by Judith Curry
“I genuinely have the fear that climate change is going to kill me and all my family, I’m not even kidding it’s all I have thought about for the last 9 months every second of the day. It’s making my sick to my stomach, I’m not eating or sleeping and I’m getting panic attacks daily. It’s currently 1 am and I can’t sleep as I’m petrified.” – Young adult in the UK
Letter from a worried young adult in the UK
I received this letter last nite, via email:
“I have no idea if this is an accurate email of your but I just found it and thought I’d take a chance. My name is XXX I’m 20 years old from the UK. I have been well the only word to describe it is suffering as I genuinely have the fear that climate change is going to kill me and all my family, I’m not even kidding it’s all I have thought about for the last 9 months every second of the day. It’s making my sick to my stomach, I’m not eating or sleeping and I’m getting panic attacks daily. It’s currently 1am and I can’t sleep as I’m petrified. I’ve tried to do my own research, I’ve tried everything. I’m not stupid, I’m a pretty rational thinker but at this point sometimes I literally wish I wasn’t born, I’m just so miserable and Petrified. I’ve recently made myself familiar with your work and would be so appreciative of any findings you can give me or hope or advice over email. I’m already vegetarian and I recycle everything so I’m really trying. Please help me. In anyway you can. I’m at my wits end here.”
JC’s response
We have been hearing increasingly shrill rhetoric from Extinction Rebellion and other activists about the ‘existential threat’ of the ‘climate crisis’, ‘runaway climate chaos’, etc. In a recent op-ed, Greta Thunberg stated: “Around 2030 we will be in a position to set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control that will lead to the end of our civilization as we know it.” From the Extinction Rebellion: “It is understood that we are facing an unprecedented global emergency. We are in a life or death situation of our own making.”
It is more difficult to tune out similar statements from responsible individuals representing the United Nations. In his opening remarks for the UN Climate Change Conference this week in Madrid (COP25), UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that “the point of no-return is no longer over the horizon.” Hoesung Lee, the Chair for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said “if we stay on our current path, [we] threaten our existence on this planet.”
So . . . exactly what should we be worried about? Consider the following statistics:
- Over the past century, there has been a 99% decline in the death toll from natural disasters, during the same period that the global population quadrupled.
- While global economic losses from weather and climate disasters have been increasing, this is caused by increasing population and property in vulnerable locations. Global weather losses as a percent of global GDP have declined about 30% since 1990.
- While the IPCC has estimated that sea level could rise by 0.6 meters by 2100, recall that the Netherlands adapted to living below sea level 400 years ago.
- Crop yields continue to increase globally, surpassing what is needed to feed the world. Agricultural technology matters more than climate.
- The proportion of world population living in extreme poverty declined from 36% in 1990 to 10% in 2015.
While many people may be unaware of this good news, they do react to each weather or climate disaster in the news. Activist scientists and the media quickly seize upon each extreme weather event as having the fingerprints of manmade climate change — ignoring the analyses of more sober scientists showing periods of even more extreme weather in the first half of the 20th century, when fossil fuel emissions were much smaller.
So . . . why are we so worried about climate change? The concern over climate change is not so much about the warming that has occurred over the past century. Rather, the concern is about what might happen in the 21st century as a result of increasing fossil fuel emissions. Emphasis on ‘might.’
Alarming press releases are issued about each new climate model projection that predicts future catastrophes from famine, mass migrations, catastrophic fires, etc. However these alarming scenarios of the 21st century climate change require that, like the White Queen in Alice and Wonderland, we believe ‘six impossible things before breakfast’.
The most alarming scenarios of 21st century climate change are associated with the RCP8.5 greenhouse gas concentration scenario. Often erroneously described as a ‘business as usual’ scenario, RCP8.5 assumes unrealistic long-term trends for population and a slowing of technological innovation. Even more unlikely is the assumption that the world will largely be powered by coal.
In spite of the implausibility of this scenario, RCP8.5 is the favored scenario for publications based on climate model simulations. In short, RCP8.5 is a very useful recipe for cooking up scenarios of alarming impacts from manmade climate change. Which are of course highlighted and then exaggerated by press releases and media reports.
Apart from the issue of how much greenhouse gases might increase, there is a great deal of uncertainty about much the planet will warm in response to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide – referred to as ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’ (ECS). The IPCC 5th Assessment Report (2013) provided a range between 1 and 6oC, with a ‘likely’ range between 1.5 and 4.5oC.
In the years since the 5th Assessment Report, the uncertainty has grown. The latest climate model results – prepared for the forthcoming IPCC 6th Assessment Report – shows that a majority of the climate models are producing values of ECS exceeding 5oC. The addition of poorly understood additional processes into the models has increased confusion and uncertainty. At the same time, refined efforts to determine values of the equilibrium climate sensitivity from the historical data record obtain values of ECS about 1.6oC, with a range from 1.05 to 2.7oC.
With this massive range of uncertainty in the values of equilibrium climate sensitivity, the lowest value among the climate models is 2.3oC, with few models having values below 3oC. Hence the lower end of the range of ECS is not covered by the climate models, resulting in temperature projections for the 21st century that are biased high, with a smaller range relative to the range of uncertainty in ECS.
With regards to sea level rise, recent U.S. national assessment reports have included a worst-case sea level rise scenario for the 21st century of 2.5 m. Extreme estimates of sea level rise rely on RCP8.5 and climate model simulations that are on average running too hot relative to the uncertainty range of ECS. The most extreme scenarios of 21st century sea level rise are based on speculative and poorly understood physical processes that are hypothesized to accelerate the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. However, recent research indicates that these processes are very unlikely to influence sea level rise in the 21st century. To date, in most of the locations that are most vulnerable to sea level rise, local sinking from geological processes and land use has dominated over sea level rise from global warming.
To further complicate climate model projections for the 21st century, the climate models focus only on manmade climate change – they make no attempt to predict natural climate variations from the sun’s output, volcanic eruptions and long-term variations in ocean circulation patterns. We have no idea how natural climate variability will play out in the 21st century, and whether or not natural variability will dominate over manmade warming.
We still don’t have a realistic assessment of how a warmer climate will impact us and whether it is ‘dangerous.’ We don’t have a good understanding of how warming will influence future extreme weather events. Land use and exploitation by humans is a far bigger issue than climate change for species extinction and ecosystem health.
We have been told that the science of climate change is ‘settled’. However, in climate science there has been a tension between the drive towards a scientific ‘consensus’ to support policy making, versus exploratory research that pushes forward the knowledge frontier. Climate science is characterized by a rapidly evolving knowledge base and disagreement among experts. Predictions of 21st century climate change are characterized by deep uncertainty.
As noted in a recent paper co-authored by Dr. Tim Palmer of Oxford University, https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2019/11/26/1906691116.full.pdf, there is “deep dissatisfaction with the ability of our models to inform society about the pace of warming, how this warming plays out regionally, and what it implies for the likelihood of surprises.” “Unfortunately, [climate scientists] circling the wagons leads to false impressions about the source of our confidence and about our ability to meet the scientific challenges posed by a world that we know is warming globally.”
We have not only oversimplified the problem of climate change, but we have also oversimplified its ‘solution’. Even if you accept the climate model projections and that warming is dangerous, there is disagreement among experts regarding whether a rapid acceleration away from fossil fuels is the appropriate policy response. In any event, rapidly reducing emissions from fossil fuels to ameliorate the adverse impacts of extreme weather events in the near term increasingly looks like magical thinking.
Climate change – both manmade and natural – is a chronic problem that will require continued management over the coming centuries.
We have been told that climate change is an ‘existential crisis.’ However, based upon our current assessment of the science, the climate threat is not an existential one, even in its most alarming hypothetical incarnations. However, the perception of manmade climate change as a near-term apocalypse and has narrowed the policy options that we’re willing to consider. The perceived ‘urgency’ of drastically reducing fossil fuel emissions is forcing us to make near term decisions that may be suboptimal for the longer term. Further, the monomaniacal focus on elimination of fossil fuel emissions distracts our attention from the primary causes of many of our problems that we might have more success in addressing in the near term.
Common sense strategies to reduce vulnerability to extreme weather events, improve environmental quality, develop better energy technologies and increase access to grid electricity, improve agricultural and land use practices, and better manage water resources can pave the way for a more prosperous and secure future. Each of these solutions is ‘no regrets’ – supporting climate change mitigation while improving human well being. These strategies avoid the political gridlock surrounding the current policies and avoid costly policies that will have minimal near-term impacts on the climate. And finally, these strategies don’t require agreement about the risks of uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions.
We don’t know how the climate of the 21st century will evolve, and we will undoubtedly be surprised. Given this uncertainty, precise emissions targets and deadlines are scientifically meaningless. We can avoid much of the political gridlock by implementing common sense, no-regrets strategies that improve energy technologies, lift people out of poverty and make them more resilient to extreme weather events.
The extreme rhetoric of the Extinction Rebellion and other activists is making political agreement on climate change policies more difficult. Exaggerating the dangers beyond credibility makes it difficult to take climate change seriously. On the other hand, the extremely alarmist rhetoric has frightened the bejesus out of children and young adults.
JC message to children and young adults: Don’t believe the hype that you are hearing from Extinction Rebellion and the like. Rather than going on strike or just worrying, take the time to learn something about the science of climate change. The IPCC reports are a good place to start; for a critical perspective on the IPCC, Climate Etc. is a good resource.
Climate change — manmade and/or natural — along with extreme weather events, provide reasons for concern. However, the rhetoric and politics of climate change have become absolutely toxic and nonsensical.
In the mean time, live your best life. Trying where you can to lessen your impact on the planet is a worthwhile thing to do. Societal prosperity is the best insurance policy that we have for reducing our vulnerability to the vagaries of weather and climate.
JC message to Extinction Rebellion and other doomsters: Not only do you know nothing about climate change, you also appear to know nothing of history. You are your own worst enemy — you are triggering a global backlash against doing anything sensible about protecting our environment or reducing our vulnerability to extreme weather. You are making young people miserable, who haven’t yet experienced enough of life to place this nonsense in context.
Judith
Excellent analysis. It is fascinating to see how your position has a evolved.
Yes, Judith is a champion of common sense. But some statements…
“ Climate change – both manmade and natural – is a chronic problem that will require continued management over the coming centuries.”
…still miss the mark. Climate conditions require ADAPTATION since management is impossible.
Judith’s comment is quite accurate.
Regardless of the cause of adverse weather conditions, societies will still need to manage the expenditure of limited financial resources to determine what actions they wish to enact. Spending those resources mitigating CO2 emissions will be unlikely to positively impact the weather while leaving less funds for things that actually help reduce damage, namely building robust infrastructure.
You manage the impacts. It’s like the weather….if it rains you wear a raincoat and galoshes and carry an umbrella. You don’t have to adapt by growing webbed feet sprouting gills
Bravo! Bravissimo!
+100
Dr. Curry,
I’m a father of 2 and a grandfather of 2, you have had the courage, insight, and knowledge to reassure concerned kids of all ages for decades.
You are the perfect definition of Hero and we Love It!
Best to You and Yours this Holiday,
John
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
The letter from your Young Adult reveals child abuse. The promoters of this nonsense should be had up for psychological harm.
Some of the promoters are surely psychopaths, but I suspect that most are simply deluded. But whether uncaring or wilfully blind to the consequences, climate alarmists have impact that is severe and evil.
Ms Curry, thanks so much a rational discussion. I wish government schools would encourage their students to explore the science and economics behind Anthropogenic Global Warming instead of promoting hysteria.
Living through the traumatic experience of normal weather is what humanity has always done. What’s new in the Disinformation-Communication Age is, we now get to hear how poorly many cope with imagined ills of all types, from Bush- and now, Trump-Derangement syndrome to Hot World syndrome.
Climate change happens and is probably happening but can we be certain it will warm during the rest of this century? If it cools significantly the problems will be much more real.
I remember feeling the same way as your young letter writer about the Cold War & the hole in the ozone layer. I’m so grateful that you have taken the time to address this young persons concerns, now if only they’ll read it.
Judith: A job well done. I presume you are familiar with the work of Svensmark and Shaviv. If not, take a look – you will like it.
Excellent post. Fits with the disturbing headline in The Daily Mail newspaper https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7789463/Greta-Thunberg-arrives-Turin-Italy-star-turn-huge-climate-change-demonstration.html
“Greta Thunberg told cheering protesters today ‘we will make sure we put world leaders against the wall’ if they fail to take urgent action on climate change.”
She clarified at @GretaThunberg “… I apologise if anyone misunderstood this. I can not enough express the fact that I – as well as the entire school strike movement- are against any possible form of violence. It goes without saying but I say it anyway.”
It is refreshing to see her denounce violence. Its always worth emphasizing.
Yeah, her scriptwriters messed up and had to issue a squishy quasi-apology/cover story. Remember in the old days, when the adults advised kids to stay in school?
“The IPCC reports are a good place to start; for a critical perspective on the IPCC, Climate Etc. is a good resource.”
A bad place to start are the anti-science places such as Skeptical Science which are very alarmists and who masquarade as “science” websites
Dr. Judith, this is one of the sanest, clearest, calmest, and most sensible posts I’ve ever seen written about future climates.
My profound thanks, bookmarked, and will be shared
w.
You could also tell them that, for the first time in human history, we have the capacity to intercept and deflect any huge asteroid heading our way.
And when it comes to existential threats a football-pitch size asteroid makes global warming look like a walk in the park.
Uh, no we don’t.
Whadayamean David?!?
We have the same capacity to deflect asteroids as we do climate change.
Guterres is not a responsible individual, he is pursuing an extremist agenda.
I haven’t followed his installation as the UN head, but he seems to be the worst choice for that role. He’s a dangerous man.
A clear problem is the extensive use of modal verbs by the climate change community with an unsophisticated audience. Such words as ‘can’, ‘may’, ‘will’, ‘could’, ‘might’, ‘would’, and ‘should’ – along with soft terms like ‘possibly’, potentially’, etc. have an outsized effect on how information is received by others. As Chi Luu has stated, they introduce “very confused human feelings of uncertainty, possibility, obligation, permission and ability into the mix.” They introduce “linguistic hedging”. Yet, virtually every public statement from folks in the climate community use these terms instead of more precise probabilities. Most of we science types have learned to disregard or simply ignore such imprecise statements and predictions.
Use of modal verbs implies some uncertainty, which is appropriate, as Judith has so clearly pointed out. The problem comes when the public then interprets these statements as highly confident projections. That’s how we get ‘only 12 more years’ left before the planet is uninhabitable. Headline writers are the worst offenders.
La Nina is expected only on strong solar wind.
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/ocean/sst/anomaly/anim_full.html
You said:
“To further complicate climate model projections for the 21st century, the climate models focus only on manmade climate change – they make no attempt to predict natural climate variations from the sun’s output, volcanic eruptions and long-term variations in ocean circulation patterns. We have no idea how natural climate variability will play out in the 21st century, and whether or not natural variability will dominate over manmade warming.”
Is this correct? We have not obtained as lay people insight into models. But I consider your claims above to be sensational if natural variability is kept out of the models…
rgrds, Eystein SImonsen, Norway
It’s a bit hyperbolic, only really in regard to the sun. They superficially include a small effect for solar irradiance, they don’t look at for more important indirect effects. See Nir Shaviv, sciencebits.com
“recall that the Netherlands adapted to living below sea level 400 years ago”: Great reminder and yes, I see good prospects for the Dutch engineering firms specializing in flood control and land recovery. Ditto for French advanced nuclear plant engineering companies and finally for US fracked NatGas; unless the oponents (guess who they are?) have their way which would immensely please OPEC and Russia.
Nice post, but doubtful will have much impact on that desperately confused and depressed UK soul.
The whole climate thingy now has four very large basic problems:
1. The climate models have been falsified by observations (delta T, SLR, ECS). Every passing year this problem grows worse. It is not fixable because computational intractability forces parameterization, which must be tuned to best hindcast, which drags in the very large attribution problem. (We know the T rise from about 1920-1945 was mostly natural, yet it is indistinguishable from the rise from about 1975-2000.) CMIP6 reportedly worse than CMIP5.
2. The mitigation solutions (renewables) are economically (subsidies) and technically (grid intermittency and lack of grid inertia) ruinous with rising penetration.
3. Past alarmist prognostications have not materialized. Children know snow. Polar bears thrive. No climate refugees. Pacific Islands grow. Nothing has tipped—we have safely passed the point of no return several times.
4. The loudest CAGW advocates have been exposed as hypocrites by their own words (Greta Thunberg will line us up against the wall if she doesn’t get her way) and deeds (Gore, DiCaprio).
2. The mitigation solutions (renewables) are economically (subsidies) and technically (grid intermittency and lack of grid inertia) ruinous with rising penetration.
————————
I am more optimistic. The modern West is starting to waver on renewables. Data and prices keeps piling up as time passes. We need to slow it when we can which is about never in the U.S. until the disaster that it is, becomes undeniable. The Red states will come out on top, sellng to the Blue ones when the reversal happens. Trump’s election was more than we could’ve hoped for. States doubling down and him delaying at the Federal level. His re-election ought to just about cinch our victory and maybe get some nuclear power plants built.
Amen!
Thank You Professor Curry!
I believe those paarticipating in Climate Etc are comming closer to the truth about the Ice Ages and ALL IS WELL. Nature has everything under control. The only worry is those on the edge of the oceans will be in the middle of farm land and the very and northern and southern hemespheres will need to move twords the equator.
Sitting here thinking about why you do not see what controls the heat gain or loss of the earth. You think it is the height of the ocean. You think a one inch rise is significant. I say it is that the oceans reflecting the radiant heat back to outer space How much surface area of the oceans is lost if the oceans drop a tenth of an inch?
I too support JC’s sensible and science-based analysis and comment on climate change. One of the hallmarks of the Scientific Method is the ability to make accurate predictions based on substantial data. Above, there is a reference to the work of Svensmark and Shaviv. To these excellent sources, I would add Dr. Valentina Zharkova and her work on solar magnetic radiation and the predicted GSM – Grand Solar Minimum – starting in 2020 and lasting for three solar cycles until 2053.
The link below addresses why 1. CO2 is not the prime driver of Climate Change and 2. Why the upcoming GSM will challenge the alarmists and why their climate models fail validation.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9agyyxdbmem4dne/Path%20to%20GSM.pdf?dl=0
I am optimistic that we will see a change soon. It will be time to update our climate and energy policies and calm the fears of those that worry,
Reblogged this on Quaerere Propter Vērum and commented:
An absolute must-read for every person interested in climate. Thank you for putting it so succinctly, Dr. Curry.
Millennialism is not a modern phenomenon.
e.g. https://www.britannica.com/topic/millennialism
It can’t be stopped with logic and science. What can you say that they will listen to? They have rejected authority of whatever kind. A law unto themselves answerable only to Gaia. You don’t imagine that the intent of this young man was to seek advice? It was to subvert resistance to his magical thinking. We are creatures of myth and magic and demons are at loose in the zeitgeist. This usually ends in madness and war. Only a hero – a being of light with a 1000 faces – can save the day. I have an idea that they are everywhere fecund with a song cycle of renewal. You are with us or you are the dust of the ancien regime. 😊
https://www.facebook.com/robert.i.ellison/posts/10216595791549664
Poetically perceptive
😊
We need to understand our own minds. Perhaps the 1000 arms Chenrezig can help with that.
Absolutely. Joseph Campbell talked about the ‘special world’ of the unconscious – in which dwell myths and archetypes – gods and demons – angels and monsters. The question of whether it is reality or imagination hardly seems to matter when opening the soul to the universe of yourself without fear. Yet – this is exceptionally dangerous territory. One misstep and the dark prevails – the mind spirals into madness – the body seethes with anger – the spirit screams in fear. Hell indeed.
Ultimately – the objective is to consciously reject the darkness and become wholly a creature of light. Then we may dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Campbell – the inspiration for Star Wars – saw these separate stands of heroes paths coming together in the modern period to create a new synthesis – a new world.
“So . . . why are we so worried about climate change?”
All these given reasons are valid, but only a part of a deeper issue. Whatever is happening with the physical climate system, a culture based upon climate catastrophe has grown up over decades in the public domain, and has long since left science far behind (and is a massive source of bias back into science). Far from being a unique circumstance, cultures of this sort have occurred endlessly throughout history, religions being the main example but there are secular cultures too. The behaviour stems from long evolved characteristics that subvert our rationality, arising to support group cohesion. The latest features of XR and the Children’s strikes, are at the ‘millenarian cult’ end of this culture of climate catastrophe.
https://judithcurry.com/2019/07/29/child-prophets-and-proselytizers-of-climate-catastrophe/
The advice to young persons seems good in the abstract. But unfortunately in ‘learning about the science of climate change’, most people tend to vector down the knowledge networks they already culturally leaned towards to start with – which are likely to be biased one way or the other about the various science topics (also outside of tiny blogland and within mainstream media in the UK, being very catastrophe based, and in the US very polarised but often missing the actual science within both countries). The alternative of jumping straight into the IPCC technical chapters is probably too daunting for most youngsters (hence the network reliance to ‘decode’ it), maybe even for the SPMs, which anyhow aren’t free of their own bias. Climate Etc is indeed a great resource but how many would stumble on it?
In deprogramming from harmful fringe religions, a complete isolation period is helpful to allow the fear / emotive grip of existential narratives to dissipate, such that the rationality to consider things properly reasserts itself before risking any return to domain-related issues. So maybe, rather than plunging into the science while fear and irrationality still unfortunately and involuntarily dominate, a similar complete break would be a best first step. Say a 6 month complete absence of reading / listening to anything about climate change, before then stepping back in. Hard to achieve these days admittedly, but can disconnect all media feeds that might regularly propagate the topic, and flick channel on the TV, radio, computer whenever it turns up within more main-stream content such as the evening news or whatever. The words of the young and ‘pretty rational thinker’ from the UK emphasise this angle, and unfortunately that level of fear won’t dissipate for some time. This makes any objective investigation virtually impossible for most who find themselves in this hole (although the email itself is a hopeful sign, and some of course will be able to dig their way out without resorting to deprogramming techniques, but likely not the majority).
Your observation that taking a break from climate info is the best approach resonates with me. When I finally searched for confirming data for AGW three years ago, I found a lot of technical explanations of how it works (or is supposed to work). It was only after checking some “despicable” skeptics that I found disconfirmatory data and realized how misleading and unscientific the AGW claims are. If I hadn’t been starting with some scientific skepticism, I doubt that my research would have improved my understanding.
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.press.
Pingback: The toxic rhetoric of climate change by Judith Curry | wryheat
Agreeing with the others, this is a very sane, unemotive, factual post that show’s the author’s expertise. It expresses both the uncertainties and the bounds of the knowledge.
However, I know that it will be totally disregarded by those pushing for action now. They don’t want CO2 emissions to reduce. They want a new world political order where they are the commissars. Climate Change is only a means to their ends and it will never end well.
Don’t worry, Chris. The Most Powerful Man in the World, POTUS Donald J. Trump, will defang, defeat and dismantle the new world order. Even if it takes ten years. Impeach that!
I never understand how a society based on sustainable energy is supposed to be more controlling than one based on fossil fuels.
OPEC sets the worldwide price on oil. Isn’t this a world political order where they are the commissars?
Are you still in the 70s David? OPEC hasn’t set the price for decades and AFAIK, they have never traded in coal
“I never understand how a society based on sustainable energy is supposed to be more controlling than one based on fossil fuels.”
I can help you with that. Wind/solar cannot actually power modern society- that’s why it’s always accompanied by conservation demands and the need for global treaties that attempt to prevent nations from cheating and using actual energy. In order to make wind/solar appear to work, a very centralized source of political power must have control over energy use by individuals, companies, and nations because pretty much any other alternative would provide an unprecedented competitive advantage. Which is also one reason why some in the movement would prohibit a competitive economy.
Luckily, the world has emissions-free alternatives that don’t require this level of control such as nuclear power. If people ever become concerned about CO2 emissions, this alternative will be adopted.
Some climate scientists, such as James Hansen, are concerned enough about CO2 to call for nuclear power. Many of today’s climate scientists, however, have determined the threat of man-made warming is so minor that it is safe to prioritize political revolution over any actual emissions action. Global consensus is settling on these scientists’ conclusion for the most part. Climate change leader Germany, for example, is now committed to replacing nuclear power with fossil fuels (gas imported from Russia) and is asking France to follow suit.
The political revolution never had a chance, of course, but incoherent youth are neither new nor worrisome. Remember, it was the flower children of the ’60s who ended up running the companies in the 1980s and 1990s- those that we all called the decades of greed.
Jeff,
In what ways have these countries devolved into totalitarian hellholes?
“According to data compiled by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, there are seven countries already at, or very, near 100 percent renewable power: Iceland (100 percent), Paraguay (100), Costa Rica (99), Norway (98.5), Austria (80), Brazil (75), and Denmark (69.4). The main renewables in these countries are hydropower, wind, geothermal, and solar.”
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-05-24/a-100-renewable-grid-isnt-just-feasible-its-already-happening/
The main renewables in those countries, with the exception of Denmark, are hydropower, hydropower, hydropower, hydropower, hydropower, and hydropower. So, what’s your point.
hydropower
Iceland 75%
Paraguay 100%
Norway 99%
Costa Rica 80%
Austria 75%
Brazil 80%
With the exception of Brasil, those countries have small populations and don’t use a lot juice.
Apparently Dave Appell wants to build a whole lot of dams in the US and forgot that it is the Sierra Club and Greenpeace that oppose them rather than the running dog capitalists.
By all means, Mr. Appell, build all the dams you wish. Anyone who says “no” is just a climate denier. Just like the folks who oppose nuclear.
The US west is pretty much dammed out.
“The US west is pretty much dammed out.”
CA is damned by politics, not dammed out.
Some technologies would require unpalatable coercion to implement across economies. But we have a winner.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/styles/borealis_photo_gallery_large_respondmedium/public/2018/01/f47/Capacity%20Factors%20for%20Utility%20Scale%201200×630-01.png
David Appell: OPEC sets the worldwide price on oil. Isn’t this a world political order where they are the commissars?
You are behind the times. OPEC had some success in keeping prices high for a few decades, but less success recently. Prices are also “set” by how much consumers are willing to pay. At sufficiently high prices of oil from OPEC, consumers switch to other sources, such as the non-government-mandated recovery of oil from shale and via fracking.
David Appell: I never understand how a society based on sustainable energy is supposed to be more controlling than one based on fossil fuels.
You are confused. It is a society based on government control that is more controlling than a society with a (somewhat regulated) free market. California is not more “controlling” because it is “based on” sustainable energy but because government has mandated a renewable fuel standard, and because government is prohibiting the development of available petroleum and natural gas resources.
