by Robert Ellison
I don’t raise the alarm at all, but there are tipping points in the Earth system. Megafloods and megadroughts. Abrupt warming or cooling of many degrees C in years or decades. Glacials and interglacials. Solar energy driving patterns of planetary turbulence and an ice, cloud and biology response. These have always been with us. Our limited geophysical instrumental series reveal a variability that can’t be distinguished from anthropogenic warming effects (Koutsoyiannis 2020 ). So it’s happening but perhaps not quite the end of the world yet.
A tipping point is ‘the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place’. (Merriam-Webster) Earth system state space is multi-dimensional. Not as many worlds or string theory dimensions but as fractionally dimensioned strange attractors in the state space. When a threshold is crossed the physical system responds with positive and negative feedbacks until settling into a new climate state as the perturbation damps out. In oceans and atmosphere hydrodynamics the rule is that big whirls have little whirls and little whirls have littler whirls and so on to viscosity. Friction turns kinetic energy to heat. But turbulent hydrodynamics says that the next tipping point – big or small – is not far away. Ice, cloud, hydrology and biology respond – occasionally dramatically. Perpetual perturbations are seen at scales of planetary waves to littler whirls.
From an important report by the U.S. National Academies (2013) Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises”
‘As recently as the 1980s, the typical view of major climate change was one of slow shifts, paced by the changes in solar energy that accompany predictable variations in Earth’s orbit around the sun over thousands to tens of thousands of years (Hays et al., 1976). While some early studies of rates of climate change, particularly during the last glacial period and the transition from glacial to interglacial climates, found large changes in apparently short periods of time (e.g., Coope et al., 1971), most of the paleoclimate records reaching back tens of thousands of years lacked the temporal resolution to resolve yearly to decadal changes. This situation began to change in the late 1980s as scientists began to examine events such as the climate transition that occurred at the end of the Younger Dryas about 12,000 years ago (e.g., Dansgaard et al., 1989) and the large swings in climate during the glacial period that have come to be termed “Dansgaard-Oescher events” (“D-O events;” named after two of the ice core scientists who first studied these phenomena using ice cores). At first these variations seemed to many to be too large and fast to be climatic changes, and it was only after they were found in several ice cores (e.g., Anklin et al., 1993; Grootes et al., 1993), and in many properties (e.g., Alley et al., 1993), including greenhouse gases (e.g., Severinghaus and Brook, 1999) that they became widely accepted as real.’
More recently, Tim Lenton et al. (2020) have written a paper: ‘The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must compel political and economic action on emissions.’ –
Oceans and the hydrological cycle
A 1990 geography coursework reading list included ‘Fluvial geomorphology of Australia’. More particularly, a paper by Wayne Erskine and Robin Warner on flood and drought dominated regimes (FDR and DDR) set me wondering. Why for God’s sake are there multidecadal regimes and sudden shifts in eastern Australian rainfall? ENSO was clearly involved – but the PDO wasn’t described for nearly another decade.
The multi-decadal rainfall-runoff variability is the result of Pacific Ocean periodicity. Positive phases of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) are drought years in Australia – negative phases bring cyclones, storms and flooding rains. And there is a flow threshold where streams change from a meandering to a braided form. Streams slowly revert to the meandering form in IPO positive regimes. Compare DDR and FDR??? with the IPO (Fig. 5) of Henley et al 2015. Note transition years. The pattern involves both the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) in the north – and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) – in the south. Warm or cool sea surfaces persist for a while and then shift. ENSO has a beat that shifted from 6-7 years to 2 to 5 years at the turn of the 1900’s – with more intense and frequent El Niño (Vance et 2012) – and has 20 to 30 year phases of persistent El Niño or La Niña states coherent with the PDO (e.g. Franks and Verdon 2006). With driving winds and currents split at the equator by the Coriolis force of a spinning planet. More flow in the Peru and California Currents shoals the thermocline and surging cold deep-water surfaces. Trade winds intensify pushing sun warmed water against Australia and Indonesia. More cold – and nutrient rich water surfaces in the east. Wind and current feedbacks kick up a notch. At some stage trade winds falter and water piled in the west surges east. The latest Pacific Ocean climate shift in 1998/2001 is linked to increased flow in the north (Di Lorenzo et al, 2008) and the south (Roemmich et al, 2007, Qiu, Bo et al 2006) Pacific Ocean gyres. Roemmich et al (2007) suggest that mid-latitude gyres in all of the oceans are influenced by decadal variability in the Southern and Northern Annular Modes (SAM and NAM respectively) as wind driven currents in baroclinic oceans (Sverdrup, 1947).
Is the beat of solar origin an effect on polar vortices? Are the 20 to 30 year Pacific state shifts an echo of the ~22 year Hale cycle? Will cold winters return with a less active sun? Gyre velocities are driven by the polar annular mode footprint. In theory solar magnetism or ultraviolet may trigger shifts in hydrodynamic state space. State space being the sum of physical states the planet can occupy within the laws of physics. It would explain synchronous north and south Pacific flows. There are climate limits that are found in paleo data. States persist while small changes in the system build instabilities that at last push the system past a threshold. That and/or a black swan event. Perturbations in ice, cloud and biology damp out until the next tipping point. States recur because the limits are physical – and hence the state space is ergodic. Limits of the past 2.6 million years seem most relevant – and I take no comfort from that.
Source: NASA
Source: Unknown
Low level marine boundary layer stratocumulus are seen off Peru. ‘The decks of low clouds 1000’s of km in scale reflect back to space a significant portion of the direct solar radiation and therefore dramatically increase the local albedo of areas otherwise characterized by dark oceans below.2,3 This cloud system has been shown to have two stable states: open and closed cells.’ (Koren et al 2017) It is an example of Rayleigh – Bénard convection in which cloud cells some 20 km in diameter form in the lower troposphere. Inside the cell water vapour condenses, droplets collide with condensation nuclei and it rains out from the centre. Faster over warmer oceans leaving a reduced domain albedo and a positive ocean heat feedback to multidecadal – and presumably longer – eastern Pacific SST change. Heat is gained or lost from the oceans as a subsystem shifts between warm and cool SST in the eastern Pacific. The Pacific has been – since the early 1900’s – in a millennially warm state (Vance et al 2013) warming the planet.
For this period, the observations show a trend in net downward radiation of 0.41 ± 0.22 W m−2 decade−1 that is the result of the sum of a 0.65 ± 0.17 W m−2 decade−1 trend in absorbed solar radiation (ASR) and a −0.24 ± 0.13 W m−2 decade−1 trend in downward radiation due to an increase in OLR… Most of the ASR trend is associated with cloud and surface albedo changes (Figure 2d), which account for 62% and 27% of the ASR trend, respectively.’ (Loeb et al 2021) Low level cloud is some 10% in the 70% odd total planetary cloud cover – according to a New Scientist reader. That changes dramatically in the tropical and subtropical eastern Pacific. My favorite future tipping point is in this cloud type at levels of CO2 in the atmosphere possible by the end of the century (Schneider et al 2018). If we burn all the fossil fuels. The last time CO2 was at such levels there were crocodiles in the Arctic circle.
Source: NASA Earth Observatory
The Moy et al 2002 ENSO proxy is based on the presence of more or less red sediment in a lake core. More sedimentation is associated with higher rainfall in El Niño conditions. It has continuous high-resolution coverage over 11,500 years. It shows periods of high and low El Niña intensity alternating with a period of about 2,000 years. There is the shift from La Niña dominance to El Niño dominance a little over 5,000 years ago that was a tipping point – and is associated with the drying of the Sahel. Note the bifurcation in the millennial band at that period. There is a period around 3,500 years ago of high El Niño intensity associated with the demise of Minoan civilisation (Tsonis 2010).
The time “series and wavelet power spectrum documenting changes in ENSO variability during the Holocene (a). Event time series created using the event model (see Methods), illustrating the number of events in 100-yr overlapping windows. The solid line denotes the minimum number of events in a 100-yr window needed to produce ENSO and variance. (b) Most recent 11,500 yr of the time series of red colour intensity. The absolute red colour intensity and the width of the individual laminae do not correspond to the intensity of the ENSO event. (c) Wavelet power spectrum calculated using the Morlet wavelet on the time series of red colour intensity (b). Variance in the wavelet power spectrum (colour scale) is plotted as a function of both time and period. Yellow and red regions indicate higher degrees of variance, and the black line surrounds regions of variance that exceed the 99.98% confidence level for a red noise process (at 4–8-yr period, the regions of significant variance are shown black rather than outlined). Variance below the dashed line has been reduced owing to the wavelet approaching the end of the finite time series. Horizontal lines indicate average timescale for the ENSO and millennial bands.” Christopher Moy et al, 2002, Variability of El Niño/Southern Oscillation activity at millennial timescales during the Holocene epoch
Is there an equilibrium up to 20,000 years before 1993 and then a shift to a cooler state punctuated by Dansgaard–Oeschger events that get more frequent and bigger as we go back through the last glacial interlude? It is followed by the Younger Dryas. Not slow insolation changes – but an ice dam bursting and freshening the Arctic. Slow changes build to a threshold and then feedbacks in a globally coupled system pop up. There is a pulse of solar activity somehow seemingly translating into large spikes of heat. Sea ice breaks off from the margins and drifts south. Thus there is high resolution data from sediment cores and a discovery of tipping points.
‘The temperature record from [3] and labelled D-O events 2 to 8 in blue from [4]. Low 10Be events 1 to 20 labelled in red. Note the 10Be scale is inverted. These low 10Be events would equate to an active solar magnetic field, shielding Earth from Galactic cosmic rays. It is possible that another 3 weak D-O events are present at 10Be events 7, 10 and 15.’ Source: Euan Mearns
A strong Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) brings warm, salty water to the Arctic where it cools and sinks. Freshening of surface water changes the threshold at which water sinks. Less north Atlantic water is funnelled north cutting salt transport and feeding back into Arctic freshening. At low points in Milankovitch insolation ice sheets survive summer and self-feedback into monsters. The Arctic is about as warm and fresh as it can get. Milankovitch insolation is at a low point. Do the hydrodynamic math. ‘The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a major ocean current system transporting warm surface waters toward the northern Atlantic, has been suggested to exhibit two distinct modes of operation. A collapse from the current strong mode to the weak mode would have severe impacts on the global climate system and further multi-stable Earth system components. (Caesar et al, 2021)
‘Schematic of the major warm (red to yellow) and cold (blue to purple) water pathways in the North Atlantic subpolar gyre. Acronyms not in the text: Denmark Strait (DS); Faroe Bank Channel (FBC); East and West Greenland Currents (EGC, WGC); North Atlantic Current (NAC); DSO (Denmark Straits Overflow); ISO (Iceland-Scotland Overflow). Figure courtesy of H. Furey (WHOI).
Biosphere
I fell into tipping points – pun intended. I was rehabilitating a shallow coastal estuary – just salty enough to make a lake that smelled like rotten eggs. The catchment is heavily urbanised and industrialised since convicts first hauled coal out of the ground. I pulled on my waders and confidently stepped into Lake Illawarra to sink to my armpits in a morass of mud and slime. The engineering student with me was laughing uncontrollably. It is all parkland and water sports now. Much as I loved my lake – I had other lakes to worry about. All over the world shallow freshwater or brackish lakes were changing colour.
The culprit is phosphorus. It settles slowly with fine particles and organic detritus. With rainfall-runoff a pulse of organic and inorganic nutrients is delivered to waterways. In the normal course of things – oxygen penetrates lake sediments some 20 mm. In the oxic zone – most phosphorus is oxidised and insoluble. Some 5-15% is in reduced, soluble, bioavailable forms. There is a little phosphene gas entering the atmosphere. Below the oxic zone it is anoxic – organisms use crystal lattice bound oxygen leaving soluble phosphorus. Nitrogen is also stripped of oxygen and dissipates as N2 or NOx gases. When a pulse of nutrients arrives in a lake algae blooms. When that dies it settles on the bottom with the likewise dead herbivores that consumed it and their faeces. Decomposition at the bottom depletes oxygen in sediment sending accumulated and now bioavailable phosphorus into the water column. This favours nitrogen fixers like blue-green algae. Benthic vegetation is shaded out freeing benthic sediment. There is a state change that is difficult to reverse. In my lake the channel was dug out increasing tidal exchange. That will shoal in the nature of estuarine channels. And by running catchment drainage through sediment traps, vegetated channels and artificial wetlands.
The biosphere is most obviously in trouble. It needs massive efforts by billions of people to manage forests, fisheries, aquifers, rangelands and waterways. And that takes peace, prosperity and a sense of humour. Fauna populations are crashing globally. The passenger pigeon’s survival strategy was sheer numbers. As people shot them out they crossed a threshold between recruitment and mortality and crashed to extinction. Nutrient exports from mines, farms and industrial and urban areas are land and water management fixes waiting to happen. Land and water management is our entire future. We have been losing carbon from agricultural soils and in traditional burning for 10,000 years. It is time to tip the balance back by managing for positive carbon, nutrient and water budgets on 5 billion hectares of private cropping and grazing land – for more production and less inputs in everything from permaculture food forests to industrial agriculture. To feed the world for another 10,000 years what we take from the Earth must be returned. It is simple accounting. Climate change means building massive factories churning out modular nuclear engines. I want a purple one. Land and water management include holding back water in sand dams, terraces and swales, replanting, changing grazing management, encouraging perennial vegetation cover, precise applications of chemicals and nutrients, cover crops… We need it to feed the world in the next 50 years.
Source: Stockholm Resilience Centre
By far the best thing to do is to better manage water and land. On 5 billion hectares of private cropping and grazing land and in global commons on which our lives depend. I am much encouraged by progress by small, medium and industrial farmers. To use plants to mine carbon from the sky and sock it away as organic matter in deep, rich, living soils. It reduces input costs – increases productivity – and feels socially good. Triple bottom line win win win – oi oi oi. Rattan Lal – doyen of soil science and 2021 winner of the World Food Prize – says that some 500 GtC (c.f. 350 GtC of modern anthropogenic emissions) has been lost from agricultural soils and in traditional burning over 10,000 years – a lot in the past 200. We should at least try to see how much can be restored this century – for biodiversity and food security. There is no plant carbon starvation at anywhere near today’s concentration.
The great global commons are best managed by local stakeholders with global information services. Big data can monitor most things. It is being used to predict the behaviour of complex ecological systems – e.g. Ye et al 2014. Cooperative polycentric management needs transparent data. Energy needs a powerful low-cost low-carbon source to meet rapid growth in demand. Modular nuclear engines rolling off assembly lines and onto trucks – or floating out of shipyards ready to connect – to meet an energy demand growth of 350% this century – is easily the frontrunner. There will be an energy transition – and because of course there are always creative/destructive tipping points in markets – the transition away from messy and bulky coal and gas will be rapid. I’d guess the lifetime of coal and gas plants being built now – if in future they can still find the parts.
Dr. Curry is very tolerant of Robert I. Ellison’s word salads.
And just where did you find this ‘word salad’ Dave. Examples and not just ideologically motivated ad hominin. Do you imagine you can convince the world of what? You’ll have to supply some details preferably supported by empirical science. Rejecting something you don’t understand or don’t like for whatever nutty reason just doesn’t do it.
Thank you for your post.
I think you mean “ad hominem” and I agree. To disagree, criticize, make non-sensical assertions without a basis or evidence is far too common, overwhelmingly common. To raise your head and distinguish yourself from this static, this noise is incredibly difficult. Your efforts are to be applauded.
There is no doubt that global warming is real and a very serious problem, now.
• It is driven by a significant increase in greenhouse heating, which continues to escalate.
• Since the mid-seventies:
o The total heating of the planet increased by 2.6%;
o The average global temperature increased by 1°C, 1.8 °F; and,
o The concentration of CO2 increased by 80 ppmv – an increase in atmospheric concentration of an inconsequential eight one thousandth of a percent, 0.008%.
• This is a number of absolutely no significance.
• While there are correlations drawn between this inconsequential increase and the increase in global temperature, and there is assumption-based conjecture, there is no proof that this insignificant increase in the concentration of CO2 has driven global warming.
• Nor can there be. Changes in average global temperature arise independently of and are wholly unrelated to changes in the concentration of CO2.
• At the same time, the average global atmospheric concentration of another greenhouse gas, water vapor, increased by 15%. An increase more than 1800 times greater than the increase in the concentration of CO2.
• Not only that, when compared on a molecule-to-molecule basis, a molecule of H2O has a greenhouse heating efficiency far greater than a molecule of CO2.
• The 15% increase in the concentration of water vapor, in terms of heating potential, is orders of magnitude greater than the potential increase in heating resulting from the increase in the concentration of CO2.
• Even more importantly, this is an increase of 15% in the latent heating power of the atmosphere which has:
o trebled the annual number of catastrophic, weather-related events since 1980, additional 17 billion dollars in annual economic loss;
o Fueled an increase of ~ 9,000 catastrophic, weather-related events around the globe, since 1980, (an increase of 45 annual events per tenth of a degree increase in the average global temperature, measured in Celsius);
o Has increased the number of lives lost by tens of thousands, wiping-out whole communities; and,
o Wreaked 2.4 trillion dollars in cumulative worldwide destruction above the 1980 baseline, by 2019.
We are lucky to have Dr. Curry. If there are other mature, responsible, courageous, open minded, fact based and truly knowledgeable sites/voices out there, I don’t know who they are.
BTW. I would love to post a carefully researched article on water vapor heating here, but I don’t know how. (I can be reached at watervapor@justforumaccess.com if you have a suggestion as to how I can submit it for review.)
Thank You – Good job,
William Van Brunt
“o trebled the annual number of catastrophic, weather-related events since 1980, additional 17 billion dollars in annual economic loss;
o Fueled an increase of ~ 9,000 catastrophic, weather-related events around the globe, since 1980, (an increase of 45 annual events per tenth of a degree increase in the average global temperature, measured in Celsius);
o Has increased the number of lives lost by tens of thousands, wiping-out whole communities; and,
o Wreaked 2.4 trillion dollars in cumulative worldwide destruction above the 1980 baseline, by 2019.”
The data says otherwise, William; you are regurgitating CliSciFi lies. Read anything by Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr.
That water vapour in the atmosphere increased 15% needs a reference or two. Otherwise it’s about a 7%/K increase as a feedback to surface warming.
7% is an old UN IPCC CliSciFi number used in its models. Observations show much less.
7% emerges from the Clausius-Clapeyron equation. The suggestion was that it is much higher. Observation shows that 7% is about right. Note that I am not specifying the source of warming.
Clausius–Clapeyron equation limits apply to saturated air. These limits are inapplicable when dealing with the actual concentration of water vapor which was 18.6 kg m-2 in 1976 and 21.3 kg m-2 in 2019.
I tend to prefer authoritative sources.
e.g. https://public.wmo.int/en/resources/bulletin/observing-water-vapour
That 2016 WMO blub is inaccurate and out of date. It asserts water vapor and clouds are feedbacks of CO2 and that water vapor feedbacks provide a multiple of CO2 forcing, among other misapprehensions. It says that water vapor concentrations are a linear response to CO2 forcings, the same false assumptions used in the UN IPCC CliSciFi models, resulting in their falsified tropical troposphere hot spot.
Whe it comes to water vapor, this source should be considered:
Atmospheric and Climate Sciences > Vol.10 No.4, October 2020
Autonomous Changes in the Concentration of Water Vapor Drive Climate Change William A. Van Brunt
DOI: 10.4236/acs.2020.104025
It’s the assumption of ‘autonomous changes’ in water vapour that’s the problem.
You do not appreciate unsupported assertions or baseless doubts. Neither do I.
I prove that:
1) increases in the concentration of water vapor drive increased water vapor heating which can drive further increases in the concentration of water vapor, autonomously. That is not an assumption. That is the physics. Yr/yr changes in the average global temperature are almost exactly correlated with yr/yr changes in the concentration of water vapor. This is the relationship in Celsius, with TPW in kg/m^2 –
DTAvg = 0.39 DTPW
and,
2) yr/yr changes in the concentration of CO2 are wholly unrelated to yr/yr changes in both the average global temperature and the average global concentration of water vapor which is consistent with autonomous changes.
‘Thanks, some very good stuff here. See attached for proposed revisions. Minor edits, but some substantial reorganization. Let me know if you want to work from my edited version, or whether you want me to post your original version.’ JC
I don’t require external validation – but there are other opinions. Why then does Dave’s obsessive personal denigration and empty headed prattle persist and multiply in some sort of nutty obsession on a blog that purports to be taken seriously? It’s a question for the ages.
That the planet is a coupled, nonlinear, spatiotemporal chaotic system there is little doubt. It is mainstream science as the citations and reference within show. Deterministic chaos has regimes and unpredictable transitions. I’ll add the American Institute of Physics to the list.
https://history.aip.org/climate/rapid.htm#:~:text=The%20changes%20had%20been%20rapid,not%20a%20world%2Dwide%20phenomenon.
Hand waving it away is not going to work. It demands a different approach designed to appeal to the middle ground of politics and to marginalize extremes. I suggest nukes and carbon cowboys – both are evolving in leaps ands bounds.
Robert, please show me where I disagreed with your statement “That the planet is a coupled, nonlinear, spatiotemporal chaotic system …” I’ve known that since my college days. I simply stated (in many ways) that you couldn’t predict specific tipping points nor their timing and making decisions based on the Precautionary Principle is inappropriate and money-wasting.
I agree with you that nukes are a good idea and that farmers should farm intelligently. At the same time I also think that centralized government should not be involved in determining particular technological nor economic outcomes; their track record is extremely poor because their decisions reflect ideological thinking. Additionally, your scheme of (effectively) collectivized farming does not work at large scale and is a poor model for feeding a worldwide non-agrarian society and economy.
I advocate leaving people alone: There are no “answers” to our many societal, economic and technical problems. Centralized decisionmaking is not the answer.
[I respect Dr. Curry and her opinions. Her allowing you to post your long-winded screed is not necessarily an endorsement of all its content.]
‘Thanks, some very good stuff here.’ JC
Despite Dave’s pretense now to be rational – the evidence persists of appalling consensus enforcer behaviour – he still doesn’t get it.
Observations suggest that the Earth system – well beyond climate – is a spatiotemporal chaotic. A hypothesis validated by observation. Like the sun rising there is every expectation that this will continue as such into the future. Tipping points in ocean and atmosphere are likely to happen 3 or 4 times this century. Unlike the sunrise – the precise timing is not predictable. With a dimming sun – there is a potential for larger shifts in temperature, hydrology and biology.
I glanced at the IPPC first assessment report at the time – and decided that solutions were technological. I advocate nuclear energy and carbon cowboys. As do most people it seems.
e.g. https://cresenergy.com/
> If there are other mature, responsible, courageous, open minded, fact based and truly knowledgeable sites/voices out there, I don’t know who they are.
In a comment about ad hominem, I suppose an ad feminem is alright.
“The biosphere … needs massive efforts by billions of people to manage forests, fisheries, aquifers, rangelands and waterways. And that takes peace, prosperity and A SENSE OF HUMOUR.”
RIE, please take your own advice.
Comments such as this are not calculated to amuse or inform. But I laughed anyway.
Apache pretty much lived in harmony with the Buffalo but then, despite their depredation, as much as it was, the horse that gave’m an advantage came from the Spaniards… but then, the buffalo gun was introduced and there was an unhealthy change in balance perhaps but… only a deranged climatist would argue that modernity should be banished for that reason.
As I recall Chief was on here year after year promising cooling for “a decade or three” or something like that.
Never let’s being wrong countless times get in his way.
No surface warming between 1998 and 2016 – 2016 being when the IPO shifted with a vengeance. Is that the pattern for a decade or three to come? But I am still right and Joshua is still parading his ignorance.
https://judithcurry.com/2022/03/05/tipping-points-in-earths-geophysical-and-biological-systems/#comment-972971
Gosh – I got it wrong. That should be no atmospheric warming from 1998 to 2016.
Satellites captures latent heat in a way that surface thermometers do not – as vapour condenses in the troposphere. And almost global coverage. Much more precise.
First off, Joshua, who is Chief? If you think its me, you are sadly mistaken. I have no idea as to what temperatures will be in the future and never said there will “a decade or three” of cooling.
‘‘Thanks, some very good stuff here. ‘ JC
More lies and culture warrior calumny from Dave. Collectivist farming? Weird.
I advocate nukes and carbon cowboys. Here’s Americans who know more and have much more common sense than Dave.
https://www.conservamerica.org/
https://cresenergy.com/
Global warming is beneficial. Global cooling is harmful.
The planet is currently in an icehouse phase. The GMST of the planet has been warmer than now for 90% of the past 540 Ma. It was 17.5 °C warmer 250 Ma ago, 13.2 °C warmer 93 Ma ago and 10.5 C° warmer 51 Ma ago [1]. Life thrived when the planet was warmer and struggled when colder.
When the planet was warmer life thrived (forests from pole to pole except in the driest inland areas). When it was colder, much of the world was arid.
Of the eight main impact sectors, empirical evidence shows that only sea level rise is negatively affected by global warming. The increase in sea level rise over this century is likely to be 200 – 300 mm. The economic impact of this will be negligible. All other impact sectors will benefit from global warming, or have negligible impact.
Given the empirical data there is no valid justification for polices or actions to attempt to reduce global warming.
1. Scotese, C.R.; Song, H.; Mills, B.J.W.; van der Meer, D.G. Phanerozoic paleotemperatures: The earth’s changing climate during the last 540 million years. Earth-Science Reviews 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2021.103503.
