by Judith Curry
The scary emergence of Nye’s Quadrant in dominating the public discourse on climate change.
If you are unfamiliar with Pasteur’s Quadrant, read my previous post [link]. The focus of my previous post was on use-inspired basic research. I struggled with the 4th quadrant (lower left), which is sometimes referred to as ‘taxonomy’. In the context of climate science, I interpreted this as climate model taxonomy, which analyzed the results of climate model simulations to identify alarming future possibilities.
Nye’s Quadrant
In response to my previous post on the Science March, which mentioned Pasteur’s Quadrant, David Deeble tweeted this version of the Quadrant diagram:
Besides being hysterically funny, the more I thought about it, I realized how profound this is.
Apart from the twitter aspect, here are other attributes of this quadrant:
- Second order belief – allegiance to consensus. Individual has not done primary research on the relevant topic or has not conducted an independent assessment of the evidence and research.
- Shutting down scientific debate; science as dogma
- Alarmism as a tactic to influence the public debate
- Political activism and advocacy for particular policy solutions
- Scientism: a demand that science dictate public policy
- Advocacy research
Some recent articles on Bill Nye’s pernicious influence on the scientific debate:
- Bill Nye not the right guy to lead the climate fight
- Bill Nye: perfect talking head for the March for Science
And then there is Neil DeGrasse Tyson (sorry Neil, you don’t get a Quadrant named after you)
The scariest thing about this quadrant is that this is the quadrant of science that is driving the media and public debate.
Within the field of climate research itself, the quickest litmus test for the Nye Quadrant is twitter addiction (~100 tweets per day)
The group of scientists operating in the Nye Quadrant are getting really political. Unfortunately (or fortunately), they are lousy at politics.
Blair King has a very good post on this: The climate crew: alienating allies and fighting the wrong fights.
See also: Climate change activists are the real science deniers.
Litmus test: Bret Stephen’s recent op-ed
NYTimes recently hired an op-ed writer by the name of Bret Stephens. Mr. Stephens is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who specializes in international affairs but has also written some controversial articles about climate change.
His first op-ed was Climate of Complete Certainty. Its actually very good. Blair King’s article provides the following summary:
Any reasonable read of Mr. Stephen’s first piece identifies some very important arguments that the climate activists have failed to address. The unrealistic confidence the climate activists have placed in their models even though those models are barely able to hindcast, let alone forecast. The growing divide between what climate scientists are saying about climate change and what the climate activists claim they are saying. Most importantly the growing disconnect between what the scientists are saying about the risks of climate change and public sentiment about the topic.
The Climatariat was not pleased. From an article by Julie Kelly:
Gavin Schmidt, a leading climate scientist and head of realclimate.org, has been on a Twitter bender since Friday, calling the column “pathetic. If you want ‘real conversations’ have it w/real people (& scientists) instead of cardboard cutout caricatures.” Stephens was even slammed by Andy Revkin, a climate journalist Stephens favorably cites in his column: “The column also features the kind of straw men and other familiar foils used by those more wedded to a world view or policy position than committed to a deep examination of a complex and consequential problem.” Hundreds of climate activists and science journalists slammed the Times, cancelling their subscriptions and comparing the Times to flat-earthers, creationists, and anti-vaxxers.
Many NYTimes readers are canceling their subscription over Stephens’ op-ed [link]. Stefan Rahmstorf and Ken Caldeira are canceling their subscription to the NYTimes [link]. Michael Mann also.
The NYPost has a good roundup of the hysterical responses.
Even the relatively moderate green journalists are up in arms:
- David Roberts at vox: The New York Times should not have hired climate change bullshitter Brett Stephens
- Nate Silver tweets: There’s nothing conservative (or liberal) about the Stephens column. The issue is about evidence vs. bullshit. He doesn’t know his subject.
And finally, a philosophical basis for canceling your NYTimes subscription over this: The righteous folly of canceling your NYTimes subscription.
JC reflections
How much do the shenanigans in Nye’s Quadrant in the name of science actually ‘matter’? Well fortunately, I don’t think these folks are very good politicians.
The issue of greatest concern is the impact all this has on the scientific community. The fame and fortune of Michael Mann — derived from Nye Quadrant tactics — is going to be tempting to some young scientists to emulate. I am already seeing hints of a few mid career climate scientists that seem ready to go full Nye.
Can we get back to the top half of the quadrant diagram, please.
If you want a fun read, check out the reviews of Nye’s Netflix show.
Nye is just another tactician leveraging Alinsky philosophy. He’s a frontman cheerleader. Nye’s portion of the quadrant represents the propaganda campaign to win hearts and minds, it’s all a derivative of fascist doctrine frankly.
Please explain how explaining the science of the overwhelming majority of qualified climate scientists if fascist doctrine? See if you can do it with an ideological frame.
What exactly is a “qualified” climate scientist. Be specific please.
Robot: “Please explain how explaining the science of the overwhelming majority of qualified climate scientists if fascist doctrine?”
Not the science; but the Nye quotient representing the globalist archetype who use science as a tool to leverage political power. So relative to this, yes, I absolutely will explain it.
First you have to understand what fascism is, and how it started. I’m not referring to the wild use of this term , or how it’s misused today.
Mussolini was kicked out of Italy’s socialist party, not because he wasn’t a socialist, but because he had radical views about the way socialism should be implemented incompatible with the status quo. Getting kicked out of the socialist party was the impetus for him to start the Fascist Party. Mussolini wrote a meandering manifesto about what he considered fascism to be, it wandered all over the place, but its central theme was to promote an inner spiritual center where individuals work for the well being of the state. Mussolini was adamantly against individualism, he was a collectivist. In fact Mussolini was an inspiration to many with socialist leanings during the time (before WWII), including FDR http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/13/fdr-praised-mussolini-and-loved-fascism/ Post WWII Leftists elites have done cartwheels to distance socialism from fascism, and done a pretty good job of it by framing it as being of the Right. Who do you think writes wikipedia definitions?
The army Mussolini built wasn’t there just to enforce his will, its intent was to also strip Individuality away. Mussolini’s collectivist views were extreme to be sure, everything for the state. I’m not saying contemporary soft socialism is synonymous to Mussolini’s Fascism, but there’s a disturbing movement towards fascist socialism today, the political forces behind climate change represents some of it relative to the scare mongering propaganda, how it’s leveraged.
The climate change debate isn’t just about science, it’s about politics, there’s ample argument and blog post topics specifically describing the various political manifestations driving climate change, I won’t go into all of them here, look them up. But specifically, like Mussolini’s desires to amplify the state through exploiting the inner spiritual self to labor for the state, so too does climate change do the same. Look at the various movements, the green movement, the resistance movement, anarchists. Science unfortunately isn’t just about science anymore, it represents a power grab. The entire resistance movement in fact is attempting a power grab, it ties into new world order philosophy. It’s goals include stripping away nation state sovereignty, it’s much, much bigger than Mussolini’s new “state” order ambitions, many of the same propaganda tactics are used. The green movement has direct parallels to the Nazi green movement which was literally a religion in Nazi Germany. The parallels are amazingly similar, cultish.
Uncle Robot, please explain this image:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lbw90JPZq6Q/U3B9roVxLAI/AAAAAAAABJ4/swCjiaMzqFk/s1600/Herr+Cook.gif
Uncle Robot: I, for one, would love to see your documentation on what the science from the “overwhelming majority of qualified climate scientist” is. How was the “overwhelming majority” determined? What is the “science”?
Nye doesn’t explain anything, I’ve seen him on tv and his first move was to attempt to silence another interviewee using a smear job. He’s built a very interesting tv character, a wimpy looking nerd who behaves like a bully. It’s entertaining.
Go try and engage in an argument that agrees that we’ve entered the anthropocene and humans change the climate but that we should celebrate that, embrace it, identify our optimum climate, and geoengineer ourselves to that climate and stay there going forward.
I’ve done it. The unreasoned, unthinking outrage from the “consensus” set is like a buzz saw. There is also a distinct lack of actual scientific work to research the possibilities that might support such a policy choice.
Climate science very carefully picks and chooses its narrative and calls it truth. Woe to you if you deviate from the party line.
Overwhelmingly majority is not of any great value. The Nazis had 100 German physicists (many of them real scientists) denounce “Jewish physics.” Einstein’s response was that it would take one if they could prove him wrong. Harsh fact: there’s plenty of evidence we have been through these climate change cycles before, with historical and archaeological evidence in vast quantities. http://amzn.to/2q0gkq8
Define overwhelming majority of qualified climate scientists? You do realize you are buying fake news on this statement? O and by the way, one PhD with years of research in this field trumps 500 associate/grad students just trying to get Fed Funds and a free ticket to the beach.
Well… if you like having the public front man for your side being a really repellent former children’s television star, you are welcome to him.
That Robot believes Bill Nye “explains” science is evidence he wouldn’t recognize science if he tripped over it.
Please explain how explaining the science of the overwhelming majority of qualified climate scientists is fascist doctrine
The idea is that the climate ‘science’ that preaches certain catastrophe is bogus, the purpose of its dishonesty being to facilitate drive a move towards a more totalitarian society – ie more and more taxes and bureaucracy for their own sake, climate alarm just a handy facade.
Yes, Punksta. Mussolini defined fascism in a spiritual context, where a person puts the state before self. He was a collectivist. Despots and radicals of that era wrote the bible of coercive community organizing that were picked up and embellished by Alinsky and his disciples.
Bill Nye is the Pee-Wee Herman of climate “science,” except that Nye does his masturbating in public instead of in the back of darkened theaters.
That’s cold.
Funny and probably accurate, but still cold. But it’s about time somebody pointed out how idiotic it is that Nye is one of the “go to” guys on climate change.
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Zing! Thanks for the chuckle!
But as for your comment:
I agree, but are those the ones that will make the best contributions? It seems to me that the best contributions are those seeking knowledge, not fame and fortune. So those following Mann into the Nye quadrant would not have made an impact (or a minimal one) to begin with.
Judith, your cynicism about the alarm that reputable scientists are raising about humanity’s slow response to the soiling of the atmosphere does not square with the physics of a rapidly rising CO2 levels. Better that we have Bill Nye’s media campaigning and Michael Mann’s public calling out of your irresponsible positions along with those of the non-climate scientists you hang out with. Surely Bohr, Pasteur, and Edison would agree that it is better to be safe than sorry – cute diagrams notwithstanding?
[citation needed] What on earth gives you the notion that reputable scientists and engineers would agree with the anti-science precautionary principle?
Uncle Robot said, ” … it is better to be safe than sorry … ”
To be better safe than sorry requires looking at both sides of the equation. What is the certain cost of being “safe” vs. the cost of “sorry”? Numbers please.
The “safe but sorry” argument represents one of the biggest straw man arguments by the left. One can’t put exact numbers on inaction versus action to remediate the Lefts best case/worse case scenario prognostications. But their best case scenario, in order to make a meaningful dent in total atmospheric CO2, WOULD cost trillions, against “possible” cost of trillions for inaction. Running with either of the Lefts best case/worst case scenarios to remidiate can’t guarantee that equal stress wouldn’t be inflicted on the human population even if for entirely different reasons. Juxtapose this to the logic of being good stewards and gradually mitigating the possibilities of calamity by gradually working down CO2 levels as technology and good cost effective stewardship allows. The logical course is for humanity to continue the latter approach and allow technological advancement to make the entire debate moot, likely within a timeframe of roughly 50 years, it’s much less risky, and cheaper to boot.
All this ignores the possibility that higher CO2 would be a net benefit anyway. Nobody can imagine food crops becoming so plentiful that the starving kids in Africa are no longer starving, among other things.
At what cost to be safe? Pursuing new energy sources in a non-market driven way has risks. That the poor remain that way lacking low cost reliable electricity has risks.
Yes, when there is any risk, you plan with safety margins. A first principle in engineering. To not build in a safety margin is to deny the risk.
Can your house withstand a M8 earthquake?
It comes down to the probability of an event within the lifetime of the planned development. Any more than a few percent needs to be planned for. We also have to account for the probability of reduced supplies and consequent escalating costs of fossil fuels before 2100, by the way.
Do you ride in a car without a helmet?
Why a helmet when you have a seatbelt and airbag? However, these items are built in for safety. Call it a precautionary principle.
Since there is no model that even pretends to come close to being predictive, just how do you quantify the required margin of “safety”?
Observations tell us it is over 2-3 C per doubling. That alone tells us the consequences of future emission scenarios. We have had enough data in the last century to make a judgment already. You don’t need full models to do the calculation. It happens to agree with models, but that is just confirmation that the cause is accounted for by known physics.
Not a good analogy. Factors of safety are used for material stresses in structural and mechanical engineering. They have more to do with material inhomogeneity, material degradation over time and unintentional stress concentrations than risk as such. It is the accomodation of known factors to engineer a safe structure.
The climate version it to posit catastrophic risk and demand remedies an at enormous cost. It is not engineering
Safety margins are related to any risk. No safety margin means denying the risk exists. Here the safety margin is given by the targeted emissions. Whether it is large enough, we don’t know. Whether we can even meet it, we don’t know.
I am an engineer and I told you what safety factors are.
Safety margins exist in experimental science too, like chemistry and biology or medicine. What we are doing is an experiment on the environment. Overdosing with CO2 is not good.
So you shift the goalposts from engineering to medicine, chemistry and biology. It’s a joke right?
Climate is a multi-dimensional problem involving human welfare. It not all that difficult to resolve in ways that promote human well being – as I explain in detail below. Targets are a one dimensional response that has not only failed to achieve anything in terms of their objective – and are based on very inadequate science pursued for ideological purposes.
Safety margins exist in not only engineering, but you can take chemical engineering if you want an example of adding a substance to a mixture and keeping it safe, right? Or how about nuclear engineering? It’s not all materials science and loads. It’s chemicals, heat, currents, gas pressure, radioactivity, you name it.
In climate, changes are driven by adding CO2 in large amounts. Many changes with various consequences, but the ultimate cause is the CO2 added. Safety margins relate to limiting the cause.
I can give you a safety factor of safety for steel – 1.67. It is used in pipes, pressure vessels, bridges, cranes etc. Chenitry is much more precise – and dosages in medicine are drug specific.
I suspect you of making things up as you go – regardless. So by all means give me examples of factors of safety in biology for instance.
With CO2 targets you condemn yourself to perpetual failure based on very poor science and worse policy.
You had an overly narrow view of the application of safety margins. You come here to broaden your horizons. I helped. You’re welcome. As I said, safety margins relate to risk. Climate change also relates to risk. Manmade causes of climate change can therefore have safety margins. The logic is not hard to follow. Is BAU 700 ppm safe or are there many risks associated with it?
You are really talking risk and risk reduction – a very broad domain indeed. And assume that a target based on very poor science is a point of catastrophic risk requiring prohibitively costly intervention now. It is failed policy – and you should try rethinking it.
Many people are with a far more optimistic view of the future of the planet. I like these people a lot better.
https://kisstheground.com/
This is the type of risk that involves the unknown because it is not just temperature and sea level, it is tipping points, global and individual ecosystems including manmade ecosystems. When the car heads into a fog bank you slow down until you know what is going on. It is not full speed ahead. Skeptics have more faith that they know the future is safe, so if anyone is overconfident, it is them.
There is no risk – Jimmy boy. The transition to 21st century energy will happen within decades for economic reasons – and in the meantime the world will be busy restoring soils and ecosystems.
You are stuck in a moral panic loop – where the anxiety builds and can only be reduced by the fighting the good fight to impose magical solutions. Give it up for your own sake. It leads only to despair.
Indeed it is happening, but is it fast enough? New technology is needed for the full-scale deal to happen. Trump is resisting this part and wants more coal. Skeptics have not opposed Trump’s energy plans at all, which is interesting to say the least.
God your full of it – the the only energy plan worth resisting is yours.
You don’t know my energy plan.
One must be both bored and stupid to repeatedly argue with Jim D.
Jim D wrote:
No, Jim. I worked for a number of years as an engineer (I am, for example, co-inventor on a number of patents).
No, that is not a “first principle of engineering.” It just isn’t. That;’s a falsehood.
Dave
I guess some engineers are more seat-of-the-pants types. Just get something that works and that you can sell to some dope, nevermind addressing failure modes. That may be true. Galaxy 7 comes to mind.
Jim D wrote to me:
Jim, you are just making a fool of yourself. You made a mistake. You said that something was “a first principle of engineering” that simply is not. You cannot find any engineer who literally applies the so-called precautionary principle all the time. It’s not physically possible.
Man up to the fact that you were wrong and let it go.
You posted a falsehood, you have been called out. Just let it go, Jim. Let it go.
Dave
OK, I should have said that if lives depend on it, it is a first principle. There are many examples I don’t need to go into. The safety of the product or the production process is more often than not considered.
JimD, “OK, I should have said that if lives depend on it, it is a first principle. ”
You mean like not building a sub compact car because there will be around 100 fatalities per million cars versus 20 fatalities per million in a full size sedan? Or are you thinking about potentially reduced lifespans instead of actual vital statistics?
Some levels of risk are acceptable. The one you quote is 0.01%. Airbags on the other hand are now compulsory because that risk level was deemed worth avoiding.
A 0.01% risk due to fiery crash though is unacceptable because it is scary than being crushed. Determining what is acceptable can be a challenge.
Yes, leave that to the engineers and how much they fear getting sued.
“Deemed”. Not evaluated, not economically determined, not costed out. In other words, politically decided. Not scientifically determined.
Yes, many seem to “deem” how everyone elses life is to be run.
Jim D wrote to me:
No, Jim, that just does not work, either. There are an infinite number of conceivable risks upon which lives could depend. It is physically impossible — really impossible! — to try to avoid or even reduce all such risks.
For example, take my elder colleague, the late Sidney Coleman, who, a few decades ago, published a serious paper (at least I think Sidney was serious!) about the possibility that the universe is in a “metastable quantum state,” and, any second now, the universe is going to destroy all matter as we know it. Indeed, he pointed out, the wave of destruction travels at the speed of light, and such a wave may be hurtling towards us right now, destroying the material universe as it travels.
This is consistent with all known physics.
What are we doing to stop it? This, after all, is pretty much the worst catastrophe imaginable, far, far worse than possibly flooding downtown Manhattan due to climate change.
We are, of course, wisely doing nothing. We have no idea what the odds are of this Colemanian catastrophe. And, the cost of trying to deal with such a Colemanian catastrophe engulfing the entire universe is beyond imagination.
So, we just hope that Sidney’s idea was a fantasy and we blissfully go on with out lives.
We have to do that.. The idea that we must address any contingency that might conceivably threaten human life cannot be put into effect.
Probabilities matter and costs matter.
And, if you once admit that, we are back to the nitty-gritty details of exactly how likely catastrophic climate change is and exactly how much it will cost to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions.
The devil is in the details, and, alas, those details are to date very, very unclear.
Which is why you cannot rationally resolve the climate debate by a blanket appeal to the “precautionary principle.”
Dave
We know enough. If you take the lower end, we can still avoid 2 C warming with emission reductions such as proposed at Paris. If you take the high end, it would be more difficult and reductions would need to be tougher. Either way something needs to be done to avoid 4 C and rising by 2100.
Incidentally, anyone who suspects that I made up the crazy Colemanian end-of-universe theory should check out the Wikipedia entry on False vacuum. The article cites papers written since the turn of the century on the subject, e.g., by Tegamark of MIT and Bostrom of Oxford, as well as some of Sidney’s classic papers from several decades ago.
Which proves, I suppose, that crazily untestable theories never die! (Any resemblance to climate catastrophism is, of course, purely coincidental.)
Dave
You are more likely to be struck by lightning, and the world is more likely to warm 4 C with current emission levels. Perspective helps.
Jim D,
What makes you think you understand any engineering principles? Have you ever worked as an engineer?
You do know that it is possible to design and build an automobile which is 100% safe, right? Yet they don’t. Ask why before popping off about first principles in a field I suspect you have never worked in.
So Jim D uses chemical engineering and nuclear engineering as examples to make his point. As someone whose father is a Chem E, with 40+ years in nuclear generation, whose brother (a GT grad) spent almost 30 years as an engineer in nuclear generation, rising to VP of nuclear engineering in one of the country’s largest utilities and who has 10 years of my own experience in nuclear power and engineering, I can state without doubt that Jim D is talking out his hind quarters.
But then Rob has already made that point.
Who knew just having a safety margin would be so controversial here. I can see why there is resistance to this whole concept. Perhaps it is the slippery slope that once you accept safety margins, next you have to do something about emissions? A safety margin is just the precautionary principle in disguise. You’re not fooled by that one, right? Livin’ on the edge. That’s the ticket.
Still on this? Weird. A factor of safety is the material or structure strength divided by design loads.
It is based on reducing uncertainties in the determination of material or foundation strength.
Risk management is about probabilities and consequences.
I have done a lot of engineering with both ideas.
It makes no sense to confuse the two and dogmatically repeat a trivial misapprehension to a grinding conclusion. But that’s Jimmy boy for you.
Jim D wrote to me:
I see, Jim, that you are simply ineducable on STEM subjects.
Nothing to be ashamed of: hey, I was never any good at baseball.
But, since you lack the ability to understand STEM, you might want to avoid demonstrating that fact in public.
While I,as a physicist, know enough about climate science and computer modeling to know that neither you nor I nor anyone else knows the future of climate, I do know one thing: humans are going to continue spewing an awful lot of CO2 into the atmosphere for the foreseeable future.
Your saying “something needs to be done” is not going to get it done.
If all you catastrophists were really serious, you’d actually learn some STEM and frantically devote yourselves to developing really cost-effective alternative energy sources.
But of course you are not serious. It is all just a game for you.
The word, I think, is “virtue signalling.”
Dave
It is you that has been left behind. Science has informed policy already on a global scale in case you didn’t notice. The public understand the need to reduce emissions, with the only ones who don’t being highly correlated to a certain political view. “Skeptics” have made such a poor showing on the science that they have side-lined themselves, and you need to get at them to do a better job. Who on that side even understands the ramifications of a positive imbalance on the attribution. I see precious little evidence of that.
Jim D wrote:
No one here (except of course you) had any trouble with the concept of “safety margin,” Jim.
The problem is your inability to see that the issue of whether to try to do something about climate change is not an open-and-shut issue. Details matter.
Check your ignorance, Jim.
Dave
Safety margin versus precautionary principle. Skeptics accept the former but not the latter. Discuss.
Robert, “It makes no sense to confuse the two and dogmatically repeat a trivial misapprehension to a grinding conclusion. But that’s Jimmy boy for you.”
But is it a lack of knowledge or a devious political tactic?
Jim D: Either way something needs to be done to avoid 4 C and rising by 2100.
Most of the evidence accumulated since the mid-1980s does not support that assertion.
As to a “safety margin”, humans would be well-advised to plan for some of the extremes of the past to recur. New Orleans, for example, might reconsider the ship channel that carries storm surge straight into port, and the inadequate forest margin and levees. New York and Philadelphia might prepare a little better for the next tropical storm Sandy.
Here is a good project from San Diego County:
http://www.sdcwa.org/emergency-carryover-storage-project-wins-prestigious-international-award-0
Climate change accelerates the occurrence of new extremes. It is just statistics. Extremes lead to damage. Therefore faster climate change leads to more damage in less time. Qualitatively clear.
JIm D: Qualitatively clear.
Increased damage from a 4C increase in global mean temperature by 2100 C.E. has no support in the evidence.
Increasing extremes mean increasing damage. Agree or not?
Jim D: Increasing extremes mean increasing damage.
There is no evidence that the extremes you imagine happening from a 4C rise by 2100 are going to happen. With time to prepare, the extremes demonstrable from a smaller increase over a greater period of time (e.g. change since 1880) can be prepared for.
The nature of man is nothing is prepared for until the extreme proves itself first. Damage first, then repair or abandonment or adaptation. That’s how it goes. Not the optimal way to adapt. Expensive either way.
Assume a very stable Minnesota climate. Wind speed is 5 to 7 mph at all times. Assume a viable wind turbine needs 8 mph. Can’t do it. No wind turbines. Climate change changes the wind speed to from 2 to 10 mph. So increasing extremes causes not destruction but production.
Not sure about recently, but the Nile used to flood each year, allowing agriculture there and pyramids too. If the watershed had been given Xanax many thousand of years ago, reducing extremes, the annual flooding, little food, no pyramids or King Tut.
Maybe with some more thought you can think of the advantages of higher sea levels. Who needs Florida anyway? Right?
All subsiding jokes aside, de Nile delta is not just a salt water intruded and inundated delta in Egypt.
Jim D wrote:
Why would technically knowledgeable people discuss something with someone who has shown himself to be technically ignorant of the relevant facts but who lacks the grace to admit to this?
Sorry, Jim.
You’re fired.
(Yeah, yeah, I know: to be really fired, you’d have to have a legit job. It’s just a figure of speech. But, seriously, why should we take you seriously when you refuse to behave seriously? Seriously.)
Dave
That question made your head explode, as it was designed to.
Just clicked a comment and landed here again. Literally – lol.
Jim D: The nature of man is nothing is prepared for until the extreme proves itself first.
That may be the “nature of man”: Look at California now, building solar farms, wind farms, a high-speed rail line that will likely not carry any passengers — all while neglecting most of its flood control and irrigation infrastructure and remaining vulnerable to the extremes of natural variation.
But back to your main point: very little evidence supports the claim that urgent action is needed to avoid disasters resulting specifically from a CO2-induced 4C temperature rise by 2100.
Equally little evidence, so to speak, supports the claim that human efforts to reduce CO2 creation can interrupt the ongoing sea level rise. In some places, coastal subsidence may be treatable by local measures.
The skeptics have gone from, it has no significant effect, to its too late, give up, or somewhere between. Either way, it is pointless to even try. I say it is worth trying, especially if the sensitivity is below 3 C per doubling because we can still hit the temperature targets. If you want to be a proponent for 700 ppm by 2100, go ahead. I don’t think anyone has tried that one yet, at least not explicitly, only implicitly by supporting no mitigation effort and not doing the mathematics of the CO2 level that entails. I wish the skeptics would go that extra step of seeing what CO2 level their favored policy ends up with, because it may open a few of their eyes as to consequences.
Jim D wrote to me:
Ummm, Jim, young fellow, unlike you, I actually am a scientist. You see, I actually know that you are not telling the truth when you say the science is settled, that there is a consensus among informed scientists on the future of climate, etc.
And, Jim, people who actually understand science do not say things such as “That question made your head explode…”
In fact, you did not actually have a question: you just tried a little bit of flim-flam in the hope that you could impress anyone who passes by who is, like you, ignorant of science.
I think the old flim-flam game is no longer working for you, Jim. Just not working anymore.
Jim also wrote:
No, Jim, all legit scientists are “skeptics”: as my own mentor in physics, Richard Feynman liked to point out, science is a refusal to accept the authority of supposed “experts.” Honest scientists do not claim to know that anthropogenic CO3 has “no significant effect,” as you claim. Rather, we claim that the research is still very difficult and therefore very unsettled and that no one actually knows the long-term effects. It is, indeed, even possible that the long-term effects of anthropogenic CO2 will be positive.
