Climate change

[Al_U_Card]

Tide gauges show minimal and constant slr.

More and the most recent studies have TCR and ECS at values that attribute 1 to 2 degrees C for a doubling of CO2.

No need to panic OR mitigate as we have centuries to adapt and that at a more economical rate than any proposal thus far concerning any carbon tax or credit scheme.

Perhaps more zeal and effort to provide energy availability and security to the underdeveloped countries might be more cost effective than creating a climate control cleptocracy?

[Winstonm]

posted to wrong thread

[Zelandakh]

posted to wrong thread

I best move my answer as well then!

[Al_U_Card]

"If change over the next 50 years is more likely to be of the same order as change over the past 50 years, as opposed to the accelerated changes contemplated in the climate models, that is surely relevant to the development of policies that are commensurate with and appropriate to the actual problem.

 

Unfortunately, it also seems to me that much of the climate science community has, in the name of doing “something”, promoted feel-good but pointless or resource-dissipating self-indulgences such as windmills.

 

In Ontario, unwise subsidization of wind resulted, for example, in purchase of 3 TWH of power from wind crony at a cost of $450 million in 2015-4Q alone, which was sold to neighboring jurisdictions for $5 million. We not only lost $400 million in one quarter, but overcharged hard-pressed industry in Ontario while subsidizing competing industry in Michigan, New York and Ohio. A more toxic policy is hard for me to contemplate. And yet our politicians want to expand this program."

 

Wise advice from Steve McIntyre

[1eyedjack]

Made me giggle. Had to share

 

http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-05-31

[Al_U_Card]

New Scientist backing the "higher" climate sensitivity value of a recent "study".

 

Nic Lewis responds:

 

Letter to the Editor concerning New Scientist article in the 28 May 2016 issue, Vol 230, No 3075, page 8: 'Earth's sensitive side'

 

The claim in your 28 May article 'Earth's sensitive side' that the strong warming over the last few years means we can now rule out low estimates of climate sensitivity is wrong. You quote Piers Forster, a co-author (along with myself) of one 2013 study that concluded near-term warming from a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere would only be around 1.3°C. I have also been sole or lead author of three different studies published since then, all of which support that conclusion. One of those studies used the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014 assessment report's estimates for the effects on the Earth's radiation balance of both warming agents such as CO2 and of cooling agents such as sulphur aerosols. I have extended these estimates to 2015 and recomputed the warming from a doubling of CO2. It is unchanged at 1.3 °C, averaging over 1995-2015 data. It remains 1.3 °C when using data just for the last ten, or five, years. Use of a shorter period gives a less reliable estimate; using a single year's temperature is unsound.

 

The suggestion that the team Forster and I were part of underestimated how much warming had been masked by the cooling effects of sulphur aerosols and other pollutants is mistaken. Our team's method is unaffected by the arguments on this point raised by the Shindell and Schmidt team studies referred to. The latter study anyway contained several errors. The corrected version fixed two of the errors I had pointed out, and shows that near term warming from a doubling of CO2 is correctly estimated from the historical mix of warming and cooling agents, including sulphur aerosols. Moreover, the findings by the Storelvmo team relied on a relationship existing between solar radiation at the surface and sulphur emissions, but over their full data period that relationship is statistically insignificant. Furthermore, two recent studies (Stevens 2015 and Kirkby et al. 2016) conclude that sulphur aerosols have had less effect on radiation than previously thought, implying that estimates of the warming from a doubling of CO2 are actually too high.

[Al_U_Card]

An interesting comment from Dr. Gerald Browning concerning GCMs

 

It bears pointing out that the problem of the GCM’s is more fundamental than mathematics. Note the cool outlier of Gavin Schmidt’s histogram which best approximates the observations. This is no accident.

 

This particular model comes from the Institute of Numerical Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Science. The model is known as INM CM4, (climate model 4).

