Here's the ugliest global-warming chart you'll ever need to see As you've likely read in many a headline-shouting article, our precious Blue Marble Earth just experienced its warmest year since reliable record-keeping began. It's getting ugly out there. According to the rapidly advancing field of attribution science, global warming and its evil twin climate change are rapidly exacerbating …
The foundations of the whole global warming narrative are rotten to the core. Temperature is an intensive property. It is mathematically possible to average the numbers, but the result has no meaningful physical meaning. Case in point: if I have two equal volumes of dry air at a pressure of 1 bar, identical except for the temperature, where one volume is 20 °C and the other volume is 0 °C, and I let them mix isolated from all other influences, what would the resulting temperature be? Averaging the two temperatures results in a value of 10 °C, but as any qualified HVAC engineer can tell you, the actual result would be 9.65 °C, 0.35 °C less.
Why the difference? Mainly because air at 0 °C has 7.3% higher specific mass than a 20 °C. Another factor is that there are some small non-linearities in how enthalpy depends on temperature. Popularly said, cold air cools stuff down more than warm air heats them up. Averaging temperatures completely ignores this fact and therefore ends up to high. Never mind that air pressure and humidity also play a role in the warming and cooling effects of air and are ignored all together. Disagree with me? Show me one paper that takes these factors into account and comes to a definite conclusion.
And then we still have the matter of temperature measurements themselves. 77.9%, nearly 8 out of 10, of the meteorological stations the MET Office uses in the UK has an accuracy worse than 2 °C. And never mind that the MET Office publishes data from 103 stations that do not even exist. The situation is just as dire in the US where only 7.9% of the surface stations reach an accuracy of better than 1 °C and Australia where the Bureau of Meteorology has been repeatedly found to cook the books.
Even the IPCC does not see any climate influence in the past or the future on fire weather, or many other climate properties for that matter. See Table 12.12 on page 1856 in their latest report. You need to read past the Summary for Policy Makers of which the content is determined by subjective voting rather than by hard facts.
Climate science is a mess and unfit to guide policy.
Why quote your entire post?
You just don't /want/ it to be true and you are blind to /any/ evidence that it is.
For starters, global warming is not about instantaneous air temperatures, it is about net energy flows. Checkout the greenhouse effect of rising CO2 levels. Checkout the flow of cold into the deep oceans as all the glaciers and polar ice caps melt. Checkout the flow of heat into the heads of those ice reserves, making tomorrow's melting that much easier. Checkout the predictions as to what happens once the permanent ice is all gone. Then come back here and explain how your wittering is relevant.
Not going to? Now there's a surprise!
Well Steelpillow, with regards to glaciers melting, yes indeed many of them are melting. And what do they reveal? Tree stumps from the vegetation that used to grow there. The glaciers were not always there and we are coming out of a little ice age.
As far as predictions go, the media is rife with failed predictions.
But to consider the CO2 concentration to be the thermostat button for earth's temperature is an enormous stretch. Decades of climate research costing billions of dollars has failed to provide a definitive answer what the warming effect is of doubling CO2 concentrations. The equilibrium climate sensitivity or ECS, is likely in the range of 2 °C to 5 °C according to the IPCC. Likely, not definitively determined. Those two extremes a a factor 2.5 apart. At the same time they emphatically say that 30 other factors, including insolation, are insignificant. The climate modelers can't even get the clouds right and they themselves say that their models run too hot.
On the whole I do not disagree that earth's atmosphere is getting warmer. But I strongly disagree that it is a disaster that requires action. The global warming target is a political choice based on a flawed metric against an arbitrary baseline.
People focus on daily news instead of watching long term trends. Hot weather is all over the news where cold spells are hardly mentioned. According to a paper in The Lancet the mortality in India due to cold is seven times higher than mortality due to heat.
The climate narrative has plot holes wider than a beer truck. It is not that I fail to see as you put it, the facts simply do not convince.
Problem is we're trying to move the mountain. That mountain is the earth's temp if we f**k with it, it will bite back because the energies involved are way beyond us currently. Also, CO2 is not a problem, it is plant food and has been much higher (as has temp) which made life more abundant than it is today. Whilst most people are using the scam to make money those behind it want you dead. They all believe there are too many of us and that democracy is bad ... and "we" listen to them. There's no hope! Listen to them, most have declared at some point they believe the earth will run out of resources and the population is too high. We wont run out as long as that star is there pouring energy in and we can sustain much higher population levels with the technology we have developed. When there are too many of us to be sustained the population will stop growing. The self-appointed elite are concerned that they can't control a large population and they wont get to keep everything.
Yes, CO2 levels were level many millions of years ago. Yes, the Earth was a lot warmer back then.
But you know what? That was before the appearance of h.sapiens.
We are not adapted for the sort of world that existed when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and human civilization is utterly unprepared for the loss of large swathes of agricultural land and large scale coastal inundation.
What do you think will happen when a billion of more people lose access to water and a billion more find they have too much (of the salty variety)?
"What do you think will happen when a billion of more people lose access to water and a billion more find they have too much (of the salty variety)?"
War, death on a massive scale and a readjustment of the global population to a more sustainable level.
"as CO2 concentrations rise plants need less water to photosynthesise"
That only works up to a point. As anyone who has dumped the 'wrong' fertilizer mix (N-P-K) on their lawn knows, plant growth depends on sufficient quantities of each nutrient to promote growth. While the focus has been on CO2, we have been making great (albeit misguided) strides in reducing the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen by anthropogenic means (conversion of N2 to various NOx molecules) which bacteria can utilize.
We need to switch back to high compression petrol engines and eliminate catalyzed diesel exhaust systems to restore a proper balance of plant food.
That only works up to a point. As anyone who has dumped the 'wrong' fertilizer mix (N-P-K) on their lawn knows, plant growth depends on sufficient quantities of each nutrient to promote growth.
Kind of. Plants are pretty much made from sunlight, CO2 and water, so the basic photosynthesis stuff. But there have been a lot of papers published about this process-
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2016.00657/full
Stomata control the flow of gases between plants and the atmosphere. This review is centered on stomatal responses to elevated CO2 concentration and considers other key environmental factors and underlying mechanisms at multiple levels.
So how plants respond to elevated CO2, the effects on plant growth, and also water requirements. CO2 goes up, H2O requirement can go down. But that can depend on the type of plant, or especially crop. Which is leading to some interesting attempts at genetic engineering-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C4_carbon_fixation#Converting_C3_plants_to_C4
Given the advantages of C4, a group of scientists from institutions around the world are working on the C4 Rice Project to produce a strain of rice, naturally a C3 plant, that uses the C4 pathway by studying the C4 plants maize and Brachypodium
But in general, plants love CO2. Which isn't really suprising when they evolved when CO2 levels (and temperatures) where much higher than they were today. Greenhouse growers, of course, know this. It's also why there's been a 'Greening of the Earth' since CO2 levels started rising following the end of the LIA. NPK gets a bit more interesting, mainly due to man-made-Neolysenkoism. So governments wanting to ban fertilisers. Or just that nitrate fertilisers are mostly produced by the petrochemical industry, that governments and activists want to ban. Phosporus mostly comes from mining phospate rock, and governments want to ban, or just heavily regulate mining. Same for Potassium, produced from potash mining. So policies can get a bit weird when we need food, need to reduce the cost of food, but introduce policies that are just going to make it more expensive, or the production less efficient. Or just go really weird like the Netherlands, and decide that their farmland is better suited to growing houses.
"many of them are melting. And what do they reveal? Tree stumps from the vegetation that used to grow there."
I'm curious as to where that has been observed.. Glaciers generally shove everything in front of them and pile it up in moraines. It seems more likely that they'd deposit trees which fell onto the surface from surrounding hillsides, as they do with dead climbers and Bronze Age travellers.
See for an example the article Melting Glaciers Revealing Ancient Tree Stumps from a Warmer Period that describes that a complete forest was covered by a glacier. The tree stumps found are confirmed to be over 3000 years old.
By the way, the glacier melting is not as bad as it sounds. For example, this article states: "This means that the uncertainty of the estimated volume of glacial ice, not the volume itself but the uncertainty of the volume, is five times the calculated change in the last 23 years."
I'm sorry, Art, but quoting an article from Anthony Watts' often debunked and wildly propagandistic "Watt's Up With That?" — self-described quite erroneously and self-aggrandizingly as as "The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change" — is hardly to be considered to be citing an unbiased, objective source, wouldn't you agree?
I'm sorry Rik but when any scientist or person with authority challenging the CO2 myth is shouted down, deplatformed, fired or generally censored you know it's a lie. It's just like the supposed plandemic; turns out it did come from a lab, the hospitals weren't that busy and not that many people died (bad flu year level), a good portion of which were killed by mistreatment. We are being kept in the Matrix and need the red pill to fix the mental and physical disease that is being foisted on us. We're being farmed like cattle and what does the farmer do to cattle that are not productive for him?
That is an ad hominem? Are the facts claimed (that there are tree stumps under glaciers, and they are roughly 3,000 years old) correct or not?
I know that there are places where there are glaciers now that were not there in Roman times so it seems to be a plausible claim.
That is an ad hominem? Are the facts claimed (that there are tree stumps under glaciers, and they are roughly 3,000 years old) correct or not?
They're correct. My favorite is Greenland and Erik the Red's ice farmers. Melting ice sheets there uncovered a lot of artefacts from the settlements there, which were abandoned when the LIA began. There's also stuff like this-
https://www.heritagedaily.com/2023/09/melting-glaciers-reveal-archaeological-treasures/148468
Archaeologists from the Secrets Of The Ice project are uncovering archaeological treasures left by melting glaciers in the mountains of Norway.
The team have found remnants of reindeer hunts dating back 1,500 years in a survey of melting glaciers in the Breheimen National Park.
or this-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/reel/video/p0gl9tq4/melting-glaciers-reveal-viking-pass-hidden-for-centuries
Thousands of ancient artefacts have been discovered that until very recently were covered up by snow and ice. The discoveries have given rise to a new field of study, glacial archaeology
or even this-
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0959683611425552
Which is a paper based on the Norwegian discoveries. One fun aspect of a lot of Scandanavian climate stuff is there are often multiple factors involved. So things like rising treelines can get complicated given there's a thing called 'isostatic rebound', where land level changes/rises as it recovers from being compressed during the last Ice Age.. Which is also one of the reasons why the UK is slowly tilting and makes claims wrt sea level rises more complicated. Like are they, or is it the land that's rising/falling?
"See for an example the article Melting Glaciers Revealing Ancient Tree Stumps from a Warmer Period that describes that a complete forest was covered by a glacier. "
Thanks. The linked article is in Icelandic but Google Translate helps. It seems to be a follow-up to an earlier article which I'll try to find. I'd guess the glacier was a fairly immobile sheet of ice so that it preserved the trees in situ much as peat does. I'm not familiar with Icelandic palaeoecology but I find it interesting that 3000 years ago is about the time the Late Bronze age across a swathe of N Ireland came to a juddering halt.
As to your second point the 23 years seems to indicate that the figure was taken from the Nature article I linked a couple of times in this thread. There are a few of points to note about that: firstly that it refers only to mountain glaciers, not ice sheets, secondly that it was sufficient to raise sea levels by about 18mm and thirdly the rate of loss was accelerating. In that context think what "This means that the uncertainty of the estimated volume of glacial ice, not the volume itself but the uncertainty of the volume, is five times the calculated change in the last 23 years" really means.
The uncertainty is going to be a smallish fraction of the overall volume. In itself it's equivalent to 10cm rise of sea-level so that the potential rise is very much greater. Far from saying it's not as bad as it sounds, it's saying that the potential rise is very large indeed. It's also well to remember that a rise in sea-level will set off a lot of erosion on vulnerable coasts. Parts of, say, the East Anglian coast already have problems with coastal erosion; a 1 metre rise could be quite devastating.
Thanks. The linked article is in Icelandic but Google Translate helps. It seems to be a follow-up to an earlier article which I'll try to find. I'd guess the glacier was a fairly immobile sheet of ice so that it preserved the trees in situ much as peat does. I'm not familiar with Icelandic palaeoecology but I find it interesting that 3000 years ago is about the time the Late Bronze age across a swathe of N Ireland came to a juddering halt.
It's all rather fascinating, eg did the LIA exist, or not? Evidence suggests it did, and was global. But this is a handy search term-
glacial archaeology
and there's a lot of research in this field. So fun stuff like the project described here-
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2023/07/20/new-study-pins-time-of-greenlands-last-melting-to-some-400000-years-ago/
The scientists at the time took little interest in the sediments; the core was moved in the 1970s from a military freezer to the University at Buffalo, then to a freezer in Denmark in the 1990s. There it was forgotten, until it was examined in 2017. The findings, published in 2021, showed it held not just sediment but leaves, moss and other detritus of things living on the surface—remnants of an ice-free landscape, perhaps a boreal forest.
So a Greenland of the future, irrespective of CO2. There's a ton of evidence for cyclical warming/cooling, along with the big stuff like Ice Ages. We just (in geological terms) had one, and we're still slowly thawing out following the LGM. Which is again back to the real science, ie how much is man made, and how much is just natural variability?
> the media is rife with failed predictions.
So ignore them, and just listen to the experts. the IPCC. Let me quote some bullet points:
° Human influence on the climate system is clear
° The more we disrupt our climate, the more we risk severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts
° We have the means to limit climate change and build a more prosperous, sustainable future
The trouble is, you don't want to do that either because you disagree with them. So who do we believe? The international committee of many climate scientists who have been working on this for decades, or you - a random guy on the internet spouting unsourced figures and unsubstantiated conclusions? Hmm, what a pickle.
And yet somehow drilling for oil and fracking making a whole group of influential billionaires much wealthier as an impetus for saying climate change being fake is somehow a non issue..
but no, it's the scientists who'll apprently lose their jobs just because... or if they somehow disagree with.... who exactly.... that are the real liars.
Pretty pathetic argument...
Identify those people and add up how much money that entails.
Then add up the amount of money that the oil, coal, and natgas corporations will lose if the usage of their products is reduced or stopped.
Then compare those two numbers. You will find that the second number will be far, FAR larger. Follow the money, indeed.
So who do we believe? The international committee of many climate scientists who have been working on this for decades..
With the objective of securing the UN EP $100bn a year, and continuing to secure their own jobs. Or do you believe a random guy on the Internet (ie Rik) and people spouting unsourced figures about 'deniers' being funded by 'big oil', but can't actually substanstiate those claims?
Jellied Eel wrote: "unsourced figures about 'deniers' being funded by 'big oil'"
Big oil spent $445m in last election cycle to influence Trump and Congress
"These investments are “likely to pay dividends”, the report says, with Republicans holding control of the White House, House and Senate – as well as some key states. Trump unleashed dozens of pro-fossil fuel executive actions on his first day in office"
"These investments are “likely to pay dividends”, the report says, with Republicans holding control of the White House, House and Senate – as well as some key states. Trump unleashed dozens of pro-fossil fuel executive actions on his first day in office"
Yep. Dividends like lower gas and energy costs in general for the US. And given energy costs are a major input to pretty much everything, it has the potential of lowering inflation and reducing the cost of living.
Meanwhile, the losers spaffed aound $1.6bn to lose an election. And prior to that, the moronic Biden released his ironically named 'Inflation Reduction Act' with around $600bn for 'green' initiatives. So that, plus of course the UN EP's demands for $100bn a year to fight the War on Warmth shows you where the real money and lobbying is. Meanwhile, the UK is still going back to the future with Millibrain's energy 'policy'.. And the wind farmers thank the UK public for the £12bn+ in subsidies they got for 2024-
https://dp.lowcarboncontracts.uk/dataset/actual-cfd-generation-and-avoided-ghg-emissions
"Dividends like lower gas and energy costs in general for the US."
Lower by enough to matter? I think not. People are paying the current (high) prices, why would producers lower their costs more than a tiny, token amount when they can maintain the approx. level and make bigger profits? That's how capitalism, especially US capitalism works. More so when the US Gov is staffed with billionaires and CEOs as department heads and in cabinet posts.
Lower by enough to matter? I think not. People are paying the current (high) prices, why would producers lower their costs more than a tiny, token amount when they can maintain the approx. level and make bigger profits?
Yep. But that's energy policy and regulation for you. So in the UK, there's an impending April Fool's (bad) joke where energy price 'caps' go up again. So will our energy bills, because tobacco costs have increased RPI, and RPI increases the costs of running a wind farm. But the wind farmers keep telling us their produce is the cheapest evah! And yet our electricity bills keep rising, and rising ever faster because of indexed contracts linked to irrelevant RPI and compounding.
And Labour got elected on a promise of putting more money in our pockets. What people I guess didn't realise is when Free-Gear Kier said 'our', he meant their, not ours. And thanks to the joys of financial engineering, there's £12bn+ in subsidies going to 'Green' energy producers, which gives us stuff like this-
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/major-wind-farm-paid-65m-175408130.html
This meant that of 4.7 terawatt hours of power its turbines generated, 3.3 terawatt hours were effectively discarded – with owner SSE paid by grid operators each time this happened.