Or not. No one knows. Least of all someone like you who has cheerfully revealed your ignorance of science.
Embrace the uncertainty monster, Jim. Just admit it: you don’t know. Anything.
Dave
It is not difficult to understand the quantities involved. The forcing change, just from CO2 has been 2 W/m2. Even forcing changes near 0.1 W/m2 in the 11-year solar cycles have measurable effects on the global temperature, so to deny that 2 W/m2 explains 1 C of warming is a very difficult position to defend because it goes counter to observable facts.
I am the one giving the numbers, and all you are projecting is anger and disparagement. Talk about 2 W/m2 in the context of the global energy budget. Remember, for proportion, 4 W/m2 is like a 1% solar increase, so say why you don’t think that has an effect or the 6-8 W/m2 we are headed towards. Say why you think Arrhenius or other scientists were wrong. If you want to help, do something resembling a scientific discussion, and then we can proceed.
Uncle Robot: “Surely Bohr, Pasteur, and Edison would agree that it is better to be safe than sorry…”
Amazing straw man. Care to tell us how one might know this? For someone trying to stick up for “science” you surely use logic poorly.
The cynicism of Mother Nature about the alarm that reputable scientists are raising is appalling. She SHOULD cooperate by raising temperatures and sea levels immediately. More Cat 5 hurricanes.
No, people who distort science for political purposes don’t help science.
@Uncle Robot:
“….humanity’s slow response to the soiling of the atmosphere does not square with the physics of a rapidly rising CO2 levels.”
“Physics” as the basis for alarm at rising CO2 levels is a familiar, and misleading, talking point. The physics of rising CO2 states that for every doubling of CO2, the temperature will rise 1 deg Celsius, all else being equal, with no feed backs. Projection of future increases in atmospheric temperatures worldwide in excess of 1 deg, due to positive climate feedbacks.is derived from climate models that may include basic principles of physics, but, in their essence, are not physics.
Roger Pielke, Sr.( well known expert on atmospheric modeling):
“The models are not fundamental physics, as only the dynamical core (such as advection, pressure gradient force, gravity) can fit in that definition. All other components of the climate models are engineering code with tunable coefficients and functions.”
http://tinyurl.com/ny44t3v
And we all know how those models have done in their forecasts vis a’ vis actual measurement – consistently too warm, and totally missing the “pause” or “slowdown”, while CO2 levels continue to rise.
Please explain “safe”.
Many people’s idea of safe seems to be jerking the steering wheel because they see something that might-kinda-look like a deer several miles down the road.
When your models can predict the 17 years of rising CO2 and unchanging temperatures, you might have an argument.
I am an engineer and I told you what safety factors are.
“soiling of the atmosphere” = unlocking CO2 from other compounds? That’s an odd way of putting it. We are currently in a CO2 drought when using any meaningful time frame, so take another breath guilt-free. The plants would thank you for your contributions to their welfare if they had the needed systems to do so.
better to be safe than sorry
================
The Luddites used the same argument.
there is nothing safe about changing horses mid-stream. right or wrong, humans have chosen technology as their future, and fundamental to all technology is the domestication and use of fire.
other animals use tools. only humans use fire as a tool. only now are we discovering that even the ecologically friendly “first nations” inhabitants of North America used controlled burning for hundreds if not thousands of years to shape their environment. modern humans are no different.
I love how people give away the game. In this instance it’s Robot’s use of the word “soiling”. CO2 is a naturally occurring compound. Something we all produce. Yet to him it is soiling the atmosphere. Honestly I don’t see how it is possible to engage someone intelligently when they start out from that point of view.
The Times might pick up some new subscribers if they allow dissenting views on their opinion page, as does the Wall Street Journal.
Perhaps the unsubcribers can start their own newspaper, the Malthusian Times.
Cool: Malthus believed humanity’s ability to reproduce too rapidly doomed efforts at perfection and caused various other problems.
His criticism of the working class’s tendency to reproduce rapidly, and his belief that this, rather than exploitation by capitalists, led to their poverty, brought widespread criticism of his theory.
The undercurrent is turning against alarmists. The battleground is shifting from climate science to climate policy, where the alarmist position is even weaker.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2017/05/02/climatists-wrong-footed/
There are more people on earth that don’t read the New York Times than do. Stefan Rahmstorf, Ken Caldeira, Michael Mann et al, welcome to the majority.
Funny that the word “quadrant” comes into this when quadrant.org.au has recently published this revelation. http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2017/04/warmists-fight-nuclear-war/
For another look at this phenomenon from someone in the upper quadrants see http://merionwest.com/2017/04/25/richard-lindzen-thoughts-on-the-public-discourse-over-climate-change/
Lindzen closes with “The system we are looking at consists in two turbulent fluids interacting with each other. They are on a rotating planet that is differentially heated by the sun. A vital constituent of the atmospheric component is water in the liquid, solid and vapor phases, and the changes in phase have vast energetic ramifications. The energy budget of this system involves the absorption and reemission of about 200 watts per square meter. Doubling CO2 involves a 2% perturbation to this budget. So do minor changes in clouds and other features, and such changes are common. In this complex multifactor system, what is the likelihood of the climate (which, itself, consists in many variables and not just globally averaged temperature anomaly) is controlled by this 2% perturbation in a single variable? Believing this is pretty close to believing in magic. Instead, you are told that it is believing in ‘science.’ Such a claim should be a tip-off that something is amiss. After all, science is a mode of inquiry rather than a belief structure.
From Slate:
“(The rest of us climate-concerned readers can even cheer these limited cancellations, much in the way we might not punch a Nazi ourselves, but are happy to see one get punched.)”
Not supposed to punch Nazis. But in some way endorsing others doing so.
There is, doubt-sowing or climate apathy. That is a Nazi?
I think you’re being especially forgiving to name Nye’s Quadrant after someone who made such a buffoon of himself at the Science march and has less credibility now than he ever had. But I have a different issue – I think your Quadrant is too simplified, and I think there is a 5th type of Science Guy needing recognition. You need to open up a diamond shaped 5th dimension in the quadrant, right where the 4 lines intersect in the center, and recognize the people who are significantly represented in all 4 places. I would call this 5th space Church’s Center after George Church of Harvard. Such a person has to perform theoretical, applied, and basic research, but also have a knack for publicity and showmanship. People in Church’s Center have the integrity to be named to chair independent investigative committees, and they have the understanding to make that work correct and profound. Polymaths are underrepresented in these technical times, and we need to recognize them.
The Iraqi Minister of Information, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf (“Baghdad Bob”‘) Quadrant…?
Here’s a nifty nasty: “Baghdad Beeb”
Happer’s demise is illustrated by no one talking about his contribution to the CNN interview on Earth Day, which was basically his inability to substantiate why Paris=Munich when questioned on his analogy. That was Happer’s amateurish attempt at politicization, which Nye was willing to overlook but the hosts weren’t.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/04/22/watch_bill_nye_blast_cnn_on_air_for_pitting_him_against_climate_change_skeptic.html
You say the strangest things. Happer is demised? What does that even mean?
That people you disagree with do not look good to you is no surprise. It just makes you a bad judge of them.
> You say the strangest things. Happer is demised? What does that even mean?
It’s easier to suggest that JimD’s “Happer’s demise” makes no sense by transmogrifying into “Happer is demised.”
Here:
Happer blew it. Nye, like most engineers, is not equipped to be in a debate with a top-notch physicist. Unless it’s one whose mental capabilities have been diminished by old age. Happer’s arguments were beyond ridiculous, so Nye, a lightweight, easily won… despite his ineptitude and debate missteps.
Happer’s reputation’s demise may be more accurate. People thought he was a scientist, but his main new point for CNN appears to have been to talk about Munich. He equates the failure of Paris to the failure of Munich and we know how that turned out, so no wonder he was asked for clarification, but that didn’t help. I don’t think he ever saw the flaw in his analogy that bad things happen when agreements fail.
Happer is a scientist. He’s just on the other side of the fence from you.
Funny, I could post a link to the same video from a site claiming that Nye was annihilated. So what’s your point?
Happer had little to say, especially in response to Nye. After the Munich thing, I don’t think the hosts went back to him. Nye got more than 50% of the time even with three guests. He made many more of his points, while I think Happer only had three points the whole time. If it was boxing, Nye won and Happer was reeling like Klitschko.
JimD,
The important point is to stress correct science when it is correct by scientific standards. You, time and again, divert the discussion from the science to the messengers like you who gossip about the science.
You do not judge science outcomes by who had most to say in an interview. Happer could well have won by saying nothing.
@Jim D
Nye is a media guy and is especially TV savvy, Happer most certainly isn’t. What I saw was a TV pro up against some boffin and it was mediated by TV people.
The skeptics sure need some “TV people”, and I don’t think Monckton gives the impression of cool-headed sanity you would want, being a regular Alex Jones guest.
> Its actually very good.
It’s hard for the contrarian network to stay away from check kiting. It’s even harder to get out of its matrix. Stephens hides behind Mr. T, oblivious to the fact that Mr. T’s only 5ft 10 when not standing on his money.
Here’s something less Nye-like:
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/The-big-problem-with-NY-Times-climate-isnt-what-you-think.html
Thanks for this link!
I’m not sure what I like best about this comment:
1. the fact that the strident, close-minded, authoritarian tone is certain to drive concern about global warming down even further than it’s unprecedentedly low current numbers or
2. the public declaration of an absolute certainty that the pathway to both good newspaper business acumen and good journalism is blind adherence to an ideological cocoon.
Following the author’s suggestions are necessary to help reach bottom, which at this point simply has to happen in order for a return to rational discourse.
Thank you for this comment!
I’m quite sure I like your victim-playing best, but I also like the string of adjectives by which we recognize the usual crap Freedom Fighters peddle in just about every thread.
Please, do continue.
Meanwhile, here’s RogerJ’s analysis:
All very reasonable indeed.
Delightful! Even more half-baked analysis!
I especially love this part: “Stephens says that much of what passes as fact is really a matter of probabilities. More dog whistling, because that is how climate change and its consequences is being communicated right now.”
Got that- Stephens is a denier for suggesting that what passes for fact is probabilities. AND it’s a false statement because climate scientists never say there is a fact- ie anything to deny – they’re just saying its a probability. Only it’s one in which we’re not allowed to discuss uncertainty.
By the by, you need to up your game. I’m not victim-playing, I’m enjoying watching team warm and team special engage in their epic meltdown. I used to be a journalist- I think the fact that the NYT is going out and hiring folks like Stephens and the networks snapped up Megan Kelly is the absolute best media news in decades. There never was any good business reason to narrow the appeal of your media business to the 17-20% of America that calls itself progressive (and which every other paper is trying to reach) and there certainly isn’t any intellectual excuse for cocooning. I applaud you, Willard, for one thing at least- you aren’t spending all your time reading folks like Joe Romm and posting the usual comments you see at sites like his: “gosh, I absolutely agree, Joe, Florida will be entirely underwater by October and Faux News just calls us alarmists! We need to switch to 100% hamster power by Friday and you’ve proven it can be done with the right tax policy!”
> There never was any good business reason to narrow the appeal of your media business to the 17-20% of America that calls itself progressive (and which every other paper is trying to reach) and there certainly isn’t any intellectual excuse for cocooning.
1) The business case for “balance” harkens from an age when print media had near-monopolies in their markets, a feature which the Internet has all but completely destroyed. See the graf following the one Willard quoted.
2) There is every intellectual justification to not bother being open-minded to fallaciously-argued schlock, no matter the ideological bent flavoring the rhetoric.
> Got that- Stephens is a denier for suggesting that what passes for fact is probabilities.
More victim playing. Delicious. A pity what JeffN does not address RogerJ’s point – brandishing Mr. T is indeed a strawman. Let’s also add that this strawman amounts to good ol’ tone policing, and that tone policing has little effect on countering anything of substance, i.e.:
That BretS promotes contrarian memes should be enough to say that he’s a contrarian.
And of course you’re victim-playing, JeffN. Lulzing along does not erase your “Stephens is a denier” crap.
Brandon,
The Internet has made it possible to get
Left-wing spin at your breakfast table from the New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, Chicago Tribune, Huffington Post, The Atlantic, Five-ThirtyEight, Salon, Boston Globe, etc etc. All of them spending millions of dollars to reach that 17% of the country that is liberal and the 20-30% of them that doesn’t want to be challenged to think.
In other words, it’s like looking at an entire mall food court made up of nothing but taco stands and saying: “I’ve got, I’ll open a taco stand here!”
“There is every intellectual justification to not bother being open-minded to fallaciously-argued schlock, no matter the ideological bent flavoring the rhetoric.”
I know liberals who’ve reluctantly but decisively stopped reading Krugman or watching literally anything on MSNBC for that same reason.
I know liberals who’ve stopped listening to climate activists for that very same reason.
> I know liberals who’ve stopped listening to climate activists for that very same reason.
Putting together then, Jeff, what I’m getting is that cocooning oneself is inexcusable because unnamed, paraphrased liberals stopped listening to left-wing spin that reminds you of taco stands.
Don’t play willard’s game, people. He’s just having fun. He doesn’t care who’s right or wrong. This is Climate ball. It’s an open question whether willard even cares about climate change.
Thomas, I don’t care about assigning or speculating about Willard. I would just like to point out a few problems with the write-up that I noted:
“”If we factor in all the probabilities, including that of the science being wrong, a strong policy response is merited.””
All factors and all probabilities are not known. There are good arguments against a strong policy included below.
“The do-nothing case or slow, cautionary policy response position needs to admit that adapting to a 3–5°C warmer world without fragmenting governance and wrecking the global economy is a huge risk.”
This claim is built on two factors not shown to be true. Current science indicates that the world could be cooler than a 3-5C world. The real issue is that harm to date by warming is myopically presented. There have been many benefits, especially if required to “factor in all the probabilities” such as wealth, technical, and societal advancements. The claim of fracturing governance or wrecking the global economy is unsupported except as a probability. All probabilities include that governance and the global economy will be better. It would be a huge risk to miss out on better governance and a better global economy. Willard is this a “bait and frame”: “cautionary policy response position needs to admit that adapting”?
“The odds of succeeding with a net economic benefit are worse than the science being wrong.” Unsupported by original claim of all probabilities, since all probabilities include the inability to make the planed changes actually work, there are unknown probabilities. Willard isn’t this a circular argument? Or is it just an unsupported claim.
“The science provides the evidence, but the policy position is based on risk and that is where most of the uncertainty lies.” Just wrong. Policy can be formulated for many reasons such as that the “science” indicates it will take a richer and more technologically adept world to address climate change. At this point, it is scientific speculation about harm; it has not happened yet. Yet, harm is what is needed to claim “strong policy response is merited” or ” fragmenting governance and wrecking the global economy is a huge risk.” The real uncertainties are in harm, especially since a case can be made for the benefits “in all the probabilities.”
brandonrgates: 2) There is every intellectual justification to not bother being open-minded to fallaciously-argued schlock, no matter the ideological bent flavoring the rhetoric.
The majoritarians are not the only people free to use the label “fallaciously-argued schlock”; such stuff forms the basis for the movement for strong measures to reduce CO2 imminently.
> Willard is this a “bait and frame”: “cautionary policy response position needs to admit that adapting”?
I don’t think so, JohnF. There’s no back and forth between categorial (“certainty”, “true”) and fuzzy or probabilistic language. There’s no switch from object language (i.e. science) to meta-language (i.e. not science, but what is important). The conclusion is not framed at the same level as BretS’ fight for personal freedom.
AGW carries risks. These risks appear to be substantial. Minimizing these risks while we search for a better world just makes sense.
But you’re right: what if we created a better world and all this was just a hoax?
JFP –
=={ There have been many benefits, especially if required to “factor in all the probabilities” such as wealth, technical, and societal advancements. }==
How do you attribute benefits to warming, as opposed to, say:
AGW carries risks. These risks appear to be substantial.
Evidence doesn’t support this.
Century long US drought decrease, satellite record global drought decrease, century long US extreme heat decrease, period of record decrease of strong US tornadoes, decreased global temperature variability, long term decreased US temperature variability, no trend in tropical cyclone energy.
Throw in the benefits of increased plant growth, increased plankton growth, increased crop yield, increased plant drought tolerance, increased temperature of maximal plant growth and crop yield, and it appears fossil fuels, especially natural gas, are a winner for a long time to come.
But you’re right: what if we created a better world and all this was just a hoax?
What if we created a worse world because of this hoax?
Religions like unfalsifiable paradise also.
“AGW carries risks. These risks appear to be substantial. Minimizing these risks while we search for a better world just makes sense.”
Whose version of a better world? Compared to the rest of the world, the US has better air and better water so that could be a better world. Of course much of that better air and better water is due to out sourcing pollution through regulation, but hey, I can’t see it from my house.
TE –
=={ Evidence doesn’t support this. }==
Really? So a warming within the range of, say, Nic Lewis’ estimates poses no risks (over any time period)?
What ever happened to the importance of uncertainty? Where’s Mr. T?
> it appears fossil fuels, especially natural gas, are a winner for a long time to come.
Looks like an unfalsifiable claim to me.
Does it mean GRRROWTH is a religion, TE?
Does it mean GRRROWTH is a religion, TE?
You would not be happy yielding the standard of living growth has afforded you.
Willard I don’t see evidence that it is a hoax. What I see is a fundamental difference(s) in application of risks and safety considerations. The harm uncertainties magnify the differences of different positions all of which can use science and policy considerations equally or almost equally. There is also myopia concerning what we do know, and what we think we know, especially in the use of policy. This is indicated by engineering problems that have been recognized for literally decades with such things as renewables, where budgets, laws, customs, specifications, and infrastructure do not match what is said about their worth, use, or practicality by proponents. I do not assign conspiracy, stupidity, greed or such. I do note that policy more often than not, is implemented with known shortcomings that should cause persons to doubt the policies’ chances of success. Yet somehow are claimed to be the pathway to the future. Sometimes these policies work, some don’t.
Joshua, using the quoted piece: Energy use, is both the result and most efficient means of sustaining economic life and the key to securing the general welfare of the world’s entire population. Releasing and utilizing energy benefits humans in spite of historical, intellectual, political, or religious traditions. Modern advances in wealth accumulation and technical ability clearly demonstrate its current applicability and possibilities despite different traditions. In the global economy, unprecedented increases in overall opulence, occur in societies that use and harness energy. Energy development is essential for human progress, and its maintenance. CO2 is a GHG, it has no choice because that is simply part of what CO2 is. Most energy used by humans result in CO2, since most energy comes from fossil fuels.
Willard ignore “all” in at least one place in my response. Didn’t see it and have it sink in, until after I hit post. The weather is changing and I am suffering a migraine.
I find “all” a bit dogmatic and incorrect in this case. Two conditions I like to avoid.
JFP –
I note that somewhere the predicate morphed from warming to energy use. Be that as it may, I will also note that energy from a variety of sources can be used, and that levels of energy use are largely a function of other factors, such as freedom, or access to political agency and franchisement. Consider the following.
=={
Energy usefreedom, is both the result and most efficient means of sustaining economic life and the key to securing the general welfare of the world’s entire population. Releasing and utilizingenergyfreedom benefits humans in spite of historical, intellectual, political, or religious traditions. Modern advances in wealth accumulation and technical ability clearly demonstrate its current applicability and possibilities despite different traditions. In the global economy, unprecedented increases in overall opulence, occur in societies that use and harnessenergy.freedom.EnergyFreedom development is essential for human progress, and its maintenance. CO2 is a GHG, it has no choice because that is simply part of what CO2 is. Mostenergy used by humans result in CO2, since most [current] eneegy comes from fossil fuels.> You would not be happy yielding the standard of living growth has afforded you.
GRRROWTH and growth are two very different beasts, TE. One might even argue that once we normalize the 1% away, they are anti-correlated. Speaking of normalizing, here’s a cameo by our Honest-Broker-in-chief:
http://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/publications/docs/workingpapers/2016/WP-16-21.pdf
Hence the underwhelming effect the “evidence” you offered earlier.
GRRROWTH is behind the curve.
Like it or not, you’re gonna get a chance to experience
SHRRRRRRINKAGE. Careful what you wish for.
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/CO2_TFR_2015.png
Sure, TE:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-Yy10ZXkAE8FBy.jpg
Also note that pie charts are so 20th century:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-YPFd6XkAADFRy.jpg
And to return to Mr. T:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-iCJqOV0AExTUM.jpg
The fight for personal freedom never ends.
Willard:
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/mar/10/michael-moore/michael-moore-says-400-americans-have-more-wealth-/
It was true. Another reason to watch his creations.
Who are these scoundrels?
1. Bill Gates, Microsoft ($81 billion)
2. Jeff Bezos, Amazon ($67 billion)
3. Warren Buffet, Berkshire Hathaway (65.5 billion)
4. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook ($55.5 billion)
5. Larry Ellison, Oracle ($49.3 billion)
6. Michael Bloomberg, Bloomberg ($45.5 billion)
7. Charles Koch, Koch Industries ($42 billion)
7. David Koch, Koch Industries ($42 billion)
9. Larry Page, Google ($38.5 billion)
10. Sergey Brin, Google ($37.5 billion)
If we could undo Microsoft, that would even things out some. Should we boycott these companies? Boycotting Koch Industries is a gimme.
Why income equality?
Income inequality is rising in the United States, and the gap between the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans compared to the majority of income earners is now at ‘unprecedented’ heights.
Do they know what it was during the MWP? I don’t think so.
http://www.newsweek.com/why-rich-stay-rich-and-poor-stay-poor-363611
“She found that, for students with affluent backgrounds, the choice in college major tends to be in the humanities such as English, history and the arts. Meanwhile their lower-income peers seek majors in math, physics and computer science. As low-income students may choose their majors based on financial necessity and marketability…”
A negative feedback if ever I saw one. I thought my son just liked physics and plasma and stuff.
“It stems from how wealthy parents spend money compared to their low-income counterparts: Where low-income families focus on immediate needs, such as food and transportation, rich families invest more on future-oriented purchases that will ensure their well-being.”
How about someone in the middle third that lives within their means? We don’t have a car less than 10 years old. But hey, don’t tax me, go after the rich.
Ragnaar: “Who are these scoundrels?”
1. Bill Gates, Microsoft ($81 billion)
2. Jeff Bezos, Amazon ($67 billion)
3. Warren Buffet, Berkshire Hathaway (65.5 billion)
4. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook ($55.5 billion)
5. Larry Ellison, Oracle ($49.3 billion)
6. Michael Bloomberg, Bloomberg ($45.5 billion)
7. Charles Koch, Koch Industries ($42 billion)
7. David Koch, Koch Industries ($42 billion)
9. Larry Page, Google ($38.5 billion)
10. Sergey Brin, Google ($37.5 billion)
Except for 6 and 7, they’re all leftists. I suppose this represents the power of Leftist media in perpetuating the smokestack era stereotype that the GOP only cares about the rich. What a rich irony.
Actually 7 & 7, but who’s counting.
This is going to be quick and dirty.
2 Koch Brothers net worth: $42 billion each.
Their combined ownership % of Koch brothers: 84%
Guessing Koch Industries has a net worth of $100 billion.
Market Value:
Apple $725 B
Exxon Mobil $357 B
Berkshire Hathaway $357 B
Google $346 B
Microsoft $334 B
PetroChina $330 B
Wells Fargo $280 B
Johnson & Johnson $280 B
Industrial & Commercial Bank of China $275 B
Novartis 268 B
Koch Industries would show up in about 75th place.
So they fund Cato. Who cares?
I guess the Left cares, it’s what they whine about. And at least 6 of those 10 in the new list are run by Leftist CEO’s, probably more; or communist in the case of a couple. Not on the list, but most influential, the 2 largest global investment banks, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are run by Leftist CEO’s.
This is from the IRS reports for 1991, 2000 and 2014. They don’t match up with the graphs above exactly with attempted crosswalks between IRS tax filers and households involving some estimates.
1991 Adjusted Gross Income $3.5 T 1% share $400 B
2000 Adjusted Gross Income $6.4 T 1% share $1.2 T
2014 Adjusted Gross Income $9.8 T 1% share $2.0 T
Do the math any way you want, but it does not come close to the percentages gained for the 1% as represented by the graph above.
The total change in AGI from 2000 to 2014 is $3.4 T and of that just $800 B is for the 1%. From 1991 to 2014 the total AGI change is $6.3 T with $1.6 T going to the !%. Just as a side note, the Piketty work upon which this other study was apparently based has been found to have major flaws.
> major flaws
Citation needed.
Sourcing the adjustment trick would also help.
***
Inequality is a systemic problem, Ragnaar. There’s no need to look at the top 1% of the 1%. I’d rather go to the source:
http://static.politico.com/dims4/default/3054f67/2147483647/resize/1160x>/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2F0e%2F78%2Fb86d452d4a079b9190b9d20f8fbb%2F170504-trump-health-care-gty-1160.jpg
How’s your health coverage be affected by Trumpcare, BTW?
***
JohnP,
I don’t have much time to respond to your comments. All I could point out is that even FUND points toward mitigation and that it’d be hard to get a lower bound than that without overstretching the bounds of justified disingenuousness.
I’m not sure how RogerJ would respond, but I’m quite confident he did his homework. I’d ask him.
Best,
W
Willard:
Trumpcare.
There are no atheists in fox holes.
There are libertarians using the Affordable Care Act.
Turns out in my role preparing income taxes, I am an ACA cop. Adherence to the IRS tax code is a good way to remain a CPA.
My time pre-ACA was about zero dealing with it. Hey, I am an accountant. Now it’s maybe at 3-5% of my tax season time available. There a small group of my clients that I am able to help. Lowering their AGI to improve their ACA outcome. IRA contributions were made as well a HSA contributions.
Personally I’d rather the ACA continue with minor modifications. I don’t know what might replace it. Mr. T. What is the healthcare control knob?
“Inequality is a systemic problem…”
Somewhere along the way I discovered rules. Don’t harm others for instance. A good rule will apply as often as possible. We are for free trade is a good rule. With Mexico not so much someone says. So the rule doesn’t apply to Mexicans? Inequality is world problem. But, U.S.A. But there’s a whole lot of people out there.
So I say you want to help those people over there. I say, if you have a good rule, you’ll help those people in Sudan too. As a matter of fact those people over there are better off than the ones in Sudan. We could triage. What are the emotional costs to ones doing the triage?
I had mentioned IRA deductions and HSA contributions and the ACA. If you or a family member are using the ACA, talk to your tax person about these things. Don’t talk to me other than here, I am anonymous and have enough clients. Both of these thing lower your AGI which is a good thing in some cases for the ACA. Some people will may too much and it will not matter, and some people will make too little and it will not matter. But there is a middle zone where it does. With a deductible IRA contribution, you get your money back someday and may save on premiums now. With an HSA contribution if you qualify for one and check the rules, you get your money back someday, and don’t have to pay taxes on it. But make sure you understand what qualified distributions means. In all cases, play things straight with the IRS and the ACA people.