“Rather than going on strike or just worrying, take the time to learn something about the science of climate change.”
That is the best advice possible. Not only is it a good message for the young, but it is equally valuable for those who are older and for those who should know better than to be taken in so easily. Learn the history and what the science says and rely less on the media for their interpretation of what the science says.
Having accepted global warming and even CAGW in the 1980s, I had no reason to question the consensus narrative. Because of Climategate, I began to research the science and I read hundreds of studies, reports and contemporary news articles that were written over the last century. Each year of digging down deep has made me less concerned than I was the previous year. The holes in the establishment line are simply too numerous. Just this morning I read papers on the history of droughts in Africa. Among the work was this “severe droughts lasting decades, and even centuries, were the norm in West Africa over the past 3,000 years.” Regardless of the subject matter, I have yet to find conditions that are unprecedented.
The reason the young are so vulnerable to indoctrination is that they can’t rely on their life experiences to counter the incessant messaging they hear daily, including from their teachers.
“Rather than going on strike or just worrying, take the time to learn something about the science of climate change.”
What they are learning in nearly all schools is that they are doomed, unless they convince the stupid adults to give up meat, lights, heat, shoes, etc. Let them stay on strike. They will get in touch with reality, when they have to get jobs to feed themselves.
Among the work was this “severe droughts lasting decades, and even centuries, were the norm in West Africa over the past 3,000 years.” Regardless of the subject matter, I have yet to find conditions that are unprecedented.
Do you suppose a west African drought today might have just a few more repercussions for society than one a thousand or three years ago?
And who is saying AGW conditions have to “unprecedented” in order to be a serious problem? Nobody.
It speaks to natural variability and just one more piece of evidence that what we are experiencing is not only CO2 impacts. It also counters the freak out narrative that every weather event is proof of AGW. It’s the ignorance of the past that is being exploited by the cultists to frighten the children.
You do grasp that don’t you.
cerescokid commented
It also counters the freak out narrative that every weather event is proof of AGW.
I don’t see any scientists saying that. They say AGW is having an impact on extreme weather events.
“Explaining Extreme Events in 2018 from a Climate Perspective”
https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/explaining-extreme-events-from-a-climate-perspective/
You also don’t see scientists disown the apocalyptic tone of media propaganda. When they speak up to provide perspective they will gain some credibility. Now, they let the more stilted views permeate the public discourse without a peep.
You also don’t see scientists disown the apocalyptic tone of media propaganda.
I see it all the time.
I think the point is that history challenges the AGW narrative. In other words, there is nothing novel here to justify the notion that fossil fuel emissions cause drought.
No, it confirms it.
The science says warming’s changes in the hydrological cycle make wet areas wetter and dry areas drier.
Besides, warming always makes droughts worse, by increasing evaporation rates.
David Appell: The science says warming’s changes in the hydrological cycle make wet areas wetter and dry areas drier.
the science is not that precise. It is especially unclear about net effects of warming in places that alternate between wet and dry (which includes almost all land areas). However, there is consistent evidence that increased CO2 makes plants (crop varieties and others) more resistant to drought.
The more severe the variability of the past is simply means the climate is sensitive to radiative perturbations. That’s why you’re praying for the negative phase of the AMO: to cool the world. It does not have to be an unprecedented negative phase.
Unfortunately, it’s largely a fantasy.
Well said, Judith. Another arrow in the collective quiver.
All well put. Perhaps a bit too ‘sciency’ for our 20 year old UK woman. Hopefully she will unpack it all in a manner that lessens her anxiety.
When discussing the warming issue with those who are likewise afflicted with “the end is near” anxiety the question always comes up, “If it is not true why would ‘they’ be doing this?” Some feel that the boiling frog scenario is a suitable proxy for biospheric collapse and though disingenuous will support it convinced that a greater good will prevail.
But truly, CAGW has been ‘cooking’ since the 60s. I am comfortable with the notion that a war weary world has been given a new enemy to affect social cohesion. Times have changed. The state can no longer realize critical mass by labeling other people the enemy. So the labels now extend to intangibles like “terror” and “global warming”. We are encouraged to fight.
Galbraith’s, ‘Economic Flywheel’ was realized in war spending: Spending on perpetual war provided a bias, a base level of economic activity. Perhaps all of this ‘Green New Deal’ talk will see the sick money pull out war and be put into resilient infrastructure in the name of ‘fighting climate change’.
I can’t shake the feeling that there is something sinister in all of this given the rhetoric. We have been given a new enemy to fight: Ourselves. “The cause of our peril is anthropogenic”, seems like a parent trying to control behavior using guilt and shame.
If we are to restore sanity (Ha!) and stop traumatizing our children we are going to have to deal with the why part. One point is irrefutable, if the state regulates carbon the state have effectively seized the means of production. Given regulatory capture, by definition, it is fascism.
The “boiling frog” analogy applies to the motivation for the hoax. As Maurice Strong acknowledged, he was a socialist operating as a capitalist. With WW II in the past, a new global threat was needed to raise anxiety and soften resistance to more government control. AGW/climate change seemed to be just what was needed. Starting slow with the Earth Summit, followed by the IPCC/COP process, the rhetoric has been gradually increased. As Dr. Curry knows, science has been corrupted in the service of bolstering the narrative. Now we have “scientists tell us” we must dramatically curtail everything. And scientists, economists, medical doctors, etc. claiming we need carbon taxes to save the planet. It’s a mad, mad world we’re in now.
Hoax??
Do you think the Earth doesn’t emit infrared radiation, or do you think CO2 doesn’t absorb it?
Ddwieland: The “boiling frog” analogy applies to the motivation for the hoax.
“Hoax” is also “toxic” rhetoric.
The chief huckster (so to speak) is Al Gore, and he is a sincere true believer who wants, in the classic American tradition, “to do well by doing good”; same as the sellers of petroleum products; and same as government-funded researchers.
“As our nonlinear world moves into uncharted territory, we should expect surprises. Some of these may take the form of natural hazards, the scale and nature of which are beyond our present comprehension.” https://www.pnas.org/content/116/49/24390
Should we interpret Judith’s words as a repudiation of tipping point? Possibly not.
https://judithcurry.com/2018/08/08/hothouse-earth/
What to do about it is the truly wicked problem. Judith’s rote bullet points are repeated above. Expanding on them would be a better use of Heartland resources. Else we get this.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/02/this-report-will-change-your-life-what-zero-emissions-means-for-uk
http://www.ukfires.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Absolute-Zero-online.pdf
There is a considerable amount of excellent science and modelling.
e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0310-1
Yet skeptics believe they can turn back the tide with imprecations and junk science. Magical thinking all their own.
RIE: your omni presence here is IMO boring, however: please define one of your most used phrases: Whalt are “sceptics”? Everybody who doesen’t confirm your opinions? My hint to you: count to three b4 you push the “post comment” knob.
That’s a bad faith argument Frank. And skeptics define themselves as skeptics.
my hint was: count to three, not two!
You at least usually discuss science. I find your comments far too limited in scope – the forcing/feedback paradigm of the IPCC rather than the dominant dynamical complexity paradigm – to be of any interest. The former leads to the faux precision of energy budgets. The latter to uncertainty.
“We don’t know how the climate of the 21st century will evolve, and we will undoubtedly be surprised. Given this uncertainty, precise emissions targets and deadlines are scientifically meaningless.” JC
Find me a tipping point (apart from in mankind’s technological capabilities) on any plausible set of assumptions in the next century.
Will epochs do? Several likely this century – with profound implications for temperature, biology and hydrology. With shifts possible far beyond decades to centuries and millennia.
e.g. – https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2009GL042239 – https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/7/074025/pdf – https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/7/eaax0087
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/tpi-sst.png
AMOC;
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL076350
Or clouds?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0310-1
Runaway ice sheet feedbacks or evaporating cloud. Both are plausible scenarios. We know from the history of the planet that we are heading for a tipping point – we just don’t know when.
e.g. https://history.aip.org/climate/rapid.htm
But how does that relate to innovative, cost competitive energy, building resilience to whatever happens for whatever reason and returning carbon to soils and ecosystems which is where it does most good for biodiversity, food security and a drought and flood tolerant agriculture?
The one type of tipping point that is well known is the change in the earth’s polarity. I’m not sure how quickly it occurs, but its existence is irrefutable.
Of course ‘it could get bad’.
https://undark.org/2018/01/26/books-alanna-mitchell-spinning-magnet/
Fantastic summary. Thank you
This is my doomed face after a wash & dry …
U.N. head demands bolder climate action or ‘we are doomed’
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-accord-guterres/u-n-head-demands-bolder-climate-action-or-we-are-doomed-idUSKBN1YF1CF
Wait. What?
Man fined for dud doomsday warning
http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/man-fined-for-dud-doomsday-warning/story-fn6ck55c-1226080950490
“Should we interpret Judith’s words as a repudiation of tipping point? Possibly not.”
Sane folk can only hope it is the tipping point.
Yes I predict that the future will resemble the past.
“We need to raise the bar on how we think about the possible worst case scenario for climate change.” JC
In order to protect us from a naturally dangerous climate, we need energy, lots of it. It needs to be affordable and plentiful. Without energy we are vulnerable to extreme and normal weather as well as climate change regardless of its causes. The alarmist want to take away the best energy sources. Their worldview invites catastrophe, ironically.
“If we do this, we will find new ways to produce nuclear energy safely, cleanly and at much lower cost.” Christina A. Back Ph.D. Vice President, Nuclear Technologies and Materials, General Atomics – https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/0/4/04538782-fd9e-4bbf-bc76-7cd0280f3e57/1C0E30F99621D75C4CCE9D80F92E0918.back-testimony-09.13.2018.pdf
This is a winnable argument. Nuclear that is – not fossil fuels. Talking to the middle ground without skeptic polemic might work.
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/W4NXb5r7iXS4IjiqNhXKHCOAlfA=/0x0:1081×979/1120×0/filters:focal(0x0:1081×979):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/16184383/NUCLEAR.jpg
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/23/18507297/nuclear-energy-renewables-voters-poll
The cladding was developed for GA’s EM2 advanced nuclear reactor – but is being marketed in a number of configurations. It won’t melt at any conceivable reactor temperature and doesn’t evolve explosive hydrogen. What do we want? No more Fukushimas. When do we want it…
http://www.ga.com/Websites/ga/images/BlogFeaturedImages/dr-back-senate-committee2.jpg
‘Dr. Christina Back, right, shows an innovative silicon-carbide cladding for Accident Tolerant Fuel to members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works during her recent testimony’
Agreed, more nuclear solves lots of problems. It’s by far the safest and has the highest energy density, and eventually nuclear fusion. Unless you’ve been duped by the alarmist propaganda, you should favor the continued use of clean burning fuels while we transition to nuclear. Solar and wind are niche energy sources only. They use lots of limited natural resources, require enormous land area, are expensive to mine and manufacture, and are damaging to the environment. They also require energy storage that does not yet exist in a competitive market. Wind turbines are an absurd and expensive boondoggle.
Well yes. But I think there needs to be a transition from fossil fuels to anything else based purely on future supply and demand. The eggs in a basket dilemma. On the other hand there is enough fissionable material left in conventional nuclear ‘waste’ to power the US for 400 years. It must of course be practical and cost competitive.
We in Australia have some 7% renewables and 7% hydro with a capacity factor of 12%. Water supply limits – but the hydro electricity was an adjunct to supplying water to one of the planets food bowls so it doesn’t matter . There is no practical way to increase renewable penetration right now. We have reached the renewables target and are winding subsidies back to zilch in 2030. It works, adds about 10% to my electricity bill and has seen some spectacular improvements is cost and performance. Going further will require some out of the box thinking.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/high-temp-electrolysis.png
So we can at great expense not solve 25% of the emissions problem – or provide electricity, process heat and transport fuels (from hydrogen) and solve 70% of the problem. The rest is largely from agriculture and forestry and that can be solved by other means.
I meant to include this from the World Nuclear Association.
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nuclear-applications/industry/nuclear-process-heat-for-industry.aspx
Nuclear power is the Luddites greatest and longest victory. It’s starting to turn back on itself with a few states trying to virtue signal with their existing plants. I’ll this for the French, for the insult they take, they beat our butt on nuclear power.
Accountable chaos aye? Sugihara is one of my favorites.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/chaos-theory-in-ecology-predicts-future-populations-20151013 I forgot about that post. “Sugihara’s team has developed an approach based on chaos theory that they call “empirical dynamic modeling,” which makes no assumptions about salmon biology and uses only raw data as input. In designing it, the scientists found that sea surface temperature can in fact help predict population fluctuations, even though the two are not correlated in a simple way. Empirical dynamic modeling, Sugihara said, can reveal hidden causal relationships that lurk in the complex systems that abound in nature.” Which address what I see as a problem of dealing with chaos with climate modelling. And we have salmon to boot. Where forecasting is material. The boats almost always have catch limits. And in defense of Scripps that where he works.
Reblogged this on Utopia, you are standing in it!.
The climate conversation unfortunately has been driven to a state where moderation is intolerable. The notion of moderation in all things, or seeking for the golden mean has been excluded. Even the suggestion of seeking a middle way is impossible in the current context and is vilified and pilloried as somehow not only scientifically denialistic but outright immoral. One result is an unfortunate but natural stimulation of emotional reactions on both sides. It is a sad state of affairs. Dr Curry is a beacon of light in a miasma of darkness.
All the arguments surrounding “CAGW worry” have one thing in common, theories that evolve around future technology remaining static, being near equal to today: “RCP8.5 assumes unrealistic trends long-term trends for population and a slowing of technological innovation.” There isn’t anything sober to anticipate slowing technological innovation as a probable outcome.
There’s no need to waste time in describing the metrics behind the ongoing exponential advancements in technology; if one must be educated on this subject, they’re the problem.
The most disconcerting thing about CAGW is the industry of activist groups who have amplified the chorus, adding chaos to the subject by using radical disinformation, it’s disconcerting only because these represent the vanguard for “the narrative”; yet they couldn’t be any further from actual science for which they falsely proclaim to be adherents to, in reality they’re usually bobbleheads of confirmation biases.
The whine from the sycophantic constellation of activist groups remains redundant and tireless in its assault, simpatico with the willing Leftist medias desires to effect the masses, emboldened mostly in their desire for political change. They find usefulness in fascist tactical propagandistic devices. Yet if the end of humanity is truly the focus of their concerns, then the horrors of fascism brings far greater risks to that end. This is what makes CAGW the most monumental of a red herring exercises ever used to facilitate political change known to humankind.
Scientist activists can only garner power when the plurality of non activist climate scientists, those who don’t believe the CAGW narrative, allow it to happen. Anecdotally the non believers of CAGW, while not active participants in the charade, likely share the same politics as the activists (using the politics of academics as the litmus); this facilitates one of two things: 1) either noninvolvement (out of sight, out of mind), or 2) fear of retribution (likely the latter weighs heavy). But those who don’t step up to denounce propaganda are forever culpable as silent partner facilitators. What remains is the integrity of those who are not willing to compromise science, and who speak out against bias and untruths. These are the “activists” who discriminate between right from wrong (Dr. Curry as example), they’re able to separate science from politics, to protect the integrity of science.
For the sake of science integrity, and for the many climate scientists who don’t believe in the relevance of CAGW, they should be much more outspoken in argument. But politics manipulates climate science, and it reeks. It’s politics that removes much of the impetus to argue against the grain in climate science. For many anti CAGW scientists, I suspect that while they may see that the emperor does not have any clothes, through political alignment there’s personal advantage to allow him remain as a naked emperor. These are the scientists who paid for a label.
Thank you, JC
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Judith you say ” We have no idea how natural climate variability will play out in the 21st century, and whether or not natural variability will dominate over manmade warming.” This is simply untrue. Given the last 15 years of Solar activity and temperature date, simple common sense suggests that a Millennial Solar activity peak was reached in 1991 +/- and a corresponding global temperature and turning point from warming to cooling was reached at 2004+/-.It’s not “rocket science” or a “wicked problem” in the long term. Short term weather forecasting is much more difficult.
Here is the Abstract from my 2017 paper linked below
“This paper argues that the methods used by the establishment climate science community are not fit for purpose and that a new forecasting paradigm should be adopted. Earth’s climate is the result of resonances and beats between various quasi-cyclic processes of varying wavelengths. It is not possible to forecast the future unless we have a good understanding of where the earth is in time in relation to the current phases of those different interacting natural quasi periodicities. Evidence is presented specifying the timing and amplitude of the natural 60+/- year and, more importantly, 1,000 year periodicities (observed emergent behaviors) that are so obvious in the temperature record. Data related to the solar climate driver is discussed and the solar cycle 22 low in the neutron count (high solar activity) in 1991 is identified as a solar activity millennial peak and correlated with the millennial peak -inversion point – in the RSS temperature trend in about 2003. The cyclic trends are projected forward and predict a probable general temperature decline in the coming decades and centuries. Estimates of the timing and amplitude of the coming cooling are made. If the real climate outcomes follow a trend which approaches the near term forecasts of this working hypothesis, the divergence between the IPCC forecasts and those projected by this paper will be so large by 2021 as to make the current, supposedly actionable, level of confidence in the IPCC forecasts untenable.”
These general general trends were disturbed by the Super El Nino of 2016/17. The effect of this short term event have been dissipating so that “If the real climate outcomes follow a trend which approaches the near term forecasts of this working hypothesis, the divergence between the IPCC forecasts and those projected by this paper will be so large by 2021 as to make the current, supposedly actionable, level of confidence in the IPCC forecasts untenable.”
See my 2017 paper “The coming cooling: Usefully accurate climate forecasting for policy makers.”
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0958305X16686488
and an earlier accessible blog version at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-coming-cooling-usefully-accurate_17.html
And /or My Blog-posts http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-millennial-turning-point-solar.html ( See Figs)
and https://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-co2-derangement-syndrome-millennial.html
also see the discussion with Professor William Happer at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2018/02/exchange-with-professor-happer-princeton.html
Except for the part where global temperatures continue to increase.
From WUWT
Scissor
What is your definition of large in “…the divergence between the IPCC forecasts and those projected by this paper will be so large by 2021 as to make the current, supposedly actionable, level of confidence in the IPCC forecasts untenable.”?
Reply
Dr Norman Page
December 15, 2019 at 10:20 am
Scissor
My comment says “These general trends were disturbed by the Super El Nino of 2016/17. The effect of this short term event have been dissipating so that “If the real climate outcomes follow a trend which approaches the near term forecasts of this working hypothesis, the divergence between the IPCC forecasts and those projected by this paper will be so large by 2021 as to make the current, supposedly actionable, level of confidence in the IPCC forecasts untenable.”
Check the RSS data at http://images.remss.com/data/msu/graphics/TLT_v40/time_series/RSS_TS_channel_TLT_Global_Land_And_Sea_v04_0.txt
I pick the Millennial turning point peak here at 2005 – 4 at 0.58
I suggest that if the 2021 temperature is lower than that (16 years without warming ) the crisis forecasts would obviously be seriously questionable and provide no secure basis for restructuring the world economy at a cost of trillions of dollars.
The El Nino RSS peak was at 2016 – 2 at 1.2
Latest month was 2019-11 at 0.71
However the whole UNFCCC circus was designed to produce action even without empirical
justification. See
https://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-co2-derangement-syndrome-millennial.html
” United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, later signed by 196 governments.
The objective of the Convention is to keep CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that they guessed would prevent dangerous man made interference with the climate system.
This treaty is a comprehensive, politically driven, political action plan called Agenda 21 designed to produce a centrally managed global society which would control every aspect of the life of every one on earth.
It says :
“The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the
causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or
irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing
such measures”
Apocalyptic forecasts are used as the main drivers of demands for action and for enormous investments such as those in the new IPCC SR1.5 report .”
COP failure
I have been writing about the climate alarmism tearing itself apart for months now.
https://www.cfact.org/2019/09/28/is-climate-alarmism-tearing-itself-apart/
The gulf between radicals and moderates has now hit the grand COP 25 summit in Madrid.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50795294
Be great if they cannot even settle on a decision! If they do it will still be denounced by the radicals. No major country can promise what they want.
Demanding the impossible makes interesting politics.
So now we have two very different versions of the warmest rhetoric and a lot of people on each side. I call them the hysterics (Greta, XR, etc.) and the moderates. The Paris Accord reflects the slow moving moderate view. It turns out that a lot of national delegations are taking the hysterical view, especially the small island states, the least developed countries, and the Africans (all of which stand to make the most money).
The standard COP compromise is unacceptable to the hysterics, who are not prepared to compromise. So Madrid is deadlocked and may collapse with no decisions made. This is why I cherish the hysterics. They are wrecking the movement.
It is like I am fighting an enemy and suddenly he is having a civil war. I am all for that.
“ Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
Napoleon
I joined an Extinction Rebellion protest in Melbourne as I was wandering past as the focus was the environmental protection of native forests and vulnerable coastal areas. There was not a single sign that said ‘coal’, ‘mine’ or even ‘Greta’.
The deep climate anxiety felt today is similar to what was a prevailing mood during the height of the Cold War and the fear of a ‘nuclear winter’ arising from the strategy of MAD (mutually assured destruction). An acknowledgment of the worst case scenario (not inevitability) and goodwill dialled back the doomsday clock.
Do we need a ‘climate clock’? If so what time is it (between 11.00pm and midnight)?
“Do we need a ‘climate clock’? If so what time is it (between 11.00pm and midnight)?”
It’s daylight savings time for activists, so move the dial back to less than 10 years to oblivion. Since it’s not a perfect science, the exact setting is only relevant to your feelings.
It’s been flashing 12:00 since it was plugged in.
Absolutely. Join the solution and not the problem. Although I do wish they would stop whinging about selling the coal to India that supports their Paris commitments. On the the hand – I don’t know what the time is.
“The coastal ecosystems of mangroves, tidal marshes, and seagrass meadows provide numerous benefits and services that are essential for climate change adaptation along coasts globally, including protection from storms and sea level rise, prevention of shoreline erosion, regulation of coastal water quality, provision of habitat for commercially important fisheries and endangered marine species, and food security for many coastal communities. Additionally, these ecosystems sequester and store significant amounts of coastal blue carbon from the atmosphere and ocean and hence are now recognized for their role in mitigating climate change.” https://www.thebluecarboninitiative.org/about-blue-carbon
Mangroves, tidal marshes, and seagrass meadows are exactly the reason why Dutch sea walls should not be seen as an adaptation panacea. Fragile coastal areas with the ability to absorb plenty of carbon dioxide need protection as they expand into low lying areas. But this is yet another conversation.
It is a conversation that goes to the heart of the topic.
No! https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0543-4.epdf?shared_access_token=IemqaDXjp59Xe4vx9SYpMtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PHAItqILlRm_HHBm_TdKN2W4fclucYeFPP7FPSpe4YZCMx6e3jOvyKFNEN4tDVEsxhypkjCeaXw5HrYv5x1N4z6OOPAlKiCRowdURrPb_LMA%3D%3D
We can’t scientifically justify a clock? I think that’s pretty well established. I think the clock is broken. Good news is – it is right twice a day,.
‘We don’t know how the climate of the 21st century will evolve, and we will undoubtedly be surprised. Given this uncertainty, precise emissions targets and deadlines are scientifically meaningless. We can avoid much of the political gridlock by implementing common sense, no-regrets strategies that improve energy technologies, lift people out of poverty and make them more resilient to extreme weather events.” JC
Malcolm
I agree with many of the environmental concerns. The trouble is that it has been totally conflated with climate. If there were a climate clock I would place it at 12 noon. We live in relatively benign times.
tonyb
You have it backwards Tony. The purpose of restoring agricultural soils, woodland, wetlands, savanna and reclaiming is biodiversity and water conservation, food security… That it draws down carbon from the atmosphere is a bonus. We should use carbon in the atmosphere as a resource while it lasts.
… reclaiming deserts…
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Teenagers being coerced into such climate dread and anxiety, will of course grow up. Like children gazing out of the window on Christmas Eve for Santa and his reindeer, they will search with expectation for the object of their belief. Checking the news for reports of mass starvation, and ecosystem collapse in various parts of the world. They will check food prices in supermarkets and perhaps drive by coastlines nearest to their homes to monitor the expected sea level rise and flooding.
And they will see nothing. Bit by bit, imperceptibly at first, a suspicion will take root and grow, that everything is continuing more or less as it always has. Eventually, 12 years will pass. Our youngster will have made a mental note of the year 12 years on from the authoritative prediction of 12 years till catastrophe, made in 2019 for instance.
But 2031 will not turn out to be the end of the world. Life will go on much as usual except for the cumbersome inconvenience of unreliable mandated electric vehicle transport and sky high electricity prices. His/her state of mind will be saddened from having attended the funerals of several friends or relatives who died from stranding in electric cars in winter storms. Yes there still are winter storms. He/she will be perplexed and angered by the sharp rise in conspicuous homelessness caused by hard to afford living costs and economic attrition from punitive green regulations and taxes.
But no catastrophe. 12 more years will pass, 2043 will arrive and it will be already as clear as daylight that those fear-mongers of their teenage protest years were spouting pure falsehood. That CO2 was not condemning earth to disaster but instead was just gently enhancing its plant growth. And as our hero finally takes the time to reflect on all this, during a holiday in the newly popular North African holiday destination of Mali in the middle of what used to be the Sahara desert but now is starting to be vegetated and rich with life and beauty, the truth will crystallise with complete clarity.
It was all a lie.
I attended a sea level/climate conference in London in 2016.
I met some of the Brexit organizers at the conference.
They are some of the same people who are organizers of Clexit, to defeat the climate alarmist movement.
If someone in the UK is alarmed, help is coming, if they open their minds to actual facts, actual data, a better understanding that climate changes in natural cycles is growing.
The Brexit/Clexit people do know what they are doing. I am a Clexit member and a friend of some Brexit members.
https://clexit.net/
When the politics of fear is leading to mental breakdowns, it is time to take a long look at what we are doing.
We are manufacturing conflict. And we are manufacturing conflict within the minds of people – especially our youth.
This person’s letter is about the clash between feelings and thought. Between subjective fear and objective reality. When one sees a Westboro Baptist kid holding signs showing avarice and fear, we view them as abused and hope that reason will prevail.
Government Funded Science
60’s: Oil reserves will be depleted in 10 years
70’s Another Ice age in 10 years
80’s Acid rain will destroy all crops in 10 years
90’s The ozone layer will be destroyed in 10 years
2000’s The ice caps will be gone in 10 years
None of these catastrophies happened, but all resulted in more taxes and regulation
If your not old enough to remember these environmental scams of the past. Your not old enough to understand how the game is played
Alas, bitter hysteria is seldom cured by sweet reason.
