Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change

[donsutherland1]

59 minutes ago, etudiant said:

That redundancy costs a lot of money. Overall, one pays for 2 complete power systems. That makes everyone so much poorer.

I'd much rather see the money spent on low emission nuclear, because it is 24/7 available, so it folds seamlessly into the grid. The associated pollution issues are less imho than the massive problems generated by rare earth extraction for wind power generators or area coverage with solar collectors.

Redundancy doesn't have to cover the whole system. Only a sufficient share of excess power capacity from alternative approaches needs to be available during the transition to cover issues that may arise. Complete failure of the entire system is not a likely scenario. Partial failure is.

China is aggressively pursuing solar power and making rapid progress in terms of production cost effectiveness. Nuclear power is another alternative.

 

[donsutherland1]

Earlier this year, France's Office for Climate Education prepared a guide for teachers on climate science. The guide was written in multiple languages and it was also publicized by the World Meteorological Organization. It would make a useful addition to any early STEM class that covers earth science.

Among other things, the guide explains the ongoing warming, climate change impacts at 1.5°C and 2.0°C, potential approaches for achieving the Paris Agreement's target of limiting warming to 1.5°C above the pre-industrial temperature average, and addressing climate change within the context of sustainable development.

The guide introduces educators and students to credible resources. For example, one task involves looking up the definition of "climate" on the World Meteorological Organization's website. It also provides a link by which users can visit the relevant portion of the IPCC's 2013 assessment.

The report is consistent with the climate science consensus. Among other things, its summary explains:

Human activities have caused a 1.0°C rise in the global temperature over the past 150 years.

Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052, if warming continues at the current rate.

Our CO2 emissions will remain in the atmosphere for centuries to millennia, maintaining the warmer temperatures long after these emissions were released.

The English version of that guide can be found at: http://www.oce.global/sites/default/files/2019-04/ST1.5_final_040419.pdf

Under a creative commons license, it can be freely shared, used, and adapted for non-commercial use.

[BillT]

"Our CO2 emissions will remain in the atmosphere for centuries to millennia, maintaining the warmer temperatures long after these emissions were released."

the TRUTH = some of that co2 gets removed daily by the plants using it as FOOD........

"Human activities have caused a 1.0°C rise in the global temperature over the past 150 years."

TRUTH = the earth has warmed that much since coming out of the little ice age, YOU nor anybody else has any evidence that humans are the "cause" of this happening.......

 

[donsutherland1]

8 hours ago, BillT said:

"Our CO2 emissions will remain in the atmosphere for centuries to millennia, maintaining the warmer temperatures long after these emissions were released."

the TRUTH = some of that co2 gets removed daily by the plants using it as FOOD........

"Human activities have caused a 1.0°C rise in the global temperature over the past 150 years."

TRUTH = the earth has warmed that much since coming out of the little ice age, YOU nor anybody else has any evidence that humans are the "cause" of this happening.......

 

The points the guide is making are:

1. Carbon dioxide has a long residency in the atmosphere.

2. Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have been the dominant influence for recent warming.

The IPCC explained:

Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the pre-industrial era, driven largely by economic and population growth, and are now higher than ever. This has led to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide that are unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. Their effects, together with those of other anthropogenic drivers, have been detected throughout the climate system and are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.

As the guide is intended for young audiences, it greatly simplifies the conclusions. Concepts such as probability and atmospheric residency are for older students. This is introductory material aimed at providing the big picture. It was vetted by climate scientists and the IPCC.

[Typhoon Tip]

8 minutes ago, SENC said:

To ADD.

1970:The new ice age! We’re all gonna die!
1980:Acid rain! We’re all gonna die!
1990:The ozone layer is gone! We’re all gonna die!
2000:Global warming is melting the glaciers! We’re all gonna die!
2010s:Climate Change! In 12 years, we’re all gonna die!

2019: Co2 is gonna kill us all! Were All gonna die!

SHUT. IT. UP.