Thanks, Ragnaar.
W
I am not in the habit of giving 77 links. But let me give you the essence of the various criticisms. Generally, Piketty undercounted the share of income going to the 1% in the base years and undercounted the share of income going to the 99% in recent years. Piketty also focused on only the “market income” vs the broader “aggregate income” which includes government transfer payments etc. Here are some of the factors.
a. Pre 1986 Tax Reform Act, the 1% was receiving income that was counted by Piketty as corporate income which then switched to Individual Income Returns post 1986. This had the effect of showing incomes for 1% individuals lower than they actually were.
b. in the 1950s very little in payments were made for employees for pensions and insurances, etc. Those amounts have increased dramatically to today.
c. In the 1950s very little in government transfer payments were made. Now we have much higher unemployment payments, SS, Medicaid, etc.
d. The treatment of tax filers, tax units and dependents have shifted so that in more recent years the IRS data has more low income persons as a percent of total income earners.
e. There are more households with a single person, thus more single incomes than in the 1950s etc.
f. There is a strong positive correlation between marriage, education and income so that there are more 2 income households with higher incomes as a share of the total than decades ago.
The analyses that have been done by various authors have all identified these areas which have resulted in their view that the Piketty studies overestimated the increase in income inequality. One study done jointly in 2016 between the Obama Office of Tax Analysis (OTA) and the Joint Committee on Taxation from Congress made a number of adjustments to some of the areas above. Here is the result of their work.
Piketty 1% share of market income 1960 9% and in 2013 19%
OTA 1% share of market/aggregate income 1960 12% and in 2013 14.8%
Rather than the share of income going to the 1% increasing by 10% the OTA analysis estimates it to have increased by only 2.8%.
Conclusion : when adjusting for other types of income and recognizing other incomes pre 1986, the increase in income inequality is not as dramatic as portrayed around the world when the Piketty book came out. I guarantee none of the MSM will ever cover this study by the Obama Office of Tax Analysis that the Piketty figures have been disputed.
> I am not in the habit of giving 77 links.
You’re not in the habit of giving any, Kid.
You’re more in the habit of handwaving to “various authors.”
You’re doing it again.
Here’s a simple chart for the US of A:
http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/chart-02.jpg
Here’s a chart for the anglosphere:
http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/chart-03.jpg
Here’s how we give a link:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/pikettys-inequality-story-in-six-charts
Whereas I am clearly in the habit of throwing around many links.
“From this history, Piketty derives a grand theory of capital and inequality. As a general rule wealth grows faster than economic output, he explains, a concept he captures in the expression r > g (where r is the rate of return to wealth and g is the economic growth rate). Other things being equal, faster economic growth will diminish the importance of wealth in a society, whereas slower growth will increase it (and demographic change that slows global growth will make capital more dominant). But there are no natural forces pushing against the steady concentration of wealth. Only a burst of rapid growth (from technological progress or rising population) or government intervention can be counted on to keep economies from returning to the “patrimonial capitalism” that worried Karl Marx.”
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/economist-explains
It is a little more balanced than The Economist suggests. It is clear that economic growth favours higher returns to the poorer and in the broad sweep of things wealth comes and goes. It goes to those with the highest rates of return and is lost to those with lower returns. Economics is not a zero sum game and wealth provides capital for expanding the pie. A bigger pie enables more redistribution. I can’t see the problem – but then the theory of surplus value was as far as I got with Karl Marx all those years ago.
Some time ago I read an article in an economics magazine on ‘rock star economists’ post the 2008 toxic debt meltdown. The usual suspects from the past were invoked. John Maynard Keynes still provides the rationale for deficit spending to increase economic activity. He and Milton Freidman were mentioned in passing setting the scene for more recent practitioners – Thomas Piketty and a few others. The modern “economic rock stars” focused on – alternatively – the inequality of wealth and the inadequacy of banking margins. In the historical context I’d suggest that Hayek and the Austrian school – and more recently Didier Sornette – are demonstrably more important in terms of managing for economic stability and growth.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2016/03/11/all-bubbles-burst-laws-of-economics-for-the-new-millennium/
Poor wee willie’s hackneyed rhetoric notwithstanding.
https://judithcurry.com/2017/05/02/nyes-quadrant/#comment-848417
W
Now I have just cited a study by the pros, the Obama Department of Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis and the Joint Committee on Taxation, US Congress and what do you return volley with, a pathetic crayon drawn graph by a bunch of financial and economic illiterate journalists. Sad.
It is time you stop living off the labor of others. You can do the research by yourself. Google Auten and Splinter tax data. Then read the Recent Trends paper with Larrimore of the Federal Reserve Board as a co-author, for other perspectives. Gauging income inequality is more complex than the uninformed might think. Just like the other looming issue of the day.
There are more ways to look at the world than those spoon fed to you. That goes for Income Inequality and Global Warming. I know, life can be such a bi..h.
I am still unclear as to why income or wealth inequality is bad. Is everyone worse off because someone is better off?
The GINI coefficient seems to be an entirely political measure, in that it is invoked for political reasons rather than economic ones. Of course I am a right winger and so believe that I am responsible for my own circumstances and just wish for there to be no special allowances made for the rich or the poor by our government.
Keitho
Exactly. But the Ws of the world need their victimization rushes and they pine for those VUEs, Venezuela Utopian Experiences and if one is really lucky they could get their Cuban Experience and drive around a 1953 Chevy like I once did.
Winston Churchill had it right. “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of bounty. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”
A vibrant growing economy rests on proper incentives, an appetite for risk taking and vigorous competition. That means people are always risking their capital and a lot of those people are always losing their shirts. Some don’t see the nexus of risk and reward. They believe that national wealth falls from heaven sprinkled down by the Tooth Fairy, Tinker Bell and Elf on the Shelf.
> Now I have just cited a study by the pros, the Obama Department of Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis and the Joint Committee on Taxation,
Where’s the link?
Again, here’s what a link looks like:
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.27.3.3
As a bonus, here’s what a quote looks like:
The authors’ last point deserves due diligence.
Try to normalize this, Kid.
“if one is really lucky they could get their Cuban Experience and drive around a 1953 Chevy like I once did.”
cerescokid, If one truly understood the facilitation of “links” then they wouldn’t have to get “lucky” for such an experience. The only links one really ever needs in life is a bundle of chicken wire and a roll of duct tape; with that you can keep on truckin’ for 60 years! Every good socialist knows this.
Like Castro said shortly after seizing power: ‘The Cadillac does not provide jobs for anyone’ … ‘The Cadillac does not increase the wealth of the country. It diminishes it.’
Listen to Mr Fuller.
Willard is no dummy. Which means you have to pay attention. Not to what he posts, but to how. He’s having fun. So either play his game, if you think you can, or pay no attention. After all he’s the chief squirrel keep at CE.
tim
Who is not having fun. Well, it doesn’t match a 20 foot, $2 birdie putt, but my Liberal daughters don’t want to hear my stuff so this is a more enjoyable outlet. Fred is just a conduit to get other people to read what I provide. No one is going to spend the time to read that 34 page report in the link. There are only a couple of devastating take-downs of Fred’s multi-hued crayon graphs in the link anyway so I get to highlight the important things instead of having it buried in the report.
If I just relied on the link, I wouldn’t be able to point out that the OTA found that the increase in income for the 1% since 1960 was only one tenth or 10% of what the Piketty study found. In other words, just like much of climate science the work of academe on income inequality is junk. They had a pre-determined point of view and all their work went into substantiating that view/
> If I just relied on the link, I wouldn’t be able to point out that the OTA found that the increase in income for the 1% since 1960 was only one tenth or 10% of what the Piketty study found.
And if Denizens only rely on Kid’s testimony, they wouldn’t be able to point out that he’s referring to a different concept than Piketty’s, which his sources calls the broad income. They wouldn’t be able to see how the authors also introduce a concept they self-servingly call consistent market income. They wouldn’t be able to see that pea and thimble game done with corporate retained earnings.
Also, Denizens wouldn’t even be able to read the introduction where Keitho’s rhetorical question gets answered. They wouldn’t be able to read the caveat according to which the views expressed are those of the authors alone, and not the official Treasury position. They wouldn’t be able to read the notes, the figures, or the summary, where the authors candidly observe that:
Denizens should be able to see what kind of game Kid’s playing right now.
Applause, please give W a hand. I knew he had it in him to actually type in the words to get my link. The problem now is he seems to have a reading comprehension problem or a blind spot. I clearly spelled out the differences and the reasons for them in my comments above. But hey, we can’t
expect everything. Someone who was paying attention and grasped the content and issues would have understood that instantly.
> I clearly spelled out the differences and the reasons for them in my comments above.
The very concept of broad income shows that we’re far from the “major flaws” promised, Kid. The authors readily acknowledge that most studies have found a long-term trend of rising inequality. Also, when the main author, a Manhattan Institute talking head, tells you that inequality slows if and only if employers provide health care to their employees, you might wish to give it some thought. We’re in Trumpcare week, after all.
Also note that the “Piketty book” ain’t Piketty & Saez 2003, and the graph that started you ain’t from that paper either. Search for the first author, Paulina Tcherneva. Her point was about the share of income growth received by the top 10 percent and bottom 90 percent of earners during expansions. But your squirrel was fun.
Thanks for playing.
We have seen this before. It is possible Bret Stephens’ tenure will be as short as RPJr’s at 538.com, and for similar backlash reasons. The first step would be an article by an actual scientist like Kerry Emanuel that says what the science really tells us instead of this straw man view.
> It is possible Bret Stephens’ tenure will be as short as [Junio’s] at 538.com
I wouldn’t speculate too much, JimD. The very idea that the BretS’ episode is related to his voice being silenced deserves due diligence. So I would focus on the times Denizens promoted boycotts, abdicated their affiliations, cancelled their subscriptions, rescinded their memberships from science associations, or simply asked that we kill the IPCC.
It’s not science, but it’s important.
Perhaps Kerry would tell us that the warming and human causation are not “indisputable.” That would be refreshing.
Stephens said it was indisputable too, but was a bit fuzzy on what the IPCC said, and I am not sure the skeptics caught that or they would be complaining about his wording. The NYT can make up for this by having a special-issue op-ed with 30 climate scientists to provide the correct balance.
Even more refreshing would be DavidW trying to justify Readers Digest boycott by his favorite think tank, the Heartland Institute:
https://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/publications/readers-digest-responds-to-boycott
The writer of this press release is the organizer of this coalition.
The website is down. Sad snowflakes.
Boycotting Google. How’s that panning out? Leftist boycotts seem to work better. More people, see.
Jim D: “Leftist boycotts seem to work better. More people, see.”
The first claim is true, but the second is not. The reason that leftist boycotts work better is not because there are more of them but because leftists, being collectivists, are more inclined to participate in collectivist actions. People on the Right, being more individualistic, not so much so.
Reblogged this on ClimateTheTruth.com.
I was surprised by the Stephens NYT piece, until I figured it out. If they want to have a “conversation” (his word) on climate policy with the Republicans, which they clearly do, then they need to disown the radical activists. That is the point of the piece, nicely stated at the end.
But notice this:
First he quotes “Whoever says he’s 100 percent right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.”
But then he says “…the modest (0.85 degrees Celsius, or about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) warming of the Northern Hemisphere since 1880 is indisputable, as is the human influence on that warming…”
Which is two claims to be 100% right! That is what “indisputable” means. Both claims are actually subject to deep scientific debate. So the moderate warmers still have a long way to go.
But the reaction has been hysterical, in both senses — insane and funny. The activists’ heads are indeed exploding, just as Stephens more or less predicted.
Here’s a fine example of exploding alarmists heads:
http://www.abc15.com/news/national/nyt-subscribers-dropping-paper-over-climate-column
They quote Stefan Rahmstorf giving the standard alarmist lie: “”He is simply repeating falsehoods spread by various ‘think tanks’ funded by the fossil fuel industry,” Rahmstorf said.” (SR is one of the top alarmist scientists in Germany.)
It sounds like Stephens was hired specifically to raise this issue. These alarmists indeed have no place at the US policy table, which is likely to last 8 years or more. Perhaps the NYT wisely prefers to be in the game.
This is actually disputable, mainly because it is wrong, the northern hemisphere has warmed more than that, he is quoting the global increase and calling it the northern hemisphere.
Gee bob, it’s so hard to keep track. Which is more important, global, NH or Arctic?
Or does it depend on which works better for you at any one time.
The NH/global snafu was corrected – but I wouldn’t get too bogged down with over-precision. It warmed at about 0.09 degrees C/decade.
“Interdecadal 20th century temperature deviations, such as the accelerated observed 1910–1940 warming that has been attributed to an unverifiable increase in solar irradiance (4, 7, 19, 20), appear to instead be due to natural variability. The same is true for the observed mid-40s to mid-70s cooling, previously attributed to enhanced sulfate aerosol activity (4, 6, 7, 12). Finally, a fraction of the post-1970s warming also appears to be attributable to natural variability.” http://www.pnas.org/content/106/38/16120.full
The alternative paradigm suggests that much of that was natural.
Bill Nye, the scientism guy…
I don’t see how anyone can be upset with Stephen’s article. Not Mann, not Schmidt – unless they believe that climate science should be regarded as an article of faith. Scientists don’t trust models, they attempt to validate them, find errors in their assumptions, and learn from them. Models of complex systems are useful when they are repeatedly verified,
– but never “trusted.”
“Trust” is an extremely vague concept in this case. The alarmists will say the models are reasonably likely to be correct, enough to justify serious action..Skeptics disagree, but the case is very complex. It is easy for reasonable people to take opposite sides, which is just what we see.
Here “trust” means acceptance without verification – as in taking someone’s word for how the accident happened without bothering to view the video.
The obvious explanation for Mann and Schmidt’ reactions is that neither of them are scientists.
Here’s one of Bill Nye’s most shameful statements:
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/06/bill_nye_demolishes_climate_deniers_im_not_a_scientist_therefore_im_not_going_to_use_my_brain/
Academia-abetted Leftist propaganda is the worst. “Stalinist censorship was easier to deal with because everyone knew the score and could see through the official lies.” ~Tony Thomas (‘Free Speech and the Fight to Save It,’ Quadrant Online)
Bret Stephens responds …
Answering Your Climate Questions
My first column, “Climate of Complete Certainty,” was published last week, and drew more than 1,800 comments on the column and on Facebook. I’m answering some of them here, edited lightly for length and clarity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/opinion/answering-your-climate-questions.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
Was he thrown out of WSJ for being too anti-Trump? His positions of anti-Trump and anti-climate-change puts him in probably a very small minority in the US.
I thought you were against climate change? I’m for allowing the climate to change so as to set the average surface temperature anomaly at 2 degrees C, which means we are only halfway to the target.
Maybe you have some opinions on a preferred sea level too.
My preferrred sea level rise is 50 cm. It will move my condo a bit closer to the ocean. Unfortunately I’ll be dead by then.
This would be typical of the selfishness of the skeptical view. It’s the I’ve got mine attitude and is devoid of other considerations.
I could pick two meters, but I like to think of others. Two meters will give me top notch water front
Among the many fields and subjects Jim D repeatedly proves himself lacking in knowledge, we can now add humor.
And perhaps arithmetic. Having a condo in Ocean City Md, I too will be long dead before it becomes ocean front.
It’s not the slow sea-level rise that gets you – it’s the storms that ride it. Look at your neighbors in NJ after Sandy. If you were them, would you rebuild in the same spot without stilts or pay any extra insurance? These are the questions in a changing climate.
Jim,
Have you ever been to the Jersey shore?
I have a brother with a beach front house on one of the Carolina barrier islands. Building codes require any new structure to meet current code, which means buildings have to be elevated – ie on stilts. The code even extends to remodeling. There is a rather tight limit, beyond which you are required to bring the structure up to current standards.
In other words Jim, problem solved. And without needing any advise from you.
Rebuilding to new standards is going to be a trend. Climate is changing and necessitates this kind of forward thinking. Some jurisdictions don’t allow sea-level rise to be considered in planning, so it seems that NJ is at least good in that regard.
Jim D
I spend time during winters on the coasts of South Carolina and the Pan Handle of Florida. Houses are on stilts all along those coasts. Because they are visionaries anticipating SLR in a few hundred years? No, it’s because they know any year they could face 10 to 15 foot storm surges. They face the same hazards that their predecessors did during Colonial times. Whether a storm surge is 11 or 12 feet is a roll of the dice nothing to do with AGW. The difference between those levels that they could experience in one night is greater than a century of SLR. In areas close to estuaries, storm surges can be greater from man’s activities such as channeling and wetland destruction. Not everything can be laid at the feet of AGW. Those along the coasts have been dealing with it for centuries.
The houses damaged by Sandy were not on stilts. Perhaps the next generation will be. This is how it progresses. Storm by storm creates new boundaries, like a lapping rising tide.
In his responses, it does appear that Bret S favors improving the technology and doing something as technology allows rather than denying that there is a problem at all. This is somewhat the basis of the Paris approach, and he has not distinguished himself either from the IPCC or Paris in this article or in his responses.
But that’s not enough to prevent outrage from your comperes.
In his op-ed he did not explicitly state support for doing something and supporting the technology to do that. It only emerged in his responses. Perhaps he expressed himself poorly, or maybe he wanted to keep his constituency happy. I don’t know. This is the kind of dual language these people use. Tough to nail down.
Sorry, but that’s nonsense. There never has been any Republican or conservative opposition to transitioning to nuclear or developing natural gas as a bridge fuel. Stephens is squarely in the mainstream of right and center-right people on this issue and always was.
Only a subset of the alleged “climate concerned” – which includes Bill Nye, by the way – opposes switching to cost-effective low emissions alternatives. They, instead, push for expensive “Easter Bunny” solutions and goofy political/economic “solutions” based on shoddy alarmism. That was obviously what Stephens was pushing back against in his first column- particularly obvious to anyone who has paid any attention to climate change. The blowback against Stephens came because many liberals don’t realize how off-the-wall Nye’s “solutions” really are or how inaccurate the activists have been.
One thing I wish he’d done is explain the “hoax” canard. The way I’ve seen it explained- AGW itself isn’t a “hoax” (although some alarmism certainly is) but the international treaty approach that pretends to “solve” the issue while really just sending all manufacturing to China and exempting it from emissions reductions is a farce- a “hoax,” if you prefer.
Increasing the nuclear share and replacing coal with natural gas are steps that acknowledge something needs to be done, at least. Denialists just want to increase coal like that has no detrimental effect, and that includes the current bunch in charge of such things in the US. We need more op-eds on why coal should be replaced, but Bret S won’t say that except in response to questions that few will see, and nor will other skeptics who claim to understand this need.
As you know, the issue with coal is whether to force the shut down of existing coal plants before it makes any financial sense. It’s making more financial sense every day and every day we use less coal with the full understanding and support of the GOP.
It’s the Democrats that want to stop this transition. Bernie Sanders is still angry that the party platform doesn’t include a complete ban on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas (it just calls for regulating it to death slowly). And so-called greens are still running about demanding the shuttering of nuclear power. These are not the actions of people who care about CO2 emissions. Given that the climate concerned are unconcerned about emissions, nobody else is either.
I go with people like Hansen who is pro-nuclear and Obama who is for natural gas as a bridge. Globally, natural gas runs out by 2100 if it is the sole source of energy. There isn’t much use for it beyond being a short term stop-gap.
While this is fortunate, the opportunity cost lost both in real dollars (countably very large) and scientism (invaluable) is a disgrace.
Stephens says that according to the IPCC the human influence on warming is indisputable, but he doesn’t realize that this report also puts 100% human as its central estimate, and that is based on observations, not just models. The sensitivity you derive from that gives you an idea of temperature differences as emissions continue towards BAU values like 700 ppm versus stabilized values below 500 ppm. It is not certainty as he straw man’s it. It is a pretty good idea, however, just based on what we have seen already even before using models.
but he doesn’t realize that this report also puts 100% human as its central estimate
And how would you test that?
You don’t test it. You measure the imbalance. It is an observation that shows that the forcing change exceeds the warming so far. This is too sciency to convey in public discourse like Stephens’ article, but it is also rather critical to understanding where the science is. He wants to disparage models, but can’t talk about the current state of the energy balance.
You don’t test it.
Right.
I’ve been reading a lot of health research lately.
Health studies are either observational( correlations among measurements ) or clinical ( studies with controlled variables ).
Observational studies indicate correlation, but not causation ( that’s how they come up with the silly press stories like ‘chocolate prevents Alzheymers’ and the like ). The clinical studies are the only science.
Consider climate science in this light.
Not only are climate predictions not controlled, like clinical studies, they don’t even have supporting measurement as with observational studies.
You can have a hypothesis and use the imbalance to test it. But the imbalance itself is a measurement. It can also happen that you have the measurement first and have to explain it. Why is the imbalance positive even after all this warming?
Jim D wrote, “You don’t test it. You measure the imbalance.”
What are you measuring?
The rate of change of ocean heat content.
> The clinical studies are the only science.
The solution to this conundrum you’ve erected is trivial, TE. First we need a pristine full-scale duplicate of the planet. However many of us grok that Uncertainty Monsters aren’t team players move there to build windmills and solar panels to their bleeding hearts’ content. The clinicians stay here and celebrate getting rid of all the medicine men and witch doctors.
As an added bonus, the Grate Climate Debait advances to an all new topic: which group is the experimental one, and which is the control?
Real Science Fun for the entire family!
As I keep saying – ascribing all ocean warming to greenhouse gas forcing is an obvious fallacy.
Ocean heat
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/argo-to-december-2016.jpg
Change in energy in
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/energy-in.jpg
Change in energy out
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/ceres-net-13-month-running-average.jpg
The ocean cools and then warms again – 1999 had warms oceans but it is not covered by the Argo data. The change from cooling to warming says quite clearly that the planet was in energy equilibrium at the inflection point. The annual overshooting of ocean warming and cooling implies that ocean thermal inertia to greenhouse gas forcing does not result in an accumulation of greenhouse gas forcing at toa. The warming mechanism involves retention of heat in the oceans and atmosphere with an instantaneous rate of increase from greenhouse gases of 1E-9J/m2.
Small increases add up over time – but at any particular time they are swamped by natural variability.
For poor wee willie’s sake – this is an example of abductive inference.
With energy out – up is warming by convention.
JimD, I believe you are wrong on attribution studies. They are based on AOGCMs and the pattern of their responses to forcing. You know things like the pattern of SST warming that they get wrong.
Stephens’ follow-up is brilliant. Can’t wait to see more head exploding over his saying that models are not science, but basically flawed polling.
It is easy — and wrong — for scientists to become stealth policy advocates
Normative Science
Too often, however, scientific information presented to the public and decision-makers is infused with hidden policy preferences. Such science is termed normative, and it is a corruption of the practice of good science.
http://oregonstate.edu/terra/2013/01/normative-science/
Michael Mann, Ken Caldeira, Stefan Rahmstorf, Dave Roberts, Nate Silver — welcome to Nye’s Quadrant.
Mann, we knew, of course.
But Rahmstorf and the others served to self identify as ideologues by their protests.
Why would a research scientist care about what’s on the NYT editorial page unless they were reading it and harbored judgment clouding opinions? Is their research suspect because of this?
If they had factual disagreements, what better opportunity to offer corrections? I saw more commotion than correction, so I’m guessing that the differences are ideological, not scientific.
Good question TE. The answer is the same as why The Inquisition existed
Rahmstorf and Mann are two of the biggest headline mongers there are. It seems when they start with the headline, mine for data, invent novel methods, and voila! Headline achieved.
Last month when the news shouted “An international team of scientist has determined that the weather had become more extreme due to global warming!”, I thought “Must be Rahmstorf and Mann”…. Yep. Using not so novel methods, however, their results don’t appear to hold up.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
~
Agreed.
I’m envisioning an additional row for the “The question for fundamental Understanding” axis. It would be negative (ie. misunderstanding). For this row under low consideration of use we could have someone like Depok Chopra, under high consideration of use we might have Bill Nye’s energy transition proposal for 100% renewables.
You must remember that 95% of the world has no idea who Nye is other than I think he appeared in an episode of the Big Bang Theory.
Is he of any importance or relevance to anything? He wore a bow tie and seemed out of his depth with actors spouting science lines.
tonyb
Unfortunately, the American public is more likely to be informed by entertainers than to read.
Bill Maher, and otherwise skeptical atheist,
would gullibly believe “ocean life faces mass extinction” without evidence as he does in this interview with Stephens:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i–Uq8VXas&feature=youtu.be
Maher, a smart guy, hits the trifecta: appeal to authority, appeal to consensus, and appeal to emotion all without bothering to question or understand the issues. Not everyone has climate background, of course, but why believe that which you don’t understand?
Like religions, climate change offers damnation or salvation, but only in the future and without supporting evidence.
Like religions, climate change also depends both on authority of those that a lay public accedes to and the peer pressure from a popular consensus.
Tonyb, Bill Nye had an educational show for elementary school level science. For many years which he was billed as “the science guy” as classed watched a TV while the teacher got a break.
TE, did you see the dust up with Bret Stephens writing a lukewarmer op ed for his first NYT article? He apparently got hired to attain diversity in attacking Trump from all sides, Stephens being a conservative still clinging to a “never Trump” pledge.
Greens organized to have him fired by cancelling their subscriptions (for a week). http://thefederalist.com/2017/05/02/bret-stephens-surprised-mob-fed-turned/
Tony, His importance is as an ignorant propagandist. Countering the worst lies is not a bad thing
Climte etc., is on a fast track to be a new and possible a more POSH version of WUWT. Politics is not among Madam Currys strongest skills. Politics must choose among the best alternatives, but also must prepare for the worst. I have to this date not seen a single bloggpost or entry for discussion in Climate etc., that include the costs of being uncertain other than being uncertain in one direction.
Deep uncertainty is my theme. I don’t really talk about costs, I talk about how to frame wicked problems and how to approach the process of decision making under deep uncertainty.
> I don’t really talk about costs.
Of course not:
https://judithcurry.com/?s=Cost
Rune, Are you being serious? This post is very rational and a plea for rational adult behavior. It is well sourced and argued. If you dislike the points made you might try to counter with rationality and rise above sound bites
> If you dislike the points made you might try to counter with rationality and rise above sound bites
Rune may have buried the lede a bit, dpy6629, but I caught the salient point:
It’s actually a very WUWT-like construction, e.g.: I have to this date not seen a single piece of evidence which proves that a trace gas in the atmosphere can have any effect on climate.
Talk about wicked ways to frame a problem with deep uncertainty.
You wish, Rune.
Cost estimating is an incredibly complex field. Have yo considered the cost and time necessary to move Jamaica to 100 % renewables? How would you go about estimating such costs?
On the other hand, what’s the cost to Jamaica if market forces are allowed to drive events? What can Jamaica do over the next 80 years to deal with ever increasing fossil fuel prices, and the inability for solar and wind to overcome intermittency?
And Rune can discuss costs in either direction, right?