These modelers have apparently devised a model intended to yield a product that is consistent with observations. According to R C Lutz, they achieved this by

1. Reducing the forcing of CO2;

2. Reducing the climate sensitivity by increasing the thermal inertia of oceans and

3. Reducing water vapor to levels observed rather than postulated.

 

Thus it appears that they have constrained positive feedback with observations, all in accordance with the approved principles of modeling as practiced everywhere but in climate science.

 

Here is a model that uses inferior numerics compared to other global hydrostatic models and obtains a completely different result. This shows that any model can obtain any result that one desires by messing around with tuning the parameterizations even if the dynamics and physics are not accurate. Not a pretty picture and should give pause to anyone that believes that the climate models are anywhere near reality.

[Daniel1960]

New Scientist backing the "higher" climate sensitivity value of a recent "study".

 

Nic Lewis responds:

 

Letter to the Editor concerning New Scientist article in the 28 May 2016 issue, Vol 230, No 3075, page 8: 'Earth's sensitive side'

 

The claim in your 28 May article 'Earth's sensitive side' that the strong warming over the last few years means we can now rule out low estimates of climate sensitivity is wrong. You quote Piers Forster, a co-author (along with myself) of one 2013 study that concluded near-term warming from a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere would only be around 1.3°C. I have also been sole or lead author of three different studies published since then, all of which support that conclusion. One of those studies used the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014 assessment report's estimates for the effects on the Earth's radiation balance of both warming agents such as CO2 and of cooling agents such as sulphur aerosols. I have extended these estimates to 2015 and recomputed the warming from a doubling of CO2. It is unchanged at 1.3 °C, averaging over 1995-2015 data. It remains 1.3 °C when using data just for the last ten, or five, years. Use of a shorter period gives a less reliable estimate; using a single year's temperature is unsound.

 

The suggestion that the team Forster and I were part of underestimated how much warming had been masked by the cooling effects of sulphur aerosols and other pollutants is mistaken. Our team's method is unaffected by the arguments on this point raised by the Shindell and Schmidt team studies referred to. The latter study anyway contained several errors. The corrected version fixed two of the errors I had pointed out, and shows that near term warming from a doubling of CO2 is correctly estimated from the historical mix of warming and cooling agents, including sulphur aerosols. Moreover, the findings by the Storelvmo team relied on a relationship existing between solar radiation at the surface and sulphur emissions, but over their full data period that relationship is statistically insignificant. Furthermore, two recent studies (Stevens 2015 and Kirkby et al. 2016) conclude that sulphur aerosols have had less effect on radiation than previously thought, implying that estimates of the warming from a doubling of CO2 are actually too high.

 

Many of the higher sensitivity studies either focus on shorter term temperature rises or assume that natural processes are cooling the Earth, and that the temperature rise should be higher. Using the CRU temperature data and atmospheric CO2 levels since 1880, the climate sensitivity would be 1.7, assuming that 100% of the temperature rise can be attributed to rising CO2 levels. Obviously, any natural warming component would lower this figure, based on the extent of the applicable warming. In Piers Forsters' case, attributing natural forces to 25% of the observed warming would lower the climate sensitivity to 1.3.

[Al_U_Card]

A classic. Even if you only watch the first 10 minutes, a primer on a rational look at what is going on and what to do about it.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HOP6JnaZgw&spfreload=1

[Al_U_Card]

“…I am immensely concerned by the overemphasis on climate model taxonomy, whereby scientists write papers analyzing the output of the IPCC climate model simulations, and infer future catastrophic impacts, and it seems far too easy for this kind of research to get published in Nature and Science. In the meantime, the really hard research problems are all but ignored, such as fundamental research into ocean heat transfer, multi-phase atmospheric thermodynamics, synchronized chaos in the coupled atmosphere/ocean system, etc. Not to mention the more manageable problems such as careful consideration of the attribution of climate variability during the period 1850-1970”. – from the essay Lennart Bengtsson on global climate change May 13, 2013.