The justification for socking away carbon in soils and ecosystems is food security, biodiversity, flood and drought mitigation… And for modular nuclear engines? Cheap and abundant power.
Regionally distributed biophysical systems are plenty warm enough to support an abundant flora and fauna. We don’t need more CO2 in the atmosphere.
Empirical evidence of the impacts of global warming and higher CO2 concentrations does not support your beliefs.
The story is that CO2 fertilises plants and reduces water loss. Building rich, deep, living soils as farmers all over the world are doing in snowballing numbers doubles and triples food productivity and stores much more water to reduce runoff and recharge aquifers. There is a weight of organic matter in living soils of a couple of elephants.
Nor do I think that Peter’s 540 million year old empirical evidence has much relevance to today’s world – or means what he thinks it does. It is drawing a long bow.
The change in the concentration of water vapor, ∆TPW, is proportional to the change in total heating, ∆TH and an exponential function of the change in average global sea surface temperature, ∆SST K.
For ∆TPW in kilograms per square meter this is:
∆TPW= 0.157 ∆TH +17.5{e^([0.0686(SSTo+SST)- 288)] )-e^([0.0686(SSTo)- 288)] ) } kgm-2
Applying this principle, the average global concentration of atmospheric water vapor is calculated to have been 18.4 kg/m² in 1880. The results of the application of this principle to NOAA data for 1996 – 2007, are within +- 1%.
See Mieruch, S.; Noel, S.; Bovensmann, H.; Burrows, J.P. Analysis of global water vapour trends from satellite measurements in the visible spectral range. Atmos Chem Phys 2008, 8, 491–504.
Peter has never answered the question of why he imagines the planet will keep warming. Or indeed stop at some convenient amount.
The planet is currently in an icehouse phase – i.e. ice at the poles. This is rare. The poles have been ice free for 70% of the past 540 Ma. The planet is 30 Ma into this icehouse phase with probably another 30 to 60 Ma to go. The glacial – interglacial cycles on 80 ka to 120 ka cycles will continue throughout this time.
The planet is past the peak of the current interglacial, so won’t get much warmer. We are on the ~100,000 year progression to the next glacial maximum.
Nothing to fear from global warming, but a risk from global cooling. Increasing CO2 concentrations will maintain slightly warmer temperatures (beneficial) and prolong the current interglacial for a while.
The south pole has been icy for 34 million years – the north for some 2.6 million. That’s to do with continental drift. So unless they drift back – it’s not changing. Or perhaps Tapio Schneider’s cloud feedback will tip us into a modern PETM
And glacials happen with runaway ice sheet feedbacks. It doesn’t take 100,000 years. With AMOC instability caused by Arctic freshening in the modern warm period – natural and anthropogenic – I wouldn’t rule it out.
I don’t know – unlike some. But then there is not much to be gained from CO2 in the atmosphere when there are so much better things to do with it. Reclaiming deserts for instance.
The glacial inter-glacial cycles occur on ~150,000 cycles with the worst being on ~300,000 year cycles. These are caused by cycles in cosmic ray flux from the Milky Way [1-3].
The 83,000 to 125,000 year glacial – interglacial cycles are due to the Milankovitch cycles
[1] Shaviv, N.J. The Milky Way Galaxy’s Spiral Arms and Ice-Age Epochs and the Cosmic Ray Connection. http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages
[2] Shaviv, N.J. The spiral structure of the Milky Way, cosmic rays, and ice age epochs on Earth. New Astronomy 2003, 8, 39-77. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1384107602001938
[3] Shaviv, N.J. Cosmic ray diffusion from the galactic spiral arms, iron meteorites, and a possible climatic connection. Physical review letters 2002, 89, 051102. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.051102
Correction:
“The coldhouse cycles occur on ~150 Ma cycles with the coldest being on ~300 Ma cycles. These are caused by cycles in cosmic ray flux from the Milky Way [1-3].
Solar magnetism changing with the solar magneto modulates cosmic radiation flux. A change in solar activity warms and cools the planet – but not by much. What changes fast and a lot is planetary albedo.
Reads the Shaviv articles cited in this comment above: https://judithcurry.com/2022/03/05/tipping-points-in-earths-geophysical-and-biological-systems/#comment-972821
The 150 Ma and 300 Ma cycles in cosmic radiation flux are due to the different rotation rates of the Milky Way spiral arms and magnetic fields.
I don’t mind Nir Shaviv. I discussed a sun climate link in the context of cosmogenic isotopes and eyeballing temperature variations over 400,000 years. Eyeballing is the best that can be done with this data.
Lam et al 2014 – https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014GL061421 – attempt to explain the physical linkages of solar winds/IMF to polar surface pressure – the Mansurov effect.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/f56fcd9f-89d8-451e-b611-e2e626d958b0/grl52088-fig-0001-m.png
It may be relevant to global climate shifts but is not itself a tipping point. Not everything is.
“The planet is currently in an icehouse phase.”
An Age, an Ice Age for last 34 million years with last 2 million years
being the coldest.
We are in icehouse global climate because of the temperature of our
cold ocean. The average temperature of our ocean is about 3.5 C.
It seems to me, that in last couple million years, our ocean has warmed to
about 4 C and cooled to about 3 C.
The significant aspect of interglacial period is their steep rise out of a glaciation period. And it seems to me what causes this steep rise and a warmer ocean.
Whether the ocean is as cold as 3 or as warm as 4 C it has powerful warming
effect upon planet Earth, but there a huge difference in terms it effect if ocean is 1 C warmer and the ocean can warm by 1 C unless huge energies are involved or very long time- thousands of years.
An example of huge amount of energy is space rocks which is about 10 km in diameter impacting Earth and/or enormous super volcano type events or
apparently no such event has occurred recently {within last million years].
Or for ocean to warm by 1 C, in recent time, it requires a long time.
And I think this long time, would found to occur in the longest time periods
of in our glaciation periods.
Or I think before the beginning of our Holocene period, our ocean was 4 C
and this warmer ocean cause the peak temperature of our Holocene period
and all the other peaks of interglacial periods over the millions of years.
Climate policies and actions need to be justified on the basis of the economic impacts of global warming and cooling, not on projections of the amounts of future global warming and cooling.
As I said in my first comment: “Given the empirical data there is no valid justification for polices or actions to attempt to reduce global warming”. Warming is beneficial.
But then if we don’t know with any precision what the future brings – how can impacts be assessed.
Energy innovation and environmental conservation and restoration make sense regardless of AGW. So assess costs and benefits without considering climate change at all. Problem solved. And claim that you are doing God’s work on Earth.
You do not understand. It is the economic impacts that are relevant for justifying climate policies. Empirical evidence clearly shows that global warming is beneficial, or has negligible impact, for all impact sectors. It is overall beneficial, is there is no valid justification to attempt to reduce global warming.
No – you don’t understand Peter. Climate impacts are irrelevant. They are not even credibly calculable.
‘Climate Pragmatism, a new policy report released July 26th by the Hartwell group, details an innovative strategy to restart global climate efforts after the collapse of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process. This pragmatic strategy centers on efforts to accelerate energy innovation, build resilience to extreme weather, and pursue no regrets pollution reduction measures — three efforts that each have their own diverse justifications independent of their benefits for climate mitigation and adaptation. As such, Climate Pragmatism offers a framework for renewed American leadership on climate change that’s effectiveness, paradoxically, does not depend on any agreement about climate science or the risks posed by uncontrolled greenhouse gases.’ https://thebreakthrough.org/articles/climate-pragmatism-innovation
No – you don’t understand. What is relevant for justifying policy and actions is the economic impacts of global warming and cooling. The empirical evidence clearly shows that global warming has a positive impact on the global economy:- energy, ecosystems, agriculture, forestry, storms, health, etc. Therefore, there is no valid justification for policies to attempt to reduce global warming and GHG emissions.
The justification is abundant and cheap power – and restoring and conserving global ecosystems. Entrepreneurs will innovate and markets will arbitrate. Peter may produce a number with massive uncertainties – and I will laugh at it. Apart from immense inevitable errors and faux precision – it is simply not required. And I am not having this discussion yet again.
The costs to reduce global warming are in the tens of trillions USD. The benefits for the world are nil, negligible or negative.
There are substantial health benefits from reducing fossil fuel consumption, but not climate benefits [1,2].
[1] Lang, P.A. Nuclear Power Learning and Deployment Rates; Disruption and Global Benefits Forgone. Energies 2017, 10, 2169. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/en10122169
[2] Lang, P.A.; Gregory, K.B. Economic impact of energy consumption change caused by global warming. Energies 2019, 12, https://doi.org/10.3390/en12183575
Modern generating plants have zero health impacts. The Chinese fired up two pebble bed reactors late last year. Seaborg is building floating platforms for molten salt reactors. Sail it to site and turn the key. Rolls Royce is building a factory to build containerized light water reactors on an assembly line. This doesn’t cost trillions. A few billions at worst – a lot of it private. Farmers desperately need higher productivity and lower input costs. Putting a few billion into the farming sector is not a problem. Nor is a few more billion for forestry or other public lands.
If Peter is going to spin the same BS repeatedly – he should make it less transparently fake.
“If Peter is going to spin the same BS repeatedly – he should make it less transparently fake.”
Should read “If Ellison is going to spin the same BS repeatedly – he should make it less transparently fake.”
You clearly did not understand my two comment which said:
“The costs to reduce global warming are in the tens of trillions USD. The benefits for the world are nil, negligible or negative.”
And:
“There are substantial health benefits from reducing fossil fuel consumption, but not climate benefits.“
It is hopelessly off topic.
Peter’s idee fixe drives him down the rabbit hole yet again.
Expanded nuclear power might cost trillions – but if it is cheaper than coal and gas the innovation windfall is immense. And taking carbon from the sky and managing to keep it in soils and vegetation is a way to use that resource for productivity and biodiversity gains.
Ellison. you consistently show you do not understand the economics of energy and of the impacts of global warming. It is the economics that must be used to justify policies, but you consistently dodge and avoid that.
The economics of factory fabricated nukes is precisely what makes it so exciting. The design elegance of the General Atomics project doesn’t hurt either.
It is not of course 100% wind and solar so that is not the comparison to make.
When the technology and economics of small nuclear are competitive with FFs it is time to move, the same for any energy source. Nuclear R&D, however, is a rational use of public monies. It is undeniably irrational to subsidize wind and solar and penalize FFs.
Since Man’s CO2 emissions are a net benefit, why penalize or subsidize any energy source to reduce emissions?
Operational subsidies lead to market distortions and inefficiencies. If it can’t survive on its own – it doesn’t deserve to. But then not many are as economically purist as me. You may complain about politics but it is not somethin we wish to abandon.
Hayek is always apropos.
‘When I say that the conservative lacks principles, I do not mean to suggest that he lacks moral conviction. The typical conservative is indeed usually a man of very strong moral
convictions. What I mean is that he has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions. It is the recognition of such principles that permits the coexistence of different sets of values that makes it possible to build a peaceful society with a minimum of force. The acceptance of such principles means that we agree to tolerate much that we dislike.’ https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/hayek-why-i-am-not-conservative.pdf
Intolerance describes Leftists, not conservatives.
Robert, both you and Hayek paint with a broad brush; his “conservative” (which he took pains to explain, describing more of a reactionary in my estimation) in no way resembles U.S. conservative principles which are liberal in their outlook. Hayek described U.S. Constitutional principles as the epitome of liberalism; Leftists are socialists and are not liberals nor progressives in Hayek’s view.
Robert, You continually quote Hayek out of context. His reference to “Why I’m not a conservative” related to European conservatism, not US conservatism. There’s a difference you’ve obviously never bothered to entertain. In the book you reference Hayek opines having an affection for US conservatism, it was still evolving in 1960, the date he published this book. He described in the book the differences between US and European conservatism. I’ve directly quoted these references to you, yet it doesn’t suit your bigotry, so you ignore it to obfuscate Hayek’s words to support your own political views.
Hayek actually considered himself a Whigist. There was only one conservative party ever in the US, the mid 19th century Whig party; one of many parties that came and went during that era. Conservatism in the US most closely aligns to classical liberalism; classical liberalism went out of favor by the late 19th century as neo liberal and progressive philosophies evolved. Conservatism means to have a sympathetic appeal to an earlier political philiosophy; this means classical liberalism in the US. In the early 20th century there were many democratic and republican conservatives; the philosophy essentially embraces strict constitutional constructionist views in the US. Much has changed, hawkish conservative democrats left the Democratic Party and became newly minted neo conservatives within the Republican Party.
Conservatism in the US was evolving when Hayek wrote his book. The Reagan/Thatcher era saw conservatives rally behind Hayek’s philosophy, during this period English conservatism began to align more closely to US conservatism. Thatcher was in fact a confidant of Hayek’s, Reagan was a follower of Hayek’s philosophy.
What he said. [Thanks, jungletrunks.]
When Hayek referenced liberalism, he was referencing classical liberalism; Hayek loathed neo liberalism as much as European conservatism.
Marx railed against liberalism, how can that be one asks? Marx was referencing classical liberalism, which grew out of the Scottish Enlightenment to embrace freedom and liberty of the individual, this was antithetical to Marx of course. Marx would love todays so called liberal.
Hayek was a liberal in the European tradition. Something he takes great pains to distinguish from conservatism.
‘Conservatism proper is a legitimate, probably necessary, and certainly widespread attitude of opposition to drastic change. It has, since the French Revolution, for a century
and a half played an important role in European politics. Until the rise of socialism its opposite was liberalism. There is nothing corresponding to this conflict in the history of
the United States, because what in Europe was called “liberalism” was here the common tradition on which the American polity had been built: thus the defender of the American tradition was a liberal in the European sense.[2] This already existing confusion was made worse by the recent attempt to transplant to America the European type of
conservatism, which, being alien to the American tradition, has acquired a somewhat odd character. And some time before this, American radicals and socialists began calling
themselves “liberals.” I will nevertheless continue for the moment to describe as liberal the position which I hold and which I believe differs as much from true conservatism as
from socialism.”
Jungletrunk misconstrues Hayek in a misconceived effort to claim him as a conservative. Dave just doesn’t have a clue about anything.
Robert, your elitism blinds you to the realities of Hayek and the American experiment; you prefer the heavy had of the State. Like many foreigners you mistake the media depiction of the U.S. “far right” for modern conservatives (classic liberals). Hayek hated the idea, but admitted he was politicly closer to libertarianism.
“Hayek was a liberal in the European tradition. Something he takes great pains to distinguish from conservatism.”
Your interpretation is ignorant, Robert. You surfed Hayek’s book and found another quote from within his book not having contextual understanding for what it means. I doubt you ever really read the book you so often quote, or took the time to study history; you rummage around cobbling together paragraphs taken from history, and ignorantly support your politics by using them without context.
An excerpt within this new quote you excised to focus on:
“American tradition was a liberal in the European sense.[2] ”
Of course! The US was colonized by Europeans! duh. The liberals who colonized America were classical liberals, that’s America’s tradition that Hayek speaks of! NOT the contemporary variety of liberalism. Like I’ve already stated, the liberal tradition in the 18th century was classical liberalism. Conservatism is a sympathetic appeal to the philosophy America was founded on, that of classical liberalism, it reaches back to those ideals that created the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the ideals behind the Scottish Enlightenment period that embraced personal liberty, and freedom. Conservatism in the US is a sympathetic appeal to an earlier form o political philosophy by very definition; that’s classical liberalism in the US. You anachronistically conflate because you don’t understand the evolution of liberalism or what conservatism actually means, much less the varieties expressed in different parts of the world. Conservatism in Germany has no relation to conservatism in the US, for example..
“This already existing confusion was made worse by the RECENT attempt to transplant to America the European type of conservatism, which, being alien to the American tradition, has acquired a somewhat odd character. ”
Hayek describes CONFUSION, (this means you), holistically he’s referring to how classical liberalism was conflated in the 20th century with neo liberalism. But in this excerpt he’s describing further conflation of political philosophy; Euro conservatism began to infect “the American tradition” (classical liberal/conservatives); essentially here he’s referencing neo conservatives. The latter were mostly in the democratic party at the time, they migrated to the GOP post Hayek’s book. Neo conservatives among other things are the nation building globalists within the GOP; thankfully a dying breed.
What he said. [Thanks, jungletrunks.]
Thanks for this post, RIE.
Well done.
Best to let a few comments/commentators add up and reply in groupings unless there is a sensible comment or commentator.
Don’t loose your cool.
Thanks. I didn’t want to ignore Dave. He might get offended. I responded to Peter’s points.
RIE,
How about less romance and more hard science?
You wrote “But turbulent hydrodynamics says that the next tipping point – big or small – is not far away.”.
One can loosely infer from this that we on the globe have had many tipping points (some big, some small) already as “not far away” becomes “in the recent to distant past” as time marches on.
So, if you discuss threats from tipping points, what have we learned from study of past tipping points? Are there any that have created significant concern? Do any credible projections indicate a greater concern for the future? How are they credibly linked to acts of Man? Are they actually controlled by burning less fossil fuel? What makes you think that human custodian bureaucrats can or will manage the Earth better than Mother nature, who has had much longer time to hone shills that work?
………………..
Or, are tipping points just a neat excuse for an n,000 word essay on your pet topic of the day? Geoff S
There are oodles of hard, old fashioned science cited. Try reading it for a change.
RIE,
Suspect I’ve read the basic old science several times over, looking for bursts of new brilliance now.
Here is one from way out left field:
https://osf.io/huxge/
Helicopter engineer Moritz Busing in Germany noticed a fundamental fault with time series temperature homogenization. Tried to get it published. Everywhere knocked back (one after 5 minutes!). This is quite important for the old topic of “How accurate are the data with which we start?”
Remember Church for youngsters, “Build on the rock and not upon the sand?”
Your concepts have gone past the engineering foundations, to more arty subjective concepts like “Should we paint the roof light pink or in rainbow hues”.
The old furphie that The Great Barrier Reef will die off. Are you aware there were coral reefs in Moreton Bay which are now dead because it was too cold? Brisbanes cement industry was built on them. If the earth does warm the reefs will just migrate south. Never any thought from catastrophists of adaption.
That’s not my furphy – note the spelling. I take it you are Australian. I live in Yeppoon on the GBR. I’ve sailed, dived, snorkelled and sailed on coral reefs from Papua New Guinea to Lady Musgrave Island. Damage to some sections of the reef has ben caused by cyclones, bleaching and crown of thorns (CoT) starfish. Cyclones come and go with the state of the IPO. The theory on CoT is that more juveniles survive with more nutrients in runoff and then settle on the outer reef. Divers kill them by hand. In the long term better land management than what happened even 20 years ago is needed – but then there is all that phosphorus in sediment.
Most bleached reefs recover. They can even pick up zooxanthellae that are better adapted than the ones they ejected. Going back several centuries the IPO was in a cool state (Vance et al 2012). La Nina intensifies the eastern Australian current and may have something to do with Moreton Bay corals. But you are right – the Coral Sea reefs are amazing and there is no existential risk to the bulk of the GBR.
RIE,
Some researchers consider that bleaching happens to most corals on an annual basis or even more frequently; that it is a natural event as part of the life cycle; that it can become more apparent to observers when weather conditions like tides and temperatures combine to a minor tipping point.; that It happens because corals are forever optimising biota suited to the needs of ongoing life.
Such views are “cancelled” by a multitude of others before they can be adequately researched, Such opponents, knowing or not, are contributing to a shameful censorship era in the history of the advancement of science.
Geoff S
We are talking major bleaching events against a backdrop of a marginally warmer ocean. It is on the basis of biological science reasonable to infer a connection of one to the other.
I’ve read science on coral adaptations. AIMS is actively studying it. As one would expect of the premier coral science lab in the land. You shouldn’t judge science by the headlines. Old fashioned science such as that doesn’t get derailed so easily. But if you want refute it – you need to do the work.
Tipping points in Earths geophysical and biological systems.
Two different systems.
Though they interact the time constraint on the former has a much wider range of possibilities than the latter.
–
Tipping points in this context are a bit like the tree falling in the forest.
Only relevant insofar as they affect the species writing about them and interested in them.
–
Hence
“I don’t raise the alarm at all, but…”
Is raising an alarm.
A tipping point is a point of change.
Change can be good ( always forgotten), bad, indifferent happy or disturbing.
A tipping point can be reversed in some situations but usually leads to ongoing, often irreversible changes.
The size of the event and the time of the event are and whom or what the event is acting on are the major considerations.
Things that are very large in association with things that occur very slowly may be of no immediate concern though very upsetting in the long term.
Thanks for specifying two areas of concern for the human race.
The question is with a lot of the events postulated humans have nothing to do with them and at the moment have limited possibility of stopping them.
Concern noted but as Alfred E Newman said, why worry.
You raise the possibility of prevention and mitigation of human induced resource depletion, water and food.
It seems to come from a need to help others.
It would classify under biological systems and would seem to have nothing to do with burning fossil fuels causing reversible geophysical changes.
You lost me at the get go. The original title was ‘Tipping points in Earths geophysical and biological system’. Judith added an s and I missed it. It’s all one interconnected system.
If you want to get mathematical – without much mathematics – I suggest Tomas Milanovic. Tomas does indeed know the math.
https://judithcurry.com/2011/02/10/spatio-temporal-chaos/#:~:text=Spatio%2Dtemporal%20chaos%20deals%20with,QM%20is%20from%20classical%20mechanics.
And the Stockholm Resilience Centre ‘planetary boundaries’ are natural systems that people are pushing at.
RIE,
You promote more carbon in soils for better water availability to plants.
Another way to increase soil moisture is known, Add water. Irrigation.
You need to explain why adding water is not as good as adding carbon.
That is, carbon needs an extra advantage over water. What is it?
No elementary lectures on plant nutrition needed. I worked with it for years,
Geoff S
Plants retard runoff, fungi and worms open up soils for infiltration, a deep root mass holds more water for longer periods – while refreshing streams and aquifers. As elemental as hydrology. And irrigation can’t possibly happen on more than a very small part of 5,000,000,000 hectares.
If irrigation can’t happen, how can the addition of carbon? Geoff S
RIE,
If irrigation can’t happen because of scale, how can carbon addition be possible? Geoff S
By increasing a concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. That decreases the need for water. Also known as “planet greening”.
Plants are able to reduce water loss – and get the carbon they need – in elevated CO2. In the deserts of the world this seems to result in more green leaf area. Increasing soil carbon content with modern farming practices increases their water holding capacity.
RIE wrote “Increasing soil carbon content with modern farming practices increases their water holding capacity.”
Our own CSIRO developed a powder product for spreading lightly over soils that increases the water holding capacity. Sounds cheaper than importing carbon-containing bulk materials to add to soil. Geoff S
That’s very funny. The carbon comes from the atmosphere in the usual way. A deep, living soil liberates nutrients improving productivity and reducing input costs. Below is a video from the Australian soilsforlife group – they have case studies on their site that you could access if you tried really hard.
https://soilsforlife.org.au/
RIE writes “the next tipping point – big or small – is not far away”
Given that time marches on, we must have been subjected to some past tipping points, big and small.
Can you please give us a couple of examples of past tipping points leading to harm to people? Also, please detail how they were connected, if at all, to past actions of Man, particularly emissions of CO2. Your thesis is weak if there are none in the past, but some projected for the future, because anyone can project.
Geoff S
This post was inspired by Matthew Marler asking for specifics. In a comment it is not possible – and for that reason I usually always reference my comments. Above I stick to physical events – and describe a few. But that’s not science – it is communication. I haven’t counted the references there that I have encountered over 30 plus years on this.
I project +/- 10 degrees C. 🤣
Even more regionally and in years to a decade. That’s happened in the past 20,000 years – and the evidence is in the reference. Those parts I haven’t quoted obviously.
Geoff S asked for: “Also, please detail how they were connected, if at all, to past actions of Man”
You just avoided that bit.
No ad homs in a reply, now, please.
I could. But as far as I as I am concerned people get what they give. In this case – nothing, nada, zilch with a side of snark.
Nice: We exist, so there can have been no tipping point (man made or other) since we came into existence.
What happens in the future is just projection. Anyone (even I?) can do it. That pretty well wraps it up for any planning, unless perhaps, they assume the future will be just like past. We exist therefore we will continue to exist.
I am relieved to read Peter’s law which reassures us that global warming is beneficial. It is consistent with how good things are now and how much better we can expect them to be. It has the virtue of simplicity in a field where there seems to be so much complexity. But, as we say in Australia, “she’ll be right”.
One concern I am left with is related to the increasing presence of phosphorus in lakes and oceans. That does seem to represent a stressor for existing aquatic biomes. We pour it into the sea after it has been used to fertilise the crops we eat or export. It is essential. The major suppliers are Morocco and China.
On the face of it, its decreasing availability for soil fertilisation and its increasing concentration in the world’s waters looks like a problem in the offing. Not, I hasten to add, is this a concern from some sinister need I may have to help others. Oh no! I don’t like smelly lakes and I am reliant on nutritious food. My ideological purity is beyond reproach.
Paul T,
Not all lakes in Australia are close enough to agriculture to be affected by phosphate leakage. (Not “phosphorus”, which spontaneously ignites at about 30C in dry air).
I’d be looking for differences between exposed and unexposed lakes before accepting conclusions. Also, considerable literature suggests that farming runoff scarcely reaches the Barrier Reef proper, though a few small island reefs are close enough to river mouths to show some effect. The tidal water entering the Reef system from the adjacent oceans has a mass far exceeding river runoff and so dilutes it to levels near impossible to detect on the main outer reef. Geoff S
Phosphorus is highly reactive and never found in elemental form. The primary source is parent rock. So erosion will export phosphorus to waterways. It settles in clays. When I was a young engineer there was a 1000 km blue-green algae bloom in the Murray-Darling River system – Australia’s biggest river by far – not that that’s saying much. We do seem to have beefed up water flow since with more efficient water conveyance and irrigation and better water management. Although it can always be done better still.
