve fuel, etc.”
+1
He also knows more than me. Quite a lot more. Mind you, a dynasty that old should know lots of stuff including how to be the centre of everything. And Feynman just reworked Karl Popper for hippies. That’s show business ;-)
REQUEST I have some other less than scientific language but scientific fact op comment, on Radiation, risk and reason – where to put it for effect in the US scientific community? It is on Forbes, commenting on a James Conca article about real risks of generation, using the now well estab;ished data versus the nonsense still promted as fact and the wholly regressive over the top “protection” regime, that has killed thousands when the radiation related deaths are 50 ever. This “political Science”, hijacked for extremist agendas, sounding familiar yet. Even the UN admitted what was being done in the name of “safet” was meaningless and unhelpfull. No change in what happens, though. Pseudo science , once legalised into a goverment job creation scheme, is hard to shift.
The nonsense is the LNT model used to estimate risks from radiation. That was never proven at elevated low levels far lower than a bomb a bomb, and is a wholly disproven hypothesis below 1,000mSv pa, and a one off dose of maybe 100mSv. BUT LNT was a useful tool for official action and a fraudulent basis for modelling hazards from low level radiation releases at nuclear pants , vs. a bomb, which they can never be, of course.
LNT is misapplied by dodgy charlatan so called expert scientists, mostly medics w/o a clue about how physics and statistics works, to model, note “Model”, thousands of deaths that still aren’t happening from Chernobyl and Fukushima, DENYING the serious science of what we now know about the threshold for elevated background around the narural world, up to 50 times the 20mSv pa level bureaucrats still evacuate the public at, and easy to use to create irrational fear of nuclear energy by extremists and the authoritiers when it suits them.
Nothing like a hazmat suit and meter to scare the bejesus out of folk.
I worked in radiation health physics at NPL, RPS and NRPB in the 60’s when we just didn’t know the radiobiology so extrapolated bomb dose effect data through severl rate and integrated dose levels to zero, ignoring natural tolerance, or any actual evidence of the complex radiobiology involved, assuming quite wrongly what the significant effect was, etc. Sound familiar. Hypothesis, not science that soon became an unknowing craft expert consensus.
We just didn’t know when the levels were set, including the much higher natural levels we evolved in and lived naturally in around the world, or the actual workings of cancer and how radiation affects them – mostly from natural mutation at 10,000/day we rely on the immune system to clean up, which dangerously higher levels of radiation inhibits, rather than causes directly (simplistic but 90/10). But lower levels certainly don’t, and there is solid evidence of enhanced immune response in higher background environments. The fact we evolved on a radiaoctive rock ina radioactive Valley and ate and drink natural radiation in caves where we breathed Radon quite harlessly, half the natural background still, as we did and still do in unventilated man caves, witha possibly hormetic effect Cohen et al study of basement ventilation). etc.
Thousands ARE dead from nuclear accidents, caused by avoidable evacuations. 50 from the worst ever accident at an uncontained plutonium plant (why has everyone forgotten the nearly Chernobyl that was Windsacle – nobody doed and my bosses cleaned it up. Filteres just being remved from the Tower, etc. ? Changing the name is a good move.
I am angry that these science denying bureaucrats repeated the needless evacuation and imposed a large avoidable death toll to no purpose on the people of Fukushima who survived the earthquake and Tsunami. YEars after themistakes of Chernobyl in this regard. They DID get the iodine out, as we did at Windscale, so Thyroid cancers are not expected. But official ignorance of modern sience directly caused the deaths of over a thousand people prematurely and needlessly to keep their phoney baloney science denying radiation protection jobs and hazmat suits. Same people, different “science”, both hypothese and cosnsensus,but the radiation one actually disproven. . Even when the model is proven wrong, they still keep enforcing it. This is serious religion for their own gain at public expense by those in authority. I rpobably missed a tpyo ;-) Too old to worry about pedants now. Facts OK? Where to put them where they can be stuck right up the establishment protection industry? Exclusion level 20mSv pa. Ransar Iran, >300mSv pa, Brazilian Monazite beaches, up to 800mnSv pa, SW Farnce 80 mSv pa. None of these are beingec vacuated or show epidemiological evidence of increased cancer rates. , which is a very low threshold. Yet this nonsense goes on. I am asking former colleages what 800mSv pa sounds like on a typical gas or scinilation detector. I bet its nearly continuous and sounds scary….BTW a good analogy is controlled low level exposure to sunlight using cremes to generate Vitamins we need, and lying naked in the desert for an hour at midday after arriving from Sweden.