[onoway]

Just watched Michael Crichton talk; this link works but it's clips from several occasions and is fairly long. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HOP6JnaZgw

 

Many of the premises he works with certainly deserve consideration in light of the examples he offers in terms of fearmongering about all sorts of things which were taken to be world wide disasters in their time which turned out to be somewhat overblown in retrospect. Also in his example about how Yellowstone National Park has been possibly permanently damaged by people thinking they knew better than the natural systems. Admittedly that particular pov is one I am highly sympathetic with, though. His comments about the practice of eugenics are also starkly horrific in retrospect, something else that was widely accepted by the scientific and other communities of the time. Very thought provoking.

[PassedOut]

Environmental records shattered as climate change 'plays out before us'

 

The world is careening towards an environment never experienced before by humans, with the temperature of the air and oceans breaking records, sea levels reaching historic highs and carbon dioxide surpassing a key milestone, a major international report has found.

 

The “state of the climate” report, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) with input from hundreds of scientists from 62 countries, confirmed there was a “toppling of several symbolic mileposts” in heat, sea level rise and extreme weather in 2015.

 

“The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle,” Michael Mann, a leading climatologist at Penn State, told the Guardian. “They are playing out before us, in real time. The 2015 numbers drive that home.”

 

Last year was the warmest on record, with the annual surface temperature beating the previous mark set in 2014 by 0.1C. This means that the world is now 1C warmer than it was in pre-industrial times, largely due to a huge escalation in the production of greenhouse gases. The UN has already said that 2016 is highly likely to break the annual record again, after 14 straight months of extreme heat aided by a hefty El Niño climatic event, a weather event that typically raises temperatures around the world.

 

The oceans, which absorb more than 90% of the extra CO2 pumped into the atmosphere, also reached a new record temperature, with sharp spikes in the El Niño-dominated eastern Pacific, which was 2C warmer than the long-term average, and the Arctic, where the temperature in August hit a dizzying 8C above average.

 

The thermal expansion of the oceans, compounded by melting glaciers, resulted in the highest global sea level on record in 2015. The oceans are around 70mm higher than the 1993 average, which is when comprehensive satellite measurements of sea levels began. The seas are rising at an average rate of 3.3mm a year, with the western Pacific and Indian Oceans experiencing the fastest increases.

Mankind adds billions of tons of heat trapping gases to the atmosphere every year and what do you know? More and more heat is trapped!

B-)

[Al_U_Card]

Article of faith: (From the Dem's policy platform.)

 

Democrats believe that carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases should be priced to reflect their negative externalities, and to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy and help meet our climate goals. Democrats believe that climate change is too important to wait for climate deniers and defeatists in Congress to start listening to science, and support using every tool available to reduce emissions now

 

So, how much of a difference will this make (if they achieve their goal)? Several thousandths of a degree!!!! (IPCC)

 

So. are we saved then? (And, from what?)

 

Go Trump go!

[Al_U_Card]

Meanwhile, back in the lab, Joelle Gergis has spent 4 years (an quite a bit of grant money) fixing a "typo".... really, her word. Among the fallacies and faults that she got peer-reviewed and published include 7 of 27 proxies that have erm....irregularities. But, 20 out of 27 are good, right? They wouldn't include spliced instrument records....nah (yah!)

 

One of many such travesties (trademark Kevin (Spaced-out) Trenberth) that Gergis has perpetrated to date.

 

Notice a difference? Right, that modern warming doesn't seem quite as catastrophic as it needs to be to be on message so....snip-snip and away with those nasty bits of truth by adding back in bogus info.

 

[Al_U_Card]

Hrothgar largely nailed this, but I see that graph as hugely worrying. The 1980 trough is not as low as the previous ones and the current peak is higher, plus the last couple of years are very worrying.

 

I think I've said this before, but the Phil Jones quoted on there is actually a local bridge player.

Pretty much, yes, except for all the contentious points and the areas of vital concern. Like, you are concerned that the global temps have risen 0.7C over the last hundred years but are still below those of the medieval warm period, the Roman warm period, the Minoan warm period and the first 5,000 or so years of the Holocene.

That, within any credible analysis of actual data (not GCM projected info) proxies tend to show no correlation between atmospheric [CO2] and global temperatures.