The system has dozens of lakes and weirs. Australia’s food bowl contributing to global food security for which the ‘mighty Snowy Mountains hydro scheme’ was hatched. They are actually barely mountains at best and the water flows are piffling in world terms. The Snowy Scheme supplies 7% of our electricity and is a perfect counterpoint to some wind and solar. Snowy Hydro is now into trifling amounts of pumped hydro for renewable energy. Why not?
‘Described as one of the civil engineering wonders of the modern world, the Snowy Scheme consists of nine power stations, 16 major dams, 80 kilometres of aqueducts and 145 kilometres of interconnected tunnels.’ https://www.snowyhydro.com.au/generation/the-snowy-scheme/
“The [Eastern Australia] multi-decadal rainfall-runoff variability is the result of Pacific Ocean periodicity.”. Likely, perhaps, but not necessarily so. https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm21/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/850985 “Time-series analysis of extreme rainfall and flood events in two water catchments of Eastern New South Wales shows an indicative link to Gleissberg 87 yr cycles”.
I suggest that the Hale solar cycle might bias the Pacific Ocean one state of the IP0 or other. So hard to show mathematically. Correlation doesn’t work. There are many factors at work in modulating the polar annular mode footprints.
The null hypothesis of AGW Theory has never been rejected, that all climate change can be explained by natural causes.
There is no scientific justification for some of the extremist economic and social penalties that a minority of zealots are trying to impose on the people of the world. ~Koutsoyiannis
Koutsoyiannis is an amazingly productive and insightful hydrologist. And I agree about how annoying progressives can be. But modern warming is without much doubt both natural and anthropogenic.
And yet, it was warmer in the Roman period and warmer still in the Minoan period.
So if it might be natural it can’t be anthropogenic? What we don’t have a clue about is what albedo was doing in the Roman or Minoan optimums.
Of course, it also could be, as Michael Crichton observed that global warming is caused by aliens or perhaps… as according to ancient legend, the sun is driven across the sky everyday by the God Helios in his flaming chariot..
You can’t seriously reject radiative physics. Some part of modern warning isn’t natural it’s anthropogenic.
Does anyone not reject the idea that CO2 in the atmosphere works like a greenhouse?
That the atmosphere is not a greenhouse is not a telling point on line by line Schwarzschild’s equation radiative physics.
RIE,
So when do we expect to see a kick up in sea levels from the oceans acting like a thermometer?
Has natural change been precisely offsetting global warming change, result no change in sea level in 6,000 years, no acceleration since evil Man appeared?
Chief
I agree that it is both natural and anthropogenic. I realize this is an almost impossible task to be this specific, but it is unfortunate that a poll of climate scientists has not been made which asked for an estimate by quintile how much they believe AGW represents of total warming since the end of the global little ice age.
At least it would get rid of the endless citations of the discredited 97% narrative.
The most influential impacts humanity may have on the average temperature of the globe is choosing the location for the official thermometers (that alone has been a Yamal 3-ring circus) and the purposeful corruption of the data.
“it is unfortunate that a poll of climate scientists has not been made which asked for an estimate by quintile how much they believe AGW represents of total warming”
Verheggen et al. 2014 did that poll over modern warming. This was the result:
https://i.imgur.com/X7XizJK.png
Javier
Excellent. I had never seen that. Thanks.
I think we are seeing the rise of intolerance in an academia that has always been mostly left-of-center. Strikes me that intolerance is a feature of zealots that exist at the extremes of the political spectrum.
Why is Putin trying to take over Europe? Why did Hitler try to take over the planet? Seems to me the root cause lies with the egotistical elite few intent on enriching themselves at all costs, with no empathy or regard for the rest of mankind. Therein lies a danger to the green energy movement that has been largely hijacked by the radical fringe. Well meaning individuals are becoming useful idiots for zealots.
Intolerance in academia…? It has been ‘fascist to the core’ since the ’90s.
It’s all in the narrative.
‘There is no doubt that America is successfully transitioning to a lower carbon energy economy, but we need practical approaches that optimize the best energy resources to power our economies while we wait for the technology to catch up.
Voters understand that. An all-of-the-above approach gives us the opportunity to invest in clean technologies, create new jobs, and promote existing natural gas and oil industries that reduce American reliance on foreign oil. But as the poll results indicate, each state and region is unique, and this means the best energy sources for each area will look different.
Instead of pitting renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and nuclear against traditional sources like natural gas and oil, an all-of-the-above approach makes room for everything—and presents a chance to get the politics out of energy policy. Candidates that listen to that message this fall will have a better chance at appealing to swing voters, especially in battleground states.’ https://www.conservamerica.org/latest-news/its-time-to-get-the-politics-out-of-energy-policy-as-new-polling-show-voters-overwhelmingly-support-all-of-the-above
So, this is how a hoax dies…
My work here is done. 😉 Conservation is a fine conservative value. Modular nuclear engines are just around the corner. Biden will want to take credit.
RIE wrote March 6, 2022 at 7:57 pm:
‘There is no doubt that America is successfully transitioning to a lower carbon energy economy, …”
There are many reports of US fossil fuel use increasing. Just one of them opens “Consumption of fossil fuels—petroleum, natural gas, and coal—grew by 4% in 2018 and accounted for 80% of U.S. total energy consumption. Natural gas consumption reached a record high, rising by 10% from 2017. “
Source: Quoted in Energy Dominance: US Set Record for Energy Consumption in 2018! – Watts Up With That?
As Robert wrote, “It’s all in the narrative.” Geoff S
Yes we all know that the USA uses coal, oil and gas – most of them want to keep using it until something better comes along. The conservamerica ‘all of the above’ statement makes political sense. Sherrington does not. It’s all about the narrative is obviously about a radical liberal framing of a political narrative that arouses the imagination of the middle ground and wins elections. Contrarians may be right about climate – hugely dubious and they can’t all be right – but they have been fighting and losing the same battles for 30 years. That’s just insane. Tim for plan B?
‘We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a program which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical, and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible. We need intellectual leaders who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization. They must be men who are willing to stick to principles and to fight for their full realization, however remote. The practical compromises they must leave to the politicians. Free trade and freedom of opportunity are ideals which still may arouse the imaginations of large numbers, but a mere “reasonable freedom of trade” or a mere “relaxation of controls” is neither intellectually respectable nor likely to inspire any enthusiasm.’ Hayek – The constitution of liberty
Although for Americans we need to explain what a radical liberal is.
“ Although for Americans we need to explain what a radical liberal is.”
Ohhhh…..you mean it’s not one of these?
https://media.breitbart.com/media/2016/10/crying-baby-640×480.png
Reclaim your liberal tradition from the socialist usurpers. Call it radical liberalism – after Hayek – and fire up the freedom train to the max.
I wonder as well to what extent the ‘zealots’ are actually in charge? Most people want an answer but are pragmatic at core.
Academia’s zealots are Lenin’s useful idiots. Government bureaucracies that define CO2 as a pollutant and engage in spreading fears about human-caused global de-glaciation should be labeled for what it is: doomsday propaganda spread by anti-America Euro-communists and green-robed enviro-posers.
RIE: “I wonder as well to what extent the ‘zealots’ are actually in charge? ”
There’s a reasonable answer that can be extrapolated.
Most political figures have a college degree; most college faculty leans politically left of center. I’m not sure the percentage that lean far left of center, but anecdotally I suspect it’s quite high based on cultural events. The next question; how much are students influenced by campus politics and media culture? Reasonable assumptions can be made.
Political positions are filled from the ranks of graduates. The cultural soup, inclusive of media, of todays graduate is decidedly seasoned to the Left. So how many are zealots in powerful positions? It’s hard to say; anecdotally it’s not far fetched to believe that the number is significant; worrisome to say the least; Hayek would agree.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-politically-biased-are-universities-new-study-james-barrett
I’ll add: enough, or near enough zealots are in charge to call it a tipping point; more worrisome than anthropomorphic “Rightism”.
When I said most people it is the vast middle ground I was referring to – it is those you need to convince – but you are quite obviously on the other extreme to judge by the political rhetoric. The usual contrarian hope is that there will be an economic tipping point in public opinion and you will be vindicated legends in your own lunchtime. If they spend trillions a year on wind and solar. I think you need a plan B.
“When I said most people it is the vast middle ground I was referring to – it is those you need to convince…usual contrarian hope is that there will be an economic tipping point in public opinion…If they spend trillions a year on wind and solar. I think you need a plan B.”
But I wasn’t referring to the middle ground of public opinion, right? My comment referenced the “zealots” in charge that you questioned. You may want to entertain the first part of your earlier comment if you’re looking for fodder to thump your chest, Tarzan, the latter line don’t dangle here.
As to your assumed inference; being contrarian to public opinion is rather pointless, pragmatically speaking. I might add, on this measure we’re both contrarian to wind and solar as the end all energy grid solution, unless you’ve changed your mind recently, like today. You haven’t of course; which is why I agreed with your common reference to a “plan B” in prior threads, an idea shared by many relative to an all the above approach until new technology becomes available.
I put the reply in the wrong place.
– https://judithcurry.com/2022/03/05/tipping-points-in-earths-geophysical-and-biological-systems/#comment-972971 –
And I doubt that the zealots are actually in charge – political pragmatism rules.
Apology accepted about misplaced comment.
I might add that I didn’t say zealots were in charge either, my reference was that enough were. Tipping points are what creates a climate nexus, zealots are fundamentally a driver to this.
Robert I. Ellison
“You can’t seriously reject radiative physics.
Some part of modern warning isn’t natural it’s anthropogenic.”
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Some people do reject it, over at Roy’s for example.
Not well argued and very repetitive.
All sorts in the world.
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Where a problem arises is in the next comment.
Since when were humans not natural?
I understand the distinction you are making.
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If you want to believe that human activity can cause significant warming and therefore can prevent it then blame humans.
With proof.
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On the other hand if natural processes can suddenly cause profound warming or cooling, the gist of your post, then the possibility exists that the warming to date has virtually all been natural.
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10%, 50%, 100%, 130% caused by humans.
One has to laugh at the last 2 figures, one of which incorporates a natural cooling climate which humanity has overcome.
Judith and yourself have expressed doubt as to the actual percentage.
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What do we owe this proof to?
Humans have developed the use of fossil fuels to a great degree in the last 150 years and engaged in widespread agricultural and irrigation practices destroying woods and forests.
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and ?
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The CO2 cycle is a lot more complex than just adding a bit of CO2 from one source and saying increased CO2, increased GHG, increased temperature, calamity. [radiative physics].
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In reality there are many other complex processes going on at the same time which make the small piece of maths and chemistry involved shrink to nothing.
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Say the sun has gone up a little in temp, naturally. More CO2 from the ocean, More plant growth from both extra CO2 and sun gives more CO2.
Does the temperature keep going up?
Carbon sinks come into play, greening causes a higher albedo. More clouds form due to more particulates in the air from all the extra wood in Australia burning.
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Before casting the first stone look at all the other potential causes [your post in effect].
CO2 enters the atmosphere from volcanoes traditionally – although we are now giving them quite a run for their money with anthropogenic emissions – enters the ocean sink – falls to the bottom – where it is compacted and subducted under a tectonic plate to reappear in volcanoes eons later. Whew.
“CO2 enters the atmosphere from volcanoes traditionally – although we are now giving them quite a run for their money with anthropogenic emissions – enters the ocean sink – falls to the bottom – where it is compacted and subducted under a tectonic plate to reappear in volcanoes eons later. Whew.
“….to reappear in volcanoes eons later…”
Yes, exactly.
There is an important scientific observation. The planet’s volcanism intensity has lessened significantly during the Earth’s existence.
Thus the CO2 levels the natural mitigation process in earth’s atmosphere… less CO2 reappear eons later due to volcanoes.
Eventually the entire carbon (C) will be captured and subducted under the tectonic plates.
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Angech, “More clouds form due to more particulates in the air from all the extra wood in Australia burning.”
It is not so much the extra wood in Australia burning, it is more that some of the products went to the stratosphere and persisted as a cell for months. That is an event that has scarcely been observed before (no instruments) and therefore has to be studied and understood before it is integrated into global schemes about factors affecting climate. Geoff S. Link (there are more)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-00022-5
I would like to add a comment on ocean acidification and the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere.
every gas in the atmosphere is in equilibrium with the water component of the earth’s surface.
The earth is basically a big beaker built out of Ph 8.1 material with the oceans resting inside it
{Ocean acidification | National Oceanic and Atmospheric …
noaa.gov] https://www.noaa.gov › education ›
The ocean’s average pH is 8.1 which is basic (or alkaline), but as the ocean continues to absorb more CO 2, the pH decreases and the ocean becomes more acidic.}
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The whole atmosphere has its CO2 supplied from this basic [in both senses ] material and the ocean and is in equilibrium with it.
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The level of CO2 in the atmosphere is totally dependent on this one large carbon doixide sink.
Totally.
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The only thing that changes its concentration is a change in temperature or pressure in the beaker which is totally dependent on the energy input minus albedo effect from the sun.
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You could pipe CO2 into the air continuously from burning fossil fuels and it will all equilibrate very quickly to the simple formula of CO2 molecules available at the ocean surface.
Which reflects the very, very large number of CO2 molecules in the ocean, not in the atmosphere.
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Hence any rise in CO2 is temperature driven, not the reverse.
Do we have rising CO2?
yes.
Why ? because the temperature of the earth has gone up over the last 50 years, naturally.
Pingback: Tipping points in Earths geophysical and biological systems - News7g
I am aware of the conflict – I wish devoutly that someone could stop it. But I wept at this off topic comment and wish it would go away. What do you think Judith?
It is good to see RI Ellison’s lucubrations in a post, instead of spread and repeated ,ad nauseam over dozens of comments, so everybody can appreciate their lack of substance.
The whole idea of climate tipping points is an exercise in circular reasoning. We detect periods of faster climate change so we deduce the existence of tipping points. The evidence for the existence of tipping points are the periods of faster climate change. The reality is that climate change is a very young immature scientific topic and we are deducing from ignorance. The AMO was identified in 1994 (named in 2000). The PDO was identified in 1997. Regime shifts is a biological concept first applied to grazing regimes and first used in relation to climate by Lluch-Belda et al. (1989) to explain the alternation between sardine and anchovy regimes simultaneously in several of the world oceans, possibly in response to climate change.
The problem comes because the answer to the main climate change question, “what is causing the observed warming?” was given before the right questions could be posed. As a result the CO2 hypothesis of climate change has no room for climate regime shifts. They are badly reproduced and never predicted by models, misattributed to aerosol changes, and unexplainable in terms of changes to radiative forcings, the only accepted climate change cause.
Is the existence of two states in a system enough to develop a tipping-point theory to indicate the existence of tipping points every time the system changes states? Not in my opinion, because then we would have a tipping point every time ENSO changes states and the tipping-point theory becomes an obstacle to understand what causes the changes, since it doesn’t explain anything.
Marcia Wyatt took a more productive approach in 2012 and through a holistic view of multidecadal variability identified that the changes are coordinated over the entire climate system, involving the atmosphere, oceans, and cryosphere (the stadium-wave hypothesis). Wyatt & Curry 2014 identified sea-ice at the Western Eurasian Arctic area close to the Atlantic gateway as the place where the signal first manifested. The cause of this non-stationary multidecadal variability is still being investigated, but it is clearly not GHG related, as it started with the current amplitude and period around 1850 (Moore et al. 2017). Chylek et al. (2014) calculate the contribution of AMO to modern global warming as 1/3, and then say: “Some of the CMIP5 models mimic the AMO-like oscillation by a strong aerosol effect. These models simulate the twentieth century AMO-like cycle with correct timing in each individual simulation. An inverse structural analysis suggests that these models generally overestimate the greenhouse gases-induced warming, which is then compensated by an overestimate of anthropogenic aerosol cooling.” No kidding. The aerosol trump-card cannot be played at successive climate shifts, and hence the great controversy over the Pause.
RI Ellison’s “tipping point” non-explanation is just a way of hiding CO2-hypothesis failure behind a smoke-screen.
Tipping points are caused by mechanisms internal to the system. Long winded lucubration by Javier doesn’t change that. The stadium wave implicitly recognises that climate is a coupled, nonlinear, spatiotemporal chaotic system – with all that implies – and Javier cannot see that. It’s a bit difficult to be right if you have the wrong scientific paradigm and are busily vociferously defending the wrong idea. The signal is propagated around the world with indices changing sign. Wyatt and Curry did indeed sort of trace the origin of the signal to the eastern margin of the Arctic Ocean. I think it is more likely to originate in the polar vortices.
‘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.
Our research strategy focuses on the collective behavior of a network of climate indices. Networks are everywhere – underpinning diverse systems from the world-wide-web to biological systems, social interactions, and commerce. Networks can transform vast expanses into “small worlds”; a few long-distance links make all the difference between isolated clusters of localized activity and a globally interconnected system with synchronized [1] collective behavior; communication of a signal is tied to the blueprint of connectivity. By viewing climate as a network, one sees the architecture of interaction – a striking simplicity that belies the complexity of its component detail.’ 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/
The idea of synchronisation of collective, emergent behaviour in climate originated with earlier work by Tsonis, Swanson and Kravtsov. (Note the co-authors of Marcia Wyatt’s first study). Their toy model viewed climate indices as nodes on a network. Always worth revisiting.
‘A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts’ – https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2007GL030288
What he said. [Thanks, Javier.]
The pause is the result of state change in the Pacific. Has it shifted again post 2015?
e.g. https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/6/3/62
“The pause is the result of state change in the Pacific.” Prove it.
Anyway, studies show CO2 has not driven warming; its the SW what done it.
‘Indeed, the reconstruction of this pair of modes for regional climate indices (Fig. 3b, c) manifests as a multidecadal signal propagating across the climate index network (with certain time delays between different indices)—a so-called stadium wave (refs. 20,35,36,37)—which we will refer to as the global stadium wave (GSW) or, when referring to the global-mean temperature, Global Multidecadal Oscillation (GMO), although, once again, the oscillatory character of this phenomenon is impossible to establish due to shortness of the data record. The phasing of indices in the GSW is consistent with earlier work (ref. 20), which analysed a limited subset of the Northern Hemisphere climate indices (Supplementary Fig. 6). 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
On the basis of nullifying AGW – I’d put AGW at about half of recent warming.
““The pause is the result of state change in the Pacific.” Prove it.” Your citation didn’t prove it, Robert.
AGW is half of what recent warming?
Warming since 1980 – and the citation was intended to show that there is natural warming. The natural warming is largely due to positive cloud feedback in the eastern Pacific. I covered this in the post. Dave would need to refute the science with adequate citations. I may be wrong – but Dave cannot show why. He is behaving instead like a drive by troll.
Robert, I said that the (relatively recent) warming was due to SW, not LW. Quit assuming I reject scientific findings; I reject UN IPCC and U.S. National Assessment lies and misdirections and the hysteria shouted by politicians, Deep State operatives, NGOs, crony capitalists, MSM & etc. I also discount your musings about tipping points.
As I also said, let farmers take care of the land and engineers manage energy systems. So-called “stakeholders” are primarily busybodies with no skin in the game.
Oh for God’s sake. SW forcing in this century is centered on cloud feedback in the eastern Pacific. And a reference was given. It was in the post as well. Dave repeats points and they weren’t interesting the first time around.
In commons like forests fisheries, aquifers, forests, rangeland for grazing and waterways stakeholders are people who have a common use claim.
On 5 billion hectares of private cropping and grazing land farmers are making great strides in seeing what works on the other side of the fence as they do. The change is snowballing. The entire red meat industry in Australia is targeting carbon neutrality by 2030. Disclosure – I put my money where my mouth is – both figuratively and literally. This should be celebrated – who doesn’t like BBQ.
https://aaco.com.au/
Robert, what studies do you think I reviewed to develop an opinion that recent warming was of SW, not LW origin? The fact that your postings blast out, shotgun-like, factoids and conclusions seems to result in your assumption that a disagreement on some points means a disagreement on all of the disjointed statements. Additionally, not everybody wants to emphasize your pet peeves.
Dave is all over the place with pointless and unsupported claims. And habitually moves goalposts. I address his relatively facile points and it is always something else. I can’t keep up. Lucky they are such pettifogging quibbles it doesn’t matter.
Now he speaks for everyone here it seems. Marginalising my views as pet peeves as he does it. I don’t think he does speak for denizens at large – let alone middle America.
Name a claim I’ve made, Robert.
>>Is the existence of two states in a system enough to develop a tipping-point theory to indicate the existence of tipping points every time the system changes states? Not in my opinion, because then we would have a tipping point every time ENSO changes states and the tipping-point theory becomes an obstacle to understand what causes the changes, since it doesn’t explain anything.
Tipping point or change of state? This seems to be the crux of the issue. Well said, Javier.
Tipping points imply a transition to a different state space. But there is no reason to believe that the system is limited to two defined states.
‘The Earth’s climate system is highly nonlinear: inputs and outputs are not proportional, change is often episodic and abrupt, rather than slow and gradual, and multiple equilibria are the norm. While this is widely accepted, there is a relatively poor understanding of the different types of
nonlinearities, how they manifest under various conditions, and whether they reflect a climate system driven by astronomical forcings, by internal feedbacks, or by a combination of both.’ https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/pdf/pep/Rial2004.NonlinearitiesCC.pdf
Robert … I’m just not fond of the phrase (tipping point) as in a complex system it seems to be only useful in describing the/a past, having knowledge of most of the variables. If we describe a change of state as a tipping point, then was that change elastic or inelastic? I’m not using the terms as they apply to physics. Maybe more economics? Was the change subject to more variables (elastic) or less (inelastic). This may sound nonsensical but I believe it relates to this whole blog about whether or not CO2, in particular human generated CO2, is the defining, dominant, unalterable variable pushing us towards said tipping point. A posited future tipping point would not only have to establish the actual ability for that particular variable to be dominant amongst know variables, it would have to eliminate the effects of combinations of variables and the various intermediate stages resulting along the way with reference to the behavior of this posited dominant variable. And we haven’t even accounted for unknowns, nor if the posited state resulting from this change is positive or negative. A tall task indeed. In the end, I think using the term tipping point actually works against what you seem to be standing for, which is basically prudent use of resources and stewardship.
Tipping points is a shorthand for deterministic chaos used widely. The underlying dynamic is perpetual change. On top of that is superimposed small changes thus far in AGW.
So what happens if we double CO2? I choose door number 3 – as do many other scientists. Climate might shift chaotically and randomly with a change in mean and variance. Or it might not. So what are the policy implications of such uncertain science?
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/ghil-sensitivity-e1529103720204.png
No one knows what’s behind door #3, or how many doors there really are. Is it prudent to engage in that choice, picking any door, or rather continue to be observant and make choices that have broad social significance in the present and near future, rather than laying all our resources at one single door? I must, could certainly, be missing something, but it doesn’t make sense. Thanks for your replies.
Door number 3 is the scientific choice – the others simply don’t stack up – that we don’t know what’s behind the door is the point. But there are other reasons for conservation, energy innovation and resilient infrastructure. AGW is not needed to justify these things. It is needed to overthrow capitalism and democracy – but that’s a different problem.
> Door number 3 is the scientific choice …
I guess, when pressed for an ‘answer’? Why was the question posed? Why in a certain way? Why so far out in time? Does ‘the answer’ have a self-fulling aspect that admits no brook? If so, that’s the very definition of extremism.
Ellison says “So what happens if we double CO2?” without reference to my two uncontested statements, backed up by history and theory:
1. CO2 is not in control of climate – as Ellison has agreed.
2. We are not in control of CO2, which he has disparaged without refutation.
The answer to Michael Ghil’s question is that climate means and variance may shift. CO2 is a significant component in a complex dynamical, spatiotemporal chaotic system. That climate is a globally coupled, spatiotemporal chaotic system is the dominant climate science paradigm.
http://research.atmos.ucla.edu/tcd//PREPRINTS/Math_clim-Taipei-M_Ghil_vf.pdf
https://watertechbyrie.com/2014/06/23/the-unstable-math-of-michael-ghils-climate-sensitivity/
Theory explains observations of abrupt change in climate at many and it is precisely that which allows for recognition of factors in pattern formations – the state of the Pacific notably.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2017/01/12/an-earnest-discovery-of-climate-causality/
“The pause is the result of state change in the Pacific.”
Or so you and Trenberth believe, but you are both wrong. Where did the energy missing in the Pause go? Was it the result of heat going into the oceans, an increase in cloud cover, changes in transport, changes in the greenhouse effect, changes in solar activity? all of the above? None? How was that change effected? Was the change in the Pacific the cause of the change in temperature, the opposite, or were both the consequence of a third factor?
Your faith in having the answer is moving, but as Peter Medawar famously said, “I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of a conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing over whether it is true or not.”
CERES TOA net flux shows planetary warming. It is largely the result of cloud feedback to SST in the eastern Pacific. A mechanism examined by Norman Loeb and colleagues from the NASA CERES program.
https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/6/3/62
This was addressed in the post. Refuting it requires some work – reading the post might be a start.