This doesn't prove anything other than one's lack of any real understanding in the physical processes guiding the greater environmental system... particularly that Time is a variable in it, or any causality-link to pernicious influence in a system...

And, also, this stuff above is just horribly blanket applicated and is incorrect..

No one said in the 1980s the Acid Rain was going to result in that. 

No one said in 1990 that the Ozone Layer meant that...    

Both those were warnings...both those were dealt with both at home and abroad, in global efforts to curtail their negative impacts and guess what? It worked..   Acid rain reduced by scrubbers at stack release points...and thought obviously still exists...the technology is there to prevent it/mitigate ..because of those sciences of those eras.  

This is complete garbage.  Non-reality-based shit.  Period.   As far as everything else on this list... 2000 to present ... it's just too stupid to comment on. 

 

[donsutherland1]

2 hours ago, SENC said:

IPCC is only about 2 things..

MONEY & CONTROL..

TELL US,  oh,,  Great Don S. How will Monies will solve the "CO2 "problem" because THERE ISN'T ONE!.. 

If one is referring to the AOC plan, I strongly oppose it. It contains substantial extraneous provisions that have nothing to do with climate/clean energy. Instead, those provisions would dramatically shift the U.S. away from a market-oriented economy. There are far better ways to approach the issue.

[donsutherland1]

2 hours ago, SENC said:

To ADD.

1970:The new ice age! We’re all gonna die!
1980:Acid rain! We’re all gonna die!
1990:The ozone layer is gone! We’re all gonna die!
2000:Global warming is melting the glaciers! We’re all gonna die!
2010s:Climate Change! In 12 years, we’re all gonna die!

2019: Co2 is gonna kill us all! Were All gonna die!

Yet Modern Forecasting,, CANNOT "model" the *Weather* correctly more than 3~5 days out..

SHUT. IT. UP.

The science doesn't suggest that in 12 years we will "die." That's a caricature of what the science is actually suggesting: time is somewhat limited if the world is to achieve its 1.5°C goal.

[etudiant]

23 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

The science doesn't suggest that in 12 years we will "die." That's a caricature of what the science is actually suggesting: time is somewhat limited if the world is to achieve its 1.5°C goal.

It would be so very helpful if the media presentation of this issue were better guided by the science.

Instead we have a high school kid sailing to the UN to tell the world what to do. Not sure that is a good basis for policy.

[donsutherland1]

The ugly side of the climate change denial movement...

Excerpts from Scientific American:

The verbal and written attacks derive mostly from men. That’s probably not a coincidence. Studies show that climate skepticism is a male-dominated perspective. Men are less likely than women to accept scientific conclusions about people being responsible for rising temperatures. And they’re more likely to overestimate their knowledge of the issue...

“I do see a shift toward a lack of substance sharing,” Cobb said. “So much of the flak from the climate-denial community, I think, was in the form of trying to share graphs to show their point, trying to question you on the validity of the science. And a lot of that was very misguided, of course, but it was still pretending to be substantive, on the data, on the issues themselves. But it seems much of it today has turned completely to ad hominem attacks, these stream of emotionally laden insults with no substance whatsoever behind them, just trying to land one below the belt.”

...“I can tell you that there is a very large overlap between those who harbor conspiracy theories about climate science and those who express unenlightened views when it comes to matters of ethnicity and gender,” Mann said. “In short, yeah—a surprisingly large number of climate deniers are misogynists. And so our female colleagues are at the receiving end of a particularly toxic brew of denialism, conspiratorial ideation and misogyny. It is most unfortunate and most disturbing.”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/as-climate-scientists-speak-out-sexist-attacks-are-on-the-rise/

 

[winterymix]

Nice discussion, Don.

 

[donsutherland1]

Early this morning, Joe Bastardi retweeted a twitter post noting that Moscow had an unusually cold summer and wrote, "yet not a peep from the warming weather media."