£65m bung to not ship product. Kinda Freakonomics because traditionally when supply exceeds demand, prices fall. In energy, they of course rise, and although it says SSE's paid by grid operators, those costs are passed through to energy customers.. Which then increases inflation, which then increases energy costs as RPI continues to rise. Then in an ideal world, that £65m literal windfall could go towards reducing SSE's customers bills.. Except of course capitalism, and SSE having flogged off their retail business to OVO, who have to buy ROCs and REGOs from SSE and other subsidy farmers.
In a perfect world, a regulator would look after customers interests and work towards reducing energy costs. But we have OFGEM, Ed Millibrain and Jonathan Brearley, and Millibrain changed OFGEMs role from protecting customers to implementing Ed's carbon policies.. Which given Brearly helped write Ed's 'Climate Change Act', he's probably fine with promoting the 'renewables' lobby. And being paid over £300k a year as OFGEM's CEO, doesn't have to worry much about his own electricity bill.
Of course the subsidies could be removed, or even reduced, especially given fraudulent & misleading statements by the 'renewables' lobby.. But with Millibrain and Brearley in charge, and regulatory capture and rent seeking firmly in place.. That's unlikely to happen.
@Jellied Eel
Make up your mind. Is it that you're in denial that our greenhouse gas emissions are behaving according to the laws of physics, or that you don't like any of these new-fangled renewable energy devices because they hit the profits of the fossil fuel industries?
"because they hit the profits of the fossil fuel industries"
If only this were true. With the current marginal pricing model, coupled with the fact you will have renewables and gas constantly swapping places at the top of the generator list, means the price is set by the most expensive one, which is always gas.
..means the price is set by the most expensive one, which is always gas.
Not always, because gas prices have been falling, and the UK could always produce more gas. Plus gas will always be necessary because of the fundamental intermittency of wind & solar. Or there's always coal. UK has that as well. Poland must be laughing their asses off at the moment. First some Baltic states disconnected from Russia's electricity grid and saw their costs more than double. Now, Ukraine's disconnecting* as well and going to be reliant on the EU. Poland is sitting in the middle and their generators are rubbing their hands with glee at the transit fees and general charges they can pass on. EU energy demand just increased quite substantially, generating capacity hasn't, so energy prices are going to go up even faster..
*with some help from Russia
Make up your mind. Is it that you're in denial that our greenhouse gas emissions are behaving according to the laws of physics
I guess you missed my previous quote where I chucked in Arrhenius, Angstrom, Planck, Einstein and a few others. The thing reality deniers can't seem to grasp is that CO2 is behaving according to the laws of physics because it has no choice. It is, and always will be a weak GHG. Again, physics constrains any effects that could possibly be attributed to CO2. Where climate 'science' drifts into climate fantasy is assuming the forcings and feedbacks that might follow, but then when those are tested by models, and model reanalysis, those are found to either not exist, or not be very significant. This is why CO2 sensitivity keeps being revised downwards, which is again due to having to obey the laws of physics and not fantasy worlds that exist inside climate models.
or that you don't like any of these new-fangled renewable energy devices because they hit the profits of the fossil fuel industries?
Nope. I keep pointing out that climate 'scientists' think we should build windmills instead of nuclear. This is because climate 'scientists' are smart, and think we should go back to the Age of Sail.. even though our ancestors knew the problems of relying on wind. Their lobbying has been very effective though, and you can see the results of their 'science' in your ever increasing energy bills. And of course as we're living in the Age of Stupid.. We build windmills and solar farms. They predict 'extreme weather'. We know that extreme weather will destroy, or just damage windmills and solar farms..
At least fossil fuels are rather more useful to society than our equivalents of Easter Island's stone statues.
Jellied Eel, no matter how clever you think you are, you are still - objectively - just "some guy on the internet". And no matter how much you think the IPCC is flawed, they are still - objectively - a group of many thousands of experts in this field who have been working on it for decades.
Rik is simply restating the IPCC position. You're telling him that he, and they, are wrong. The burden of proof is on you, and let me tell you you're not even close to clearing that credibilty bar. You're just some guy, you don't have an inside understanding on all this. You're not as clever as you think you are.
Jellied Eel, no matter how clever you think you are, you are still - objectively - just "some guy on the internet". And no matter how much you think the IPCC is flawed, they are still - objectively - a group of many thousands of experts in this field who have been working on it for decades.
Correct. I'm just one guy. So is Rik. And there's an army of infinite monkeys that depend on keeping the Carbon Cult going in China at the moment, still looking for ways to extract the $100bn a year that the UN EP wants. But I've also been studying this field for decades.
Rik is simply restating the IPCC position. You're telling him that he, and they, are wrong. The burden of proof is on you, and let me tell you you're not even close to clearing that credibilty bar. You're just some guy, you don't have an inside understanding on all this. You're not as clever as you think you are.
I'm telling Rik he's wrong. He's telling me I'm wrong. You're chucking around insults because you are a well indoctrinated believer. Like in most cults, overcoming your programming requires effort on your part to overcome all the conditioning you've been bombarded with. But there's some simple stuff-
The Earth is heating up. No argument. That heat is exacerbating extreme weather. No argument.
There's always room for an argument, especially in science. Far less so in climate 'science' though, where anyone who argues against the cult is branded a denier. Nothing in the pile of spaghetti supports the argument that extreme weather is increasing, hurricanes are becoming more severe, etc.
notice that although at first rising incrementally, temperatures were not chart-busters until 1970, when, as the old saying goes, "Katy, bar the door!"
Or Stephen, call the bank. 1970 being when Schneider (and others) discovered the media loves a good disaster story, and because it was cold, we got the impending Ice Age scare. The science was wrong then, just as it is now. But thanks to a few cold years in the '70s data manipulators can claim 'record' rates of warming. We have no real idea if similar rates in the past happened, but we do know they happened, ie things like the MWP & LIA. But the reality deniers really hate those because there's no correlation with CO2. So Mikey Mann and the Hockey Team whipped up thermometers out of plugs of wood, and thanks to some bad math, the IPCC got to tell a tidy story and pretend that the past never happened.
And people are still doing it-
The Earth is getting hotter, and it's getting hotter faster. This ugly reality is readily apparent when looking at this ugly chart
Hotter than what? Faster than when? It only shows data from 1880. It doesn't include anything from the satellite record. It glosses over the amount of reliable data in the late 19th century.. Which is still an issue. Some areas of the globe aren't covered by weather stations. Or parts of the globe like the UK are covered by badly sited stations that don't qualify for climatology because their uncertainty might be +/- 5C. Or again they set records by measuring the temperatures from 3 Typhoon jet exhausts as they took off at RAF Coningsby.
But that's normal, especially for GISS. No data? No problem! Just find another weather station a few hundred, or sometimes thousand kilometres away, and apply kriging to fill in the blanks. And as if by magic, they can produce angry red heat maps with imaginary data to fill in the blanks where there is no actual observation data. Who needs real data when you can model it instead?
And the further back in time you go, the worse it gets. So then it's using wooden thermometers from a small number of locations to take the whole world's temperature. Because much like in Avatar, the sacred trees are 'teleconnected'. Or going further back, using ice cores.. Which can obviously only be taken where there's a decent amount of thick ice. But no matter, snow contains memories of warmth along with CO2. Except when cores like Vostok show CO2 levels increasing following warming. But effect preceding cause is just fine in climate 'science'. Throw the proxies in the blender and call it good.
Lots of words, all of which amount to "I am right and the IPCC and the 99% of professional climate scientists that agree with them are wrong". You're not a professional climate scientist, so you don't get to claim refuge in that 1% - you haven't done research to support your position, you've just read some stuff on the internet. The sheer arrogance you need to hold this stance is just staggering.
Newton saw further because he stood on the shoulders of giants. You've found the view from up there doesn't align with your politics, so rather than stand on their shoulders you bite at their toes.
The sheer arrogance you need to hold this stance is just staggering.
You saw stuff on the Internet, and probably TV that has shaped your beliefs. I saw stuff that made me sceptical, which is the usual route to scepticism. So in my case, it was the Hockey Stick, which erased the MWP and LIA. This tripped my BS meter, as it did for many others. Then it was discovering exactly how the Hockey Stick and warming was manufactured using some attrocious statistics, and then getting a peek behind the curtain with the Climategate leaks. That showed how appalling that aspect of climate 'science' worked.
Newton saw further because he stood on the shoulders of giants. You've found the view from up there doesn't align with your politics, so rather than stand on their shoulders you bite at their toes.
Nope, not at all, and as is often the case, you have things bass-ackwards. The problem is the way science has turned into politics and activism, and the way that has hijacked and corrupted the science because there are trillions of dollars (or pounds) in play. So for some reason, global warming means we must build windmills instead of nuclear because CO2 means extreme weather which will destroy windmills. But wind farmers get billions in subsidies and don't want their gravy train disrupted. Or there's activists like Greenpeace or Extinction Rebellion who co-opt climate change as a way to force social change.
And you also don't seem to understand the history of global warming, or the significance. So back in the day, Arrhenius built on the work of other giants-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect
Arrhenius, in this work, built upon the prior work of other famous scientists, including Joseph Fourier, John Tyndall, and Claude Pouillet. Arrhenius wanted to determine whether greenhouse gases could contribute to the explanation of the temperature variation between glacial and inter-glacial periods.
In trying to figure out why Ice Ages. And came up with the Greenhouse effect that we all know and love. But the first steps in characterising and quantifying the CO2 problem. But then ran into a 'denier'-
Arrhenius's absorption values for CO2 and his conclusions met criticism by Knut Ångström in 1900, who published the first modern infrared absorption spectrum of CO2 with two absorption bands, and published experimental results that seemed to show that absorption of infrared radiation by the gas in the atmosphere was already "saturated" so that adding more could make no difference.
I'm.. fairly certain people wouldn't consider Ångström a science denier, but if that debate had happened today, the Carbon Cult members would probably have branded him with that label. But the debate bewteen Ångström and Arrhenius resulted in the first downward revision of CO2 sensitivity because science. But then Ångström at the time didn't know CO2 has four absorption bands, not two because he was limited by the technology of the day. The saturation issue remains however.
And then there were some other deniers working on this-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum
In 1901, Max Planck used quanta to mean "quanta of matter and electricity",[6] gas, and heat.[7] In 1905, in response to Planck's work and the experimental work of Lenard (who explained his results by using the term quanta of electricity), Albert Einstein suggested that radiation existed in spatially localized packets which he called "quanta of light"
Which spawned photons, quantum physics and cats in boxes. But also the central problem with the Greenhouse Effect, and err.. actually being able to quantify that effect. Which over time has resulted in downward revisions of CO2 sensitivity, because when it's set high in climate models, they rapidly diverge from reality during reanalysis. So if a model can't 'predict' the past when it's hindcasting and being compared to observations, it's rather unlikely they'll be able to predict the future. That part is how science should be done, and also why warming predictions have dropped from as much as 8C down to our current 1.5C. Amusingly the last time I pointed this stuff out, I got some ignorant trolls who seemed to think that photons only applied to light..
But this is the crux of the argument. What, exactly is the effect and relationship between CO2 and warming? There are some assumptions base on the theory that the relationship is logarithmic, ie how much warming per doubling of CO2.. Which is also where saturation kicks in, so if warming has peaked for the current doubling interval (270-540ppmv), then we're almost at peak warming that can be attributed to CO2. If that well established science is correct, then we should see temperature rises slow down, which is the historical norm, ie our 'climate' oscillates around an average temperature, which probably isn't that dissimilar to today.
But then the Carbon Cultists argue against people like Arrehenius, Ångström, Planck, Einstein etc because their wooden thermometers can measure global temperatures to two decimal places, and their trees are teleconnected so they're accurate for the whole globe. Do you really believe that wooden thermometers work?
Give it up Eel, you are wrong. And you are coming across as a complete buttbag. Just like the rest of the climate denier cretins who cannot even understand what they see right in front of them every day.
The climate scientists are RIGHT. You are WRONG (and have been taken for a ride by big oil, FACT). Get over it.
But in the end it won't matter either way. The planet is probably already too far gone to recover now. Some big wars on the way as the populations start to migrate. You Americans are going to need a bigger wall. Top and bottom. And sides. I'm reminded of the film Monsters, that's the sort of wall you will need.
Give it up Eel, you are wrong. And you are coming across as a complete buttbag. Just like the rest of the climate denier cretins who cannot even understand what they see right in front of them every day.
Thus sayeth yet another anonymous troll with another insightful comment packed full of childish ad homs.
What I see in front of me every day is just weather, and normal weather. What you probably see is red weather and an existential dread of an impending Thermageddon that will never arrive. But this is just the way you've been programmed, and breaking that condition requires you to make an effort to understand the actual science, and why much of the climate 'science' you've been spoon fed is just propaganda.
The planet is probably already too far gone to recover now.
Don't Panic! You might currently be living in this-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Stupid
But like Al Gore's 'Inconvenient Truth', both movies are works of fiction. There's also something about climate 'science' that tends to be parody, so if you're looking for something in book form, look no further than 'Dire Predictions' by this chap-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_E._Mann#Books
Because he's made many dire predictions, and like another famous climate 'scientist' Paul Erlich, they've pretty much all been falsified. So fear not, the planet will be just fine. It's gone through many climate changes and we've done ok. Some, like the LIA might be a bit unpleasent, but others like the MWP have been just great. And you're really in the age of stupid if you think a 1.5C temperature increase is going to result in the end of civilisation as we know it.
IPCC got their BOGUS data which was "cooked" by NOAA and NASA to APPEAR to be warming out of control.
But NOAA lost ALL CLIMATE SCAM funding. So did NASA. So did IPCC. Without NOAA and NASA and USAID funding, IPCC will STOP EXISTING.
It's a GIANT SCAM and Trump and DOGE and the new EPA and MANY of us are EXPOSING it for what it is.
The USA will produce cheap carbon-based fuels again, in export-level quantities, at affordable prices, AND the WORLD will be BETTER OFF!
Alrighty then, I'll see your IPCC Table 12.12 on page 1856, and raise you a Table 12.5 page 1813, 12.6 p.1819, 12.7 p.1827, and 12.8 p.1835 (among others) for a high confidence of projected increase in Fire Weather in Northern, Central, Eastern and Southern Australia, Northern, North-Eastern and South-Western South America, the Mediterranean, and Western and Central North America ...
You care that "the media is rife with failed predictions."
You deal in arbitrary data points, just like they do.
I told you to look at the flows - the rates of change over time and the second differentials of those rates.
Hint: from 500 million years ago to 5,000 years ahead should be enough.
Do try to stay focused and follow the science, not the media.
1. It's not happening.
2. It is happening but it's not that bad.
3. It is that bad but it's not our fault.
4. It is our fault but it's too late to do anything now.
You are speedrunning this in a single thread, moving from 1 to 2 in just one post. Slow down or you'll hit 4 and have nowhere to go.
Lovely reference to the Yes, Minister! series. However, in my original post what I said was that the quality of many temperature measurement networks is shoddy. I did not claim there was no warming at all.
One of the problems with the concept of an average global temperature anomaly is that it tries to summarise the state of thirty generally recognised different climate types into a single number. An extreme in one direction can cancel out an extreme in the opposite direction. In that case the conclusion would be there are zero problems where in fact you have two.
And when they focus on specific regions, you people then say "But you're disregarding the rest of the data" or "You're just cherry picking the hottest places."
There's no way to have an actual scientific discussion with people who abandon science the first moment they see Trump's glistening rod.
There's no way to have an actual scientific discussion with people who abandon science the first moment they see Trump's glistening rod.
Indeed. TDS sufferers often come out with juvenile comments like that, and have pretty much zero understanding of any of the actual science. But that's the problem with both climate 'science' and TDS. It's adherents have been so thoroughly indoctrinated that it's become more of a cult or religion than anything resembling science.
I have a degree in Chemical Engineering, and thirty years of industry experience. The fact I think Trump is a vile misogynist does not invalidate my ability to do the science, the maths and every other discipline that leads to the perfectly reasonable conclusion we would be better leaving fossil fuels in the ground.
We have a LOT of evidence that CO2 is "earths thermostat button" but in the past we saw that the rise in CO2 was always roughly matched by a rise in temperature without too much lag or lead from either. Now? CO2 levels are spiking precipitously and temperature is lagging far behind. Even if we stop raising CO2 levels now, temperature levels will with near 100% certainty continue rising for a long time. There's nothing that plants or other carbon cycles can do against that. Changes in temperature and CO2 levels have historically always been slow. Now they're not. (To illustrate just how much not slow it is, I find this XKCD graph to be very telling: https://xkcd.com/1732/) There's no telling exactly what is going to happen, but it won't be good
And what do they reveal? Tree stumps from the vegetation that used to grow there. The glaciers were not always there and we are coming out of a little ice age.