I can quote too. “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Javier quoted:
“Some of the CMIP5 models mimic the AMO-like oscillation by a strong aerosol effect”
With a colder AMO being the result of stronger solar wind states causing a positive North Atlantic Oscillation regime, and a warmer AMO being the result of weaker solar wind states causing a negative NAO regime, we have the veritable antithesis of a tipping point.
I’d venture that the polar annular mode drives sea surface temperature variability in the north Atlantic. That the multidecadal inflection points appear in the cumulative NAO index shows that it biases the system to one state or another. It is not classical cause and effect.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/smeed-fig-71-e1523915527771.png
https://os.copernicus.org/articles/10/29/2014/os-10-29-2014.pdf
The NAO cannot physically cumulate.
That isn’t what was meant. Look at the inflection points and wonder why it works.
The cumulative NAO index could work well at confusing some people into thinking that negative NAO drives a colder AMO. That is not a desirable cause and effect.
“I don’t raise the alarm at all, but” – then you do….. “tipping points” is alarmist
Solutions are not alarmist. Nor is much of the scientific literature whatever the meme on the corruption of science says.
Solutions to non-problems are alarmist, Robert I. Ellison.
The UN IPCC bureaucracy and U.S. National Assessments are alarmist. CliSciFi’s failure to call out the wildly false statements by politicians, Deep State operators, NGOs, crony capitalists, media & etc. is prima facia proof of corruption.
The entire field of climate studies is corrupted by politically controlled funding. Show me where I am in error, emotional opinions or not.
A fundamental determinant of both the general circulation and subsequent climate features is that the poles incur a radiative deficit and the tropics incur a radiative surplus.
This imbalance is made up on an annual basis by transport of latent and sensible heat by the atmosphere (2/3) and the oceans (1/3).
In the earliest models of increased CO2, Manabe noted that for the same amount of mass exchange between high and low latitudes, and for an increase of global mean temperature ( and commensurate increase of global absolute humidity ) thermal energy exchange increased.
Increased CO2 increases the efficiency of thermal exchange in the atmosphere.
In addition to ice albedo considerations, this contributes to so called ‘Arctic Amplification’, which for the North Polar regions has manifest in warmer summer temperatures, preventing continental glacial ice accumulation.
In this way, CO2 works against glaciation.
So, greenhouse gas warming would seem to be stabilizing against any ‘tip’ to the most significant and probably worst state change of glaciation.
“Increased CO2 increases the efficiency of thermal exchange in the atmosphere. In addition to ice albedo considerations, this contributes to so called ‘Arctic Amplification’”
If this was true then, why there was so little Arctic amplification before c. 1995, after two decades of intense warming and intense CO2 increase? See for example:
Curry, J.A., Schramm, J.L., Rossow, W.B. and Randall, D., 1996. Overview of Arctic cloud and radiation characteristics. Journal of Climate, 9(8), pp.1731-1764.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/downloadpdf/journals/clim/9/8/1520-0442_1996_009_1731_ooacar_2_0_co_2.pdf
On page 1757 they say:
“The relative lack of observed warming and relatively small ice retreat may indicate that GCMs are overemphasizing the sensitivity of climate to high-latitude processes.”
“for the North Polar regions has manifest in warmer summer temperatures”
Clearly not true.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n_anomaly.uk.php
Increased summer energy is used to melt ice and snow, not to raise temperature.
I’m afraid CO2 offers little protection against glaciations, that are not the result of a tipping point but a long protracted process that takes c. 15,000 years, and which astronomical decision has already been taken for the Holocene.
Ice sheets – after runaway ice sheet feedback – are the most obvious feature of glacials. Human greenhouse gas emissions adds to warming that freshens the Arctic reducing AMOC.
“for the North Polar regions has manifest in warmer summer temperatures”
“Clearly not true.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n_anomaly.uk.php
Increased summer energy is used to melt ice and snow, not to raise temperature.”
I said North Polar, not deep Arctic, which this DMI data (poleward of 80N) refers to. Over the Arctic Ocean, yes, latent energy of melting moderates summer temperatures, but this is not the key area for glaciation.
By North Polar, I mean the much larger area poleward of 60N, which includes 65N commonly used as a latitude of significance for orbital considerations, and more at the center of where the Laurentide Ice Sheet occurred.
I took this NOAA data poleward of 60N and found summer warming of around 2C since 1979:
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/noaa-global-surface-temperature/v5/access/timeseries/aravg.mon.land_ocean.60N.90N.v5.0.0.202201.asc
I’m afraid CO2 offers little protection against glaciations, that are not the result of a tipping point but a long protracted process that takes c. 15,000 years, and which astronomical decision has already been taken for the Holocene.
Clearly, 2C warming reduces the chances of snow enduring through the summer.
“Human greenhouse gas emissions adds to warming that freshens the Arctic reducing AMOC.”
Even were an AMOC slowdown to verify and be 100% due to global warming, it would still have to overcome the actual waming of global warming.
And take that line of reasoning further. Say the AMOC is transporting heat from lower latitudes to the North Polar regions. What happens to that heat? One answer is that it stays at the lower latitudes. But then what? It becomes available to the atmosphere and is transported to the higher latitudes anyway.
And remember, the atmosphere transports roughly twice as much thermal energy poleward than does the ocean.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Heat-Transport-by-the-Atmosphere-and-the-Ocean-Shown-here-are-the-annual-mean-values-of_fig2_255626945
I believe it’s pretty clear that in this regard, global warming prevents the worst tipping point.
The reduction in heat transport north reduces temperatures at the margins of the arctic Ocean and sea ice and ice sheet feedbacks. It happens on a quasi regular basis.
“I said North Polar, not deep Arctic”
Polar refers to the Pole which is a single point. And the Arctic Circle runs at 66.56ºN. It is improper to refer to anything South of the Arctic Circle as the Arctic or Polar. The correct term is Subarctic. In the scientific literature the Arctic is usually limited to North of 70ºN.
There cannot be much summer polar amplification if the >80ºN 2 m summer temperature has actually decreased c. 1 ºC between the 1970s and the 2010s. 2018 is a good example of this phenomenon with the summer temperature clearly below the 1958-2002 average.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2018.png
Polar amplification is mainly a cold season phenomenon, taking place between October and April. Something that has not been very discussed and lacks a proper explanation within the erroneous Modern Theory of Climate.
Javier repeats a number of points that are clearly trivial. And I fancy that it is his interpretation of science that is erroneous. It is characterised by dogmatic certainty and is lacking in a comprehension of fundamental aspects of climate science – such as emergent climate variability – that comes with a absence of intellectual humility. Let’s face it – he eyeballs graphs, gets it wrong and insists that his pontification is infallible. Talk about religious.
There is a reasonable dominant scientific paradigm that is emphatically not Javier’s. There is some AGW superimposed on Hurst-Kolmogorov stochastic dynamics. I put that explicitly to Judith – ask her yourself.
e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227670614_Hurst-Kolmogorov_Dynamics_and_Uncertainty
Javier,
Nobody knows precisely where the first accumulations of the previous glacial started, but estimates of the peak accumulations were from the Keewatin Dome at 65N to the Quebec Dome around 54N:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-31166-2/figures/1
Over this area, there is an increase in summer time temperatures:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/tmp/gistemp/NMAPS/tmp_GHCNv4_HR2SST_250km_Trnd_603_1979_2021_66_3000_100_180_90_0_2__POL/amaps.png
The phase shift incurred by summer melting taking up latent heat and autumn/winter freezing releasing latent heat are not material to the reduction of chance of snow making it through the summer.
Eddie,
“Nobody knows precisely where the first accumulations of the previous glacial started”
True, but we know where the last remnants of the Laurentide ice sheet are. They are the Penny and Barnes ice caps located in Baffin Island at 67 and 70 ºN, both within the Arctic Circle. One could be forgiven for thinking that the last places to melt should be the first to grow.
So far they have been shrinking, but if you hear they are growing fast, start running towards the Equator.
Hello Javier,
not to belabor the point, but worth considering:
The latitude of annual energy deficit begins close to 30N!
https://www.e-education.psu.edu/meteo300/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.meteo300/files/goes-r_tropics_surplus_heat2.jpg
Eddy,
And that is the annual average. In winter (Dec-Feb) the energy deficit at the top of the atmosphere starts at 15ºN!!! (20ºS in Jun-Ago). Without heat transport we could only live in the deep tropics.
You want to see a real tipping point? Check out the animal experiments by John B. Calhoun, AKA the “Mouse Utopia”. One could argue our 24/7/365 digitally connected civilization is a grand experiment in testing the limits of the Behavorial Sink theory.
https://reflectionsinnaturalhistory.com/2021/08/27/42-a-world-gone-mad-have-we-become-the-mice-in-a-calhoun-social-experiment/
There are many real tipping points – but I am actively disinterested in sociology.
I’ve been looking at the Kubernetes open source environment, AI controlled servers, helmets that display 3D images and sound that seem to be in the real world. I’m imagining massively multiplayer gamers and sex bots running around the real world. The Matrix comes on down the line.
Robert,
First let me say I appreciated your essay and while I lack the in-depth knowledge to challenge any specific claims, I am delighted to see the debate. I lean towards rate-of-change tipping points. Large changes in short time frames break ecosystems.
As to my reference to tipping points in Behavorial Sink theory, I think follow-on experiments performed on other mammals with a central nervous systems confirmed the syndrome is not unique to rats and mice. The same heard behavior was observed in cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens, and to a limited extent even humans (prisons). The experiments progressed through the 70s till they shut down further research due to ethical concerns.
Robert … a shout out to you for putting yourself out there and giving us some good commentary.
No worries Bill. It was easier and more fun than I expected.
To clear up something that’s been bothering me – the period in the quote below refers to the CERES record. Warming in SW and cooling in OLR. There was some planet warming in the early years and little change until 2015 when the IPO may have entered a warmer phase. It is abrupt climate change. Seen in hydrological patterns across the planet. The famous ‘Great Pacific Climate Shift’ of 1977/78 is an example. There is even a 1000 year Nile River instrumental record that was shown to exhibit this hydrological behaviour in the middle of the last century.
e.g. https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/tpi-sst.png
‘For this period, the observations show a trend in net downward radiation of 0.41 ± 0.22 W m−2 decade−1 that is the result of the sum of a 0.65 ± 0.17 W m−2 decade−1 trend in absorbed solar radiation (ASR) and a −0.24 ± 0.13 W m−2 decade−1 trend in downward radiation due to an increase in OLR… Most of the ASR trend is associated with cloud and surface albedo changes (Figure 2d), which account for 62% and 27% of the ASR trend, respectively.’ (Loeb et al 2021)
Sorry – it should be the 1976/77 climate shift.
Hummm, Robert: “It is abrupt climate change.” that has occurred throughout history. Be afraid, very afraid of future abrupt climate change.
Dave confuses science for politics. Coping with whatever nature throws at us requires building resilient infrastructure and systems. Including in food production and energy generation. But Dave is very afraid of something – and instead of running with science he fumbles the ball.
No, Robert, it is CliSciFi that confuses science for politics. [You seem to be OK with that.] I’ve lost all patience with CliSciFi practitioners and their UN IPCC and U.S. National Assessment mouthpieces. I no longer dick-dance around the minutia of the “science” with true believers because their conclusions are ideologically based, not scientific; they do not argue in good faith.
I, too, believe in motherhood and apple pie. However, we don’t even build our infrastructure to withstand past weather events.
Anyway, I prefer to leave food production up to independent farmers; they seem to be doing a great job of it. I also prefer to leave energy generation up to knowledgeable engineers (such as myself) instead of English Lit. majors.
It doesn’t stop Dave mouthing platitudes like leaving it to farmers or to engineers like me.
‘The best conserver of land in use will always be the small owner or operator, farmer or forester or both, who lives within a securely placed family and community, who knows how to use the land in the best way, and who can afford to do so.’
— Wendell Berry
“A society that will not conserve its topsoil cannot preserve social order for long.”
— David Orr
‘ConservAmerica seeks to build common ground between policymakers and stakeholders around policies that protect the environment and economic growth. Our priorities are conservation; public land access; clean, abundant, and affordable energy; and sound environmental stewardship.’ https://www.conservamerica.org/priorities
Getting the policy settings right is the goal. Leaving the field to progressives is not an optimal plan.
“Our priorities are conservation; public land access; clean, abundant, and affordable energy; and sound environmental stewardship.”
It’s hard to argue against that.
“Leaving the field to progressives is not an optimal plan.”
I also agree; but unfortunately progressives believe theirs is indeed the optimal plan, and they own the field of mindshare generally speaking. Progressives hold the reins that drive CAGW politically. They reign over the IPCC and the media. This does not bode well for the first litany of points you make.
What’s needed is for more scientists to take a stand on the side of science. They don’t because of the progressive industry of cancel culture, and media coercion; fear in a word. Maybe I can’t blame why more don’t come forward; besides, where would the funding come from for anything not blessed first by consensus? Dave’s CliSciFi reference is apropos in this context.
Republicans are repositioning themselves to be more in tune with middle America. Not grandstanding but sensible policy and not too many bread and circuses. Y’all call for middle America to be more like you. Y’all need to chill.
Robert, you have no coherent idea about middle America, Republicans or me. Keep playing with your waterworks and leave others alone.
I know who’s in the Roosevelt Conservation Caucus. People of a much higher calibre than Dave
https://www.conservamerica.org/caucus
So what?
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These people think Australian droughts are all about the Indian Ocean: “For Southeast Australia, we show here that the “Big Dry” and other iconic 20th Century droughts, including the Federation Drought (1895–1902) and World War II drought (1937–1945), are driven by Indian Ocean variability, not Pacific Ocean conditions as traditionally assumed. ” https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2008GL036801
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RIE:
“Tipping points are caused by mechanisms internal to the system”
Climatic boundary events during the Holocene are notably during grand solar minima periods, on average every 863 years. Like the Piora Oscillation, 4.2kyr and 3.2kyr events. Characterised by increased El Nino conditions and warming in Greenland. The internal mechanisms responding to the solar variability, are not tipping points, but profound negative feedbacks.
Changes in insolation, solar magnetism and UV don’t make large Earth energy budget changes. That is caused by changes in ice, cloud, hydrology and biology. It’s a feedback but whether it’s negative?
Multidecadal changes in the solar wind strength alter annular mode regimes which drive the changes in AMO and ENSO regimes, and the changes in sea surface temperatures drive changes in low cloud cover. Weaker solar wind = warmer ocean phases = reduced low cloud cover. So it’s a self amplified negative feedback with considerable overshoot. There is no way that those climatic boundary events could occur without the solar variability.
I have been this morning reviewing mechanism for an indirect solar effect. Other than UV it is all a bit tenuous. But let’s assume there is a connection – based on eyeballing data series. A lower solar activity is associated with more wavy patterns in the polar annular modes.
e.g. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/024001
But at least in the eastern Pacific it leads to cooler sea surface temperatures.
“But at least in the eastern Pacific it leads to cooler sea surface temperatures.”
The reverse, El Nino conditions normally increase during centennial solar minima, because negative NAM is directly associated with slower trade winds.
You are incorrect and we have had this discussion.
No you are incorrect, El Nino conditions normally increase during centennial solar minima.
Here is evidence of La Nina intensity and frequency during the centennial cool sun period – and more frequent and intense El Nino in the modern grand max.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/vance-2012-e1520868687324.jpg
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/26/3/jcli-d-12-00003.1.xml
That is irrational as negative NAM conditions during centennial solar minima are associated with slower trade winds.
Australia had more severe drought during centennial solar minima in the early and late 1800’s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drought_in_Australia
African and Asian El Nino driven drought in the LIA:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/978-1-137-45740-0_3
Centennial ENSO cycle:
https://aquadocs.org/bitstream/handle/1834/31388/Roger%20Y.%20Anderson.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Doubling of El Nino episode frequency 1807-1821 in the Dalton Minimum:
https://sites.google.com/site/medievalwarmperiod/Home/historic-el-nino-events
The impacts of ENSO depend on where in the world you are.
e.g. http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/fapi/datastream/unsworks:57901/bin7c24b40c-eed8-4395-9317-f43dc9340a4a?view=true
There was a centennial solar minimum roughly 1550-1590, so a warmer AMO would be driving the great plains drought. Though I am sceptical about their ‘inferred’ ENSO index for the period.
There were centuries of low solar activity in the middle of the millennium.
e.g. https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/isotope-9400-e1531338833901.png
Accompanied by floods in Australia.
e.g. https://research.jcu.edu.au/portfolio/jonathan.nott/
And drought in the America.
e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8257696/
90% of terrestrial rainfall comes from oceans with the AMO and PDO accounting for some 52% of variability.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/fig3_5367751
That’s the last millennium and AMO+PDO accounts for some 52% of US rainfall variability. It is better thought of as PDO+ENSO instead of just the PDO.
RIE:
“There were centuries of low solar activity in the middle of the millennium.”
Not exactly, there was a series of longer duration centennial solar minima, interspersed by multi-decadal periods of higher solar activity levels.
Lower indirect solar forcing is associated with drought in the US continental interior (warm AMO), and in southern Australia (El Nino). Your ‘Jonathan Nott’ link page says nothing about wet periods in Australia, it’s a bluff.
Ulric if you able to provide references – it might be a different story.
Just to be clear, you made up a story about low solar being accompanied by floods in Australia, with a link which says nothing about your false claim. I don’t do stories, I like to know how things really function.
We know that El Nino conditions increase during centennial solar minima, which is why southern Australia sees more drought then, and the AMO is normally warmer then too.
https://media.springernature.com/m685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41598-017-13246-x/MediaObjects/41598_2017_13246_Fig2_HTML.jpg
NONE OF THAT IS EITHER A SOLAR OR ENSO PROXY.
OH AND JONATHON NOTT HAS PUBLISHED EXTENSIVELY ON NORTHERN AUSTRALIAN PALEOCLIMATE.
E.G. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322614819_The_influence_of_tropical_cyclones_on_long-term_riverine_flooding_examples_from_tropical_Australia
COOL IPO’S DOUBLE CYCLONE FREQUENCY IN BORTHERN AUSTRALIA. A REFUSAL TO CONSIDER EVIDENCE IS NOT THE SAME AS THERE BEING NO EVIDENCE.
That’s a warmer AMO during centennial solar minima.
“Heightened TC activity occurred between 1400 and 1850 CE in Queensland and between 1500 and 1850 CE in Western Australia. A distinct clustering of flood events in northwest Western Australia”
So the north becomes wetter when the south becomes drier. I’m glad we cleared that one up.
North east Australia is wetter in cool IPO.
https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ipIjr7e7lyXQ/v0/1200x-1.jpg
That image is from March 8th 2022, in Sydney, so your game is deception rather than science.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-09/australia-floods-leave-1-billion-of-damage-as-thousands-flee
And it is because of the current state of the Pacific. Which bit don’t you understand?
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/cb/ssta/ssta.daily.current.png
Sydney is NOT in northeastern Australia.
Sydney is wetter in a negative IPO. The storms flooding Queensland and northern NSW pushed down the coast.
Obviously southern and particularly southeastern Australia is drier with El NIno conditions.
Southern Australia’s rainfall is influenced by the SAM and the IOD – but that’s not the point is it.
https://www.climatekelpie.com.au/index.php/climatedogs/
Robert, what is the point? You seem to have been driven into incoherence.
The point was that cool IPO prevailed over much of the last millennium.
And the import of that speculation?
The Medieval optimum was dry in Australia and the little LIA wet. It is correlated with high and low solar activity respectively. The proxy IPO data is compelling. It is associated with seesawing atmospheric mass movements in the polar annular modes – that may indeed have a solar component.
https://img.etimg.com/photo/msid-90170378,quality-100/bloom10.jpg
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014GL062447
If Dave follows the discourse and not just insists on his bumptious 2 cents worth – he might learn something.
What does this have to do with your tipping point paper? I don’t care about speculation as to Medieval Warming and LIA periods’ rainfall and their causes.
And what the hell does your commodity prices have to do with anything other than showing the effects of war?
And waste less of my time.
Robert, you seem to have a lot of time to write screeds on every imaginable topic. Again, dilettante comes to mind.
The point here is that southern Australia’s rainfall is undoubtedly strongly influenced by ENSO. Trust you to change the subject to SAM.
Most rain in Australia falls in the north. A lot of it in cool IPO regimes. It is not me changing my story in mid stream. 🤣
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/vance2012-antartica-law-dome-ice-core-salt-content.png
Vance, 2014 Figure 4 (d) has negative IPO during negative NAM regimes in the mid 1400’s and late 1600’s and positive IPO during positive NAM regimes in the early 1500’s and early 1700’s. That’s bonkers, I’m not buying it.
The proxy relies on enhanced zonal winds at high latitudes. That’s positive SAM and NAM. The Pacific last switched to cool conditions in 1998 with lower solar activity. Ulric’s odd eyeballing of these things is rubbish.
NAM by the way doesn’t come into the Vance et al IPO paper at all. Nor does SAM as such.
The sun might be involved in climate change – but it is an indirect effect operating on global physical systems.
SAM and NAM do not regularly change in unison, so your odd eyeballing is rubbish. My original point still stands, El Nino conditions usually increase during centennial solar minima, as I have shown, and we know that the low solar is obviously characterised by negative NAM.
I don’t eyeball.
‘If you think that science is certain – that’s your error.’ Feynman
I reference work showing centuries of a cool eastern Pacific and rainfall around the world in the familiar pattern. The sun is irrelevant – there may be an influence – but it can’t be proved by eyeballing.
These things are connected – enhanced flow in the Peruvian and Californian currents results in increased upwelling in the eastern Pacific – both hemispheres independently – and resultant feedbacks. It is sometimes characterised as a stochastically forced nonlinear oscillator.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/pdoenso.jpghttps://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/pdoenso.jpg
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/pacific-gyres.png
And perhaps the ‘stochastic forcing’ is the SAM and NAM – which may have a solar component. It may be why Smeed’s cumulative NAO seems to work so well.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/smeed-fig-72-e1518284539722.png
Blogoscience is about rejecting the bits inconsistent with ideology as espousing all sorts of unquantified pet theories with an arbitrary insistence on the certainty of blogo ratiocination.
“Blogoscience is about rejecting the bits inconsistent with ideology as espousing all sorts of unquantified pet theories with an arbitrary insistence on the certainty of blogo ratiocination.”
As you do, along with dead links and unsourced photos of floods in the wrong region, and ignoring all reason and record of what contradicts one salt proxy in the Antarctic.
It was a recent flood on the east coast of Australia in a La Nina. I provide links to lots of reputable science. Which one you missing Ulric?
You provided an unsourced photo of Sydney flooding on the pretense that it was the northeast. The whole southeast has had positive rainfall anomalies during recent La Nina conditions, with drier anomalies in the northeast. So the rainfall did not push down the coast as you have claimed, the coastal region was drier further north.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/maps/rainfall/?variable=rainfall&map=anomaly&period=2month®ion=nat&year=2022&month=02&day=28
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” turbulent hydrodynamics says that the next tipping point – big or small – is not far away. … From an important report by the U.S. National Academies”
Is this supposed to be science? It is so vacuous as to result hilarious. Turbulent hydrodynamics doesn’t say anything, much less about the future. Not far away doesn’t mean anything, much less in scientific terms that are supposed to be precise. Is it a month, a decade or 10,000 years? Big or small doesn’t mean anything. How small can a tipping point be and yet still be a tipping point? Nobody knows because tipping points are in the eyes of the beholder, like beauty.
The entire article is just an exercise in nothingness.
Should be part of a manual about how to speak without knowing anything and yet sound sciency and prescient.
‘We investigate complex pattern formation in a system for which we have excellent experimental control and where the underlying equations are well known: Rayleigh-Bénard convection. This is a system where a horizontal fluid layer is heated from below and cooled from above, so that above some critical temperature difference convection rolls form. This system has been experimentally investigated since for more than a hundred years, but modern experiments in compressed gases allow the fine control needed to get good quantitative results.’ https://www.ds.mpg.de/LFPB/chaos
Educate yourself Javier and stop being such a dick about it.
Why do tipping points exist at all?
Where can tipping points exist?
–
In a stable system there are no tipping points.
In a semi stable system there are tipping points and righting mechanisms.
In a chaotic system there are no tipping points.
–
The earth has proven itself to be exceptionally stable over 4 billion years.
It has a known composition, a known orbit and exists in a known solar system.
–
True there is a little bit of fudge in the foam called the ocean that forms a thin membrane around most of the earth surface.
–
The mere existence of life and the evidence of existence of life for more than 2 billion years from an aquatic basis proves that major tipping points capable of wiping out life have not occurred over that time.
–
Given the frail nature of amino acid reproduction, a very limited temperature range, a dependence on hydrogen, oxygen and carbon in suitable quantities in this temperature and pressure range one can safely state that RIE’s tipping points are not as frequent or worrisome as he has asserted..
–
My favorite analogy in life is the boat that does not sink.
If a theory holds water, the ship must sink.
We are still here ergo the theory is not correct.
–
Now I am on board with RIE as far as his comments go on chaos, on unpredictability.
On black swans and dragon kings and preparing for the future.
I even take his point that there are a multitude of tipping points, a plethora, a plague and pestilence number of events that could happen, are happening right now or will happen.
But.
Lovely word but. means I disagree with whatever I just said.
–
The tipping points, the real ones , the wipeouts, have not occurred in 2 billion years.
When you bet on black for 2 billion years and it does not happen, Taleb would say one of two things.
It could happen tomorrow, or the game is rigged.
–
In these sort of situations I would go with the game is rigged.
There is an inbuilt self regulation at work preventing the chaos theory from operating properly.