Fluid Identities!
http://i0.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2017/04/Identities.jpeg
The Week in Pictures: The End is Nye Edition. Nyehilism
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/04/the-week-in-pictures-the-end-is-nye.php
Judith Curry,
Thanks for this post.
It’s nice to come here for some sanity.
In my own small world, I am surrounded what can only be described as climate hysteria.
Combined with DJT hysteria.
As of late, it has become scary.
Pingback: The Nye Quadrant Of Science | Tai-Chi Policy
Dare one ask which quadrant Judith Curry, writer of WSJ op eds, beloved by Republican congressional committees and Daily Mail journalists, belongs to?
I think they sit somewhere near the origin, with low ratings on either the understanding or practical application axes. They make a point of themselves not understanding much, and therefore not trying to use science for anything practical.
Jim D, vertallguy’s questions was about Dr. Curry. Your answer is not only glib, I think it a bit rude.
I think Judith has been very explicit that her position is well down and to the left on that chart. Don’t know much, so shouldn’t do much.
What’s rude for some could be “hysterically funny” for otters.
JimD,
You might be surprised at how many Denizens here would sit on the top row, as supported by success in their careers. I certainly put myself there and can provide evidence. When you are yourself in top row, you will find it easier to recognize others there. Geoff
> I certainly put myself there and can provide evidence.
I’d certainly like to see that evidence, and also evidence that being in the “front row” provides any quadrant expertise, whatever that means and wherever is that row.
Evidence matters a lot in chest beating matters.
Willard
for ‘otters’? Are they friends of the squirrels?
tonyb
Their closest kinship is like the one between strawmen and red herrings.
For good examples of both, cf. BretS’ crap. That BretS’ crap is crap should be obvious. That NYT’s excuse is crap should also be, but perhaps it’s not. So let’s repeat what seems obvious to many:
https://theoutline.com/post/1400/political-diversity-is-a-cop-out-for-overpaid-media-men
BretS’ bigotry is already well documented.
All this would be hysterically funny were it not.
Most of my research has been in Bohr’s quadrant. But in the 21st century, arguably more in Pasteur’s quadrant. My current work, focused on my company cfanclimate.net, is in Edison’s and Pasteur’s quadrant.
Re my testimonies and op-eds, they are all about opening up the scientific and policy debate, rather the antithesis of Nye Quadrant.
> the antithesis of Nye Quadrant
Which quadrant that would be?
Which quadrant occupant is most likely to erase previous assertions?
“On Netflix’s collection of episodes of “Bill Nye,” the 23rd episode, entitled “Probability,” is identical to that which originally aired in 1996—except that the segment on sex and chromosomes has been excised completely. The episode offers no explanation whatsoever. The show simply moves from the segment immediately prior the deleted clip to the segment immediately following it.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/02/bill-nye-the-evidence-hidin-guy/#ixzz4g1DJLhfQ
The excised portion included a statement from Nye asserting that
Chromosomes control “whether we become a boy or a girl.”
We could also ask which quadrant cognitive dissonance goes in. Cognitive dissonance is when the observations agree with AGW like this, but the cognitively dissonant people say it is more likely wrong anyway because it disagrees with their worldview.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1950/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.01/offset:-3.2
Interesting presentation
dear dr Curry, my research has been both fundamental and use oriented and opens roads for new researchers in these directions, at least if you and some of your colleagues were working out on it.
The Prophet Lovelock
We’ve lost our fear of hellfire, but put climate change in its place
By Boris Johnson
12:01AM GMT 02 Feb 2006
“Billions will die,” says Lovelock, who tells us that he is not normally a gloomy type. Human civilisation will be reduced to a “broken rabble ruled by brutal warlords”, and the plague-ridden remainder of the species will flee the cracked and broken earth to the Arctic, the last temperate spot, where a few breeding couples will survive.
Snip
But the more one listens to sacerdotal figures such as Lovelock, and the more one studies public reactions to his prophecies, the clearer it is that we are not just dealing with science (though science is a large part of it); this is partly a religious phenomenon.
Humanity has largely lost its fear of hellfire, and yet we still hunger for a structure, a point, an eschatology, a moral counterbalance to our growing prosperity. All that is brilliantly supplied by climate change. Like all the best religions, fear of climate change satisfies our need for guilt, and self-disgust, and that eternal human sense that technological progress must be punished by the gods.
And the fear of climate change is like a religion in this vital sense, that it is veiled in mystery, and you can never tell whether your acts of propitiation or atonement have been in any way successful. One sect says we must build more windfarms, and these high priests will be displeased with what Lovelock has to say. Another priestly caste curses the Government’s obsession with nuclear power – a programme Lovelock has had the courage to support.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3622794/Weve-lost-our-fear-of-hellfire-but-put-climate-change-in-its-place.html
The Prophet Sir David King
Why Antarctica will soon be the only place to live – literally
Sunday 02 May 2004
Antarctica is likely to be the world’s only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government’s chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/why-antarctica-will-soon-be-the-only-place-to-live-literally-58574.html
David King: Hot Girls and Cold Continents
https://climateaudit.org/2008/07/22/david-king-hot-girls-and-cold-continents/
Hoodwinked By A Green Zealot: The Scientist Behind The Dash For Diesel Called CO2 ‘Worse Than Terror
The scientist behind the dash for diesel is a committed climate change activist who once described global warming as a greater threat than terrorism.
Professor Sir David King, 77, was the architect of the policy to cut fuel duty for diesel cars as Tony Blair’s personal scientist.
Yesterday he admitted he got it wrong, having been driven by an obsession with carbon emissions. The former Government chief scientific adviser, knighted in 2003, has presided over many controversies.
In 2004 he wrote in the journal Science: ‘In my view, climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today – more serious even than the threat of terrorism.’
http://www.thegwpf.com/hoodwinked-by-a-green-zealot-the-scientist-behind-the-dash-for-diesel-called-c02-worse-than-terror/
Political “Scientist” Michael Mann Prefers Censorship, Slander and Punitive Action Over Debate
Most Americans are unaware of the vicious campaign waged by climate activists against people who do not recite the strictest tenets of the manmade-climate-change creed…they are the bullies attacking anyone who dares to question climate science or who doubts whether human activity is causing climate change.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/political-scientist-michael-mann-prefers-censorship-slander-and-punitive-action-over-debate/
Bill Nye Gets Eaten By the Crocodile
Self-anointed climate “expert” and mechanical engineer Bill Nye the Pseudo-Science Guy discovered just how fickle his fair weather liberal friends truly are. It turns out this “March for Science” isn’t a march for science at all, it is yet another left-wing Orwellian political love fest.
“I love Bill Nye,” said Stephani Page, a member of the March’s board, who was critical of what she considered the March’s lack of diversity…”He is a white male, and in that way he does represent the status quo of science, of what it is to be a scientist.”
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/bill-nye-gets-eaten-by-the-crocodile/
Stephens makes the excellent point that there is a big difference between the “science” and the activist scare tactics. For this he is villified? Further evidence that the concensus enforcement community likes to alienate those it needs to persuade.
The irrationality is hard to explain except in terms of emotional hysteria. Witch hunting has a new constituency of pseudo-scientists and journalists.
My conclusion is that the concensus enforcement community is merely doubling down on Hillarys campaign strategy. Throw tantrums aimed at your allies, alienate those you need to persuade, and blame evil distant witches. Oh and make yourself hated in the process
Where does the scientific community reside?
Universities?
That neighborhood is developing covenants against free thought,
The pioneers and free thinkers will move to the collective mind of the net.
It’s happening here.
Climate Etc. is one of the addresses in the new community.
Silencing dissent is a symptom of decline.
Judith, which quadrant do you picture yourself in?
People who listen only to CNN are not scientists. A scientist must listen to Mother Nature, not to a din of mass media.
Who only listens to CNN? Do you listen to Mother Nature Curious, or do you listen to CNN?
Both.
See her comment above, at https://judithcurry.com/2017/05/02/nyes-quadrant/#comment-848038
Thanks
The lower left quadrant is also the location of “Mount Stupid” in the famous cartoon here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiqzLW63NLTAhUT2mMKHYKkBMIQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fritholtz.com%2F2015%2F06%2Fmount-stupid%2F&psig=AFQjCNHCiMO2Uu7FXeFV1vL_lCeEfXWRWQ&ust=1493866483717785
The Nye Quadrant is funny. He’s maybe taken his step from “the sublime” to “the ridiculous” (I know, the comparison to Napoleon is gross.)
But shouldn’t the Quadrant go, by priority, to someone pushing Design Science?
Appeal to consensus is nothing more than a devilish exploit of the scientific illiterate. Unfortunately, it is very effective.
The Nature of Science in Science Education
“One element of the survey examined individuals’ views about how science is conducted. The study designers formulated a series of questions aimed at classifying respondents’ positions on a four level hierarchy of nature of science understanding.
Those at the highest level (Level I) understand that science is concerned with the development and testing of theory.
Those responding who lack this degree of sophistication, but still have an awareness that experiments require a control group would be classified as Level II.
Individuals at Level III do not have the comprehension of those in the higher two groups but still see scientific findings based on a foundation of careful and rigorous comparison with precise measurements.
Those lacking any understanding of the nature of science were classified as Level IV.
These findings are sobering. Two percent of the two thousand adult respondents were at Level I, 21 percent were at Level II, 13 percent were at Level III and 64 percent were at Level IV. This finding is sobering. Even as measured by the basic nature of science elements contained in this study, more than 60 percent of the American public effectively had no knowledge of how science works.“
too funnny
“This chapter has explored the dynamic arena of the nature of science by examining both its history and ways that the nature of science has informed and should guide science teaching. We have taken the position that a pragmatic consensus exists regarding some of the most important elements regarding the process of science, but have demonstrated that constructive debate exists. Research and discussion continues regarding the relationship between what teachers believe about the nature of science and what they then communicate to students. We assert that teachers must have experiences where they explore the social studies of science and contemplate the methods by which that content may be shared with students. This is the core purpose for developing this book, a book of rationales and strategies. It is vital that the science education community provide an accurate view of how science operates to students and by inference to their teachers. What follows in the accompanying chapters are tested strategies for doing just that. Whether these plans find a home in teacher education programs, in school classrooms, or simply in the minds of interested individuals, we are confident that science education will be a richer discipline and our students will be more adequately prepared for their lives as citizens when they are afforded a fuller understanding of the nature of this thing called science.
The Role and Character of the Nature of Science in Science Education “
Maybe you would like to identify more precisely what you find so funny?
Can’t answer for Mosh, Fiction, but this:
could be hysterically funny considering the anti-consensus screeds repeated daily by contrarians.
Hope this helps.
@ Willard – thanks – that helped :)
I realize that I should have been more precise.
A measure of consensus is not an objective basis for knowledge about nature.
However, I imagine that those who have no knowledge about how science works are susceptible to the consensus argument. (That is something I imagine, I do not know that to be true.)
I included the quote in my comment in order to provide a quantitative estimate of the proportion of the public that effectively has no idea about how science work. (The link was included only to identify the source for that quote, and nothing more.)
> A measure of consensus is not an objective basis for knowledge about nature.
An objective basis for knowledge of nature would indeed be a good idea, Fiction.
While we’re waiting for that objective basis, human beings might need to be more pragmatic and accept that most disciplines can reach consensus about an overall theory while disagreeing about some parts of it. In fact, one could even argue that almost every single scientist can still disagree with one another while reaching consensus on the basics.
Exactly like the consensus over AGW.
None of this matters here. We’re supposed to hysterically laugh at BillN and waving our arms around deep uncertainty, the place of our own advocacy in this caricatural typology, and feign that we never talk about costs.
Thanks for your citation.
willard: could be hysterically funny considering the anti-consensus screeds repeated daily by contrarians.
I do not know which specific claims of any specific screeds you are referring to, but the objection here is not the existence of a pragmatic consensus, but the enforcement of a non-pragmatic consensus.
willard: In fact, one could even argue that almost every single scientist can still disagree with one another while reaching consensus on the basics.
Exactly like the consensus over AGW.
Even Christopher Monckton agrees on “the basics”. As does every lukewarmer. The problem with AGW is the stifling of debate over derivatives from the basics, such as “the” climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 concentration; and whether the net change in temperature, rainfall and CO2 since about 1880 has been on the whole beneficial to terrestrial and marine plant life; and whether an increase in CO2 concentration will help or hurt the little marine animals for which it is an ingredient in their skeletons.
How do you suggest that we should be pragmatic about the fact that the basics, the models IPCC so heavily relied on in their assessment, are wrong? And how do you suggest that we should be pragmatic about that these models also form the basis for United Nations attempt to radically change our society and mis-allocate a tremendous amount of resources in the process?
“The refusal to acknowledge that the model simulations are affected by the (partially overestimated) forcing in CMIP5 as well as model responses is a telling omission.”
Gavin Schmidt (Climatologist, climate modeler and Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York). (See Comment 17)
> the objection here is not the existence of a pragmatic consensus, but the enforcement of a non-pragmatic consensus.
Indeed, Matt. And Mosh’s quote from Fiction’s cite shows that this objection is based on a misconception. Science is a pragmatic endeavour, and it’s only by presuming otherwise that the objection can take off the ground. Contrarians therefore indulge in a strawman, the same way BretS does with his sober whining. That some then pat BretS’ shoulders because he plays their own deep uncertainty card is why I’m alluding to check kiting.
Mr. T has never been contrarians’ real friend. In doubt, ask any reinsurer. Worse, the idea that climate science dives into deep uncertainty barely coheres with the luckwarming proselytist research of the lowest sensitivity bounds justify disingenuousness could find. This may explain why either we find editorials banging the uncertainty drum, editorials banging low CS, but seldom both.
The contrarian playbook is a political one. That’s the only reason why it can sustain its inconsistencies for years without flinching. Freedom fighters care about Freedom and GRRROWTH. They mostly pay lip service to INTEGRITY ™ while giggling hysterically.
BartR said all this here years ago. Until he was silenced.
> How do you suggest […]
Beware your wishes, Fiction. Getting room service once ought to be enough and my last comment to Matt should indicate that I’m not in the mood for squirrel chases.
I’m only here for BretS and the hysterical laughs.
Here’s a good best of:
http://fusion.net/the-best-of-bret-stephens-your-newest-new-york-times-o-1794297718
Tom Friedman once won a Pultizer Prize.
Let that sink in.
Willard: Contrarians therefore indulge in a strawman,
No, the Bengtsson and other cases show that the majoritarians actively attempt to enforce a consensus. The objections are to specific social punishments like that.
No, it shows a co-author is free to vote with his feet.
JCH: No, it shows a co-author is free to vote with his feet.
You write as though only one person was involved.
> Bengtsson and other cases show that the majoritarians actively attempt to enforce a consensus.
You’re just rope-a-doping from one talking point to the next, MattStat. BretS’ strawman is that nobody claims “total certainty.” That’s just crap.
It’s as simple as that.
And if your claim that Moncktopus agrees with the basics may indicate that this word might not mean what you think it means:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/jun/03/monckton-us-climate-change-talk-denial
willard: I found that he had misrepresented the science.
You have a bad source. Probably something about “basics”. I read what he writes at WUWT, including his answers to my questions and responses to my comments. He even agrees with the 97%: there has been warming and human activities have contributed to it. “Climate sensitivity” is not one of the “basics” — every estimate has problems. I think there is a good case (also with “problems”) that the sensitivity to doubling of CO2 concentration can’t exceed 1C, starting with the climate as it is now.
I have been consistent on the point that the majority try to enforce the “consensus” by shaming, punishing, and insulting dissidents. There have been active attempts to deny the right to publish (not merely dispute the publications.) There was even an attempt post hoc to persuade a dissertation supervisor to revoke the PhD degree of a dissident.
“BartR said all this here years ago. Until he was silenced.” – Willard
Now who is playing the victim card? Not to mention but freedom of speech.
BartR left in a huff on his own accord.
> Not to mention but freedom of speech.
Not mentioning freedom of speech would be a good idea since it’s a red herring, even if Freedom Fighters always seem to fight personal freedom wherever they go.
Emeriti usually leave by their own accord. Some go emeritus too.
How contrarians can whine about silencing while rooting for teh Donald may always remain a mystery. Or not.
BartR said all this here years ago. Until he was silenced.
Ya. Silenced by a new job. Moved from a university with zero teaching load and all day to play.
This Bengston description of the situation before he joined the group with which his co-author did not want his name to be associated:
There is no hint whatsoever that he was being bullied into holding back.
JCH: This Bengston description of the situation before he joined the group with which his co-author did not want his name to be associated:
He signed on as a scientific advisor to GWPF, he did not “join”. After being threatened with shunning by dozens of his colleagues, he withdrew from his agreement to serve as an advisor.
“How contrarians can whine about silencing while rooting for teh Donald may always remain a mystery.”
Whining about what contrainians whine about is special pleading
Debating skillz, it’s not science but it’s important
> Whining about what contrainians whine about is special pleading
The expression “special pleading”. It may not mean what you think it means.
Incidentally, I welcome contrarian smarm. BretS’ is only the most recent one. In the eternal fight between smarm and snark I have chosen my side.
Here, have a letter:
https://www.climatefactsfirst.org
W
How nice. I am so impressed I am simultaneously swooning and reaching for the smelling salts.
When the NOAA Tidal Gauge Graph for Sydney begins to depict an acceleration in the 0.65mm/yr SLR, I will begin to take their whimpering seriously.
> When the NOAA Tidal Gauge Graph for Sydney begins to depict an acceleration in the 0.65mm/yr SLR,
How many years in a row, and why not a round number like 0.6 or 0.5?
Does “doing science” require a control group all the time? I’m more into engineering, but I supervised individuals who considered themselves scientists (our organization charts treated them as such).
For example, let’s say we are engaged in measuring the number, shape, gouge depth, and age of iceberg scars on the sea floor. How can we even dream of having a “control group”?
I fully agree with you. Control group is irrelevant in much of science.
I doubt that hypothesis and experiment are in most ways essential to climate science. More a process of observation and explanation – or abductive inference. Which apparently – according to poor wee willie – I stole from Aristotle.
I was going to come back to this comment after making some halva – with a Tasmanian leatherwood honey. Now it doesn’t seem important.
The activities you describe are measurements (observations), not experiments. Nevertheless, climate is a system we don’t have a control for, and that weakens the science around it. I.e., a controlled experiment is scientifically superior to one that has no control for comparison.
Reblogged this on 4timesayear's Blog.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0309132515623368
Rather than Nye how about Carey?
Pleased to see that he’s a bloke.
It’s all very amusing to discuss the categories fromf a four quadrant perspective but it might be more useful to look at the quadrants as a venn diagram with three of the quadrants being science and the previously vacant quadrant being not science.
There is delicious irony for those who are disturbed about the NYT article since they consider themselves the intellectual elite and thus the true scientific literates.
But, how many have taken the time to learn the scientific issues? Have they read about the PDO, AMO, or NAO? Do they know the questions with the LIA and MWP or the Roman and Minoan Warm Periods? Have they briefed themselves on decadal, multi-decadal, centennial or millennial oscillations and quasi-periodicities? How about the lack of an upward trend in US Tornado activity or precipitation or forest fires. Do they know the difference between Antarctic sea ice and ice shelves and ice sheet and only 1 can have an effect on SLR. And do they know the Antarctic Sea Ice was at “historic highs” just 3 years ago? Do they know the IPCC said the contribution to GMSLR from Antarctica is only .27mm/yr or 1/5 the thickness of a dime? Do they understand the Arctic Sea ice loss does not contribute to SLR? Do they know about geo-thermal activity in West Antarctica and Greenland? Do they know about the study raising questions about how much ice melt in Greenland is reaching the ocean? Do they know that the Antarctic glaciers are inherently unstable and some scientists said it may take 7000 years for the collapse of the Antarctic Ice Sheet and that the West Antarctic Peninsula is cooling and East Antarctica is gaining ice? Do they know about the settlements in Greenland? Do they know that the Arctic had a warm period 100 years ago? Do they know that scientists 100 years ago were expressing concern about declining global glaciers, warming in the Arctic and the instability of the Antarctic glaciers? Do they know some scientists do not think the polar bear is going down for the last count? Do they know that waters in the abyss can take thousands of years to mix with the atmosphere or that deep waters in the North Atlantic can take 200 years to reach the Pacific? Do they know some scientists still believe that solar and cosmic ray cycles have an effect on climate? Do they know about the studies showing SLR back to the 1700s and before and that some scientists believe there has been no acceleration in SLR and that some estimates of SLR acceleration are 0.0004+-0.0008 mm/yr? (the precision is impressive and the level of uncertainty even more so). Have they read about the locales where subsidence is many multiples of SLR? Or that shrimp farming in the Mekong Delta is exacerbating SLR or construction of embankments in Bangladesh estuaries are a bigger problem than SLR or that many very long Tidal Gauge records show no acceleration?
Do they know that Daniel Patrick Moynihan sent a memo in the White House in 1969 expressing concern about CO2 and the possible 10 feet rise in sea levels and 7 degree F rise by 2000? As he said “goodbye Washington, goodbye New York”. The last NOAA Tidal Gauge report for New York showed 2016 sea level below 2010. And I can attest from personal experience that last month Lady Liberty did not have her hem moistened by the ocean.
I would not expect those who are outraged by the NYT article to actually take the time to understand the numerous and at times subtle (and maybe too complex?) issues surrounding global warming. It is much nicer to mute the jangles in the head listening to the soothing tomes of the Science Guy than to actually do the heavy lifting of thinking for themselves.
good list
Brilliant indeed. Duane Tolbert himself would be proud. I especially liked “it’s volcanoes”
Go denizens!
Finally, a bit of knowledgeable common sense in this discussion.
VTG, do you know about the vocanic ash in PIG, or that it is the explanation for its recent acceleration in ice loss? See Nature 1/18/2008. As for Greenland, see Nature Geoscience 9: 366-369 (2016). You should study more and comment less. You just exposed your lack of knowledge, while Ceresco’s comment showed his broad grasp of climate related facts.
> [Kid]’s comment showed his broad grasp of climate related facts.
Kid’s “grasp” of the items he listed using leading questions is far from being obvious by listing them alone.
It is a good list, and by no means complete. But I am sure the activist alarmist scientists who have objected to the NYT Stephens article know all about these arguments. They also know the counter arguments, many of which are well known, and which they choose to accept.
Ristvan,
My bold.
Do you understand the importance of acknowledging uncertainty? Is the word “caveat” unknown to you? Are “geo-thermal” and “volcanic ash” synonymous? Are all questions rhetorical? Is the irony in your admonishment to “comment less” intentional? Should everyone just channel their inner Duane?
Just asking questions, you understand.
VTG
Excuse the brevity of my previous list but it was off the top of my head in between having a cranberry walnut bagel and an Egg McMuffin. Now that I have had a sip of Midnight Mint Mocha Frappuccino, other items have come to mind.
Did any of the NYT readers look into the interrelationship of polynyas and Antarctic glaciers and calving dynamics? Do they know natural variability is eating away at the Totten Glacier? Have they checked the NAO OHC upper 700m to see how, after rising for several decades, it is now dropping? Do they know the role of isostasy and eustasy in the relative sea level computations and are they aware of the constantly changing size of the ocean basins? Did they read the NYT 1989 article discussing the US government study finding that there was no significant warming since 1895? Or did they peruse the 2002 study which found that the warmest years in Greenland since 1873 were 1932,1941,1947 and 1960? Did they read the NTY article from 1896 reporting 163 deaths in New York City from the heat? Are they aware of the see saw relationship between the poles for temperatures? Did they read the NOAA report on State Maximum record temperatures indicating that 37 states have record high temperatures prior to 1940 while only 4 have sole records in the last 30 years? Did they read the 2016 study indicating that the most extreme weather in the US occurred between 1900 and 1960? How about the study on the anti-phase of SST off NW Africa for the last 2500 years? Did they know that climate scientists had at one time put all their eggs in one basket in the form of canvas buckets for recording sea surface temperatures? Did they know that the 1990 IPCC report stated that the rate of recession for mountain glaciers was largest for the period 1920 to 1960? Are they aware of the study finding 3 time intervals of comparable warmth in the Alaska Range for 0-300, 850-1200 and post 1800? Did they ask themselves why there are so many hysterical articles about places like Sydney when the SLR there is 0.65mm/yr without any hint of acceleration?
If they are not aware of these things and find themselves behind the curve, I suggest they get cracking and try to catch up to the skeptics and actually learn some facts instead of whining about some NYT column short on feeding them their usual pablum.
Tornado activity is now rising. If you are behind the times I suggest you get cracking and get caught up instead of whining about others.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/2017-us-tornado-season-whirlwind-start
https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/tornado/clim/EF1-EF5.png
Are there other subjects that you don’t have anything to contribute on? It only took 3 seconds to find this NOAA graph. You just made my point of the two comments above, that there is a lack of knowledge of the facts which must be due to zero initiative and wilfull ignorance. Crack on.
A graph through 2014. What year is it? Try to stay up to date.
A perfect metaphor for the dichotomy of how skeptics and warmists view the issue. You provide a trend of a few months and I provide a trend for 60 years. A few months data, a trend does not make.
But then for those who think Princess Di is ancient history I guess that makes sense. Skeptics, OTOH would say the Mythical Goddess Diana is more in the ancient history category.
Personally, I think any data and trend less than 1000 years is still leaving too many questions unanswered but one has to work with what they have, as inadequate as it might be.
Do they know some scientists still believe that solar and cosmic ray cycles have an effect on climate
But in different ways then expected.
One of the conundrums is the rise of the CH4 atmospheric fraction in the 21st century when ch4 emissions are decreasing.
Convincing arguments are it is a decrease in OH which would be a result of decreasing UVR in the recent solar cycles.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/04/11/1616426114.abstract
The implications for attribution studies with paleo reconstructions are significant (and for policy makers problematic)
https://aura.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/feature-20111123.html
Science Advances published an article May 3rd that may provide a new question for the list.
It is
“New technology reveals the role of giant larvaceans in
oceanic carbon cycling”
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/5/e1602374/tab-pdf
And it is not behind a pay wall.
+ several
The quadrant doesn’t matter. The good science is characterized by curiosity, though good science in the fourth quadrant would tend to be social science.
Sociologist Erving Goffman was said to be awful to go to dinner with because he’d run experiments and involve you in awkward and embarrassing situations, thereby discovering rules nobody knew existed.
I don’t see how it’s possible to be curious about climate science, when the thing is mostly beyond knowing. It’s like doing astrology. You do careful measurements of the planets’ motions but the connection to historical events never shows itself. You can’t be curious about the latter, no matter how careful and science-like your measurements.
Climate connections are likewise beyond guessing. Being more careful about measurements doesn’t get you anywhere.
Pieces of climate science can be done with curiosity, but not as a field. It would be like what causes wind waves to grow so fast.
We need more climate science deNyers.
Someone who has recently gained a significant social media presence is the Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, Dr. Jordan Peterson. He got himself into trouble at his university by taking a contrarian view on the nature of expressed sexual identity, and by highlighting what he sees as authoritarian Canadian laws that effectively mandate the use of ‘correct’ gender pronouns.