The reason the warmth, not Moscow's cold, received widespread news coverage is or should be largely self-evident:

1. This summer, warmth, not cold, was the big global story

2. Cold areas were relatively localized, but areas of warmth were widespread

3. Historic heat waves affected Europe (two of which shattered widespread all-time high temperature records, including national high temperature records)

4. Alaska experienced its warmest month on record and Anchorage's summer will likely match its warmest month on record prior to 2019

On August 1, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported:

Exceptional heat has been observed across the globe in recent week, with a string of European countries logging record highs temperatures that have caused disruption to transport and infrastructure and stress on people's health and the environment. As the heat dome spread northwards through Scandinavia and towards Greenland, it accelerated the already above average rate of ice melt.

"July has re-written climate history, with dozens of new temperature records at local, national and global level," said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

"The extraordinary heat was accompanied by dramatic ice melt in Greenland, in the Arctic and on European glaciers. Unprecedented wildfires raged in the Arctic for the second consecutive month, devastating once pristine forests which used to absorb carbon dioxide and instead turning them into fiery sources of greenhouse gases. This is not science fiction. It is the reality of climate change. It is happening now and it will worsen in the future without urgent climate action," Mr Taalas said.

"WMO expects that 2019 will be in the five top warmest years on record, and that 2015-2019 will be the warmest of any equivalent five-year period on record. .

https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/july-matched-and-maybe-broke-record-hottest-month-analysis-began

Below are the global Temperature Anomalies (June 1-August 27, 2019):

Below are the GISS temperature anomalies and rank:

June: +0.92°C (1st warmest June)
July: +0.93°C (1st warmest July and also 1st warmest month)
August: To be available by mid-September　

In sum, in the big picture, excessive and persistent warmth was the major story of summer 2019. Widespread monthly and all-time high temperature records were set. Localized areas of cold existed, but they were the exception this summer. Only few monthly record low temperature records were set. The coverage properly focused on the major weather story of this summer, the widespread and, in places, historic warmth.

[donsutherland1]

With Hurricane Dorian's historic intensification, it is a good time to point to an article in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate from last fall. The article noted that one can expect more intense storms on account of climate change.

Abstract:

As one of the first global coupled climate models to simulate and predict category 4 and 5 (Saffir–Simpson scale) tropical cyclones (TCs) and their interannual variations, the High-Resolution Forecast-Oriented Low Ocean Resolution (HiFLOR) model at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) represents a novel source of insight on how the entire TC intensification distribution could be transformed because of climate change. In this study, three 70-yr HiFLOR experiments are performed to identify the effects of climate change on TC intensity and intensification. For each of the experiments, sea surface temperature (SST) is nudged to different climatological targets and atmospheric radiative forcing is specified, allowing us to explore the sensitivity of TCs to these conditions. First, a control experiment, which uses prescribed climatological ocean and radiative forcing based on observations during the years 1986–2005, is compared to two observational records and evaluated for its ability to capture the mean TC behavior during these years. The simulated intensification distributions as well as the percentage of TCs that become major hurricanes show similarities with observations. The control experiment is then compared to two twenty-first-century experiments, in which the climatological SSTs from the control experiment are perturbed by multimodel projected SST anomalies and atmospheric radiative forcing from either 2016–35 or 2081–2100 (RCP4.5 scenario). The frequency, intensity, and intensification distribution of TCs all shift to higher values as the twenty-first century progresses. HiFLOR’s unique response to climate change and fidelity in simulating the present climate lays the groundwork for future studies involving models of this type.

The article also covers the likely increase in the most extreme tropical cyclones:

The increased probability of higher-intensity TCs becomes more tangible when focusing on the number of TCs that exceed 165 kt in each simulation, which is the fastest wind speed ever recorded during a TC landfall (Typhoon Haiyan; Takagi and Esteban 2016). In the 70-yr HiFLOR CTL experiment, nine TCs achieve awind speed of greater than 165 kt. The number of TCs that exceed this threshold grows to 32 for the 2016–35 simulation and 72 for the 2081–2100 simulation.

https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0898.1

 

[SENC]

All due respect @donsutherland1,, I caught NSW (National Weather Service) .. Lying on "wind Speeds" & gusts here in Wilmington.. Does NOAA LIE? In My no uncertain terms,, yes..  