I know I am wrong but heck, being wrong only once every 2 billion years feels pretty good.
So the only tipping points worth warrying about are extinction level events?
Robert I. Ellison | March 6, 2022 at 5:05 pm |
There is a reasonable dominant scientific paradigm that is emphatically not Javier’s. There is some AGW superimposed on Hurst-Kolmogorov stochastic dynamics.
–
Good to see you both going toe to toe.
You could do it without belittling Javier who puts a lot of time and science into his ideas as well but I guess he gives it back.
Not needed , both of you.
but good luck.
–
There is ample proof of CO2 having a role in global warming for 80% of people.
There is no proof that the human component of CO2 production does play any role in global warming other than that blank cheque just mentioned.
–
The majority of CO2 in the atmosphere comes from the sea, not volcanoes.
Not burning fossil fuel, Not bush fires. not dead and rotting vegetation which most people use to account for the bulk of CO2 turnover that they see.
–
CO2 is in regular exchange with the bulk of CO2 in the OceanCO2 in the ocean.
It can only exist in the air as a result of the partial pressure with CO2 in the ocean.
The turnover is constant and forced and far outweighs the small amounts produced by external mechanisms like man etc.
–
CO2 can only go up and stay up consistently if the temperature is going up.
Calumny is Javier’s first recourse. He started it – but I think I am much better at it. If Javier were polite he would get that back too – perhaps with a little wry eyeroll.
Didn’t we have this conversation – the oceans are a carbon sink. It is taken up by organisms in the photic zone and sinks to the bottom where it is compacted and subducted by a tectonic plate to emerge eons later from volcanoes.
https://www.whoi.edu/press-room/news-release/the-oceans-biological-pump-captures-more-carbon-than-expected/
I guess you don’t take criticism well. It isn’t personal. I find your approach to climate change very improductive, as you find mine. At a small scale weather is mainly chaos, but as the size increases, forces start to act, gradients, the Coriolis effect… Chaos becomes less important. GCMs treat the North Atlantic Oscillation frequency as red noise and therefore are unable to explain the multidecadal-long trends it presents. It is evident that the system is responding to forces external to it and stops behaving as purely chaotic. The NAO responds to the strength of the polar vortex, and the strength of the polar vortex responds to a multitude of factors, including the QBO, solar activity, ENSO, and volcanic eruptions. I find the idea that we are contemplating chaos at a bigger scale useless, unproductive, and an obstacle to a deeper understanding. Same with the idea of tipping points before enough understanding of the system exists. Some systems might present tipping points, but pointing to any rapid change and saying that it is a tipping point is useless, unproductive, and an obstacle to a deeper understanding.
Just grow up and take criticism better. That you are convinced you are right does not mean you are right. That you write all the time saying the same things over and over doesn’t help anyone.
What he says. [Thanks, Javier.]
I guess that Javier doesn’t take contradiction well. But there is science cited in the post – if he wants to refute he needs to provide some math and science of his own. He doesn’t. His interpersonal metier is innuendo and disparagement. Water off a duck – but pointless and tedious.
I have seen graph after graph eyeballed into narrative submission and ceremoniously paraded like battalion standards. Eyeballing is utterly worthless as a scientific method and I simply do not find it even a little worth engaging with him. He doesn’t have a clue about spatiotemporal chaos and is prepared to pull nonsense out of his arse in an unsupported narrative. Some expertise in the topic is usually a prerequisite to pontification. The result is of no value.
‘There is something much more complicated and qualitatively radically different from the temporal (Lorenzinan) chaos – the spatio-temporal chaos. There is no established spatio-temporal chaos theory. It is cutting edge and a few people have worked on this only for a few decades. Spatio-temporal chaos deals with the dynamics of SPATIAL PATTERNS. Mathematically we deal with fields described by non linear PDEs; Navier Stokes equation is an example.’ Tomas Milanovic
The Navier-Stokes equation says many things. It is based on hydrodynamic principles. It unpacks into millions of equations at ever smaller scales – down to viscosity. Like Russian dolls as Tim Palmer put it. Perturb the flow and patterns can experimentally be observed to shift. Patterns shift in oceans and atmosphere – decadal patterns notably But without understanding the underlying dynamics it is impossible to understand linkages and mechanisms.
We may instead look for keys under the lamp post or do the math that can be done and not the math that should be done. That should be the definition of unproductive.
Show us your falsifiable calculations for any of the future tipping points you postulate. Real, not theoretical.
The science is in the references. I have provided a review in the simplest and most accessible language I can muster. To refute the science Dave would need to provide his own science. I can’t see that happening.
Show me the numbers!
I’ve read the scientific basis of chaos theory and there is nothing there to refute your unquantified “trivially true” tipping point statements (can’t prove a negative). Show us mere mortals some calculation for any of the tipping points you imagine are coming.
I take contradiction perfectly well. I am very used to most people disagreeing with me and I have no problem with that. My articles are based on peer-reviewed scientific articles and my figures and graphs based on similarly published or official data. My interpretation of the literature-published research and data is mine, as it is my right. You can doubt my interpretation, and that is fine with me, but to doubt the data you have to present better supported alternative data. I defend my views with citations when available and known to me.
Your views don’t result in predictions, that constitute the ultimate test of scientific hypothesis. Vague things like “the next tipping point – big or small – is not far away” is an example. USELESS. According to my research the next Pacific shift should be expected by 2031-2033. I already predicted the 2018 Niño, the 2020 Niña, and SC25 having slightly more activity than SC24, but less than SC23. My view of climate change leads to useful predictions.
You use a lot of words to say very little of substance. Climate change is based on energy fluxes.
David Wojick has perfectly defined your article at WUWT: “It really sounds like science, or one of those deliberate nonsense articles the journals keep publishing. At root it is simply incoherent.”
What he said. [Thanks again, Javier.]
We predict that tipping points and climate surprises are inevitable.
I predicted the transition to a cooler Pacific sea surface after 1998 early in the 1990’s – and the pause publicly in 2007. I’m predicting a centennial cooling of the Pacific with a cooler sun. A trigger and not a forcing. The linkages and physical mechanisms are all important.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2007/11/enso_variation_and_global_warm.html
Your eyeballing of the graphs leads to predictions that are utterly unverifiable. I don’t take them seriously at all.
This is a clash of paradigms. Dinosaurs and uppity upstarts. Most scientists are upstarts on this. Including Judith.
Guess which you are.
David Wojick in his Oroville post mischaracterized Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics as statistics of extremes. It is not. The statistics reveal the tendency of similar sized events to cluster – or persist in Harold Hurst’s term. Hydrological regimes and transitions. 1000 years of instrumental data showing dynamical complexity at work. Hydrological series are not noise – in 1950 it was entirely unknown mechanism.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/nilometer.png
David is a dinosaur too. So he piled on with the troglodytes and trolls at WUWT. Little wonder I have avoided polluting my brain there for the longest time.
It must be wonderful to be so much smarter than everybody else, Robert.
“We predict that tipping points and climate surprises are inevitable.
I predicted the transition to a cooler Pacific sea surface after 1998 early in the 1990’s – and the pause publicly in 2007. I’m predicting a centennial cooling of the Pacific with a cooler sun.”
Those are not predictions. It’s like saying that an eclypse is inevitable and should take place not far away. That’s not science. Predicting the Pause in 2007 when it started in 1998, give me a break. Predictions are beforehand. Realizations of what is going on is just observation. While hypotheses must account for observations, they are not a test of falsifiability.
I’ve been very well schooled in the scientific method for many years. As an outsider to climate science I don’t belong to any school or paradigm. I just find my way using the available evidence as my only guide.
It is clear and evident that climate science has lost its way. You are part of the problem, not of the solution.
What he said.
David Wojick in his Oroville post mischaracterized Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics as the statistics of extremes. It is not. The exponent shows the tendency in a hydrological series of similar event sizes to cluster – or persist in Harold Hurst’s term. Hydrological regimes and transitions. 1000 years of instrumental data showing dynamical complexity at work. It is not randomly distributed as had been assumed. In 1950 it was a novel mechanism.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/nilometer.png
David is a dinosaur too. So he piled on with the trolls and troglodytes at WUWT. An was invidious behaviour. It was an online Lord of the flies. In the end I just had fun poking sticks at them.
‘A ‘threshold concept’ is a concept that, once understood, changes the way that a person thinks about a topic. Jan Meyer and Ray Land explain: ‘A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something.’ https://unistudentwellbeing.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Theshold-Concepts-Prf04.pdf
Without the right conceptual tools – of course it’s a mystery.
Pettifogging quibbles. I’ll do something useful and interesting instead.
angech,
Some common ground here.
On sinks and sources of CO2, with satellite mapa like OCO showing patches of lower and higher concentration in the iar.
Question is, how does one derive a sink or source category from a concentration map?
One thought process says: “Here is a patch of higher CO2. It must be coming out from a source.”
A contrary thought process is: “Here is a patch of higher CO2. It must be waiting in a big queue (line in the US) on its way to being sucked into a sink.”
Is this too simplistic? Are there ways to classify into sink or source?
Geoff S
Geoff S This is a paper I do not understand but is very interesting if real
It implies that water [the ocean or on land] is the sink and source of CO2.
Obviously this would tie CO2 in the atmosphere into firstly the amount of water below and secondly with CO2 sources such as cities and forests and volcanoes but explain why there is basically a steady state.
If this were true it would imply higher CO2 levels over warmer ocean.
I will try to check it out.
Water Vapor Myths:A Brief Tutorial(copyright 1998-2020)
Author: Steven M. Babin, MD, PhD
Before the end of the eighteenth century, most people believed that evaporation required the presence of air to dissolve the water. The term saturation vapor pressure arose because it was believed that this was the maximum amount of water vapor that could be dissolved in air. People erroneously believed that warmer air could dissolve more water vapor than cooler air. However, studies by De Luc and Dalton in the late eighteenth century cast doubt on these conclusions. The publication of Dalton’s paper in 1802 finally resolved the issue. Dalton showed that the pressure of a gas is independent of the amount of other gases present. Because air is mostly empty space, each gas acts individually as if it alone existed. Most gases are indefinitely soluble in other gases (Ostwald 1891). In an equilibrium state, the amount of vapor above a liquid depends almost entirely on the temperature of the liquid. John Dalton concluded that the vapor pressure of water in air is independent of the existence of the air (Brutsaert 1991, Cardwell 1968, Greenaway 1966, Ostwald 1891, Dalton 1803).
Even today, many people believe that saturated air is holding as much water vapor as it can and that warm air holds more water vapor than cool air. Unfortunately, this mistaken belief has even made its way into some textbooks. A new general meteorology textbook (Nese et al. 1996) written by faculty members of The Pennsylvania State University should help to dispel this commonly held myth. In addition, a new atmospheric thermodynamics text by Bohren and Albrecht (1998) discusses this issue. A lucid non-mathematical explanation with illustrative examples is given by Bohren (1987).
Air does not hold water vapor. Water vapor is not dissolved in air. This can easily be demonstrated by a thought experiment. Imagine a closed container containing a beaker of pure water and a beaker of ocean water. Place the two solutions side by side so that they are at the same atmospheric temperature and pressure. The air above these two solutions is at the same temperature and pressure. If air “holds” water vapor, then the two solutions should have the same saturation vapor pressure. However, the saturation vapor pressure above the saline solution is less than that above the pure water. In the saline solution, the salt ions replace some of the water molecules so that fewer water molecules are available for evaporation (see Footnote 1). Therefore, the presence of the salt reduces the rate of evaporation from the saline solution compared to the solution of pure water. This then is the reason why the saturation vapor pressure above the saline solution is less than that above pure water. Note that the presence of initially identical air above the solutions could not account for this difference.
Saturation vapor pressure is actually something of a misnomer. The term saturation probably is an historical remnant from pre-Dalton times. It probably should be called equilibrium vapor pressure because, by definition, it is the water vapor pressure that occurs when a phase change is taking place. The higher the liquid water temperature, the more energetic are the liquid water molecules. The more energetic these molecules are, the more readily they can leave the liquid interface. This increases the amount of evaporation and therefore the saturation vapor pressure. The temperature of the air has nothing to do with it except that it can be eventually warmed or cooled depending on the temperature of the liquid surface. “Saturation” occurs when the evaporation rate equals the condensation rate and the air is in equilibrium with the liquid.
People commonly use relative humidity. As its name implies, it is not an absolute measure of water vapor content. Relative humidity is relative to saturation over a flat surface of pure water. On a flat surface, the forces on a water molecule from its nearest neighbors tend to hold it in place and oppose the thermal energy of the molecule tending to move it away. Notice that the dark circle has four nearest neighbors.
When you have a curved surface such as a droplet, each water molecule has fewer nearest neighbors than it would have on a flat surface. In a cloud, these droplets can be as small as a ten-thousandth of a micrometer and contain only a few dozen water molecules. Notice that the dark circle in this figure has three nearest neighbors.
This effect of curvature on surface tension was discovered by Lord Kelvin. With fewer nearest neighbors, there is now less attractive force holding the water molecule to the surface. It is then easier for one of these water molecules to escape the intermolecular forces trying to keep it in the droplet. Because relative humidity is relative to a flat surface of pure water, the relative humidity of the air in equilibrium with this droplet can be much greater than 100%, depending on the curvature (i.e., size) of the droplet.
This commonly occurs in clouds and has been called supersaturation. This is another unfortunate term because it is a thermodynamically stable state and there is nothing “super” about it. Only the conditions for equilibrium between the liquid and its vapor have changed. Like a flat surface, “saturation” above this droplet occurs when the rates of evaporation and condensation are equal and the air is in equilibrium with the liquid.
Despite this condition being referred to as supersaturation, the air actually has no difficulty accommodating this amount of water vapor. If you took a clean smooth container of pure water vapor, you could create a relative humidity of over 300% before you would get condensation. Fortunately, the real atmosphere has ubiquitous particles (e.g., salt, dust, etc.) that can act as condensation nuclei. Condensation nuclei act as solutes in the liquid cloud droplets. Solutes lower the equilibrium vapor pressure as mentioned above. The presence of a solute molecule at the liquid-vapor interface means that there are fewer water molecules available for evaporation. It is indeed fortunate for us that this occurs in the atmosphere. Otherwise, there would have to be a much larger quantity of water vapor in the atmosphere (it would have to become much more humid) in order to have rainfall (Rogers and Yau 1989). In the Earth’s atmosphere, relative humidity rarely exceeds 101-102% within clouds. Outside of clouds and close to the Earth’s surface, you can consider the relative humidity not to exceed 100%.
Key Points to Remember:
Relative humidity is not an absolute measure of atmospheric water vapor content. It depends upon the temperature and shape of the surface. Better measures are mixing ratio, specific humidity, or dew point. Mixing ratio is the mass of water vapor per unit mass of dry air. Specific humidity is the mass of water vapor per unit mass of moist air. Dew point is the temperature to which moist air must be cooled, with pressure and mixing ratio held constant, in order for this air parcel to become saturated.
Because relative humidity is relative to saturation above a flat surface, it is possible to have humidities exceeding 100%. However, because of the ubiquitous presence of condensation nuclei (e.g., dust, salt, etc.), relative humidities in the Earth’s atmosphere typically do not exceed 100% at the surface or 102% within clouds.
Air in our atmosphere is a mixture of gases with very large distances between molecules. Therefore, air can accommodate a large quantity of water vapor. Water vapor is not dissolved in air and air does not “hold” water vapor. The presence of the air is not relevant to the vapor pressure and could be replaced by a vacuum.
Because cloud droplet and air temperatures are nearly the same, it appears that saturation vapor pressure depends upon air temperature. Strictly speaking, it depends on the cloud droplet temperature.
Footnote 1: Each sodium and chlorine ion actually is surrounded by a shell of water molecules held by strong ionic attraction between the ion and the polar water molecule. This attraction (hydration energy) is nearly as strong as that which the sodium and chlorine ions have for one another (this is why salt so readily dissolves in water). Therefore, the water molecules in this hydration shell are not as free to evaporate as those in a solution of pure water. The net effect is that there are fewer water molecules available for evaporation. This phenomenon is known as Raoult’s Law (Adams, 1973).
angech,
A second-order refinement you might want to consider is that different isotopes of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon result in different masses of the molecules they create. For the same average temperature, the lighter molecules of water and carbon dioxide will have higher velocities and higher kinetic energy than their heavier isotopic counterparts. Thus, as water and carbon dioxide transition from the liquid phase to the gaseous phase (evaporate and out-gas), the lighter molecules with greater kinetic energy will be favored, leading to isotopic fractionation. This is important because one of the arguments for increases in atmospheric CO2 being anthropogenic is the change in the 13C/12C ratio in atmospheric CO2. To the best of my knowledge, no one has taken isotopic fractionation into consideration in their calculations.
Clyde Spencer | March 13, 2022 at 3:15 pm |
“angech,
A second-order refinement you might want to consider is that different isotopes of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon result in different masses of the molecules they create”
–
Thank you for looking at those comments and your suggestion.
I hope someone does try to follow it up.
I have tried very hard to understand RIE’s use of the phrase ‘tipping point’ as an alarm mechanism rather than what happens when certain expected conditions are met e.g. rainfall. If the change is unexpected then, presumably, it cannot be called ‘a tipping point’ but a new condition entirely deserving of an original explanation as to why it happened. We can then think of a more suitable descriptive term for these types of changes and whether or not we should fear them. If CO2 can drive temperatures up then surely we would have seen evidence of it time and time again in the historic record, but as of now, there is no evidence. And so are we saying a ‘new’ condition exists and doesn’t that deserve a proper explanation as to how it is happening.
As an example of the hazards of tipping points how would RIE deal with the Cambrian Explosion? We know biologists have struggled to get to grips with this event in spite of research uncovering some shreds of evidence of a slower change than the word ‘explosion’ suggests. The event, however, still offers alternative explanations of Planet Earth’s evolutionary processes which is only disturbing if you have a vested interest in the explanation being wrong.
I am disturbed by anyone arguing that what we see on a daily basis in our weather systems is in any way more serious than the tipping point caused whenever one country invades another with a totally unknown outcome at any time soon perhaps never.
Deterministic chaos in a system is identified by behaviours associated with the broad class of such systems. Transitions to emergent states included. Weather and climate is one of those systems. Unimpressed? We could always look for the keys under the lamp post or do the math that can be done rather than the math that should be done. And I’m a bit dismayed that anyone can use the Ukraine to make a trivial point on a climate blog. Not that I know what the point is.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/bifurcations.png
You state Ukaine, RIE, I deliberately did not. I said … whenever one country invades another … which is an ongoing struggle for many human beings not just to comprehend and understand but to survive.
There are logical answers to the fossil fuel fears expressed in climate science which can be utilised now – nuclear is an obvious one. We may then buy time to really understand what a global energy policy should look like and how we can build grids that are as harmonious as the human race should aim to be whatever its political standpoint. What stands in the way is our own stupidity and unscientific thought processes and one of the curses of that is the so called ‘tipping point’. You are sold on it … I am not. Get over it.
‘I am disturbed by anyone arguing that what we see on a daily basis in our weather systems is in any way more serious than the tipping point caused whenever one country invades another with a totally unknown outcome at any time soon perhaps never.’
I assumed it was a reference to Russia and Ukraine. But no one has argued that ever.
Contrarians always insist that they have the ‘true science’ – I can’t see it and you can’t all be right – but tipping points are scientific truths – in Newton’s sense – confirmed by experiment and observation. It is not science otherwise.
Refute the science cited or get out of the kitchen.
Spatiotemporal chaos is at the core of Earth system science. You can’t win and simply condemn yourself to irrelevance by trying. Get over it.
Show us the real calculations, then, for the tipping points you postulate.
What am I trying to win, RIE. A battle of word salads with you? I wouldn’t even want to try, even if I had the stamina to do so which I don’t. And it is a sad person who believes winning is all but thanks for you concern.
You cannot to refute the old fashioned empirical science cited with narratives. It is just nor science – it is blog science. Something else entirely. You can’t win any debate on tipping points because you have nothing in the way of real science to wave around. By all means find some.
Pingback: Tipping points in Earths geophysical and biological systems – Climate- Science.press
Who said science blogs aren’t like Sunday dinner at an Italian extended family? Conversations start with nice warm comments and can end with intense heat. And that can be repeated cyclically throughout the day. The tipping points are just a word or look that can bring total chaos.
One thing though, the food is always great!
March temperatures in North America will remain below average due to SSW.
https://i.ibb.co/n81KWHN/gfs-T2m-us-1.png
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/100mb9065.png
If the weak La Niña persists over the next year due to weak solar winds, it could be the tipping point for a winter temperature drop in the Northern Hemisphere.
http://www.bom.gov.au/archive/oceanography/ocean_anals/IDYOC007/IDYOC007.202203.gif
Robert
“The last time pCO2 was at this level was in the Pliocene (or Miocene).”
This phrase is much repeated & is based on marine derived pCO2 from pH which does not match terrestrial pCO2. This is due to the very level of Henry’s Constant for CO2 and the assumption that patm in the mid Pliocene (~4 Ma) was 1 bar. Stomata based levels are lower at ~300 ppm.
Several proxies suggest it was ~1.2 bar and dropped to ~1 bar over the period 3.3 to 2.6 ma during very low magnetic fields hit by large CMEs.
The good news is that this is very slow (although geologically fast) and even in a low field, a Carrington event only happens about 3 times per ka, each event stripping ~0,2% of patm.
It was bad news though for all species of large birds (> 20 kg) which all went extinct in all global environments over this period. Several of which had been around for 50 Ma.
Tipping can be to cold conditions such as in a polar excursion which lets in more cosmic radiation leading to cloud cover (see Kitaba et al).
best
Alan
‘ConservAmerica seeks to build common ground between policymakers and stakeholders around policies that protect the environment and economic growth. Our priorities are conservation; public land access; clean, abundant, and affordable energy; and sound environmental stewardship.’ https://www.conservamerica.org/priorities
The objective is to get to sound policy. For that you need to win the politics. Tipping points are mainstream science – the dynamical mechanisms are better understood than ever. I focused on the past on the assumption that the system is ergodic and past states are reprised. But just when?
‘The past few decades have been characterized by a period of relatively high solar activity. However, the recent prolonged solar minimum and subsequent weak solar cycle 24 have led to suggestions that the grand solar maximum may be at an end1. Using past variations of solar activity measured by cosmogenic isotope abundance changes, analogue forecasts for possible future solar output have been calculated. An 8% chance of a return to Maunder Minimum-like conditions within the next 40 years was estimated in 2010 (ref. 2). The decline in solar activity has continued, to the time of writing, and is faster than any other such decline in the 9,300 years covered by the cosmogenic isotope data1. If this recent rate of decline is added to the analysis, the 8% probability estimate is now raised to between 15 and 20%.’
I have been reviewing solar influences other than UV. It is all a bit tenuous. I assume a solar/climate link. The IPO transitioned from centuries from the cool mode to the warm mode around 1900. At both ends of the planet the polar annular modes are triggered by warming and cooling in ozone at between 15 and 30 km in altitude. My working hypothesis is that the Pacific will reprise a centennial cool mode with a dimming sun. There are of course decadal tipping points in this sub-system. They are feedback tipping points driven by winds and currents and happening faster than the slow solar evolution.
It is mainstream science and it is not going away. It is the rationale for the Paris temperature target. But tipping points are obviously trigger words for extreme internet incivility. It leaves the trolls and troglodytes dismayed and seething in the dustbin of history. conservamerica has a pragmatic grasp of real politics and policy – while retaining a capacity to arouse the imagination of the populace – and may actually contribute positively to the future of society.
R.I.E.:
“There are of course decadal tipping points in this sub-system. They are feedback tipping points driven by winds and currents and happening faster than the slow solar evolution. ”
Northern Annular Mode anomalies are associated with daily-weekly changes in the solar wind strength. The ocean phases act as negative feedbacks to the NAM variability, within physical limits. Referring to these phenomena as tipping points is a mischaracterisation.
Solar cycles and centennial solar minima are finely ordered by orbital cycles. So the duration of the current centennial minimum can be empirically mapped, leaving probability estimates redundant and obsolete.
The Lenton paper is so desperate to identify a “tipping point” that they claim in all seriousness that:
This is simply alarmist nonsense, as Peter Ridd and others have shown. See here for details.
And when I see that kind of sloppy scare-tactic easily-refuted “science” in a paper, I know that I can’t trust a single word that they say.
As far as I know, NOBODY has ever identified a “tipping point” in advance of it happening. So it’s very easy to say “LOOK OUT! TIPPING POINT JUST AROUND THE CORNER, EVERYONE PANIC!”
Finally, I’m still waiting for a clear definition of a “tipping point”. The head post says it is ‘the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place’.
Ok … but the Lenton paper claims that “fires and forest pests changing” in boreal forests is a “tipping point” that’s already occurring. Never mind the fact that pests change every day. Never mind the fact that forest fires are at a century-long low. So long as they can get people worried … it’s obviously a “tipping point”. But I see nothing “significant” or “unstoppable” about changes to the boreal forests. What, are they gonna disappear?
Sorry, but this all seems like a contrived “emergency”, just like so many, many, many others in the history of the current climate hysteria.
w.
Willis, Robert I. Ellison won’t identify even one of his tipping points nor back up his ideas with actual data or calculations. He just keeps telling everybody they have to falsify his science or they fall short of understanding his science; essentially proving a negative. I made the mistake some time ago of trying to follow him down his various rabbit holes. Never again.
I didn’t do any relevant science – I studied over 30 years hundreds if not thousand of scientific papers on the topic.