I would have given the fretful person a link to Realclimatescience. Anyone serious enough to have studied some physics snaps out of it quickly. The rest have no claim on me as a rusty remedial tutor. Tony Heller produces the temperature readings and they clearly show no discernible increasing trend and a piffling amount of change–especially with error bars.
I have a technical question. Is a value for ECS an assumption or constant in the GCMs, or is it a function generated by the GCMs? To simplify greatly, I had assumed that GCMs took a value for ECS that was generated elsewhere and used it to predict changes in the future based on projections of changes in CO2. Is this wrong?
ECS is an emergent quantity from GCM simulations
curryja
“ECS is an emergent quantity from GCM simulations”
–
“Douglas B. Levene Is a value for ECS an assumption or constant in the GCMs, or is it a function generated by the GCMs? “
–
One of the perennial questions and answers.
–
“ECS The equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) is the temperature increase that would result from sustained doubling of the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere, after the Earth’s energy budget and the climate system reach radiative equilibrium.”
It is thought of as a general property of the climate system:
“Climate sensitivity is typically estimated in three ways; by using observations taken during the industrial age, by using temperature and other data from the Earth’s past and by modelling the climate system in computers. For coupled atmosphere-ocean global climate models the climate sensitivity is an emergent property; rather than being a model parameter it is a result of a combination of model physics and parameters. By contrast, simpler energy-balance models may have climate sensitivity as an explicit parameter.”
GCM are usually spectral with course resolution.
“All state-of-the-art models somehow parameterise atmospheric radiation, sub-gridscale motion, chemistry, and cloud physics. Clearly, some parameterizations are specific to GCMs, such as very slow land surface changes, or slow chemical processes.
when there is a difference between the radiation inputs at which ice comes and goes, two distinctly different global mean temperatures can arise under the same intermediate radiation inputs, depending on whether the input was waxing or waning.”
–
Estimates of ECS are so wild that physics and circulation models seem to have been thrown out the window.
ECS should be able to have a simple answer, radiative physics, atmosphere, double CO2
Answer.
Simple.
–
So ECS is definable from physics.
What you put in is what comes out.
Nothing “new” in the misused sense of being emergent.
It is only a constant for a particular set of assumptions and as some of those assumptions can change with time ECS will vary from model to model and in real life ( observations)
To say it is emergent as JC and many others do is problematical..
The answer is emergent in that it comes out if the models you use and should differ from model to model.
But the ECS is also generated only by the assumptions and parameters put in.
Both concepts are technically correct.
The problem that arises is that ECS should be an entirely predictable figure in a very narrow range at the lower end of the range.
Dr. Curry: Emergent ECS is a function of model tuning; at least one modeler has said that they adjust parameters until they get an ECS that seems about right. No?
Yes the climate models that produce ECS are tuned. Yes one of the CMIP6 modeling groups explicitly said model was tuned with ECS in mind; however the others seem unconstrained by producing ‘sensible’ values of ECS
Thank you for your reply, Dr. Curry. Is there a higher limit to a “reasonable ECS?”
Yes one of the CMIP6 modeling groups explicitly said model was tuned with ECS in mind
Which CMIP6 group tuned with ECS in mind?
Pingback: Judith Curry: 'La retórica y la política del cambio climático se han vuelto absolutamente tóxicas y sin sentido' – BLOGS L2N
What collective nonsense is this? Climate fables, platitudes and implausibilities. Of course it is not an existential threat. The problem will be well on the way to a solution by 2030.
Teach the children maths, science and engineering and set them free. Do not imagine for a moment that they will reach the same conclusions as you.
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of to-morrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
“The Prophet”, Kabril Gibran
“Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.”
― Aristotle
FYI—although I suspect you’re already familiar with this breakthrough:
CBS, 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl, Jan. 6, 2019 show on biofuel pioneer Medoff. H/T Skip181sg
https://www.youtube.com/redirect?redir_token=qUZwhUDpUaj4n1kl3arotTaCTNR8MTU0ODI5MDU4MUAxNTQ4MjA0MTgx&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbsnews.com%2Fnews%2Fmarshall-medoff-the-unlikely-eccentric-inventor-turning-inedible-plant-life-into-fuel-60-minutes%2F&stzid=UgxHSSeKB0TrS3yHPf94AaABAg&event=comments
[quotes from the transcript:]
——————–
What Masterman helped implement was Medoff’s novel idea of using these large blue machines called electron accelerators to break apart nature’s chokehold on the valuable sugars inside plant life – or biomass. Machines like these are typically used to strengthen materials such as wiring and cable. Medoff’s invention was to use the accelerator the opposite way – to break biomass apart.
…………
His inventive use of the accelerators caught the attention of investors who saw a potential goldmine in the technology.They gave Medoff’s company – Xyleco – hundreds of millions of dollars, allowing him to scale up and build this factory – in Moses Lake, Washington – so he could turn his invention into reality. It’s scheduled to be fully operational this spring.
Here, agricultural residue, like these corn cobs, is trucked in from nearby farms, ground up, blasted by the electron accelerator and then combined with a proprietary enzyme mix.
This process, Medoff’s remarkable invention, releases plant sugars that he’s now using to make products he claims will solve some of the world’s most intractable problems, affecting not just the environment but also our health. One of the plant sugars is called xylose and Medoff says it could reduce obesity and diabetes, since it is consumable, and low in calories.
Craig Masterman: Xylose is called wood sugar And it has an unusual property that your oral bacteria cannot use it. So it won’t decay your teeth.
…………
With the investor funds, Medoff also opened a $45 million testing facility in Wakefield, Massachusetts, a far cry from the garage. And he hired more than 70 scientists and engineers who have come up with a sugar-based product aimed at another impervious problem, some call it a plague, the accumulation of plastic debris.
……………..
Perhaps Medoff’s most consequential discovery is how to extract the plant sugars and convert them into to environmentally-friendly biofuels: ethanol, gasoline and jet fuel.
………………
Medoff’s ethanol is much better than regular corn ethanol in terms of greenhouse gas emissions – 77 percent better, according to a study that was independently reviewed.
………………
Robert Armstrong, the former head of MIT’s chemical engineering department, joined Xyleco’s board of directors after Medoff told him about the electron beam accelerator, his inventive way of breaking down biomass.
……………….
A possible 30 percent dent in the petroleum market, according to a report by the Department of Energy. But the question is: can Marshall Medoff scale up his operation enough to compete with the oil industry?
……………
John Jennings: It won’t turn off oil and gas overnight, obviously. It won’t turn off coal. It won’t turn off nuclear. It won’t turn off all the other sources of energy. But it will find its place. And I think it will find it relatively quickly because of all the boxes that it ticks.
Thanks.
I’ll add it to my technology watch list. 😊
Little did I realize, when I first saw a man wearing a turban cross the campus that I was witnessing an early leader of India’s Green Revolution. Not known to me but another Indian, now no longer anonymous but then newly minted Ph.D (OSU1968), Rattan Lal was mimicking an earlier no-till researcher Ohio Stater Bill Richards at the time experimenting with no-till farming on designated lands as well as his own farm in Centerville Ohio. Since then, Lal has taken his advocacy for returning carbon to soil, now called: Regenerative Agriculture which will feed the expected population in 2100 of 10 billion people. Regenerative Agriculture is: cover crops, no-till farming, manure & compost as natural fertilizers with the benefits of sequestering carbon, restoring soil health as it retains water and nutrients, while increasing crop yields.
As for our young climate anxious patient? education per se will hardly address their condition. Psychotherapy? Medications? Group Therapy? all are designed to assist with ameliorating these serious depressive symptoms as manifest here: the specific ideation around climate change is less relevant than addressing the panic attacks plus other related physical symptoms. Others less impaired may reach out and Dr. Curry’s remedy would be a tonic for those whose needs include: yes, climate as well as your life will be alright. As Annie in a reprise then joined by FDR and Daddy Warbucks: “The sun will come out tomorrow you can bet your bottom dollar on tomorrow, come what may.”
Rattan Lal is a treasure.
The climate science position on uncertainty appears to be that the less they know the scarier it gets.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/11/03/lessweknow/
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/02/03/hidden-hand/
They are not uncertain – Judith is. Try to get on the same page.
They are not uncertain because their inadequate statistics education makes it hard for them to see or to understand the large uncertainties in the data.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/11/16/agw-issues/
Yeah – no that’s not why it is uncertain.
People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe
Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.
Collective delusion vs sound judgement. Let history record the winner
The increasing CO2, partly from the use of fossil fuels, does not now, never has, and never will have a significant effect on climate. https://watervaporandwarming.blogspot.com
Indeed. Water vapor appears to buffer our climate. Low water vapor pressures have a warming impact (as we see now) but when the water vapor pressure gets higher, cloud coverage increases to reflect sunlight and cool the planet. The ultimate driver, as you and others have pointed out before, is the sun and it’s cyclic behavior. CO2 is a lagging indicator.
Recent work, as described in the above link and with more at http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com recognizes the importance of water vapor as a ghg and that it has been increasing. The increase, about 1.5% per decade, is indicated by TPW measurements since it has been accurately measured worldwide (1988). Current calculated contributors to warming since 1909 are: Solar 17.8%, ocean surface temperature cycles 21.7% and water vapor increase 60.5%.
A good summary of climate confusion.
Climate models are based on radiative methodologies; they can provide only minimal information of the climate. The radiative methodologies are not enough to understanding and addressing the climate issue. The younger generation should know the limitations of climate models and that there is room for them to participate in figuring out what is going on with the climate.
And yet models based on a climate sensitivity value of around 3 degrees for a doubling of CO2 perfectly predicted the course of the ensiung 45 years of climate change, starting back in 1973.
It’s almost as if…climate models are based on past observations and the laws of physics and they work!
Get real Craig. Anyone can fit a model to the past if you do enough “tuning” and it runs over a short enough period. The value of a model is its predictive capability and here they fail abysmally.. They can’t even get the pre-73 period right without massive fudges so are of little to no skill.,
“perfectly predicted the course of the ensiung 45 years of climate change”
Rather, they OVERpredicted it by a facor of two.
Global sea level rise is accelerating. It makes a significant difference.
“Using a 25-y time series of precision satellite altimeter data from TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, Jason-2, and Jason-3, we estimate the climate-change–driven acceleration of global mean sea level over the last 25 y to be 0.084 ± 0.025 mm/y2.”
R.S. Nerem et al, “Climate-change–driven accelerated sea-level rise detected in the altimeter era,” PNAS, February 12, 2018.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1717312115
graph:
https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/styles/icn_full_wrap_wide/public/Sea-Level-Rise-Fever-529px.png
New models are being built from the ground and oceans up. Old models are to be consigned to histories dustbin.
https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/06/week-in-review-science-edition-114/#comment-904681
Robert, even if they models are correct, they do not provide the actual picture of what is going on in the biosphere. They are based on calculating radiative imbalance at the top of the atmosphere, what do we do with this thing at the top of atmosphere? we are in the biosphere! In short, the radiative model has little value, in any. It does not give us the real picture of climate change and what to do with it.
Oh come on, Nabil. Those radiative forcings mean changes in temperature, precipitation, humidity and more at the surface.
PS: Actually radiative forcings are stated at the tropopause, but what models actually calculate are energy flows throughout the atmosphere (and at the surface) via what’s called the Schwarzschild equations (or two-stream equations).
It doesn’t look like you read my linked comment on models. But here’s something else entirely anyway. .
https://watertechbyrie.com/2018/06/10/a-maximum-entropy-climate-earth-in-transient-energy-equilibrium-2/
Robert, I read the links, nothing substantiated.
David, the tropopause is still too high from the surface. Tell me how the radiative model can capture surface greening, deforestation, and changes in the carbon cycle. I know that these are not incorporated in the present climate models as Chapter 9 of IPCC AR5 clearly states.
Nabil,
Everything is solidly grounded in scientific literature. Unlike many I pull nothing out of a congealed consensus (Palmer and Stevens, 2019).
But never mind – you can lead an ass to water – but not get a good faith discourse.
Bye 😊
As climate scientists, we are rightfully proud of, and eager to talk about, our contribution to settling important and long-standing scientific questions of great societal relevance. What we find more difficult to talk about is our deep dissatisfaction with the ability of our models to inform society about the pace of warming, how this warming plays out regionally, and what it implies for the likelihood of surprises. …
1. Tim Palmer and Bjorn Stevens are consensus climate scientists, and they are proud of their personal contributions to settled climate science.
A. The earth is warming.
B. Mankind’s combustion of fossil fuels in responsible for it.
In addition, Palmer has publicly stated that climates have been remarkably accurate at the job they were asked to accomplish.
Tim Palmer made a one line comment in an interview. A serious person would check out his public lectures and published work.
Climate models…
Robert, you need to provide uninterrupted chain of mathematical proof connected to the body of the science and publish your work in a scientific journal so that the public may agree with you.
Nabil: climate models partition the atmosphere into slabs, whose number depends on the amount of computing power available. (Sometimes it’s about 15-20; not sure about these days.) Then each slab is divided into cells, perhaps 150 km wide. They they calculate how the relevant variables flow into and out of these cells.
Here’s a description of a climate model. It’s 15 yrs old, so not the latest. Obviously people have put a great deal of thought (and mathematics) into the model. The model includes changes in vegetation, air flows, changes in GHGs, and much more.
“Description of the NCAR Community Atmosphere Model (CAM 3.0),” NCAR Technical Note NCAR/TN–464+STR, June 2004.
http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/models/atm-cam/docs/description/description.pdf
It’s extremely unlikely/essentially impossible that you’re going to find that professional climate modelers left something as simple as the carbon cycle out of their models. So when you think something is missing, you should first see if your understanding and knowledge are incomplete instead of automatically assuming climate modelers made a big, big, obvious, crucial, simple, big mistake.
Here’s a quick overview of another model, without the math:
“NASA GISS GCM Model E: Model Description and Reference Manual”
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/modelE.html
JCH, thank you. You have proven my point. What we still do not know about climate change is a lot more than what we know. It is thus premature for young adults such as the one who is this post’s topic to panic by what scientists presently claim.
Nabil,
There is nothing novel in anything I write – and it is all solidly referenced. If I have an original idea – I check the literature.
I find that it is nearly always the literature that leads me down new paths. A benefit of having a curious and open mind. Sorry to disappoint.
“Remember, then, that scientific thought is the guide to action; that the truth at which it arrives is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we can act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.” William Kingdon Clifford, The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885)
😊
Robert, the greatest risk we have is spending trillions foolishly based no numbers. The earth can swallow all of the trillions we have easily and in no time. When we run out of money, all of what we have can be devoured by the earth. Look at living examples of previous civilizations in the Middle East. When they ran out of money, the earth devoured their civilizations and they are now below the surface. If we do not have the numbers now, let’s wait until we get them.
“Common sense strategies to reduce vulnerability to extreme weather events, improve environmental quality, develop better energy technologies and increase access to grid electricity, improve agricultural and land use practices, and better manage water resources can pave the way for a more prosperous and secure future. Each of these solutions is ‘no regrets’ – supporting climate change mitigation while improving human well being.” JC
I’d add the the Copenhagen Consensus – benefit to cost ratios more than 15. I have introduced dozens of pragmatic responses under this post alone. All much better than no regrets.
That still leaves sea level rise and ocean acidification. SLR alone is going to be very, very expensive.
For a man sans effective and pragmatic strategies to draw down atmospheric CO2 – it is all a bit weird.
https://www.thebluecarboninitiative.org/
Since when was the discussion about ways to draw down CO2? Try to focus and control your endless need to be mr smartypants.
How “politically pragmatic” is it to accept the swamping of many coastal cities around the globe? “Sorry, Florida, it just wasn’t politically pragmatic to act to save half your state.” Sorry Boston. Sorry Bangladesh.
I noticed your prime minister left the country in the middle of a wildfire national disaster. That’s some leadership, there. Does he have any “politically pragmatic” ways to draw down CO2?
He probably imagines that this – 🤣 – isn’t how I react to his comments. Smartypants? I have been chuckling all afternoon.
“Common sense strategies to reduce vulnerability to extreme weather events, improve environmental quality, develop better energy technologies and increase access to grid electricity, improve agricultural and land use practices, and better manage water resources can pave the way for a more prosperous and secure future.”
Shows he didn’t read the post. And if he thinks that was a national fire disaster – he doesn’t know Australia. That was a traditional long weekend in December. Scott Morrison went somewhere?
We have lots of ways to draw down carbon and other greenhouse gases. On the way to a 50% reduction in per capita CO2-e emissions by 2030.
https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/styles/width-450/private/resources/c42c11a8-4df7-4d4f-bf92-4f14735c9baa/images/fig4.jpg
How is conceptually simple and cheap. Not to underestimate the technical and engineering challenges.
https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/styles/width-450/private/resources/c42c11a8-4df7-4d4f-bf92-4f14735c9baa/images/fig5.jpg
The green bits involve purchasing carbon abatement at an average price to date of $10/t CO2-e – $4.56B committed so far. With clear benefits for the environment, people, jobs, indigenous communities, farmers…
https://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/government/emissions-reduction-fund
https://www.clc.org.au/images/sized/files/news/170502-Burning-Trip-Karlantjipa-(161)-700×378.jpg
https://www.clc.org.au/articles/info/fire-management1
Then there is blue carbon. Both in country and regionally as good Oceania neighbors.
https://www.clc.org.au/articles/info/fire-management1
These fast accreting environments are the best way to attenuate storm surge, to reverse coastal dead zones and conserve biodiversity. Trust me – I am an expert in coastal environments as both an engineer and environmental scientist over decades. I can build seawalls as well – but we like to avoid them these days if possible. I linked a short video above on the Mississippi River delta above. You must have missed it. Too busy being disparaging abou Australian politicians I suppose.
But do tell please – what would you like to do about it? Do you have any ideas or are you just pissing in my pocket?
Appell
SLR……going to be expensive.
Lol. The Sydney NOAA Tidal Gauge Graphs have been updated to 2018. It continues at the rate of 3” per CENTURY. From 1886 to 2018 rising at 3 inches a CENTURY. You have to get in touch with reality.
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=680-140
David Appell – “That still leaves sea level rise and ocean acidification. SLR alone is going to be very, very expensive.”
Ocean acidification – Appell you have to quit embarrasing yourself. No place on planet earth are the oceans even remotely acidic. The oceans are 100% alkaline by huge margins. Under no scientific definition can Minute changes in the alkaline levels of the oceans be considered becoming more acidic or the process be considered ocean acidification. It has zero scientific merit.
No place on planet earth are the oceans even remotely acidic. …
This is a completely substance-free argument.
Yes, agreed!
And there is not any greenhouse warming effect on Earth’s surface.
The 288 K – 255 K = 33 oC difference does not exist in the real world.
Lol. The Sydney NOAA Tidal Gauge Graphs have been updated to 2018. It continues at the rate of 3” per CENTURY. From 1886 to 2018 rising at 3 inches a CENTURY. You have to get in touch with reality.
Citing one tide gauge is about as out of touch with reality as one can get.
Keep praying for the negative phase of some 60-year Multidecadal Oscillation.
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=120-012
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=190-091
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=170-011
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=9410660
All these locations rising at rates of 3-4 inches a Century. Some go back over 150 years. I keep looking for the acceleration. Subsidence is the problem across the globe, not runaway SLR.
There was a blue carbon link missing – and the average cost of abatement is more A$12/t-CO-e than $10.
https://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/government/australia-work-on-blue-carbon
This is sea level rise where I live.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/sea-level-rise.jpg
https://coastadapt.com.au/sea-level-rise-information-all-australian-coastal-councils#QLD_LIVINGSTONE
It’a a fun little toy – and in line with Engineers Australia guidelines. Where you are responsible for lives, disaster planning and emergency response -caution is the name of the game. We have been planning, designing and building for this for decades. Largely in response to erosion and storm surge. Including planned retreat. We moved our local hospital from the beachfront to a couple of kilometres inland for instance. Critical infrastructure is built above the 500 year inundation level. We base that on historic data and add a safety margin. Only the most significant infrastructure is protected – houses fall into the sea. New development in erosion prone zones doesn’t happen. This is just run of the mill practical engineering.
Extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere changes the pH of seawater. Of that there is little doubt. Changes in the ecology of systems on such a large scale are problematic. We don’t know how that will impact biological communities and trophic (food) webs. We simply don’t know. And again caution would seem to be the name of the game. Nor is there much doubt about the enhanced greenhouse effect against a backdrop of extreme natural variability. There really is a need to learn how to walk and chew gum at the same time.
https://i.imgur.com/rgNIAUa.png
JCH comment – “No place on planet earth are the oceans even remotely acidic. …
This is a completely substance-free argument.”
JCH- perhaps you should consult a basic science textbook to become familiar with the Ph scale. a basic 7th or 8th grade textbook should suffice.
JCH
I’ve read there was no VLM at Sydney, but for the sake of argument let’s accept there is at the rate of .3mm/yr. So, instead of .75mm/yr let’s assume ~1.05 mm/yr or ~4 inches per Century not 3 inches.
Then let’s accept the 12 cm since end of 19th Century. That is 1/8 of ~40 inches over 120 years. So round off to 5 inches over a Century +.
Whichever rate we accept, 3 or 4 or 5 inches over a century is hardly alarming. Adding 1 foot of SLR over 200 years or 300 years or 400 years gives policy makers ample time for adaptation, especially since sea walls or any other measures can be built in a decade or less.
Jakarta and numerous other coastal cities have an urgent need to mitigate effects of subsidence, in some cases many centimeters per year. But they just keep building skyscrapers. The Opera House is a lot safer.
JDallas – all solutions have a property called “acidity,” measured by the concentration of hydrogen ions.
The ocean’s acidity is increasing.
Because the land in some areas is rising hardly means global sea level isn’t rising.
And perhaps you should ask the authors of those textbooks if the oceans are “acidifying”. The answer will be yes.
And if he thinks that was a national fire disaster – he doesn’t know Australia.
“Morrison calls Australian fires ‘disaster’ but denies link to climate change,” 12/12/19
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/12/12/asia-pacific/morrison-australian-fires-disaster-but-no-climate-link/
It continues at the rate of 3” per CENTURY.
Global average sea level is rising at 4.2 mm/yr (17 in/century), accelerating at 0.064 mm/yr2.
data source:
ftp://ftp.aviso.altimetry.fr/pub/oceano/AVISO/indicators/msl/MSL_Serie_MERGED_Global_AVISO_GIA_Adjust_Filter2m.txt
I provide on the ground, actual observational data from several locations and all you can scrape together is modeled Graphs. Unconvinced.
Little Greta knows not history, neither climate science; likely not any science at all. Her time will soon pass, leaving no impact. She is so young to be used, to be lionized by adults who should no better. Who was it here who suggested the future will be like the past? It is true. Sensible policies which would benefit all except the gazillionaires, as noted here by Dr. Curry, are unlikely to be implemented; such is the paralysis among the political class, and the widespread credulity among the public of the narrative the media has spoon-fed them.
Greta Thunberg stated: “Around 2030 we will be in a position to set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control that will lead to the end of our civilization as we know it.”
My translation: Around 2030 XR will be in a position to set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond government control that will lead to end of Western Europe’s, North America’s West and East coasts and Australia/NZ’s civilizations as we know them.
“I have no idea if this is an accurate email of your but I just found it and thought I’d take a chance. My name is XXX I’m 20 years old from the UK. I have been well the only word to describe it is suffering as I genuinely have the fear that climate change is going to kill me and all my family, I’m not even kidding it’s all I have thought about for the last 9 months every second of the day. It’s making my sick to my stomach, I’m not eating or sleeping and I’m getting panic attacks daily. It’s currently 1am and I can’t sleep as I’m petrified. I’ve tried to do my own research, I’ve tried everything. I’m not stupid, I’m a pretty rational thinker but at this point sometimes I literally wish I wasn’t born, I’m just so miserable and Petrified. I’ve recently made myself familiar with your work and would be so appreciative of any findings you can give me or hope or advice over email. I’m already vegetarian and I recycle everything so I’m really trying. Please help me. In anyway you can. I’m at my wits end here.”
–
Re the e mail,
Treat with caution.
Very well written which is a little at odds with the desperation described.
People do develop anxiety states, panic and depression over many problems in the world. Severe anxiety is a medical condition and the best answer is not rational arguments but support from family and doctors with large doses of reassurance and assessment to see if any medications or counselling might help.
–
It is a bit like people with a fear of flying.
We are all in the same boat (earth).
I would point out that the pilot, who is much better experienced in the vagaries of air travel is quite happy to take us up, he is not worried and most of the other passengers are quite happy going to wherever.
No change of course being advertised by the pilot ( business as usual.
Chat to your fellow passengers, they are all ok filling up their cars, going to Majorca etc.
Then the second bit of advice.
Is to stop watching and listening to horror movies and the news
Unless you enjoy being scared.
–
I would think it essential to seek medical advice and counselling advice.
I agree, it could have been written so as to provoke a response from Judith which could be used against her. However, it received an excellent response which I’ve shared on media sites.
Actually I edited out the typos etc. This is for real, as per subsequent email conversations
Thank you for your concern and help.
Well done.
It is very hard to help someone trapped in a continual worry circuit.
9 months of continual distress is far too long for it to be normal worry.
–
Reassurance and support is essential.
Seeking medical and counselling help is essential.
Explaining that the current situation is safe, danger has been overstated, while we work out what the real issues are is not going to help.
It will work on me and others here however.
Good, I hope that your corespondent is less stressed and concerned, and that he or she has shared their concerns with someone who can help. I was twice very close to suicide, those around me didn’t seem to be aware of it, until on the second occasion someone I hadn’t seen for some time appeared, recognized what was happening and began working on it. This led me to travel to India and to a very different life. [The first episode ended, ironically, when I was riding a motorbike and a car ran me down with near-fatal injuries. I hope that the youngster has a less painful resolution.]
https://twitter.com/DowdEdward/status/1205975342776635393
It is terrorism: Killing and destruction, a believable threat or actual, to achieve a political end.
Judith
I well remember around 10 years ago being invited to a private school to talk about climate change. I was astonished by the nihilistic attitude of some of the 10 year old children, who were convinced they would never see adulthood as their teachers/parents/grown ups had told them that the world as they knew it would end.
Fast forward 10 years and we arrive at the nihilistic attitude of your correspondent. Assuming it to be genuine-and if not it is certainly representative of a significant portion of young adults, can I give a little British climate history to put things in better context?