He’s interesting from two points of view with regard to the discussion here.
Firstly, because he decided to start a public conversation by publishing videos about his concerns on YouTube, which subsequently went viral, and thereby triggered precisely the open public conversation he sought.
And secondly, because his current research area concerns political leanings versus personality traits, focussing particularly on the Left. One of the traits that characterises Leftists is so-called agreeableness (although its expression can turn out to be very disagreeable). Part of agreeableness is seeking consensus, which although nice-sounding, concludes by identifying those outside the consensus as a threat.
There is an interesting interview with him and one of his PhD students on the topic of “Where Do PC SJW’s Come From?” here: –
https://youtu.be/sHcy4R0ZWw8
Great stuff! PC authoritarians have a high incidence of personality disorders.
gyan1: “PC authoritarians have a high incidence of personality disorders.”
And as such it is incumbent on us to treat them humanely – but not to the extent of putting them in charge.
> PC authoritarians have a high incidence of personality disorders.
Indeed:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-personality-of-political-correctness/
The study thus reveals more about Freedom Fighters than about SJWs.
It also underlines why we need to be thankful for contrarian concerns.
Willard: “The study thus reveals more about Freedom Fighters than about SJWs.”
Not really – the study was very specifically about SJWs, rather than freedom fighters (at least according to authors).
And while I agree with you about the helpfulness of recognising formal similarities in terms of personality features between PC-authoritarians and right-wing-authoritarians, there is a massive dissimilarity in influence and the level of social concern about the respective groups. Furthermore, as Peterson points out, it is not the PC-authoritarians who are the main problem, but the PC-egalitarians who go along with them, convinced it is the right thing to do (all the way to passing laws in Canada that the authoritarians then get to arbitrate on).
Peterson talks in detail and at length in his videos about the growing influence of PC-authoritarians on university campuses and elsewhere, not because all of the people bringing about these changes are themselves authoritarians, but because they have effectively been captured by the authoritarians. Right-wing authoritarians pose no such danger.
I only have reason to care about authoritarians if they can exercise power over me through laws/policies/institutions, etc. I see zero prospect of right-wing-authoritarians being in that position. Not so with PC-authoritarians (and their servants) who have been advancing relentlessly in recent years.
> Not really – the study was very specifically about SJWs, rather than freedom fighters (at least according to authors).
Yet here’s what Barry Kaufman writes:
Pingback: A look at the "Bill Nye" quadrant of scientific research!
Gizmodo and mediamatters have ‘corrections’.
Correct the corrections.
“Using the term “modest” to describe this amount of warming is inaccurate and misleading. Science has found the warming to date to be large and rapid.”
No, according to the IPCC, the best estimate for the low scenario (B1) is 1.8°C(per century), making the observed rates of around 1.6°C per century modest, ‘less than expected’, or otherwise small.
Much as a fever of only several degrees can be deadly, it only requires a few degrees of warming to transition the planet out of ice ages or into hot house conditions.
Non sequitar. Human bodily fever is a bodily adaptation to defend against viruses. And it exhibits a startling lack of climate science. It was not global temperature that led to ice ages or to hot houses.
On day one of the previous glacial ( when the trend of ice accumulation began ) global average temperature was still well above average! It was local sunshine declining that allowed high latitude snow and ice to make it through the summers. Similarly, day one of the interglacials had still lower than normal global average temperature. Surely those studying the equations of motion understand that nowhere is there a term for global average temperature.
Importantly, the recent warming has been extremely rapid: more than 100 times as fast as the cooling that took place over the previous 5000 years. It’s the rapidity that is most troubling. Human society is built on a presumption of stability, and the rapidness of the change is creating instability.
Wrong, irrelevant, and wrong.
The ‘recent’ warming since around 1975 is of a rate not much different than the rate of warming from around 1910 through 1945. The the orbital changes since the Holocene Climatic Optimum are not relevant.
Stability here is not defined, but there’s evidence that greater global average temperature is related to increased, not decreased stability. And global temperature variability decreases with increasing global mean temperatures.
Not surprisingly this warming has already led to impacts that are widespread and costly. The damage incurred in New York City during Super Storm Sandy was amplified by sea level rise that elevated and significantly extended the reach of the storm surge. Estimated costs for the additional damage were in the billions of dollars.
It is true that sea level is rising, as expected from thermal expansion of oceans. However, there are distortions here. Notice the use of the word ‘amplified’ to describe the damage, but in proximity to the word ‘Storm’. This indirection is because there’s no correlation of tropical cyclone strength with global warming. The argument is of a conter-factual – how much damage would have hypothetically have occurred otherwise. Because surface elevation increases inland, the area of increased damage may have been real but marginal. Further, while thermal expansion is a real phenomenon, so to is groundwater extraction which is thought to contribute 1mm/year of SLR. I do not hear advocates suggesting humanity should stop drinking water or growing food.
Global Warming Is Now A ‘Women ’s Issue’ Due To ‘Ecofeminism
Environmentalists are increasingly claiming that global warming is a “women’s issue” and that the world needs “eco-feminism” as a path forward.
snip
Ecofeminists believe that women and nature are bonded by traditionally “feminine” values and their shared history of oppression by a patriarchal Western society. This patriarchal society is built on four intersectional pillars of sexism, racism, class exploitation, and environmental destruction.
http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/global-warming-is-now-a-womens-issue-due-to-ecofeminism/
Same sort of reasoning which claims indigenous peoples are closer to nature and therefore better at living in harmony with it. Well, I would agree that engaging in a subsistence level hunter gatherer life puts one very “close” to nature. As for living in harmony, tell that to the peoples who burned large swaths of forest or ran thousands, maybe tens of thousands of buffalo off cliffs. They used the tools they had. Just as we do today.
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
Pingback: Nye’s Quadrant – waka waka waka
The hysteria with which the NYT op-ed was met by the usual suspects is another indication that the warmunists are losing, and beginning to recognize it. Ryan Maue says the pause is back. Karl busted. Mann exposed as a nasty name caller, in a congressional hearing no less. Climate march comprised of nuts, fruits and overt communists. Ever more hysterical yet easily refuted claims (last week it was 10 feet of SLR in San Fransisco bay by 2100, the old WAIS tipping point canard). Trump rumored to soon make good on his Paris promise, with sound underlying legal reasons to avoid Ninth Circuit challenge complications.
Pingback: Quoted for truth. #ChurchOfGlobalWarming #AGW #Scientism – once upon a krischel
Global warming believers are like a hysterical ‘cult’: MIT scientist compares ‘climate alarmists’ to religious fanatics
22 January 2015
Climate change alarmists have been likened to a fanatical ‘cult’ by an MIT professor of meteorology.
Dr Richard Lindzen told a Massachusetts-based radio station that people who believe in global warming are becoming more hysterical in their arguments.
‘As with any cult, once the mythology of the cult begins falling apart, instead of saying, oh, we were wrong, they get more and more fanatical,’ he said
‘You’ve led an unpleasant life, you haven’t led a very virtuous life, but now you’re told, you get absolution if you watch your carbon footprint. It’s salvation.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2922553/Global-warming-believers-like-hysterical-cult-MIT-scientist-compares-climate-alarmists-religious-fanatics.html
MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen urges Trump : “Cut the funding of climate science by 80% to 90% until the field cleans up
https://judithcurry.com/2017/03/29/house-science-committee-hearing/#comment-843954
Linden is detached from reality:
http://i.imgur.com/ryhN2Gr.png
Oceans have lost heat over the last two and a half years.
The oceans are about as warm as ever, currently spiking upward over the last two 1/4s, and the promised release of heat built up over the prior La Niña events did not happen. The heat build up over the recent La Niña events remains in the oceans,which is contrary to what people were saying was going to happen.
have the checked the anomaly in the arctic?
The oceans are about as warm as ever,
Your chart show the oceans have lost heat for two and a half years.
Simple enough: CO2 is falling because Gaia saw the coming of Trump.
TE, it’s not just temp, it’s also distribution of the warm pools of water.
Two and a half years are not climate any more than a single El Nino is. You need to look at decadal or multi-decadal trends. How many times does this have to be emphasized? The decadal trend is clear. The decadal-averaged imbalance is positive.
0 to 700 meter data:
http://i.imgur.com/qNfZtAq.png
0 to 700 meters:
http://i.imgur.com/iHerfDF.png
Just to set expectations, the ocean is a couple orders of magnitude more massive than the atmosphere and its temperature has barely changed since 1950, therefore per 2LT unless something very strange is happening on timescales of interest the ocean should be absorbing increasing amounts of heat over time as the balance with the atmosphere shifts.
Delingpole: ‘Climate Change’ Is No More Credible than Magic Says Top Physicist
The evidence for man-made climate change is so flimsy that you might just as well believe in magic, says one of the world’s top physicists.
Richard Lindzen, Alfred P Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Emeritus at Massachussetts Institute of Technology, has long expressed doubts about the “science” behind anthropogenic global warming theory. (h/t Paul Homewood)
Now, in probably his most comprehensive and devastating assault yet on the Climate Industrial Complex, Lindzen shreds every one of the fake-science arguments used by the environmentalists to justify their hugely expensive “global warming” scare story.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/05/02/delingpole-climate-change-is-no-more-credible-than-magic-says-top-physicist/
Do You Believe In Magic – The Lovin’ Spoonful
http://tinyurl.com/lwh6plm
Reblogged this on Quaerere Propter Vērum.
OK, that was pretty funny.
Waving their fists at the NYT over Stephens’ rather anodyne column (“None of this is to deny climate change or the possible severity of its consequences.”) and publicly demanding to be “won back” just proves the point. What was the inexcusable scientific error of the column, exactly? The narcissistic addictions to Twitter and TV and protests are classic hallmarks of cargo cult science (“Nature’s phenomena will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work.”).
BTW I love Nate but occasionally I suspect he understands empirical statistics a lot better than mood affiliation.
> What was the inexcusable scientific error of the column, exactly?
Glad that you ask.
Although a bit strange considered how Denizens value their own self-thaught knowledge.
The editorial stated one fact.
That fact was wrong:
https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/859138664290553856
Thanks for asking.
Willard, “Although a bit strange considered how Denizens value their own self-thaught knowledge. ”
yuk yuk, fact checking is part of that self thaught knowledge. The Obama EPA stated that the Clean Power Plant would reduce asthma attacks by 90,000 per year and the MATS would reduce asthma attacks by 130,000 per year. In 2008, there was an estimated 12.5 million asthma attacks in the US and there is an increasing rate. By 2030 when all the asthma health savings kick in, the benefits will be statistically insignificant.
Recent research indicates that Asthma attacks are related to Calcium Sensor Receptor issues in the lungs so free over the counter CSR antagonist inhalers could cure over 50% of asthma cases. Exactly why the hell should the US waste money on the Clean Power Plan when MATS and direct research on the actual problem takes care of most of the issues?
> fact checking is part of that self thaught knowledge
Yet everyday contrarians illustrate that when they have to choose between fact checking and fighting for their personal freedom, they only pick the former when it serves the latter:
https://newrepublic.com/article/142444/bret-stephenss-opinions-arent-problem
What were you saying something about asthma again, Cap’n?
Yes, I was saying something about asthma Willard. The EPA’s estimates of benefit for reduced power plant emissions with respect to asthma are flawed and misleading. Stephen and Riv both have overstated benefits of corn to ethanol and I have no problem pointing that out.
Personally, I am a fan of cleaner and more efficient and not a fan of BS.
> I was saying something about asthma
And where is BretS talking about asthma again, Cap’n?
Here, have another piece on BretS:
https://qz.com/974048/andrew-revkin-bret-stephens-new-york-times-op-ed-misses-the-difference-between-uncertainty-and-skepticism-when-it-comes-to-climate-change-science/
Mr. T struck out again, Cap’n. Why would contrarians still hire him as their designated hitter?
Willard, “And where is BretS talking about asthma again, Cap’n?”
Under the “I saw a widening gap between what scientists had been learning about global warming and what advocates were claiming as they pushed ever harder to pass climate legislation.” Coal related air pollution and the benefits of killing coal are part of that big push. That is why the EPA was Obama’s designated hitter instead of DOE and NRC which are energy related government agencies. That is why CO2 was called a “pollutant.”
> Under the “I saw a widening gap between what scientists had been learning about global warming and what advocates were claiming as they pushed ever harder to pass climate legislation.”
The word “asthma” doesn’t appear there, Cap’n.
You’re just using your good ol’ bait and switch. And that “but pollutant” fall almost went unnoticed.
Here, have another slice:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/05/bret_stephens_is_aware_of_everyone_s_biases_but_his_own.html
Please, pray tell more about asthma.
Willard, your reply is so nonsensical I think this will be the last time I read you. The left is not up in arms because Stephens conflated the Northern Hemisphere trend with the global trend.
Dear TD2,
I responded to your “have you stopped punching hippies” loaded question by mentioning:
(1) the *only* fact BretS stated;
(2) that it was false.
The fact that BretS succeeded to write an editorial with only *one* fact should tell you why your loaded question is suboptimal.
The reason why BretS and the NYT got flack has nothing to do with the single *fact* BretS wrote in his editorial. It has everything to do with his certainty strawman, which Denizens already know as Mr. T. He’s also known as the uncertainty monster.
The pieces I’ve already quoted elsewhere by Andy Revkin should give you more good hints.
Considering that you couldn’t even source your claim that “Armstrong showed it’s trivial to produce a model that outperforms GCMs” the other day, I could not care less if you read me or not. That won’t prevent me from reading your crap. And contrary to Cap’n, I’m interested in contrarian crap. Why else would I be here?
“You’re just using your good ol’ bait and switch. And that “but pollutant” fall almost went unnoticed.”
If you say so Willard, but the “science” used to sell “climate change” is climate change science.
captdallas2, In 1998, Jonathan Z. Cannon, then EPAs General Counsel, prepared a legal opinion concluding that CO2 emissions are
within the scope of EPAs authority to regulate, This is well before President Obama became President. In 2007, (also before President Obama was President) a conservative Supreme Court said, “The Clean
Air Actís sweeping definition of ìair pollutantî includes
ìany air pollution agent or combination of such agents,
including any physical, chemical . . . substance or matter
which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient
air . . . .î ß7602(g) (emphasis added). On its face, the
definition embraces all airborne compounds of whatever
stripe, and underscores that intent through the repeated
use of the word ìany.î25 Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous
oxide, and hydrofluorocarbons are without a doubt ìphysical
[and] chemical . . . substance[s] which [are] emitted
into . . . the ambient air.î The statute is unambiguous.”
This is why CO2 is called a pollutant. captdallas, you are wrong.
And that changes his point how Willard.
> And that changes his point how
Precisely, timg. BretS’ appeal to fallibility does not rest on any factual point. Hence the irrelevance of PD’s leading question.
Nice try, though.
Eric,
Do you understand the difference between EPA counsel arguing that CO2 falls under the scope of the EPA’s ability to regulate and the actual Endangerment finding? If I recall correctly, Supreme Court only ruled on ability to regulate, not the finding. In reaching that finding the EPA, according to their own Inspector General, failed to follow established EPA protocols. In fact they performed no scientific research at all – simply referred to the IPCC report and stated CO2 is a health hazard due to all the bad things being predicted.
Bret Stephens Takes On Climate Change. Readers Unleash Their Fury.
I think that sums it up.
Will ever: Readers Unleash Their Reason.?
TE
They can’t use reason because then they would be skeptics.
What they can do is attack and distract from logic, observations and science in emotianal diatribes to confuse the low information public and those who are not paying much attention. Wear little hats and curse about something Trump said privately 12 years ago and they far exceed coarse language at any forum in public.
A rich guy on late night TV using his baby’s medical crises to shill for political views.
LOOK, a squirrel. Ignore the shadowy firgures behind the curtain.
Scott
They can’t use reason because then they would be skeptics.
No sentence has better captured the essence of this debate than that.
It cannot be improved upon.
One of the commenters whom Bret Stephens replied to on May 2 was Susan Fitzwater, a self-described scientist who deals with noisy data. Ms. Fitzwater objected to Stephen’s NYT article regarding areas of climate science uncertainty because, and now I am paraphrasing: such exposure gave legitimacy to deniers who claim that climate change is not a problem.
I do not understand the stance of not allowing contrary message to be heard, not only by Ms. Fitzwater but by seeming many others in the climate science cabal; at least the science is settled crowd.
I am reminded of the prostitute with whom former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer had a Washington liaison who said when asked about her involvement:
“Its complicated”.
Now when I hear established climate scientists who refuse to participate with skeptics in a dialogue regarding the uncertainties of climate change and the interpretation of some of the data, models, and public policy, and I hear: “Its complicated”. Now I know exactly what they mean.
Now we have determined what you are – what remains is to haggle on the price. 😁
Meh, tomato/tomahto = “such exposure gave legitimacy to deniers who claim that climate change is not a problem”/sound scientific hypothesis’ that challenges theory
The science is intrinsically interesting – but much of it exists to demonstrate the inherently imponderable. There is a bottom line that creates a impenetrable barrier to perfect comprehension and reliable predictions.
“Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Gödel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the calculation.” James McWilliams
The antidote to a goal orientated science – proceeding from premise to conclusion – is to proceed from observation to a plausible mechanism fraught with uncertainties, sparse observation, complex couplings and observer biases.
“Modern hydrology places nearly all its emphasis on science-as-knowledge, the hypotheses of which are increasingly expressed as physical models, whose predictions are tested by correspondence to quantitative data sets. Though arguably appropriate for applications of theory to engineering and applied science, the associated emphases on truth and degrees of certainty are not optimal for the productive and creative processes that facilitate the fundamental advancement of science as a process of discovery.” Victor Baker
At the base of climate science is an adequately demonstrated rediative theory of greenhouse gases, the quite obvious and large scale anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and observations of surface warming in the 20th century. It leads to a conclusion that the warming of 0.09 degrees C/decades may be all or partially anthropogenic. The obvious corollary is that the planet may continue to warm at 0.09 degrees C/decades. Notwithstanding the prognostications from chaotic dynamical systems (models) that ‘project’ higher warming – or observations that suggest that much of 20th century warming was quite natural.
Observations suggest as well that chaotic dynamical systems are ubiquitous – in climate, weather, models, ecologies, economics and much else. The essential behaviour is that small changes can initiate large, internally driven changes in the system state. Thus warming, changing the molecular composition of the atmosphere, chemical changes in the oceans, changes to terrestrial hydrology from CO2 induced reduction in the size and number of plant stomata, etc., can initiate large and completely unpredictable changes in Earth systems. Do you feel lucky – punk?
On the other hand – the interventions advocated by the regressive left are guaranteed to provoke economic disruption on a vast and devastating scale. Many look forward to it as a ‘transformative’ moment. Their narratives are of moribund western economies governed by corrupt corporations collapsing under the weight of the 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. It seems more an unrealizable millennialist nightmare than a rational plan for the future of humanity and the planet.
The global economy is worth about $100 trillion a year. To put aid and philanthropy into perspective – the total is 0.025% of the global economy. If spent on Copenhagen Consensus smart development goals such expenditure can generate a benefit to cost ratio of more than 15. If spent on the UN Sustainable Development Goals you may as well piss it up against a wall. Either way – it is nowhere near the major path to universal prosperity. Some 3.5 billion people make less than $2 a day. Changing that can only be done by doubling and tripling global production – and doing it as quickly as possible. Optimal economic growth is essential and that requires an understanding and implementation of explicit principles for effective economic governance of free markets. So what are these laws of capitalism?
https://watertechbyrie.com/2016/03/11/all-bubbles-burst-laws-of-economics-for-the-new-millennium/
One critical freedom is economic freedom. Markets need fair, transparent and accessible laws – including on open and equal markets, labour laws, environmental conservation, consumer protection and whatever else is arrived at in the political arena. Optimal tax take is some 23% of GDP and government budgets are balanced. Interest rates are best managed through the overnight cash market to restrain inflation to a 2% to 3% target. These nuts and bolts of market management are mainstream market theory and keep economies on a stable – as far as is possible – growth trajectory. The critical project for development is opening up markets for agricultural products. The Copenhagen Consensus found that a deal on the DOHA round of trade talks would make the world richer by $11-trillion by 2030.
The key to emissions – however – are technical innovation in energy and land management. A key to energy futures – IMO – is advanced nuclear but progress is being made on many fronts. The graph belowshows EM2 costs that are competitive with gas at $7/MMBTU. The rational approach is to innovate on potentially cost competitive energy – rather than subsidize energy that is far from ready for commercial deployment.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/download.png
Scientific interventions that make people better off include increasing global agricultural productivity. It is happening on both large and small holdings – and includes the potential for genetic engineering to play a part. It includes also precision agriculture – reducing inputs for increased productivity and less environmental impact – and conservation farming. It includes ordinary people and such things as “food forests”. The latter do not just achieve exceptional productivity and diversify nutrition sources but conserve the genetic diversity of our food crops and animals. Rebuilding the organic content – and thus productivity – of soils in cropping and grazing lands conserves soil and water, drought proofs communities, reduces downstream flooding and erosion, restores environments and biodiversity and enhances food security. This happens to be the best way to make significant inroads into rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere – if that’s a factor. It succeeds with diverse, prosperous and autonomous cultures in vibrant landscapes.
The sequestration numbers are impressive – 360 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide as 100 billion tonnes of carbon in soils and ecosystems over 30 or 40 years. It is a project that is well in hand.
https://youtu.be/sBeCHZNf2L4
RIE,
You seem to regard increased soil organic carbon as a stable state, when native soils have a lower stable state to which we can expect Nature to revert. Increased carbon does increase yield, but it does this partially by its own consumption. Therefore, long term gains would seem tobrequire active management and that comes at a cost.
Do you have estimates of that cost?
Geoff
You need to revise your assumptions.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/soil-carbon-deficit.png
That’s after conversion to modern agriculture on both grazing and cropping lands.
https://youtu.be/wgmssrVInP0
https://www.agriinvestor.com/speaker/tony-lovell/
RIE,
Not the right blog, but why should carbon for soils be viewed any differently to other major fertilizers like potash or phosphate? With attendant procurement, transport, storage, application etc. costs? You can’t get higher yields without some form of depletion of assets. It takes $$ to replenish.
Geoff.
It requires carbon dioxide, sunlight vegetation and land management – with many ancillary benefits.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fes3.96/full
This soil carbon store can be renewed by restoring land. Holding back water in sand dams, terraces and swales, replanting, changing grazing management, encouraging perennial vegetation cover, precise applications of chemicals and adoption of other management practices that create positive carbon and nutrient budgets and optimal soil temperature and moisture. Atmospheric carbon is transferred from the atmosphere to soil carbon stores through plant photosynthesis and subsequent formation of secondary carbonates. The rate of soil carbon sequestration ranges from about 100 to 1000 kg per hectare per year as humus and 5 to 15 kg per hectare per year inorganic carbon. The total potential for carbon sequestration in agricultural soils is approximately equal to the historic carbon loss of 78 GtC. This is about 10 years of global annual greenhouse gas emissions. At realistic rates of sequestration 25% of current annual global greenhouse gas emissions could be sequestered over 40 years.
Carbon sequestration in soils 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.
And this is very much much at the core of global efforts to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.
http://4p1000.org/understand
It is very much a key to meeting Australian COP21 commitments. There have been 189 million tonnes of CO2 abatement contracted at an average cost of $11.83.
http://www.cleanenergyregulator.gov.au/PublishingImages/auction%20results%20april%202017/ERF%20Fifth%20Auction%20April%202017%20combined%20results.jpg
Globally – it is about restoring soils and forest and reclaiming deserts.
Robert I. Ellison: “…conventional agriculture is hitting a productivity barrier with exhausted soils and increasingly expensive inputs.”
Innacurate. You will find the data contained within enlightening, if not, ideological recalibration:
https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/past-issues/issue-5/the-return-of-nature
Regardless, even if it’s in Nye’s wheelhouse, it belongs in another thread.
I have read the Breakthrough report and others – it is not remotely the whole truth. Their argument has to do with the intensification and the use of marginally less land for agriculture. The sector has maintained output for decades with stable inputs. Growth towards the vastly increased food requirements of the next 50 years demands very much increased productivity globally with increasingly depauperate soils and increasingly expensive inputs.
http://www.farmlandinfo.org/statistics
And forested land areas have pretty much stabilised
https://fthmb.tqn.com/PPC_3KygBXjz1A4IN5HsTL7LQ74=/768×0/filters:no_upscale()/about/forestarea-58e1794a3df78c5162cae306.jpg
But further progress on biodiversity requires well designed interventions. There are successes in the US – but there are ongoing failures.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2015/10/04/biological-abundance-and-economic-growth/
The Breakthrough Institute analysis is superficial in the extreme – and the more I read – I have read a lot of their output – the less impressed I am.
I was asked questions about a very small part of what I wrote about above. The bulk is a big picture on an alternative view of climate and appropriate responses to anthropogenic changes to the atmosphere.
Just to stay on topic – whining about Bill Nye I think is unproductive nonsense.
Just to add two more graphs.
https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_medium/public/thumbnails/image/2015/01/28/19/pg-20-food-shortage-graphic.jpg
Speaks for itself. The solution is to understand soils.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2H60ritjag
https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Iriai/posts/887228804726716
It is a key to climate that I am not sure Bill Nye understands.
It didn’t occur to Ellison to look for other reasons for peak food production.
Peak food production is simply coincident with peak people production. It’s not a sign of things beginning to go wrong.
https://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/images/worldgr.png
Robert I. Ellison: “Their argument has to do with the intensification and the use of marginally less land for agriculture.”
The Break Through essay: Abandonment of marginal agricultural lands in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe has released at least 30 million hectares and possibly as much as 60 million hectares to return to nature, according to careful studies by geographer Florian Schierhorn and his colleagues. Thirty million hectares is the size of Poland or Italy. The great reversal of land use that I am describing is not only a forecast; it is a present reality in Russia and Poland as well as Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Poultry and corn are nowhere near there peak rate of growth, just the opposite, they continue to see exponential growth of production. The decline of red meat peaked only because poultry won preferred protein status.
The Break Through essay you call superficial in the extreme is simply an aggregation of supportive facts and figures, all supported by citations from reputable data sources, among them: US Census Bureau; EPA; USDA; USDA Economic Research Service; USGS National Minerals Information Center; World Bank; US Energy Information Administration.
One of the table line items in the paper you posted says it all:
Objective-Gender equality. Impact-Improve crop productivity of women farmers.
The evidence presented in the Break Through essay alone destroys much of the propaganda in the papers you post.
So it comes down to: are you another fascist socialist evangelizing from the bible of pseudoscience; or just another PC egalitarian disciple under its spell?
Sringer’s decrease in the rate of population growth doesn’t actually mean that population is not growing. And the collapse of Soviet collectivist agriculture is hardly a triumph. As for chicken and corn – the real question is which came first. There will be more meat consumed as incomes grow but this puts pressure on staples.