 

[jburns]

26 minutes ago, SENC said:

All due respect @donsutherland1,, I caught NSW (National Weather Service) .. Lying on "wind Speeds" & gusts here in Wilmington.. Does NOAA LIE? In My no uncertain terms,, yes..  

 

I replied to your post in the Dorian banter thread yesterday telling you that you needed to back up your claim about  NWS lying. You didn't and continue to post your claim.  Take a week off.

[etudiant]

On 8/29/2019 at 9:17 PM, winterymix said:

Nice discussion, Don.

 

Don't think this is a helpful cartoon. It is deeply anti scientific, an appeal to mass authority. 

In response to a book 'A hundred authors against relativity'. Einstein said: 'Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough.'

 

Einstein said 'Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough.'

[donsutherland1]

2 hours ago, SENC said:

All due respect @donsutherland1,, I caught NSW (National Weather Service) .. Lying on "wind Speeds" & gusts here in Wilmington.. Does NOAA LIE? In My no uncertain terms,, yes..  

 

The public information statement concerning Dorian's winds is not official data. Those data and other data will be subject to quality control before any data is finalized. Such quality-controlled figures will be part of the National Hurricane Center's report on Dorian.

Because of the unofficial nature of the data, public information statements often carry the following disclaimer or others like it, "The following are unofficial observations taken during the past 24 hours for the storm that has been affecting our region..."

[donsutherland1]

The current estimated sea level rise is 3.7 mm per year.

The full data can be found at: https://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/en/data/products/ocean-indicators-products/mean-sea-level/products-images.html

[bdgwx]

And in keeping with the spirit of this thread here is another example of a blog post or statements by an expert which I feel contains misleading information. For those that don't know Dr. Spencer is one of the maintainers of the UAH satellite temperature dataset and is often labeled as a "skeptic". He fully acknowledges that CO2 is a GHG and that humans can and likely are having a significant impact on the climate. I happen to respect him and his contributions to the science, but I do disagree with him on many points namely on his downplay of the magnitude of the anthroprogenic effect, our confidence in this conclusion, and our ability to make decisions from what we've learned so far.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/09/the-faith-component-of-global-warming-predictions

 

 

[donsutherland1]

31 minutes ago, bdgwx said:

And in keeping with the spirit of this thread here is another example of a blog post or statements by an expert which I feel contains misleading information. For those that don't know Dr. Spencer is one of the maintainers of the UAH satellite temperature dataset and is often labeled as a "skeptic". He fully acknowledges that CO2 is a GHG and that humans can and likely are having a significant impact on the climate. I happen to respect him and his contributions to the science, but I do disagree with him on many points namely on his downplay of the magnitude of the anthroprogenic effect, our confidence in this conclusion, and our ability to make decisions from what we've learned so far.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/09/the-faith-component-of-global-warming-predictions

In his blog article, Spencer claims, "(And, no, there is no fingerprint of human-caused warming. All global warming, whether natural or human-caused, looks about the same...)"

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/09/the-faith-component-of-global-warming-predictions/

His understanding is badly dated. The accumulating evidence strongly suggests otherwise.

1. Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide has been rising steadily.

2. No natural factor to explain this outcome has been identified. It does, however, have a strong correlation with greenhouse gas emissions by humanity (not all of which are being absorbed in sinks).

https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/

3.  The 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere has been decreasing. CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are of the 12C isotope. That declining ratio offers overwhelming evidence that the origin of the rising atmospheric concentration in CO2 is the burning of fossil fuels.

https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/co2/iso-sio/iso-sio.html?pagewanted=all

4. The climate models best represent recent warming when rising greenhouse gas forcing is included. There has been a decoupling between global temperature trends and natural forcings. That the evidence demonstrates that the burning of fossil fuels is largely responsible for the rising atmospheric concentration of CO2 provides an unmistakable "fingerprint" of the anthropogenic cause of the ongoing warming).