...
On the whole I do not disagree that earth's atmosphere is getting warmer. But I strongly disagree that it is a disaster that requires action.
When there were trees under the glaciers, humanity was a small group of nomads.
We now have a highly inflexible society where people expect flooding to not be a thing, and for the supermarkets to be full of food. Climate change will cause mass crop failures, changes in the habitability of coastal regions (where, *cough* most people live), famine, civil war, mass migration and associated civil unrest.
If you don't think it's a disaster, then you haven't studied the history of mass famines and forced migrations closely enough.
@rg287
"When there were trees under the glaciers, humanity was a small group of nomads.
We now have a highly inflexible society where people expect flooding to not be a thing, and for the supermarkets to be full of food"
How are we now less flexible? We now have the ability to travel further, faster and with greater capacity. We have construction and materials as well as other environment modifying methods (draining swamps and tidal defences). And we have superior methods of food management and logistics. We also have heating and cooling technologies. Those nomads would believe us to have magic for how we can deal with this world.
"Climate change will cause mass crop failures"
I keep hearing this fantasy but it seems to go the other way. The warming/Co2 seems to be improving crop yields.
How are we now less flexible? We now have the ability to travel further, faster and with greater capacity.
Tell the inhabitants of NYC, New Orleans, London, Singapore, Mumbai or Shenzhen that flood defence is impracticable and they need to move inland.
See how flexible society is then! Move n million people in a hurry. Lol. Tell President Trump "terribly sorry, but your billion-dollar property portfolio is getting wet and staying that way."
Simply consider the response of the world's wealthiest country to Hurricane Katrina and the fact that citizens were living in FEMA cabins years later. But no, it's fine, people are highly flexible and movable. They'll simply pack their bags, abandon their home and move inland to... where? A refugee camp? Sure, sure.
"Climate change will cause mass crop failures"
I keep hearing this fantasy but it seems to go the other way. The warming/Co2 seems to be improving crop yields.
Then you haven't been paying attention to the collapse in (e.g.) Olive harvests in Spain and Mediterranean regions, or fruit harvests in Central America. And we're not talking about "a bad year". We're talking about there being no harvest because in many cases the orchards never even set fruit. This against a backdrop of ecosystem collapse as all the scary, slightly vague predictions that climate scientists have been making of for years start happening.
Olive oil price skyrockets as Spanish drought bites
Why Texas Hasn't Had an Olive Harvest in Three Years
Long lasting drought led to crop failures in the Maghreb
Drought is devastating southern Africa’s crops: why it’s happening and what can be learned
There are locations which were slightly marginal for crops, that are now becoming sweet spots and yes, the yields may improve there - but on the other edge of that growing region (across the old sweet spot and in the opposing marginal zone), crops are now failing entirely. Large-scale mechanised farming is inflexible - you can't just tell a thousand acre arable farm to dump their harvesting gear and plant fruit trees. Trees take years to mature and bear fruit, and the areas which are becoming climactically suitable for (say) cereal crops are often thoroughly unprepared to pivot to those crops, or topographically unsuited for intensive mechanised farming.
And of course if/when we start to see the shutdown of circulation mechanisms like the AMOC, parts of northern Europe could just turn into frigid sub-Arctic regions with no ability to engage in meaningful agriculture whatsoever. It could be a boon for sub-Saharan farmers (although per the links above, both Northern and Southern Africa have seen major crop failures in the past 2 years), but meanwhile there are 100million people in the new northern wilderness of the British Isles, Scandinavia and northern France with no domestic food supply. But obviously we'll all highly mobile and will just abandon our homes to move south. Sure.
But by all means avoid the hard questions by cherry picking "oh well, this farmer seems to be doing well" and ignore the big picture, the overall, accelerating reality of unreliable harvests and shifting temperatures.
@rg287
"Tell the inhabitants of NYC, New Orleans, London, Singapore, Mumbai or Shenzhen that flood defence is impracticable and they need to move inland."
Is it impractical? If so I am fairly sure they would prefer moving inland than getting so wet. Its not really a problem.
"See how flexible society is then! Move n million people in a hurry. Lol."
What hurry? Aint the MMCC claims so far projected because they are so unmeasurable now? There is no hurry. Or do you imagine this as some kind of Hollywood film or in the UK Gordon Browns drowning dog propaganda for not turning off the light switch?
"Simply consider the response of the world's wealthiest country to Hurricane Katrina and the fact that citizens were living in FEMA cabins years later"
Yes, that probably affected the election when national policy had such issues. The abuses of FEMA funding and certain behaviours deemed acceptable were terrible. But this has little to do with what we are discussing.
"Then you haven't been paying attention to the collapse in (e.g.) Olive harvests in Spain and Mediterranean regions, or fruit harvests in Central America."
Is this supposed to be out of the ordinary? Farming and crops have good and bad years, this is normal and why an entire commodity market exists. Even your links dont seem to support your attribution to MMCC co2 theory. The Africa one even says the government was warned this was likely to come and they did nothing to prepare.
"But by all means avoid the hard questions by cherry picking "oh well, this farmer seems to be doing well" and ignore the big picture, the overall, accelerating reality of unreliable harvests and shifting temperatures."
Amusingly you are accusing me of what you just did and didnt even do well (your links dont back you up). There are many people who stand and shout the end is coming. You need a little more for me to assume your claim has any more validity to the others.
I already have done all that, which is why I *KNOW* for a *FACT* that CO2-based man-made climate change is ABSOLUTELY a HOAX designed to separate YOU from your MONEY and FREEDOM, and advance a world-wide socialistic group-think society that is easily controlled and manipulated.
Within a year I'll accept your apology.
* Not Agreeing != Not Reading/studying/analyzing/understanding.
In fact, YOU are in the wrong on AGW; you appear to be mindlessly accepting what you have been told, without question, and I doubt you'd go so far as to at least TRY to understand ALTERNATE explanations of actual observed data, such as the effects of atmospheric pressure on the GH effect, or the IR bandwidth saturation of the extremely narrow band affected by CO2, or increase in CO2 concentration caused by ocean warming and underwater volcanic activity due to gas solubility of CO2 vs temperature [you can easily find that chart]!!! And all CO2 does is slow black body radiation down anyway - it is NOT blocked - as it re-radiates every bit of radiation absorbed that is NOT transferred by convection yo whatever atmosphere ocean, or land it comes in contact with!
Seriously, are people REALLY this ignorant of physics and chemistry, and also THAT willing to believe the DOOMER "scientists"? Obviously CRITICAL thinking was replaced with GROUP THINKING in schools!
Well, for instance, you wrote:
Even the IPCC does not see any climate influence in the past or the future on fire weatherwhich is just not true, per the link you yourself provided. (Yes, I checked it. Unsporting, I know.)
What the IPCC says there is (I've excised the references for brevity, feel free to check them in the original report that you helpfully linked):
Climate change drives future increases in North American fire weather, particularly in the south-west (high confidence), although further studies on shifts in exposure and vulnerability are needed to understand overall fire risks (see WGII Chapter 14). A significant increase of FWI is apparent before 2050 under RCP8.5 in much of North America, including the frequency of 95th-percentile FWI days, peak seasonal FWI average, fire weather season length, and maximum fire weather index [ref] and fire season across North America expands dramatically beyond 2°C global warming levels [refs] simulated fire-spread days across Canada and found increases across most of the areas studied by 2071–2100, with median changes of –20 to +140% (RCP2.6), –20 to +250% (RCP4.5) and 40 to 360% (RCP8.5) compared to 1976–2015. [ref] found more conducive conditions for lightning-ignited fires in the south-eastern USA by mid-century, while warming conditions in Alaska increasingly push July temperatures above 13.4°C, a threshold for fire danger across Alaska’s tundra and boreal forest [refs].- which is to say, they are in no doubt about the connection between climate change and fire weather.
(That's just one paragraph of the chapter, mind. Several others deal with fire weather in other parts of the globe, all with the same thrust - yes, it's seriously exacerbated by climate change.)
Good of you to check the actual references. There are two things I have a problem with here. First of all, they include RCP 8.5, an extreme scenario for the rise in carbon dioxide levels. It was originally intended as a test scenario to see what models do. Yet, in many publications it is treated as the most likely scenario because, well, it gets scary results.
Second issue is modelling. Even the researchers creating the models for CMIP 6 say they run too hot. The models are both numerically unstable and inaccurate. See for example this article, in which researchers varied the initial conditions by a trillionth of a degree (0.00000000001 °C) and got completely different outcomes running the models from 1920 to 2100.
Climate science has a long way to go before it can be used for policy making.
What you wrote is correct. But irrelevant.
You consider two equal volumes of air that exist independently of one another in separate environments (outside the environment, if you will), and make the correct observation that the cold volume has a higher specific mass. Subsequently, when you mix the two volumes, you're not mixing an equal mass - you're adding a larger mass of cold air to the warm air, and your average temperature comes out at slightly below 10C.
Given that these two volumes exist in - presumably - a lab of some sort, you've got a third environment into which you have pumped the excess heat to chill the cold volume down in the first place.
On average, the temperature doesn't change - you're just picking where the heat is. You've started out with two room-temperature lots of air, chilled one (and put the heat... somewhere. Vent to atmosphere?) and then mixed them. In fact in reality, the heat has changed - because you've probably burnt some gas to generate the energy to pump the heat out, resulting in a net increase in heat to the atmosphere.
Your example describes - incompletely - a real phenomena. But the Earth does not work like that. The Earth has a broadly constant mass of air (not withstanding the negligible percentage that gets stripped off by solar wind, or added by meteorites burning up in our atmosphere). This mass (and the water - see Sea Surface Air Temperatures) are warming, partly through the simple calorific release of turning carbon fuels into heat, and partly through the increased atsmopheric warming caused by increased CO2 emissions.
This warming is likely to continue accelerating as the ocean warms to the point where CO2 ceases to be soluble and the massive dissolved CO2 store that has been building up in the mid-Atlantic for the past 150years starts out-gassing.
Since USAID has shut down, I expect that the hot air about global warming will dissipate. In the meantime, to make up for that, Central Europe is building gigantic 1 GW electric heaters to dissipate excess electricity generated by domestic solar panels. https://spectator.sme.sk/business/c/blowing-excess-green-electricity-into-the-air-yes-also-in-slovakia
Definitely a logic flaw here!
Imagine the solar panels were not there, what would happen to the energy from the sun striking the ground?
Solar panels are net-zero (ignoring the energy used to create them from fossil fuels)
We use solar panels to (try) prevent locked up CO2 in fossil fuels being ADDED to the atmosphere.
Not so sure solar is a net zero on the heat.
Mine get really hot under load. If you get a chance, take a look at one with a FLIR unit.
They are black and absorb a lot of heat and not reflect it like grass or sand.
In those areas where they are covering grass, what is the effect on carbon capture?
I would love to see someone do a study on this.
My concern about the petroleum is not the carbon but the byproducts. Plastics specifically.
We don’t get the micro plastics under control we might not have much life left.
Not so sure solar is a net zero on the heat. Mine get really hot under load. If you get a chance, take a look at one with a FLIR unit. They are black and absorb a lot of heat and not reflect it like grass or sand.
Not likely to have much effect because climate stuff is planetary scale, and the area covered by solar panels is teeny in comparison. At most, they may have a small local effect and contribute to UHI (Urban Heat Islands). Urban areas are usually hotter than rural because urban generates more heat.. Which is also an issue if weather stations are sited in UHIs.
More significant is why people are wasting that heat from their solar panels. That's mostly down to policy & subsidies favoring solar PV, but combi panels exist that can be used to capture that heat and heat water. Then use the PV element to heat some large, well insulated hot water tanks and you have 'free' hot water for heating, showering, washing etc. Very cheap because it's a cylinder and a cheap resistive heating element, so much cheaper to service and maintain than a combi boiler. Plus it'll work when there's a power cut, and a combi boiler won't.
Snag of course is although you can get a nice 300l well insulated cylinder for <£1,500.. you need the space to put them, which a lot of modern homes don't have because they've been designed around combi boilers for everything. Plus building regs can sometimes be bizarre, because even though you're using solar for 'free' heat, energy efficiency rules can penalise storage systems. But also one of the glaring problems around 'decarbonisatiom' and policies that will force homeowners to replace gas with electricity for heating and cooking.
In those areas where they are covering grass, what is the effect on carbon capture?
Much the same as for the heating effect. In the grand scheme of things, very little. When they create shade, they'll obviously limit photosynthesis. Biggest problem with solar farms is they convert land from growing food to growing subsidies instead.
No logic flaw of the type you are perhaps thinking of.
With solar thermal systems, excess heat is a problem, you solve it by putting a radiator on the side of the house: so you collect heat on the roof and move it (well most of it, remembering our thermal dynamics) to the radiator.
So something similar can be achieved by solar voltaic and heat pumps.
From reading the linked article, it would seem the problem is the electricity network operators not wanting to upgrade the network to support large numbers of small generators feeding the distribution network. As has been often discussed here an issue is base/predictable load. If you are using coal, oil or gas as your main power station energy source then adjusting (or probably not in this case) the output to take account of small scale solar generation is going to have CO2 related side effects.
Looks like a good business to be in will be a spa operator, where you could use the excess electricity to heat your sauna and hot pools...
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Well why don't you suck Elon's dick harder and maybe you can move to Mars instead. SpaceMarine.
I didn't know they taught environmental science in the Royal Signals?
Well why don't you suck Elon's dick harder and maybe you can move to Mars instead. SpaceMarine.
Another insightful comment from a TDS sufferer, who's clearly projecting again.
I didn't know they taught environmental science in the Royal Signals?
Then you don't know much, do you? Oddly enough, the environment plays a huge role in getting reliable signals, with things like 'rain fade' affecting radio comms. Or using tropospheric scatter to bounce radio signals OTH. Or even the effect of weather on laser links. Or the way MODIS is used. Or because this is often a tri-service thing, the development of this-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HITRAN
The original version of HITRAN was compiled by the US Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories (1960s) in order to enable surveillance of military aircraft detected through the terrestrial atmosphere
And not to forget the Navy, they're obviously very interested in SSTs, and deeper because those have a big impact on sonar. And then combining all of the above, all services get very interested in stuff like DSPs and signal processing to find signals in noise, or just time series analysis. But that's also a bit of a Rik-ism-
According to the rapidly advancing field of attribution science
Which is basically the climate muddlers catching up with the military and industry, who have been doing signal processing in very noisy environments for a very long time. Of course when those experts point out that the mathturbators are doing it wrong, and using triangle filters incorrectly (Rahmstorf Smoothing again), they get shouted down as deniers because they're not climate 'scientists'.
You think the HITRAN researchers were also getting shot at in the field?
Some might have. But here's a thing-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-dioxide_laser
I sometimes wonder if there could be experiments using these, because if you get CO2 really really excited, it lases and emits IR in wavelengths that are just a tad relevant to CO2 dogma. So modulate a beam tuned (or tuned and filtered) to the wavelength of interest, set up a bunch of ground targets, fire the beam up into the sky and we couldl actually measure absorption and 'back radiation'. So verify dogma by experiment and observation, rather than trying to use trees, ice cores or sediments as thermometers. Or even thermometers as proxies for narrowband IR wavelengths. Especially when better instruments exist like pyranometers and pyrgeometers*, which for reasons best known to climate 'science', you won't find in a typical weather station.
But then-
Because the atmosphere is quite transparent to infrared light, CO2 lasers are also used for military rangefinding using LIDAR techniques.
It's been done, lasers are also used to designate targets and that works off scattering, or 'back radiation', and that's one of the reasons why HITRAN exists.. But still doesn't explain why climate 'scientists' aren't actually looking for better observations, and instead rely on wooden themometers and virtual realities..
* Some do exist, ie the orbiting Carbon observatories are essentially flying spectrometers with notch filters tuned for CO2. Downside is those, being satellites have only produced a few years of data, so tell us very little about long-term climate changes.
If Slovakia produces more energy through solar panels, then a good idea would be to stop using coal or natural gas coming mainly from Putin Khuylo's Russia. Another solution could be to produce hydrogen as a way to store energy, which can be reused in transports, heating, cooking...
You have no clue and are not afraid to show it.
This is known since the Shell study (1960s? I forget) or Hasselmann's papers (mid 1970s). Everything else has been just refinements.
We are fucked, and the Drumpf will not help. Nor the way China acts, or the do-goodies in Germany with them burning more coal than ever.
1960s? I raise you a Svante Arrhenius, 1890s. With pen and paper he calculated the sensitivity of the green-house effect to changes of the CO2 levels. He was off by a factor of 2. Pretty good I'd say.
Ironically enough, in the early 1900s, scientists pondered burning coal just to create a warmer climate. Dropped the plan, they figured nobody could burn *that* much coal.