“To ensure that real food price increase does not exceed ~30% over the record lows of 2000–06, published modelling suggests that staple crop production must increase by 60% between 2010 and 2050.
• It therefore follows that, after accounting for likely increases in crop area, farm yield (FY) must linearly increase by a rate of 1.1% per annum (p.a.) (relative to 2010 yield). This is the minimum rate required, and a higher target of 1.3% p.a. is recommended to offset risk. Unfortunately, the current average global rates of progress for FY in wheat, rice and soybean are each only 1.0% p.a.
• Progress in FY is influenced by two components: (1) progress in potential yield (PY)—or water-limited potential yield (PYw), depending on which is appropriate; and (2) closing of the yield gap between FY and PY (or PYw).
• Progress in PY averages between 0.6 and 1.1% p.a. for most crops, and
progress these days is largely attributed to breeding. The yield gap is closing or reducing, but at a rate of change (range of –0.8% p.a. to –0.2% p.a. for staples) such that its influence on FY is somewhat less than that of the change in PY. Yield gaps exceed 100% of FY in many developing countries.
• The most feasible and fastest way to lift global FY will be to close large yield gaps. This will require huge investment in research, development and extension, and in rural infrastructure and institutions.
• Continued progress in PY (and PYw) is also important and largely dependent on investment in basic and applied breeding, both in the public and private sectors, but boosting progress will be difficult to achieve. Conventional breeding can be assisted by new molecular tools. Biological limits are not yet foreseen.
• As always, new crop management (agronomy) complements breeding
advances. Agronomic improvements are also vital in yield gap closing and
building sustainability.
• This book strongly supports the intensification of cropping as the means
to deliver higher yield and feed a hungry world. Intensification can occur
sustainably if based on scientifically determined ‘best-practice management that improves input use efficiency and soil quality. The biggest positive environmental consequence of crop intensification will be the reduced pressure to clear new land for cropping.”
http://aciar.gov.au/files/mn158_web_5_0.pdf
Yield increases are possible without increasing conversion of grazing land – but it is not automatic and cannot release vast areas of land to nature. It is all a lot of nonsense from Breakthrough. The figures for the US – rather than Russia – tells the story.
And much of the closing of the the yield gap in Africa and Asia will come from women in agriculture – if given half a chance.
http://www.globalagriculture.org/report-topics/women-in-agriculture.html
“Springer’s decrease in the rate of population growth doesn’t actually mean that population is not growing”
Nor did I say that. It’s exactly the same measure as the graph of peak food production, figjam.
“At the base of climate science is an adequately demonstrated rediative theory of greenhouse gases, the quite obvious and large scale anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and observations of surface warming in the 20th century.” Does it explain the Neolithic melting that enabled use to find Utzi when the glacier melted, or any of the other human artifacts that have appeared from glacier and ice field melt in the last few years? Remember that most of the CO2 buildup is 20th century. How then to excplain the glacier melting at the close of the 19th century and the subsequent rebuild that is causing World War I Apline soldiers to come out of those glaciers?
Oh for God’s sake.
Observations that suggest that most 20th century warming was quite natural??????
https://www.facebook.com/Australian.Iriai/posts/1257637017685891
There is so much else to the problem – broaden your perspective.
How about the the post-1850 warming before most of the manmade CO2 was introduced? Or the previous warmings and coolings in historic and neolithic times? Yes, broaden your perspective.
Natural variability – and natural variability is all I talk about – doesn’t mean anthropohenic warming isn’t happening. It is just not as interesting.
The next step is rational policy.
“Broaden your perspective” that’s rich coming from someone whose tunnel vision prevented him from noticing that peak food production is natural consequence coincident with peak human population growth.
What a wanker.
I don’t think that Springer understands that a reduction in the rate of population growth doesn’t mean that population isn’t growing.
“• To ensure that real food price increase does not exceed ~30% over the record lows of 2000–06, published modelling suggests that staple crop production must increase by 60% between 2010 and 2050.
• It therefore follows that, after accounting for likely increases in crop area, farm yield (FY) must linearly increase by a rate of 1.1% per annum (p.a.) (relative to 2010 yield). This is the minimum rate required, and a higher target of 1.3% p.a. is recommended to offset risk. Unfortunately, the current average global rates of progress for FY in wheat, rice and soybean are each only 1.0% p.a.”
The rate of increase of yield is declining (which is confusingly the definition of the peak) for many commodities and demand is increasing. Demand that is rising at a rate higher than supply mean price rises. The problem is that higher food prices mean hunger for people at the margins. There are many factors involved – but reversing loss of carbon from soils is a primary way to increase yield.
“I don’t think that Springer understands that a reduction in the rate of population growth doesn’t mean that population isn’t growing.”
Well you thought wrong.
I don’t think Ellison understands the difference between his ass and his elbow.
Views on shape of the Earth differ. Yes, subscribers should pay (time and money) to hear the views of flat-earthers. We want our alt-facts subsidized.
It does seem ironic that our host now resides most prominently in the Nye Quadrant, yet seems completely oblivious to the fact.
That you think there is such a parallel tells me a lot about your arrogance. So photographs from space are comparable evidence to projections from models that have not yet projected actual climate data?
JCH: your ocean heat content graps show that prior to 1990 the heat content was negative. What kind of heat is that? Year 1967 shows -9000000000000 Joules, impressive!
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JCH: moreover, since in calculating the ocean heat content the temperature is the only variable and you express the heat content with six decimals you would have failed in the basic science test at our university. You cannot measure the temperature with that accuracy.
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Andrew Revkin has a very good follow up piece today: http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/05/04/time-honesty-climate-uncertainty/
This article describes why I (and much more significant others like Zeek and Dr. Tol) have pretty much given up on Dr. Curry and this Blog — as everything is “framed” for conflict, rarely ever looking for “common ground”. Most often, it’s not what is said by knowledgeable people (like Dr. Curry and Others) — it’s what they don’t say — their silence.
Dr. Curry’s Congressional testimony and follow-up (and also one instance with Dr. Pielke) is an example. On science testimony, Dr. Curry emphasized 4 areas of needed research: Clouds, Oceans, Ocean Oscillations, Indirect Solar. But within the GOP and the Trump Administration, this has fallen on deaf ears. Reading about the need to seriously cut the GW/CC federal budget is a very common theme — with no one of any significant stature in the GOP calling for the increased research that Dr. Curry says is necessary. The GOP “loves” the negative comments, but ignores or calls it heresy when anything is said that does not fit their “negative agenda”. Dr. Curry “silence” on the GOP’s position is troublesome, to say the least. What ever happened her call for common ground like on Short-term Climate players (black carbon, methane, smog, HFC’s)?
While I don’t know diddly about the science of GW/CC, I do know about (1) electricity generation; (2) agriculture.
Last week Planning Engineer posted a story on Secretary Perry’s directive on the transmission network. Now, as anyone in the Industry knows, a major companion story to this was the PJM story that their system is/will continue to be stable with significant Renewable penetration levels: https://cleantechnica.com/2017/03/31/us-transmission-operator-confirms-system-remains-reliable-gas-renewables/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
But this PJM story never saw the light of day on this Blog. Dialogue is “framed” in extremes as 100% Renewables vs. 0% fossil fuels and Nuclear. No attempt and silence by people like planning engineer, or ristvan on discussing electricity generation “common ground”.
Agriculture really gets me going here at CE, especially by ristvan who knows better. Dr. Curry constantly uses the term “Wicked Problem” to describe the complexities of GW/CC. But the dialogue here at CE, CO2 and Ag is clear cut and resolved — CO2 is simply “plant food”.
When efforts to describe (& provide science research) of the “wicked probem” on CO2 and Ag (C3, C4 plants, science law of limiting factors, etc.) my efforts (like Zeke) are mocked, and with people like ristvan just being silent.
The confrontation nature of CE where people like Dr. Tol don’t even want to spend time here anymore is a travesty.
SS said: Dialogue is “framed” in extremes as 100% Renewables vs. 0% fossil fuels and Nuclear.
I’ve never seen this? Got a link and, also, even if you do, it’s not the central tendency here.
Could it be you are stressed out because climate change is far down the list of problems most people perceive they have? Maybe the stress is rendering you irrational?
You are free to post here. Last week you were free to link to your preferred version of reality. Why didn’t you do it then? Something about your rant just doesn’t add up.
Stephen – funny you should mention PJM. I was thinking of doing a posting to send people to their website and look where they have provided two documents: “PJM’s Evolving Resource Mix and System Reliability” and the”Appendix to PJM’s Evolving Resource Mix and System Reliability”.
These documents seem to me be a utility’s efforts to committ to tell the same basic story for layman that I have been doing as a “hobby” here. I recommend these excellent reports to the Denizens.
You say the system will be stable with significant renewable penetration levels. What does that mean to people? You? And what did the study say? It actually says, “Results show that portfolios with a share of solar above 20 percent of the reliability requirement tend to be infeasible due to
very low solar output during high-load winter days over hours with no sunlight or high levels of cloud cover.”
Going from the low levels of solar now, approaching 20% is significant. But it is a significant limitation if you are looking to bolster the case of Atlanta’s City Council who is committing to transition to 100% renewable.
Helped me if I’ve overlooked anything in the reports – do they indicate that 10% or 15% solar penetration give similar reliability without degradation to the other cases? I did not note that, but rather thought these were “tolerable” ranges.
Plus they are mostly doing the Loss of load calculations, not fully addressing the transmission risks with firm numbers, but merely alluding to them.
Links:
http://www.pjm.com/~/media/library/reports-notices/special-reports/20170330-appendix-to-pjms-evolving-resource-mix-and-system-reliability.ashx
http://www.pjm.com/~/media/library/reports-notices/special-reports/20170330-pjms-evolving-resource-mix-and-system-reliability.ashx
Stephen – the link you reference “Clean Technica” works to twist the PJM findings. It does not use numbers for the current PJM findings contained this:
>The report also referenced a previous PJM study which concluded that “the PJM system, with adequate transmission expansion and additional regulating reserves, will not have any significant issues operating with up to 30 percent of its energy provided by wind and solar generation.”
PJM publishes a long detailed report but he pulls a quote from an older study. Surely you can see the weasel words contained in the cited document “with adequate transmission expansion and additional regulating reserves”. What does that mean? Let me state here “with adequate reinforcement and additional needed waterproofing the I-85 collapsed structure could be replaced with 30% cardboard without any significant issues.” By definition in both of the above, are tautological because if there are issues they can be hinged back to the “undefined” nature of “adequate”. What is “adequate” in either case. Not knowing what adequate is- is the concern. It’s what I write about, It’s what Perry is concerned about. It surely does not mean necessarily that nothing needs to be done and that renewables can be easily integrated.
SS,
You write “Most often, it’s not what is said by knowledgeable people (like Dr. Curry and Others) — it’s what they don’t say — their silence.”
To me, the shoe seems on the other foot. Many times I have asked how scientists attribute climate change between natural and anthropogenic and I get silence.
If you ask individual scientists about their favoured estimate for climate sensitivity and why, you will not get an answer (unless the mood has changed recently).
Experts will claim that sensitivity cannot equal zero, but they have given no reason to support the contention.
I ask what the proper error bars are on many sets of data. I get no response.
I ask if accuracy of claimed processes can be traced back to endorsed primary standards and I get no answer.
There are real, fundamental questions, plenty of them, where the climate science approach seems to be “We sort of solved that some time ago, well not really, but if we keep quiet about this or that topic, inquiring minds will forget that the matter was never resolved.”
Please note that Dr Curry HAS involved herself with CS, has expressed that the natural/man-made attribution is a problem about which she has written, (a wicked one), has affirmed her belief that uncertainty is one of the main problems in climate science. And so on.
SS, I suggest that you take off the blinkers and look at your assertions fairly. Then apologise. Geoff
“Many times I have asked how scientists attribute climate change between natural and anthropogenic and I get silence.”
See ar5.
See lovejoy.
Read the science.
Don’t expect people to give you a reading list for free.
Don’t expect people to regard your questions when you consistently ignore answers
And you get non sequiturs. The reports you list do not address the question.
I think you make a point. Where are Zeke and Tol? Things may have been amplified by the recent election. Verbal swords sharpened. We haven’t had a national election like the recent one. The world is changing in terms of daily communication. That CE would also change might be expected.
Zeke is doing science.
SS.
The thing about renewable (wind/solar) is the fact they are intermittent. This intermittency creates serious problems, down the road, even with an infinite amount of storage.
Wind/Solar must (1) provide for power on demand (peak) and (2) while at the same time store energy. As the sun goes down Wind must pick up the slack. The sun can still be up but at a bad angle for producing power while near peak power is still in demand. During peak demand when the sky is overcast or cloudy or/and the wind is too weak or strong (storms produce overcast and high winds), this results in 100% back up since the stored energy is most likely very low or empty.
Then this state or condition could continue for more than 24 or 48 hours at any given location or multiple locations and the backup becomes the primary. Maintaining 2-primary systems is not economically feasible and the grid itself will be continually passing through ramp up and ramp downs between 2-primary systems at different times in different areas.
I would not wish this on any society. The problem exists as well regardless of the mix between wind/solar and fossil. Of course nuclear and hydro persist in related areas.
I believe I heard on this site the ism “The point is that the more we invest with foresight; the less we will regret in hindsight.”
To date, my friend, I believe we can both agree that the needed foresight has been missing during this adventure into a renewable energy source. Where Investment groups, door-to-roof salesman and politics has been the substitute, including subsidies, of the needed “foresight” or forethought.
Serious regrets are waiting our arrival I fear.
AL
Stephen Segrest: But this PJM story never saw the light of day on this Blog.
If you saw it, why did you not post it for us?
The confrontation nature of CE where people like Dr. Tol don’t even want to spend time here anymore is a travesty.
I debated Dr Tol once when I thought he was wrong. He was, iirc, not distinguishing between a significance test and a power analysis. Of course, it may have been I who was wrong. Lots of people had the opportunity to judge. Other people have critiqued and praised him at various times. Presumably, he could take those praise and critiques and use them in his next presentations. Your take is that debate is intrinsically bad.
Stephen Segrest: But the dialogue here at CE, CO2 and Ag is clear cut and resolved — CO2 is simply “plant food”.
That is not a fair statement. There have been plenty of discussions about the overall net costs and benefits of CO2, Some people say CO2 is simply “plant food”, but hardly a majority hold a simple view of CO2. What is most remarkable is how much policy was formulated in the absence of much evidence that CO2 was bad for agriculture. If you have some reviews of actual threats to ag posed by CO2, say damage to date, present them, and I am sure that they will be read in some detail and evaluated.
Simply “plant food” also downplays “plant food”.
Every cell of every body is alive only through the photosynthesis of solar energy by atmospheric CO2, photosynthesis which increases with increasing CO2!
And that’s true not just of land based life but also oceanic life whose foundation is photosynthesizing plankton.
Reproduceable results indicate that:
Increased CO2 increases plant growth.
Increased CO2 increases crop yield.
Increased CO2 increases plant drought tolerance.
Increased CO2 increases temperature tolerance of land plants.
Increased CO2 increases the temperature of peak plant growth.
It is astounding that some factor which increases life on earth is harmful to the environment.
And it is astounding that some factor which increases available sustenance is harmful to humans.
Global warming is also a likely result of increased CO2, but as Stephens asks, So What?.
Increased drought?
Contradicted by US surface and global satellite records.
Increased fires?
Contradicted by fire scar and ash sediment records.
Increased severe storms?
Contradicted by the decrease in strong US tornadoes.
More intense tropical cyclones?
Contradicted by the lack of trend in accumulated cyclone energy.
Increase in the frequency of extremely hot days?
This one should be a given, right? Wrong. While the shorter term records, both for the US and globally indicate an increase, the more than century long US record indicates a decrease in extremely hot days! The same is true for the small portion of the globe outside the US with consistent and persistent records. This is, remarkably, consistent with early models of global warming, that temperature variability should decrease with increasing temperature.
Increased flooding?
Floods are a little less clear because they involve multiple factors, not just the presumed increased precipitation. And precipitation involves multiple factors, not just the presumed increase in water vapor. And the precipitation records are spottier and less reliable. However, there does not appear to be a record of extremely high daily precipitation events in the US ( 15cm or more ). Also, though for multiple conditions, floods tend to occur through out the year, indicating that they are not controlled by temperature.
Increased sea level rise?
Models indicate an increase in SL through thermal expansion. SL is rising around 3mm/year. But in what context? Groundwater use changes sea level in two ways. Globally groundwater use increases SL by about 1mm/year. Locally, groundwater use causes subsidence often at rates much greater than thermal expansion.
Though the principles of warming are sound, global warming has been exaggerated from the start in terms of extent and effect. That’s not surprising. The establishment of the UN programs were political acts by political actors. Political actors are motivated by their agenda and cannot resist exaggeration, appeals to emotion, and any other tool to further their agenda.
Stephen S: “Most often, it’s not what is said by knowledgeable people (like Dr. Curry and Others) — it’s what they don’t say — their silence.”
I think, at the very least, there’s an order of magnitude and precedence issue with this comment. What about the silence of scientists who don’t challenge the *certainty* of climate catastrophe as cast in the critically urgent and highly emotive Western authority narrative on climate change? This narrative, coming from many of the most influential people in the world and the huge pyramids of government and organizations beneath them, is the dominant narrative of the domain that has flooded the public sphere over many years. As can be seen from the sample snippets below, the authority of science is repeatedly invoked to underscore this *certainty* of imminent catastrophe. Where was and is the concomitant push-back from scientists across the world, that should be expected from this inappropriate hi-jack of their authority?
[GRO HARLEM BRUNDTLAND] to 15th session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development : “So what is it that is new today? What is new is that doubt has been eliminated. The report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear. And so is the Stern report. It is irresponsible, reckless and deeply immoral to question the seriousness of the situation. The time for diagnosis is over. Now it is time to act.” [OBAMA] Energy Independence and the Safety of Our Planet (2006) : “All across the world, in every kind of environment and region known to man, increasingly dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are abruptly putting an end to the long-running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not only is it real, it’s here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster.” Speech in Berlin (2008) : “This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.” George town speech (2013) : “Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm.” State of the Union (2015) : “The best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe.” [FRANCOIS HOLLANDE] Paris climate summit Nov 2015 : “To resolve the climate crisis, good will, statements of intent are not enough. We are at breaking point.” [GORDON BROWN] Copenhagen climate plan (2009) : “If we miss this opportunity, there will be no second chance sometime in the future, no later way to undo the catastrophic damage to the environment we will cause…As scientists spell out the mounting evidence both of the climate change already occurring and of the threat it poses in the future, we cannot allow the negotiations to run out of time simply for lack of attention. Failure would be unforgivable.” [ANGELA MERKEL] to UN summit on Climate Change (2009) : “After all, scientific findings leave us in no doubt that climate change is accelerating. It threatens our well being, our security, and our economic development. It will lead to uncontrollable risks and dramatic damage if we do not take resolute countermeasures.” Same speech : “we will need to reach an understanding on central issues in the weeks ahead before Copenhagen, ensuring, among other things, that global emissions reach their peak in the year 2020 at the latest.” And while president of the EU, on German TV in a wake-up call for climate action prior to 26 leader EU climate meeting (2007) : “It is not five minutes to midnight. It’s five minutes after midnight.” [POPE FRANCIS] Asked if the U.N. climate summit in Paris (2015) would mark a turning point in the fight against global warming, the pope said: “I am not sure, but I can say to you ‘now or never’. Every year the problems are getting worse. We are at the limits. If I may use a strong word I would say that we are at the limits of suicide.” [MARK CARNEY] governor of the bank of England, speech ‘Resolving the Climate Paradox’, September 2016: “…climate change is a tragedy of the horizon which imposes a cost on future generations that the current one has no direct incentive to fix. The catastrophic impacts of climate change will be felt beyond the traditional horizons of most actors including businesses and central banks. Once climate change becomes a clear and present danger to financial stability it may already be too late to stabilise the atmosphere at two degrees.”
A few more narrative samples…
[PRINCE CHARLES] speech to business leaders in Brazil (2009): “The best projections tell us that we have less than 100 months to alter our behaviour before we risk catastrophic climate change.” [AL GORE] speech to NY University School of Law (Sept 2006): “Each passing day brings yet more evidence that we are now facing a planetary emergency — a climate crisis that demands immediate action to sharply reduce carbon dioxide emissions worldwide in order to turn down the earth’s thermostat and avert catastrophe.” [JOHN KERRY] as US Secretary of State, responding to UN report (2014): “Unless we act dramatically and quickly, science tells us our climate and our way of life are literally in jeopardy… …There are those who say we can’t afford to act. But waiting is truly unaffordable. The costs of inaction are catastrophic.” [HILLARY CLINTON] time.com (Nov 2015): “I won’t let anyone to take us backward, deny our economy the benefits of harnessing a clean energy future, or force our children to endure the catastrophe that would result from unchecked climate change.” [BERNIE SANDERS] US presidential candidate (2016), feelthebern.com : Bernie Sanders strongly believes climate change is real, catastrophic, and largely caused by human activities.
and yet a few more narrative samples…
[M. LAURENT FABIUS] French Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Development, in the National Assembly (May 2014): “We have 500 days – not a day more – to avoid a climate disaster. People often talk about climate change or global warming. I attach great importance to words, and as far as the French language is concerned I don’t think those words are very appropriate, because – without alluding to this or that political programme – change is seen as rather a positive thing, but in the case of climate, it isn’t at all. Some French people say: why not, since they might think Lille, for example, is going to join the Côte d’Azur? That’s absolutely not it. We must face up to climate disruption, climate chaos. The scientists, several of whom are present here, have said it: ‘you’d have to be blind not to see it’.” [FRANCOIS HOLLANDE] as French President, at 150 nation climate summit in Le Bourget, France (Nov 2015): “Never have the stakes of an international meeting been so high, because it concerns the future of the planet, the future of life.” [MERKEL] as German chancellor, at the Lowy Institute in Sydney (Nov 2014): “If we do not put a brake on climate change, it will have devastating consequences for all of us – there will be more storms, there will be more heat and catastrophes more droughts, there will be a rising sea levels an increasing floods.”
Andy
The problem is that Obama appears to be advised by theoretical scenarios derived from physics of what ‘should’ happen, exemplified in models.
He might find it instructive to spend a few hours in the archives of Nasa which has your weather records as does places like the Smithsonian .
A read through the ‘US weather review’-a monthly digest from observers throughout the States – would be instructive. The reviews date back in one form or other to around 1850.
Whilst the narratives are most likely accurate, the actual temperatures and barometer readings need to be taken with a pinch of salt as the observers were mostly amateurs until around 1880 and even after that their methodology was highly suspect (I have written on this before)
As an example one observer remarks that a friend brought his new barometer on a wagon train, railroad and then to his house strapped to the back of a mule.
They also recognise that the thermometer instruments they used would give very different readings according to the ‘brand’ they were using.
All in all these observations and the ones I have collated in England back to the Domesday book, suggests that our current climate is rather benign and does not begin to compare (mostly) with the cataclysmic storms/frosts/winds/rainfall etc etc of previous centuries.
tonyb
“A read through the ‘US weather review’-a monthly digest from observers throughout the States – would be instructive. The reviews date back in one form or other to around 1850.
Whilst the narratives are most likely accurate, the actual temperatures and barometer readings need to be taken with a pinch of salt as the observers were mostly amateurs until around 1880 and even after that their methodology was highly suspect (I have written on this before)”
I tried to find temperature records from before the Civil War when working on my master’s thesis, and discovered no continuous data from that time. What was there was usually from frontier forts which of course moved with the frontier.
clayton
That sounds a very interesting project. As you say, data was limited, observers moved around, many states and towns had not even been created. On my site there is some historical weather information including that for Virginia. Just click on the red or yellow dot on the map.
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
The individual US Weather Reviews were comprised of individual reports but I think that most of it will be fragmentary. I am British so I have not researched the US weather in great detail but at someone’s request looked in the Met Office archives who has lots of US information. I wrote some of it down and here are two fragments which probably are more of general interest rather than of specific help to you
—- —– —–
1 Examples from supplement; Cherry blossom (earliest record 1883) and red currant and many other fruit flowering dates, veg sowing and cropping,
Richards self -regulating thermometer
Drapers ditto
‘The indications of the instrument are trustworthy to within 2degrees f’
There was also a one off slim bound index listing the articles to be found in various issues.
Data was telegraphed to the office of the Weather review.
Many observers used their own forms, obvious attempts in the late 1880’s to standardise
(The author has added a few comments within the body of the notes which are related to the material. These are in emboldened text)
The following are random extracts that caught my eye, starting with a snippet of Dale Enterprise’ material, there are a few other ones within the appropriate year reference;
US Monthly review 1888 December
Dale Enterprise West Virginia Dec 1888 68f max 13f minimum 40.8 mean 1.82 inches rain. The station has voluntary observers using non- standard instruments. It is situated in the Virginia area of the New England Meteorology region.
‘ The more noteworthy meteorological features of the year may be mentioned, first the large deficiency of rainfall over the central valley and southern states which resulted in the worst protracted and disastrous drought that has been known for many years, secondly the unusually warm weather which prevailed in the northern and central portions of the country east of the Mississippi river in July, during which month many stations reported the highest temperatures recorded since their establishment.
New England meteorological society which includes West Virginia run by Prof Wm H Niles of the Institute of technology Boston. Dale are within this area.
—– —– —-
Considerable droughts in the period 1876 Jan. whilst the average temp has been slightly below normal values on the pacific coast it appears in all other sections of the country to have been decidedly above , the excess amounting to 9f for Tennessee and the Ohio valley , 7.7 for the upper Mississippi, 6.9 for the lower Mississippi ranging down ( through a variety of values) to at its least to 1.5f for Minnesota.
it should be stated however that although above the average and amongst the warmest month yet, the past January was, except perhaps in Kansas, by no means the warmest January, in which we have recorded that January 1828 appears to have been as warm in Tennessee and throughout the Atlantic and gulf states, the January of 1843 was warmer for new jersey and Maine, 1855 was warmer in the west and southwest, 1853 was warmer on the pacific coast.
—– —– —–
tonyb
“If we do not put a brake on climate change…”
“there will be more storms”
Really? Why? Mid-latitude storms are baroclinic waves – why should there be more? Tropical cyclone energy does not indicate a trend. Strong US tornadoes indicates a decline. This is not substantiated.
“there will be more heat”
Really? The US long term record ( more than 120 years ) indicates a decrease of extreme hot days. This is consistent with a decrease of temperature variability with warming.
“and catastrophes” not even identified, so let’s skip this.
“more droughts”
Really? The long term US record indicates a decrease in the Palmer Drought Severity Index. The long term US record indicates a decrease in summer time drought ( based on US average summer precipitation of 7.5 inches which decreased in frequency ). And the global satellite record indicates a decrease in drought area.
“there will be a rising sea levels”
Yes, sea levels are rising. But at 3 millimeters per year, this is much less than coastal subsidence in many areas.
“and increasing floods.”
Really? Based on what evidence?
This meme is false.