[winterymix]

On 9/8/2019 at 3:45 PM, etudiant said:

Don't think this is a helpful cartoon. It is deeply anti scientific, an appeal to mass authority. 

In response to a book 'A hundred authors against relativity'. Einstein said: 'Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough.'

 

Einstein said 'Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough.'

etudiant:   Do you understand what it takes to get a scientific study published in a career-leading scientific journal?  Do you understand the scientific ethics involved?  if you are not a scientist with university-level qualifications and haven't completed a college curriculum that exposes students to the scientific method you wouldn't know how and why scientists work towards a consensus.  Areas that can be analyzed and modelled become established scientific concepts over time.  Areas of knowledge that are challenging to analyze leave room for opposing scientific theories.  Regarding modern climatology, enough is settled to deserve consensus.  Over 97% of the World's top scientific experts agree that anthropomorphic influences are inducing changes in the planet's land, air and water.  These experts are referred to as scientists because they have the intelligence, training, ethics and experience to put forth the best possible version of reality, knowledge and the truth.  

Unless you have superior intelligence, education, colleagues and insight and defer to experts with qualifications, you are deliberately drawing your thoughts from an inferior path.  Knowing less, comprehending less and understanding less than accomplished scientists is an unwise but deliberate choice.

[donsutherland1]

Earlier today, Joe Bastardi tweeted a global temperature chart that ends in 1995. It's unclear whether he recognized when the chart ended. The link to @tan123 brings one to a widely-known climate change denier.

https://twitter.com/BigJoeBastardi/status/1171386083051016193

The chart is misleading. The world has continued to warm since then.

The 2018 global temperature anomaly was 0.40°C (0.72°F) above the 1995 figure (+0.85°C/1.53°F in 2018 vs. +0.45°C/+0.81°F in 1995). Further, to remove the noise of internal variability, the 30-year moving average in 2018 had increased to +0.57°C (+1.03°F) from +0.16°C (+0.29°F) in 1995. The red line on the bottom chart depicts the 1995 global temperature to help illustrate how things have changed since then. All temperature data is from the GISTEMP data set.

Finally, the linear trend line shows an annual increase of +0.021°C (+0.038°F) since 1995. The coefficient of determination is 0.75.

[bdgwx]

16 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

In his blog article, Spencer claims, "(And, no, there is no fingerprint of human-caused warming. All global warming, whether natural or human-caused, looks about the same...)"

That statement isn't just misleading but completely incorrect. There are all sorts of fingerprints that can be used to narrow down which physical process resulted in the warming. Dr. Spencer knows this so I don't why he would make such a statement anyway. So yeah, that was far beyond just being misleading.

There were a couple of other statements that leaned more toward the misleading end of the spectrum too though. For example, "I’m not saying that increasing CO2 doesn’t cause warming. I’m saying we have no idea how much warming it causes...". This is a very misleading statement. We might not know exactly how much warming will occur, but our understanding of the process and feedbacks involved gives us far better understanding than just "no idea". 

And then through inference he conflates uncertainty with faith. Again...very misleading. Uncertainty is not the same thing as faith. Faith is the belief in something without evidence. Uncertainty especially when quantified is itself based on evidence. The message people are getting from statements like these is that anything less than 100% perfect knowledge is the same as having no understanding whatsoever.

[bdgwx]

1 hour ago, donsutherland1 said:

Earlier today, Joe Bastardi tweeted a global temperature chart that ends in 1995. It's unclear whether he recognized when the chart ended. The link to @tan123 brings one to a widely-known climate change denier.

https://twitter.com/BigJoeBastardi/status/1171386083051016193

The chart is misleading. The world has continued to warm since then.