You are unfortunately confused about how global warming occurs. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising, and that is the root cause of the issue. All you need to do to measure global warming is to grab yourself a CO2 meter and check for yourself. You'll find that CO2 levels are at 420ppm and rising. When it hits 600 it wil start to reduce human IQ. Won't that be fun!
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising, and that is the root cause of the issue.
No, that's a theory. It's also a theory that can't explain all the past climate change that we know has happened, without CO2 to drive it.
You'll find that CO2 levels are at 420ppm and rising.
And? They've been far higher in the past when most life on Earth evolved.
When it hits 600 it wil start to reduce human IQ
It's already reduced the IQ of many reality deniers. But a simple question for you. That graph. Any idea why the line weight for 2024 is much thicker, and in red? Cheap presentation trick, or science?
>"The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising, and that is the root cause of the issue.
No, that's a theory."
Well, from what I have read - sorry no reference to hand - the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is the root cause of the issue; only the role of CO2 could be considered to be more of an enabler or catalyst in getting increased amounts of H2O into the atmosphere; which then takes over as the main greenhouse gas... The "amount" of atmospheric CO2 needed is significantly lower than we are experiencing today...
Following the science theory, if we are wanting to cool the planet, we need to reduce the amount of H2O in the atmosphere, an objective that can be facilitated by reducing levels of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) to below the threshold level referred to above. Given the main source of CO2 other than volcanic eruptions is the burning of oil, gas and coal, we can see why policy makers will want to keep the message simple and focus on CO2.
>Maybe you should look at the relative effects of "greenhouse" gases.
I am well aware of the relative effects and that other greenhouse gases have an even greater impact on atmospheric warming. From the context I was focusing just on CO2 and H2O.
>Also, the models on which the claims are made have not held true.
Maybe.
Remember given the size of the challenge we needed to have started decades back, looking at our understanding from a couple of decades back, the decision to KISS and focus on CO2 was sensible.
Not aware of any of the denials presenting a model that has stood up to scrutiny, so its up to you if you wish to not look through the telescope...
@Roland6
"Not aware of any of the denials presenting a model that has stood up to scrutiny"
I am not aware of any models claiming MMCC Co2 theory that stand up to scrutiny. Scrutiny being reality. The first step is to prove the problem. That is the step we are currently at. The science is settled but the science (note how its a religion 'the science' not conducting science and accepting scientists are human) still has no idea what is going on.
Then the prophets of doom do the very things claimed to be destroying the planet. Used a truant school girl as a meat shield. Advocate for monuments to sky gods and only recently finally caught up to the reality that their religion requires moving to nuclear.
It isnt surprising that people dont have 'faith' in this religion.
@codejunky - The science is settled but the science still has no idea what is going on.
Agree with the sentiment, and would add that many deniers have no interest in knowing what is going on, as that might require them to actually do something.
However, we do know that things are changing and man has been playing a significant part, we also now probably have a better handle on what is not causing the changes (from all the wrecked models); if only we could figure out just what is going on...
>Advocate for monuments to sky gods and only recently finally caught up to the reality that their religion requires moving to nuclear.
Whilst I have always been cautious about nuclear, it was obvious in the early 1990s that we needed more of it and that politicians and people would have to bite the bullet - hence why I've ways advocated there being a nuclear power station at Battersea, although perhaps the O2's site at Greenwich is better? :)
Its a shame the only version of nuclear we've been investing in since WW2 has been the one that makes it easy to build nuclear weapons...
"Its a shame the only version of nuclear we've been investing in since WW2 has been the one that makes it easy to build nuclear weapons.."
Light water PWR reactors running a commercial fuel cycle are very poor at this. In fact pretty much any reactor running a fuel cycle more than a couple of months long will be poor at this.
@Roland6
"Agree with the sentiment, and would add that many deniers have no interest in knowing what is going on, as that might require them to actually do something."
There are hard core believers on both sides but for the rest of us the onus is on proving there is a problem. Until that is achieved, for the people without the time to keep looking into it, there is little reason to believe it but on trust. That trust is damaged when many claims are made and shown completely wrong.
"However, we do know that things are changing and man has been playing a significant part"
For the first bit fine but for the mans fault part, do we? We dont know what the changes are nor hoe much is natural. Based on a short moments questionable data and a longer term entirely in question dataset we dont yet know what is happening nor how much we contribute."
"we also now probably have a better handle on what is not causing the changes (from all the wrecked models); if only we could figure out just what is going on..."
For that I would agree and say this is the development of the science which may hopefully one day come to understanding the problem.
"Whilst I have always been cautious about nuclear, it was obvious in the early 1990s that we needed more of it and that politicians and people would have to bite the bullet - hence why I've ways advocated there being a nuclear power station at Battersea, although perhaps the O2's site at Greenwich is better? :)"
Most sensible people would. But there has been a lot of resistance to them and instead promotion of things that dont work instead. If MMCC co2 thing was believed in honesty we would have moved to nukes and there would be less complaining about the issue. And you are right about weaponised versions, we need nukes that can use maximum fuel
Remember given the size of the challenge we needed to have started decades back, looking at our understanding from a couple of decades back, the decision to KISS and focus on CO2 was sensible.
Or extremely lucrative. Buy your carbon indulgences from a trading exchange near you. It's a long con that demonstrated that you can tax thin air. But we're also living in interesting times. So not so long ago, we had 'The Pause' where temperatures pretty much flatlined, despite the inexorable rise of CO2. This was understandably inconvenient, but part of the correlation/causation challenge. But then this happened-
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL111500
Global average upper atmosphere temperature changes linked with the Hunga volcanic eruption (January 2022) are analyzed based on satellite measurements and compared with chemistry-climate model simulations.
Which was kind of a black-swan event that kicked many olympic-sized swimming pools worth of H2O into the atmosphere. The AGU paper notes the stratospheric cooling effect, but didn't find lower atmosphere changes.. But then-
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2319228121
The local-scale anti-correlation between tropospheric and lower stratospheric temperature also holds when considering climate change—where the troposphere has been anomalously warming relative to the zonal mean, the lower stratosphere has been anomalously cooling, and vice versa.
Which is fun because Hunga Tonga might explain recent warming, or it might not. Observations should show any effect as the effects from Hunga Tonga subside.. Which might mean we're back to The Pause again, with temperatures falling, and then going back their average(ish). But also means actual scientists can look at the data and perhaps revise sensitivity figures wrt CO2 and H2O.. Which the reality deniers and CO2 dogmatists will deny, but it gets rather hard to deny CO2 is a weak GHG when it continues to rise, but temperatures flat line. Stock approach to this dilema is the climate 'scientists' just adjust their data to exagerate warming.. Which is back to stuff like the Met Office having the majority of their weather stations poorly located, and according to WMO rules, not suitable for climatology because the uncertainty ranges are waaay to high.
"So not so long ago, we had 'The Pause' where temperatures pretty much flatlined, despite the inexorable rise of CO2. "
That was because of a record El Niño in 1996-1997 and the GWPF dined out on it as the global temperature slowly climbed back up to the peak in those years, until they could no longer deny the trend so quietly removed the graph from their website.
> Any idea why the line weight for 2024 is much thicker, and in red?
Same reason the start of the decades are bold - it's to make it easier to read. Not sure how you can work a conspiracy into that, but climate deniers are nuts (but that's just a theory, as you would say).
There is a strong correlation between ice cream sales in Australia and shark attacks. Does eating ice cream cause shark attacks? No of course not. Ice cream consumption and shark attacks mostly occur in the summer when people go to the beach. Correlation is not necessarily causation.
I don't believe anything I am told by people making huge amounts of money by telling me something that makes them the money. Especially when they fly around the world constantly, have private jets, yachts and huge houses at low-levels by the sea. Doubley so when they told me the ice caps would be gone by now and I would've drowned in the higher sea-levels or best of all that the oceans are boiling!
I wonder if anyone has considered the nitty-gritty of thermal dynamics, among the very many career thinkers-about-air whose work distilled down to these predictions associating temperature rise with climate sequelae. For that matter I wonder if any career scientists have taken note of deficiencies in any one line of data, and considered either correcting for them in their methods or testing evidence of warming by many different approaches and looking for a confluence.
You mention a 1.8% error in an averaging problem. If we were to extrapolate directly from the error you’re worried about to the 1.50-degree increase the climate-change-consensus people worry about, doesn’t that still only make the “real” value of that increase 1.47 degrees? What leads you to believe that people modeling planet-scale atmospheric dynamics haven’t considered how things heat up and cool down?
And more to the point, I’m hearing you object that science is messy, and its predictions and attributions are insufficiently confident for you. Is your position that climate change isn’t happening, or that it probably is but it’s pointless to act on anything less than perfect certainty about every mechanism?
I don’t think your interpretation of the table you picked from the IPCC report is accurate. That table caps off a section titled “Global perspective on climate impact drivers,” and says that it summarizes that specific section. That section specifically deals with “global-scale studies,” as distinct from studies observing effects in specific localities or regions (which it dealt with in the prior section). So it’s assessing the quality of the very small sliver of studies that measure indicators of climate impact as total, worldwide quantities. I read it more as “most of our studies are local or regional, and additionally we have strong evidence of uniform global impact in some of these areas,” not “we lack evidence that this phenomenon is related to climate change at any level.” The body of that section was well worth a read though!
Plus, since you’ve taken in the report, you’ve surely read the next table, Cross-Chapter Box 12.1, which includes rather more dire and higher confidence warnings, drawing on the full range of studies instead of just the global-scale ones, right?
I wonder if anyone has considered the nitty-gritty of thermal dynamics,
Yep. And you can try this at home! From my favorite mad scientist-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WT0qZdHT5M
Which isn't about the magical properties of CO2, but touches on how thermodynamics actually works. And in the first few minutes explains why upconversion works, and CO2 'trapping heat'.. doesn't. Climate 'scientists' usually wibble about S-B equations, black bodies and ignore fundamental physics like that.. But it's the reason CO2 is a weak GHG. It holds onto photons about as well as a beta cuck holds onto a woman.
For that matter I wonder if any career scientists have taken note of deficiencies in any one line of data,
Quite a few have, but when they challenge the orthodoxy, they usuall get branded as heretics, deniers, and can find their careers cut short. Doing actual science just doesn't bring in the big bucks like climate 'science' does.
Good job on completely misunderstanding the underlying mechanics. There is no upconversion going on in the "greenhouse" warming (if anything, it's down conversion we'd be interested in). GHGs ABSORB photons. They don't re-emit other photons, they simply absorb the energy as heat. The only conversion that is happening is that normal sunlight gets through the atmosphere mostly undisturbed, falls on whatever it falls on, on the earths surface which heats whatever it hits on the surface, which then re-emits it in (amongst other wavelengths) infra-red. it's this Infra-red that we're interested in here, because CO2 and other GHGs can absorb these wavelength photons as heat. CO2 doesn't absorb SUPER well, but it absorbs, and worse it's about the ONLY thing in our atmosphere that readily absorbs at 15 microns wavelength, so infra-red energy that would previously not have been absorbed in the atmosphere at all and radiated into space, now stays in the atmosphere. And the more CO2 you have, the more it absorbs and the more heat gets trapped in the atmosphere. More heat in the atmosphere = global climate change. It's really not that hard.
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-do-greenhouse-gases-trap-heat-atmosphere
Good job on completely misunderstanding the underlying mechanics. There is no upconversion going on in the "greenhouse" warming (if anything, it's down conversion we'd be interested in). GHGs ABSORB photons. They don't re-emit other photons, they simply absorb the energy as heat.
Again you really don't understand what you're talking about. Heat is just energy in motion, and if a CO2 molecule gets hit with a photon (which has pretty low odds given H2O is likely to get hit first) it raises the energy state. If (when) it cools, or collides with another molecule, it will lose that energy. But your problem is a total misunderstanding of how 'global warming' or the 'greenhouse effect' actually works.
So that has upwelling IR photons from a cooling surface hitting a CO2 molecule, and then some of that energy being re-radiated and emitted back down, and thus potentially warming the surface. But then the IR photon will be emitted in a random direction, so depending on altitude, most of that will miss the surface and end up on it's merry way back to space. Your 'explainer' rather glosses over that point, but is explained here-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget#/media/File:The-NASA-Earth's-Energy-Budget-Poster-Radiant-Energy-System-satellite-infrared-radiation-fluxes.jpg
With a famous graphic explaining the way reality works, and note the 'back radiation' component. This is the actual key to real climate science, because quantifying that gives us the actual climate sensitivity wrt CO2. And funnily enough, as climate models have developed, lowering that sensitivity produces results that more closely resemble reality, because the physics state that CO2 is a weak GHG.
@JelliedEel, I've been reading your posts & see many fundamental flaws. You appear to be cherry-picking what you like, and disregarding caveats and clear information that disagrees with your mis-led opinions. Here's a prime example. You write:
"So that has upwelling IR photons from a cooling surface hitting a CO2 molecule, and then some of that energy being re-radiated and emitted back down, and thus potentially warming the surface. But then the IR photon will be emitted in a random direction, so depending on altitude, most of that will miss the surface and end up on it's merry way back to space. Your 'explainer' rather glosses over that point, but is explained here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget#/media/File:The-NASA-Earth's-Energy-Budget-Poster-Radiant-Energy-System-satellite-infrared-radiation-fluxes.jpg
With a famous graphic explaining the way reality works, and note the 'back radiation' component. This is the actual key to real climate science, because quantifying that gives us the actual climate sensitivity wrt CO2. And funnily enough, as climate models have developed, lowering that sensitivity produces results that more closely resemble reality, because the physics state that CO2 is a weak GHG."
Okay, seems like NASA says that the net heat out balances the heat in
BUT: it clearly states that the *Net Abosorbed* is 0.6 W/m2, with a note to an update in 2021 to have risen to 1.0 W/m2.
You can throw out a lot of smoke about what the cause of the net absorption change is, but the consensus is that it's due to the Greenhouse gasses, of which CO2 is by far the biggest effect.
It's pretty clear in the information that *you* presented, so what are you trying to pull here? (other than attention and discord, in which case congratulations!)
But please look at the data and think a little more clearly about what it is telling you.
As they say: its best to be silent and thought a fool, than open your mouth and confirm it ! :-)
You can throw out a lot of smoke about what the cause of the net absorption change is, but the consensus is that it's due to the Greenhouse gasses, of which CO2 is by far the biggest effect.It's pretty clear in the information that *you* presented, so what are you trying to pull here? (other than attention and discord, in which case congratulations!)
Congratulations. You found a thing. You clearly didn't understand that thing, but then that's how climate 'science' works. CO2 isn't 'by far' the biggest effect, hence why the IPCC gives it a GWP (Global Warming Potential) of 1. Other GHGs are available with higher GWPs. Like CH4. Or H2O, but that one isn't exactly a gas, but that's why H2O actually has by far the biggest effect.
Whether or not CO2 has 0.6 or 1.2C effect is the multi-trillion dollar question, or just how the UN tries to sell nations on handing over $100bn a year to spaff on hookers and blow. See how the UN (mis)managed funds from their 'Oil for Food' fund, complete with one of the key players, Maurice Strong taking a rather large personal check.
But please look at the data and think a little more clearly about what it is telling you.
It tells me it's an extremely simplified graphic that attempts to explain an incredibly complex subject, with a lot of moving parts, variables, and uncertainties. It also tells me you prefer to act on faith than science.
What on *earth* has that upconversion piece got to do with anything here ??
Apart from the ability (in theory) to absorb low-energy photons and re-emit higher-energy photons, but it's not a 1:1 relationship,
otherwise you'd have an Infinite Energy Engine (which is simply impossible).
And your source says that a material could absorb TWO low-energy photons, to allow it to re-emit ONE higher-energy photon.
But the energy balance would have to be the same: photon energy OUT has to be equal to, or less than photon energy IN.
Oh, and BTW, if you have a large layer of atoms (e.g. a CO2 "blanket") where they all radiate in all directions, the net effect is in the same as a parallel stream perpendicular to the layer.
(The maths for that is Undergraduate-level Physics, & we can ignore the curvature of the earth, since the atmosphere is a tiny fraction of the Earth's radius).
What on *earth* has that upconversion piece got to do with anything here ??Apart from the ability (in theory) to absorb low-energy photons and re-emit higher-energy photons, but it's not a 1:1 relationship,
Try watching it again, paying especially notice to the bits about-
1) All molecules absorb and re-emit photons, altering the energy state.
2) How long that process takes.
And then think about how that process works wrt the idea that CO2 'traps heat'..
"And more to the point, I’m hearing you object that science is messy, and its predictions and attributions are insufficiently confident for you. Is your position that climate change isn’t happening, or that it probably is but it’s pointless to act on anything less than perfect certainty about every mechanism?"
I don't think anyone is denying climate change. The question is; is CO2 the cause and is the data being manipulated or interpreted to make us think it's a given. The thick red line on the graph is actually not a cheap presentation trick to my mind, it simply highlights the most current in a messy visual. But there are a lot of tricks played such as showing short periods that ignore hotter times and higher CO2. The climate models do have a high degree of uncertainty and this has been empirically shown to be the case.