That, the most alarming proxy analyses and projections are based on post-ex selection of values, computer model derived values with climate sensitivities that are 2 to 3 times greater than that calculated or observed from actual measurements.

That, we are at the end of a grand solar maximum that brought us out of the Little Ice Age (Frost fairs on the Thames, pestilence and famine etc.) and appears to be heading to a very much lower value of solar activity for the next few solar cycles.

That almost all current temperature data-bases are being adjusted to "agree" with expected warming trends shown by the above-mentioned GCMs and that the actual measured data shows only a meagre warming over the instrumental period.

Reason indeed for being concerned.

[Al_U_Card]

Interesting news from the space-weather front

 

http://spaceweather.com/images2016/26aug16/figure_strip.png

 

The relationship between solar activity, galactic cosmic-ray effects and atmospheric cloud formation indicates that up to a 2% difference in cloudiness is caused by the....SUN.

 

This is quite a bit more than any other "forcing" including greenhouse gases.

 

Now, with the sun going quiet for the next little while, how will Mother Earth respond? Only time will tell.

recent scientific study using ACTUAL observations

[Al_U_Card]

Speaking of clouds...and the uncertainty that they "inject" into the models, (150% of the total GHG forcing since 1900....) to say nothing of the fact that this "error" is more than 100 times the actual contribution by [CO2] annually.

Just watch the explanation (24 minutes in provided the coup de grace graphic) of why the models can't measure anything, let alone global temperature.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THg6vGGRpvA

[Zelandakh]

Speaking of clouds...and the uncertainty that they "inject" into the models, (150% of the total GHG forcing since 1900....) to say nothing of the fact that this "error" is more than 100 times the actual contribution by [CO2] annually.

Just watch the explanation (24 minutes in provided the coup de grace graphic) of why the models can't measure anything, let alone global temperature.

Given that Patrick Frank was putting forward a 300 degree uncertainty (10 times the entire warming attributed to CO2) back in 2008, his 14 degree figure in 2016 could be seen as coming into the mainstream. Give him another 8 years and perhaps he will be predicting a 300 degree temperature rise instead! ;) :lol:

[Al_U_Card]

Given that Patrick Frank was putting forward a 300 degree uncertainty (10 times the entire warming attributed to CO2) back in 2008, his 14 degree figure in 2016 could be seen as coming into the mainstream. Give him another 8 years and perhaps he will be predicting a 300 degree temperature rise instead! ;) :lol:

That would be one slant on attacking the messenger when you can't refute the argument. Indeed, the models aren't improving over time (BUT they ARE getting more precise...lol) but our appreciation of their limitations is. Within their envelope of uncertainty, they could well be "projecting" as big a temperature drop by 2100 as they are a rise. This,of course, may be necessary as real observations put the lie to the models. They will just have to change their parameters and voila! catastrophic doom will be assured...some day.

[Al_U_Card]

As good a primer on the real nature of climate change as you are likely to find.

 

Green is good...

 

Including but not limited to:

 

 

http://www.thegwpf.com/content/uploads/2016/10/AAA11-1024x655.png

 

http://www.thegwpf.com/content/uploads/2016/10/AAA12-1024x669.png

 

http://www.thegwpf.com/content/uploads/2016/10/AAA13-1024x649.png

 

http://www.thegwpf.com/content/uploads/2016/10/AAA14-1024x761.png

 

http://www.thegwpf.com/content/uploads/2016/10/AAA16-1024x725.png

 

http://www.thegwpf.com/content/uploads/2016/10/AAA18-1024x666.png

[PassedOut]

Here's another reason that the US election is important: The world is racing to stop climate change. But the math still doesnt add up

 

This is the logic behind the inescapable emissions gap: If we want to hold global warming to 1.5 C, we need to be emitting only 38.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalents by the year 2030. For 2 degrees C, theres only slightly more leeway 41.8 gigatons.

 

The promises countries have made under the Paris agreement dont remotely get there at best, theyd have us at about 53.4 billion tons in 2030. The emissions gap is therefore between 12 and 14 gigatons per year if you want to keep the planet at 2 degrees, and between 15 and 17 gigatons per year for 1.5 degrees, says UNEP.