The 2018 global temperature anomaly was 0.40°C (0.72°F) above the 1995 figure (+0.85°C/1.53°F in 2018 vs. +0.45°C/+0.81°F in 1995). Further, to remove the noise of internal variability, the 30-year moving average in 2018 had increased to +0.57°C (+1.03°F) from +0.16°C (+0.29°F) in 1995. The red line on the bottom chart depicts the 1995 global temperature to help illustrate how things have changed since then. All temperature data is from the GISTEMP data set.

Finally, the linear trend line shows an annual increase of +0.021°C (+0.038°F) since 1995. The coefficient of determination is 0.75.

 

That top chart is misleading indeed. First, it's not peer reviewed. That doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong, but it is a huge red flag. Second, Dansgaard was among the first ice core researchers. His 1969 work is based on ice core samples from Camp Century in Greenland. So this isn't a global temperature proxy. It is a Greenland temperature proxy using oxygen isotope techniques. And "present" is in reference to 1967 which is the last data point in his dataset. So we're missing the last 50 years of warming which for Greenland is at least 1.0C (and possibly higher) according to Berkeley Earth and various other compilations of Greenland temperatures. So if Bastardi is giving his blessing to this chart then he's going to have to accept that temperatures (at least in Greenland) are higher today than at any point in the last 2000 years. And the recent warming occurred at a rate that is unusual for the holocene and during a period in which temperatures were on a secular decline falling off from the holocene climate optimum circa -6000 BCE.

Here is Dansgaard's 1969 dataset.

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo-search/study/2429

https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/gisp/campcentury/cc-1ynew.txt

 

[donsutherland1]

3 hours ago, bdgwx said:

 

That top chart is misleading indeed. First, it's not peer reviewed. That doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong, but it is a huge red flag. Second, Dansgaard was among the first ice core researchers. His 1969 work is based on ice core samples from Camp Century in Greenland. So this isn't a global temperature proxy. It is a Greenland temperature proxy using oxygen isotope techniques. And "present" is in reference to 1967 which is the last data point in his dataset. So we're missing the last 50 years of warming which for Greenland is at least 1.0C (and possibly higher) according to Berkeley Earth and various other compilations of Greenland temperatures. So if Bastardi is giving his blessing to this chart then he's going to have to accept that temperatures (at least in Greenland) are higher today than at any point in the last 2000 years. And the recent warming occurred at a rate that is unusual for the holocene and during a period in which temperatures were on a secular decline falling off from the holocene climate optimum circa -6000 BCE.

Here is Dansgaard's 1969 dataset.

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo-search/study/2429

https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/gisp/campcentury/cc-1ynew.txt

 

I have no issue with the chart itself. It was likely accurate at the time it was made. Today, it is obsolete.

[Typhoon Tip]

Occasionally we'll get a click-by shooting by some nimrod troll that's too stupid to realize they aren't making the impact they think they are, and are in fact only sounding like this guy  ...

But those aren't really the typical forum user. Most of y'all and the regulars in here really are not the target of these moguls and/or celebrities of the denial-sphere.  They're targeting their constituencies, telling them what they wanna here.  Morality and ethics have nothing to do with it.  They have an easily life if their constituencies are happy - and what makes them happy? This clear and obvious logically flawed vomit they spew from their bully pulpits... 

[Ginx snewx]

Any comments Don on Mann Vs Ball dismissal.

[donsutherland1]

 

1 hour ago, Ginx snewx said:

Any comments Don on Mann Vs Ball dismissal.

As far as I know, the case never got to the merits of the issue.

[Ginx snewx]

49 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

 

As far as I know, the case never got to the merits of the issue.

Because Mann refused to give the defense the data?

[donsutherland1]

57 minutes ago, Ginx snewx said:

Because Mann refused to give the defense the data?

No. The underlying data is publicly available. That wasn’t the issue.

The data can be found here: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/research/MANNETAL98/

[psv88]

@bdgwx and @donsutherland1 crushing this thread. Keep it up! Well written and informed posts. Thank you both.