I do have a comment in a moderation queue with future numbers from literature. But I am not dancing to Dave’s tune.
I have no idea what that unscientific, uneducated, self important noise maker, Eschenbach can prove. Ellison may or may not be wrong, in whole or in part, but without a doubt, Escehnbach’s comments are not grounded in science or data, Eschenbach is but an ego driven, noisy gong.
I like you better all the time. 😊
Thanks for the useful ad hominem. You provided important information and analysis that will advance the utility of this forum.
You missed Dave’s sterling contribution. Keep up the good work.
Good luck – I can be reached at watervapor@justforumaccess.com
You might at least read the abstract of my paper:
Van Brunt, W. (Oct. 2020) Autonomous Changes in the Concentration of Water Vapor Drive Climate Change. Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, 10, 443-508. doi: 10.4236/acs.2020.104025
The Lenton et al paper is not empirical science – it is an opinion piece. Not to be taken as gospel. I didn’t address it directly in the post and won’t now. I included it because it is topical had some semblance of thought for the future. The math of spatiotemporal chaotic systems is damn near impossible. They are using equation less machine learning on big data to forecast fish populations. Let’s see where it goes.
The emphasis in the post was on past events based largely on the 2013 NAS report. It is mainstream science and it is not going away. Waving hands is simply going to waste another 30 years and leave the policy field to pissant progressives. As I say – it’s time for plan B. I did cover it in a little detail and expanded consideration well beyond CO2. The Stockholm Resilience Centre infographic shows that nutrient export and biodiversity are more immediate concerns than climate change. Unless you want to argue that ecologies are not chaotic?
Plan B is to win the politics and implement sound policy. Contrarians plugging pet new physics are a noisy distraction.
‘ConservAmerica seeks to build common ground between policymakers and stakeholders around policies that protect the environment and economic growth. Our priorities are conservation; public land access; clean, abundant, and affordable energy; and sound environmental stewardship.’ https://www.conservamerica.org/priorities
As the NAS said – climate changes abruptly and climate surprises are inevitable. Unless you want to argue that the Earth system is not globally coupled, nonlinear, spatiotemporal chaotic?
Willis, Ellison begins with an implied definition of tipping point as an abrupt change in state. But then cites an alarmist, Lenton, who uses it as an *irreversible* change in state, the better to produce the desired political, sociological, and psycological effects. We think of stresses accumulating in the branch we’re sitting on until, abruptly, it breaks and we fall.
Such an ambiguous term then can be defended ad hoc with the motte and bailey technique, which suits sophists like Ellison who has no response to contravailing facts except ad hominem.
And I disagree most heartily with William Van Brunt, as I have enjoyed many of your posts in WUWT and elsewhere.
Lenton et al is quite obviously not empirical science. Getting data on the future is difficult. Observation of the past is another story.
https://history.aip.org/climate/rapid.htm
The fun bit is figuring out why?
Jiminy has nothing but blogoscience assertions, arrogance and disparagement. And he complains bitterly when I suggest drinking has disengaged his brain and loosened his tongue. That is pretty mild for climate blogs. He is such a special little snowflake.
Ah, Elly, he’s so predictable. Never a reference to any fact or even a factoid.
I suggest that the arrogance is all on his side. I have historical and theoretical grounds for all my statements, which Elly has never contested much less refuted. Be careful, cobber, you’re showing your slip again. Folks will wonder why, if my statements are so insubstantial, he hasn’t deigned to refute them. Or even make the attempt.
This has me wondering why he insists on AGW as the foundation for any of his otherwise very reasonable remarks on land and water use. It seems more than irrational. It’s counterproductive. Wasn’t it Talleyrand who said something was worse than a crime, it was a mistake?
The American Institute of Physics says otherwise Jiminy. Deal with it. And it is impossible to refute Jiminy – he simply rinses and repeats.
Elly, https://history.aip.org/climate/rapid.htm
is a nice sociological study of science as practiced by humans. Do you have a point?
What?
“The American Institute of Physics says otherwise Jiminy. Deal with it.”
Deal with what, old antipodal friend? Oh look, there’s a squirrel?
You’re a time-waster!
The same point that Jiminy has such a knowledge chasm on. Spatiotemporal chaos and tipping points based on observations of past rapid change. Jiminy dismisses it as ‘a sociological study of how science is done by humans’. I don’t know what that means if anything.
The American Institute of Physics says… what, you sodden old obfuscator?
Elly, https://history.aip.org/climate/rapid.htm
is a nice sociological study of science as practiced by humans. Do you have a point?
Poor old dear’s memory is going as well as his knees.
I’m wondering if Elly is capable of forming a declarative sentence that states his opposition to my statements. I rather doubt it.
Do you really want to play silly games? I don’t.
I accept your resignation with some satisfaction. But I do wish you had offered any attempt at all at refutation. I might have learned something.
Ooh! There’s a straight line for you. Release the ad hominem!
We are in control of CO2 in the atmosphere – and it is a large factor in Earth climate and other things. I have already said that as Jiminy rightly notes. Jiminy disagrees. He has a right to be wrong. But I have had long, tedious and fruitless discussions before on his very own points. I’m not doing it again. I’m not here to dance to his offkey tunes.
I had a salutary experience at WUWT. After my post appeared on their site. They did offer to take it down so I have no complaint on that score.
They are an echo chamber in which consensus is enforced by mob rule. Seen it all before? They refute science with memes and can’t see the problem with that. They only need one meme – and are reassured that (1) they are smarter than the average climate scientist and that (2) they are the last great white macho hope for humanity.
All they have to do is sit at a keyboard and share memes.
This is as stoopid as anything on the left.
“(1) they [WUWT] are smarter than the average climate scientist”; maybe first do a test that proves a bigger hockey stick is a better measure?
Unfortunately it’s the stupidity of the Lefts policy making that sucks up most available global bandwidth; don’t worry, WUWT and CE siphon off only a byte or two. The existential threat today isn’t CO2, it’s geopolitical. Don’t tell John Kerry archetypes this.
There are extremists at opposite ends. The real McCoy is in the middle. That’s where elections are won.
The distribution of heat over the continents during the winter season is via the oceans. Therefore, long-term changes in atmospheric circulation due to changes in stratospheric circulation (changes in the ozone zone at high latitudes due to solar wind variability) cause changes in winter temperatures over the continents. Therefore, during periods of decreasing UV radiation in weak solar cycles, climate changes will occur in many regions.
https://www.iup.uni-bremen.de/gome/solar/mgii_composite_2.png
https://i.ibb.co/3kVvwQp/gfs-t100-nh-f00.png
At 70 hPa you can see even better what is currently happening in the lower stratosphere. The SSW resulted in a disruption of the polar vortex, despite very low temperatures in the lower stratosphere.
The low temperature is important because the temperature difference in high and mid latitudes drives the polar vortex.
https://i.ibb.co/7x393hD/gfs-t70-nh-f00.png
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/70mb9065.png
Try this:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020RG000723
Meanwhile, at WUWT, we have their contest prizewinning paper which, IMHO, is what climate change science should look like, and what political decision making based upon that science should say. Job done and the IPCC shuts up shop forever in a few paragraphs.
It may take a little time for the reader to get to the statement ‘… Build 3000 nuclear plants …’ but once the target is set then it is over for all those costly bureaucrats who can be carted off to more meaningful work elsewhere. We would also have a load of climate academics carted off to more meaningful science projects such as improving our energy generation grids and the infrastructure necessary to ensure every living soul gets energy from it if they want/need it, and finding a way to ensure computers can compute random numbers at will and at least get a handhold at the bottom of the cliff that is predictive computation and probability for real.
Think of all the filthy lucre that skilful use of human time would have released for more appropriate use elsewhere. The savings for our environment not covered with wind turbines and solar panels. No child labour in mines. If you care about the human race, the planet and the proper use of hearts and minds then Jim Kelly’s paper is well worth a read and is nowhere near as long as some papers we encounter. It may also drive a few politicians toward better policy making and appropriate use of their time. It may even deter them from further wishes to prolong their terms of office. Win-win-win-win (recurring) …
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/07/wuwt-contest-winner-professional-1st-place-the-greta-leap-forward/
This is a ‘review’ of IPCC reports that repeats a litany of qualitative contrarian arguments. That isn’t science.
If CO2 is a tipping point risk then so are wind farms!
Do wind farms change the weather?
By David Wojick
https://www.cfact.org/2022/03/08/do-wind-farms-change-the-weather/
The beginning: “The effect of lots of wind turbines on weather and climate is a small but active research area. Wind power converts wind energy into electricity, thereby removing that energy from the air. The research issue of how taking a lot of energy out might affect weather or climate seems to have emerged as early as 2004. Studies range from the global climate impact down to the local effects of a single large wind facility.”
I have not seen this discussed before.
Trees and building shed vortices that locally perturb patterns of turbulent atmospheric flow. This occasionally coalesces into local deluges or rain shadows. Every thing changes – it all appears to completely random with an underlying but obscured determinism. Wind farms take their place in the landscape.
The flap of a butterflies wings may cause a tornado in Texas – but it is vastly more likely to damp out viscously within centimetres.
The world uses some 170000 TWh of energy per year. To supply industrial, transport and residential demand would require 4 times that – and another 3.5 for increasing demand this century. The cost is in the many trillions of dollars and how long does it take to build a plant? Yes – nuclear reactors are the practical solution – but we need massive economies of scale with reactors rolling off assembly lines or floating out of shipyards.
e.g. https://www.seaborg.com/
Models have always been poorly performed. The best that can be hoped for with the current generation is probabilistic forecasting which provide a family of solutions. Chaos ensures the solution trajectories diverge.
‘Lorenz was able to show that even for a simple set of nonlinear equations (1.1), the evolution of the solution could be changed by minute perturbations to the initial conditions, in other words, beyond a certain forecast lead time, there is no longer a single, deterministic solution and hence all forecasts must be treated as probabilistic. The fractionally dimensioned space occupied by the trajectories of the solutions of these nonlinear equations became known as the Lorenz attractor (figure 1), which suggests that nonlinear systems, such as the atmosphere, may exhibit regime-like structures that are, although fully deterministic, subject to abrupt and seemingly random change.’
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2011.0161
Scientists have identified the challenge and are rising to the occasion. The next generation uses big data generated by observing systems with exascale computing and machine learning to initialize a model and far more precisely project solutions a decade or so into the future.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1906691116
The next generation of models uses big data generated by observing systems with exascale computing and machine learning to initialize a model and far more precisely project solutions a decade or so into the future. Here’s a more recent study.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/data-driven-model.png
I guess that they owe it all to WUWT and the guys there – having solved climate change – can do something else. Perhaps they can solve the bigger picture now.
One can focus on the narrow beam off the IPCC assessment. But it doesn’t take you very far into the science of these things. Refuting it with memes is such a nonsense exercise. Someone wants to critique the language of these reports? So what.
I’ll leave you with my favourite model quote.
‘Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Gödel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the calculation (see ref. 26).’ https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0702971104
I remind you that CE has its Galileo Galilei award for neglected genius. Last year it was won by Alan Lowry for his theory that it was neutron star matter at the core of the planet wot drove climate. Along the way he refuted general relativity.
Who cares?
“Who cares?”
RIE neglects to mention that computers have far too many of his favourite tipping points (potentially in the wrong directions) caused by computer scientists believing a logic machine can cope with true randomness. Building a true random number generator cannot be done without ‘illogic’ being included in the process. When we have a computer that can predict 100 (or even 20) coin tosses with say only a 5% fail then we can trust we are on the right path but until then are we just trying to see in a very dark place?.
Models are not up to simulating the past let alone the future.
e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0044-6
And random events are by definition unpredictable. It is approached by the theory of large numbers. One cannot predict the toss of a coin. That would require Laplace’s demon.
And then Poincare’s orbital Hamiltonian equations revealed dynamical complexity.
Robert, thanks for cementing in everybody’s minds the fact your postings prove you are the very definition of “dilettante.”
Dave’s reflexive enforcement of group consensus. We don’t give a rat’s arse.
Who cares?
Dave’s lack of substance is the stuff of legends. I sure someone cares.
Who might care about a dilettante’s shotgunned concerns?
Does he ever say anything that isn’t vacuous hyperbole.
The ‘Nature’ comment provides a list of conceived ‘tips’.
( https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0 )
I had some ideas on the first six before tiring.
While I may be biased to the disconfirmational,
I do believe the following evidence bears inclusion in the fuller picture.
1. Amazon rainforest (frequent droughts).
Droughts are dynamic events, the kind circulation models can’t predict past ten days or so. Manabe at least, indicates that CO2 enhanced atmospheres will make for net wetter conditions at the equator which the Amazon forest straddles.
(See Figure 9. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333837663_Role_of_greenhouse_gas_in_climate_change )
To be sure, Manabe also points out the deficits at the sub-tropics, but further points out that precipitation, soil moisture, and runoff data sets are too uncertain and often contradict one another. He says we still lack the ability to assess these parameters.
For their part, the IPCC indicates mean changes, but low model agreement on precipitation, evapotranspiration and runoff:
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_TS.pdf#page=135
So both observations and models are self contradictory.
2. Arctic sea ice (reduction in area) This is an observed trend that is consistent with Manabe’s predictions from the 1970s. It does follow directly from considerations of import of warmer more humid lower latitude air to the Arctic. Is it a ‘tipping point’? It’s a trend, but not so far, at least, a step function change. And the Arctic is pretty icy each winter. And it would seem likely that there was a greater decline in the Holocene Climatic Optimum, and especially the Eemian and every interglacial that incurred greater summer sunshine.
Further, Arctic sea ice decline raises the question of Antarctic sea ice increase. NASA GISS A1B from a while back indicated much greater sea ice loss for the Antarctic (1979 through 2021 ), but a slight increase has occurred. Should we include Antarctic increase as a falsification of models? If not, why not?
3. Atlantic circulation (in slowdown since 1950s)
This would appear to be uncertain.
” it is still unclear whether or not the AMOC has changed markedly over the past decades”
(https://phys.org/news/2020-11-stable-ocean-circulation-north-atlantic.html)
Apparently, there are not yet observations to support change much less validated models to predict it.
Observations do indicate an area of decreasing temperatures in the North Atlantic. This area is predicted only among a subset of the IPCC model consensus,
and those IPCC models don’t extend this cooling past a regional effect.
4. Boreal forests (fires and pests changing)
Forest are more the result of climate states than a point to be tipped to.
The brief satellite record indicates decreasing fire globally.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/90493/researchers-detect-a-global-drop-in-fires
And Boreal forsest appear to have grown denser.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-greenerfor-now/
5. Coral reefs (large scale die-offs)
This would also appear to be a biospheric result, not a climate tip.
Any species that has been around for hundreds of millions of years, such as coral, would to
have proven resiliency far greater than recent climate change.
Coral occur in a range of ocean temepratures, including the very hottest ones of the Red Sea.
http://www.coastalwiki.org/w/images/c/cd/Distribution-of-coldwater-and-tropical-coral-reefs_001.jpg
Many coral die off events occur not from temperature anomalies, but by low sea level events that expose the coral to the air.
There are some good photographs of this here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/05/falling-sea-level-the-critical-factor-in-2016-great-barrier-reef-bleaching/
After die offs there is a rapid regrowth of coral.
Systematic survey of the Great Barrier Reef even indicates a record high.
https://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/new_data_shows_great_barrier_reef_coral_cover_is_at_a_record_high
Further, coral are symbiotes with algae which provide the coral with energy through photosynthesis.
This photosynthesis benefits from increased CO2.
6. Greenland ice sheet (ice loss accelerating)
The brief satellite record indicates ice mass loss for Greenland.
https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2021/ArtMID/8022/ArticleID/946/Greenland-Ice-Sheet
The years 2010, 2012, and 2019 appeared to have the largest decreases.
The trend since 2013 actually appears to represent a deceleration, though this is a brief record.
Most of the loss appears to be around the periphery.
We know that the first ‘Glacier Girl’ excavation in 1992 atop Greenland found planes at a depth of 82m.
We know that the second excavation in 2018 found planes at a depth of 91m.
This point history indicates a continuance but slowdown of accumulation, undistinguished between snowfall and melt events.
Also, whether this is related to climate change or just variability is unclear.
Mass change of Greenland could be quite significant, but not so sure that accelerating loss due to climate change is supported.
I regard the Lenton et al paper as spitballing and have never paid much attention to such things. It was Judith’s idea. 😉 It’s not science but opinion – and you are entitled to yours.
The north Atlantic is the place to look. The 26 degree north array is amazing technology. It commenced operation in 2004. Earlier instrumental data from the 1990’s is decidedly dodgy. Smeed et al 2017 found a stepwise reduction in the period from 2004 to 2017. Extrapolating from such a short record is very unwise. Proxy studies over much longer periods sacrifice precision for statistical power.
I have tried this three times now. Sharing the Nature sharedit token so you can see unpaywalled papers is too much like work.
There are three papers linked at the bottom of this carbon brief article. They will lead you to Nature’s sharedit function.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/atlantic-conveyor-belt-has-slowed-15-per-cent-since-mid-twentieth-century
If tipping points are irreversible then none of these are tipping points. Even 100,000 year ice ages are not irreversible. There may be no large scale tipping points.
If tipping points need not be irreversible then sunrise and sunset are tipping points. Either way the concept is ridiculous.
The Earth system is spatiotemporal chaotic with all that implies. There are limits to internal variability of a physical system imposed by the laws of physics. It is not reversible as such – it doesn’t have a memory. It transitions to a state within the physical limits.
https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/pdf/pep/Rial2004.NonlinearitiesCC.pdf
Lockwood et al 2010 used the cosmogenic isotope record to look at 24 grand solar maximums in the past 9000 years. They estimated an 8% chance of a descent to Maunder minimum conditions – the 15 MV line shown in the graph – in the next 40 years. Ineson et al 2015 – https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8535 – increased that to 15-20%.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/cms/asset/42e2c1f1-2261-43db-a0b8-da053f045326/rspa20090519f06.jpg
‘Superposed-epoch study of the descent of the heliospheric modulation parameter ϕ at the end of a grand solar maximum. For each line t=0 is the time when ϕ falls below 600 MV in the composite reconstruction by Steinhilber et al. (2008) (i.e. the times marked by vertical dashed lines in figure 5). The 24 lines are the variations for the 24 available cases in the last 9000 years. The horizontal dot-dashed line is the 175 MV level as given in figure 5. The thick dashed line shows the data for the past 100 years, showing the progress of the current grand solar maximum.’ https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2009.0519
‘Any reduction in global mean near-surface temperature due to a future decline in solar activity is likely to be a small fraction of projected anthropogenic warming. However, variability in ultraviolet solar irradiance is linked to modulation of the Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations, suggesting the potential for larger regional surface climate effects.’ I
… What makes it interesting is the response of the polar annular modes in both hemispheres.
… the 15 MV line… It’s the 175 MV line.
RIE,
Trying to be helpful, when you author an article of this type, you need to discuss pro and con views.
Yours is heavy with endorsement of views that you like, but some in your audience are experienced scientists who might avoid articles that are like tv commercials in a way.
I nitpicked a couple of your themes hoping to show that dissenting arguments exist and deserve mention.
In a more general sense, maybe you have enthusiasms that are not compatible with neutral science, that make you seem like a green advocate. Not many readers here favour greenery. Cheers Geoff S
‘Each of us is responsible for ensuring the land that shaped our heritage and culture is well cared for and continues to define who we are for generations. As conservatives, we live our conservation values every day. Whether we are farmers, hunters, fishermen or all of the above, we care for the land and water because they are what sustain our bodies and our souls. Too often, though, “environmentalism” is an excuse to impose intrusive and costly government mandates and regulations when better solutions are available. At ConservAmerica, we focus on pathways to responsible stewardship that harness the power of the free market, property rights, and the American spirit of entrepreneurialism while prioritizing local voices in the decision-making process. We support solutions that embrace public-private collaborations and innovation.’ https://www.conservamerica.org/priorities
Most are in favour of ‘greenery’.
Tipping points define chaotic systems. Science has identified rapid change in the history of climate. It gets there with feedbacks in the natural world. Most scientists except on the basis of observations that the Earth is a globally coupled, nonlinear, spatiotemporal chaotic system. Most denizen do too. It is mainstream science and is not going away despite Geoff’s qualitative expressions of umbrage.
Robert, please identify an upcoming tipping point that will be driven by Man’s production of CO2, quantitatively.
I did above. A 15-20% chance of a return Maunder Minimum conditions in 40 years. Combined with a freshening Arctic and diminishing AMOC it might be a problem.
The Pacific seems to have settled back into it’s 20 to 30 year cool mode. So anytime now it will shift again. Given a dimming sun and feedbacks in the polar annular modes – I am leaning towards a shift to a yet cooler state.
AGW is a factor in both those subsystems. Does he want the time and date? No one is that good.
What will this 15-20% chance tip us into; why should I worry? What is the role CO2 plays in this chance? What role does AGW play in speculations of a freshening Artic and AMOC slowdown?
Please describe the AGW “factor in both those subsystems.”
I make a little effort to correct distortions – but I don’t dance to Dave’s loony tunes.
‘Moving the goalposts is an informal fallacy in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded.’
RIE,
In the 1980s I conceived and organised corporately a private international symposium on property rights with guests like Prof Richard Epstein from Chicago Law. This was done to help combat the spread of increasing impediments from a greening bureaucracy. The attendees were concerned with good stewardship of Nature as a given.
I think that you are redefining green if you imagine it to be beneficial and productive. Some actions by green advocates have been horrible, approaching crimes against humanity. See international banks refusing funds for new fossil fuel electricity plants in Africa, because they produce CO2. See the push for electric cars when global electricity generation cannot cope now and for the foreseeable future.
It was sad when wisdom largely disappeared from political decision making. Geoff S
Most environmental scientists – would agree on environmental excesses. I quoted ConservAmerica who said pretty much the same thing.
‘Too often, though, “environmentalism” is an excuse to impose intrusive and costly government mandates and regulations when better solutions are available.’
My job as engineer and scientist was to find better solutions for clients. Your constant misrepresentations and pompous bombastic insults are a little tedious and far from productive discourse.
Do you not read the comments that you constantly and ineptly pretend to respond to?
‘We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage.’ https://cdn.mises.org/Intellectuals%20and%20Socialism_4.pdf
Contrarians are mostly contrarian. Reacting to ideas out of antipathy while no one other than fellow travellers takes them seriously.
Robert, you forgot “clinging to their religion and guns.” Obama would not be pleased with you.
If I were in a position to demand anything – I’d demand that Dave STFU.
You quote: “‘We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage.’” Today Leftists are doing just the opposite, treating “intellectual adventures” as enemies of the State.
You demand forbearance, but deny the same courtesies to others.
Robert I. Ellison | March 8, 2022 at 4:16 pm
“The flap of a butterflies wings may cause a tornado in Texas – but it is vastly more likely to damp out viscously within centimetres”
–
Chaos theory actually works both ways, did Lorenz consider this?
For instance The Tornado in Texas actually allows the butterfly to flap its wings.
The fact that the transaction is two way and a necessary condition is often overlooked.
No Texas, No tornado, No butterfly.
This is one of the reasons that systems that have evolved do have a more permanent structure and rules than one way chaos theory allows.
Otherwise I could click my fingers and Putin could fall over dead.
Will give it a try.
The butterfly is a metaphor – not the real world. Regime shift – AKA tipping points – are emergent behaviour caused by negative and positive feedbacks in the physical system as tremendous energy cascades through powerful subsystems.
I have some thoughts to share with you on the planet without-atmosphere Te =255K issue.
It was always coming back from opponents – it is not possible for a warmer planet without-atmosphere
(Tmean =288K) to emit the same amount of IR EM energy, as the uniform surface temperature blackbody planet at (Te = 255K).
–
Theoretically the uniform surface temperature for the same emitted IR EM energy should be necessarily higher, than the actual the planet’s average surface temperature.
–
(Thus, the Earth’s without-atmosphere mean surface temperature should be lower than 255 K, since Earth has not uniform surface temperature. And the greenhouse effect should be bigger than +33oC, and no one knows how much bigger, so everyone conveniently turned a blind eye on this simple but very important fact).
https://www.cristos-vournas
‘Robert, your elitism blinds you to the realities of Hayek and the American experiment; you prefer the heavy had of the State. Like many foreigners you mistake the media depiction of the U.S. “far right” for modern conservatives (classic liberals). Hayek hated the idea, but admitted he was politicly closer to libertarianism.’ David Fair
I don’t comment on American politics. I do agree with conservative lobbyists ConserveAmerica. Americans like everyone else want rational energy and environment policy and to move beyond bickering from extremists (at both ends of the spectrum) that has stalled progress for decades.
‘Americans take the environment and the transition to cleaner energy very seriously, and they want traditional energy companies to lead the way. In fact, over 80% want to see natural gas and oil companies developing and applying clean energy technologies. A majority of both conservative and liberal voters also indicated that they want to see Congress promote policies that stimulate U.S. energy production in a responsible way that minimizes harm to the environment.’ https://www.conservamerica.org/latest-news/its-time-to-get-the-politics-out-of-energy-policy-as-new-polling-show-voters-overwhelmingly-support-all-of-the-above.’
Tipping point is a hot button term and I used it deliberately. It is mainstream science and it is not going away. It does suggest a need for energy innovation and environmental stewardship. But then that is always rational policy regardless of global warming or tipping points. The energy solution is factory fabricated small nukes. Environmental stewardship is the responsibility of 7.8 billion people.