A quick favor, Art: Please disprove the simple and basic physics behind the absorption and re-radiation of the energy of long-wave radiation by large, active molecules such as CO2, CH4, N2O, and the like, and how that re-radiation warms the troposphere in quite easily measurable and quantifiable amounts while measurably cooling the stratosphere, as has been well-demonstrated for many decades? Also, if it weren't for the Earth's greenhouse-gas blanket, the simple Stefan-Boltzmann black-body equations prove that the Earth would be at, oh, about -15ºC. Thanks to those gasses (and, of course, water vapor), we average around 15ºC. What our rapid addition of more CO2, CH4, and N2O into the troposphere is doing is mucking with that fine balance. We're cooking ourselves.
If you have empirical proof that climate change science is "rotten to the core", please give a call to the following folks, and tell them that they can save the time and money they have spent and are planning to spend on the irrefutable reality of human-caused global warming: the vast majority of insurance professionals, the Pentagon, NATO, NASA, NOAA, the US Pacific Command, the US Department of the Navy, the US Coast Guard, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Institute for Defense Analyses, the US Army War College, the United States Joint Forces Command, the DoD Office of Net Assessment, the National Intelligence Council, the National Research Council, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Federation of American Scientists, the Geological Society of America, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, the World Health Organization, the World Meteorological Association, plus over 100 major US corporations, including Google, Facebook, Apple, Coca Cola, AT&T, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Walmart, and General Motors. I'm sure they'll all be happy to learn that their efforts are unneeded, and to hear your insightful analyses.
Finally, here's a convivial invitation: I regularly attend the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, where over thirty-thousand of the world's top geophysical scientists gather to talk shop, many of whom who are deeply involved in actual climate-science research, not mere theorizing. The next AGU gathering will be in The Big Easy in December 2025 — a fun town. I'll be there, and I can absolutely guarantee you a session in which you can present your research, your data, and your conclusions. Afterwards, I'll take you out for a beer on Bourbon Street to introduce you to some of the climate scientists who would be very interested in your research — hell, I'll even buy!
A quick favor, Art: Please disprove the simple and basic physics behind the absorption and re-radiation of the energy of long-wave radiation by large, active molecules such as CO2, CH4, N2O,
Not Art, but I asked you before and you never explained. What exactly do you mean by 'large' and 'active', and although the phrase is probably copypasta, you seemed to have overlooked the most important 'GHG' again, H2O..
I'm sure they'll all be happy to learn that their efforts are unneeded, and to hear your insightful analyses.
Ah, the appeal to authority. Even though some seems to be misplaced. Coca Cola? Realy? Aren't they one of the largest and most pointless emitters of CO2? That hiss of death every time a coke or sparkling water is opened.. As for insightful analysis. Any particular reason you chose the heavier line weight and color for your 2024 line? Will you be presenting this paper at the next AGU?
Señor Anguila:
1) If you're interested in the physical mechanics of radiative forcing, let me point you to some recent research untangling that observable but not yet fully understood physical reality. Here's one from the popular press (https://bit.ly/4idJwjt), and here's the paper from which that article is based (https://bit.ly/4gPP5TT).
b) Y'know, sometime asserting the logical fallacy identified as the "appeal to authority" masks the simple fact that the authority in question is based on verifiable data, solid reasoning, and experimental verification, as is true in this case. Authorities also claim that the Earth is a globe which has a marginally elliptical orbit around the sun — are you dismissing that conclusion merely due to its assertion by an "authority"? No, of course not. You're not an idiot.
iii) You ask, "Any particular reason you chose the heavier line weight and color for your 2024 line?" Sigh ... of course: simply to make the most recent year stand out and thus be easier for readers to identify among all the squiggles populating the chart. Must you find a nefarious intent behind simple attempt at graphical clarity?
§) You also ask, one can only assume snarkily, "Will you be presenting this paper at the next AGU?" Uh ... no ... primarily because it's old news to any self-respecting climate scientist, but also because it's not primary research but instead merely a popular-press discussion of others' research and data-gathering. And, if you don't mind me responding in an equally snarky manner, "Grow the %$#@! up, bro ..."
Here's one from the popular press (https://bit.ly/4idJwjt), and here's the paper from which that article is based (https://bit.ly/4gPP5TT)
Ah, you could have just watched the video I cited earlier, which explains 'trapping heat' more clearly. Again you don't seem to understand the issue, like quantifying how much energy is involved? Especially as it's only 'trapped' for a teeny fraction of a second, and then carries on it's way back to space.
b) Y'know, sometime asserting the logical fallacy identified as the "appeal to authority" masks the simple fact that the authority in question is based on verifiable data, solid reasoning, and experimental verification, as is true in this case.
No, it really isn't true. You could expand and explain exactly how you cooked your spaghetti, or why you think such a short time period allows you to draw any conclusions over a time frame longer than you have data for. Especially when you've spliced together incompatible data, eg Argo since 2000.. Where did your data come from before then, and how verifiable are that data? So accuracy and reliability of manual temperature readings from sea chests in ships vs the Argo floats..
Must you find a nefarious intent behind simple attempt at graphical clarity?
There's no justification for manipulating data. Plus it's a familiar presentation trick with the likes of "Mike's Nature trick" used to hide the decline in temperatures from his wooden thermometers. Or just the way groups like the UK's Met Office decided to recolor weather maps to change normal temperatures into angry red temperatures.
but also because it's not primary research but instead merely a popular-press discussion of others' research and data-gathering.
I.. see. So it's meaningless then? After all, it isn't 'peer reviewed', published in a serious journal etc. It's just another handy example of what happens when you cherry pick data and trends.
And, if you don't mind me responding in an equally snarky manner
Having studied both climate science and 'science' for the best part of 30yrs, I fully expected you to and am used to it. So about those 'large' and 'active' molecules.. That should be a simple question to answer, and doesn't require another gallop. Simple physics and chemisty, no? Stuff like CO2's solubility in water etc.. I think I also asked you before if you knew where the assumptions wrt CO2 doubling orginated from, because those are pretty much unchanged given they're based on the fundamental physics of that molecule.. That paper didn't really touch on the theoretical 'forcings' and 'feedbacks' that haven't been observable outside climate models, but it's a good paper to help you understand the basics.
"Ah, the appeal to authority"
No. "appeal to authority" is when you reference an irrelevant authority: "my hairdresser was right about my needing to dye to roots, therefore I trust his opinion on car brake maintenance".
Referencing a list of researchers and companies who have significant interest in knowing what the reality is. The fact some may only want to know in order to make money from it (insurance industry!) does not change anything.
"Coca Cola? Realy? Aren't they one of the largest and most pointless emitters of CO2? That hiss of death"
Well, if they deliberately made the CO2 just for fizzy drinks then you might have a point. Or try reading stuff like Production Process of Beverage Grade CO2: Ensuring Purity and Compliance: "Raw CO2 is commonly obtained from natural wells, ethanol production during fermentation, and as a byproduct from ammonia and other chemical plants" (as it is Coca Cola they are probably offering to take away the byproducts for only a moderate fee)
No. "appeal to authority" is when you reference an irrelevant authority: "my hairdresser was right about my needing to dye to roots, therefore I trust his opinion on car brake maintenance".
So every entity on Rik's list is an authority on climate science then? But you're also doing a variation of a meme by a climate 'scientist' by the name of Stephen Schneider, (in)famous for this quote-
And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.
So basically saying it's ok to gloss over inconvenient truths in climate 'science'. But he also came up with an analogy that you wouldn't trust your plumber to perform cardiac surgery. Oh, and in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate" (Science 173, 138–141) helped kick off the 1970's impending Ice Age scare. But he was unfortunately diagnosed with cancer, then decided to ignore his oncologists and design his own treatment. And then died. Thus possibly demonstrating he should have trusted his oncologists, and climate 'scientists' aren't experts on everything.
Well, if they deliberately made the CO2 just for fizzy drinks then you might have a point
So what you seem to be saying is Coca Cola might be subsidised by the fossil fuel industry? You're still missing the point though. We must waste billions to elimate CO2, or stop it being released into the atmosphere. So why haven't artificially carbonated soft drinks being banned already? Surely that would be a quick and easy win? Oh, and.. ethanol production during fermentation. So that would be CO2 from yeasts. Any idea how much of that happens naturally in the environment? How that might respond to say a warming, wetter world? Oh, and soil bacteria.. that produces a lot of CO2 as well.. Which is probably why the Vostok (and other) ice cores show CO2 levels rising following warming.
"A quick favor, Art: Please disprove the simple and basic physics behind the absorption and re-radiation of the energy of long-wave radiation by large, active molecules such as CO2, CH4, N2O,"
I saw some work on this and it's not a straight line by a long way. The warming effect of the gases are polynomials. CO2's impact gets proportionally less for a while as the concentration rises. There are all sorts of buffering effectsm, which makes sense as otherwise we wouldn't be here arguing about it!
Also not the commenter you're responding to but H20 does not absorb Infrared and is thus not involved in that question. By "Large" and "Active" he probably means "enough cross-section to capture infra-red photons in roughly the 15 micrometer wavelength and absorb the energy as heat". You know, how greenhouse gasses work.
H2O is very relevant to global climate change but it has very different working mechanisms from those gasses mention. But I guess you already know that and want to derail things as much as you can.
Also not the commenter you're responding to but H20 does not absorb Infrared and is thus not involved in that question.
What is this Hydrogen-20? And again you're living up to your name, and clearly don't understand any of the basic physics involved. Have a free clue here-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_window#/media/File:Atmospheric_Transmission.svg
By "Large" and "Active" he probably means "enough cross-section to capture infra-red photons in roughly the 15 micrometer wavelength and absorb the energy as heat
I have no idea what he thinks he means, and he doesn't seem to be able to explain himself. Or why he keeps ignoring H2O. But CO2 isn't a 'large' molecule. 'Active' gets a bit more fun because it might mean reactive, which it is, so carbonic acid and the bonkers claim that CO2 will lead to 'ocean acidification'.. Which it won't because the oceans are mildly alkaline and contain gigatonnes of carbonates.. Oddly enough formed when CO2 levels were far higher, so the good'ol White Cliffs of Dover, made from the 'bones' of trillions of dead plankton. But that's another one of those climate 'science' inconsistencies. Does the presence of those plankton remains (alkenones) mean proxies that rely on those indicate higher, or lower CO2 concentrations? Again the evidence of gigatonnes would suggest they love CO2.
But I digress. So if CO2 is an active/reactive molecule, how does this fit with the meme that CO2 will remain for tens, or even hundreds of years? If it can, that would suggest if it's that persistent, it's not very reactive.. Which chemists of course know is bollocks.
It just means you don't have the requisite knowledge (and don't seem to want to learn it).
This is obviously your belief, and the Carbon Cult has spent billions to just take things on faith. Which has been standard practice for religions over our history. Don't question the faith, just believe. Obey Citzen. The UN EP needs you, and their $100bn a year.
Chances of that are getting smaller by the day, eg the US skipping the latest IPCC jolly in Hangzhou this week.. Where one of the main subjects is defining Carbon Capture and Storage. Of course Ed Millibrain didn't wait for 'Teh Science' and committed £22bn to dump CO2 into a hole in the ground.. Which of course will be added to our energy bills, which are already some of the most expensive in the world.
Kier Starmer and Rachel Reeves have been scrabbling around trying to find ways to reduce inflation and make the UK competitive. An obvious solution would be to just bury Ed instead and give UK energy policy to someone competent.
For one thing Rik, as you probably well know, the effect of CO2 is logarithmic. That is why the effect is defined in terms of doubling CO2 levels. The effect diminishes with increasing concentration and most of the impact is behind us.
Cooking ourselves is a gross exaggeration. CO2 both heats and cools, but it is not the only game in town. Sea water never gets above 30 °C. You can observe that in the tropics where massive thunderstorms remove enourmous amounts of heat away from the lower atmosphere.
Anyway, appeal to authority does not convince me. What counts are facts and falsifiable hypothethes. What concerns me is that we are spending inordinate amounts of money on solutions that do not work on what is unjustly perceived as a problem, crippling our economy and the welfare of people. Dumb stuff such as carbon capture and storage. Expensive stuff that according to the calculation methods touted by the IPCC would have an impact too small to even measure. Bjorn Lomborg calculated using IPCC methods that if all countries in the world stuck to the Paris agreement from 2015 to 2100, the difference would be 0.17 °C at the cost of trillions of dollars. Sheer madness.
And finally a sane grown-up enters the room.Thank you.
Time for nonsense is way past over. It was over twenty years ago. We, collectively, and unfortunately, will suffer the consequence of the effect the misinformation campaigns Each of those designed and calculated to infuse doubt into the climate conversions. There was never a "debate". The "debate" was the misinformation injected by the fossil-fuel industry to prevent regulation and keep their profits high - the damage being done to the earth be damned. The "debate" was created by politicians, who knew better, but who put the fossil-industry money in their campaign coffers and would then "wink and nod" at the camera spewing nonsense about scientists disagreeing meaning no warming was happening. The US house and senate a full of them, with Jim Inhofe as the poster-boy and Marsha Blackburn running a close second. Corrupt leaders make corrupt bargains to serve corrupt personal interests. Preventing our planet from becoming uninhabitable isn't among the interests they hold.
I read though these comments and for those attempting to espouse nonsense about warming not occurring or being part of one of the extended natural cycles the earth sees due to perturbations in its orbit over eons, I feel disappointment. Not at the commenter directly, but disappointment that we collectively haven't done a better job at education and reaching out to those ignorant on the grave danger this issue represents to humanity. People basically fall into three-camps around global warming:
(1) those that know and have the integrity to address the issue directly,
(2) those that know, but accept some benefit in exchange for compromising their integrity to contribute to misinformation on the issue, and
(3) those that don't know, but pretend as if they do after hearing no more than a 15 second sound-bite and then the gullible loudly amplify the misinformation 128 characters at a time. (the loud-minority problem)
The unfortunate part is aggregation of wealth within the chemical and fossil-fuel industries and our failure to prevent its corrupting influence in politics sadly means the voices of (2) and (3) above are those that get amplified to the masses contributing to the morass we find ourselves in. For those with any lingering questions, please re-read [Humans brought the heat. Earth says we pay the price](https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/02/heatwaves_future/) along with the linked articles therein. If you can't hold your hands under a 128°F faucet, what will 170°F feel like on the skin in the desert southwest of the U.S. when we reach 2070? Not even 50 years away.
As a parting note addressing the global temperature rising at a rate much faster than anticipated by many models, just as the data in this article sought to use the most conservative set that could be tuned to eliminate uncertainties to the greatest extent practicable, that has led to most estimates on the rate of warming being woefully conservative as well. One of the variables with the biggest impact on rate of rise and state of global warming is how must "committed-warming" the current numbers reflect. (how much of the warming we are seeing was due to emissions already released and adsorbed by the system in the 1970, 1980, 1990, etc.., the affect of which we are just seeing at present)
If this rapid rise we see today is because the "committed-warming" has a much longer look-back time than was thought and what we see manifesting now is a result of the committed-warming from the 70's our goose is cooked. That would be, we have not yet seen the impact from the committed-warming put into the system in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s or 2020s yet. So the climate impact due to committed-warming gets worse each year, just like compound-interest on a loan. The only question is whether we are amortizing the impacts over a 10, 20, 30 or 40 year note and what our interest rate is. The committed-warming is that aspect of the problem that means even if we went to a 100% clean and renewable sources of energy tomorrow, we would still experience global average temperature rise for the next hundred years.
The Anthropocene may just be a very brief global period (depending on what they settle on as its beginning), that leads into the 6th great mass extinction. Our window closed for staving off the worst aspects of climate change. What we do now and going forward will determine if the warming we will have will be survivable, and for how many?
As I look at my children, I'm sickened. This is our (collectively, me included) greatest societal failure of the last 50 years that we are passing on to them. The responsibility was ours to act in time to prevent the worst consequences of global warming.And we failed. The 1.5 deg C target was chosen because of the truly horrific consequences of going beyond 1.5 deg C, even incrementally past it. It was chosen as the target temperature that if exceeded ensured the irrecoverable melt of the Greenland ice sheet and the associated 10 meters of sea-level rise resulting in the forced-migration of between 35% and 40% of the worlds population away from crowded coastlines.
Time for nonsense is way past over. It was over twenty years ago. We, collectively, and unfortunately, will suffer the consequence of the effect the misinformation campaigns Each of those designed and calculated to infuse doubt into the climate conversions. There was never a "debate"
Indeed. The 'science' is settled, we must 'Act Now!', Al Gore the preacher man has produced Inconvenient Truths, PR outfits like 'RealClimate', DeSmog and 'Skeptical Science' have spoken. And anyone that tries to point out the misinformation spewed out gets shouted down, branded a 'denier' and beaten with Mikey Mann's very broken Hockey Stick.. Which then results in more 'science' like this-
What we're experiencing now is a gobsmackingly meteoric rise in temperatures, one so fast that living organisms — such as you and I — will not have nearly enough time to adapt, let alone evolve.