 

When you think that one gigaton is the equivalent of taking all European vehicles off the road for one year, and the gap is between 12 and 14 gigatons, you see what the scale of the problem is, explains McGlade.

 

Thus, were way off course with very little time to turn things around. The worlds current promises, says UNEP, would allow the planet to warm by about 3 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.

 

And by the way: even these numbers for keeping warming below 1.5 or 2 degrees tend to assume something that many scientists think is dubious. They tend to rely on the assumption that well bust through our carbon budgets but somehow get a second chance later in the century, once we create technologies that can somehow withdraw carbon dioxide out of the air again. These scenarios often have the world removing net amounts carbon dioxide from the atmosphere after 2050, rather than putting more there. Its far from clear that will actually happen, at least at the scale that would be required.

Clinton understands this, but Trump is clueless.

[Zelandakh]

Sorry PassedOut but the sensitivity estimates are not nearly good enough to give such exact figures. For one thing, it depends on exactly when the emissions occur - 38.8 gigatons now might give 1.5 degrees of warming by 2030 but 38.8 gigatons in 2029 certainly would not. It is numbers like this that gives GW scientists a bad name.

 

Of course, reading more closely I note that the report does not say that the warming itself has to occur before 2030. If they merely mean the equilibrium sensitivity then the 2030 date is highly misleading due to the time lag from the oceans. Either way, not exactly a stellar example to give to the forums, more of an AIU-style piece from the opposite side.

 

Whether either of them understand that much of what is written on the subject is not worth the paper it is written on (or the cost of the data bandwidth since much goes through the internet) I could not say. But I daresay both have advisors on the subject that come at it from a partisan and highly biased viewpoint.

[PassedOut]

World on track for 3C of warming under current global climate pledges, warns UN

 

The commitments made by governments on climate change will lead to dangerous levels of global warming because they are incommensurate with the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new report.

 

The United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) said that pledges put forward to cut emissions would see temperatures rise by 3C above pre-industrial levels, far above the the 2C of the Paris climate agreement, which comes into force on Friday.

 

At least a quarter must be cut from emissions by the end of the next decade, compared with current trends, the UN said.

 

The report found that emissions by 2030 were likely to reach about 54 to 56 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year, a long way astray of the 42 gigatonnes a year likely to be the level at which warming exceeds 2C.

 

Erik Solheim, chief of Unep, said the world was “moving in the right direction” on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and tackling climate change, but that measures should be taken urgently to avoid the need for much more drastic cuts in emissions in future. “If we don’t start taking additional action now, we will grieve over the avoidable human tragedy.”

 

He warned in particular that people would start being displaced from their homes by the effects of climate change, suffering from drought, hunger, disease and conflicts arising from these afflictions. Mass migration as a result of climate change is hard to separate from other causes of migration, but is predicted to become a much greater problem.

 

This year is “locked in” to be the hottest on record, according to Nasa, eclipsing last year’s record heat, and may show the way to future temperature rises and their accompanying problems.

Of course the predictions are not exact, and no one has that expectation. But the trend -- and the risk -- is clear. I have three sons and a granddaughter. I want the US to work with the rest of the world to reduce these emissions.

[Al_U_Card]

You would leave your children destitute to try and control the weather?

 

With observational climate sensitivities in the 1.1 C / doubling range and cloud effects being ignored by all the lovely (read inaccurate) GCMs used for these "projections", save your money to help those kids pay all the taxes that you are signing them up to pay for your commitments.

[PassedOut]

You would leave your children destitute to try and control the weather?

That's the sort of alarmist nonsense believed only by pants-pissers with no head for business.

 

If you'll notice, Trump is campaigning on a massive return to fiscal irresponsibility -- catering to the same free-lunch crowd who voted for G. W. Bush. Should Trump win (and he might) our kids and grandkids will have carry the burden for both his fiscal irresponsibility and environmental irresponsibility.