These erroneous ideas are what make climate change a hoax.
TonyB: “He might find it instructive to spend a few hours in the archives of Nasa which has your weather records as does places like the Smithsonian”
I don’t think Obama or any other of the authority figures referenced would have or ever will be dibbling around in any climate records. Nor did they ought to be doing that. Either these leaders have been advised by scientists who (for whatever reasons and to whatever extent models are implicated), have passed into advocacy by underwriting a certainty of imminent catastrophe, or they have been advised by bureaucracies that have seriously mistranslated the scientific position into one of certainty of imminent catastrophe. Either way, outside a tiny few skeptic scientists there has not been a push-back from science at the hijacking of their authority to underwrite this certainty, which also is communicated in such a powerfully emotive fashion. Btw, I am UK based.
Tony B:
P.S. while I often enjoy reading about your historic climate investigations, I don’t think they are germane to my comment in answer to SS. Even without such records and many more from various climate relevant specialisms, current science as say represented by the IPCC (hardly a skeptic organization and indeed including model related findings), does not support the highly emotive and critically urgent Western authority narrative of imminent climate catastrophe, as exampled above.
TE, yes,attribution is difficult for individual events but if there are 500-years floods every 5-10 years that would be a sign that the statistics have changed. Climate is defined by statistics, not by individual events.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03052017/flooding-storms-climate-change-extreme-weather-missouri-arkansas
The article says Louisiana just had its 8th 500-year flooding event in just over one year (!). Does anyone say this is an anomaly that will go away, or is it more likely to trend worse?
This goes not only for floods, but also heatwaves, droughts, coastal storms, etc. Climate change occurs most noticeably at the tail of the distribution, just by the nature of such distributions, so that is where to look.
what it means is that those return times are meaningless, they do not account for multi-decadal and longer oscillations or a long term secular trend. or for the often observed phenomena of clustered events
Just dismissed. No study needed?
Changing return times are not meaningless. It is the difference of how areas redefine their flood prone areas or mitigate against flooding. If they just say it is a 500-year event so we don’t have to plan for this happening again any time soon, that would be a major error, and they would look foolish if it happened again 10 years later without them making any improvements. This is an aspect of climate change that takes the unprepared by surprise.
Actually I misstated the article, Louisiana was the 8th 500-year event in the US in the past year or so.
Jim D, how many 500 year events that occurred in a year is meaningless unless you know how many didn’t occur.
steven, yes, you have to know how many 500-year events are expected per year in the US to make sense of the eight. More information may help. This is their link to the events data.
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hdsc/aep_storm_analysis/
If the areas considered to count are large enough, not many would be expected in the US per year. They don’t quantify the minimum area, but they do consider that it covers “a large area” to count.
Jim D, you’d think by now that some enterprising scientist would have figured out by now how many 500 or 1000 or whatever events can happen in a year. Since they haven’t then they should probably just shut up until they do or it is just propaganda, don’t you agree?
steven, there are such studies and the article I linked mentioned some. The skeptics don’t mention these, so reading their sites and op-eds you would never know. This is not just academic. Flood plains are often defined by 100-year events. If those areas are increasing, regional governments need to know, and they will be using climate services or government agencies for this type of study.
TE, yes,attribution is difficult for individual events
Attribution is a subjective projection by human beings, not a causal effect demonstrable by observation or physical equation. As such, it is fertile ground for confirmation bias.
Louisiana just had its 8th 500-year flooding event in just over one year
Common sense should shed some light on this.
First, this recent event was from an intense low pressure area that had anomalously low temperatures ( there were freezing temperatures in the southwest deserts on the last day of April following the passage of this system’s cold front ).
Second, the previous floods in Louisiana were in March. The argument for increased flooding is that there is increased precipitation because of increased water vapor because of increased temperature. But the March flood indicates that flooding is not constrained by temperature. Motion of the air has always been capable of flooding rains.
Third, the precipitation records are not sufficiently long, accurate, or reliable enough for even the past one century, much less five. Ascribing 500 year events is certainly not based on observation.
Fourth, what precipitation records we do have, and they’re even more spotty and undocumented than the temperature records, don’t indicate any increase in the most extreme precipitation. There’s no trend in the occurrence of 20 or 30 centimeter daily rainfalls and 1982 remains the year with the most of these:
https://turbulenteddies.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/ghcn_conus_extreme_precipitation.png
This goes not only for floods, but also heatwaves
Extreme heat in the US has decreased over the last 122 years.
This is consistent global warming theory that there will be a decrease of temperature variability with increasing mean. If the the decrease of variability wrt the increase of mean is large, as it has been in the US, then there will be fewer extreme high temperatures. If the decrease of variability is some middle amount, then extreme high temperatures will not be decreased, but they won’t be increased, either. If the decrease of variability is some middle amount, then extreme high temperatures will not be decreased, but they won’t be increased, either. If the decrease of variability is small, then extreme high temperatures will increased, but not by as much. And, remarkably, warming means there will be more normal days.
droughts
For the US, droughts have decreased over the century plus long record.
For the globe, drought area has decreased slightly over the satellite era.
coastal storms
Not sure what this refers to.
Not a particularly compelling reason to believe a change in frequency or intensity of either mid-latitude or tropical cyclones.
And certainly, tropical cyclone frequency and intensity lack any trends over the period of record deemed relatively accurate.
If you want to see how NOAA does return periods for precipitation, this is where to start. They have a US climatology and define their methodology.
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hdsc/aep_storm_analysis/
Regarding extreme events, there is a school of thought that slower moving systems in a future climate with a smaller meridional temperature gradient does indeed lead to more floods and droughts. The current floods in the US are from a slow-moving system, so it doesn’t only require more moisture for extremes, but other factors could also add in, and there is also more heat for droughts.
Coastal floods: Irene and Sandy have led people to think about coastal infrastructure, and even whether to rebuild in certain areas. They know these events will occur again, and in the not too distant future, and it is a perfect storm of sea-level rise combined with more moisture in those areas.
Heatwaves: unprecedented events in Europe and Texas in the last decade would not have been possible 50 years ago, and now are possible because of the steady rise in temperature. What those areas had was just the first of such events that will recur ever more frequently in a warming world, and it would be no surprise to most people. They need to plan for the trend.
Jim D, No there isn’t or you would be able to tell me how many potential 500 year events there are in a year. When you have a reference for that come back.
“While investigating the discharge time series of the Nile River in the framework of the design of the Aswan High Dam, Hurst (1951) discovered a special behaviour of hydrological and other geophysical time series, which has become known as the “Hurst
phenomenon”. This behaviour is essentially the tendency of wet years to cluster into wet periods, or of dry years to cluster into drought periods. The term “Joseph effect” introduced by Mandelbrot (1977) has been used as an alternative for the same behaviour. Since its discovery, the Hurst phenomenon has been verified in several
environmental quantities, such as wind power variations (Haslett & Raftery, 1989),
global mean temperatures (Bloomfield, 1992), flows of the River Nile (Eltahir, 1996), flows of the River Warta, Poland (Radziejewski & Kundzewicz, 1997), monthly and daily inflows of Lake Maggiore, Italy (Montanari et al., 1997), annual streamflow records across the continental United States (Vogel et al., 1998), and indexes of North Atlantic Oscillation (Stephenson et al., 2000). In addition, the Hurst phenomenon has
gained new interest today due to its relationship to climate changes (e.g. Evans, 1996).” https://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/getfile/511/1/documents/2002HSJHurst.pdf
The NOAA rainfall maps are for design rainfall. They are based in frequency analysis of individual rain gauges and are used to trace isohyets on maps to define parameters for design storms of specific frequency, duration and intensity. These in turn are used to model ungauged catchments using rainfall/runoff models.
Frequency analysis – taking floods at a point as an example – is a simple process of selecting the largest flood in a year and ranking them. The largest storm in a 100 years is the 100 year storm. Hurst phenomenon occur on all scales from days to millennia. It will almost guarantee that there will be multiple storms of about the same intensity in any year – loosely described in the media as storms with some return period. It doesn’t imply that there are more frequent high intensity storms. It is just journalists and amateurs framing a misguided narrative.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/moys-2002-2.png
Long term geophysical data suggests the 20th century was relatively tranquil. A bit dry in Australia – but by no means the worst it has ever been.
that slower moving systems in a future climate with a smaller meridional temperature gradient does indeed lead to more floods and droughts.
Well, drought has decreased, so the “school” may want to look into that.
Floods are more difficult to assess, because:
1. precipitation can be discrete or at least much less continuous than temperature.
2. floods occur in specific watersheds – which change. A levee on a river here or a bunch of strip malls there mean floods that wouldn’t have occurred in the past, occur now.
3. floods are episodic.
4. multiple conditions lead to flooding.
To be sure, the temperature gradient is modeled to decrease. However, this is still not completely clear. The forcing from a CO2 doubling at the tropopause indicates more forcing at the tropics (more than 4W/m^2) than at the poles (around 2W/m^2). Arctic Amplification does increase winter temperatures, but at the surface, not aloft where jet streams form. And were the hot spot to occur, it would tend to increase,not decrease the gradient.
All of this occurs in context of the seasonal cycle. The gradients are very much larger during winter than summer, so seasonal climate already experiences great variation of jet stream intensity as an analog to global warming. And along these lines, if you examine the Wiki lists of historical floods, they occur fairly evenly across all months of the year. This is because of different conditions, sure. But it means temperature is not very closely related to overall flooding.
Further to the hypothesized stagnant pattern of a weaker jet stream, for any given intensity, there is still an infinite variety of wave patterns that can, and do occur. Time permitting, I intend to retrace the Francis paper steps to look into this.
The issue was judith’s silence.
Science of Doom has some interesting references indicating just how uncertain precipitation assessments are, including contradicting signs of trend for multiple latitude bands. The inter-annual and inter-decadal variability is consistent with fluctuating dynamics. Difficult to claim that global warming, or anything else, is exerting any coherent trend in precip.
You no longer posting here is a loss we can all take in stride.
I don’t think The confrontation nature of CE where people like Dr. Tol don’t even want to spend time here anymore is a travesty means what you think it means, timg.
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“The fame and fortune of Michael Mann — derived from Nye Quadrant tactics — is going to be tempting to some young scientists to emulate. I am already seeing hints of a few mid career climate scientists that seem ready to go full Nye.” That’s the issue.
Perhaps a little tangential to the above discussion…
Two nights ago we went to to see the new Bill Nye documentary, “Bill Nye: Science Guy”.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4853154/
We went to see this as part of the Toronto Hot Docs festival. The documentary was followed by a Q&A session with the directors, producer and grate man himself. The Session was “moderated” by a CBC “science writer” whose name did not meet my threshold for caring.
In general, I came out of the experience with a higher opinion of Bill Nye. I never watched his TV shows. My opinion had previously been informed by the opinions of others commenting on the “danier” web pages I read, like this one (no really)..
Generally the film flowed from Bill Nye’s early fame, his early life (I did not know he was a mechanical engineer), to his efforts to debunk Ken Ham’s creation science efforts, to his attempts to debate and convert Joe Bastardi, to Bill Nye’s new roll as the leader of the Planetary Society.
The earlier parts of his life were interesting from a biographical point of view. His family has a hereditary disease which made him decided to never have children.
The Ken Ham portion of the film made it seem like he was shooting fish in a barrel. Good efforts in my opinion but he was never going to convince anyone who already believes the Bible as interpreted by Ken Ham is the Truth.
The Joe Bastardi part seemed like a straw man argument. I was not overly familiar with Joe Bastardi and the film set him up as some kind of ridiculous clown that the hero was going to banish to irrelevance. But that never happened.
More interesting was Joe Bastardi’s son who is/was studying meteorology at Penn State under professor wonderful himself. Remarkably Professor Mann had significant screen time and at no time used the “d” word, referring to contrarians instead. Bill Nye himself had no reluctance using the “d” word.
Bill Nye was supposed to debate Joe Bastardi at a seminar hosted by Professor Mann but Bastardi allegedly backed out at the last minute. At the seminar on student asked Nye how students can help communicate the threat of dangerous climate change to the public. I liked Nye’s response, something like always being open to their questions and willing to engage in discussion. The fact that he said this with Professor Mann in the room made me want to walk out and in fact Bastardi’s son walked out from the seminar at about this time. Interesting.
They also got to film Bill Nye on the East Greenland ice sheet where climate scientist Dr. James White (?I think?) was drilling ice cores that showed… increasing temperatures and CO2 concentrations in lock step throughout the record of the ice cores, especially in the modern era. Given they started drilling their ice core after scraping out 20 m trench to create a subsurface drill house, I have to wonder how much of the modern era they have actually recorded. The lock step assertion runs counter other ice core data I have seen.
They also claimed the ice cores showed the fastest climate change in the modern era which runs counter to other Greenland ice core data I have seen.
There were also the obligatory scenes of Greenland melting with the climate scientist saying it is a lot different from when he first came to Greenland in 1989. I thought “Well duh.”
The last part was about Bill Nye’s involvement in the Planetary Society, with a lot of adulation for Carl Sagan and their successful launch of a light sail but nothing about what happened after that. Good job.
Like I said, I came out of the film thinking better of Bill Nye than going in.
Then came the Q&A session wherein we learn that he is ashamed of the U.S. election results, he thinks Canada could do more to reduce Greenhouse emissions and should shut down all of the tar sands projects, that nuclear energy is just too unpopular to be a viable solution, and that solution to all our problems will be solar and wind renewables.
He said that there is a lot of wind and solar potential in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. That most of Canada’s population lives in eastern Canada and could get all the energy they need from offshore wind farms in the Atlantic. This seemed very naive and he came across as being geographically challenged. Off course the sheep in audience ate it up.
The directors were asked if there was anything they left out of the film and they responded saying there was a whole section concerning Bill Nye’s discussion with anti vaccination advocates and… Bill Nye’s interactions with Marc Morano of the Heartland Institute.
“Interesting” thinks I. Given Marc is probably a much bigger fish that Joe Bastardi, I suspected that Marc handed Bill Nye his ass and this is why the footage was left on the cutting room floor. Are there any insiders with a different perspective?
Bill Nye is a true believer. While he claims he is open to debate, I think that he is only open to debate on his terms. He also pushed his new Netflix series encouraging us all to binge watch the whole thing. Sure… maybe later, though my son says its all politics, no science.
“his efforts to debunk Ken Ham’s creation science efforts,” What a waste. I doubt more than 1 in a thousand people who take Ken Ham seriously take Bill Nye seriously, if they even know who he is.
I wonder if taking on Ken Ham is what gives Bill Nye credence with his fan base. You may be right in that he likely had a negligible impact upon Ken Ham’s fan base. What he did was set himself up as an opponent of false belief for his fan base. The fan base is built on him holding up science against unworthy challengers. That’s the script, that’s what they’ve seen. Now coming out the gate, whatever he wants to challenge is seen occupying the role of unworthy while he is wrapped in the mantle of “science” defender. Skip the actual content and debate – the format and ideology is already there.
There are videos of Marano and Nye on youtube.
Oh, and the at home with Bill scenes never showed the solar panels on his roof, the high efficiency appliances, the low volume toilets and shower heads nor the electric car. Also interesting.
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The planet has warmed 0.85 degrees C since 1880 only if one assumes that 1880 is accurate within something less than 0.85 degrees C by 10x or so.. Does any scientist pretend to know what the proper temperature of the planet should be? It could very well be that 1880 was a very cold period, or even a very warm period. But relative to it being recent human caused warming then the year 900AD, if warmer had no help from humans burning fossil fuels. So whatever warmed the planet in 900AD without human assistance could very well be in play today. And if the planet was warmer in 900AD than in 1880, then why are we not stating how much the planet has warmed (or cooled) since the year 900AD?
Albert, That is a good point.
What is the accuracy of projected global temerature in 1880?
Hardly any thermometers worldwide, none in arctic, none it Antarctic, few in asia, none in vast portions on the pacific or south atlantic oceans.
What are they talking about?
This is so fake news to assume tree rings or ice cores are accuarte to 0.01* C.
Scott
There’s plenty in 1880.
Yes 1880 was warmer than the LIA.
Think.
Thanks Moshpit.
Nicest comment ever
For global temperature estimates using arctic and antarctic measurements?
Africa and the vast oceans.
But still I think, listen and evaluate.
What do you think of accuracy of global averages in 1880? +- 1*C
Scott
MBH98 claimed fourteen (or so) proxy records had a precision of ±0.1°C in the year 1,000 AD for the whole northern hemisphere, so I imagine fifty (or so) thermometers must be really, really accurate.
“Yes 1880 was warmer than the LIA.”
Possibly, but 1884 was not.
Thought.
mosh
That rather an unscientific statement. There were plenty of warm years in the intermittent LIA. 1880 was not warmer than all the LIA but only some (most?) years within this ill defined period.
tonyb
Mosh,
Question stands if you care to answer.
What is the estimated accuracy in your view of the 1889 global temperature. Is it + – 1*C, greater or less?
Not a hard respnse for someone asking others to think.
Scott
For future reference it’s not The New York Times. It’s The Failing New York Times.
New York, New York!
How will it be w/out
the electricity?
http://www.woodyallenpages.com/2015/01/rhapsody-blue-music-woody-allen-films/
Edit.
Why are so many bloggers here writing about messengers and their properties, when there is much more value in talking about the science and how it can be improved by people discussing the science and not the message?
Sure, the post is about Nye and a quadrant, but Nye is a messenger who really exhibits little knowledge about science. I’d warm to people advising Nye about how to educate his own self in the relevant science, perhaps with some questions he is invited to investigate to better inform himself. Geoff.
Reblogged this on I Didn't Ask To Be a Blog.
The prominent role of the rich elite class in the current global warming movement is reminiscent of the same role played during the campaign for alcohol prohibition during the 20’s and 30’s.
http://www.returnofkings.com/41091/prohibition-in-america-the-intersection-of-women-and-capitalists
Many of the issues are the same today as yesterday – a kind of class war in which “progressive elites” are intolerant of the values and lifestyles of the working class. Now its urban liberal elites versus a Trump-voting blue collar underclass. The end result will be the same. The new carbon (dioxide) prohibition will run its course until society is sick of its puritannical self-righteousness and hypocrisy.
Liddzen has a fascinating set of refutations of alarmism at
http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/05/01/mit-climate-scientist-dr-richard-lindzen-believing-co2-controls-the-climate-is-pretty-close-to-believing-in-magic/
The anomaly scatter plot in figure 1a is fascinating. I had not seen this before. Given this much scatter the mean is meaningless.
Joshua China has little freedom but is generating wealth by energy. Though they have nukes hydro and renewable energy most is fossil fuels. Warming fossil fuels and CO2 go together.
JFP –
Access to energy in China has been accompanied by a massive growth in freedom. Consider Nigeria, where by contrast access to energy has not grown in a similar way despite massive growth in energy production.
I do not think that there is a one-directional causality in play and I am highly skeptical about arguments that reduce such complex mechanisms to simplistic causality such as “energy ===> freedom” or “warming ===> benefits.”
In my observation , climate “skeptics” like their close cousins, libertarians, love them some “But what about the externalities” arguments …until they don’t., just like they love them some “But don’t forget the law of unintended consequences arguments” …until they don’t.
O c’mon Josh. You make the same simplistic equalization that Climate deniers are also Libertarians and then in the next few sentences denounce the statements ‘energy=freedom, warming=benefits”….?? Simplistic equalizations are only allowed in your thought/political world when convenient I suppose. How much longer until we see entirely through you
Joshua, I don’t know how to measure freedom. I know how we measure energy and CO2 emissions. They are a few way out there that don’t think CO2 from fossil fuels minus sinks aprroximately equals what we have in depleted carbon isotopes. I have not seen a convincing argument though. The energy estimates indicate fossil fuels are most responsible for our energy. Our use and application of energy to problems has yielded to date the increases in wealth, health improvements, and other desired benefits. At present. nuclear has the some of the capability to support or continue growth of the benefits, but has limits.
For Joshua and for Willard as to mitigation: Coal will be needed in large volumes if for nothing else than for steel and other goods production. The usable tech for transportation is fossil fuels from crude oil or LNG. The transition, if possible, to replace most fossil fuel use for electricity with nuclear will likely take upwards of forty years, estimated by life cycle. That still leaves housing, food, heavy transport, heavy industry, human social activities, and other uses to be transitioned. Though their life cycles are less, the inter-dependencies and sheer numbers make any forced, meaning less than the general economic choice, expensive to the point of doubtful outcome.
The problems with Australia should not be dismissed. At present, they show that 25% renewables means loss of modern dependable civilization. What is left is, at present unknown; but short term costs increased by a factor of 4700%. The idea that redoing all these different energy uses with intermittent energy that yields a cost about 15% of an economy cannot be supported. They are interlinked. Modern (early 20th century) models of such systems show that the increase of disturbances in complex inter connected systems causes exponential increase in the likelihood of failures of the system with attendant costs. This does not include the use of predictive feed forward systems as are proposed for handling intermittent renewables. One of the exercises required in control theory was the mathematical proof that feed forward cannot work repeatedly. It can be constrained in simple cases. What Australia is using is feed sharing and feed loading. It lessens the problem but with costs.
The question is how much warming is anthropogenic vs. natural variation. We’ve been through several warming and cooling cycles before fossil fuels were used in quantity.
“We have 500 days – not a day more – to avoid a climate disaster.” The precision of that statement. You might almost think that he could predict next year’s temperatures.
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“Scholars of armed conflict argue that it must be feasible before it will occur and suggest that adequate finance is a key ingredient for organizing violence against a state. In Free Markets and Civil Peace, we argue that economic repression and market distortions create conditions that make armed conflict feasible. Economic repression and economic mismanagement supply the means, motive, and opportunity for groups to challenge states because economic distortions spawn underground economies that form the organizational bases of insurgency that allow groups to succeed and remain sustainable in the face of superior state forces. Greater economic freedom, on the other hand, raises the opportunity costs of violence, raising the premium for maintaining order. Our empirical analyses using standard data show that greater economic freedom is indeed associated with greater civil peace, greater respect for human rights, and produces greater peace between ethnoreligious groups within countries. The results are robust to sample size and to bias from endogeneity, or reverse causality.” https://www.fraserinstitute.org/research/free-markets-and-civil-peace
“Economic freedom is the fundamental right of every human to control his or her own labor and property. In an economically free society, individuals are free to work, produce, consume, and invest in any way they please. In economically free societies, governments allow labor, capital, and goods to move freely, and refrain from coercion or constraint of liberty beyond the extent necessary to protect and maintain liberty itself.” http://www.heritage.org/index/about
The global economy is worth about $100 trillion a year. To put aid and philanthropy into perspective – the total is 0.025% of the global economy. If spent on Copenhagen Consensus smart development goals such expenditure can generate a benefit to cost ratio of more than 15. If spent on the UN Sustainable Development Goals you may as well piss it up against a wall. Either way – it is nowhere near the major path to universal prosperity. Some 3.5 billion people make less than $2 a day. Changing that can only be done by multiplying global production – and doing it as quickly as possible. Optimal economic growth is essential and that requires an understanding and implementation of explicit principles for effective economic governance of free markets. So what are these laws of capitalism?
Markets exist – ideally – in a democratic context. Politics provides a legislative framework for consumer protection, worker and public safety, environmental conservation and a host of other things. Including for regulation of markets – banking capital requirements, anti-monopoly laws, prohibition of insider trading, laws on corporate transparency and probity, tax laws, etc. A key to stable markets – and therefore growth – is fair and transparent regulation, minimal corruption and effective democratic oversight. Markets do best where government is large enough to be an important player and small enough not to squeeze the vitality out of capitalism – government revenue of some 25% of gross domestic product. Markets can’t exist without laws – just as civil society can’t exist without police, courts and armies. Much is made of a laissez faire concept of capitalism – but this has never ever been a model of practical economics.
Maximising economic growth is a matter of maximising productivity – and energy is a key factor input. 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, 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. The warming from black carbon – by the way – is equal to that of carbon dioxide emissions from electricity production. It is for the most part a problem of lack of development.
Economic growth is not a religion – it is a fundamental human right. Which is not even an especially libertarian notion.
“Today, over one billion people around the world—five hundred million of them in sub-Saharan Africa alone—lack access to electricity. Nearly three billion people cook over open fires fueled by wood, dung, coal, or charcoal. This energy poverty presents a significant hurdle to achieving development goals of health, prosperity, and a livable environment.
The relationship between access to modern energy services and quality of life is well established. Affordable and reliable grid electricity allows factory owners to increase output and hire more workers. Electricity allows hospitals to refrigerate lifesaving vaccines and power medical equipment. It liberates children and women from manual labor. Societies that are able to meet their energy needs become wealthier, more resilient, and better able to navigate social and environmental hazards like climate change and natural disasters.
Faced with a perceived conflict between expanding global energy access and rapidly reducing greenhouse emissions to prevent climate change, many environmental groups and donor institutions have come to rely on small-scale, decentralized, renewable energy technologies that cannot meet the energy demands of rapidly growing emerging economies and people struggling to escape extreme poverty. The UN’s flagship energy access program, for example, claims that “basic human needs” can be met with enough electricity to power a fan, a couple of light bulbs, and a radio for five hours a day.” https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/our-high-energy-planet
“There are libertarians using the Affordable Care Act.”
They must be very poor libertarians, which I have never met. The level of poverty required for ACA subsidies is mind boggling severe. My son, who voted Obama both times needed insurance and discovered that ACA was essentially useless for him because he had a full-time job. I recently retired and looked at ACA and came to the same conclusion: $5000 deductible and several hundred a month premiums made no sense. ACA was really to make SJWs feel like they were doing something for the poor. Most Democrats in Congress voted for it (and many Republicans resisted ACA reform) because it subsidizes a few big insurers by guaranteeing them customers.
It also majorly helps those with pre-existing conditions, removes lifetime caps, ensures a coverage of certain essentials, and gets employers to kick in for more economical insurance pools. Even a libertarian could benefit from some of these.
It also encourages employers to drop coverage. My PCP’s employer dropped coverage for all their employees, because all would be eligible for ACA; he and the other doctors could well afford individual coverage. And my PCP was a fan of ACA. I think I see why.
Certain essentials? Like contraception? Not terribly expensive individually, but another added expense for insurance. I actually approve of limiting insurers ability to drop coverage because of costs and requiring pre-existing conditions to be covered. It didn’t take 300+ pages to do that.
Conversely it mandates covering your employees if you have more than a few. Employee pools also get the better deals from insurance companies than individuals.
What I can speak about is MNSure, our ACA. It seems possible that our plan follows Federal guidelines.
Family of 4.
Beginning of Advanced Premium Tax Credit
About $48,000
Ending of Advanced Premium Tax Credit
About $96,000
In this range you get a large Premium Tax Credit at first and then it phases downwards on the way to $96,000.
At about $96,000 it’s gone. Go buy insurance elsewhere.
These threshold number follow family size.
What the market gave me before the ACA was for about $1000/month, a $6000 per individual deductible and a $12,000 per family deductible.