History in general appears to be poorly taught in schools these days (dates and facts are largely out, instead the pupil is told to empathise with social conditions.) Climate history prior to the turn of this century appears to be not taught at all
Climate change can be seen in many different aspects of British life
As an example, Castle design was always evolving as military tactics changed. One of the best examples of castles being affected by climate are in the water gates of major British castles such as the Tower of London 11th C and Harlech. (13thc) in Wales.
These were intended to either supply-by water- defending forces when besieged, or so monarchs or traitors could directly disembark into the castle. The Tower had several water gates which went into disuse as river levels fell then returned to use in later years, but all complicated by tides/bridges. . Harlech has a water gate, now a mile inland, as sea levels fell and deposition then occurred.
There were also a change in building materials as climate warmed or cooled, but the effects of a warm climate changing to a colder one can best be illustrated by our abbey a couple of miles from me, as that is not confused by changes for military purposes but illustrate well the evolution in building techniques as the climate altered
The Abbey -established in 1196- is set back around 200 yards from the shores of Torbay in South Devon. (This from their information boards)
“Canons lived austere lives with only one heated room known as the calefactory (Latin Calefactus-made warm.) The additional fireplaces added during the 1300’s reflect the extreme weather conditions of this period.
As the climate deteriorated during the 1300’s the original thatched roof of the Barn was replaced with a slate roof that was better able to deal with stormy weather coming in from the sea (note; this signifies a change from warmer Westerlies to colder Easterlies)
The most dramatic change in response to climate were the alterations to the cloister. The original cloister had wide walkways with gently sloping roofs where canons could sit and study or pray . As the climate became colder and wetter, this was no longer possible. The cloister was rebuilt with narrower walks and less shelter. The pitch of the roof was increased to shed heavy rains and even snow..”
“Climate change summary board; From 1370 the Abbey was altered to cope with a colder wetter climate. The thatched barn was re-roofed with slate . The cloister was rebuilt with steep roofs to take away the rain and narrow walks as it was now too cold to work in them . New fireplaces were added.”
We can more precisely identify the decade that the climate changed by the catastrophic two years of rain and cold around 1305 well recorded in our history as there were a lot of battles going on involving King Edward . The climate further deteriorated over the next half century until the events recorded above happened. That the climate had previously been much more warm and settled can be seen in the building techniques, but also in the copious records available.
Records of prolonged heat, drought and rain in the middle of the 13th century alone show that in 1236 the Palace of Westminster was flooded; followed by an extremely hot summer, there were droughts in 1241 and six months of intolerable heat , then great heat and drought in 1252 and 1253.
The warmest decade in the last 500 years are probably those years around 1540 with severe and prolonged drought and heat, followed within a few decades by the extremes of the Little Ice Age, the coldest period in the entire Holocene
.
That was intermittently broken, as we note that Parliament declared a ‘climate emergency’ during the reign of Charles 2nd in 1661, so History repeats itself exactly, as Parliament declared one in 2019!
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/lords-jrnl/vol11/pp362-363#h3-0005
“The Fast to be observed in Westm. Abbey, and the Bp. of St. David’s to preach.
“Whereas His Majesty hath been pleased, by Proclamation, upon the Unseasonableness of the Weather, to command a general and public Fast, to be religiously and solemnly kept, within the Cities of London and Westm. and Places adjacent: , That the Lord Bishop of St. David’s is hereby desired to take the Pains upon him, to preach before the Lords of Parliament, on Wednesday the Fifteenth Day of this Instant January in the Forenoon, in the Abbey Church of Westm. being the accustomed Place where their Lordships have used to meet upon the like Occasion.”
Samuel Pepys Diary
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/01/15/
This morning Mr. Berkenshaw came again, and after he had examined me and taught me something in my work, he and I went to breakfast in my chamber upon a collar of brawn, and after we had eaten, asked me whether we had not committed a fault in eating to-day; telling me that it is a fast day ordered by the Parliament, to pray for more seasonable weather; it having hitherto been summer weather, (during winter) that it is, both as to warmth and every other thing, just as if it were the middle of May or June, which do threaten a plague (as all men think) to follow, for so it was almost the last winter; and the whole year after hath been a very sickly time to this day”
As you know, we have these fantastic records in Britain which are apparently ignored and the end result is the sort of email that is the subject of your article.
One last thought. Your 20 year old correspondent, if living in England, has never known a warming climate, as can be illustrated by the Met Office Central England temperatures which shows a marginal decline-or more scientifically a static climate- since 1998.. Not that you would know that from the hysterical media. If she is genuine and wants to correspond, my email can be found by clicking on my website
Tonyb
Most of the history we were fed (like geese) were either a proclamation of the vanity of victors of wars, or with the aim of beatification in mind. The apparently mundane remarks were usually noted by researches as side-notes. Yet it is these mundane bits that hold much on the life and times of the ancestors.
However in the last few decades research back into prehistory is showing that those times were far more threatening. And still, what is evident is that humanity then understood the threats and was prepared; and renewed a zest in life with even better outcome. However a downside is also evident, as when ignorance prevailed that civilisation near perished.
melitamegalithic
It appears that climate was often much more extreme in the historic past than it is today.
Some of the weather events described by our forefathers are truly dreadful and whether heavy prolonged rain causing difficulties with planting or harvesting, or prolonged heat that often meant that droughts, hard times were often the norm.
The MWP appeared to be much more settled and allowed a very substantial population increase as the growing season was longer and more land could be used at higher altitudes such as upland Dartmoor, close to me. Humanity seemed to be more resilient and enjoyed the good times but were reconciled to the very bad times.
The current generations enjoy a relatively benign climate, are longer lived, healthier, wealthier and enjoy more civil liberties than at any time in our history. Until the modern industrial age life could be brutal and short.
I don’t know why so many want to join XR and revert back to those days. There is no climate emergency and the IPCC never said ‘we have 12 years to save the planet.’
Your comment about being fed like geese is a good one. These days many people exist inside their own social media bubble and are influenced by like minded people. We saw this amply illustrated in the recent general election here. Activists found the enthusiastic support they were getting on social media bore no resemblance to what people in the real world were thinking.
tonyb
Hi Tony, fascinating stuff, I will email this to my correspondent
Excellent. Thank you.
Tonyb
We know that climate changes – but ultimately only quantitative analysis of very long term data can show patterns of change that reveal the underlying dynamic. In the case of the Mediterranean basin – Nilometer data that shows persistent epochs that shift at irregular intervals to another persistent climate epoch. A shift in means and variance with sometimes dire consequences for civilizations. We have traditionally called these cycles. The pattern suggests an underlying dynamical complexity in a system that is sensitive to small changes. Fast forward to today and we are changing the atmosphere, the global energy content, ocean chemistry, land use and biology everywhere. This on top of natural change. The dominant dynamical complexity paradigm says that small change can trigger large system responses.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/nile-river-flow1.jpg
Water levels varied from ‘hunger’ at 12 cubits (a cubit is approximately half a metre) through abundance at 16 cubits to disaster at 18 cubits.
Joseph told Pharaoh that his dreams came from God telling him to prepare for seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. The task of Pharaoh was to find a wise and honest man to put some of the abundance of the years of plenty away to provide for the years of need and avert a terrible tragedy.
Rainfall in the Mediterranean basin is influenced by ocean surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific and the north Atlantic. The variability in ocean surface temperature year to year, decade to decade, century to century result in persistent regimes of droughts and floods. Because of the importance of Nile River flows to the Egyptian civilisation water levels have been measured for 5,000 years and recorded for more than 1,300. The ‘Nilometer’ – known as al-Miqyas in Arabic – in Cairo dates back to the Arab conquest of Egypt. The Cairo Nilometer has an inner stilling well connected to the river and a central stone pillar on which levels were observed. The exterior of the stilling well can be seen in the photo below. The Nilometer remained useful until the 20th century when major dams changed the Nile River flow regimes.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/nilometer.jpg
Source: WaterHistory.org
D. Kondrashov and colleagues* collated a record of Nile River water levels spanning from 622AD to 1922AD. They calculated the mean of high water levels at 18 cubits. This suggests that life in ancient Egypt might best be described as lived on the edge. Perhaps not surprising – given Joseph’s source of information – is that they found a 7 year signal in the data. The record shows increasing water levels over the past millennia and a prominent spike towards the end. There were signals of variability – more or less flooding – with a ~256 year beat.
* https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2004GL022156
Humans are part of “ natural “ change?
We have always referred to the natural world vs our built environments. On top of external variability doesn’t quite work. I’m surprised you felt compelled to voice such a trivial quibble. Please don’t.
Sorry.
Thanks. 😊
Thanks . Your note warrants wider circulation.
I agree the work deserves wider circulation. Dr. Curry’s essay is essentially a manifesto the layperson can understand. It should be published in every major newspaper as a service to the public to help alleviate fears, but it likely won’t be published for obvious reasons.
Dr. Curry,
Another piece of good news to add to your summary is that global populations are expected to peak at ~10,5 billion before the end of the century and then start to decline which will reduce our loading on the biosphere.
limits to population have been promoted at many past milestones.
population blows right past each limit as if it was not real.
every limit is past with more people living better after.
more abundant, affordable, reliable energy has make that possible.
the greens are trying to limit population and setting the limit by destruction of abundant, affordable, reliable energy
We need to end this alarmist garbage.
We have never sought anything but a high energy planet.
https://thebreakthrough.org/articles/our-high-energy-planet
Health, education, safe water and sanitation, development, food security, family planning… all naturally reduce family size without coercion.
https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/
There are serious issues missed here in favor of partisan polemic.
World In Midst of Carbon Drought (w/ Prof. William Happer, Princeton University)
For a physics professor his explanation of the physics of CO2 infrared adsorption was rather muddled. But he gets all the important science right.
Even as a 33 years old man, I can relate to the feelings of this young man that in my case were triggered when my daughter was born in last year’s extraordinarily dry summer in Germany.
I started looking at the skeptical side more carefully after heated political debates with my father and to my surprise I found that at least some critical voices like you have a point. Your blog as well as Roger Pielke Jr’s articles and talks helped me put the alarmist articles I had started reading obsessively into some perspective. As you say, the future is uncertain, but what is sure is that your writings improved my quality of life tremendously. Thank you and thanks for the job you have done answering concerns like the emailer’s in this article in particular. I will bookmark it and forward it if somebody has similar feelings.
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Bravo Judith
Terrorism takes many forms. Climate catastrophe is particularly nasty form of terrorism because it targets children. And it is obvious that this is what they are doing.
Quote
“All it really takes to destroy a people is to take away their future, to take away the potential of their children”.
Rare Earth
How to destroy People: Japans Untouchables
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIsndKkasfI
7min – 40secs
Martin Cropp
Judith
I hadn’t noticed until now that your correspondent was vegetarian. I have been one all my adult life. Over here veganism is becoming very popular and those practising it are often very belligerent and try to convert everyone on the basis that it will save the planet and cut carbon emissions.
I carried out some research over the last week on this claim and was genuinely surprised that lacto- vegetarians (which I am) are considered the most environmentally friendly, whilst vegans are often very problematic and have a heavy carbon footprint.
The reason for this is that few other things than grass can be grown in much of the world (e.g. for cows)and we have created mono cultures in environmentally sensitive places (such as ex rain forests) for such things as avocado and palm oil.
In other words, very many vegan ingredients (in the NH) are imported and are often out of season for much of the year and consequently have a big carbon footprint when brought to the consumer.
Avocados-the item of choice for many ‘woke’ vegans’ -is so environmentally unfriendly that it ought to be banned as a danger to the planet.
Recycling is generally good, but plastic very much has its place in stopping many food stuffs getting damaged or spoiling. The much derided plastic bag much used over here for is arguably more environmentally friendly than a paper bag, as it is very much lighter and has a far lower trucking footprint.
As for cotton…what an environmental disaster that is!
tonyb
Thank you Dr. Curry. I wish certain members of my family would read more posts like this one.
Let’s call it an early Christmas gift.
The common usage of RCP8.5 is causing quite a bit of turmoil, We need to spend time and money properly contextualizing the pathways.
Global warming, Climate change-Globalist tripe. Nothing more.
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Dear Judith, endless thanks for this superior support of common sense, so much badly needed in this time! The EU have voted for its suicidal mission to oblivion rhise days and nobody has a slignt idea of the governing forces! Greetings from Czechia.
Frost warning.
Please see the forecast for December 18.
https://pics.tinypic.pl/i/00994/ie55d4j6z7ef.png
OMG! Frost! and in the middle of winter, too!
Unheard of!
Not in the middle, but at the very beginning of winter. It will not be a usual cold at this time of year.
Given that the chart shows North America and the 1st day of winter for 2019 (as normally counted throughout North America) is December 21st, I have to ask, what do you think you are talking about?
Yes I know Australians do it differently.
Dr. Curry Road, the researchers, they know this problem. I suggest (for recall, analyses) paper: Towards reliable extreme weather and climate event attribution, Bellprat et al., 2019.
In abstract, there is such a conclusion:
“Limitations of climate models to reliably simulate event probabilities remain overlooked in current practice of event attribution studies.”
… in Introduction eg:
“In this study, we challenge the current practice insufficiently accounting for reliability, by demonstrating that it is not only unjustified but also carries the risk of issuing overly strong attribution statements (for extreme events).”
… in Discussion, summary conclusion:
“It is now urgent for the scientific community to more properly address model limitations in event attribution studies because of the increasing public attention to and trust in the scientific community formulating robust attribution assessments.”
The problem with educating and convincing a believer like Thunberg and other average citizen is their inability and unwillingness to try to learn in a balanced way. If one argues about ES, then you toss out an acronym they have to learn and associate with. The problematic point about ES is the definition of theoretical temperature guess vs. doubling CO2. This is unrelatable. We need to keep this simple to convince. I suggest clearly labeled graphs and explanations which lead the reader to become informed. Further, we can provide hindsight and argue what the future would be with linear, not logarithmic curves. Then, we can say, that over the last century global warming was around 1.34 degree C. Have we seen anything catastrophic, anything that has pivoted or tipped? Why should the future of 1.5 degree or even 3 degree rise and be so drastically different?
Tell the tale with Christy’s graph of tropospheric temperature showing 102 exaggerated model results vs. actual balloon data.
Tell the tale with of sea level rise with tidal gage graphs. They show little or no acceleration, in some case deceleration. So we should expect another 6 to 8 inches over the next century, as we have seen in the last one. In the last two or three decades we have had much clamor over glacier and arctic ice melting, but the recent sea level rise remains mostly constant. Contrast this with the IPCC and DiCaprio and Al Gorisms, and the truth seeker will start scratching his head over how alarms of 6 to 15 feet per century could be true.
More of the tales. Show the graph of increasing CO2 accumulation vs. global temperature, and it will show no causal relation of CO2 driving the latter.
Then, point to the makeup of greenhouse effect attribution – percentage of water vapor and clouds vs. CO2, and highlight the 5% component of manmade CO2 vs. total CO2.
Finally, mention that the carbon trading and associated cost is an annual business of around $1.5 Trillion. Follow the money and find the reason for the hype.
1. Earth’s-Without-Atmosphere Effective Temperature Calculation:
So = 1.362 W/m² (So is the Solar constant)
Earth’s albedo: aearth = 0,30
Earth is a rocky planet, Earth’s surface solar irradiation accepting factor Φearth = 0,47
(Accepted by a Smooth Hemisphere with radius r sunlight is S*Φ*π*r²(1-a), where Φ = 0,47)
β = 150 days*gr*oC/rotation*cal – is a Rotating Planet Surface Solar Irradiation Absorbing-Emitting Universal Law constant
N = 1 rotation per day, is Earth’s sidereal rotation period
cp.earth = 1 cal/gr*oC, it is because Earth has a vast ocean. Generally speaking almost the whole Earth’s surface is wet. We can call Earth a Planet Ocean.
σ = 5,67*10⁻⁸ W/m²K⁴, the Stefan-Boltzmann constant
Earth’s-Without-Atmosphere Effective Temperature Complete Formula Te.earth is
Te.earth = [ Φ (1-a) So (β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ /4σ ]¹∕ ⁴
Τe.earth = [ 0,47(1-0,30)1.362 W/m²(150 days*gr*oC/rotation*cal *1rotations/day*1 cal/gr*oC)¹∕ ⁴ /4*5,67*10⁻⁸ W/m²K⁴ ]¹∕ ⁴ =
Τe.earth = [ 0,47(1-0,30)1.362 W/m²(150*1*1)¹∕ ⁴ /4*5,67*10⁻⁸ W/m²K⁴ ]¹∕ ⁴ =
Te.earth = 288,36 Κ
And we compare it with the
Tsat.mean.earth = 288 K, measured by satellites.
These two temperatures, the calculated one, and the measured by satellites are almost identical.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
I think with this post, you leave those that kicked you out of the tribe in the dust, doing whatever it is they do.
Nicely articulated. I wish every teacher in the US (and beyond) would read this to their classes.
In fact, why don’t you find an outlet (Wall Street Journal) to write an opinion piece for teachers and students.
That would be an enormous gift to the country, even the world.
Excellent comments on this sad situation, but I think the cause of the problem goes beyond this man-caused climate change hoax. A critical underlying cause is ineffective thinking and the simple fact that our education systems have totally failed to teach the structure of reality. This causes politicians, scientists and the party press to unwittingly sell disinformation to the ignorant masses who have also never been taught the structure of reality.
Reality is defined by the laws of cause and effect, which state among other things that each time you ask why, you have to have at least two answers in the form of one action cause and at least one conditional cause. As you continue to ask why of a given subject, the causes expand from 2 to 4, to 8, to 16, to 32 etc. And that is a minimum set – it’s usually many more. Additionally, reality requires that each one of these causes must have sensed evidence to support it. No guessing, categorizing, or correlating are allowed. Also, no effect can exist unless its immediate causes exist in the same space and time frame.
Since our scientists have never been taught these fundamental principles of causation, they are left to their own way of thinking about the world around them.
For more details check out William Taddit’s new book:
“Climate is ultimately complex. Complexity begs for reductionism. With reductionism, a puzzle is studied by way of its pieces. While this approach illuminates the climate system’s components, climate’s full picture remains elusive. Understanding the pieces does not ensure understanding the collection of pieces. This conundrum motivates our study.” Marcia Wyatt
https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/guest-post-atlantic-multidecadal-oscillation-and-northern-hemisphere%E2%80%99s-climate-variability-by-marcia-glaze-wyatt-sergey-kravtsov-and-anastasios-a-tsonis/
https://judithcurry.com/2011/02/10/spatio-temporal-chaos/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-011-1071-8
https://judithcurry.com/2013/10/10/the-stadium-wave/
They are not in Kansas anymore, haven’t caught on, admit to zilch uncertainty and want me to STFU about it. Sound about right?.
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Thank you for this!
We have collected the results calculated with the Effective Temperature Complete Formula.
Comparison of results planet Te (Tsat.mean) measured by satellites, and the planet Te calculated with Complete Formula:
…………………Te = [ Φ (1-a) S (β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ /4σ ]¹∕ ⁴……….. (1)
Planet or…….. Te.satellites……… Te.incomplete…….Te.complete
moon ………….measured …………..formula ………….formula
Mercury …………..340 K ……………437,30 K ………..346,11 K
Earth ………………288 K ……………255 K ……………288,36 K
Moon ……………..220 Κ ……………271 Κ ……………221,74 Κ
Mars ………………210 K ……………211,52 K …………215,23 K
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
Fabulous. Why don’t you plot the temperature trend and then see if it matches instrument data.. oh right…
Conclusions:
We had to answer those two questions:
1. Why Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t affect the Global Warming?
It is proven now by the Planet Effective Temperature Complete Formula calculations. There aren’t any atmospheric factors in the Complete Formula. Nevertheless the Planet-Without-Atmosphere Effective Temperature Complete Formula produces very reasonable results:
Te.earth = 288,36 K, calculated by the Complete Formula, which is the same as the
Tsat.mean.earth = 288 K, measured by satellites.
Te.moon = 221,74 K, calculated by the Complete Formula, which is almost identical with the
Tsat.mean.moon = 220 K, measured by satellites.
Earth has a very thin atmosphere; Earth has a very small greenhouse phenomenon in its atmosphere and it doesn’t warm the planet.
2. What causes the Global Warming then?
The Global Warming is happening due to the orbital forcing. It is not happening because of the atmosphere. We have the prove – a newly discovered for the Rotating Planet Surface Solar Irradiation Absorbing-Emitting Universal Law:
Jemit = σΤe⁴/(β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ (W/m²)
And knowing that Jemit = Jabs
And Jabs = [ Φ (1-a) So (1/R²) /4 ] (W/m²)
Solving for Te we obtain the Planet without Atmosphere Effective Temperature Complete Formula:
Te.earth = [ Φ (1-a) So (1/R²) (β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ /4σ ]¹∕ ⁴ = 288,36 K
The calculations made by the Planet without Atmosphere Effective Temperature Complete Formula also correspond to the next conclusion:
The measured by satellites Earth’s mean temperature T = 288 K is the Earth’s surface radiative equilibrium temperature.
And… what keeps the Earth warm at Te.earth = 288 K, when the Moon is at Te.moon = 220 K? Why Moon is on average 68 oC colder? It is very cold at night there and it is very hot during the day…
Earth is warmer because Earth rotates faster and because Earth’s surface is covered with water.
Does the Earth’s atmosphere act as a blanket that warms Earth’s surface?
No, it does not.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
Great. How is it again that climate changes when the spin is almost constant?
Never mind that, the more interesting question is – why does this blog act as a magnet for cranks?
I didn’t say that. 🤣
Judith wrote:
In his opening remarks for the UN Climate Change Conference this week in Madrid (COP25), UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that “the point of no-return is no longer over the horizon.”
In light of the Lenton+ comment in Nature 11/28 about tipping points, why is this fear mongering? If the possibility of some tipping points/abrupt changes are in the 1-3 C region instead of 5 C or above, why is what Guterres said out of bounds?
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) introduced the idea of tipping points two decades ago. At that time, these ‘large-scale discontinuities’ in the climate system were considered likely only if global warming exceeded 5 °C above pre-industrial levels. Information summarized in the two most recent IPCC Special Reports (published in 2018 and in September this year)2,3 suggests that tipping points could be exceeded even between 1 and 2 °C of warming (see ‘Too close for comfort’).”
“The latest IPCC models projected a cluster of abrupt shifts7 between 1.5 °C and 2 °C, several of which involve sea ice.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0
Because you shouldn’t bother buying fire extinguishers nor install smoke detectors unless your house is actually on fire.
Uncertainty, and all that – if you don’t know everything, you know nothing.
Judith wrote:
Activist scientists and the media quickly seize upon each extreme weather event as having the fingerprints of manmade climate change
“Averaged across the past eight years, about 73% of published studies have found a role for climate change in the events they examined, versus about 27% that didn’t. But it isn’t an even split over time. In the last few years, more papers have pointed to the influence of global warming—about 95% of them these days, Herring noted.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/more-and-more-links-are-emerging-between-warming-and-extreme-weather/
Personally, I am quick to seize upon each extreme weather event as being 100% definitely *not* proof of any climate change.
This is because there is so much uncertainty that I am absolutely certain that climate change is a hoax.
Craig
What is the last decade of weather, or 3 consecutive decades of ‘climate’, you believe to be ‘normal’ and unaffected by man and that we should be aspiring to return to?
tonyb
Did they also point out the history of forest fires in the US and how the state of California and Australian forest managers are acknowledging the role of poor forest management practices, in addition to other variables, in contributing to recent forest fires?
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/figure16-1.jpg
Did they also mention this finding using NASA data?
“Globally, the total acreage burned by fires each year declined by 24 percent between 1998 and 2015, according to a new paper in Science that analyzes NASA’s satellite data, as well as population and socioeconomic information. The decline in burned lands was largest in savannas and grasslands, where fires are essential for maintaining healthy ecosystems and habitat conservation.“
Or did they mention the history of heat waves in the US?
https://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/figure-gd-1-10.png
Or did they mention the trend in tornadoes
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/image70.png
Or major hurricane frequency
http://climatlas.com/tropical/global_major_freq.png
Did they mention this study?
“Continental United States (CONUS) hurricane-related inflation-adjusted damage has increased significantly since 1900. However, since 1900 neither observed CONUS landfalling hurricane frequency nor intensity shows significant trends, including the devastating 2017 season.”
Klotzbach et al 2018
“Climate models indicate that atmospheric water vapor will increase with warming at a rate consistent with that expected from the Clausius–Clapeyron equation (~7% K−1). In contrast, results from modeling studies indicate that the increase in global-mean precipitation P with warming is much lower (~2% K−1) and dictated by energetic constraints rather than moisture availability.
“Attempts have been made to quantify precipitation and water vapor sensitivity from observations. Water vapor increases are tightly coupled to surface warming in observations, and the sensitivity of water vapor is robustly observed to be 6%–7% K−1 (Wentz and Schabel 2000; Trenberth et al. 2005; O’Gorman et al. 2012), in agreement with models. Precipitation and surface temperature change demonstrate weaker coupling in the observations (O’Gorman et al. 2012; Allan et al. 2014), and more uncertainty in observed dP/dTs. Wentz et al. 2007 determined that P has increased at a rate of roughly 6% K−1 by using observations from 1987 to 2006, which is much larger than modeled sensitivities. Other studies have shown observed dP/dTs to be 2–3% K−1 (Arkin et al. 2010; O’Gorman et al. 2012; Allan et al. 2014), in closer agreement with the models. The sensitivity of P is also dependent on the time period used (John et al. 2009). For example, the sensitivity obtained using data from the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (Huffman et al. 2009) and HadCRUT4 temperature measurements (Morice et al. 2012) is 3.4% K−1 for the years 1989–2010 (O’Gorman et al. 2012) and 2.8% K−1 for the years 1988–2010 (Allan et al. 2014).”
The Sensitivity of the Hydrological Cycle to Internal Climate Variability versus Anthropogenic Climate Change
Ryan J. Kramer and Brian J. Soden, JCLI May 2016.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0408.1
Nearly 25 years ago predictions were that the ski industry would go kaput.
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/04/IPCCSkiing1995_shadow.jpg
But they haven’t with snowfall up.
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/nhland_season1-6.png
March 7, 2019
“Major resorts across North America have been falling over each other to announce later than planned closing times, much deeper into the spring, and in some cases the summer.”
“The amount of snow in the western United States has seen an average drop of 41 percent since the early 1980s, according to research just published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. As a result, the snow season shrunk by 34 days.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/20/climate-change-is-taking-a-toll-on-the-20-billion-ski-industry.html
Here’s what Tony Heller didn’t tell you — trends in NH snow cover for each season:
SON: 120 Kkm2/yr
DJF: 49 Kkm2/yr
MAM: -160 Kkm2/yr
JJA: -240 Kkm2/yr
Overall the trend in snow cover in the northern hemisphere is -19,000 km2/yr since 1966, implying a loss of about 1 Mkm2.