All of that is very mom and apple pie, Robert. It all goes out the window, however, when people are hungry and cold. This is why the warmunists are now panicking and blaming anything and everything that is not unreliables.
BTW, it is an old truism that if everybody is responsible for something nobody is responsible for it.
Nukes are not unreliable and private lands are best managed by farmers and foresters. Nukes provide the opportunity to virtually unlimited energy for a prosperous future. Farmers are the future. I’m sure they know a lot more than Dave.
“The best conserver of land in use will always be the small owner or operator, farmer or forester or both, who lives within a securely placed family and community, who knows how to use the land in the best way, and who can afford to do so.”
— Wendell Berry
Mismanagement of commons “The best conserver of land in use will always be the small owner or operator, farmer or forester or both, who lives within a securely placed family and community, who knows how to use the land in the best way, and who can afford to do so.”
— Wendell Berryleads to the collapse of vital resources.
Mismanagement of commons leads to a collapse of resources epitomised by the idea of the tragedy of the commons. There is another way. We can drill down to more effective management founded on local needs and conditions as determined by locals.
https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons
This is consistent with everything ConservAmerica values.
https://www.conservamerica.org/values
As Ronald Reagan said in mom and apple pie mode – it is “our great moral responsibility” to protect our shared environment for future generations.
I hope the old gal is still around, Robert. Sounds pretty smart.
The principles listed seem to be designed for small, cohesive agrarian societies with strong local laws without the undue influence of larger governments; the fundamentals underlying the formation of the original U.S. agrarian society. Some principles would seem to apply to small urban and suburban locales; you get larger than a township and things start getting wiggy.
Republican forms of government to hold them all together then comes to mind, with minority protections. That sounds like the U.S. Constitution. Too complex, however, for blog BS-ing.
Additionally, the great Ronald Reagan was a politician and entered apple pie mode often. Protecting the environment doesn’t mean we don’t alter it in productive ways.
That’s a bit of a mess. I’ll try again.
Nukes are not unreliable and private lands are best managed by farmers and foresters. Nukes provide the opportunity to virtually unlimited energy for a prosperous future. Farmers are the future. I’m sure they know a lot more than Dave.
“The best conserver of land in use will always be the small owner or operator, farmer or forester or both, who lives within a securely placed family and community, who knows how to use the land in the best way, and who can afford to do so.”
— Wendell Berry
Mismanagement of commons leads to a collapse of resources epitomised by the idea of the tragedy of the commons. There is another way. We can drill down to more effective management founded on local needs and conditions as determined by locals.
https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons
This is consistent with everything ConservAmerica values.
https://www.conservamerica.org/values
As Ronald Reagan said in mom and apple pie mode – it is “our great moral responsibility” to protect our shared environment for future generations.
I don’t see any change from the original posting, Robert.
BTW, farmers aren’t the only people that know alot more than me.
Dave obviously hasn’t looked hard enough. And the late Elinor Ostrom was both brilliant and dedicated. Dave’s facile off the cuff comments don’t do her justice. It’s about the self determination – avoiding both the privatization of shared resources and top down impositions by government – of local people from Chilean fisherman to the commons of Kitafugi – focussed on what works to sustain the resource into the future.
Robert, why are you attacking me when I agree with you?
You get what you sow Dave.
This is what stratospheric intrusion over North America looks like now. An eddy potential greater than 2 shows the extent of air from the north that does not mix with the surrounding air.
https://i.ibb.co/fHcvmTL/gfs-pvort-320-K-NA-f024.png
Sorry
“low heights of the 2 potential vorticity unit (PVU)”
Severe frost in Colorado and northern Texas. Snowstorm in Kansans.
https://i.ibb.co/n3RSvbP/Screenshot-1.png
‘Technically, an abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause. Chaotic processes in the climate system may allow the cause of such an abrupt climate change to be undetectably small.’
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2002. Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/10136.
First there is a need to identify the rate of change, work out why it happens and the definition follows. As I said above – when a threshold is crossed the physical system responds with positive and negative feedbacks until settling into a new climate state as the perturbation damps out. These are tipping points – among many.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/tpi-sst.png
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-015-2525-1
Typical winter temperatures (C) in the US.
https://i.ibb.co/stDPCq4/Screenshot-1.png
Even Georg Cantor described the quantity that grows beyond all bounds or diminishes to any desired minuteness but always remains finite as the improper infinite. Hilbert’s Hotel is an example of how mathematicians have conjured with a word in an attempt to contain (and control) something that remains beyond limit no matter how you look at it.
Hence the suggestion that catastrophic events can occur every 1,000 years on average at a random point on Earth seems to me to be a nonsense concept. Events will always occur randomly and that randomness may be determined by how an event at point one may indeed sometimes influence what happens at another seemingly unrelated point nearby or even far away. Randomness allows every possible combination of factors. It is human to look for patterns but we should be very cautious about what we find. Tipping points may satisfy a scientific need but that does not mean the concept is sound or suited to the purpose it is being put to.
Instead of a catastrophic event just suppose that a coin toss (binary) event occurs within every millimetre of a square centimetre at the same time every millisecond. The potential pattern is 2 to the power of 100 … or 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376 patterns every millisecond and that is only in two dimensions. Think about the mistakes that can be made about time, space, and big numbers when looking for patterns over areas we cannot monitor regularly. Think of the things we do not see and the influences at work we do not adequately understand because the theories are unclear.
The Earth contains an enormous amount of energy in dynamic patterns and no two moments on the planet are ever going to be the same because something, somewhere, will have changed many, many, many times over during every millisecond our ‘present’ passes us by and becomes the past. To believe we can influence climate by burning fuels to feed us, keep us warm, and get us from A to B is, IMO, madness. We should be focused entirely on what we do know for sure and we do know that nuclear energy will deliver what we need but our obsession with wind and solar ‘farms’ are as undesirable as any other ‘folly’ a human being has ever built.
We should use whatever nature provides as efficient and reliable fuel just as we have always done and let every generation improve rather than constantly berate itself. Too many people have been dumbed down and we all need to start fighting back against those who wish to cripple us as a race. I do not intend to go down without I fight and I know that I am not alone, not even close to it. The pendulum will swing as it always does, beliefs will change, and the bad influences among us will be found out. The baddies already know who they are and that is why they fight and try to shut us up. That is just one of randomness’s many very good abilities – to uncover the dishonesty and deceit in our nature and ensure it will not pay.
Far too much political posturing to be interesting. A solution must be nuclear and in the meantime we will continue to use coal, oil and gas. That seems abundantly evident.
And hydrological series do not consist of random data points.
Since “panta rhei” was pronounced by Heraclitus, hydrology and the objects it studies, such as rivers
and lakes, have offered grounds to observe and understand change and flux. Change occurs on all time scales, from minute to geological, but our limited senses and life span, as well as the short time window of instrumental observations, restrict our perception to the most apparent daily to yearly variations. As a result, our typical modelling practices assume that natural changes are just a short-term “noise” superimposed on the daily and annual cycles in a scene that is static and invariant in the long run. According to this perception, only an exceptional
and extraordinary forcing can produce a long-term change. 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
The numbers surrounding your tipping points, RIE, are enormous and way way beyond those I earlier gave and it is likely humans will have exhausted only a tiny number of the possibilities involved before the Sun dies. So why scare people unnecessarily when there is so much else in reality for most of us to worry about if it isn’t about control for control sake?
They ae not my tipping points. But I suppose you mean that they happen so infrequently we are unlikely to encounter them. But whatever the frequency of megafloods and megadroughts, abrupt warming or cooling of many degrees C regionally in years or decades, glacials and interglacials or perpetual turbulent dynamics and with an ice, cloud, hydrology and biology response they are inevitable and leave a mark on the planet. Just in the Holocene. Nothing to worry about but simply how a globally coupled, nonlinear, spatiotemporal chaotic Earth system works. To prepare for the future one needs to understand the past. And if you are not here to understand – wtf are you doing?
Pretentious prick. And what is this future we are supposed to prepare for when we don’t even prepare for the past?
That is the what I said Dave you obnoxious little prat.
What is the future we are supposed to prepare for, Robert? BTW, preparing for everything is preparing for nothing so don’t bother with that.
Bumptious misrepresentation. Energy innovation, better land and water management and resilient infrastructure for whatever nature throws at us are the basis for building prosperous communities in vibrant landscapes.
Robert, you could have just said motherhood and apple pie and made as much sense.
It makes perfect sense to everyone but Dave.
e.g. https://www.conservamerica.org/
Robert, it appears your ego does not allow your brain to process what I actually said: I support nuclear power and letting farmers farm intelligently. I don’t support allowing dilettantes to dictate the processes.
‘“The best conserver of land in use will always be the small owner or operator, farmer or forester or both, who lives within a securely placed family and community, who knows how to use the land in the best way, and who can afford to do so.”
— Wendell Berry
I think I actually quoted this from the ConservAmerica site. Dave’s bumptious misrepresentations continue.
And that contradicts what I said how?
It contradicts again Dave’s bumptious collectivist assertion.
Well, Robert, your recent comments indicate you have degenerated into incoherence. Please come up with something deserving comment.
Dave’s commentary is exclusively bumptious disparagement.
This bumpkin only disparages ideas that deserve disparagement.
What’s the difference between a once in 1m years event and a once in 1bn years event if April 1st 2022 happens to be the day, month, and year
it happens? Unless we knew what exactly happened in the past 1bn years we wouldn’t have a clue about a repetition would we?
It’s a big flaw in our records and it isn’t helped by metereologists tampering with the data of contemporary stuff just to prove temperatures are going where they want them to go – up. That is similar to the pretence of a charlatan using a crystal ball or a pack of cards to prove they know your past in order to prove they can tell your future … and it seems to be an increasing problem with climate science.
RIE let’s his slip show much too frequently for my liking. Try cutting the ad hominens out would be my advice.
Lass, Robert demands that everyone agree with every part of his world view. He will rhetorically beat people around the head and ears with voluminous factoids until they give up in disgust and go home, leaving him the playing field.
I did suggest that the past 2.6 million years was the period of most relevance to modern conditions.
We have nothing from this commenter but bloviation and insults.
Are you describing your comments, Robert?
‘What’s the difference between a once in 1m years event and a once in 1bn years event if April 1st 2022 happens to be the day, month, and year
it happens? Unless we knew what exactly happened in the past 1bn years we wouldn’t have a clue about a repetition would we?’ UK lass
Nothing but bloviation. We know something about paleoclimate. Not enough to pick the next glacial tipping point – but it has happened and seems related to thermohaline circulation in low NH summer insolating. Despite Dave’s abusive and aggressive pettifogging quibbles.
OK, Robert, let’s try it in a different manner: What does that particular factoid have to do with mankind’s decisionmaking today?
Glacials and interglacials are a fact of the Pleistocene. What causes glacial transitions seems to be warming and freshening of the Arctic. This may be of some scientific and general interest.
What causes warming and freshening of the Arctic over the Pleistocene?
… ‘There’s no such thing as normal’ …
… Is as good a place to start if we are serious about understanding our planet’s climate and certainly true of all things to do with nature. But then Samantha Stevenson of UC Santa Barbara spoils it all by galloping off to computer models which have absolutely nothing to do with the natural order of things, and haven’t got a single prediction more right than any other humble human who may stack everything they own on being right just the once.
Whether human or a machine designed by a human we are not good at predictions where randomness rules. We do have sophisticated gambling dens which may be slightly fairer than slot machines, but mathematics will demonstrate that even with a 50-50 chance you will be bankrupted pretty soon unless you have the perfect defensive strategy (which you will wisely keep to yourself).
When it comes to the future I wouldn’t trust many of these so called scientists to show me a better future. These populist scientists and their political followers have already got a whole raft of bets 100% wrong. But worse than that, they are still throwing other people’s good money after bad – constantly – and not producing evidence of improvement.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/15/the-longest-drought/
UK-Weather Lass “RIE let’s his slip show much too frequently for my liking. Try cutting the ad hominens out would be my advice.”
Yes. Luckily we have his own words to reply with. Ellison said: “Examples and not just ideologically motivated ad hominin. Do you imagine you can convince the world of what? You’ll have to supply some details preferably supported by empirical science. Rejecting something you don’t understand or don’t like for whatever nutty reason just doesn’t do it.”
Letting his slip show is just another way of distracting from the absurdities of his replies. “Oh look! A squirrel!” If we reply to Ellison, is it ad hominoid?
‘And just where did you find this ‘word salad’ Dave. Examples and not just ideologically motivated ad hominin. Do you imagine you can convince the world of what? You’ll have to supply some details preferably supported by empirical science.’
Ad hom? Jiminy indulges in baseless character assassination – and quotes out of context – far too consistently and frequently for it to be an accident.
Zealots use global warming to insist on the transformation of economies and society. I insist on rational economics, democracy and the rule of law. But there is climate risk in tipping points – assuming that the future will resemble the past.
Power from nuclear fission is now a mature technology – even if currently there are billions being invested to perfect it. It’s time for a coalition of the we are sick and tired of wind and solar and we need a real solution. I’ll work on the slogan.
Robert, I don’t know if you are leading from behind or just now jumping on the bandwagon. Anyway, demonstrations of your ego constantly amaze me.
Again? Dave’s trolling purely for his own amusement is completely pointless. I can’t even say that I – and a much broader spectrum of society as the video shows – am in favor of nuclear energy without attracting his interpersonal BS. Culture warrior madness. The other side of the coin to David Appell. The risk of following Dave into his ideological rathole is terminal irrelevancy.
I was trying to suggest that railing against a 100% wind and solar is a strawman fallacy. Even the Democrats are heavily investing in advanced nuclear reactors.
I quite like technology – I have been following developments in nuclear engineering for decades. I follow many things – ideally this adds up over decades to knowledge and personnel development.
I noted yesterday that General Atomics and Framatome have reopened the Training, Research, Isotopes, General Atomics (TRIGA) research reactor fuel assembly facility. There have been 66 TRIGA reactors around the world. Most of them still in operation providing for training of future nuclear technologists.
This provides the capacity to build fuel cores for their 50 MWe factory fabricated gas cooled fast neutron reactor collaboration. The design is on the same principles as GA’s EM2. A great design from two of the giants of the nuclear industry – with a prototype expected by the end of the decade and commercialisation by 2035.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2016/06/18/safe-cheap-and-abundant-energy-back-to-the-nuclear-energy-future-2/
Who cares? Will you go help them build it?
I’m looking for an entry point for exposure to select nuclear technologies.
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This is an excellent review of the math and physics of turbulent fluid flow in oceans and atmosphere. I don’t know who wrote it, when or why. It seems to be coursework. Turbulence is why there are tipping points in climate.
http://people.atmos.ucla.edu/jcm/turbulence_course_notes/turbulent_flows.pdf
Here is a piece of research that suggests a whole lot more work is required to add some flesh to the bones of UK historic weather records. It was organised by Reading University (with links to the town’s local UK Met Office)
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/mar/25/1855-was-driest-year-in-uk-history-volunteer-research-project-finds
In summary Dr Mark McCarthy, the head of the Met Office’s National Climate Information Centre, said: “The UK rainfall record is notoriously variable, with extremes of weather presenting us with drought and flood. The more we can shine a light into the earlier chapters and extremes within the rainfall record, the better we are able to understand the risks presented to us by climate change and future extreme weather events.”
Pity a little more of this kind of enterprise wasn’t present before climate scientists started jumping to conclusions about extreme weather all over the planet.
Uk Weather lass.
I have met with Dr Mark McCarthy at the Met office in Exeter. A fine Scientist.
There are literally tens of thousands of weather records in the Met Office Library and archives, a resource I use. Many of these records have not been digitised so do not in effect exist to desk bound researchers. There are even some records on vellum which I had translated, dating to the 14th Century.
The trouble is that, by definition, people did not live in the coldest or wettest parts of the country (such as the highest parts of the Lake District) so records are sporadic. The Met office now has a weather station on the extremely wet Honister pass so collecting data that didn’t exist before. Also weather records get lost or destroyed (blame the Reformation) or were not recorded in the first place as there was no one around to witness it or did not get recorded due to lack of literacy.
My Own weather records dating back 2000 years show cataclysmic weather at times far worse than events over the last 100 years or so-the period the Met Office tends to concentrate on. Sorting out old weather records means discounting legend, superstition and religious references although the Roman material was pretty good.
So this new research is very welcome but there is far more still to be tabulated.
tonyb
Thanks for the additional info, tonyb.
I have accessed much data myself (the British History Online archive is a searchable and rich preserve of digitised stuff) but what intrigues me about this study is that it was conceived and operated during lockdowns to give volunteers something to do.
I wouldn’t wish it become necessary to lock us down to get work like this done but it does suggest there is an enormous amount of data out there and online which offers us an opportunity to see ever deeper into the past and thus put together a better image of the present.
I was told by the librarian at the Met office that the Scientists in the building rarely visited them, hence my comment about desk top researchers not seeing the whole picture. Stuff is being digitised now but how selective it is I don’t know.
Their even more interesting archives are several hundred yards away so that takes a real effort to research and I was told by the Met office there was no money for research of this nature these days.
Australia did a similar volunteer data input some 5 or 6 tears ago but the criteria was quite tight (i.e had to be in Stephenson screens)
tonyb
Excellent discussion.
My problem is with this citation: ‘The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must compel political and economic action on emissions.’ which is emblematic for the alarmism underlying the words “tipping point.”
Ellison begins with an implied definition of tipping point as an abrupt change in state, but alarmists, like Lenton et al., cited, use it as an irreversible change in in state, the better to produce the desired political, sociological, and psycological effects. We think of stresses accumulating in the branch we’re sitting on until, abruptly, it breaks and we fall.
So, in sense 1, yes there have been many tipping points in the climate record. Indeed, as Ellison notes, we have had eight glaciations in the last million years of this current Ice Age, with eight interval warmings including the current. And since emerging from the LGM around16,000 years ago, we have had the dramatic plunge into the Younger Dryas and the equally dramatic reversal reach the Holocene Optimum about 8,000 years ago. All of these changes, tipping point or no, began with no preceding change in CO2.
We have been cooling gradually since the Holocene Optimum with interval warmings – Minoan, Roman, Medieval, and Modern – all of them cooler that the HO. And in our temperature records, the largest fastest change was in the CET and Armagh records of 1680-1720.
Indeed, in sense 2, there has never been a tipping point in the last 550 million years: not at the P-T extinction warming (to at least 28°C), nor, more surprisingly, at the “snowball earth” events when glaciers reached almost to the equator and albedo increased dramatically.
So the use of the term is at best ambiguous, at worst misleading, and we would be well advised not to use it.
‘The Earth’s climate system is highly nonlinear: inputs and outputs are not proportional, change is often episodic and abrupt, rather than slow and gradual, and multiple equilibria are the norm. While this is widely accepted, there is a relatively poor understanding of the different types of nonlinearities, how they manifest under various conditions, and whether they reflect a climate system driven by astronomical forcings, by internal feedbacks, or by a combination of both.’ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B:CLIM.0000037493.89489.3f
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.
In the spatiotemporal chaotic Earth system there is a ‘deterministic limit’ to numerical weather and climate modelling. That the system is chaotic is the overwhelmingly endorsed scientific paradigm. So we have both unpredictability and sensitive dependence.
So we don’t want to let CO2 levels drop. You never know if that might trigger a catastrophic change, like plants dying and such. It’s already really low at 0.04 percent. We are already on the edge.
Sounds like a reasonable explanation for why we should depend on historical data rather than theory and mathematics. The world will tell you what’s happened, if you ask the right questions. In 550 million years there has never been a temperature change preceded by a CO2 change.
Theory is required to explain observations. But Jiminy has little of either.
https://history.aip.org/history/exhibits/climate/rapid.htm
Before the industrial revolution – new CO2 was added to the atmosphere by volcanoes – when in excess over carbon sinks concentrations in the atmosphere increased. There is respiration and photosynthesis but these tend to balance necessarily. And there are always feedbacks in ice, dust, cloud and water vapor.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/65-million-years-temps-co2.png
Feedbacks include a warming and freshening Arctic slowing AMOC and cooling northern latitudes with runaway ice sheet growth. This is a regular feature of the Pleistocene and we ae overdue.
Absolutely right, Elly. And in 550 million years there has never been a temperature change preceded by a CO2 change. And in the better-studied past 20,000 years, never a reversal preceded by CO2 – emergence from the LGM, rapid descent into the Younger Dryas, rapid rise to the Holocene Optimum, gradual cooling since then punctuated by the Minoan, Roman, Medieval, and current Warmings, descent into and emergence from the LIA – all without any preceding CO2 change. We won’t say that CO2 can’t control climate, just that it hasn’t yet. The correlation of course is very good, about as good as that between sex and marriage.
Jiminy is a good example of crude blogospheric science asserted dogmatically and persistently. He says the same things over and over. No one much believes him. I will agree to disagree and ignore him.
Elly, you might try to refute anything that I’ve said. You might learn something. Like the difference between causality and correlation. Try just one. Any one.
Oh, and try to do it without the ad hominem. So much more pleasant to be refuted that way.
Jiminy needs to get his theoretical ducks in a row before he is worth refuting – and if he finds the truth as I see it insulting I can’t help that. He should try refuting this.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00322-9
Wrong link – https://nsidc.org/sites/nsidc.org/files/files/NRCabruptcc.pdf
Elly, please try to remember – I know that gets difficult as we get older – that I began this with a dissent to – not you, but a citation in your otherwise excellent article. You brushed by the compliment and distilled an insult of some kind. I can’t fathom your thought process.
If carbon dioxide gets too low, life on Earth could tip into the ole Cosmic Dumpster.
The Earth system consists of very many interacting parts. It is inherently sensitive to small changes and unstable – but it may be ergodic. There are physical, biological and chemical limits to change. Le Chatelier’s principle may put a floor under atmospheric CO2 concentration. But we haven’t died yet – knock on wood.
Well, wrong-link-Ellison, I can’t find anything there to refute, nor can I fathom why you asked. I requested politely that you refute any one of my statements – just one, any one – and this is what you resort to, this absurd subterfuge to camouflage your incompetence to defend your faith/truth based on… what?
The Earth system consists of very many interacting parts that vary across space and temporally. Patterns in oceans and atmosphere that duck and weave in eddying spirals of spatiotemporal chaos. It is deterministically chaotic and so sensitive to small changes and can and does shift abruptly to another state. No need for alarm – but forewarned is forearmed. For physical systems such as our beautiful planet – chaotic change is ergodic – there are physical, biological and chemical limits to change set by natural laws.
So overwhelmingly says science and math. The observation to support that supposition is that we are still alive and kicking.
You prove me wrong Jiminy.
Sounds fine to me. I’ve never said or implied otherwise. Why do you straw man me?
My contention, uncontested by you or anyone else, is that CO2 at this time at these levels is not in control of climate, and that we are not in control of CO2. I’ve given historical and theoretical evidence for those statements.
Now you prove me wrong.
Elly? Just one. Any one.
🤣 CO2 is not in control of climate. I don’t think any one things is. It may be a trigger for climate transitions.
Robert?
Knock knock, who’s there?
We are not in control of CO2.
You can’t come in.
Unless jiminy has a convincing tale of why today’s interglacial is different than the others – I’m going with we are adding to atmospheric CO2.
https://assets.weforum.org/editor/large_EEYnarb17Mwon7wYfBZ_V6gUQ3hwp6_tpzpPzAMVLRw.png
“I’m going with we are adding to atmospheric CO2.”
As well you should, Elly. We add at least 4% to the annual input of CO2 to the atmosphere. And then there are those natural experiments…
No – not an explanation at all for the puzzle of why CO2 levels in the atmosphere are so different this time around.
But Elly, different from what? CO2 levels have ranged from 210 to 8,000 ppm, with no tipping points. That is not even responsive to “We are not in control of CO2” Can you not address the point?
CO2 levels in past interglacials was some 280 ppm. It is not today. So what’s the explanation for this difference Jiminy?
“CO2 levels in past interglacials was some 280 ppm. It is not today. So what’s the explanation for this difference Jiminy?”
Well, Elly, at the start of the Hirnantian Ice Age, CO2 was around 4,000 ppm, and at the reversal to head back to 22C it was 3,000. What’s the reason for that, Elly?
Any idea about “We are not in control of CO2”?
Perhaps “Let us hope it is not true; but if it is true, let us hope it does not become generally known.”?
‘Measurements of air in ice cores show that for the past 800,000 years up until the 20th century, the atmospheric CO2 concentration stayed within the range 170 to 300 parts per million (ppm), making the recent rapid rise to more than 400 ppm over 200 years particularly remarkable [figure 3].’ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-change-evidence-causes/question-7/
https://royalsociety.org/-/media/Royal_Society_Content/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/fig3-large.jpg
Science agrees to disagree Jiminy. We are in charge of CO2 and CO2 is a climate forcing. Respond to what I said instead of going around again in your disinformation spin cycle.
“Measurements of air in ice cores show that for the past 800,000 years…”
I regret to inform you that the Hirnantian Ice Age was a bit more than 800,000 years ago.
And whether we have added to CO2 or not (we have), we are not in control of atmospheric CO2 as witness 1929-1931[30% drop in output] and, more disappointingly, 2020 when Arizona State University climate scientist Randall Cerveny, unaware of that, expressed his disappointment that “We had had some hopes that, with last year’s COVID scenario, perhaps the lack of travel and the lack of industry [-10% drop in output] might act as a little bit of a brake. But what we’re seeing is, frankly, it has not.”
Are you not able to address a point without mangling it beyond recognition?