Which is gobsmackingly bollocks, and demonstrably false. No evidence has been provided that there's any 'meteoric rise', or that it's any different to past climate changes that have been well documented. But those (MWP, LIA etc) occurred without the influence of CO2, which is why CO2 dogma is a sucker bet. It's warmed since the LIA ended. CO2 has increased. Effect precedes cause, and correlation is causation because the UN EP really wants their $100bn a year. And then there's the bizarre claim that you and I will not have enough time to adapt to a 1.5C diffference in temperature. Not sure about you, but I do this frequently when travelling. As do many millions of people who flock from colder climates to hotter ones to sunbathe.
(3) those that don't know, but pretend as if they do after hearing no more than a 15 second sound-bite and then the gullible loudly amplify the misinformation 128 characters at a time. (the loud-minority problem)
True, although Rik's gish-gallop used more than 128 characters. It's certainly loud, but isn't science, so-
The unarguable answer: It is indeed hot in here. Dangerously hot. And the acceleration of that heating is increasing
The spaghetti does not support that conclusion. Nor does it support CO2 dogma, and if anything only shows a weak correlation between CO2 and temperature.. which is actually what the real science says because CO2 is a weak GHG. And Rik can't explain what he thnks he means by CO2 being a 'large' and 'active' molecule, which indicates he does not understand the physical basics. It is not hot in here. It is not dangerously hot. There is no evidence that his pile of anomalies indicates any acceleration that hasn't occured in the past.
One of the variables with the biggest impact on rate of rise and state of global warming is how must "committed-warming" the current numbers reflect. (how much of the warming we are seeing was due to emissions already released and adsorbed by the system in the 1970, 1980, 1990, etc.., the affect of which we are just seeing at present)
This is where climate 'science' drifts into magic. The basic dogma (ok, and some actual physics) is that CO2 absorbs photons at one of it's absorption wavelengths, increasing it's energy state and 'trapping heat'. But then pretty much instantaneously spits that photon back out in a random direction. Suggesting some kind of delayed reaction needs a pretty strong physical basis which doesn't exist. And then the big problem with CO2 dogma is there's only one very narrow 'atmospheric window' that doesn't overlap with H2O.
As I look at my children, I'm sickened. This is our (collectively, me included) greatest societal failure of the last 50 years that we are passing on to them.
Indeed. According to David Viner, kids aren't going to know what snow looked like. Except of course it's snowed pretty regularly since he made that stupid claim. But your kids might not know what light looks like because they won't be able to afford electricty. Which is really the greatest societal failure because the carbon cultists captured our energy policy to make billions in subsidies. Climate 'science' says more 'extreme' weather, yet we're building pre-industrial windmills that are vulnerable to those weather extremes.
The 1.5 deg C target was chosen because of the truly horrific consequences of going beyond 1.5 deg C, even incrementally past it.
Nope. The 1.5C target was chosen because previous targets of 3C, or 2C were predicted by climate models. Then reality stepped in with evidence that theorised 'forcings' and 'feedbacks' didn't exist, and that climate sensitivity wrt CO2 is low.. But then neither do 'tipping points', so there are no 'horrific consequences' for hitting 1.6C. Then again, a 'famous' climate 'scientist' Paul Erlich did make a claim in his 'Population Bomb' book that we'd literally turn into 'blue steam'. He never did explain the physical basis for that claim, and most of his other predictions in that book were rapidly falsified.
But if you actually read the IPCC reports, especially WG2 & 3 that cover adaptation and mitigation, you'll discover that moderate warming is actually a nett benefit. Plus of course there's been the 'Greening of the Earth' and improved crop yields because plants love CO2. Greenhouse growers know this, and also know that increasing CO2 levels far beyond atmospheric doesn't help heat their greenhouses, or cause their plants to spontaneously combust.
So as Douglas Adams famously said, Don't Panic! Of course the Carbon Cultists want you living in a state of fear because they want your money.
Indeed! Those with evidence that climate change science is "rotten to the core" should come up an present it at AGU/EGU, let's hear their hypothesis, formulations and conclusions debunking the physical basis of climatology and atmospheric science... hey even one day they could be candidates for a Nobel prize!
The climate IS changing but ... it aint CO2!
I also suspect that all the geo-engineering / SRM taking place is not to cool the planet but the opposite. You form clouds at the right time and it will trap heat. There are a lot of dodgy temp readings too. This all to make data that fits the narrative. A narrative that originated from the Club Of Rome as a people control lever. They also came up with pandemics!
A couple of years ago the surface sea temp suddenly jumped 0.75 deg C in a few weeks. Humans don't command enough energy to do that. That was in the air ~9 months later. We have 2 massive energy stores, the really huge one is that star we circle elliptically and the other much smaller one but still massive compared to human's puny efforts is the earth's core. Our orbit is not a circle, our axis of rotation wobbles and the whole thing precesses. Hence the major climatic changes. On top of that our core is not fixed, it is liquid, it flows and moves and our mantle / crust that we live on moves on top of it. NO ONE has a model that properly simulates the whole caboodle.
Dear Mr Blartfast, no need to get your knickers in a twist. Along with bringing about peace in Ukraine and Gaza, President Trump is fixing climate change by sacking the scientists who monitor it and banning any mention of it in government documents. Just ignore any reports of evidence to the contrary, like this. /s
Wait, what... did you just assume my political affiliation? In the elections the US constituency was faced with two horrible candidates. For different reasons, but still horrible. Had the democrats put forward Dean Philips and he had won, the US, and the world for that matter, would be in much better shape today. I do not agree with Dean's opinion on climate, but he would easily have been a way better president.
Trump is not only a loose cannon, he is a one-man artillery battery firing barrage after barrage of destructive executive orders.
I just plucked one bit out at random:
And never mind that the MET Office publishes data from 103 stations that do not even exist.
*facepalm*
A know conspiracy site. It even quotes Breitbart!
That claim is easily debunked: https://science.feedback.org/review/no-the-uk-met-office-is-not-fabricating-climate-data-contrary-to-a-bloggers-claims/
What next? Got a few Alex Jones quotes to share?
Do you actually ever go outside? If you did, you would realize it is getting hotter *everywhere*, especially in Europe. Over on this side of the pond we couldn't go out for weeks during the summer due to all of the massive fires in Canada, while the DC area got hit with a 100 degree heatwave in September. Normal temperatures at that time of the year are in the 70s. Not to mention Los Angles getting hit by a hurricane, and of course the more recent fires.
Then there is Europe. I was station in West Germany in the 1980's there wasn't any A/C. They didn't need it as summer temperatures were usually in the 60s or 70s. I never saw a single day with a temperature above about 80. My daughter went there last year and the temperature was 90 every day. Every recent year has broken previous record temperatures, and recently there were simultaneous record heat waves on every continent.
It must take some real work to ignore what you experience every day. Then again, MAGA types seem to do it all the time.
Do you actually ever go outside? If you did, you would realize it is getting hotter *everywhere*, especially in Europe
Yep. I love going outside, especially when it's warm. Or even cold and snowing. And if it's getting hotter, then great, I won't need to use the heating as much. This is a good thing given the cost of energy in Europe, largely due to tilting at windmils because the climate 'scientists' told us this is how our energy policy should be. Make energy a luxury and save the planet. If poor people die because they can't afford to heat (or cool) their homes, that also helps save the planet. The average person emits 250kg CO2e every year, or not if they're dead. Oddly enough, a lot of 'Greens' that believe in CO2 dogma are also eugenicists that think the planet is overpopulated. See Paul Erlich's "Population Bomb" for more info.
Then there is Europe. I was station in West Germany in the 1980's there wasn't any A/C.
Yeh, well, we're a bit tougher over on this side of the pond and don't really need it. Plus if you'd been stationed in the UK, you'd be grateful if you had working heating at all.
My daughter went there last year and the temperature was 90 every day
Over on this side of the pond, we call that 32C and summer. So open the windows, brush the moths off our speedos and soak up the sun. Might even leave our umbrellas at home. And oddly enough, we might also flock to beaches in Spain or the south of France where it's.. EVEN HOTTER! And if we get Thermageddon, that will only be 33.5C and we won't notice the difference. But A/C might be nice, but thanks to European energy policy, we couldn't afford the electricity to run that.
Oh, and because our politicians are reallly, really smart. Like unbelievably smart.. One of the reasons our electricity bills are so high is we're forced to pay for extra insulation, because when it's hot outside, you really really want it to be hot inside as well! Clever, huh? But then this is also the policy that's reduced ventilation, thus increasing damp and mold! Did I mention that our 'leaders' are smart?
I usually just focus on how CO2 is NOT the climate control knob. So NUKING economies and TAXING carbon-based fuels just enriches elitists and removes our freedom.
[example, CO2's effect is saturated beyond 200 ppm, a point at which plants typically DIE from too little CO2, so adding CO2 has NO measurable effect except that plants grow faster AND deplete CO2 faster]
"The Earth is heating up." WRONG. Only according to YOUR charts. Then again we ARE in a recovery from an ice age, near the end of the warming portion.
"That heat is exacerbating extreme weather." WRONG. In fact, extreme weather events (like hurricanes) are on the DECLINE.
"The effects of climate change are no longer a worry for the future" This is true. Earth's climate follows a predictable pattern of ~100,000 year ice age cycles. We're due for another some time in the next few thousand years, BEYOND human control
"the 'climate crisis' is upon us now." FALSE. We're in a downward trend in a ~70 year cycle: 1900 cold, 1935 warm, 1970 cold, 2005 warm, 2040 cold, 2075 warm, etc. [do a DFT on it, you'll see!]
"And its driver, global warming, is growing at an increasing pace." WRONG. We're still in a normal cycle, and in fact, the 1930's were WARMER than the 2000's, if only by a little!
The USA has FREAKING STOPPED *ANY* funding to ANY agency, foreign OR domestic, related to the CLIMATE SCAM! NOAA and NASA and others DROVE the IPCC and its LIES, and there will be NO MORE of THAT!!! [it was all WEF and D-Rat LIES anyway, cooked/fake data provably faked for the past to demonstrate a fake "trend", provable by anyone who had access to data 20 years ago and made copies like Tony Heller did] And, it is ABOUT TIME we put a STOP to that CRAP! We in the USA are going to produce, use, and make as MUCH coal, oil and natural gas as we can, and ship it AROUND THE WORLD as best as we can, at very affordable prices, and you will ALL benefit from it being SO inexpensive!
And that's just gonna happen, and NOTHING will STOP it! And we'll use all of those extra "trons" to FORGE AHEAD with AI like 'Grok'.
Or would you prefer COMMUNIST CHINA (a nation that had NO restrictions on carbon according to Paris Accords) get there *FIRST*... ???
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to remember is Los Angeles is built in a desert.
Without the water supply from the central valley and the Colorado river Los Angeles could not exist
Plus they keep extending the suburbs into the forested valleys outside the city without cutting down said forest. hence when the forest catches fire , all those expensive houses burn too.
But then if it had a climate where it rained more, the loose rock the city is built on would turn to mud and flow out to sea....
The fact that the houses are mainly built of wood is a factor, but not the main reason which simply building too close to the forest: the temperature of the flames and the wind gusts do the rest and you can see the ruins of many stone buildings. You can build wooden houses that are as resistant to fire as anything else, but because we know wood burns, we assume that's the problem.
The fact that the houses are mainly built of wood is a factor, but not the main reason which simply building too close to the forest: the temperature of the flames and the wind gusts do the rest and you can see the ruins of many stone buildings.
Ah, California. A very special place with some very special people. So they build wooden homes on fuel laden ravines, do very little to manage the fuel loads or provide adequate water supplies.. And then wonder why nature exposes that folly. And then rather than blaming their politicians and civil servants for their incompetence, they try to blame CO2. Then again, there is evidence that these were man made fires and a few arrests have been made for arson.
Actual science has done some soil core samples which found regular char layers and showed that fires were common events. Sometimes started deliberately by our ancestors, because they knew that allowing fuel loads to build up was a really dumb idea. Eventually Cali's politicians might figure that out as well.
Sigh.
I wouldn't mind a serious debate with you, but you often ruin your argument by working out from single issues. Is California the only state which has not just tolerated, but actively encouraged dangerous building practices? How about Florida, which rewards building on reclaimed land or coastal areas with subsidised insurance.
In fact, California is a picture book example of the American dream – literally go west – and a very short term view of property. Hollywood was setup because land was cheap and, unlike the home of the US film industry New York, there was little or no labour regulation. That the weather turned out to be so good, was a bonus, but this was because the area is traditionally arid. This was followed if memory serves by what turned out to be an unusually long period of precipitation from the 1950s until the 1990s, which helped encourage Okies and others to settle there.
Atrocious water management is also hardly limited to the west coast. In fact, the US has historically lurched from one environmental disaster to another relatively unscathed, because there's always somewhere else to settle. Regulation is routinely spurned in favour of "the market" which gave rise to Enron, Edison Pacific. In fact, the market does provide the necessary tools for managing development in such areas: building permits only when there is insurance coverage; better pricing of scarce (or limited) resources such as water through shares. Sure, this could mean the end of Central Valley as an agricultural centre, but also the countless golf courses. Iceland has practised this successfully in its fishery since the 1970s.
I don't really care what is driving climate change, but I do know that we can all do a lot more to avoid and mitigate the effects of natural disasters. As I've said many times, I'd prefer policies that reward efficiency rather than "sin taxes".
"Regulation is routinely spurned in favour of "the market" "
Usually due to the people running the market also writing the regulations. There needs to be a separation of government and industry. If you are in one you cannot be in the other.
The US also relies on a reactive method of regulation and self-reporting where its up to the company to decide if pumping chemicals into the local water is bad.
I wouldn't mind a serious debate with you, but you often ruin your argument by working out from single issues. Is California the only state which has not just tolerated, but actively encouraged dangerous building practices? How about Florida, which rewards building on reclaimed land or coastal areas with subsidised insurance.
Sometimes there are pretty much single issues, ie the way California and it's cities are governed and managed. So as an example that's been in the news recently, the $17bn ghost train. Massive amounts spent, and not much to show for it. Nice idea, and still cheaper than HS2.
But Cali's a victim of it's own success, ie massive growth and infrastructure & services not keeping up with demand. Plus being in an arid location and sitting in a bowl.
I don't really care what is driving climate change, but I do know that we can all do a lot more to avoid and mitigate the effects of natural disasters. As I've said many times, I'd prefer policies that reward efficiency rather than "sin taxes".
Agreed, but all too often climate change is used as an excuse to divert attention or resources. It's back to the 'science is settled'. So ok, plan for say, 2C warming and figure out what that means wrt infrastructure demands like water and land management. Improve water supplies and storage so water doesn't run out. Get serious about reducing fire risks, reduce fuel loads and cut fire breaks.. Which is an even bigger challenge given video from the LA fires showed just how far the Santa Ana winds can blow embers. There have been some policy changes to try and reduce fire risks, eg requiring new homes to have sprinkler systems. I've been looking for reports to see if that worked, or if it failed because there was a lack of water. I've been chatting with friends in LA about that, and if you'd be allowed to run the sprinkler system off swimming pool water.
Again, you ignore a cogent objection to your argument: pretty much everywhere within the US property development has priority over any environmental concerns. It wasn't that long ago that the North Carolina legislature banned discussion of rising sea levels… and everything along the gulf coast and up the eastern seaboard until about Vermont should be considered high risk.
So ok, plan for say, 2C warming and figure out what that means wrt infrastructure demands like water and land management. Improve water supplies and storage so water doesn't run out.
Given your other statements, this has the risk of being tautological. Predictions about climate change have had to be revised since they were made. Given that we still can't reliably predict the weather more than 4 days out, I don't see how we can figure out how things will be with 2°C warming. What science suggests, models support and recent weather patterns indicate is indeed happening, is that more energy in the water cycle is leading to more frequent severe weather (storms, heatwaves, droughts, extreme precipitation) around the world. Then there are problems of feedback loops related to reduced glacial or forest cover, which have mathemetically chaotic consequences.
In such an environment, I think it's more than a little simplistic to suggest that Improve water supplies and storage so water doesn't run out is anything like sufficient. The problem with all developments dependent upon underground aquifers (including California) is that demand has far exceeded supply for decades, with shortfall being made up from meltwater from the mountains. As for sprinkler systems and forest fires, once temperatures get close to or above 100°C they are useless, and even the biggest swimming pool would be emptied surprisingly quickly. These remain incredible wastes of water in areas that can ill afford them.
Adaptive policies are likely to have to be far more severe than many things currently being considered and, therefore, unpoular with electorates. As with so many things, we will probably have to wait until the financial cost of dealing with the consequences becomes prohibitive. Unfortunately, building insurance premiums are continuing to rise as, in the absence of intervention to remove the properties at greatest risk, other policyholders shoulder more and more of the risks.