Brian
I’m with you 100% in your opposition to the LNT. Another recent substantial study confirms in a well controlled cohort analysis that low level irradiation confers a maximum of zero added cancer risk:
http://www.auntminnie.com/index.aspx?sec=ser&sub=def&pag=dis&ItemID=114689
(Radiologists live longer.)
In a few seconds on google scholar you can find hundreds of published studies showing that low level low-LET radiation DECREASES cancer incidence and INCREASES longevity. The mechanism is well understood, immune stimulus form responses such as heat shock proteins, ion channels and many others. As scientific observations go it’s as solid as gravity.
And yet the false LNT hypothesis continues to be the basis of radiation protection and nuclear policy. The whole establishment reconciled itself to a lie.
Its the science denial that creates the jobs and makes the money.
May I add denial of James Lovelock to your list? He has now said forecasting climate more than a few years out has to be daft, as the stories of empirical 4×2, American 2X4, being applied to their “so called models”10 years out have already shown. Only the arrogance of climate modellers and the regressive in fact anti-nuclear as sustainable alternative to fossil energy solution renewable cure money trough made attempts at such partial and undersubscribed models possible in the first place.
On the LNT side there is denial of Ramsar, Kerala, Guarapari, SW FRance. No one dying, still not evacuated. A Really good place to go a a serious immune system upgrade/healthy hoiday. But doesn’t suit the anti nuclear science deniers or provide jobs and wholly excessive funding for the over the top protection and remediation industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvgAx1yIKjg or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdHHUGwFoJE
Brian
I worked for a while in the nuclear industry. I heard from someone once who had been involved in a “remediation” operation concerning a leak of radioactivity into water pipes. He and his colleagues were suited up in full protective gear to remove all the water. In an idle moment one of them calculated that the natural radioactivity in their bodies was higher than the activity in the water which they were dealing with as low level waste.
Thought I’d write this seven if you know it, for those that don’t. My first degree was in radiation physics. I worked for 12 years in radiation measurement and protection as a physicist and later instrument and radiation measurement equipment designer for UK gov. My assistant Danny went on to spend his career in the discicipline as Protection Officer at Hinkley Point AGR. Basic point. If there are ANY problems at a quite safe but elevated levels in a nuclear plant, the instruments light up, in the reactor facility and the perimeter. There is redundancy, so nothing is missed and everyone knows – if its civilian.. Much more than they do for the much more dangerously emissive coal plants emitting tons of radioactive Uranium and Thorium plus heavy metal toxins up the stack BTW – unregulated and unmeasured.
Little know fact: Enough U-235 refined from the coal goes up the chimney of an old style coal fired plant to fuel a nuclear reactor of the same power. (Gabbard et al, ORNL, 1987)
We (RPS/NRPB) provided clean up services to government and commerce, and safety surveys for HMG. No heavy duty stuff, actual protection of people, film badge service as well. Regularly exposed to elevated back ground and radiation calibration sources for instruments, as part of the job. Radium, Co-60 for Gamma, Strontium-90 was the Beta emitter of choice (sealed with thin window), also various X-Ray and Van der Graaf HV generators. Don’t stand in the beam/be quick when placing sources (with regular 1 ft tongs usually), and always maximise distance/ mimise proximal time. Dose and dose rate. Inverse square again (inverse square law!). Step away from the radiation, avoid really high dose rates..
Radionuclide chemisty and unsealed sources, especially liquids and powders, are very different hazards, as alpha and beta radiation are easy to protect against externally but nasty to ingest where they come into direct contact with cells and may also participate in body chemisty – bad. Those w/o a gamma signature are obviously the most dangerous, as you canfind them easilly with a detector. Po-210 dcays by alpha only 138 day half life and is lethal internally. But safe to carry and undetectable wrapped in cooking foil, say or even a strong paper bag (from a radiation perspective). Hence its use by Putin to murder Alexander Litvinenko (which he denies, of course, like all the other unfortnate deaths).
Its likely there are hot spots in a plant after a possible leak of an unsealed source that you will only detect when very close, such alpha emitters for example, so need appropriate care and protection. Usually the searchers wil know what they are looking for so what instroments to caryy, such as an Alpha detector on a long stick! So I am glad you had a suit. And the actual risk was low. Most of my sources were sealed. Never saw a hazmat suit worn. We had them in the Mobile Lab but I never saw a dangerous enough situation with unsealed sources, and never cleaned up the drains in luminising works. Not sure they wore them then. Damp dust down and be careful. Wear face mask.
In a localised situation of expected hazard protection is wise, like in a pipe/plant! You don’t know until you get there. There may even be aliens breeding in the nuclear domes that need a snack, pipe blocking material. Watch Quatermass.