You’ve already agreed that CO2, one of many forcings, is not in control of climate at this time at these levels. Is it not time to grudgingly agree that we are not in control of CO2? It would make me feel ever so much better.
Jiminy in his cups.
“Jiminy in his cups.”
Thank you, Elly.
Yet another demonstration of your inability to address any statement of fact, and your unwillingness to acknowledge that.
No worries, cobber. You’ve always got ad hominem. That should work.
It’s the only explanation for forgetting that I did respond and failing to respond to me but instead repeating the same nonsense I have responded to over years. Sorry Jiminy – I am getting off your mad hurdy-gurdy.
Here you claimed to be a hydrologist. https://judithcurry.com/2011/02/09/decadal-variability-of-clouds/
Now you claim to be something else. Maybe you are just a poser.
🤣
Thanks, Robert. Now take we are not in control of CO2.
Robert? Hello? We are not in control of CO2?
The proper reply of course is:
“Let us hope it is not true; but if it is true, let us hope it does not become generally known.”
I hope it’s not necessary to mention that, in addition to our diminished output not affecting the rise of CO2, our increase in WWII and postwar reconstruction didn’t affect the rate of rise in the slightest.
We are adding about about 2 ppm CO2 to the atmosphere annually – a 10% drop in emissions in 2020 is 0.2 ppm.
Jiminy can’t answer the question of why this interglacial is different than others over the past 800,000 years. It is probably a mistake to respond – but he repeats constantly the same silly and arrogant blogoscience year after year without ever broadening his perspective. I like my sources to be a little more authoritative than Jiminy.
The rational response to the risk of abrupt climate change triggered by AGW is an orderly transition to nuclear power. To get back to the topic at hand.
‘Abrupt climate changes were especially common when the climate system was being forced to change most rapidly. Thus, greenhouse warming and other human alterations of the earth system may increase the possibility of large, abrupt, and unwelcome regional or global climatic events. The abrupt changes of the past are not fully explained yet, and climate models typically underestimate the size, speed, and extent of those changes. Hence, future abrupt changes cannot be predicted with confidence, and climate surprises are to be expected.’ National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2002. Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/10136.
But Elly, the only difference is that this one has lasted longer than most. The previous, the Eemian 130,000 years ago, was 2C warmer, with sea level at least 6m higher, and CO2 280 ppm. You can’t explain that either.
My explanation is that CO2 at these levels is not in control of climate, and we are not in control of CO2.
You’ve been finally forced to agree that “🤣 CO2 is not in control of climate. April 6, 2022 at 5:27 pm.” I suggest that agreement on the second is overdue.
As I said – we are in control of CO2 in the atmosphere. The difference in CO2 concentrations this interglacial is the result of 200 years of anthropogenic emissions.
Yes, you have said that, Elly, and you’re still wrong, as shown by the facts you’ve chosen not to address. “We are not in control of atmospheric CO2 as witness 1929-1931[30% drop in output] and, more disappointingly, 2020 when Arizona State University climate scientist Randall Cerveny, unaware of that, expressed his disappointment that “We had had some hopes that, with last year’s COVID scenario, perhaps the lack of travel and the lack of industry [-10% drop in output] might act as a little bit of a brake. But what we’re seeing is, frankly, it has not.” And the followup “I hope it’s not necessary to mention that, in addition to our diminished output not affecting the rise of CO2, our increase in WWII and postwar reconstruction didn’t affect the rate of rise in the slightest.”
If you once again choose to not attempt to contest those facts, you are in a state of cognitive dissonance, again, when you monkishly repeat “we are in control of CO2 in the atmosphere.” But we are getting used to the repetition.
Jiminy has said that many times. I have discussed it but I am not prepared to indulge an endless roundabout.
Spatiotemporal chaos and tipping are much more fun.
e.g. https://watertechbyrie.com/2017/01/12/an-earnest-discovery-of-climate-causality/
‘Tsonis, Swanson et al. identified shift circa 2000. Stadium wave warming period that began in 1976 ended around 2000, we have been in multi-decadal ocean driven cooling period since then. We need another 20 yrs to make sure we are understanding this correctly.’ JC
The state of the Pacific Ocean shifts episodically with major climate effects across the globe – including on surface warming. Identified as ocean surface temperature shifts in the easten Pacific and changes in the trajectory of surface warming. They are the result of turbulent fluid dynamics in globally coupled ocean and atmosphere flows. Globally coupled – hence the stadium wave. These are tipping points at a decadal scale.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2022/04/rss-temp.png
A shift in 2000 – another in 2016? Is there a signal in the satellite atmospheric temps? I have been at this for 40 years – and yes we need another 20. The details may be fuzzy – it will come into focus with time – the fundamental science is correct.
Interesting the Elly can ignore the CO2 history of 1929-1931 and the somewhat less impressive 2020 to repeat his mantra that we are in control of CO2 in the atmosphere. It has a drumbeat, but it’s very repetitive. Not only is there no evidence for it, there’s good evidence against it. Not a reasonable assumption. Speaks to a certain mindset.
Jiminy is looking for God only knows what in 1929-1931 CO2 data. The COVID blip might have reduced anthropogenic emissions in 2020 by 0.2 ppm. It is set against large natural variability. One thing for sure – whatever he is doing it isn’t science.
NASA ice core data. The confidence limits are +/- 1.2 ppm.
1929 307.2
1930 307.5
1931 308.0
Annual Mauna Loa – uncertainty of some 0.3 ppm
2019 411.43
2020 413.95
2021 416.11
Oh, super! Elly is equating ice core data with anthropogenic emissions! When even now we emit little more than 4% to the annual input to the atmosphere! Well, we never did depend on his thinking.
I guess he didn’t read my note that Arizona State University climate scientist Randall Cerveny, unaware of [1929-1931], expressed his disappointment that “We had had some hopes that, with last year’s COVID scenario, perhaps the lack of travel and the lack of industry [-10% drop in output] might act as a little bit of a brake. But what we’re seeing is, frankly, it has not.”
Oh well.
He might have noticed, if he had cared to look, that the CO2 produced during WWII and postwar reconstruction did not affect the trend in CO2 rise at all.
But he doesn’t look at what he doesn’t want to see…
Anthropogenic emissions – some 36.3 billion tonnes in 2021 – adds a couple of parts per million to the atmosphere annually. The 4% is a meme that comes up occasionally. Natural sources and sinks of carbon roughly balance – the standout is human emissions steadily increasing over the past 200 years. With atmospheric CO2 exponentially increasing in recent decades as emissions exponentially increased.
“With atmospheric CO2 exponentially increasing in recent decades as emissions exponentially increased.” That is either a blatant lie or an unaccountable error. The CO2 rise is linear, with occasional inflections since 1840. I will allow Elly to make the choice.
And what Elly really should know, as a land and water guy, is that 30%of the increase in agriculture since 1950 is attributed to CO2. Or does he think that human-emitted CO2 is treated differently in nature?
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that, unfortunately.
Freeman Dyson thought that the best response to rising CO2, if we wished to do that for some reason, would be planting vegetation. But the coccolithophores should really take care of the increases easily.
Sigh. What is needed is some actual science citations Jiminy.
https://judithcurry.com/2022/04/09/week-in-review-climate-edition/#comment-975626
My money is on cows to fix the future.
Oh and here’s the ‘linear increase’ in atmospheric CO2.
https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png
Elly, you call that exponential? I call it linear with inflections. Please note it goes back all the way to 1960. My specification was 1840 to now. You really should try to be fair. It’s hard, though, I guess.
He doesn’t like it when I ignore his ‘specification’.
https://www.google.com/search?q=CO2+EMISSION&rlz=1C1RXQR_en-GBAU936AU936&sxsrf=APq-WBtST0qC1CZ0TZF99oorHzAZ2enDaQ:1650012013598&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiN98ff1ZX3AhV1SWwGHbROAXsQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=437&bih=375&dpr=1.88
Even on the sceptic spectrum Jiminy’s assertions are extreme fringe.
Lets try this.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2022/04/annual-co2-emissions-per-country-1.png
Robert I. Ellison | April 15, 2022 “://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2022/04/annual-co2-emissions-per-country-1.png”
–
No bias there RIE?
–
“Global Carbon Project is a Global Research Project of Future Earth and a research partner of the World Climate Research Programme.It was formed to work with the international science community to establish a common and mutually agreed knowledge base to support policy debate and action to slow down and ultimately stop the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”
Feel free to supply your own facts.
Robert I. Ellison | April 14, 2022 at 7:21 pm |
“As I said – we are in control of CO2 in the atmosphere. The difference in CO2 concentrations this interglacial is the result of 200 years of anthropogenic emissions.”
–
Or simply the warming of the oceans.
So where’s the data?
And why didn’t it happen in past interglacials? That’s a stubborn anomaly.
You can choose to go down the gurgler with fringe extremists who have been futilely swapping the same memes on climate blogs for 30 years. Or you can chill, take the middle ground and provide for the future. Your children will have new respect for you.
Robert I. Ellison
You should note there are a lot of choices in life.
1. “You can choose to go down the gurgler with fringe extremists who have been futilely swapping the same memes on climate blogs for 30 years. ”
2. “Or you can chill, take the middle ground and provide for the future.”‘
3. You could become a fringe extremist and try to save a world that never asked you to save it
One of the worst things you can do in life is believe your role in life is to help other people.
Basically it stems from a belief that you are superior to them, know more than they do and take pity on them for their ignorance.
A common trait among missionaries, politicians and health experts, and fun police.
Such people are often mortally offended to find out that people do not want their help and would rather they go away and stop wrecking the party.
Worse, they think that people who disagree with their views should be punished until they repent and see the light.
–
Moralists, anti smokers, Do gooders and their ilk.
All under one collective group name.
What was it?
Parents.
You would make a good parent RIE.
–
“Your children will have new respect for you.”
–
Right.
What a fool I am.
https://foolfoundation.org/
Here I thought that our job was to build the future we want for our children.
https://www.conservamerica.org/
And not to babble on inconsequentially about missionaries.
Robert I. Ellison | April 15, 2022
“What a fool I am.”
Only if married to Kathy
“Here I thought that our job was to build the future we want for our children.”
Nah, our job is to have children and get out of their way
“And not to babble on inconsequentially about missionaries.”
Well, if that’s your position…. How can I argue with that?
The difference in thought is the I/we confusion.
The future you want to build because you know best is not necessarily so.
Certainly not the future most other people want
and not in the way you want to do it.
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Try a little bit of lateral thinking.
Put yourself in other people’s shoes.
Get a little bit of perspective and give a little bit of hope and credence to others.
–
Remember when you push other people, as do Gooders always do, that there is natural pushback and the antagonism you display develops more antagonism.
Judith,
As a committed do gooder I am going to put down some thoughts on a way to stop the war using social media.
If you feel it is solid enough to put up as a post, or if others can put up a similar idea in a better format it would be appreciated.
Hi Angech send me an email curry.judith at gmail.com
Tipping Points,
Well here we are at a big one
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Stop the Ukraine war
The power of individuals to enact change on their own is minute.
Collective action is a little better but is limited takes a lot of time and effort.
Social media allows Multiple groups across the world to engage in collective action at the same real time.
This magnifies the ability to create change quickly.
The wear in the Ukraine needs action on multiple fronts.
It needs leadership from the major representatives of our countries and grass roots action.
The United Nations must unite and put out a call for the war to stop immediately.
The aggressor, in this case Russia, should be stripped of all rights of representation at all levels until the war stops.
Europe and Nato must issue similar calls for the war to stop and offer to put in peacekeeping forces now.
The United Nations, Europe and Nato should send peace keeping forces in regardless now.
Not to fight unless fired on.
Only to go in if Ukraine supports their coming in.
To leave immediately if the Ukraine requests.
With a large number of countries represented by troops on the ground Russia will have to halt its indiscriminate bombing.
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The USA should also offer to send troops in on these conditions
All other world countries including the big two India and China should help.
People on the ground, not fighting but ready to respond would create a situation the Russian army would not want to upset.
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Volunteers could be called up to go in such a situation, similar to the Spanish Civil war, not to fight but too prevent fighting.
The slow build up and reluctance to take even a defensive helpful position has created an extremely bad image for all nations.
This would not be needed if the nations of the world do what they should have done in the first place.
Time for them to step forwards and act, not aggressively, but defensively, saying we are all in this together.
Send enough people in so the Russians cannot kill people.
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The other side of the coin is the Russian people themselves.
A reckoning needs to be called within Russia.
Over the last 10 years the Russians have been mixing better with the rest of the world on the internet and logistically.
People in St Petersberg and Moscow have enjoyed freedoms that they thought were guaranteed until now.
Social Media impact must register and does register.
Everyone who has an option, tweeting, facebooking [if allowed], phoning should do it.
They need to push and push for peace with their politicians.
They must put out a call for the Russian people to take action and demand their leader change course.
This is possible in the new Russia, and needs people to be reassured that their actions will be supported.
Hi Angech, I love big ideas that look from an out of the box perspective. You are exactly right that social media has the potential power to bring global democracy on global issues.
Naturally, such power is a dangerous rival to governmental power and thus would never be promoted by an official authority. (They want to control it.)
Obviously, the power of the global collective could also be dangerous if misinformed. Therefore the first value of the social media global collective should be to demand straight reporting and perhaps expose and punish corrupt media. Ferreting out truth could be a challenge but if the mediums are free to do so, uncensored, nature might lead to the correct result. After all, the only universal value is truth.
Elon Musk, whom you might have heard of, may have been thinking along these same lines in recent weeks as he is trying to turn Twitter into a true town square (but likely much more.)
Ron
I would say that social media has sown more discord than healing. Many anarchist groups use social media to call up their troops, institute insurrection then maintain it. Govts maniuplate us through it including climate change and covid
Russia is winning the propaganda war in Russia because of social media
As we can see with much of social media, including Twitter, is is filled with hate So not sure there is any proof it can bring global democracy-looks the opposite to me.
tonyb
Tony,
My assessment is that all new technology gets mishandled. The temptation is always to explore the limits of a new power.
Modern culture is the now perpetually in the process of maturing and trying to responsibly incorporate the new powers to make society optimally functional and prosperous. That happens all in the boiling pot of diverse interests, fighting for their values are made a priority. Sometimes that gets ugly. But those negative examples provide an education to society as a whole.
Angech is perfectly correct that there is a strong global consensus among citizenry that WWII type blitzkrieg invasion for territorial expansion is wrong. These rare types of events present an opportunity for global democratic action and perhaps a temporary unity.
That saying is a little dated. In the new order beggars are voters that make irresistible targets for grooming by corrupt media to be manipulated into thinking that they have a human right to be given horses. Then when they get a government horse they find they can’t afford to take care of it even if they had the motivation to. The horse dies or escapes to join a wild gang that eats their subsistence crops.
If wishes were horses then beggars would ride.
And if wishes were fishes we’d all castanet. Ole!
Social media is where the irrational interrupt the sane.
“Social media” wanted to be shooting down Russian aircraft with American aircraft in March- full out WWIII.
That’s because “social media” told us from December to February that Biden mumbling about sanctions (unless a “light incursion”) would absolutely deter Putin from invading Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the EU chit-chatted about whether it was actually necessary to shut down the pipeline to Russian gas fields that the EU paid for after the last Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In other words, “social media” is divorced from reality and serves as little more than a platform to share fairy tales.
‘ConservAmerica educates the public and engages elected officials to promote commonsense, market-based solutions to today’s environmental and energy challenges. To pass on a better world to our children and grandchildren, a strong economy and a clean environment must go hand in hand.’ https://www.conservamerica.org/
We have some more modest goals – a strong economy and environmental conservation and restoration. Focus on what’s important angy. You will find most of your scattergun verbosity honed down to better effect.
I get carried away at times
I wonder if there will ever be a substantive response to “We are not in control of CO2” that references 1929-1931, 1941-1950, and 2020. I rather doubt it. It would be most painful.
I have given detailed responses yet again. Jiminy rinses and repeats.
Those “responses” have been evasions to the questions:
1. why did CO2 continue its languid rise during the 30% decrease in human CO2 output in 1929-1931.
2. why did CO2 continue its languid rise unaltered during WWII and postwar reconstruction 1941-1950?
3. why did Arizona State University climate scientist Randall Cerveny, unaware of [1929-1931] express his disappointment that “We had had some hopes that, with last year’s COVID scenario, perhaps the lack of travel and the lack of industry [~10% drop in output] might act as a little bit of a brake. But what we’re seeing is, frankly, it has not.”
4. are these not contravailing facts to the statement that “we are in control of CO2”?
Given that we produce a little more than 4% of the annual CO2 input to the atmosphere, and have no control over the other 96%, nor over the CO2 sinks, it’s implausible on the face of it to suggest with a straight face that we are in control of CO2.
Again? I have more interesting science, economics and policy to discuss.
Ellison’s thought process is interesting. He doesn’t contest the facts, only the conclusion.
Jiminy’s strange blogoscience is that 1929-31 and 2020 are conclusive of something or other.
https://judithcurry.com/2022/03/05/tipping-points-in-earths-geophysical-and-biological-systems/#comment-975774
And he still hasn’t explained why this interglacial is different to the others. He simply goes around in circles until I get dizzy.
https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/2021-07/ClimateDashboard-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-image-20210505-1400px.jpg
We are in control of CO2, CO2 is a climate forcing and tipping points are ubiquitous in the Earth system. That’s the dominant climate science paradigm. Jiminy may disagree but his views are fringe extreme even for sceptics.
This interglacial is not different from the others except in lasting a bit longer than usual and having CO2 a bit higher.
The CO2 level is a distinction without a difference. It is unacceptable to ignore CO2 levels in previous Ice Ages – the Hirnantian, for example – and become anxious about the interglaciations of the last million years. The Eemian, 130,000 ya, only had 280 ppm CO2, it’s true, but the global temp was perhaps 2C higher, and the sea level at least 6 m higher. CO2 ShmeeO2.
If CO2 is not in control of climate, as Ellison has agreed, then the question is irrational. Yes, he is dizzy.
I did not say that those facts were conclusive, merely that they were countervailing to a statement without any foundation of its own.
I know it’s a bit counterfactual but ocean and atmospheric oxygen levels are going down despite the observed CO2 “greening” of the planet. It matters what kind of “green” is keeping things in balance. Algae, forests or industrial farming?
https://www.climatelevels.org/
Very interesting. But isn’t O2 per meg relative, not absolute?
‘Oxygen concentrations are currently declining at roughly 19 per meg per year, or about 4 ppm per year. One “per meg” indicates one molecule out of 1,000,000 oxygen molecules, or roughly one molecule in 4.8 million molecules of air.’ https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/oxygen/modern_records.html
It means that CO2 produced in combustion and respiration is larger than carbon fixation by photosynthesis.
e.g. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue-2.1/broecker.htm
So it is relative to all the molecules in the air, and the absolute value of O2 is still around 20.54% wet or 20.95% dry air, eh? Less hand-waving would be nice.
The change is tiny – hence the meq units. While oxygen is abundant – the concentration is changing.
The Eemian (130 to 114 ky BP) saw a warmer Northern Hemisphere climate caused by higher summer insolation. As a result, the Greenland ice sheet was 30 to 60% smaller than today.
The difference today is that CO2 production by combustion and respiration exceed carbon fixation and oxygen production by photosynthesis.
https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/2021-07/ClimateDashboard-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-image-20210505-1400px.jpg
The problem with one eyed fanatics is one track minds.
The O2 meg ratio of course was developed to reference the prevalence of the 18O isotope relative to all O atoms.
And the difference with the Eemian which is being neglected is the CO2 of 280 vs our 420 ppm…as well as the higher temp and higher sea level.
I wish I could find a way to allow him to retreat with dignity. But it seems to be impossible. The thrashing and the ad hom is losing its charm. He’s already agreed that CO2 is not in control of climate. It really shouldn’t be that hard to agree that we’re not in control of CO2.
After all, if CO2 doesn’t control climate, what difference does it make whether we control CO2? This idee fixe detracts from his contributions to land and water use.
The site https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/2021-07/ClimateDashboard-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-image-20210505-1400px.jpg
is I believe deliberately deceptive.
The scale is truncated, starting at 100 and ending at 450. And the time is truncated, extending no further back than 800,000 years. That’s how we rouse the masses to action!
As if 420 ppm was unprecedented and must inevitably have a warming effect. Neglecting the prior glaciations that have initiated with higher CO2 levels. The last age that had both temperatures and CO2 levels this low was the late Carboniferous.
800,000 years is the period in which we have seen ~ 100,000 year climate cycles. Co2 levels over the period ranged from 180-300 ppm. It is Jiminy who is being deceptive.
‘The O2 meg ratio of course was developed to reference the prevalence of the 18O isotope relative to all O atoms.’
No it wasn’t. ‘Several techniques have become available for measuring atmospheric oxygen. The one used at Scripps Institution of Oceanography is interferometry, which exploits the refractive properties of different precisely known wavelengths to measure the oxygen/nitrogen ratio (O2/N2) (Keeling et al. 1998). ‘ op. cit.
https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/oxygen/delta_n2_o2_equation.jpg
In the words of Michael Ghil (2013) the ‘global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – each of which has distinct characteristic times, from days and weeks to centuries and millennia. Each subsystem, moreover, has its own internal variability, all other things being constant, over a fairly broad range of time scales. These ranges overlap between one subsystem and another. The interactions between the subsystems thus give rise to climate variability on all time scales.’
The interaction of subsystems is the basis for tipping points in the Earth system. Carbon dioxide is radiatively active in the atmosphere and climatically significant.
‘And the difference with the Eemian which is being neglected is the CO2 of 280 vs our 420 ppm…as well as the higher temp and higher sea level.’
No. I am not neglecting it. It was warmer so why weren’t CO2 levels higher? Why are we at 413 ppm CO2 this time around? That is the question Jiminy cannot answer. He deflects rather than answers. Frankly I don’t think he has anywhere near the scientific chops to understand the question.
‘The thrashing and the ad hom is losing its charm.’
Jiminy is of course a precious little snowflake who is of course entirely innocent of aspersion and denigration. The charm faded long ago.
Idee fixe again. And the inevitable ad hom to substitute for clarity of thought.
Is that all you have Jiminy?
Actually, no.
“No. I am not neglecting it. It was warmer so why weren’t CO2 levels higher?
–Because CO2 isn’t in control of climate.
” Why are we at 413 ppm CO2 this time around?”
–Because CO2 isn’t in control of climate.
It’s all because of the difference between correlation and causality.
Anything else you want to know, hey, just ask.
Warm = more CO2 in atmosphere. A correlation caused by biokinetics overwhelmingly.
If I want to know something I refer to people who know something – that’s why they are called references. Jim should try it sometime.
I’m just chuffed that you recognized that as correlation. Good job! What’s the coefficient, do you think?
Better than with sex and marriage?
Science begins with observation. This table is in the post. It is based on observation of decadal stream morphology changes in eastern Australia.
https://i0.wp.com/judithcurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-2.56.55-PM.png
It is correlated with the warm or cool states of the Pacific Ocean. Why is all too obvious. Which takes it to the next level of validated science. Why there are these decadal and longer patterns in Earth hydroclimatology is the puzzle to be solved. There are a 1000 years of recorder Nile River level data. Here Demetris Koutsoyiannis compares Nile River levels, tree growth rings and for good measure a random series. Clearly geophysical processes are not random – as hydrologists had assumed.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2022/04/koutsoyiannis.png
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.407.9850&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Finding out what this other source of climate change is – and what causes – it is a study of decades. We get closer to scientific truth – but it requires a love of Earth science, diligent study, intellectual humility and an open mind. It’s a work in progress.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2017/01/12/an-earnest-discovery-of-climate-causality/
Excellent diversion! Oh look, a squirrel!
But
Co2 is not in control of climate, as you’ve agreed.
And We are not in control of CO2.
We’re waiting.
Oh and, that correlation?
Jimmy’s diversion is from the topic of the post. So I returned to the topic at hand. Change in a chaotic nonlinear system – in which small changes in forcing trigger state transitions – is not simple causation. And correlation is not a useful concept when there are emergent system properties.
‘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
Absolutely right!
And the answers are…?
Oh wait… a squirrel!
Jimmy’s squirrel is how the Earth system works. If the goal is knowledge of the Earth system this is the sin qua non. Mathematically it is governed by fields described by non linear partial differential equations.
Navier-Stokes equation for fluid flow is an example. Nothing there that Newton would not understand – but numerical solutions are sensitive to initial conditions. This idea is the most modern – and powerful – in climate science and has profound implications for the evolution of climate this century and beyond.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EvwC9oAXAA0dJF3?format=jpg
‘ 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.’ https://www.ds.mpg.de/LFPB/chaos
The problem first is to ask the right questions – and then design and build monitoring and analytical systems.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/data-driven-model.png
Yes.
And the answers are…?
The problem first is to ask the right questions – and then design and build monitoring and analytical systems.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/data-driven-model.png
And so you have the last word.
Such as it is.
Such is life in a system that – although completely deterministic – shifts seemingly at random.
‘Lorenz was able to show that even for a simple set of nonlinear equations (1.1), the evolution of the solution could be changed by minute perturbations to the initial conditions, in other words, beyond a certain forecast lead time, there is no longer a single, deterministic solution and hence all forecasts must be treated as probabilistic. The fractionally dimensioned space occupied by the trajectories of the solutions of these nonlinear equations became known as the Lorenz attractor (figure 1), which suggests that nonlinear systems, such as the atmosphere, may exhibit regime-like structures that are, although fully deterministic, subject to abrupt and seemingly random change.’ https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.2011.0161