Given your other statements, this has the risk of being tautological. Predictions about climate change have had to be revised since they were made. Given that we still can't reliably predict the weather more than 4 days out, I don't see how we can figure out how things will be with 2°C warming.
But this is exactly what the IPCCs AR are all about, ie WG2 & 3 are adaptation and mitigation. So taking LA as an example again-
Temperatures in the coastal basin exceed 90 °F (32 °C) on a dozen or so days in the year, from one day a month in April, May, June and November to three days a month in July, August, October and to five days in September.
So with global warming, temperatures might now exceed 32°C on more than a dozen days, or there'll be 34°C on more days. So then factor that assumption into city planning and building regs. This is already done, ie power companies know that if warm weather is forecast, people are going to use more electricity for their AC. For water, consumption might also increase as people water their lawns. But LA already has ordinances to restrict that.
What science suggests, models support and recent weather patterns indicate is indeed happening, is that more energy in the water cycle is leading to more frequent severe weather (storms, heatwaves, droughts, extreme precipitation) around the world.
Not necessarily, eg-
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01683-2
Decreasing trend in destructive potential of tropical cyclones in the South Indian Ocean since the mid-1990s
And it's much the same with the Atlantic and Pacific. This paper, albeit from 2012 explains why there's an apparent increase in the Atlantic-
On the Classification of Extreme Atlantic Hurricanes Utilizing Mid-Twentieth-Century Monitoring Capabilities
That points out that hurricanes aren't getting more extreme, it's just that we're better able to observe them. Satellites can see them forming, crazy pilots can fly into them and collect data. And it's much the same for all the other 'extreme' weather. Look at the trends, and generally not extreme at all, but quite average. The difference is now we have 'named' storms, 'red' weather alerts, manipulation of weather forecasts that turn normal summers into angry red summers.. and of course the media hyping up weather and attempting to attribute that to global warming. Science may suggest it, but if observations don't support it, then the science (and especially models) need revising.
Then on the bigger picture, how much warming should be attributed to post-LIA, general warming since the LGM, cycles like ENSO, AMO & PDO, solar etc etc.. And finally CO2, the weak GHG that is so profitable.. Which is back to figuring out what, exactly the climate sensitivity wrt to CO2 really is.
Then there are problems of feedback loops related to reduced glacial or forest cover, which have mathemetically chaotic consequences.
Or there isn't, or those issues are local. A famous example was melting snow on Kilimanjaro that was hyped as an example of 'climate change'. Reality was it's a result of deforestation. So a localised example of 'man made climate change', but not globally significant. But because CO2 is a weak GHG, forcings and feedbacks are necessary to amplify the effect and hype up the fear around CO2. If those predictions are falsified (which most have been) then CO2's back to being a weak GHG. IPCC reports (reluctantly) show this, because observations don't support older theories, or high sensitivity. And the big one was the idea of 'tipping points', which don't exist outside models that have been parameterised with unrealistic assumptions.
Plus of course negative feedbacks also exist. You just don't generally see anything negative on the news, especially on the Bbc because they're firmly committed to CO2 dogma.
The problem with all developments dependent upon underground aquifers (including California) is that demand has far exceeded supply for decades, with shortfall being made up from meltwater from the mountains.
Sure. Lake Mead has been a good example because that had been drying out. An artificial reservoir that's often used as an example of 'global warming' rather than an increased population using more water than it can supply. But that's also an example of the paradoxical nature of CO2. It's drained Lake Mead, now it's filling it, so CO2 can have equal and opposite reactions, often simultaneously. Or Lake Mead's dependent on ENSO and PDO cycles.. Plus some very human decisions, ie the decision not to divert water to save the Delta Smelt. Or deciding that it's a really good idea to grow soft fruit, veg and almonds in an arid environment. Sure, you can do this, if you have the water to irrigate.. But those crops require a lot of water. But perhaps not the smartest idea when there's competition for that water from ever growing populations. So not climate change, just bad planning and policy.
As for sprinkler systems and forest fires, once temperatures get close to or above 100°C they are useless, and even the biggest swimming pool would be emptied surprisingly quickly. These remain incredible wastes of water in areas that can ill afford them.
Maybe. LA's made it policy to fit them, so it'll be interesting to see if they had any effect, and you're probably right. I watched the LA fires from when it started as a small fire in the Palisades, and then it grew, and grew. Now the smoke has settled, there's a number of reports ongoing into what caused them, what allowed them to spead, and what improvements might be made. One issue is, of course water. So a fire engine might use 1000-1500 gallons per minute. If there's only 1 or 2 fires in an area, the water supply and hydrants can cope. When it's 100 fires in a small area, they can't.. Especially if they may be competing for water with home sprinklers that may or may not be effective.
But LA's done strange things wrt water before. Like mandating low-flow toilets, and then discovering the sewer system.. actually needs water to move things along. So sewers blocked, and the utilities had to pump water & disinfectant to deal with the mess that policy created. Something that might be effective as a consequence of localised events like the Palisades fire is to compulsory purchase some lots on top of hills and build new reservoirs. Then when fires happen again, there might be more water available to fight them. Or perhaps some other policy changes. EVs, E-bikes, scooters and 'hover boards' have been responsible for a growing number of fires. Maybe those aren't the safest things to keep in a garage attached to a home. Some parts of Germany have already banned EVs from underground/under structure car parks due to the fire risk.
So lots of things to consider, and potentially done to mitigate risks, but not necessarily from CO2.. but they need to be the right things. So again the wisdom of relying on wind for electricity, or installing solar PV on rooftops made from shingles that catch fire when there's a fault, a DC arc and it ignites a rooftop.. Which amusingly happened to Brighton Council in the UK. There are consequences of going 'Green' without thinking things through.
As well as building wooden houses in forests and then wondering why their houses are destroyed when the forest burns, kindly add in the stupidity of quite a lot of suburban Californians. IIRC about 30+ years ago there was a spate of grass fires in southern LA due to a city-wide water shortage during which the city authorities attempted to preserve drinking/cooking/washing water by making it an offence to fill swimming pools or to water gardens and lawns. The result, after a week or three, was a steep increase in house fires.
Why? Simple: many house-owners couldn't bear the sight of bare earth where grass and flowers had previously grown in their gardens and were fixing that problem by buying paint and painting their lawns a nice green before using more green paint as well as other bright colours on former flower beds. Unfortunately the cheap paints these idiots all used were oil-based, and had to be used in large amounts before enough remained on the surface to show pretty colours and turn a dry, dead lawn into a nice green one.
Consequence? Since these paints were oil-based, they all burnt super well, just like the wooden house they surrounded. Fire departments soon learnt that painted gardens were much harder to extinguish than ones that were merely dry, and the painted gardens also burnt rather well when helped along by dropped cigarettes. In addition, fire turned out spread rather easily between adjacent gardens and sometimes got ignited by lightening too.
"painting their lawns a nice green"
That's insane - straight out of Alice in Wonderland (painting white rose blooms red.)
US = Uncompromisingly Stupid (A = Anencephalic?)
Actually Lewis Carroll's fantasy is currently a credible account of the shenanigans in those parts with the Queen of Hearts whose penchant for summary decapitation and blind furies particularly identifiable. The Mad Hatter and the March Hare could be longstanding stock parts easily assignable to the current cast.
Unfortunately when, or if, America wakes up it won't all have been an incomprehensible dream.
That's insane - straight out of Alice in Wonderland (painting white rose blooms red.)
Cali is a special place. Another trend is to replace RealGrass(tm) with astroturf. In theory, that's supposed to be somewhat fire resistant, but if it's not, that would help fires spread. Having a rock garden would make a better fire break, but then there's also a trend to maximise sq footage by building right up to property boundaries. So no setbacks, and it's much easier for fires to spread again.
If you want insane lookup US home owner associations. HOAs. They are usually run by extremely narcissistic and petty people who have huge chips on their shoulders. Your lawn must be of a certain grass type, it must be between certain lengths, it must be kept watered/green, you can't keep a car in your driveway, you can't leave your garage door open too long.
Even some towns have local ordinances about lawns. It is a completely alien concept for a European and especially a Brit where we regard our home as our castle.
There are stories of people getting fines for the wrong curtains!
This also tends to be more a thing on the blue side in the US.
If you want insane lookup US home owner associations. HOAs. They are usually run by extremely narcissistic and petty people who have huge chips on their shoulders.
Yep, been there, done that when I was looking at US property. Only $10k a month in HOA fees. Then asking what, exactly I would get in return.. crickets. Oh, and the prospect of a flurry of 'fines'. Then from poking around a little, discovering the HOA's 'CEO' paid themselves $250k a year and generated a tidy chunk of change from those 'fines'. I could kinda, maybe see why that can be in a gated community (gilded cage) but not in a regular suburb.
It is a completely alien concept for a European and especially a Brit where we regard our home as our castle.
But like many things, what started over there is steadily spreading over here.. So new developments charging service charges to their freeholders and ground rents to leaseholders, with regular price hikes. Government seems to have slowly gotten wise to this wheeze and is puttiing limits on the 'rents' developers and property managers can screw free & leaseholders for. Councils seemed fine with the deal because they didn't have to provide services to private estates, but could still charge Council Tax for services that weren't being provided.
Ah, politics..
When perusing these type of articles, may I respectfully suggest that the reader recalls the expression (variously attributed to Mark Twain, Benjamin Disraeli and sundry others - take your pick)
There are …
“Lies, damned lies, and statistics”
I’m sitting on the fence as regards global warming, so feel free to up/down vote me to oblivion
Downvoted then for being a fool and ignoring the science.
Yes, an ignoramus can twist numbers however they like to support whatever lie they want to tell. But that’s why we have scientists, experts in their field, who understand what the numbers mean, can interpret them correctly - and then can tell us what is going on. We should listen to them. We should ignore whatever memes and shit are being spread by social media.
But that’s why we have scientists, experts in their field
But the spaghetti graph seems to be something Rik has thrown together himself, without understanding the sources or limitations of the data.. So from the side bar, this is an example-
...and since 2000 has relied heavily on data from the global and internationally managed array of over four thousand Argo floats.
There are.. issues with relying on Argo data, along with smoothing and splicing a bunch of different datasets to invent a time series out of less than whole cloth. I look forward to the publication in a peer-reviewed journal though.
Back in 1971 I became acquainted with a certain fellow student in my year, name of Chris Monckton. In 1976 the first computer predictions of global warming were published. They weren't based on willie-waving, they were based on the cold equations. Monckton presently became one of the leading global warming deniers. He is smarter than all of us put together, but eventually the evidence overwhelmed and he came to accept the scientific truth of it.
Suggest you sceptics out there do some serious scientific fact checking.
Suggest you deniers out there find something more unscientific to wave your willies over.
Will be intrigued to see the ratio of up/down votes here. That, I am /not/ going to second-guess!
Ah, Art Slarti, oh it doesn't matter, you seem the perfect customer for me. I can sell you subscriptions to The Light, The Epoch Times and The Telegraph if you would be so kind as to give up your money to right-wing, conspiracy "newspapers" who share your views (or probably initiated them.)
The point is that the Heartland Institute, which is a climate change skeptical organistaion, still referred to Christopher Monckton in a posting last December. If he has changed his position, it would have happened after that and it would be significant enough to show up on-line. I can find no such message. So the question is, where has he publicly said he has changed position? Or are we talking about a different person here?
It does appear that Art has an accurate point here - IF the OP is referring to "Lord" Christopher Monckton[1 ]then there is a definite lack of (online) references[2] to indicate that he has changed his mind - about *any* of the total bollocks that he has spouted over the years.
If there really *is* a citation that this particular Monckton has been convinced to change his tune on at least the topic at hand then that would be an excellent thing to share here.
But so far I am doubtful that The Mad Monckton of MAGA[3] has changed his mind.
[1] other wikis are available
[2] not that I'm claiming to have especially good google-fu, but it normally suffices
[3] just the opening frame is enough, no need to punish yourself by watching that YT video
OK "first computer model" has the IT angle... but really, we have known about this _much_longer: in fact https://xkcd.com/2889
Good on El Reg to weigh in on this.. not so many years ago they were happy enough to publish "climate sceptic" Lewis Page's infuriating nonsense so they have some making up to do.
Every time we see an article (and this one is a really good one) there are denialist commentards pounding the table.
I suggest to force all these people to buy the low-level coastal areas. They should build very expensive houses on the beach and live their exclusive lives on the beach. I even suggest that we build a wall around their houses at the beach, some safe inland distance away from them. The wall will be closed off and no one of them is allowed inland to leave their beach properties, never, ever again. They must live in their paradise denialist's homes. In less than 100 years or so, the sea will be at the wall and we are happily rid of those pesky denialists.
The problem is, they will all die of old age before the oceans rise more than a couple of cm.
It's their children and their children's children's children unto (roughly) the fortieth generation who will reap the whirlwind.
They should be enslaved and set to building CO2 scrubbers.
Can't find the stat in the cited paper, but I have seen 2 cm cited for one or two vulnerable coasts.
The thing is, it's far from even, it varies from place to place and year on year.
Chuck a pebble in a pond. How fast do the ripples spread? Derive formulae based on wave height and angle. Apply that as, say, a day's meltwater from a glacier ripples out across the world. To get all the way, the time can be measured in years. So while someone gets their feet wet next week, someone else might still be fine for the next couple (sic) of years.
As I understand it, most places today have seen "no more than", i.e. less than, 2 cm. Let's say an average global rise of 1 cm over the last 25 years, i.e. 0.04 cm/yr
Average future life span of a denial-age adult, say 40 years. Average future rate of rise, say 0.15 cm/yr. Average rise recorded on death certificate, 6 cm.
Okay I lied. I blame the AI which mixed up inches with centimeters.
Current Sea Level Rise is about 3 cm a decade. Not a lot actually. But you need to add/subtract local tectonics to that. In any case buying a house close to sea level isn't especially bright because with or without climate change it'll almost certainly be within the reach of the strongest storm that might come along, and insurance companies have finally noticed that and are adjusting their rates accordingly.
"Current Sea Level Rise is about 3 cm a decade."
Or a foot a century in left pondian units.
Quite small changes in sea levels can have magnified effects on rivers which can expose large areas on river flood plains to greatly increased risk of inundation. Many major global cities are built on such flood plains so the problem isn't just for beach houses of the idle rich.
I think there is convincing evidence that extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and intensity, at least in the last two to three decades. The likelihood that a monotonic rise in global temperatures, storm frequency and intensity over three, four or five decades is purely due to random variation becomes incredibly unlikely. The correlation with the rise in atmospheric greenhouse gases with a credible mechanism, is increasingly consistent with causation.
Madmen Asserting Global Annihilation.
Rise in sea levels isn't uniform due to ocean currents. So, for example it's already observable along the eastern seaboard of the US as warmer water from the gulf and caribbean moves up there. Of course, things may change if, as some models suggest, the Atlantic circulation (warm water from the tropics travels to the arctic, cools and returns). IIRC the circulation on America's Pacific coast is from the North.
CO2 scrubbers are another hugely expensive subsidy industry.
"I suggest to force all these people to buy the low-level coastal areas"
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obamas-mansion-marthas-vineyard/
https://www.tmz.com/2022/02/22/barack-obama-mansion-hawaii-sea-wall-oahu/
Pretty much every climate doom mongering rich person owns a seafront and/or hugely energy consuming property. Bill Gates, Al Gore, John Kerry.. All the good low level costal areas have been bought up. Us plebs have to live up in the hills where its cheaper.
The base of Obamas house is over 13 feet above sea level.
That is *NOT* a low level coastal area. Neither are the other examples.
I have a friend with a house "on the coast". He literally has an exit from his back garden directly onto the beach. However, rising sea levels won't be a problem for him either, as this isn't "low-level coastal": https://www.jamiejones.org/photos/gower/caswell-west.png
You are talking about a specific term, "The Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ)" which is defined as you suggest.
I'm pointing out that when scientists predict sea level rise by the end of the century of a few feet, that doesn't make a house at risk if it's at 13 feet.
"If I can remember how to do maths, I think 3 or 4 is less than 13."
Christ you nut jobs are nutty:
Nutjob: If sea levels are going to rise like the scientists say, why did Obama buy a house at sea level.
Scientist: We predict 3 or 4 feet, maybe less. Obama's house is 13 feet above sea level, so it's safe for beyond his lifetime.
Nutjob: But 13 feet is within the defined LECZ, so checkmate "scientist".
Scientist: WTF?
There is a very old book - thousands of years old - one of the oldest books ever, with a story about a lovely lady called Helen of Troy. Troy was a harbour city, famously besieged by the Greeks to free Helen and today, is several kilometers from the sea. So I will build my beach house there. Alternatively, you could build your beach house around Cape Town and the south coast of Africa, which is rising at a rate of about 2cm per year, which is also quite safe. The whole west coast of North America is also rising but earthquakes are a little bit of a problem. If you are an idiot, then you could build underwater at New Orleans.