“From 1960 to 2017, the Alpine [European Alps] snow season shortened by 38 days—starting an average of 12 days later and ending 26 days earlier than normal.”
https://time.com/italy-alps-climate-change/
“Overall, snow cover duration has decreased across most of Canada over recent decades. The number of days per season with snow cover has decreased by 5% to 10% per decade across most of Canada and during most seasons from 1981 to 2015. These decreases are due to later snow cover onset in the fall and earlier snow melt in the spring as a result of warming trends across most of Canada.”
https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/climate-change/canadian-centre-climate-services/basics/trends-projections/changes-snow.html
A primer on what teens should know about the history of the global climate. Rivers drying up and excessive heat.
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/2017_07_21_20_20_35-down.gif
In 1922 the Arctic warming
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Screen-Shot-2017-02-01-at-6.48.38-AM-down.gif
In 1940 the Arctic is still warm
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Screen-Shot-2017-04-16-at-7.10.00-AM-down.gif
In 1958 the Arctic is still warm. How is today any different?
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/DppvMM0VsAAO2El.jpg
Glaciers were melting at the end of the Little Ice Age. Alaska Glaciers shrinking since the end of the Little Ice Age.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/p1386k/pdf/02_1386K_part1.pdf
Glaciers in the Alps shrinking after 1860
https://www.the-cryosphere.net/12/3311/2018/tc-12-3311-2018.pdf
China glaciers shrinking since the LIA
https://www.igsoc.org/annals/55/66/a66A031.pdf
Greenland Ice Melting In 1903
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Image1824_shadow.png
South Pacific islands drowning in early 1800s
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2019-02-26052109_shadow.jpg
In Brest 5 inches per Century SLR
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=190-091
In Los Angeles 4 inches of SLR per Century
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=9410660
So, what has changed?
What has changed with the rain?
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/rranom.eaus_.0112.10827.png
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/image28.png
In India
https://s3.amazonaws.com/jo.nova/graph/water/rain/droughts/rain-drought-india-l.gif
“The hydrological cycle is expected to intensify in response to global warming1,2,3. Yet, little unequivocal evidence of such an acceleration has been found on a global scale4,5,6”
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2068
At the global level no increase in precipitation
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-17-0065.1
No statistically significant trends in tropical cyclone flooding
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Precipitation-Journal-of-Hydrology.png
For those teens in Australia who read the NBC headlines about record heat in their country and recent droughts they should first read these historical accounts.
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/2018-07-31043913_shadow.png
One of the most terrible days in 1851
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Image735_shadow.png
The heat waves of 1896 isn’t in the record
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Image777_shadow.png
Or 1900?
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2019-12-17072941.png
Heat Apoplexy in 1906
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Image2212212019.png
Bushfires in 1934
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2017_11_23_06_20_52-down.png
1939 record heat in 3 capitals
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/2018_01_13_10_59_21-down.png
Death rates from heatwaves were worse 100 years ago
http://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Z1M0R/1/?abcnewsembedheight=430
Tony Heller’s graphs and Tony Heller tactics — throw out so much flak no one can respond to it all, while cherrypicking a couple points in spacetime as if they represent a global conclusion, having little connection to the issue at hand — in this case global precipitation.
From the Miralles+ Nature paper you cited:
“Our results suggest that recent multi-year declines in global average continental evaporation8,9 reflect transitions to El Niño conditions, and are not the consequence of a persistent reorganization of the terrestrial water cycle. Future changes in continental evaporation will be determined by the response of ENSO to changes in global radiative forcing, which still remains highly uncertain10,11″
“It is well documented that precipitation is difficult to measure with confidence on a global scale and only a few decades of reliable data are available [see discussion in Stephens and Ellis (2008) and Arkin et al. (2010)]. Internal variability in these short record lengths may contribute to the uncertainties described above and limit the applicability of the observational data to better understand anthropogenic climate change.”
The Sensitivity of the Hydrological Cycle to Internal Climate Variability versus Anthropogenic Climate Change
Ryan J. Kramer and Brian J. Soden, JCLI May 2016.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0408.1
“Major resorts across North America have been falling over each other to announce later than planned closing times, much deeper into the spring, and in some cases the summer.”
That’s a single year’s data point, not a trend. Another tactic of Tony Heller’s disinformation.
Appell
I can understand your frustration. That happens when you’re on the wrong side of the science argument.
You have lost every debate. MWP, AMO, the whole thing. It’s all coming down like a house of cards. Tick tock, tick tock.
I can understand your frustration. That happens when you’re on the wrong side of the science argument.
You have lost every debate. MWP, AMO, the whole thing. It’s all coming down like a house of cards. Tick tock, tick tock.
Really, that’s the best reply you can muster, to take your ball and go home? Lame.
Appell – “Averaged across the past eight years, about 73% of published studies have found a role for climate change in the events they examined, versus about 27% that didn’t. But it isn’t an even split over time. In the last few years, more papers have pointed to the influence of global warming—about 95% of them these days, Herring noted.”
Its very Impressive that the climate scientists can tease out the role climate change has made in weather events, when
As cerescokid points out, there has been virtually no statisical change in weather events since the early 1900’s.
“There is evidence from observations gathered since 1950 of change in some extremes….”
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/SREX-Chap3_FINAL-1.pdf
Appell _ “There is evidence from observations gathered since 1950 of change in some extremes….”
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/SREX-Chap3_FINAL-1.”
Why do you resort to the common alarmist tactic of cherrypicking start dates.
Why not start with the early 1900’s – using a longer period shows a more complete picture. ie natural swings, in which the uptick since 1950 is within the normal range of natural variation
Why not start with the early 1900’s – using a longer period shows a more complete picture.
Because that’s what the IPCC did that I quoted.
Because it mixes climate eras. The anthropogenic period started around 1950, with anthropogenic aerosols and anthropogenic GHGs.
Explain how starting at 1950 (giving 70 years of data) isn’t enough but 120 years suddenly is? Maybe you want to use 2000 years? A million? 100 million?
The point is to draw conclusions about possible causative factors, so you look for time periods where they are prominent or dominate. Which for CO2 wasn’t the era 1900-1950. If you wanted to draw conclusions about the best vanilla ice cream, you wouldn’t mix in some chocolate ice cream into your samples.
“Because it mixes climate eras.”
Climate era proof is primarily decadal? That’s laughable by even scientific layman standards.
I didn’t say it was “decadal.” I wrote that the Anthropocene started around 1950, so trends since then are a measure of it.
“I didn’t say it was “decadal.” I wrote that the Anthropocene started around 1950, so trends since then are a measure of it.”
How do you measure from 1950 to now other than decadal? We’re not near the century mark since then. You’e kidding, right?
You can have annual numbers. Or monthly. Decadal. Whatever.
There’s nothing special about 100 years. The real question is if the observed trends are statistically significant.
You and ilk are apparently inching towards the invention of quantum climate science; the measure of climate by, days, hours, minutes. Look at that out of character hurricane! It was too hot today!
You’re completely wrong. Scientists are always saying that a single event or a single month or a single decade isn’t proof of climate change — but (often) they have characteristics in line with what’s expected under climate change. Kevin Trenberth says we’ve perturbed the climate state enough that every event/month/year/whatever now has some AGW in it.
So the little bear says 70 years is just the right amount of time to measure a bonafide, irrefutable determination of climate catastrophe within the century mark. Nice.
Stop twisting my words. I didn’t say 70 years was the right time, I said it was often sufficient.
Cheers.
“I didn’t say 70 years was the right time, I said it was often sufficient. Cheers.”
Often sufficient? As opposed to other 70 year incremental comparisons? You have that kind of granularity?
Cheers is a dead giveaway, I’d put down the adult beverage if I were you.
Are the trends statistically significant to whatever degree you choose?
Decadal measurements are uber short durations for measuring climate change. Decadal measurements are noisy relative for a science that measures cyclical climate fluctuations over millennia.
You have to do statistical analyses to understand the data, whatever it is.
Models might as well be packaged under the Milton Bradley label, they’re as predictable as pin the tail on the donkey. But there is one ass consistently pinned that also holds the publics wallet.
Exxon’s projections made in the late 1970s, for both CO2 and temperature, were spot-on:
https://www.sciencealert.com/exxon-expertly-predicted-this-week-s-nightmare-co2-milestone-almost-40-years-ago
_Appell’s comment – “There’s nothing special about 100 years. The real question is if the observed trends are statistically significant.”
By cherrypicking the start date of 1950, you artificially created a statistically significant trend.
Unfortunately, you fail to see the bigger long term picture.
Excellent post Judith. Thank you for being brave enough to do what you do.
I was wondering if it might be possible to correct the typo in the very first paragraph (nite) as some of my alarmist friends stop reading at the first sign of an error.
Warm regards.
“Global mean temperature decreased prior to World War I, increased during the 1920s and 1930s, decreased from the 1940s to 1976/77, and as noted above increased from that point to the end of the century. Insofar as the global mean temperature is controlled by the net top‐of‐the‐atmosphere radiative budget [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007], such breaks in temperature trends imply discontinuities in that budget. Such discontinuities are difficult to reconcile with the presumed smooth evolution of anthropogenic greenhouse gas and aerosol radiative forcing with respect to time [Hansen et al., 2005]. This suggests that an internal reorganization of the climate system may underlie such shifts [Zhang et al., 2007].” https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2008GL037022
Models are not merely problematic but unfit for purpose (Palmer and Stevens, 2019). Large centres with computing power can run models many times producing solutions with multiple trajectories and propagating uncertainty – in accord with Lorenzian sensitive dependence. One may take a mean and neglect ‘irreducible imprecision’. Kravtsov et al (2018) compared the mean of the CMIP5 opportunistic ensemble – the less said about those the better – to surface temperature reanalysis and found that about half of warming since the mid 1940’s was the result of internal variability – missing in state of the art models. No surprise there. Implications for ’emergent’ ECS and surface temperature projections are obvious.
Decadal shifts involve a reorganisation of marine stratocumulus in the eastern Pacific Ocean with changing sea surface temperature. SST variability happens as shifts in turbulent spatio-temporal patterns of ocean and atmospheric circulation.
https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/06/week-in-review-science-edition-114/#comment-904800
Tipping points have been discussed in the literature since the 1950’s, Following Lorenz – understanding of the mechanism of deterministic chaos in weather and climate evolved. In the 80’s and 90’s Wally Broecker – the Godfather of global warming – was considering chaos in the context of thermohaline circulation and the initiation of glacials. By the early 2000’s abrupt climate change and surprises were inevitable.
“A small forcing can cause a small [climate] change or a huge one.”
— National Academy of Sciences, 2002.
Abrupt change in THC is possible. Data from the 26 degree north array in the Atlantic is showing a slowdown this century. But the potential for abrupt shifts this century is unknown and incalculable. Marine stratocumulus cloud may evaporate. Tapio Schneider et al (2019) did some fine scale cloud modelling – a proper use for models. At about 1200 ppm CO2 marins boundary layer stratocumulus almost disappear and the planet warms by about 12 degrees C. This may be enough to trigger an ocean anoxic event and mass extinctions (Royal Society Publishing, 2019).
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/cloud-computation.png
I’d suggest limiting CO2 concentration to say 600 ppm. Just to be on the safe side.
The Lenton et al stories – there have been a couple of them – are so vague as to be meaningless. Speculation and not science as such. There are other planetary thresholds that seem more to the point. We may have crossed a couple of them.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/cloud-computation.png
1000’s of keystone species are on average 50% less abundant than in the 1970’s. Chaotic population dynamics may well result in some or many species crashing out of existence. Far too much phosphorus and nitrogen is eutrophying waterways, wetlands and coastal zones. A tenfold increase in the area of anoxic zones since the 1970’s. The risks of climate change is still uncertain – but as they said – surprises are inevitable. Extremes have been much more extreme in the past – the nature of Wally’s beast. Quantifying extremes requires a 1000 years of data.
https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/14/the-toxic-rhetoric-of-climate-change/#comment-904986
Even 80% renewables penetration by 2050 triples retail energy costs in the US (NREL, 2015). Both politically unpalatable and pointless – CO2 emissions from electricity generation is 25% of emissions. And we will cheer on emerging economies using whatever source of energy is cost competitive. We will need to be a lot more creative than that to retreat from planetary thresholds.
https://thebreakthrough.org/articles/our-high-energy-planet
https://www.stockholmresilience.org/images/18.3110ee8c1495db74432636f/1459560224012/PB_FIG33_media_11jan2015_web2.jpg
Thank you for your message of common sense.
As a mid-20 non-westerner I found it truly shocking that teenagers in Europe and the US do believe this extinction narrative. We are not live in a superhero world where apocalyptic crisis happens in every moment.
Seems to me, there’s a lot of political agitation in all this – ie: climate change is seen by some as a vehicle / an opportunity to stir things up & cause chaos … just look at the litter left by marches in London & Paris – would environmentally aware people do that ? Also, how many climate change concerned people could respond with even a logical let a lone a numerically literate response if asked to explain their reasons for concern …
Data from previous interglacials surely should gives us reasonable expectations as to what to expect with regards to temperature and sea level rise when the interglacial period reaches the historical sharp peak in the not too distant future.
This a fine, rational response that doesn’t adequately address the crippling effect fear has on thinking. Facts and logic don’t overcome paraiyzing fear.
So an addendum to the essay is needed:
Realize that governments, media, and activists all lie. You are too young to know this for fact. They have an agenda and it requires that people be manipulated into cooperation. Fear is a powerful tool with many historical precedents. Consider this as an inoculating experience that will make you stronger and more resistant in the future. Yes, there is one. Don’t let people who don’t care about you use your for their selfish purposes.
Milankovitch Cycle should be read Reversed !
Of course climate changes.
And of course the planet’s rotational spin is almost constant.
Also Earth has a very thin atmosphere; Earth has a very small greenhouse phenomenon in its atmosphere and it doesn’t warm the planet.
The cause of climate change is not the Earth’s atmosphere.
The cause of climate change is orbital.
Milutin Milankovitch has explained everything 100 years ago.
The ( Ṃ ↓ ) represents the Original Milankovitch Cycle grapheme.
And the ( Ẇ ↑ ) represents the Reversed Milankovitch Cycle grapheme.
( Ṃ ↓ ) – supposedly this is the Original Milankovitch Cycle. Please take notice of the dot under ( Ṃ ↓ )
The dot’s position represents the present time, when Planet Earth is in Original Milankovitch Cycle Minima:
The Original Milankovitch Cycle shows a cooling trend.
( Ẇ ↑ ) – and this is the Reversed Milankovitch cycle. Please take notice of the dot above ( Ẇ ↑ )
The dot’s position represents the present time, when Planet Earth is in Reversed Milankovitch Cycle Maxima: ( Ẇ ↑ )
The Reversed Milankovitch Cycle shows a warming trend.
Milankovitch had to reverse his cycle to match the instrumental data. But he didn’t have a time.
It was a critical mistake in Milankovitch’s assumptions.
Now it is time for us to make the necessary correction.
100 years have passed, Milankovitch agrees, if it is necessary, for us to make a correction.
Right now Planet Earth is in an orbital forced warming trend. And these are culmination times.
The very slow warming trend will continue for about a 1,5 millennia on. Then slowly and gradually the Global Temperatures will become cooler.
The ( Ṃ ↓ ) represents the Original Milankovitch Cycle grapheme.
And the ( Ẇ ↑ ) represents the Reversed Milankovitch Cycle grapheme.
Milankovitch Cycle should be read Reversed !
The dot’s position represents the present time warming trend, when Planet Earth is in Reversed Milankovitch Cycle Maxima: ( Ẇ ↑ )
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
How amazing. Why haven’t people realized this?
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/earths-orbit.png
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/ceres_ebaf-toa_ed4-0_incoming_solar_flux_march-2000tomarch-20182-e1541276063620.png
But wasn’t Milankovitch concerned with summer insolation at high northern latitudes and nonlinear ice sheet feedbacks? Not average global insolation that remains reasonably constant?
At present Perihelion occurs in the middle of the Southern Hemisphere summer.
At present Perihelion occurs in the middle of the Northern Hemisphere winter. Consequently at present Perihelion occurs in the middle of the Southern Hemisphere summer.
In the summer Earth’s axis tilts toward sun.
At Perihelion Earth receives 7% more intense sunlight than at the Aphelion.
This is because the Earth’s orbit is not circular but elliptical, with the Sun located in one of the foci of the ellipse.
When we apply Stefan-Boltzmann Law we come to conclusion that at present, when Perihelion occurs in the middle of the Southern Hemisphere summer, Earth absorbs more solar energy and that leads to orbital forced warming trend.
It happens because North and South Hemispheres have an unequal distribution of land and oceanic surfaces.
The Southern Hemisphere is mostly covered with oceans (water) and the Northern Hemisphere is crowded with continents (soil).
As a result there is a major difference in each Hemisphere surface qualities.
The surface is what interacts with incoming solar flux.
cp. ocean = 1 cal /gr oC
cp. land = 0,19 cal /gr oC
Let’s apply the Rotating Planet Surface Solar Irradiation Absorbing-Emitting Universal Law:
Jemit = σΤe⁴/(β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ (W/m²)
We can see now that when insolated, the land emits more intensively IR radiation back to space than the ocean does.
It is just happening that way at present. When Southern Oceans are tilted towards sun Earth is at Perihelion (at closest to sun position).
At present more intense insolation (+7%) falls on oceanic waters. That leads to orbital forced global warming trend.
It all happens according to Reversed Milankovitch Cycle.
And it happens according to Stefan-Boltzmann Law.
And of course the average global insolation remains reasonably constant.
And Jabs = [ Φ (1-a) So /4 ] (W/m²)
What changes in the time is the Earth’s surface IR radiation intensity.
That is why I say there is an orbital forced Global Warming Trend.
It is the 21.000 years Milankovitch Cycle. Only the Milankovitch Cycle should be read Reversed !
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
Eccentricity and inclination at present is shown in the graphic. Regardless of land masses – orbits don’t change anywhere near fast enough to be a factor.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/ocean-heat-and-power-flux.jpg
Honestly – I think you need to rethink it.
Thank you Robert.
What I have to complement is about the axial precession.
Axial precession is the movement of the rotational axis of Earth. According to the Milankovitch Cycle, precession has a cycle of roughly 23,000.
Precession doesn’t change the total amount of solar radiation that hits Earth. But precession primarily alters the perihelion and aphelion.
Overall, this increases the seasonal differences from one hemisphere to the other.
The warming trend we observe now started some 6.500 years ago.
It is a very slow process. The MWP is a confirmation of the existence of a long warming trend.
The LIA was observed as a colder atmosphere and more snowy winters. Also the glaciers were increasing.
On the other hand oceans continued accumulating heat.
It is a very long cycle. We are observing the Reversed Milankovitch Cycle culmination period.
It will last about a millennia and half and then there will be a cooling trend.
It is a culmination phase phenomenon. It is similar to the common Solstice we observe every year..
Around Solstices the day is almost the same, only very tiny changes can be observed. It is a culmination time of a year. When day stops getting shorter and then it starts getting longer. A very slow and small changes can be observed.
The same with the 7.500 years long warming trend. It comes to its culmination now.
First it will stop to get warmer, and then very slowly it will change to a cooling trend.
But as I have said it is a very long and a very slow process. It will take some 1.500 years to complete.
That is why I say there is an orbital forced Global Warming Trend.
It is the 23.000 years long Milankovitch Cycle.
Only the Milankovitch Cycle should be read Reversed !
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
So instead we look at a mirror image of 65N summer insolation and compare that to global temps?
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/65n-insolation.png
http://www.realclimate.org/images/Marcott.png
Perhaps not. Perhaps we should look at solar activity determined from cosmogenic isotopes.
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/109/16/5967/F3.large.jpg
Hmmmm…
To quote (almost) Billy Connolly:
There is no such thing as bad Climate Change, just the wrong clothes.
It’s summer. I spend as much time as possible in air conditioning and wearing a sarong.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1b/ae/80/1bae8050a5e967dcf8fe4bfee0d18761.jpg
While I agree on some of the data. As a human being how can you even believe that rhetoric you just opinionated into the world? Your argument is that we got so good at building infrastructure that increased damaging climate change is null? While I agree our chemical and applied sciences are much further advanced, I feel like you’re ignoring key triggers to needing to combat this. Fossil fuels are outdated technologies. I mean tesla himself discovered wireless charging in the early 1900s and we just now use it for cell phones? You’re driving the narrative of oh it’s not our problem someone else can fix it. You will be the munitions that the hard right will use against moving our civilization forward.
This is not correct- but I appreciate your restraint. There is far too much vilification of scientists by any clown with a keyboard these days.
The idea is that resilient infrastructure and good emergency planning are required whatever the cause of extremes. Attribution of causation of extreme weather requires much longer data records than from the 1959’s on. A matter of statistical significance.
Some progress can be made by managing pollutants like nitrous oxides, CFC’s and methane – as well as sulfide and black carbon aerosols. A lot of the rest relies on better managing water and terrestrial carbon pools. ‘Blue carbon’, a million sand dams by 2040 and 5 billion hectares of hope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITwPDs2LdcU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_WxyLRnjAU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9qYyrgzoII
I was background streaming a comedy called Rake yesterday – where it was said that if the activity of nuclear waste could be reduced to background levels in 250 rather than 250,000 years nuclear might work. They can with existing technology. And we could do a lot with such an energy source.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/em2-summary-e1514320391410.png
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/em2-fuel-cycle1.jpg
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/em2-waste-reduction.png
The creation of a truely global civilization of prosperous communities in vibrant landscapes this century cannot rely simply on wind and solar energy.
“The idea that the science of climate change is largely “settled,” common among policy makers and environmentalists but not among the climate science community, has congealed into the view that the outlines and dimension of anthropogenic climate change are understood and that incremental improvement to and application of the tools used to establish this outline are sufficient to provide society with the scientific basis for dealing with climate change. For certain, some things are settled. We know that greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmosphere as a result of human activity and that they are largely responsible for warming of surface temperatures globally.” Tim Palmer and Bjorn Stevens (2019) – The scientific challenge of understanding and estimating climate change. – https://www.pnas.org/content/116/49/24390 –
A reasonable summary. One that I’m reasonably confident Judith agrees with. But one clarification of this passage is required for those not familiar with the work of Tim Palmer in particular. The question of whether AGG caused most recent warming is not resolved with great certainty. From an observational perspective.
“The top-of-atmosphere (TOA) Earth radiation budget (ERB) is determined from the difference between how much energy is absorbed and emitted by the planet. Climate forcing results in an imbalance in the TOA radiation budget that has direct implications for global climate, but the large natural variability in the Earth’s radiation budget due to fluctuations in atmospheric and ocean dynamics complicates this picture.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10712-012-9175-1
The frustrating thing is that the views of both sides have congealed around competing cultural values. Limiting first of all open ended investigations of geophysics and instead devolving into a series of contested talking points. Secondly, diverting attention from profound social, economic and environmental challenges for humanity this century.
@RIE “The question of whether AGG caused most recent warming is not resolved with great certainty.”
If by “recent warming” you mean the last decade or two, I would agree. That would be an excellent reason to not attach much importance to it.
If however you mean the last century, the evidence is clear that the combination of anthropogenic forcings (including aerosols, which aren’t considered greenhouse gases) and the Sun are essentially 100% responsible for the warming since 1850.
If it’s only 90% say, to what do you attribute the other 10%?
“Climate science is settled enough,” Raymond Pierrehumbert, Slate 10/1/14.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/10/the_wall_street_journal_and_steve_koonin_the_new_face_of_climate_change.html
Recent warming occurred since 1976.
“The global-mean temperature trends associated with GSW are as large as 0.3 °C per 40 years, and so are capable of doubling, nullifying or even reversing the forced global warming trends on that timescale.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0044-6
GSW is the global stadium wave. But the energy dynamic is modulated by marine boundary layer stratocumulus changes in the eastern Pacific. And this may be a feedback of solar modulation of the polar annular modes. Although that may be a threshold too far. 😊
“The idea that the science of climate change is largely “settled,” common among policy makers and environmentalists but not among the climate science community, has congealed into the view that the outlines and dimension of anthropogenic climate change are understood and that incremental improvement to and application of the tools used to establish this outline are sufficient to provide society with the scientific basis for dealing with climate change.” https://www.pnas.org/content/116/49/24390
consensus = congealed
There is a broad and nuanced science that is emphatically not the crude and eccentric theories of sky dragon slayers. Seek and you will find. Although I suspect that congealed is a life choice for many.
Judy, I agree that both climate alarmism and climate denial are greatly overblown, and that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
I do however feel that, in the interest of better mental health, the most pressing need this week would be to reassure this 20-year-old that things aren’t as grim as some have saying. So I do hope you replied to that person with the gist of your post here.
Since “the middle” is a bit fuzzy, being hard to pin down, let me add to that fuzziness by pointing to my own answer to a related question this week on Quora, namely https://www.quora.com/Is-2-degrees-Celsius-global-temperature-rise-really-the-temperature-that-if-exceeded-will-result-in-an-irreversible-tipping-point/answer/Vaughan-Pratt-1
Hi Vaughan
I think you underestimate the power of biology in our current ‘hyperthermal’. CO2 warming, positive cloud feedback, a wild proliferation of oceanic autotrophs and heterotrophs, an ocean anoxic event, a mass extinction, a massive drawdown of CO2 as dead organisms settle to the bottom of oceans and a transient cooling. It will all work out much faster than millions of years.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rsta/376/2130
Of course we might manage water and landscapes to add to terrestrial carbon pools.
https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/soil-carbon-storage-84223790/
Cheers 😊
Hi Robert,
Thanks for those thoughts.
How come you omitted the possibility of a nuclear winter? Shouldn’t that come under the “power of biology”? Though I suppose a robot setting off the doomsday machine could be considered more cyberwarfare than biology. ;).
I would imagine including “a mass extinction” on your list of things that will “all work out” might not be the sort of thing that would cheer up Judy’s 20-year-old correspondent, who may well be concerned about actively participating in a mass extinction.
Absent concrete numbers for the other items on your list, I’m not sure what to make of them. Cloud feedbacks for example may well play a role, but unless it’s a different role from what they’ve played during the past 50 years I don’t see their relevance since the historical constraints have automatically taken them into account.
In a nuclear winter – all bets are off. The old advice of bend over, put your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye applies.
But if it is numbers you want to get buried under.