BUT Outside is different. Outside a plant the wind and water quickly distribute the radionuclides over large areas so levels are rapidly reduced to safely below all the other radiation that’s out there naturally. The shorter half lives decay fast, of course. Glad I never had to do a luminising plant, because that was Radium, which is reasonably long lived particle and gamma emitter, like Caesium, but at least you can detect the gamma radiation from a distance before the alpha or beta become a hazard. Solid gamma sources no problem. You can see Gamma radiation a mile off, at low levels and through most shielding stuff, and generally they are solid and contained. We used to plant them by the road side around Leith Hill so the trainee scientists could do an exercise to find and re pot them using our mobile lab with a very senitive lead shieled directional detector (NaI with PM tube).
My boss was once flown out to Saudi on a VC-10 as someone lost a C-60 source down an oil well and they seriously wanted to l know where it might have gone….was it in the oil and other liquids from the well?
One of the rare test populations for elevated background that was not natural is an appartment block in Taiwan where the RSJ’s were made from steel someone dropped a C0-60 source in while smelting. From memory, no surprise, the effects of around 40mSv pa, twice the Fukushima evacuation level, were that people were heathier. Clearly less cancer vs. the greater incidence LNT predicted. Positive disproof of the LNT theory at this level. As we now know is the case elsewhere.
Don’t tell the people responsible for imposing the out of date disproven science that they can back off and keep the suits, meters and evacuations until dose rates go 50 times higher. And, obviously first respnders need protection, as they don’t know what’s there until after they detect it.. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477708/
When I had cause to use a Geiger counter, I used to test it by holding it to my thyroid gland and checking the reading went up.
I surprised quite a number of people by demonstrating that the most radioactive object in the vicinity was themselves.
To me the most serious issues are when people blame ‘Climate Change’ instead of Human land-use change. This is especially true of the classic plant and insect examples activists give. Eg a butterfly in UK where the grub lives in ant hills and the ants are very sensitive to changes such as longer grass above them making their hills cooler. Or plants moving up hills because the valleys are all built on.
“Let me take this opportunity to redefine climate denialism:”
And yet the vast majority of the posts you allow on this blog are spectacularly ignorant posts denying the actual science.
Scientist 1: “Sea levels are going to rise 1 m by 2100” – Scientist 2: “No, sea levels are going to rise 2 m by 2100”. Conclusion: Science hasn’t reached a consensus, so let’s do nothing.
Wrong.
In your example you have 2 “scientists” making very poorly claims about a POTENTIAL increase in the rate of sea level rise. What the data actually shows is that sea level has been rising for a long time unrelated to AGW and that since there has been a reasonably reliable means of measurement, satellites; there has been no long term rise in the rate of rise. Have your two “scientists” tell you when this mysterious rate rise will occur. Not for the last 25 years.
sea levels are going to rise by 7 inches by 2100
Scott
Scientist 1: “Sea levels are going to rise 1 m by 2100” – Scientist 2: “No, sea levels are going to rise 2 m by 2100”. Conclusion: Science hasn’t reached a consensus, so let’s do nothing.
Keep perspectives.
Sea level is observed to be rising at 0.29 m per century:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2016_rel4/sl_ns_global.png
less than 1/3 of your low end scenario above.
And the fastest growing contributor to SLR, and a substantial portion of the rate above has been groundwater consumption. I’m not, however, recommending you or anyone else foregoes bathing.
The good news is we’re not doing nothing – we’re doing important somethings without even trying! We’re growing more efficient, older, and increasingly less populous.
Technology has meant per capita decreases in energy consumption at the same time we all now have super-computers in our pockets. And three fourths of CO2 emissions are from nations with less than replacement rate total fertility. Demographics are, as they say, destiny. So decreasing CO2 emissions are baked in the cake. And, indeed, CO2 emissions appear to have already peaked.
Somewhat ironically, fertility decline corresponds to economic development ( lowest in the economically developed nations, highest in undeveloped Africa ). This is not a fluke. Many arguing to save the planet argued for draconian restriction to economic development ( which is ultimately fascist ). But just the opposite is apparent. Long term reduction of human footprint follows from economic development ( more babies in poorer nations is worse for the environment than fewer babies in wealthier nations ).
Brigitte,
Perhaps you could look at Tonyb, web site climate reason to look at sea level in a scientific manner.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/07/12/historic-variations-in-sea-levels-part-1-from-the-holocene-to-romans/
Tonyb, if you see this I apologize for stealing your credit.
Scott