Every time we see an article (and this one is a really good one) there are denialist commentards pounding the table.
Yep. Usually with garbage comments like this-
The Earth is heating up. No argument. That heat is exacerbating extreme weather. No argument.
I suggest to force all these people to buy the low-level coastal areas.
Not a problem. Well, the main problem being people like Al Gore, Obama, Gates etc etc have already snapped up property in those areas. But if anyone fancies buying me a beachfront mansion, I'd be happy to rig up some webcams so you can watch me drown. Or not.
But I'm a fan of the planet. I probably understand it rather better than most reality deniers. One of my favorite examples are places like this-
https://www.scubadiving.com/exploring-bahamas-crystal-caves-in-abaco
Once you enter, it’s hard to believe your surroundings are real. There are unique crystal roses hanging from the ceiling look like blown glass, chandeliers of soda straws with little diamond-like features on the ends and crystal pools that look like explosions of rock candy inside. Some of the formations have translucent angel wings, and the entire ceiling looks as if it is still dripping.
I'm not sure if our intrepid author understands any geology, or how those formations develop. Hint: Not in this environment-
Areas of the cave can drop down to 150 feet for short periods of time then come back up to 80 feet and even as shallow as 40 feet in some areas.
They're not exactly well known for forming under water. So couple of possibilities. The caves were originally dry during the thousands of years it took them to form, and there's a slim chance they somehow flooded later. Or sea levels just rose, much as they've been doing since the Ice Age has been receding. Rik can probably tap up his AGU colleagues and get citations for some papers that have dated samples from those (and other similar) caves. The interpretative data 'experts' won't have a clue though.
So..
Those are the y-axis values for each of the 1,460 temperature-measurement data points that create the chart. They indicate the degree (pun intended) of variance for each measurement from the average of global temperatures from 1951 to 1980.
Is the kind of thing that can impress people who don't understand what they're looking at. An entire planetary ecosystem broken down into 1,460 'data' points, covering only 30 years of our planet's climate history. But it's the kind of presentation trick that allows people to jump to conclusions like this-
The Earth is getting hotter, and it's getting hotter faster. This ugly reality is readily apparent when looking at this ugly chart
Yes, it's an ugly chart, and an ugly trick.. But it doesn't tell you anything about whether the Earth is getting hotter, or getting hotter faster because it's extremely spatially and temporaly constrained. It also tells you nothing about actual attribution, ie how much warming is natural, and how much is man-made. Which includes man-made issues like measuring jetwash at RAF Coningsby and claiming that as a 'record temperature'. Or that most of the UK Met Office's temperature stations aren't fit for climatology per WMO station sighting standards.
But it's good for keeping climate 'scientists' off the streets I guess, and giving reality deniers something to get alarmed about.
"low-level coastal areas. " ... "we build a wall around "
I was thinking a wall across the top of Florida but the Mason-Dixon line might be better option but then 49°N just to be sure.
The greater risk isn't from the genuine maga grade intellect denialists, rather from those that aren't so brain dead as not to realise the planet is warming and the climate changing to a more hostile configuration but who also believe through their wealth, power and position they and their family etc can escape unscathed from the inevitable effects of climate change.
Utterly delusional of course. I am sure these delusions were shared by the late Bronze Age elites up until they were burned in their palaces during the collapse that closed that period.
I was thinking a wall across the top of Florida but the Mason-Dixon line might be better option but then 49°N just to be sure.
Nah, you need to be looking further north-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentide_ice_sheet#/media/File:Laurentide_ice_sheet_map.jpg
Now THAT is a 'climate change' that CO2 might help us avoid. Think positive, or Canada and pretty much anything north of NYC gets it.
(and of course as we slowly slip away from the last glacial maximum, and the planet continues to warm up.. try and figure out the influence that CO2 could have had on that.)
@b0llchit
"Every time we see an article (and this one is a really good one) there are denialist commentards pounding the table.
I suggest to force all these people to buy the low-level coastal areas."
Wasnt it the MMCC co2 believers who bought that property? Also flying around the world to tell people not to fly or we all gonna fry. Also we shouldnt drive, only they should drive in their glorified milk floats.
Yes and no imho ... the TFA's about climate science and attribution in particular, which (as detailed under the link From Columbia Climate School on "rapidly advancing field of attribution science") involves quite a bit of data analysis, at least one "Climate Attribution Database", and a lot of computing -- the ACM even started to award a yearly Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling in 2023 to reflect on excellence and progress in the needed effort.
The Columbia link notes that "Climate models currently do not have fine enough spatial resolution to deal with the many aspects of extreme precipitation, largely because they lack sufficient computing power". The US's SCREAM effort (whole-earth 3.25 km horizontal-resolution cloud-cover prediction with 10 billion parameters for physics + dynamics) and the European EXCLAIM approach currently stretch the fastest supercomputers to their limit in this field. We need FP64+ Zettaflopping to really get there imo, and fast (no silly "AI" kids' stuff)!
One wonders if they're being paid to do so, and if not, why they do it for free.
Because it's the greatest threat facing humanity.. It's also the most expensive or lucrative threats facing humanity, although there may be less 'scientists' at the next COP jolly now that budgets are being cut. But the UN EP still wants their $100bn a year, so just keep on believing. Don't ask akward questions like 'So about that MWP then..'
Yeah, boring, except for that rivetingly suspenseful phonetic similarity intrigue between "Slartibartfast" and "BartyFartsLast" that had the audience here puzzled and gripped to the edge of its seats from Post #1 ... thankfully, with this latest emission the olfactive balance is fully restored ... ! (Spolier alert: the quack charlatan imposter is ... "Slartibartfast" ... butt, shhhh, as always, keep it quiet, yet deadly! ;) )
Its interesting how they accuse the 'deniers' of burying their heads in the sand and 'ignoring the evidence' yet the same people love to protect themselves from contradictory opinions as they seem even more unable to comprehend these than the supposed deniers.
.If you're referring to me, I love valid contradictory opinions. However, I'm not going to spend time reading fantastical bollocks from someone who is convinced 2 + 2 = 5.
You'll note, there are people here I constantly disagree with who aren't on that list (codejunky for one) - because some of the time, he's able to talk with reason, even when I don't agree with his reason.
The people I've blocked have a history of pure batshit crazy postings and the total refusal to listen to sense. There is no debating them, and that's due to them.
It says a lot about you that you can't comprehend this.. Did you ever try to engage with the "the end of the world is nigh" sandwich-board wearers than used to parade around town? How did those debates go?
"who is convinced 2 + 2 = 5."
Wasn't it left wing activists who were saying that 2+2=5 as being fixated on the 'correct' answer of 2+2=4 is some sort of western maths and therefore anti-social justice?
"Did you ever try to engage with the "the end of the world is nigh" sandwich-board wearers than used to parade around town?"
I've never seen Greta Thunberg in person, thankfully! I'm sure a debate with her would result in her saying 'how dare you' and 'blah blah blah' a lot.
Outcry as Trump withdraws support for research that mentions ‘climate’
US government stripping funds from domestic and overseas research amid warnings for health and public safety
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/21/trump-scientific-research-climate
I'll be dead in 20-40 years, and I don't care.
This pile of crap and the people in it are not worth saving or even worrying about.
Everything's so enshittified now that I don't care if it burns in a heap.
Nobody cares about quality or has pride in their work. Look at Microsoft, Google, Boeing, Apple, Amazon, Intel, IBM, HP, or any other company where their name once meant something. They're all putting out the cheapest crap they can get away with.
Let it burn.
Clearly you have not children (and possibly grand children) to care about or even give a shit about
Thankfully most of us do care and it is up to us to do something about it, sadly we are up against large corporate entities for whom it is in their short term interests to drill baby, drill. Not helped by politicians coming up with what they think are vote winning ideas but in reality just screw up the economies thus making it harder to fix the problem as we now can't afford to do so.
all my rambling can also be condensed down to a few words to describe the problem : " short term interests" and " vote winning"
Only surprising if you actually believed that late 90's early 00's terror story, that climate change had already happened, 50 years before predicted.
C02 based climate change has been on the radar for a couple of hundred years. It got renewed attention in the 1950's, leading gradually to the "sky is falling" reports of the late 90's and early 00's, when pseudo scientists and their political cohort started telling people that the climate change predicted for 2050 had already arrived. Instead, we've spent the last 30 years arriving at the place real scientists predicted 30 years ago.
Yes, warming wasn't rising as fast before. Now we are moving into the predicted acceleration phase. After warming will come climate change. Not surprising at all if you were paying attention.
If I had a car with brakes that I think may be failing would I leave it until the brakes actually failed, or get them looked at by an "expert in car brakes" and get the expert's opinion?
In the area of climate change we have a similar (even though more complicated) situation - so again off to the experts for their opinion...
I will err on the side of caution and get my car brakes fixed BEFORE they fail, AND support the idea that climate change is a significant problem that needs to be solved BEFORE it is too late...
To me it seems that "deniers" have little, or no, sense, NOR an ability to appraise a situation either objectively or logically.
You are able to get your brakes fixed because it is just you making that decision and you can afford it.
Now if you needed to get agreement from every large government to ignore their own needs and decide to fund you now very expense brake replacement, good luck with that.
A better option now is to drive carefully.
Other, natural factors could be at play, too, overlaying the effects seen in the chart.
However, I can’t help the feeling that burning all the carbon stored over hundreds of millions of years in two centuries is not going to help.
FYI: I drive an EV, my apartment is heated by solar and a geothermal heat pump.
We will add solar cells at some point in the future.
But I‘m not sure if we’re just very slightly dragging out the inevitable.
True. Which is why, like with public health campaigns, the goal is to get everyone on board so we all move in the right direction together.
And of course, the very purpose of the counter campaigns is to discourage as many as possible so as to make the effort useless for those that do try.
The real issue is the the rate of change over a relatively short period of time. As the FAQ in the article says, yes temperatures have been way higher in the past but that took a long time to come about and usually ended in some form of mass extinction event.
Sea levels were also much higher of course.
But they will be black-market graphs now that Trump's banned any climate research in the US.
You will have to go into a speakeasy to get them...
"Oi Joe, got any temperature data under the counter?"
"There you go perfessor, don't let the feds see you with these. Got some sea level numbers coming in next week if you're interested, smuggled in from Europe on the beer labels. Just pay the beer tariff and you can have them for cost."
<plug>
</plug>
I do enjoy reading the comments of all those who believe that we are not facing a catastrophic problem with climate change. Particularly their dogged insistence that the only reason all these scientists are warning us about climate change is because of the huge climate change industry and the megabucks to be made from it.
All of which requires them to ignore the fact that the oil and gas companies, some of the wealthiest enterprises on the planet, have been willing to shovel cash at scientists willing to buck the consensus and say that everything is fine. And that it is at this point well-documented that the same oil and gas companies scientists posited nearly 50 years ago that C02 might drive damaging climate change. And did the research to back it up, only for that same research to have been concealed by the oil and gas companies who didn't want their business model ruined.
I mean, it takes a special type of clever to decide that the "climate change industry" is entirely driven by money, while ignoring the smoking elephant in the corner of the room.
Whilst I agree that the graph shows decade increases in average temperatures, I wonder if we all stopped tomorrow with petrol, diesel, gas, mining (including lithium), all industry, flights, cars, farting cows, general agriculture, data centres etc - would it stop increasing OR are we in any natural increase of averages as part of a cycle?
I'm not saying we don't do something (whatever that is - and just tax carbon offsetting for rich people isn't it) - but what will the outcome be? Even if it's just 1 degree C, that average is still increasing.
"are we in any natural increase of averages as part of a cycle?"
Short answer, no. Long answer from NASA:
Short answer, no. Long answer from NASA:
Longer answer-
The warming of the past century—0.7 degrees Celsius—is roughly eight times faster than the ice-age-recovery warming on average.
We don't actually know, because the 'evidence' is basically cobbling together a bunch of proxies that may or may not form an accurate temperature record. But that evidence also shows plenty of cyclical climate change, as well as the big stuff like Ice Ages. So then you have reality deniers who pretend the LIA never happened, despite a lot of evidence that it did. So then the question becomes 'Is warming following the LIA at all anomolous', which gets a bit inconvenient when the end of the LIA just so happens to correspond with the Industrial Revolution and the arbitary and carefully cherry-picked dates like 1850 to start defining 'climate anomalies'. Pick a cold year, and of course you get an exagerated warming end. Run a trend from the peak of the MWP to present, and it pretty much flatlines. But of course the MWP also gets denied.
> would it stop increasing
Not immediately and it won't start to come down until the degree of greenhouse gases/water vapour start to be re-absorbed (CO2 negative etc) from when they came i.e all the fossilised plants, life etc. Although there is a problem there as in the modern world there are not many places where fossilisation can actually take place any more.
The tipping point is when the oceans warm up enough to release the trapped methane (which is already happening on shallow coasts) which is an even more potent greenhouse gas, after that there will be nothing we can do other than to hope to ride it out.
>The tipping point is when the oceans warm up enough to release the trapped methane
Is that the tipping point or is it a race between the oceans and the melting of the Siberian permafrost which will also release vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere.
One of the troubling things about the current political status of Russia, is that we probably should be working with Russia to collect and use that methane and so minimise the amount that is released directly (as methane) into the atmosphere. Which suggests that whilst we should be reducing our burning of fossil fuels, we will need to continue burning some fossil fuels, just to reduce their impact on the climate...
What an utterly useless graph that is designed only to provoke an emotional response in the observer. What is the scale? How many degrees from 'average' is the deep red?
This is like the TV weather where they now show temperatures in deep red to indicate some sort of warning when even 10 years ago higher temperatures in the same area were depicted as normal.
While I'm not a climate scientist I do note that a few million years ago the entire planet was a lot hotter than it is now. Then it went through a few ice ages. And now it's getting hotter again.
The category error here is humans thinking they are in control of this planet's climate.
You are not.
Lets see.
So for the last six decades or so its been..
1) We will will have limitless cheap nuclear fusion in a few years time
2) We will run out of oil / gas / natural resource of choice in a decade or two.
3) Billions will be starving due to overpopulation... although this prediction "based on irrefutable science" stopped after the 1990's for some reason
4) Global warming will cause some ill-defined "crisis" in a decade so we must shut down modern industrial society. Although the "crisis" temp is still lower than the Holocene Climate Optimum. More than 5000 years ago, Back when the UK had decent summers.
Its all b*llocks. All of it. And the people who bang on about how its "science" always seem to know least about how messy real science is. Like in the case of AGW, totally ignoring geophysics because that's a totally different field. Which when added to discussion totally ruins almost all the key assumptions of all those "scientific" AGW papers. What do you mean there is a huge independent source of ocean heat with geothermal vents. At 300C+. Thats circulates a volume equal to the worlds oceans ever 10x9 years. Lets ignore that. Then there is all the really dodgy maths in these papers. Makes Enron look like an upstanding business with totally honest accounts.
Repeat after me. Its all b*llocks. Find something more relevant to worry about. Even if we totally deindustrialized in the morning (and as a result 95% of the population starved to death - that means you) the net effect on the "climate" would be about the same as going outside the next time it's raining and waving your hands about thinking that will make it stop raining.
Yeah, total b*llocks. We're just ants on this very big planet. Dont flatter yourselves that we are in any way important. The next Ice Age will take care of that particular self-delusion. Very quickly.
Putting a number on it is admirable but futile.
If we accept the accuracy of the measurements, the averaging and the base line and agree the planet is warming we only pass the first hurdle to justify Net Zero targets.
Next we have to agree that CO2 is the most significant driver, not just that it is a greenhouse gas. It maybe but many might argue differently.
Finally we have to decide if we can stop the climate changing or as this article might suggest it is too late.
What do we do, continue to spend Billion in the UK and Trillions around the world reducing carbon emissions or spend that money adapting to the now inevitable change?
More scarmongering BS from the climate alarmists. Still emerging from the last mini ice age, we expect the temperature to rise a liitle, for the benefit of the majority of humanity. Absolute arrogant hubris to think we could do anything about it anyway. Expect to read this rubbish if the Guardian, not here.
The comment title kinda says it all.
but I recently was gifted Helen Czerski's The Blue Machine
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123979539-the-blue-machine
Although founded on strong science, it is an easy read, well- and amusingly-written.
It also not light on the science of the mechanisms of oceanic Heat and CO2 transport,
what Global Ocean Temperature actually means,
and how long some of these planetary processes take to circulate
(spoiler alert: some are near-immediate, some are seasonal, some annual,
but the really BIG effects can take many decades !)
If anyone is interested in educating themselves on the underlying planetary-scale science,
I wholeheartedly recommend it.
NB: I have no links to the author or publishers;
this is purely my own opinion as a Citizen Scientist.
Go read it and enjoy
(& then get serioulsy worried!)
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