– https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/06/week-in-review-science-edition-114/#comment-904800 – https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/06/week-in-review-science-edition-114/#comment-904802
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlnGQkT0rQs
Thanks for all the links (said the cyberdolphins as they took off for bluer parts of cyberspace).
But they all seemed to deal with at most decadal climate change!
As I pointed out on Thursday (December 12) in the very first sentence of my poster
http://clim8.stanford.edu/A41M-2848.pdf
“Climate is always changing”.
So your links are everything Republicans complain about with climate change.
Whether you are a climate denier or a climate alarmist (there are lots of both), when you cite subcentennial climate data to support your side of the climate debate, you are arguing from opposite premises.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Ralph_Hedley_%28follower%29_An_argument_from_opposite_premises.jpg
Only with centennial climate data is it possible for people to argue from the same premises.
More on this at my poster cited above.
Hi Vaughan, do you want to do a guest post on your poster?
We know that climate changes – as I said above in the context of more than a 1000 years of Nilometer data. The answer is 42 – I have a brand new string theory. Perhaps another 1000 years will be needed to understand spatio-temporal chaos. Perhaps a 1000 years is optimistic – but hopefully before God’s final message to creation written in 300 foot high letters of fire. “The management apologizes for the inconvenience.”
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/Cairo_Nilometer_2.jpg/450px-Cairo_Nilometer_2.jpg
https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/14/the-toxic-rhetoric-of-climate-change/#comment-904986
What is most audacious is the juxtapositioning of very short term – post hiatus – observation of process – Loeb et al 2018 – with very long term reconstructions of sea surface temperature. Google US medieval megadrought. As above so below.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/vance2012-antartica-law-dome-ice-core-salt-content-e1540939103404.jpg
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00003.1
I’m predicting 1000 years in the desert for the US and 1000 years of Noah level inundation in Australia. Like Trump – I have an 81% approval rating among evangelical Christians – although his is slipping lately.
Good to see you back – btw
Vaughan
To set aside Douglas Adams and get serious for a moment.
You do a disservice to Kravtsov et al and dismiss identification of a geophysical mechanism involving Rayleigh-Bénard convection over the upwelling region of the Pacific Ocean. The latter not at all concerned with statistics of climate.
Sergey Kravtsov and colleagues compared surface air temperature from models to a reanalysis product. The result quoted suggests that half of the warming since 1976 related to the warm phase of the GSW. A very sophisticated analysis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VbgzCahx8o
The geophysical mechanism involving open and closed cell cloud at the marine boundary layer was supported with with both observation and theory. Open and closed cells are a satellite observation to be puzzled over. Theory from Koren 2017 suggests that closed cells persist for longer over cooler water before raining out from the center to leave an open cell. The CERES observations of Loeb et al (2018) show where this mechanism of change is centered and it’s significance. It is not a long bow to infer that this mechanism has operated at decadal to millennial scales.
https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/43000/43795/clperu_amo_2010107_cu.jpg
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/43795/open-and-closed-cell-clouds-over-the-pacific-ocean
😊
Reblogged this on ClimateTheTruth.com.
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You do us a service, Judith, in a world infected with AGW hysteria and mountains of misinformation. It has occurred to me that AGW theory can’t get over the laws of physics. For example, Wien’s Law provides that the maximum wavelength of IR emitted from a surface equals 2898/ T (Kelvin). This implies that the 15 micron wavelength described as the CO2 fingerprint wavelength is only emitted from a surface at or colder than 79 degrees below zero Celsius. Little of Earth’s surface ever gets this cold. The coldest ever recorded is 88 below C at Vostok, Antarctica and the highest is 58 deg. C in the Libyan desert. Virtually no IR is emitted at 15 microns within this range and little IR could possibly be absorbed by CO2 or in any way “trapped”. Am I missing something?
Michael Blair wrote:
This implies that the 15 micron wavelength described as the CO2 fingerprint wavelength is only emitted from a surface at or colder than 79 degrees below zero Celsius.
No, any blackbody emits photons of all wavelengths. (Just look at the Planck law.)
A quick Google brought me to this fun image. It was at WUWT so I crossed myself and hastily left.
https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/clip_image002_thumb-2.png
There is a broad band of emission frequencies.
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Thank you very much for this Dr Curry.
As the mother of two primary school kids with a scientific background myself, I am genuinely alarmed at the way schools deal with this at the moment.
I live in Ireland, but am from Belgium originally. And in both countries we see the same sort of things: science lessons being only a pretext to scaremongering about Climate change. My 5 yrs old recently had a “science day” with experiments made in the classroom. 3 experiments. All 3 about how oil/petrol is bad for the environment. Nothing optimistic in that way to “promote” sciences. Similarly for my 8 yrs old, who had already gotten indoctrination sessions last year about how cars are evil – and now his parents are “killing the planet” each day they drive… One of my best friend in Belgium had her 10 yrs old in tears about how climate change is “decimating polar bears” the other day – her school gets a monthly visit by an “environment” teacher … each one leads to crisis at home. Another one is a teacher herself and was telling me how her school was “asked” by local authorities to bus all the kids (including some younger than 6) to “climate strike” demonstrations last year…
In both countries, I hear of paedo-psychotherapists saying that they get more and more kids coming to them with “eco-anxiety” issues. And still… the indoctrination keeps going on… :(
Lenka
I have great news for ‘environment teachers,’ holier than thou adults and any parents with budding Greta’s living under their roof demanding they participate in a school strike. . Without waiting for Govt. legislation they can voluntarily achieve the ‘No Co2 emissions by 2025 demanded by Extinction Rebellion, by re-evaluating their own modern lifestyles, as with energy consumption set to soar by 50% by 2050, renewables can not take up the fossil fuel energy gap for decades.
Simply follow these cut out and keep guidelines for a low emissions lifestyle;
Assuming journeys are necessary in the first place, travel only by bus, cycling, walking or train. For students, no parents taxi service. No flying except in an emergency so obviously no foreign holidays and forget ski-ing. No spring water in plastic bottles, No imported food or food out of season when there is a local alternative. No Burgers and little other meat, dairy or fish, no hot daily showers, an embargo on throw away fashion clothes and shoes, no cotton. Infrequent washing of clothes in tepid water and no artificial drying. Drastic reductions of energy guzzling internet and social media, with environmentally damaging smart phones and computers rationed to one a household and kept for years, and curtailment of consumer good purchases. Accept carbon rationing.
Curtail consumption of habitat destroying coffee and forego endless home deliveries, whether fast food or shoes. Cease attendance at festivals or sporting events, especially overseas or with floodlights. Minimal home heating. Boycott new content on tv or film especially when made overseas, expect regular power cuts. Curtail vegan foods which have achieved mythical planet saving status, despite many vegan ingredients being imported –often by air-bearing huge carbon footprints.
No doubt young local activists believing in this ‘climate emergency’ have taken their own drastic steps to try to prevent it by selflessly regressing to the 18th century and might like to inform the rest of us which measures they have personally implemented? Contributions from publicity seeking but hypocritical celebs and Royals especially welcome.
How highly will your activist friends family teachers and children score in following the low carbon lifestyle they wish to impose on others Lenka?
Perhaps we ought to leave climate change to nature which has provided extremes of one sort or another throughout the 12000 year long Holocene and instead concentrate on the environment? This is undoubtedly facing a ‘crisis’.
tonyb
OMG. The 21st century children’s crusade. Do we need educational guidelines on this? The answer is not to deny uncertainty and risk – but to instill confidence. We are brilliant technological monkeys and no problem is too difficult.
Great to hear from someone with the expertise and commonsense but we need this to be seen and heard in public thank you for your explanation
This is an extremely well-reasoned, rational, and intelligent piece. And backed up with facts.
The only thing wrong with it is that simply not enough people will get to read it.
Why don’t more people know about this?
“Global storm and ocean-eddy resolving [O(1 km)] models make it possible to directly simulate deep convection, ocean mesoscale eddies, and important land–atmosphere interactions. Prototypes of such models are already being developed (21), 3 examples of which are compared with a satellite image. By avoiding the need to represent essential processes by semi-empirical parameterizations, the simulated climate of such a model is more constrained by the laws of physics. This can be expected to lead to the reduction or even elimination of many systematic biases that plague the present generations of models (24–31).” https://www.pnas.org/content/116/49/24390
There is little understanding here of the limits of the current generation of models. What there is always misses the point. There is no understanding at all of a new generation of Earth system models. Starting from observations including an astonishing range of remotely sensed data, near real time data from physical sensors across land surfaces and in oceans, calibrated hydrologic and carbon models… and providing probabilistic forecasts at scales of a season to a decade.
https://image.slidesharecdn.com/danabasoglu-180504212458/95/computer-modeling-capabilities-challenges-for-earth-system-predictions-1-1024.jpg
https://www.slideshare.net/UCAR/computer-modeling-capabilities-challenges-for-earth-system-predictions
So that’s what happens when a slideshow is shared. 😊
Parameterizations are used all the time, even in basic physics: Ohm’s law, Hooke’s law, the ideal gas law…. They’re a summary of observed behavior where describing the complex microscopic behavior isn’t feasible. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong in their applicable domain.
What a shame modelers don’t have infinite computing power. Until then they do the best they can with what they have.
There are many empirical equations and others based on statistical mechanics. It is not the point Tim Palmer was getting at. Semi-empirical parameterizations remain imprecise with implications for irreducible imprecision in nonlinear models.
“Finally, Lorenz’s theory of the atmosphere (and ocean) as a chaotic system raises fundamental, but unanswered questions about how much the uncertainties in climate-change projections can be reduced. In 1969, Lorenz [30] wrote: ‘Perhaps we can visualize the day when all of the relevant physical principles will be perfectly known. It may then still not be possible to express these principles as mathematical equations which can be solved by digital computers. We may believe, for example, that the motion of the unsaturated portion of the atmosphere is governed by the Navier–Stokes equations, but to use these equations properly we should have to describe each turbulent eddy—a task far beyond the capacity of the largest computer. We must therefore express the pertinent statistical properties of turbulent eddies as functions of the larger-scale motions. We do not yet know how to do this, nor have we proven that the desired functions exist’. Thirty years later, this problem remains unsolved, and may possibly be unsolvable.
So how much will uncertainties in climate-change predictions of the large-scale reduce if models are run at 20, 2 or even 0.2 km resolution rather than say 100 km resolution? Equally, we may ask whether there is a certain resolution (e.g. 20 km), where it might be feasible to represent small-scale motions using stochastic equations, rather than trying to resolve them? These questions urgently need answering as the pressures grow on the climate science community to estimate, and if possible reduce uncertainties, and provide more reliable and confident predictions of regional climate change, hazardous weather and extremes.” https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.2011.0161
Finding optimum scales with regard to computing power – and making more precise and comprehensive observations – is the path to reducing ‘irreducible imprecision’. As is reducing the simulation period thus limiting propagation of uncertainty. Even then probabilistic and not deterministic forecasts are what is possible.
Tapio Schneider and colleagues did modelling at a cloud resolving scale – in which use of fundamental physics is possible. To do it at a global scale they say would require 3,000,000 times more computing power. One possibility is to nest fine scale modelling in a coarse grained model – eliminating the need to use ‘semi-empirical’ parameterizations. As is commonly done in hydrodynamic modelling where we may be interested in sub-metre scales. For mixing studies of desalination discharges for instance. The carbon cycle on land is another area that will benefit from this approach.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/nested-models.png
It is not obvious that anyone here – even David Appell – is on top of the nonlinear math of climate models.
😊
“…the nonlinear math of climate models.”
How has nonlinearity manifested itself in the climate of the last 2,000 years? Temperature or any other variable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_1000_years#/media/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
Although I was talking models and not climate.
Semi-empirical parameterizations remain imprecise with implications for irreducible imprecision in nonlinear models.
The largest uncertainty is how much of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases and aerosols humans are going to emit between now and then.
Every model in science has some “irreducible imprecision.” That doesn’t mean they aren’t useful.
And land-use and land cover changes. And changes in solar irradiance and whether any huge volcanoes will erupt. What will be the time series of each of these? You can choose the time period — annual, monthly, daily, etc.
Irreducible imprecision is a term with a specific meaning in climate computing.
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/104/21/8709/F1.large.jpg
“Generic behaviors for chaotic dynamical systems with dependent variables ξ(t) and η(t). (Left) Sensitive dependence. Small changes in initial or boundary conditions imply limited predictability with (Lyapunov) exponential growth in phase differences. (Right) Structural instability. Small changes in model formulation alter the long-time probability distribution function (PDF) (i.e., the attractor).”
https://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709
“Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable.”
You have of course not a clue how clueless you are,
😊
From the PNAS paper’s abstract:
“Atmospheric and oceanic computational simulation models often successfully depict chaotic space–time patterns, flow phenomena, dynamical balances, and equilibrium distributions that mimic nature. This success is accomplished through necessary but nonunique choices for discrete algorithms, parameterizations, and coupled contributing processes that introduce structural instability into the model.”
You make it sound like modelers are criminals for not creating perfect models. Like they’re not doing their best with what they have. They’re working hard while some smartypants sit back and judge every little thing from afar. How about spending your brain coming up with better parameterizations? That’d at least be useful.
“Where precision is an issue (e.g., in a climate forecast), only simulation ensembles made across systematically designed model families allow an estimate of the level of relevant irreducible imprecision.”
Now read the rest of the paper to find out what these systematically designed model families are. And why sensitive dependance structural instability so humbling.
“Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable.”
Far from maligning modellers – I am in agreement with them. You just need to pull your head in and back up a little. Possibly your default setting.
😊
https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/14/the-toxic-rhetoric-of-climate-change/#comment-905219
There is no understanding at all of Earth climate models.
As usual Judith Curry provides a balanced and
compelling perspective on this issue.
I will be sending her article to friends and colleagues with children who are terrified by the predictions of impending disaster.
The alarmist scientists, politicians and media commentators who perpetuate this “state of fear” for their own ends dominate the airways.
Judith Curry in her quest for truth deserves the support of everyone who is troubled by this domination.
A “… small forcing can cause a small change or a huge one.”
— National Academy of Sciences, 2002. Abrupt climate change: inevitable surprises, p74
In both model land and on planet Earth – although never the twain shall meet. Models have ‘sensitive dependence to initial conditions’ – small imprecisions in input data produce a large, propagating nonlinear uncertainty in model output that saturates at an ‘irreducible imprecision’ intrinsic to the model structure. Planet Earth is a rotating ball with oceans and atmosphere in which turbulent flow patterns form and shift in a spatio-temporal chaos of infinite dimensionality.
“Broecker in particular, looking at deep-sea cores, in 1966 pointed to an “abrupt transition between two stable modes of operation of the ocean-atmosphere system,” especially a “sharp unidirectional change” around 11,000 years ago.(23) It proved possible to build simple fluid-flow models that showed how a switch in the pattern of ocean currents could promote such a change.” https://history.aip.org/climate/rapid.htm
Model inputs are these. The bottom line is an anthropogenic forcing of somewhere between 1.13 and 3.33 W/m2.
https://www.e-education.psu.edu/meteo469/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.meteo469/files/lesson01/IPCCForcings_small_5.png
They miss of course large changes in the energy dynamic of the planet caused by patterns of ocean and atmospheric circulation that shift over decades to millennia.
“The top-of-atmosphere (TOA) Earth radiation budget (ERB) is determined from the difference between how much energy is absorbed and emitted by the planet. Climate forcing results in an imbalance in the TOA radiation budget that has direct implications for global climate, but the large natural variability in the Earth’s radiation budget due to fluctuations in atmospheric and ocean dynamics complicates this picture.” Loeb et al 2012
Some things may be just wrong – clouds and aerosols quite likely. “Global emission estimates use the “bottom‐up” method of multiplying emission factors by activity data. With this method, a bottom‐up estimate of total global emissions in the year 2000 is about 7500 Gg BC yr^−1, with an uncertainty range of 2000 to 29,000 Gg yr^−1. (Bond et al 2013). This is before we get to amplified warming from the black carbon lensing effect in mixed species emissions or indirect cloud effects. I did a quick literature search last night and cannot find a consistent narrative. Tami Bond and friends are at least comprehensive.
“Other species co‐emitted with black carbon influence the sign and magnitude of net climate forcing by black‐carbon‐rich source categories. The net climate forcing of a source sector is a useful metric when considering mitigation options. Principal co‐emitted species that can change the sign of short‐lived forcing are organic matter and sulfur species. The direct radiative forcing is positive for almost all black‐carbon‐rich source categories, even when negative direct forcings by sulfate and organic matter are considered. Liquid‐cloud forcing by co‐emitted aerosol species can introduce large negative forcing. Therefore, high confidence in net positive total climate forcing is possible only for black‐carbon source categories with low co‐emitted species, such as diesel engines.” op. cit.
Reducing pollution can save millions of lives, is being done and should be taken to its logical conclusion. Open burning is complex. Fire is welcome – perhaps unavoidable is a better word – in many landscapes. But 21st century fire management can reduce aerosol emissions, reduce risks to human communities and keep more carbon in soils and vegetation. Where it belongs. Intensive, rotational grazing on grassland is a large part of the solution in many ways.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2014/06/30/black-carbon-a-health-and-environment-issue/
Scenarios of the future are wilder and more speculative still.
e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378016300681
And this is what feed into into over the horizon chaotic dynamical models. Appellgate had to ask. I think the future is cyberpunk. The singularity occurs on January 26th 2065 when an automated IKEA factory becomes self-aware and commences converting all global resources to flat pack furniture. Until then – endless innovation on information technology and cybernetics will accelerate and continue to push the limits of what it is to be human and to challenge the adaptability of social structures. New movements, fads, music, designer drugs, cat videos and dance moves will sweep the planet like Mexican waves in the zeitgeist. Materials will be stronger and lighter. Life will be cluttered with holographic TV’s, waterless washing machines, ultrasonic blenders, quantum computers, hover cars and artificially intelligent phones. Annoying phones that cry when you don’t charge them – taking on that role from cars that beep when you don’t put a seat belt on. Space capable flying cars will have seat belts that lock and tension without any intervention of your part. All this will use vastly more energy and materials this century as populations grow and wealth increases.
We are cheerleaders for maximum economic growth on a high energy planet. We will just have to find clever technological fixes for any problems that emerge.
e,g, https://thebreakthrough.org/articles/our-high-energy-planet
.
Still resorting to name-calling. Are you 8 years old?
Appell is a gatekeeper for the ‘congealed’ consensus of Palmer and Stevens. Hence Appellgate. 🤣
You have no earthly idea whether or not Tim Palmer and Bjorn Stevens would consider Appell a gatekeeper for the congealed consensus or for their consensus, and they clearly embrace a consensus:
…From this certainty stems the conviction that additional warming is best avoided by reducing or reversing emissions of long-lived greenhouse gases.
Maybe you should stop recklessly throwing around your vile aspersions in their names.
So you are 8-yrs old. And don’t know how my last name is pronounced.
Hey, did you notice Australia just had its warmest day ever? Good think models didn’t project continued warming, huh?
“The idea that the science of climate change is largely “settled,” common among policy makers and environmentalists but not among the climate science community, has congealed into the view that the outlines and dimension of anthropogenic climate change are understood and that incremental improvement to and application of the tools used to establish this outline are sufficient to provide society with the scientific basis for dealing with climate change.” Palmer and Stevens
Bolding mine. And as if I have ever suggested anything but chaos and caution. And pragmatic responses. Dozens of which I have introduced under this post alone.
“Although it has failed to produce its intended impact nevertheless the Kyoto Protocol has performed an important role. That role has been allegorical. Kyoto has permitted different groups to tell different stories about themselves to themselves and to others, often in superficially scientific language. But, as we are increasingly coming to understand, it is often not questions about science that are at stake in these discussions. The culturally potent idiom of the dispassionate scientific narrative is being employed to fight culture wars over competing social and ethical values.49 Nor is that to be seen as a defect. Of course choices between competing values are not made by relying upon scientific knowledge alone. What is wrong is to pretend that they are.” http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/units/mackinder/pdf/mackinder_Wrong%20Trousers.pdf
At some stage we need to get beyond bolding words and lines in scientific literature and put our big person pants on.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data_v4_globe/stations_big.gif
Only ~100 stations worldwide are needed to get an accurate-enough measure of global mean surface temperature:
“Spectral Approach to Optimal Estimation of the Global Average Temperature,” Samuel S. P. Shen et al, JAMS 1994.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/1520-0442%281994%29007%3C1999%3ASATOEO%3E2.0.CO%3B2
“Climate science is settled enough,” Raymond Pierrehumbert, Slate 10/1/14
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/10/the_wall_street_journal_and_steve_koonin_the_new_face_of_climate_change.html
“But what if we are unlucky and climate sensitivity turns out to be at the high end of the range? In that case we would be locked into 4 degrees Celsius of eventual warming within the next few decades, even in the unlikely event we were able to stop using fossil fuels cold turkey. As Koonin rightly notes, the past 30 years of intensive research in climate science has not managed to narrow the uncertainty range in climate sensitivity. What he fails to note is that this uncertainty provides an argument for more rather than less action on emissions control, since it means that no scientifically credible argument advanced in the past several decades has been able to rule out the risk that climate sensitivity is at the high end of the range. In the face of that, the only way to avert the risk is to simply not emit so much carbon dioxide. And the millennial duration of the warming induced by carbon dioxide means that we don’t have the luxury of waiting a few more decades before taking action, in the hopes that 30 more years of research will finally accomplish what the past 30 failed to do.”
So I keep saying. Only it matters what sort of action is both effective and politically pragmatic. I doubt that you are familiar with either.
https://thebreakthrough.org/articles/climate-pragmatism-innovation
David Appell | December 18, 2019 at 8:54 pm |
“Only ~100 stations worldwide are needed to get an accurate-enough measure of global mean surface temperature:”
–
90% at airports?
No Airports 200 years ago.
an accurate-enough measure of global mean airport surface temperature:” is very useful.
For all those flyers out there.
Changes in the number and properties of weather sites is a fact that is unavoidable.
How would you prefer to handle those changes to produce a long-term record?
Look at the coverage pre 1900 for temperatures. What a joke. Less than 1/3 coverage of the globe, yet Apple rationalizes his cherry picking by believing we know anything about global temperatures at that time. Absurd.
Same with saying record heat, ignoring obvious heat waves pre BOM data.
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Image777_shadow.png
Again, cherry picks of a few areas with warming for ONE DAY. Not at all representative of the globe or of a trend.
Do you really not understand that????
cerescokid, I enjoy the anecdotal historical climate references you post. Do you mind sharing link sources for some of these you’ve discovered? I’d like to explore more of the historical records. I’ve used Trove; NYT’s also has a subscription to their archives, though I haven’t used it.
Also per the historical sleuth research that tonyb often shares (that I also thoroughly appreciate); I believe these references have much more relevance (at minimum providing sober reality of context) than CAGW doomsayers care to admit. The references certainly underscore the folly of activists who point to wildly fluctuating contemporary seasonal events as “concrete evidence” for CAGW, instead of recurring natural variations of climate, where in many instances there’s been seasonally more harsh warming examples described in the historical record.
Jungletrunks – “I believe these references have much more relevance (at minimum providing sober reality of context) than CAGW doomsayers care to admit.”
context is a key concept –
Far too often, the alarmists cherrypick isolated data, start dates, etc to show AGW, whereas when provided the broader context, the asserted attribution to man made caused warming largely disappears –
jungletrunks
I’m happy to share what I have. I believe most are from Tony. I’ve been accumulating for a few years. As I go back through them, if there are other sources I will share that, as well.
The value in these old articles is that they document what we old duffers know intuitively. I’ve also gained a lot of knowledge from decades of reading about historical events. The warmists want everyone to believe today’s weather is unprecedented. Of course it’s not. Using a combination of contemporary reporting and reading a few hundred scientific studies demonstrate that. If the science is as settled as some believe, why do so many scientific papers lead off explaining how things are poorly known or constrained.
I’m amazed how many have fallen for the establishment narrative with such ease.
It’s not wrong at all. Open your eyes. It’s in the media and on here all the time. That includes your absurd reference to Australia. Nothing is unprecedented. That is reality.
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Appell–“cherry picks of a few areas with warming for ONE DAY”
Glaciers were documented retreating for a very long time before the “hockey stick” was a concept.
Glaciers were documented retreating for a very long time before the “hockey stick” was a concept.
Yes, some were. No one disputes that there was an LIA — but it wasn’t globally synchronous.
You don’t need to go back 20k years, parts of the arctic were melting in the 19th century.
Was glaciation in aggregate expanding in the early 19th century?
You don’t need to go back 20k years, parts of the arctic were melting in the 19th century
Parts. Was this much melting, across the total Arctic?
http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.1.png
JCH | December 18, 2019 at 5:40 pm |
You have no earthly idea whether or not Tim Palmer and Bjorn Stevens would consider Appell a gatekeeper for the congealed consensus or for their consensus, and they clearly embrace a consensus:
…From this certainty stems the conviction that additional warming is best avoided by reducing or reversing emissions of long-lived greenhouse gases.
Maybe you should stop recklessly throwing around your vile aspersions in their names.
Palmer and Stevens say that the world view of activists has ‘congealed’ into a version of climate science inconsistent with the views of climate scientists. I read congealed as an aphorism for groupthink. I suggest that there are activists trolling the internet policing their groupthink. This is of course claimed by both sides and hurled at each other – and anyone who dares to disagree with both sides – with schoolyard epithets. Look – if you going to insult me – show some class. I award points for subtle, clever and amusing.
They do not use the word “activists” in their paper. That is your distortion. And you have no clue whether or not they would insult Appell.
You did that in their name.
And Palmer said, “Remarkably accurate.”
The paper is about one thing: a whole bunch more money for the newest, most powerful computer. So they can finally shut you up.
What was it? Politicians and environmentalists? Playing at semantics is all this activist can do. And he has not the slightest clue about this new class of Earth system models.
https://www.slideshare.net/UCAR
“The sooner we depart from the present strategy, which overstates an ability to both extract useful information from and incrementally improve a class of models that are structurally ill suited to the challenge, the sooner we will be on the way to anticipating surprises, quantifying risks, and addressing the very real challenge that climate change poses for science.
Unless we step up our game, something that begins with critical self-reflection, climate science risks failing to communicate and hence realize its relevance for societies grappling to respond to global warming…
We are suggesting a new approach to climate model development (23). This approach should aim to reduce climate models’ dependence on subgrid parameterizations where possible and account for their uncertainty where not. To be successful, this approach must master and motivate technological innovations, particularly in computing, and be given a sense of purpose commensurate to the task at hand.”