I am self employed. I know of families paying $18,000 per year now. When people say choices are made because of healthcare, it’s true. I have clients dropping coverage, they just can’t afford it. I am an old libertarian. Principles evolve but it in this case, not that the gas tax went up 5 cents, we’re talking about one of the biggest problems we have.
Here’s what happens. Someone is 60 and no longer has coverage through their employer. What is the goal? Get to 65 and Medicare. Those 5 years are tough. But at 65 Medicare is a strong backbone program, with some of my clients paying only an additional $1500 per year per person (some chose to pay about $3500) on top of the about $1259 they pay into the Medicare program. We could say that’s not a problem, from 60 to 65.
One could say all I am doing is pointing out problems. Here’s an answer. Expand health saving accounts (not health reimbursement accounts). Why do you want one? It’s one the most tax efficient things going. Even the playing field. Either all health insurance is deductible in all cases from your taxable income without gotcha rules, without having to itemize, or none of it is. That goes for employer provided plans. This is going to help some small employers. They already granted me this ability. I am more talking about the employees of small businesses.
If you want to be the forgotten, work for someone who doesn’t provide health insurance, buy your own, and in many case get no effective deduction for it. Yes it’s deductible, subject to all your health costs exceeding 10% of your AGI and you having enough other deductions to itemize and at least one other I am not going to mention as I don’t have a whiteboard handy. Who gave us that? Gave us that for at least 2 decades? Why our congress did. Maybe that’s why I am a libertarian.
This is where the Medicare expansion to 55 proposed by Hillary could have helped you, or the public option that Obama wanted as an option in states that was squashed by insurance companies fearing their business model could not compete in efficiency. The public option, with its large national pool, would have helped these rural communities that have lost insurers due to the problems of a small pool.
Jim D:
You just rang a bell for me. My second cousin is in rural MN carrying on the family tradition of farming. Even if they were in MNSure (our ACA), in network is not working for them, it’s too far away. Us near Minneapolis, don’t have that problem with a number of nearby networks to choose from.
Clinton’s proposal would have worked but perhaps just in the short term. Without evidence I have concluded Medicare at about $1259 in premiums per year is subsidized and I guess that’s all of us paying those Medicare taxes. And just by the way, young immigrants would pay into it as well. Because when I see old people able to get Okay insurance for less than $3000 per year, I conclude, subsidy. And I am not saying they shouldn’t get that. I have some poor old clients. But when I conclude subsidy, I wonder about long sustain of the new deal.
Farmers by and large pay for their own health insurance unless one spouse gets it through their job, and may help explain why rednecks voted red.
The best solution would be Medicare for all. My guess is that Medicare for all would double your Medicare contributions, because I think currently Medicare accounts about half the total healthcare cost of the country, but then you wouldn’t need to look for health insurance, and everyone would be treated equally. This doubled contribution would be 2.9% or 5.8% for self-employed.
As I said, the public option would be perfect for those rural communities whether it is a national one or a state one. The ACA apparently allows states to set one up, but the states with large rural communities tend to be Republican, so that would be a non-starter. Gubmint takeover and all that.
The answers are illusive. People working (above the table) do pay into Medicare.
“The best solution would be Medicare for all.”
Best solution in what universe? Why not VA care for all? Why should veterans get exceptional care exclusively? Oh, they sometimes die on waiting lists to see a doctor. That’s right.
That reminds me, this actually happened to the wife of a longtime friend of mine who moved to the UK and was on the waiting list for an acute ulcer. She bled to death internally one night after waiting four weeks for her appointment, which was just two more weeks away. Apparently they were unlucky enough to live in the wrong area. No, there was hospitals nearby but the rationing worked by lottery attached to the postal zone. They lived in London. Can anyone in the UK here claim that NHS care is similar to the service you might receive for a competitive enterprise that needs your business and goodwill to survive? Just curious. Maybe I am for state run healthcare, equal and excellent for all, wealthy or destitute.
One of the major coverage provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the expansion of Medicaid eligibility to nearly all low-income individuals with incomes at or below 138 percent of poverty ($27,821 for a family of three in 20161). This expansion fills in historical gaps in Medicaid eligibility for adults and was envisioned as the vehicle for extending insurance coverage to low-income individuals, with premium tax credits for Marketplace coverage serving as the vehicle for covering people with moderate incomes. While the Medicaid expansion was intended to be national, the June 2012 Supreme Court ruling essentially made it optional for states.
As of September 2016, 19 states had not expanded their programs. Medicaid eligibility for adults in states that did not expand their programs is quite limited: the median income limit for parents in 2016 is just 44% of poverty, or an annual income of $8,870 a year for a family of three…
JCH:
When you hear of more people having health insurance, your quote explain a lot.
More than you want to know about MNSure:
Family of 4:
Beginning of Advanced Premium Tax Credit
About $48,000
Ending of Advanced Premium Tax Credit
About $96,000
Below about $48,000 in the above in MN is Medicaid or Minnesota Care. This is another thing my clients and I discuss. Elsewhere I had mentioned deductible IRA contributions and they can be used to move from above the threshold to below it in some cases. Both spouses could contribute. Easy for me to say as they have to come up with the money. Minnesota Care can involve having to pay monthly premiums. I’ve heard of up to $71 per adult but it could be higher.
The solution is single payor with hefty regulation.
Hillarycare/Romneycare/Obamacare/Trumpcare are the insurance Frankensteins cobbled together by the incompetent twits who oppose single payor.
“Flood plains are often defined by 100-year events.”
In 1982 I moved into an apartment in Petaluma, Cal. where two winters in a row were 100 year floods. Of course Petaluma had been settled for 130 years at that point, so how would they know what was a 100-year flood?
Exactly. You realize you can’t do it from one weather station. Luckily California has many more weather stations. Between them you can do statistics on the frequency rare events for the whole area.
You have missed Clayton’s point. One cannot accurately estimate the 100 year flood from 100 to 200 years of data. It would take at least 1000 years, and then only if climate were unchanging (that is, stationary), which it is not. Having multiple century scale records does not change this.
The failure to understand statistical sampling theory is probably the greatest failing in climate science today. Good physics applied to bad math.
The NOAA link gives you their methodology. Statistics are per methodology. If you have a better methodology, go for it.
Jim D wrote:
Ah, Jim D, do you have any knowledge of any technical subject at all? Like maybe high-school probability/statistics?
The “better methodology” is simply to admit that there is inadequate data to get meaningful results. Clayton is obviously right about this.
In the unlikely event that you actually want to learn anything about this, try googling “fat tails.”
“Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.”
Dave
You can always get results with error bars. Maybe those error bars are large, but they can always be given, and a result with error bars is better than no result at all, where you just throw your hands up and say ‘who knows, not a clue’ in response to people who need this type of information.
The NOAA design rainfall is for a different purpose entirely. They enable generation of synthetic storms for a range of design purposes – but they are not real storms. The behaviour of real storms is very different – and no two storms are alike either spatially or temporally. The overall purpose of design storms is to estimate flood flows on a consistent basis.
I can do it for any part of Australia using the resources in the link below – but you really need some depth of understanding to make sensible estimates. They generally made us do it by hand before plugging it into computers.
http://www.bom.gov.au/water/designRainfalls/revised-ifd/?year=2016
The NOAA rainfall maps are for design rainfall. They are based in frequency, intensityand duration analysis of individual rain gauges and are used to trace isohyets on maps to define parameters for design storms of specific frequency, duration and intensity. These in turn are used to model catchment flows using rainfall/runoff models.
Frequency analysis on the other hand – taking floods at a point as an example – is a simple process of selecting the largest flood in a year and ranking them. The largest flood in a 100 years is the 100 year flood. But it is more clearly understood as the probability (based on simplified assumptions) of a flood exceeding a flow in any year – a 1% annual exceedance probability. Flood intensity depends on multiple factors – and not just rainfall intensity. Rainfall at a point can be similarly analysed – but has far less significance.
e.g. https://water.usgs.gov/edu/100yearflood.html
Actual flows have a dynamic over minutes to millennia that are very different to the unavoidably simplified assumptions of synthetic rainfall generation.
“While investigating the discharge time series of the Nile River in the framework of the design of the Aswan High Dam, Hurst (1951) discovered a special behaviour of hydrological and other geophysical time series, which has become known as the “Hurst
phenomenon”. This behaviour is essentially the tendency of wet years to cluster into wet periods, or of dry years to cluster into drought periods. The term “Joseph effect” introduced by Mandelbrot (1977) has been used as an alternative for the same behaviour. Since its discovery, the Hurst phenomenon has been verified in several environmental quantities, such as wind power variations (Haslett & Raftery, 1989), global mean temperatures (Bloomfield, 1992), flows of the River Nile (Eltahir, 1996), flows of the River Warta, Poland (Radziejewski & Kundzewicz, 1997), monthly and daily inflows of Lake Maggiore, Italy (Montanari et al., 1997), annual streamflow records across the continental United States (Vogel et al., 1998), and indexes of North Atlantic Oscillation (Stephenson et al., 2000). In addition, the Hurst phenomenon has gained new interest today due to its relationship to climate changes (e.g. Evans, 1996).” op.cit.
Hurst phenomenon occur on all scales. It will almost guarantee that there will be multiple storms of about the same intensity in any year – loosely described in the media as storms with some return period. It doesn’t imply that there are more frequent high intensity storms. It is just journalists and amateurs like Jimmy framing a misguided narrative.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/moys-2002-2.png
Long term geophysical data suggests that the 20th century was relatively tranquil. A bit dry in Australia – but by no means the worst it has ever been.
Reblogged this on Random Thoughts from My Mind and the World and commented:
I laughed, I cried, I shook my head – another brilliant article from Judith Curry. Make sure to read her other great articles.
Nye’s Quadrant feeds perfectly into the Arrogance of Ignorance (enjoy) – https://syllamo.blogspot.ca/2016/07/the-arrogance-of-ignorance.html
It’s beyond concerning that the dump NYTimes movement is even occurring, a nod to control. As a non-scientist yet media reader, this should concern everyone, and will further erode trust and balance
Not really. Suggesting that the alarmists have no place at the present policy table is alarming them, but it is also true, so they should be alarmed. The NYTimes wants a place at that table.
Unless there is a conspiracy at Google this is what we have from the IPCC:
“The latter the atmospheric residence time of the greenhouse gas is a highly policy relevant characteristic.”
CO2:
“5 to 200 yr”
“No single lifetime can be defined for CO2 because of the different rates of uptake by different removal processes.”
https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/016.htm
There is a lack of focus. We want a tight distribution to make good policy. If ½ is being sunk is that considered about a 1 year residence time for ½?
We could argue that hardly any of the new CO2 is being sunk because older CO2 makes up more of the total and that’s being sunk.
What we may be after is an effective residence time where semantics and accounting gimmicks are not part of that.
“Terrestrial ecosystems play a significant role in the global carbon cycle and offset a large fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The terrestrial carbon sink is increasing, yet the mechanisms responsible for its enhancement, and implications for the growth rate of atmospheric CO2, remain unclear. Here using global carbon budget estimates, ground, atmospheric and satellite observations, and multiple global vegetation models, we report a recent pause in the growth rate of atmospheric CO2, and a decline in the fraction of anthropogenic emissions that remain in the atmosphere, despite increasing anthropogenic emissions.” https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13428
https://www.nature.com/article-assets/npg/ncomms/2016/161108/ncomms13428/images/m685/ncomms13428-f1.jpg
The increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is some 1.75ppm/year. The proportion remaining in the atmosphere is some 0.4. The change is related to the difference between CO2 greening and respiration in soils.
“Interdecadal 20th century temperature deviations, such as the accelerated observed 1910–1940 warming that has been attributed to an unverifiable increase in solar irradiance (4, 7, 19, 20), appear to instead be due to natural variability. The same is true for the observed mid-40s to mid-70s cooling, previously attributed to enhanced sulfate aerosol activity (4, 6, 7, 12). Finally, a fraction of the post-1970s warming also appears to be attributable to natural variability.” http://www.pnas.org/content/106/38/16120.full
The alternative paradigm suggests that natural warming has been underestimated in the 20th century – if so much of the warming will be lost this century. The corollary is that there will be continued greening and reduced soil respiration.
The slow carbon cycle originates in rock weathering.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/page2.php
It will certainly accelerate with warmer and wetter conditions – but dramatically with healthier and richer soil ecology. The latter suggests that we may actively intervene in the slow carbon cycle through better soils management.
Was thrilled to see my little meme – inspired by Dr. Curry’s blog – published here and on my birthday, no less. It’s very gratifying and thank you!
https://twitter.com/ClimateOpp/status/861371114592903168
“Trump’s critics are actively exploring the path to impeachment or the invocation of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, which allows for the replacement of a President who is judged to be mentally unfit…
With regard to Trump, however, the rule has been broken repeatedly. More than fifty thousand mental-health professionals have signed a petition stating that Trump is “too seriously mentally ill to perform the duties of president and should be removed” under the Twenty-fifth Amendment.” http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/how-trump-could-get-fired
Perhaps you should invoke the 25th on poor wee willie for an evident obsessional, compulsive disorder that makes him unfit for blogging?
As for Trump – there is a Goldwater precedent – apparently – for suing these people.
https://twitter.com/DavidDeeble/status/859780706729287680
Yes, after 1964 campaign, the APA adopted what is called “the Goldwater rule” declaring it is unprofessional conduct to declare mental fitness of someone you have not treated, and obviously a violation of doctor/patient confidentiality if you have. But of course these 50,000 clearly aren’t familiar with the standards of their profession.
Impeachment for being mentally unfit is not a grounds for impeachment. See Art. II, sec. 4: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Congress has no authority to do so under the 25th Amendment–that is reserved for the VP and a majority of the Cabinet to do so. Not surprisingly the raving left is going on about things they don’t understand–like climate change.
“The Framers of the Constitution planned ahead for the death of Presidents—hence, Vice-Presidents—but they failed to address an unnerving prospect: a President who is alive and very sick. Had Kennedy survived being shot, and been left comatose, there would have been no legal way to allow others to assume his powers. To fend off that possibility, the Twenty-fifth Amendment was added to the Constitution in February, 1967. Under Section 4, a President can be removed if he is judged to be “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” The assessment can be made either by the Vice-President and a majority of the Cabinet secretaries or by a congressionally appointed body, such as a panel of medical experts. If the President objects—a theoretical crisis that scholars call “contested removal”—Congress has three weeks to debate and decide the issue. A two-thirds majority in each chamber is required to remove the President. There is no appeal.”
It is not impeachment – apparently.
We can trust Chief to miss the obvious:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/how-trump-could-get-fired
And of course ClaytonE will chase down Chief’s squirrel – Freedom Fighters a free to fight whatever they want wherever they go.
“The GINI coefficient seems to be an entirely political measure, in that it is invoked for political reasons rather than economic ones.” Democrats here in Idaho spend a lot of time bemoaning that they never win statewide offices and are now a tiny curiosity of seats in the legislature. http://claytonecramer.blogspot.com/2015/10/and-i-thought-i-would-have-to-calculate.html
“For a lot of progressives, Idaho is everything wrong with conservative values, and places like Oregon and California are utopia. So what are the Gini coefficients for income by state? Not surprisingly Idaho is part of the most equal set of states. For 2011: Idaho is 0.433; California is 0.471; Oregon is 0.449. Amazing: a Republican controlled state has more income equality than states where Republicans don’t matter.”
“nd of course ClaytonE will chase down Chief’s squirrel – Freedom Fighters a free to fight whatever they want wherever they go.” Not sure what you mean. I pointed out that the New Yorker apparently hasn’t read the 25th Amendment, and 50,000 mental health professionals unaware of the standards of their profession are like the 100 German physicists who condemned “Jewish physics.”
> Not sure what you mean.
That the Goldwater Rule (which I cited a few times before you even appeared here) is quite irrelevant to the larger point. Teh Donald is a dangerous dude. Reading the quote may have sufficed. Reading Osnos’ article may also have helped realize that even for “leftists”, whatever that means, impeachment is a long shot. Which just goes on to show that being a Freedom Fighter may first and foremost be a reading issue.
Oh, and please don’t be like Chief and learn to click on the proper “reply” button.
You’re welcome.
Some of these comments appear without the reply link, at least in my browser.
That you think the belief of 50,000 mental health professionals that he is mentally unfit shows you either do not understand the Goldwater Rule or you do not consider it an important standard of professional conduct.
> That you think the belief of 50,000 mental health professionals that he is mentally unfit shows you either do not understand the Goldwater Rule […]
There’s a clause missing, ClaytonE.
Pray tell more about my thoughts about the Goldwater rule.
Here, have a cookie:
Yes poor wee willie – I did read the article. I admit I thought it was funny as – but these people appear to be madly serious.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/22/congressman-tells-girl-that-trump-is-more-dangerous-than-a-terrorist/
I have made a matrix of poor wee willieisms.
– Genders, unite!
– Make America small again!
– Demand fluidity of all genders! Support Women Without Borders!
– Make LGBT the dominant gender of human species!
– World currencies, unite! Repeal and replace the dollar with the North Korean won!
– Demand 150 won per hour minimum wage!
– Demand removal of capitalist borders!
– Europe and Syria, unite!
– Defend North Korean borders from U.S. Imperialism!
– North Korea and South Korea, unite under the glorious leadership of Kim Jong-un!
– Climatologists, unite! Take climate controls away from capitalists and hand them back to the people!
– Repeal and replace carbon with a different, climate-neutral element!
– Nationalize climate!
– Species, unite!
– Reparations to all extinct and endangered species, hunted and domesticated animals!
– Educators, unite! Weed out non-conformism in academia! Denounce and ostracize dissent among the students and faculty!
– Journalists, unite! Build the new Iron Curtain and make Russia pay for it!
– Demand complete and unconditional tolerance of these ideas! All who disagree must be sent to Gulag!
It is clearly a highly sane political stance aimed at saving the planet from Trump, economic growth and real liberal freedoms.
Poor wee willie seems to imagine that I am responding to him with any comment. It is far from the case.
clayton
you need to backtrack to where the reply link occurs which can be very many comments back. in this particular sub thread the link comes from Willard almost directly above
tonyb
“This issue is not whether [teh Donald] is mentally ill but whether he’s dangerous,”
So where does either impachment or 25th Amendment provisions apply just because the left thinks he dangerous? Bill Clinton was dangerous: Waco for example. And we know that he committed rapes, unlike just talking stupidly
More squirrels, ClaytonE.
I can play squirrel too:
Nice minimization, BTW.
Fewer than 1500 comments needed to hit 850,000. Time to start betting on when that happens?
Teh left – still living in a dream world. Loving it! :)
No little dance this time, jim2?
Height of the cold war, I remember
in one of those bleak news reels
my father used to watch on T.V.
in the middle of filming troop movements
and views of subdued people in grey
industrial towns, the camera moves in
to focus on soldiers, a smiling Cossack.
Suddenly he’s down on his haunches,
in a puddle, does the famous
cossack improbable movements, defiant
dance against the elements,O Kalinka,
– and everyone’s entranced.
Your poetry is exquisite Beth. Besides – I have loved cossacks since reading the remarkable Gurdjieff.
May I offer some advice?
“You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.” – Joseph Campbell
From the great myth maker himself. He says in ‘A hero with a thousand faces’ that we are all our own heroes. He surveyed the sweep of myth culminating now in a great coming together of diverse strands in the maelstrom of the zeitgeist – culminating in a new revelation emerging like the phoenix from the ashes in the eternal cycle of cultural destruction and rebirth. It is both the terror and the promise of the mythological and archetypal pantheon we each have within us.
To quote a critic. “Joseph Campbell is deep…balls deep…all up in your metaphysical psychology.”
Thank you chief.
I have a friend, a dancer, who’s father often said to her:
‘Never forget that you are a Cossack! )
Good interview today by JPMorgan’s CEO, Dimon. Although he’s a Democrat, he has the right ideas about what this country needs today, and it’s the furthest thing away from “the resistance”:
Excerpt
People get boxed up in personalities and stuff like that. The Trump administration’s [economic] agenda is the right agenda. Corporate taxes have been driving capital and brains and companies overseas for a decade. It has caused huge damage in investment and jobs and productivity. It was a mistake. We have to fix it. Counterintuitively, that usually helps middle-class wages, and lower-class wages, and job formation.
The second issue is regulation. If you talk to anyone involved in business — forget banks and big business — talk to small businesses — do it yourself, don’t ask me — they’ll tell you it’s crippling. Small-business formation is the lowest it has ever been in a recovery, and it’s really for two reasons. One is regulations and the second is access to capital for people starting new businesses.
Then there is infrastructure. You might be shocked to find out, we haven’t built a major airport for 20 years. China built 75 in the past 10 years. It takes 10 years to get all the permits to build a bridge today. Ten years? What happened to the good old can-do America? Where is “We get it done, we work together”? We’ve become this bureaucratic, stifling environment. I’m not talking about violating environmental things — I’m talking about building a bridge, getting things going, getting people to work together. Even some of my friends noticed there was a bridge in Cambridge being built across the Charles River. It was a teeny little bridge. It took six years. Don’t tell me that’s not corruption. I don’t care what you say — that’s corruption.
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/jamie-dimon-national-catastrophe-ringing-165236154.html
The new Low-Low down on Pasteur’s Quadrant– the ‘Pause’ is looking more and more like a Plateau:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-wine-idUSKBN17T2HH
That Bill Nye’s name is even a topic of discussion shows the ridiculousness the debate has descended to.
Hell, I am a better educator of science than Nye, let alone having better claim to education on the subject.
Judith Curry,
Multiscientific approaching is the key issue on climate problems. As practical researcher in metallurgical production industry I have experienced how to reach working solutions to multi-scientific problems – like to problems of climate changes, too: at first you have to learn to know the problem in practice; in reality you have to know potential issues influencing on the problem well enough; you have to know well enough theories related to the problem; you have to learn well enough to know necessary literature knowledge on the problem; you have to learn to utilize observations in reality and laboratory or other tests awailable well enough; and finally you have to find in reality, that your solution is working in reality.
Present key issues on climate change
Judith Curry’s statement ”how much warming is caused by humans is THE key issue of debate” is the most urgent one in the order of priority to be solved. The quicker the better that all the potentially unnecessary funding for man-made warming can be replaced by funding for the research on the main key question: how do we learn to adapt ourselves to natural climate changes and extreme weather events.
Undistinguished man-made warming
In the Rio conference 1992 there was not found any final evidence for the recent climate warming believed to be caused by human CO2 emissions especially from fossile fuels. Anyhow, risk of the believed man-made warming was regarded as such that – according to precautionary principle – cutting of anthropogenic CO2 emissions was considered to be necessary. But, as cutting of CO2 emissions according to the Kyoto protocol, in its entirety, proved to be disastrous, those as precausionary and cost-effective regarded measures failed. That was not caused only by disproportionate targets between state governments, but even by lack of knowledge concerning influences of both anthropogenic and total amount of atmospheric CO2 on climate warming.
Even the Paris agreement bases on hypotetic climate sensitivity adopted by IPCC – i.e. on increase of climate temperature, by using climate models, as CO2 content in atmosphere is doubled, without any evidence in reality. In addition to potential defeciency of climate models, the lack of evidence can be proved to be caused, for instance, by parameters based on circular argumentation.
Why the CO2 emissions from fossile fuels are not any threat?
Even though Svante Arrhenius proved that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, he did not regard it as any threat of climate warming. Instead he regarded any increase of CO2 content in atmosphere as useful for vegetation.
The climate sensitivity based on results of climate models adopted by IPCC is deeply uncertain and exaggerative, as Judith Curry has stated. But she seems not yet to be ready ‘to show how much warming is caused by humans’. My forecast is that she will agree with the scientists who say: ‘climate sensitivity can not be distinguish from zero’ (Cripwell, Wojick, Arrak etc; and even Scafetta and Lindzen have claimed that climate sensitivity is less than 1C or 0.5C).
The share of CO2 from fossile fuels in the recent total increase of CO2 content in atmosphere is minimal:
”As we well know CO2 content in atmosphere is controlled by striving for dynamic balance between all CO2 emissions from sources to atmosphere and all CO2 absorptions from atmosphere to other parts of environments. If the emissions are more than absorptions, the CO2 content in atmosphere is increasing, but if they are less, the CO2 content in atmosphere is decreasing.
Recently the CO2 content in atmosphere has increased about 2.2 ppm a year. As the total amount of CO2 emissions to atmosphere has then contained only about 4 % CO2 from fossile fuels, in this yearly increase of 2.2 ppm in the atmospheric CO2 content there has been only about 0.088 % CO2 from fossile fuels, at the most”; https://judithcurry.com/2017/03/20/discussion-thread-improving-the-interface-between-climate-science-and-policy/#comment-842716 .”
In my comment https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/10/the-new-climate-denial/#comment-838229 I have further written:
”In the same way as [water from] 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, [even] the more minimal influence of total CO2 content in atmosphere on climate warming has been proved by the observations, according [to] which trends of increase of CO2 content in atmosphere follow trends of 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.”
Concerning the recent climate warming in my comment https://judithcurry.com/2017/03/11/scott-pruitts-statement-on-climate-change/#comment-841843 I have tried to prove, by observations in reality, that the minimal influence of the recent CO2 content in atmosphere on the climate temperature is really working solution:
”At first I have been interested in the question why on the dry savannas in Africa any climate temperature during day time can be even about 70 C, but during night time that can drop below zero Celsius degrees. The frost in clear, dry atmophere of savanna during night time can be explained by the lack of water vapor as greenhouse gas in atmosphere. At the same time, according to pragmatic logic, it proves that influence of present CO2 content in atmosphere as greenhouse gas is not noticeable.
At second I have thought, why a smoke streak of jet plane in the sky sometimes can be seen, sometimes it can not be seen. On basis of what I have experienced it means that the clear sky without the kind of smoke streaks, in spite of presence on flying jet planes, is a consequence of low relative humidity in the air. The lack of water vapor as green house gas makes even climate get colder during night times. Correspondingly higher relative humidities in air lessen the cooling of climate during night times, and that higher humidity can make even water drops of smoke streaks be possible. Even though foehn winds are regarded as dry, the relative humidity in air seems sometimes to be still high enough to make smoke streaks of jet planes be possible.”
Summary
As anthropogenic CO2 emissions do not dominate the CO2 content in atmosphere, and as even total content of CO2 in atmosphere does not dominate the climate temperature, the influence of CO2 from fossile fuels – and even from other anthropogenic CO2 sources – is so minimal that it cannot be distinguished from zero. This means that cutting of anthropogenic CO2 emissions from any anthropogenic source is unnecessary and causes only losses.
May 12th 2017.
The Arctic Committee reported today about climate change “going on apace” to John Humphreys the senior BBC NEWS journalist in the Today programme.
Surprisingly Humphreys asked the arctic chairperson:
1. Why hasn’t the ice deminished in the Antarctic
And
2. Do you think in your opinion this is a
Crisis?
Not a lot but this is mainstream senior BBC media daring to question a climate scientist.
Great oaks from little acorns.
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