$5B and 2000 times more computing power is a bargain. But shutting me up seems unlikely. Can I make it easier for the ideologically challenged?
https://image.slidesharecdn.com/danabasoglu-180504212458/95/computer-modeling-capabilities-challenges-for-earth-system-predictions-1-638.jpg?cb=1525469192
So that’s how I did it by accident. Famous last words. Whoops!!!
https://www.slideshare.net/UCAR/computer-modeling-capabilities-challenges-for-earth-system-predictions
Fundamentally ensemble prediction is pretty much here to stay for the foreseeable future.
The best that you can do is not nearly good enough. As Tim Palmer there are centres in the world with computing power to produce multiple runs from stochastically generated inputs – within limits of estimate precision. This permits probabilistic forecasting which is the most that can hoped for theoretically. These perturbed physics ensembles will be given more emphasis in the next assessment report – Tim said. But the question remains. Can we take either you or them seriously?
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/cms/asset/94141948-e1c2-4dc4-ac3e-82ca271c2911/rsta20110161f08.jpg
“Figure 8. Schematic of ensemble prediction system on seasonal to decadal time scales based on figure 1, showing (a) the impact of model biases and (b) a changing climate. The uncertainty in the model forecasts arises from both initial condition uncertainty and model uncertainty.”
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.2011.0161
Starting at the 14,20 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=864&v=-fkCo_trbT8&feature=emb_logo
And here’s a perturbed physics model. It’s even more uncertain.
“Broad range of 2050 warming from an observationally constrained large climate model ensemble.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo1430
The bottom line is that chaos and risk coexist. But practically – the old class of models are dinosaurs. The new class is initialized, decadal and probabilistic. The problem with interacting with activists such as JCH is chasing their ignorance in circles. On a more mundane level – I have introduced dozens of pragmatic policy responses under this post alone. There is never a hint of reciprocation and one wonders if they have any idea at all. Someone more suspicious than me might wonder at something more insidious.
The bottom line is that chaos and risk coexist.
What’s the evidence of chaos in the climate of the last 2,000 years?
The last 5,000 years?
The new class is initialized, decadal and probabilistic
What’s the use of a model correctly predicting decadal temperature and other parameters?
What is so worrisome is ECS. TCR is a important value along the way. ECS occurs at an re-established equilibrium. Why do decadal value matter? In physics it’s often far easier to calculate the long-term evolution of bulk parameters, but not so easy to predict their path all along the way….
We are suggesting a new approach to climate model development (23). This approach should aim to reduce climate models’ dependence on subgrid parameterizations where possible and account for their uncertainty where not. To be successful, this approach must master and motivate technological innovations, particularly in computing, and be given a sense of purpose commensurate to the task at hand.”
Theoretical, sit-back-and-judge words. How do you do that in practice? Are climate modelers not already doing the best yhey can?
PS: Where are your superior parametrizations?
I was the first person on this website to link to Doug Smith’s paper. Just a hunch, I bet he Tim and Palmer are as thick as thieves.
Like everything here, it ridiculed by the doubters of climate models.
Holy bullseye.
The forecast for 2018 is cloudy
20 to 40 years of La Niña versus a new decadal forecast model that used initial conditions that forecast a great deal of warming after 2009 – with half of the years forecast to be warmest years.
https://i.imgur.com/nZwNe7k.png
“Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climatic changes across most of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies.” https://www.nap.edu/read/10136/chapter/2
“Hints that the climate system could change abruptly came unexpectedly from fields far from traditional climatology. In the late 1950s, a group in Chicago carried out tabletop “dishpan” experiments using a rotating fluid to simulate the circulation of the atmosphere. They found that a circulation pattern could flip between distinct modes. If the actual atmospheric circulation did that, weather patterns in many regions would change almost instantly. On a still larger scale, in the early 1960s a few scientists created crude but robust mathematical models that suggested that global climate really could change to an enormous extent in a relatively short time, thanks to feedbacks in the amount of snow cover and the like.(22)” https://history.aip.org/climate/rapid.htm
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/nile-e1527722953992.jpg
“The hydrologist H.E. Hurst, studying the long flow records of the Nile and other geophysical time series, was the first to observe a natural behaviour, named after him, related to multi-scale change, as well as its implications in engineering designs. Essentially, this behaviour manifests that long-term changes are much more frequent and intense than commonly perceived and, simultaneously, that the future states are much more uncertain and unpredictable on long time horizons than implied by standard approaches. Surprisingly, however, the implications of multi-scale change have not been assimilated in geophysical sciences. A change of perspective is thus needed, in which change and uncertainty are essential parts.” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02626667.2013.804626
“What happened in the years 1976/77 and 1998/99 in the Pacific was so unusual that scientists spoke of abrupt climate changes. They referred to a sudden warming of the tropical Pacific in the mid-1970s and rapid cooling in the late 1990s. Both events turned the world’s climate topsy-turvy and are clearly reflected in the average temperature of Earth. Today we know that the cause is the interaction between ocean and atmosphere. Is it possible to successfully predict such climate shifts…
The winds change the ocean currents which in turn affect the climate. In our study, we were able to identify and realistically reproduce the key processes for the two abrupt climate shifts,” says Prof. Latif. “We have taken a major step forward in terms of short-term climate forecasting, especially with regard to the development of global warming. However, we are still miles away from any reliable answers to the question whether the coming winter in Germany will be rather warm or cold.” Prof. Latif cautions against too much optimism regarding short-term regional climate predictions: “Since the reliability of those predictions is still at about 50%, you might as well flip a coin.” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822105042.htm
“We are suggesting a new approach to climate model development (23). This approach should aim to reduce climate models’ dependence on subgrid parameterizations where possible and account for their uncertainty where not. To be successful, this approach must master and motivate technological innovations, particularly in computing, and be given a sense of purpose commensurate to the task at hand….
The sooner we depart from the present strategy, which overstates an ability to both extract useful information from and incrementally improve a class of models that are structurally ill suited to the challenge, the sooner we will be on the way to anticipating surprises, quantifying risks, and addressing the very real challenge that climate change poses for science. Unless we step up our game, something that begins with critical self-reflection, climate science risks failing to communicate and hence realize its relevance for societies grappling to respond to global warming.” https://www.pnas.org/content/116/49/24390.full
“We are living in a world driven out of equilibrium. Energy is constantly delivered from the sun to the earth. Some of the energy is converted chemically, while most of it is radiated back into space, or drives complex dissipative structures, with our weather being the best known example. We also find regular structures on much smaller scales, like the ripples in the windblown sand, the intricate structure of animal coats, the beautiful pattern of mollusks or even in the propagation of electrical signals in the heart muscle. It is the goal of pattern formation to understand nonequilibrium systems in which the nonlinearities conspire to generate spatio-temporal structures or pattern. Many of these systems can be described by coupled nonlinear partial differential equations, and one could argue that… the field of pattern formation is trying to find unifying concepts underlying these equations.” http://www.ds.mpg.de/LFPB/chaos
Spatio-temporal chaotic patterns of coupled ocean and atmospheric circulation shift on a dime. The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) defined abrupt climate change as a new climate paradigm as long ago as 2002. A paradigm in the scientific sense is a theory that explains observations. A new science paradigm is one that better explains data – in this case climate data – than the old theory. The new theory says that climate change occurs as discrete jumps in the system. Climate is more like a kaleidoscope – shake it up and a new pattern emerges – than a control knob with a linear gain.
JC SNIP
“We may believe, for example, that the motion of the unsaturated portion of the atmosphere is governed by the Navier–Stokes equations, but to use these equations properly we should have to describe each turbulent eddy—a task far beyond the capacity of the largest computer. We must therefore express the pertinent statistical properties of turbulent eddies as functions of the larger-scale motions. We do not yet know how to do this, nor have we proven that the desired functions exist’. Edward Lorenz “Thirty years later, this problem remains unsolved, and may possibly be unsolvable.” Tim Palmer
Fine scale modelling allows processes to be modelled using fundamental equations of state. Rather than use parameterizations for which no explicit functions exist. But ya really need to build them from the bottom up. Sure – you could give me $5B and 2000 times more computing power and I’d give it a go. To be honest though – you are probably better off with Tim Palmer.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/hurrell.png
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2009BAMS2752.1
“Thirty years later, this problem remains unsolved, and may possibly be unsolvable.” Tim Palmer
Why is it necessary to do this in order to obtain useful results from models?
How would you do it if you were building your own climate model?
“What’s the evidence of chaos in the climate of the last 2,000 years?
The last 5,000 years?”
What is the Sahara today was savanna circa 5k years ago
“A thorough analysis of a proxy El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) record indicates that a bifurcation occurred in the ENSO system sometime around 5,000 years b.p. As a result of this bifurcation the attractor became higher dimensional and a new mechanism of instability was introduced. As a consequence of these changes the system switched from a dynamics where the normal condition (La Nina) was dominant to a dynamics characterized by more frequent and stronger El Nino events.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-008-0469-4
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/moy-2002-wavelet1-e1530244572217.jpg
You would not be alone in that idea jungletrunks. Moy et al (2002) present the record of sedimentation shown above which is strongly influenced by ENSO variability. It is based on the presence of greater and less red sediment in a South American lake core. More red sediment is associated with El Niño. It has continuous high resolution coverage over 12,000 years. It shows periods of high and low El Niño intensity alternating with a period of about 2,000 years. There was a shift from La Niña dominance to El Niño dominance identified by Tsonis 2009 as a chaotic bifurcation – and is associated with the drying of the Sahel. Seen clearly in the wavelet analysis. There is a period around 3,500 years ago of high El Niño intensity associated with the demise of the Minoan civilisation (Tsonis et al, 2010). It shows ENSO variability considerably in excess of that seen in the modern period.
“We are suggesting a new approach to climate model development (23). This approach should aim to reduce climate models’ dependence on subgrid parameterizations where possible and account for their uncertainty where not. To be successful, this approach must master and motivate technological innovations, particularly in computing, and be given a sense of purpose commensurate to the task at hand.”
Theoretical, sit-back-and-judge words. How do you do that in practice? Are climate modelers not already doing the best yhey can?
PS: Where are your superior parametrizations? Appellgate
Oddly – this is a quote is from from the recent Palmer and Stevens article. Not my words at all. All in quotation marks and referenced. What Palmer and Stevens said was that fine scale modelling allows calculation from first principles rather than using parameterizations of cloud and other factors for which there are there are no explicit functions. That being a major source of uncertainty in climate models.
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/49/24390/F1.large.jpg
Despite that – Palmer said in an interview – in the context of claims that modellers were being conservative – that models were remarkably accurate. They haven’t underestimated warming at all. 😊
“Since when was the discussion about ways to draw down CO2? Try to focus and control your endless need to be mr smartypants.
How “politically pragmatic” is it to accept the swamping of many coastal cities around the globe? “Sorry, Florida, it just wasn’t politically pragmatic to act to save half your state.” Sorry Boston. Sorry Bangladesh.
I noticed your prime minister left the country in the middle of a wildfire national disaster. That’s some leadership, there. Does he have any “politically pragmatic” ways to draw down CO2?
Rambling and disparaging – typical of interactions far from good faith discourse. But I answer comprehensively. Every time. Above I thought it would be fun – in response to claims of complex and convoluted language – to reply entirely in quotes. What can I say? There are difficult ideas – and some diligence and effort is required. The McWilliams paper I refer to took me literally months of struggling through.
“Atmospheric and oceanic computational simulation models often successfully depict chaotic space–time patterns, flow phenomena, dynamical balances, and equilibrium distributions that mimic nature. This success is accomplished through necessary but nonunique choices for discrete algorithms, parameterizations, and coupled contributing processes that introduce structural instability into the model. Therefore, we should expect a degree of irreducible imprecision in quantitative correspondences with nature, even with plausibly formulated models and careful calibration (tuning) to several empirical measures. Where precision is an issue (e.g., in a climate forecast), only simulation ensembles made across systematically designed model families allow an estimate of the level of relevant irreducible imprecision.” https://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709 .
Appellgate copies and pastes not even the entire abstract. Tuned models? Yes that’s what we do with models. In the context of climate models – the last sentence is the clincher. Model families involve systematically varying initial condition within the limits of precision of estimates. Allowing estimates to be made of model uncertainty.
But that’s all nice enough in theory – a nit of intellectual entertainment. The bottom line I think is chaos and risk. Tipping points have been discussed in the literature since the 1950’s. Following Lorenz – understanding of the mechanism of deterministic chaos in weather and climate evolved. In the 80’s and 90’s Wally Broecker – the Godfather of global warming – was considering chaos in the context of thermohaline circulation and the initiation of glacials. By the early 2000’s abrupt climate change and surprises were inevitable.
A “… small forcing can cause a small change or a huge one.”
— National Academy of Sciences, 2002, Abrupt climate change: inevitable surprises, p74
Here – only political and technological pragmatism can save the day. Not hippies waving placards and chanting solar power now.
“The old climate framework failed because it would have imposed substantial costs associated with climate mitigation policies on developed nations today in exchange for climate benefits far off in the future — benefits whose attributes, magnitude, timing, and distribution are not knowable with certainty. Since they risked slowing economic growth in many emerging economies, efforts to extend the Kyoto-style UNFCCC framework to developing nations predictably deadlocked as well.
The new framework now emerging will succeed to the degree to which it prioritizes agreements that promise near-term economic, geopolitical, and environmental benefits to political economies around the world, while simultaneously reducing climate forcings, developing clean and affordable energy technologies, and improving societal resilience to climate impacts. This new approach recognizes that continually deadlocked international negotiations and failed domestic policy proposals bring no climate benefit at all. It accepts that only sustained effort to build momentum through politically feasible forms of action will lead to accelerated decarbonization.” https://thebreakthrough.org/articles/climate-pragmatism-innovation
So I answered Apellgate’s question about pragmatic responses – and asked just one question of my own in return. But do tell please – what would you like to do about it? He is not here to answer questions apparently.
https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/14/the-toxic-rhetoric-of-climate-change/#comment-905367
What Palmer and Stevens said was that fine scale modelling allows calculation from first principles rather than using parameterizations of cloud and other factors for which there are there are no explicit functions.
How would the modelers accomplish that, given the computing power they have to work with?
jungletrunks wrote:
What is the Sahara today was savanna circa 5k years ago
How is that an example of chaos made manifest?
“For several hundred thousand years, the Sahara has alternated between desert and savanna grassland in a 20,000 year cycle[8] caused by the precession of the Earth’s axis as it rotates around the Sun, which changes the location of the North African Monsoon. The area is next expected to become green in about 15,000 years (17,000 AD).”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara
And then you quote Wikipedia ffs?
What’s wrong with Wikipedia? They cite their sources. Studies show they’re as good as the traditional encyclopedias.
In response to a question about what people could do, and I think the person meant things like plant trees, fly less, drive less, etc., Schneider resounded with “vote”.
So maybe meant vote for the Roarbonkers, or InHooters, but I sort of doubt it. I suspect he means to vote for the people Al Gore votes for.
So in other words, I suspect he is a flaming activist.
After all, he tells people warming could burn off a bunch of clouds and cause a hot-house earth.
And the Wikipedia quote on the Sahara desert is both preposterous and unreferenced, Precession should be a clue. Please – by all means – supply the reference.
All year I have I have been thinking about this study all year. It’s a fabulous use of simulation, I’d be a bit cautious in our nonlinear world – but the tipping point is at 1200 ppm CO2. We may have more than 12 years. 🤣
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/cloud-computation.png
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0310-1
“But Schneider and other scientists are trying to address the limits of simulating Earth’s atmosphere in computer programs. One approach uses machine learning to teach global climate models to better represent clouds by training them on real-world observations and simulations that detail smaller-scale processes. This could lead to faster and more reliable ways of forecasting future climate.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00685-x
There are similar opportunities in carbon cycling and biology – as I have said. The discussion around it in the public arena is – however – unmitigated hyperbole. Adding to the toxic rhetoric.
You sure the questioner didn’t mean this? Because it is utterly impractical, unachievable and – in words JCH can comprehend.- bonkers.
https://www.theccc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Net-Zero-The-UKs-contribution-to-stopping-global-warming.pdf
And as I said in a comment just below this thread – this is Joe Biden’s platform stripped of the rhetoric. All reasonable applied science research objectives that if properly funded could revitalize America’s industrial and agricultural base. This is not hippies and children despairing and waving placards. I predict that the Republican Titanic can’t change course in time – and that there will be dancing in the streets.
https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/14/the-toxic-rhetoric-of-climate-change/#comment-905412
My quote from that Wikipedia article does cite a source, which in turn cites this paper:
Monsoon-driven Saharan dust variability over the past 240,000 years, C. Skonieczny et al, Science Advances 02 Jan 2019: Vol. 5, no. 1, eaav1887
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aav1887
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaav1887
Certainly they could have, but they were asking Schneider what he would recommend, and he did not recommend those sorts of things.
He said one word: vote.
One hint, not so subtle, he says there were 196 signatories to the Paris Agreement, and then says there are now 195. So I would say he think the very best thing people need to do now is vote out the people who took it to 195.
There are a simply an enormous number of papers suggesting improvements in climate models.
Michael E. Mann once suggested the AMO needed to be accounted for in climate models. Imagine that.
Most authors understand if they say it wrong, the vultures will soar down and begin their celebration about the stupid worthless unfit climate models. Bjorn “Dickie Lindzen” Stevens seems to have a special knack for exciting the vultures.
20 to 40 more years of La Niña?
I have Trump toilets. They were made in 1927. Today the plumber saw one and exclaimed, “That’s the biggest tank I have ever seen!” They double flush. Ain’t nothing left in the bowl expect water and shiny porcelain. Confuses the crap out of people. Haha. I don’t think any activists have my toilets.
“Observational data and modeling experiments indicate that dust emissions are tightly tied to West African monsoon strength, as dust-generating winds and aridity vary in concert on decadal, millennial, and orbital time scales.” Here’s one from Clive Best.
http://clivebest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Glacial-cycles-1.png
Dust at this scale has been suspected of having a hand in glacial terminations. Your reference was Wikipedia where claims were made that don’t appear is the reference. I could go into it at greater depth but that would be pointless.
As for JCH’s more weird than usual rant. Paris is working exactly as designed.
https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/part1_iiasa_rogelj_ssp_poster.pdf
“We don’t know how the climate of the 21st century will evolve, and we will undoubtedly be surprised. Given this uncertainty, precise emissions targets and deadlines are scientifically meaningless. We can avoid much of the political gridlock by implementing common sense, no-regrets strategies that improve energy technologies, lift people out of poverty and make them more resilient to extreme weather events.” JC in the post above.
You may disagree – but if the superficiality shown thus far is any indication – I wouldn’t give it much credence. But nope – I read it again and still can’t see anything but polemic that’s seems aimed at someone else. 🤣
Yes we have seen that before. Te reality is uncertainty that far exceeds magnitude of the observed variable. And they succeed admirably in not underestimating warming.
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/49/24390/F1.medium.gif
Why would you paste in a graph that wasn’t from the paper I cited, and was ten years old, except to mislead?
See the Hausfather+ paper’s Figure 1, Figure 2 and Figure 3 for results as of 2018. They’re pretty good.
“Evaluating the performance of past climate model projections,” Hausfather et al, GRL 2019.
https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL085378
When this happens it’s more than time to get out of the rabbit hole.
https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/14/the-toxic-rhetoric-of-climate-change/#comment-905554
You may not have read the article – or my comment in this threat where the graph first appeared. Sorry about that. 😊
Not even that. The paper you have so copiously commented on and the answer to a question you asked. In this thread. I think I might be wasting my time. 🤣
As well as the paper you comment on but have not read and the response you neglect – the graph was discussed in some detail in the recent interview with Tim Palmer in this thread. If information is shared but not considered and instead there is some sort of odd talking past people – it is indeed a waste of everyone’s time.
“We are suggesting a new approach to climate model development (23). This approach should aim to reduce climate models’ dependence on subgrid parameterizations where possible and account for their uncertainty where not. To be successful, this approach must master and motivate technological innovations, particularly in computing, and be given a sense of purpose commensurate to the task at hand….
And climate modelers haven’t been trying to do this for decades?
See Tapio Schneider just above. 😊
Please explain instead of assigning homework.
Please use some common sense. The Tapio Schneider video seems unmissable.
What did Tapio S say that’s relevant to the discussion here?
Paris Accord destroyed (my latest thinking for a fun 2020)
https://www.cfact.org/2019/12/19/cop-25-paris-accord-destroyed/
“Action Now!” radicalism has destroyed the slow moving, consensus based Paris Agreement. It is not just COP 25 that failed; the UN climate change machinery has collapsed. This is good news, even though the reason is bad news.
I have been writing about the climate alarmism movement tearing itself apart for months now. For example here.
The new radicalism is at war with the establishment moderates. This great gulf between radicals and moderates hit the COP 25 summit in Madrid with a vengeance. These annual summits are normally protracted exercises in compromise among the almost 200 nations represented. Not this time.
In Madrid the Action Now! radicals would not even consider compromise. Their extremism then caused the moderates to take hard line positions as well, so the COP stalled out and failed to act on any significant issue. That what the radicals demand is impossible did not help. The negotiating machinery ground to a noisy halt.
So now we have two very different versions of the alarmist rhetoric and a lot of people on each side. I call them the “Action Now!” hysterics (Greta, XR, etc.) and the moderates. The Paris Accord reflects the slow moving moderate view. It turns out that a lot of national delegations now take the hysterical view, especially the small island states and the Africans (both of which stand to make the most money).
You could see the breakdown coming on, as Madrid was hyped as the “action COP” when it was nothing of the sort. Even the COP leaders took part in this foolish rhetoric. Yet the sorts of radical national actions being called for were simply not on the agenda. I doubt the moderate negotiators on the ground in Madrid had the authority to even consider the radical’s hysterical demands for immediate drastic action.
Nor is such radical action on upcoming COP agendas. It is not part of the Paris Accord process and therein lies the problem for the Action Now! radicals. They demand what cannot happen.
The hysterics are calling for radical action at next year’s Glasgow COP at the latest. This is highly unlikely, to say the least.
In fact the harassed moderates in Madrid pointed out that most countries, including all of the major emitters, do not have to file new emission reduction plans until 2030. China and India, the first and fourth biggest emitters, have already said that is their intent. Additionally, their plans allow for unlimited emission increases until 2030, which is intolerable for the Action Now! hysterics.
America, the number two emitter, is certainly not going to file a radical action plan. U.S. membership in the Paris fiasco officially ends before the 2020 Glasgow COP begins in November.
If the Action Now! radicals continue their intransigence then the Paris Accord is essentially dead. This is almost certain to happen. Ironically the Paris Agreement has been killed by the irrational fear of climate change that spawned it in the first place. Is that cool or what?
The death of the silly Paris Accord is fine by me. My only real concern is that the hysterics might somehow do real damage. So far this seems unlikely, given that what they are demanding is impossible.
This is why I cherish the hysterics. They are wrecking the climate scare political movement. It is like I am fighting an enemy force and suddenly it is having an endless civil war. I am all for that.
A wild year looms. Gear up!
Have fun holidays.
David
Climate Change Debate Education Project (http://ccdedu.blogspot.com)
Donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/climate-change-debate-education
“The old climate framework failed because it would have imposed substantial costs associated with climate mitigation policies on developed nations today in exchange for climate benefits far off in the future — benefits whose attributes, magnitude, timing, and distribution are not knowable with certainty. Since they risked slowing economic growth in many emerging economies, efforts to extend the Kyoto-style UNFCCC framework to developing nations predictably deadlocked as well.
The new framework now emerging will succeed to the degree to which it prioritizes agreements that promise near-term economic, geopolitical, and environmental benefits to political economies around the world, while simultaneously reducing climate forcings, developing clean and affordable energy technologies, and improving societal resilience to climate impacts. This new approach recognizes that continually deadlocked international negotiations and failed domestic policy proposals bring no climate benefit at all. It accepts that only sustained effort to build momentum through politically feasible forms of action will lead to accelerated decarbonization.” https://thebreakthrough.org/articles/climate-pragmatism-innovation
David is a day late and a dollar short. Skeptic views on climate are so disconnected from public attitudes that skeptics are well past the point of political irrelevance. And they seem committed to going down swinging. The public want a pragmatic strategy that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg for little return.
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Sun Zhu
http://a.abcnews.com/images/Site/071318Charts-05.jpg
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/public-backs-action-global-warming-cost-concerns-muted/story?id=56549874
This is Joe Biden’s platform stripped of the rhetoric. All reasonable applied science research objectives that if properly funded could revitalize America’s industrial and agricultural base. This is not children despairing and waving placards. I predict that the Republican Titanic can’t change course in time – and that there will be dancing in the streets.
“Bring together America’s top talent to innovate on climate. America – with the leadership of government – has led the way on many technologies and innovations, from the GPS to computer networking. Biden will establish ARPA-C, a new, cross-agency Advanced Research Projects Agency focused on climate. This initiative will target affordable, game-changing technologies to help America achieve our 100% clean energy target, with a specific focus on the following, as recommended by the founding director of ARPA-E:
* grid-scale storage at one-tenth the cost of lithium-ion batteries;
* small modular nuclear reactors at half the construction cost of today’s reactors;
* refrigeration and air conditioning using refrigerants with no global warming potential;
* zero net energy buildings at zero net cost;
* using renewables to produce carbon-free hydrogen at the same cost as that from shale gas;
* decarbonizing industrial heat needed to make steel, concrete, and chemicals and reimagining carbon-neutral construction materials;
* decarbonizing the food and agriculture sector, and leveraging agriculture to * remove carbon dioxide from the air and store it in the ground; and
capturing carbon dioxide from power plant exhausts followed by sequestering it deep underground or using it make alternative products.”
“In Madrid the Action Now! radicals would not even consider compromise. … They demand what cannot happen.”
Yes I agree, but I believe the ramp in climate radicalism is more a reaction to a bigger phenomena; a general weakening of the power behind the globalist vision stemming from the rise of populism. Trump’s election, and his pressure and influence on the EU, et al, for fair trade; for NATO to pay up; the exit of the Paris Accords, the ending of the JCPOA (a globalist construct), a deepening recognition of Israel (against the grain of globalist sensibilities): overall, the general thrashing of bureaucratic globalist ambitions. The disruption has continued with Boris Johnson’s election, and Brexit. EU power is being dismantled. Those countries whose survival relied on usurping from the collectivist trough are now being forced to participate in greater production in order to fund for their own national interests, and protection; this diminishes the funding for social programs.
Overall the power erosion has unleashed a temper tantrum among radical progressives, they’re panicking. Their knee jerk reaction manifests itself in impeachment, resistance, revolution.
When a pimple is pressured and squeezed, the infection suddenly festers. It often must be lanced before healing can begin.
Trump’s pressure on the EU?? From what I can see they mostly laugh at him, and sometimes even get caught doing so on camera:
My only quibble is with this statement;
–The concern over climate change is not so much about the warming that has occurred over the past century. Rather, the concern is about what might happen in the 21st century as a result of increasing fossil fuel emissions. —
The warming that has occurred over the last century is instructive toward future warming, no?
I am hard pressed to identify any significant net negatives from the warming so far and see a good number of net positives.
What actual science, as opposed to propaganda or speculations, indicates that benefit is going to catastrophically reverse over the next 75 years?
Personally, I’d recommend more elaboration of the accumulated evidence on each point of interest (or point of dispute) and avoid appeals to “common sense”. I don’t think people agree on what “common sense” is before they know the outcome.
Other than that, good essay.
Mars, Moon and Earth satellite measured mean temperatures comparison:
210 K, 220 K and 288 K
Let’s have here for convenience reasons the following:
Comparison of results the planet Te calculated by the Incomplete Formula:
Te = [ (1-a) S / 4 σ ]¹∕ ⁴
the planet Te calculated by the Complete Formula:
Te = [ Φ (1-a) S (β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ /4σ ]¹∕ ⁴ (1)
and the planet Te (Tsat.mean) measured by satellites:
Planet or……..Te.incomplete……….Te.complete……….Te.satellites
moon………………formula…………………..formula…………..measured
Mercury…………….437 K………………….346,11 K…………..340 K
Earth……………….255 K…………………288,36 K……………288 K
Moon…………………271 K…………………221,74 Κ…………..220 Κ
Mars……………….211,52 K…………….215,23 K……………210 K
Let’s compare then:
Moon:
Tsat.moon = 220K
Moon’s albedo is amoon = 0,136
What is left to absorb is (1 – amoon) = (1- 0,136) = 0,864
Mars:
Tsat.mars = 210 K
Mars’ albedo is amars = 0,25
What is left to absorb is (1 – amars) = (1 – 0,25) = 0,75
Mars /Moon satellite measured temperatures comparison:
Tsat.mars /Tsat.moon = 210 K /220 K = 0,9545
Mars /Moon what is left to absorb (which relates in ¼ powers) comparison, or in other words the Mars /Moon albedo determined solar irradiation absorption ability:
( 0,75 /0,864 )¹∕ ⁴ = ( 0,8681 )¹∕ ⁴ = 0,9652
Conclusions:
1. Mars /Moon satellite measured temperatures comparison ( 0,9545 ) is almost identical with the Mars /Moon albedo determined solar irradiation absorption ability ( 0,9652 )
2. If Mars and Moon had the same exactly albedo, their satellites measured temperatures would have been exactly the same.
3. Mars and Moon have two major differences which eliminate each other:
The first major difference is the distance from the sun both Mars and Moon have.
Moon is at R = 1 AU distance from the sun and the solar flux on the top is So = 1.362 W/m² ( it is called the Solar constant ).
Mars is at 1,5 AU distance from the sun and the solar flux on the top is S = So*(1/R²) = So*(1/1,5²) = So*1/2,25.
Consequently the solar flux on the Mar’s top is 2,25 times weaker than that on the Moon.
The second major difference is the sidereal rotation period both Mars and Moon have.
Moon performs 1 rotation every 29,5 days.
Mars performs 1 rotation every day.
Consequently Mars rotates 29,5 times faster than Moon does.
So Mars is irradiated 2,25 times weaker, but Mars rotates 29,5 times faster.
And… everything else equals Mars and Moon has the same satellite measured mean temperatures.
It is obvious now, everything else equals, the Mars’ 29,5 times faster rotation eliminates the Moon’s 2,25 times higher solar irradiation.
That is why the 29,5 times faster rotating Mars has almost the same average satellites measured temperature as the 2,25 times stronger solar irradiated Moon.
http://www.cristos-vournas.com
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The problem with our increasingly urban society is that people, and youth in particular, are mostly unexposed to how nature works and weather and climate are mysterious as opposed to more of the older generations who came from a more agriculturally aware era. Farmers, ranchers and outdoors people and those raised by people from those pursuits have been informed by generational knowledge of the vagaries of the climate and the weather and the constant fluctuations. Weather, for these people, is not just of passing interest to make conversation, but something intrinsic to their livelihoods and its patterns, forecasts and histories are mentally catalogued and studied constantly. Farmers usually know what the patterns of weather have been doing for their lifetimes and sometimes their forefathers as well. That, more than anything, gives people an awareness that the climate ebbs and flows and storms and disasters are continually a part of life, and no amount of legislation will change it. Personal preparedness helps, and good choices about where you build (not at sea level!) are always wise, although the current generation of young people seem to be long on alarmist and short on deductive logic.
I have missed this important comment, however I will still add my 2c on this topic; from a different perspective.
Farmers – and their forefathers – have observed nature, and climate in particular, for millennia. For millennia little had changed in their ways (and some of us remember ways no different than those of Hesiod). Farmers were always self reliant, with very basic tools.
That has now all changed, first with the advent of steam power, then with the now ubiquitous diesel powered machinery. Today’s farmer is wholly dependent on a wide ranging industry to procure machinery, fuel and seed stock. These are also items to be on the ‘preparedness’ list. The old methods are only seen at the occasional fair. The modern system is far more productive, but far more susceptible.
I was unsure about where to leave a rather general query. This thread is apropos however it has such a huge number of responses I’ll probably be lost in the welter. But I’ll try anyway.
I’m a professor, originally a philosopher, with publications in environmental ethics and have as a specialty political philosophy.
I agree that the rhetoric is “toxic” but it is in effect, toxic both ways. Good public policy requires good information, but so-called “climate change skeptics” short-circuit discussing responses to climate change by effectively denying there is anything to talk about. Whether you mean to or not Dr, Curry, you are aiding and abetting this avoidance. I became aware of you only via far-right memes pitting you against folks like Greta Thunberg and effectively portraying you as a skeptic. In a quick examination of your work, your position is clearly more nuanced but the nuance is wasted on many people who are just taking it to mean there is effectively no problem.
Clearly we do not need to head into bunkers with survival rations while discussing ways of avoiding humanity’s last days. We’re not there yet and I seriously doubt even with the worst possible outcomes that climate change is the apocalypse.
But as William James said, “When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice.”
I have little doubt we can solve almost any climate change issue ad hoc when we are forced to action. Sure, people may die, there may be upheaval and discomfort, but we’ll likely meet the challenge. But that is little comfort to the dead and discommoded.
So, why not MAKE some positive, informed choices rather than merely avoid them? Why should we effectively choose the ad hoc, last-minute “Hail Mary” path?
The “uncertainty monster” may mean that we can’t know for sure, but given the magnitude of possible negative outcomes some action may be warranted. If we were “certain” we might be justified in a Manhattan Project style devotion of resources to the issue. But even if not, aren’t there responsible lower key things we can and should do?
You’re the climate scientist, would it make sense for new roofs, parking lots, roads etc. to be IR reflective? Requiring LED’s? Continuing things like reformulating refrigerants to decrease their impact? Increased conservation methods in new construction? Monitoring and regulating natural gas wells to ensure less escape of gas into the atmosphere?
Again, you are the climate scientist. Aren’t there responsible choices we can make at this level of certainty?
You must realize that the folks who totally deny climate change often include people who are effectively willing to deny science and give a loud “raspberry” to the “do-gooders” who they believe are intent on taking away their right to be as polluting as they wan. “Rolling coal” is a real phenomenon. There are people who think it fun to pollute more just to show their contempt for the climate change issue.
I do not know your complete position, but I hope you are aware that people are making use of you for ends that may not reflect your true stance.
Thurman Lee
That was a very interesting comment, as was that from Female Farmer immediately before you. I urge you to post them again in a relevant new thread as this is likely to be the last few comments on this oldish thread unless others pick up on 3 comments in quick succession,.
You stated;
“.., but so-called “climate change skeptics” short-circuit discussing responses to climate change by effectively denying there is anything to talk about.”
Some of us do bother to read both sides of the story and are very well aware of the all the nuances. Can I suggest that you have likely read ‘The uninhabitable earth’ by David Wallace Ellis and Greta Thunberg’s book?
So have I. I have also read all the IPCC reports and have a very large library of climate books by scientists and historians.
The reviews of the former book illustrate the extreme views taken by many in the driving seat of policy, that has in consequence made some of our children nihilistic
Here’s just one review from a supposedly moderate middle ground British newspaper “this book may come to be regarded as the last truly great assessment ever made. is there even time left to pen another.?’ Thunberg’s books and speeches talk of apocalypse and has terrified many of her peers. Do you think that is responsible?
Judith has covered ‘low hanging fruit’ many times. we are now into the hard and expensive and sometimes dubious choices. Can I endorse those in my own country knowing that the climate of today is generally much more benign than that of much of the last 2000 years?. Or that the population of Europe would be far lower than it currently is if we had to endure the severe rain of the 14th century or the severe cold of some of the 16th or the extreme heat of the 12th century?
Do have a read of such books as ‘Times of feast times of famine’ or ‘climate history and the modern world’ or ‘a cultural history of climate’ and see some better context to your concerns. What do you really believe is happening? Do you think it unique?
“You must realize that the folks who totally deny climate change often include people who are effectively willing to deny science and give a loud “raspberry” to the “do-gooders” who they believe are intent on taking away their right to be as polluting as they want”
I know of absolutely nobody who denies climate change, nor deny science but ARE sceptical of poor research, computer models, assumptions and those scientists poor at statistical analysis. I also know of no one who thinks it ok to be as polluting as they want. Do you know of any such people because if so we move in different circles.
tonyb
Sorry, never read Ellis/Thunberg… and also sorry that you are unaware in the Trump age, of people that will suppress science and even deny it altogether. Look up “Rolling Coal” it is a real phenomenon where I live. People are literally willing to massively pollute just to show they do not believe.
I actually come at this as a philosopher and teacher of logic among other things. I have been appalled by the willingness of my own senators and representatives who believe that the Bible says that God will fix climate change and believe that a snowball refutes climate change research.
I come at this as a person who saw a think-tank assert on their website that they could document hundreds of climate scientists who had written articles denying anthropogenic global warming… but was sceptical enough of their presentation to write 50 or so of the scientists, to verify it with them… only to find out that the think-tank was perpetrating a huge fraud, which they subsequently took off the web in a few days after getting contacted by some of the scientists I had written.
In my direct interaction with these scientists I found them pretty much unanimous in saying 1. Anthropogenic Climate change is the current received theory that best accounts for everything. 2. Various cycles do exist but cannot account for existing data without anthropogenic climate change in the mix. 3. That it has become common for their science to be misrepresented, suppressed and highly politicized… and that the source of most of this are fossil fuel companies,
On whether climate change constituted a crisis to humanity, many were good scientists and said “crisis is not a scientific term.” But, that there would certainly be larger more frequent storms, changes in the ability of different regions to produce various crops and so on.
I’m happy for you that your region has come out ahead so far in the area of climate change. But I’d strongly suspect that for every area that comes out “ahead” in some sense, there will be one that doesn’t and that dislocations in agriculture may affect everyone. My interaction with climate scientists made it clear that they most just knew things would change, that there would be more energy in our weather systems and that the outcomes in terms of new norms for weather in different regions was pretty much unpredictable.
I personally do not like to gamble.
“I do not know your complete position, but I hope you are aware that people are making use of you for ends that may not reflect your true stance.”
I would just point out that this is inevitable for anyone involved in any public policy debate. It cuts both ways of course as some mainstream alarmists could be argued to be contributing to a mental health crisis of unjustified anxiety.
The real problem here is that policy is a matter of priorities and moral judgments. As Bertrand Russell argues persuasively, these cannot be dictated by science. We don’t know what the “ideal” climate of the earth is and so arguments about climate policy are not gong to be all or even mostly about science.
The most important point for scientists is that accurate information is their role. When scientists become activists, they compromise their authority with the pubic, which is already often quite skeptical of the bombardment by media of pseudo-science in every area of life, particularly in the area of medicine.
There is ample reason for skepticism about climate science too. It’s a mess with biased work prevailing. Here’s just one reference on paleoclimate showing in my view that the whole field is untrustworthy.
http://www.climateaudit.info/pdf/climategate/Climategate.10YearsAfter.pdf
“The real problem here is that policy is a matter of priorities and moral judgments. As Bertrand Russell argues persuasively, these cannot be dictated by science. We don’t know what the “ideal” climate of the earth is and so arguments about climate policy are not gong to be all or even mostly about science.”
Great paragraph, so true.
Both of my grand parents were farmers, my mothers parents were farmers in Scotland, my fathers family grew up farming in the U.S. Midwest. I remember that there always was a Farmers Almanac laying around, relied upon by many for help in predicting the seasons. I also remember listening to long discussions my grandparents had about their expectations for weather the coming season, even when they no longer farmed; such was the entrenched mindset of those who lived their lives concerned about how weather would effect their livelihoods.
In the U.S. there was over 6 million farms circa 1940, the era of peak farming, the number of farms has shrunk to around 2 million today, but population has roughly tripled. In 1940 near 40% of the populations livelihood came by farming, much of it indirectly through the support of farming. Today it’s only around 2%. People take for granted the food they eat, and the lifestyles they enjoy. Someone raised in the 1940s wouldn’t expect much sympathy from consequences for building near sea level, near coasts. Unpredictability was managed using common sense best practices.
The hysterics generated by the mass media, and activists, often has little to do with science, nor does it often recognize the self correcting forces facilitated through self awareness. Even Trump wants the “cleanest air and water ever”! He has also championed removing plastics from the worlds oceans.
Just as farmers did post dust bowl, today there is actually a great deal of progress to mitigate the consequences for what humans have done to the environment historically, mostly out of ignorance. Both industry and most individuals are already participants in the evolution of best environmental practices, it includes the participation from skeptics, and those falsely labeled as skeptics, but also the legions of non skeptic ignorant (representing perhaps larger numbers, those who believe the press at face value); this aside, nobody has a problem paying for cost effective energy efficiency. There’s a great deal of cultural self awareness that recognizes what’s good for the planet, and leans into best practices by default. The effects from self awareness will facilitate the evolution in technologies needed to continue improving the environment. The impetus of self preservation will advance the health of the environment without the draconian economic measures advanced by politically driven culture warriors.
Jungletrunks
This may be very relevant to your comments about your mothers parents farming in Scotland
‘That CET has intriguing parallels with Northern Hemispheric and the Global climate was also noted by Hubert Lamb and other researchers, and places CET as a potentially interesting, scientifically valid, proxy for the global situation.
The warm period during the 1920’s and 30’s resulted in the Arctic melting (again) recorded in this excellent free online book by Dr Arnd Bernaerts
http://www.arctic-heats-up.com/chapter_1.html
A farmer from Buchan in North East Scotland, one of the snowiest parts of lowland Britain, wrote in the agricultural section of the local newspaper during the exceptionally mild winter of 1933/34.
“1934 has opened true to the modern tradition of open, snowless winters. The long ago winters are no precedent for our modern samples. During the last decade, during several Januarys the lark has heralded spring up in the lift from the middle to the end of the month. Not full fledged songs but preliminary bars in an effort to adapt to our climatic change.”
It then goes on to say;
“It is unwise to assume that the modern winters have displaced the old indefinitely”
and also; “Our modern winters have induced an altered agricultural regime”
John Steinbeck’s’ classic novel ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ spoke eloquently of the hardship caused by severe drought and heat waves in part of 1930’s Dustbowl America-a period that remains arguably the warmest in recorded history in that country.
http://www.city-data.com/forum/oklahoma/155903-grapes-wrath-classic-okie-book.html
Tonyb
I appreciate the post tony.
I wish I knew my grandparents in Scotland better, I was only 8 the last time I saw them. But my grandfather maintained a vegetable garden up to his death. Your reference to the lark reminded me of the story of the robin that befriended my grandfather, and would hop along beside him, returning year after year until his death. My grandmother said the robin returned after his death the next year, eventually.
Back to the climate, “it’s unwise to assume that the modern winters have displaced the old indefinitely”.
I for one see no reason to doubt the before statement. With the common chat about Mann’s hockey stick, it represents merely a shrimp in the baleen of a whale sized hockey stick, his is part of a flag at the tail end of this larger hockey stick that will inevitably get digested on the way back down, of that I’m confident; though likely still a rather distant reality that even then will unfold over many lifetimes. Humans again may be wantonly burning carbon on an industrial scale to escape the cold.
I’ve always enjoyed your posts tony, they always provide context that others loose sight of in their algorithmic discussions often serving to veil politics.
Incomplete sentence about robin, “eventually leaving for good”
Jungletrunks
Thanks for your kind comment.
Nice story about the robin. It’s my favourite bird.
You might also like this documented comment from Hubert lamb also about Scotland
‘Our modern bouts of amnesia regarding previous climatic conditions can be seen to be nothing new by reading the comments from the annals of Dumfermline Scotland from 1733/4, when it recorded that wheat was first grown in the district in 1733. Lamb wryly observes that was not correct, as enough wheat had been grown further north in the early 1500’s to sustain an export trade (before the 1560’s downturn).
This information also usefully confirms a warm period around that date, to one that had changed to a cold period by the time of Pastor Schaller commenting in 1560.
Incidentally the 1730’s were the warmest recorded instrumental decade prior to the 1990’s. The 1540’s were probably the warmest in the last 500 Years and that they had deteriorated to the shocking cold of the 1560’s is sobering
Tonyb
Thanks again tony.
Yes, we humans are prone to short sightedness and misrepresentation, these among a long list of other foibles. Some history seems to repeat on a loop.
Most of the IPCC models since the 1990s have been right. Skeptics’ models have been wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=wJoMp-k_H3w&feature=emb_logo
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming
Thurman Lee, I enjoyed your contribution.
I wanted to say that I started out being extremely alarmed about climate science – I regularly read mainstream science magazines and took pretty much for granted that what I was hearing was from climate scientists and they were unanimously alarmed.
It wasn’t until I was challenged on a number points by my father that and realised I didn’t know enough that I started down the rabbit hole – and for a layman I dived pretty deep. But so strong was my bias it took me 2 years just to admit that the skeptics might have a point.
JC’s journey was happening about the same time, as she started to re-examine some of the things she took for granted from her colleagues they didn’t add up, and climate gate further raised eyebrows. Her engagement with skeptics was the starting point.
I completely get what you are saying. There is such utter rubbish being talked about the climate – from BOTH sides. IMO, the recent boost to alarmism has been as a result of a push back against Trump, and unfortunately coinciding with one of the biggest El Ninos (an entirely natural phenomenon) in history. Of course climate change is not a hoax, whether by the Chinese or anyone. And windmills do not cause cancer. I once received a list of Trump’s pronouncements on climate, and of the 90 statements, only 3 were potentially scientifically defensible.
Never-the-less, there is no question that once you get to know the data and science, that the claims of catastrophe are over-stated (to put it mildly). There are unquestionably people claiming it to be all “nonsense” that know no more about it than people who think we are all “doomed”. Neither are correct.
Logic, reason, evidence.
“1. Anthropogenic Climate change is the current received theory that best accounts for everything”
But it is not the only theory, and it doesn’t account for everything very well. Since early 20th C warming was of the same magnitude (when man’s emissions were not significant) as late 20th C warming (when they were), logic would dictate that man’s emissions had little effect. There known unknowns, and we should expect unknown unknowns. There ARE other things that might going on. Just 1 or 2% change in cloud cover could explain ALL of 20th C warming. Do we know if that happened? No, we don’t. Do we know of things that might have influenced that? Yes, we do.
“2. Various cycles do exist but cannot account for existing data without anthropogenic climate change in the mix.”
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Simply because they cannot account for the warming, does not mean they can be certain that anthropogenic factors dominate. That is an argument from ignorance “well, we can’t think what else it could be!”
“3. That it has become common for their science to be misrepresented, suppressed and highly politicized… and that the source of most of this are fossil fuel companies.”
I have not seen a jot of evidence for this. Not a jot. Can you find genuine actual evidence for this? Not just editorials or what someone thinks? In fact, reliance on renewables, a reflexive action, probably extends the life of the fossil fuel industry NOT threaten it. That’s because our needs exceed anything that can be provided by renewables (without totally trashing the environment) that they have to be backed up with – yet more fossil fuels. This has been discussed here quite a bit. Talk to Peter Lang on this site who has this area pretty well covered.
I speak to you as someone who is very firmly left of centre politically – and I realise that the nature of climate change policy response appeals to those on the left as much as it repels those on the right. But not me. It appalls me the hurt and alarm that is going on, and that hand-wringing over climate deflects attention to REAL environmental issues. It’s tied messily in with politics and science and truth are piteously abused, traumatised, into a whimpering, cowering, limping monster, good for nothing other than to hang your favourite slogan on. It breaks my heart.
As a semi-logician (my phil dept required being able to do completeness/correctness proofs of first order logics for all phil PhD’s) I appreciate your explanation of the errors inherent in my outline given its brevity. I took them for granted, though I believe in each case the basic idea expressed is sound.
To use another bit of quick rhetoric that gets some of these ideas across, one of my correspondents basically said that if anyone understood how science worked at all, they would know that global warming is no hoax. Scientists make their name by making bold new claims, not by agreeing with everyone else.And of course everyone loves funding… So, if it were possible to prove global warming was a “Hoax” somebody would have already made a name doing it and have all the fossil fuel money they needed in grants.
As far as the incredible politicization and it mainly coming from the fossil fuel folks and their rich investors, you might not have seen it, but many of my correspondents reported it. The only person who CALLED me rather than just writing was a person from Harvard, who literally said that it was “dangerous” to talk about. Craziest conversation I have ever had. He was mainly trying to figure out if I was one of the people out to get him. Besides it being reported by several of the people who responded to my queries, I can also point out that in Oklahoma, where I live, there was a brief scandal in which a fossil fuel benefactor of the University of Oklahoma tried to intervene in hiring and tenure evaluations of geologists who were reporting that fracking caused earthquakes. For a brief time OU officially denied fracking could trigger quakes. But within just a few months the whole thing was admitted and the state geological survey located at OU was helping regulators determine where to frack and where not to frack. Our earthquake incidence went down immediately.
This shows what GOOD can come from application of science versus what evil can come from denying it. For my part I think existential dread is unwise, but I’m still saying it seems to me that doing something rational is better than doing nothing at all through denial. Choosing not to choose is itself a choice.
succinct, TonyB, succinct. thanks.
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I’ve become incredibly anxious too, and had my first (of many I suspect) rant today: https://myhomefarm.co.uk/state-shift-have-we-reached-the-tipping-point
Interesting perspective. I do think it is easy to underestimate what melting ice “means” in terms of a signal. Most people are unaware of the non-linearity of adding heat energy to ice until it melts and heating up water (which from 0 C to 100 C is fairly linear). https://petersironwood.com/2019/09/04/essays-on-america-ice/
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Extinction rate is an issue at a human emotional level, source of medicine and biodiversity level. JC should have made comment on this within her blog
I’m currently living abroad and it’s every day at least 30°C.
Everyone back home is jealous with me.
These FACTS put the ‘DANGER’ of a few degrees extra in clear perspective.
It’s time, people use their BRAIN instead om their emotions that were so cleverly maniputed by the media.
ah, perhaps using arbitrary, sloppy measures (decline in extreme poverty as defined by WB or other) in an editorial post emphasizing the uncertainty of measure, and to a lesser extent causality, of climate change (and not noting the of course more troubling, and real potentially disastrous effects of ocean acidification,) isn’t a brilliant idea. More, blaming perhaps well-intentioned even if nearly always hypocritical people – ‘extintion rebellion’ et al. – for the more general and global current state of stress and worry (the rise in co-responding behavioral changes and problems even as defined by the dsm in both younger and less young people precedes the climate hype and co-responds statistically more with a)the diffusion of smart phones and their usage, and b), the acceleration of the concentration of wealth into the hands of a very few.
Societal prosperity might well be a policy, but it is not present over the last 13 years at all, and hasn’t been present in the west as yet this century.
Thank you for your response. More young people need to empower themselves positively to find solutions instead of looking at the devil of blame. Empowering and educating our adults of tomorrow will lead to a completely different mindset than the one that has been seeded in the last year. I have young daughters and I tell them to learn as much as they can about themselves and focus on learning. Developing collaboration, discussion and creative thinking is the way forward, whether it relates to climate change, friendship groups, or how they can assist communities near or far to their environments. My worry is the dictatorships in governments that forfeit this development and skew free thought. But my thoughts count. And my footprints that I leave in my lifetime will hopefully serve and nourish the intent that thought is the answer and will be the decided thing that shapes our futures.
“We still don’t have a realistic assessment of how a warmer climate will impact us and whether it is ‘dangerous.’” The latter is definitely false.
In a survey of 365 of the world’s best economists who have published articles about climate change (Howard and Sylvan 2015), ninety-three percent (3% opposed) of respondents indicated that the US Government should immediately commit to reducing greenhouse gases (fig. 9). A statement on carbon dividends supporting a carbon tax, signed by 27 Nobel laureates including libertarian Republicans Greenspan and Bernanke, provides further evidence of consensus (Carbon Statement 2019). The DICE (Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy) model, which earned William Nordhaus a Nobel prize in 2018 (nobelprize.org), and is also praised by Dr. Hassett, President Trump’s former lead economic advisor (cfr.org), shows the social cost of carbon to be about $37 for 2020 (Nordhaus 2017, table 1). The worsening of climate projections (IPCC 2018) suggest that a higher value of $90, which yields a gas tax of about $1 per gallon, could be prudent. This carbon tax would account for the difference between long term costs and benefits, solving the negative externality of global warming. However, it should be noted that 13% of economists support zero-carbon incentives in place of a carbon tax (Howard and Sylvan 2015, fig. 7).
These estimates by Dr. Nordhaus were given before the scientific reports giving the grave danger to coral reefs. He has said: “We’d have to be very pessimistic about the economy or optimistic about technology for 2 degrees. If we start moving very swiftly in the next 20 years, we might able to avoid 2 degrees” (NY Times). This could save 10-20% of coral reefs. He believes keeping temperatures at 1.5 degrees to be impossible.
Additionally, in the most recent environmental address by President Trump (whitehouse.gov), he implied that cutting carbon emissions was good and also supported solar and nuclear energy. The Green New Deal, in its current form, significantly differs from the average recommendation of economists and scientists.
See philipsphilosophy.wordpress.com for more information.
The antidote to the Greta Thunbergs and a reason for optimism about the future.
All people conditioned to deny climate change.