IOW: absent emergencies, governments should adjust incentives, and gently.
I agree completely. Governments are currently taking a top down approach where they pick the winners (feed in tariffs for solar/government investment in emerging technologies/etc) and losers (efficiency standards/banning coal/etc). Government actions will never be as efficient as market driven solutions. Surprisingly even most of the candidates running for the Canadian federal Conservative Party leadership are advocating "big government" solutions.
Canada's province of Ontario was the first jurisdiction in North America to fully eliminate coal as a source of electricity generation. This had the greenhouse gas reduction equivalent of taking 7 million cars off the road. Not bad for a province of just under 14 million.
Probably not at the level that we've become accustomed, but you can imagine that if labor only costs $17/day then the costs of food would drop, the housing market would adjust to the new incomes, etc. They live on that much in China. There's no reason we can't have the Chinese economy in America.
None of those eight papers appear to be written by sociologists or historians
Only if you don't take a second to check. Authors of climate consensus studies — including Naomi Oreskes (Science historian), Ed Maibach (Professor of Communication), J. Stuart Carlton (Social Scientist), and John Cook (web page designer/climate communicator)
These studies are often executed by sociologists and science historians, although it's not clear why a physical scientist would be unqualified to perform a literature review.
All eight? You may not like the findings, but you will have a hard time finding a paper that finds otherwise. Anyone who looks at this finds the same. There is a strong consensus. This is not surprising to anyone who has taken even a cursory review of the literature.
Needless to say, scientists disagree with you. If the science clearly and unambiguously shows something to be true, then there is considered to be a consensus around that fact.
Please read the papers means you are stuck on the idea of only listening to the people who wrote them.
As opposed to making things up whole cloth? Well yes. That's the whole point of science.
Using either SkepticalScience or Wattsupwiththat as a reference is generally inflammatory
What? The SkepticalScience.com link references 8 published papers all showing a strong consensus. If you don't like Skeptical Science then maybe read the published papers. The site is always well sourced.
Claims that a Consensus is somehow relevant in scientific endeavors is nonsensical.
The parent didn't claim that the consensus was relevant to the science. The consensus is informed by the science, not the other way around. The parent just pointed out that the science shows that man made global warming is real and that any crazy hand waving about a Chinese conspiracy is, well, crazy.
Before flaming or marking me a troll or something, look it up. Google "roman grapes england". Know when you're being lied to by a bunch of people that want to take your money.
Very sage advise. You could even just Google "grapes England" and find that grapes are still grown in England. But then your last sentence there would seem a tad ironic.
Do you really think going from 0.025% to 0.040% atmospheric CO2 is what's driving all temperature change?
A change from 0.025 to 0.04 would cause a direct impact of 2.5 Wm^-2 based on radiative transfer codes. Over the surface of the Earth that is equivalent to 1,600,000 Hiroshima bombs per day. Yes, this is certainly what is causing most (possibly more than all) of the warming over the last 60 years.
When you consider that warmer air holds more H2O (a far more potent heat trapping molecule) then you begin to see that the overall impact is even larger than the direct effect.
global warming is actually beneficial for the first couple of degrees for humanity as a whole, according to the IPCC even (AR5)
That finding relies on a paper by Richard Tol called “The Economic Effects of Climate Change”. It found that any benefits are sunk after 1C warming. Since we've already warmed by 1C, any further warming will have detrimental effects. The impact is non-linear so things do go down hill quite fast after the next 1C. This was an aggregate of previous studies. Unfortunately "Gremlins intervened" and among other issues, minus signs were dropped from two of the impact studies. The corrected paper is quite a bit less optimistic.
The CO2 based models are still getting it hopelessly wrong.
No correlation at an annual timescale. Seasonal factors drive CO2 over that timescale. CO2 goes down in the northern hemisphere summer (as plant growth absorbs CO2) and up during northern hemisphere winter as plants die off and release CO2. The cause of the long term trend however is obvious and confirmed with carbon isotope analysis.
Last week a study suggested earth's plant life is absorbing a greater percentage of global CO2 emissions -- although reductions in China could also be significant.
That sentence seems to confuse two different phenomena. This story is about emissions - how much we emit. The previous story is about the airborne fraction - how much of what we emit stays in the atmosphere vs. being absorbed by plants or the ocean.
WHY is this not being allowed for in predictive models?
It is. CO2 growth rate is not generally an output of the models. CO2 growth rate is largely determined by what policies we put in place. The IPCC produces several projections showing how climate will react to mild, moderate, and high CO2 growth. Which pathway we follow is largely up to us.
That slowdown is on the second derivative. The acceleration has slowed if the paper is right. Here's what that looks like: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/e... . The red curve is CO2.
Please do read the links. Please also read Soden 2005 which uses "satellite measurements to highlight a distinct radiative signature of upper tropospheric moistening over the period 1982 to 2004." and finds "The observed moistening is accurately captured by climate model simulations" - that is, the moistening that emerges from the physics coded into the models.
As the atmosphere warms it will moisten. That is confirmed by the models, it's confirmed by observations, and it's confirmed by basic physics. Hornwumpus is right about only one thing:
Water vapor is by far the largest greenhouse gas. If the increase in temperature caused by CO2 results in a large increase in atmospheric water vapor CO2 induced global warming will be bad,
Slashdot Mirror
IOW: absent emergencies, governments should adjust incentives, and gently.
I agree completely. Governments are currently taking a top down approach where they pick the winners (feed in tariffs for solar/government investment in emerging technologies/etc) and losers (efficiency standards/banning coal/etc). Government actions will never be as efficient as market driven solutions. Surprisingly even most of the candidates running for the Canadian federal Conservative Party leadership are advocating "big government" solutions.
Only the Conservative leadership candidate Michael Chong is advocating for a market driven solution: "We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to both lower income taxes and clean up our environment through the pricing of carbon," Chong said Wednesday at a news conference on Parliament Hill.
"It works. BC implemented and now has the fastest growing economy, the lowest income taxes in Canada, and they have reduced emissions"
We need to get to 0. Every journey begins with a single step.
Here's arctic and antarctic sea ice combined. : The combined graph is quite a bit more dramatic.
Canada's province of Ontario was the first jurisdiction in North America to fully eliminate coal as a source of electricity generation. This had the greenhouse gas reduction equivalent of taking 7 million cars off the road. Not bad for a province of just under 14 million.
What caused the several centuries long mega-droughts in California in the last 2000 years before Manmade Climate Change?
Previous California mega droughts coincided roughly with the medieval warm period and "caused the collapse of that continent's most advanced pre-Inca empire, the rich and powerful state of Tiwanaku". That warming coincides with a period of higher than average solar radiation and less volcanic activity - both natural factors that would cause warming. Man made global warming has driven modern temperatures well above the relatively high temperatures observed at that time - in spite of the fact the sun is now at its dimmest in a half century. If the droughts are in fact related to global temperatures then California ought to look at making some drastic changes to their water management. It's only going to get hotter from here.
A lack of wildfires didn't cause 62 million trees to die this year in California.
1896 is calling...
Probably not at the level that we've become accustomed, but you can imagine that if labor only costs $17/day then the costs of food would drop, the housing market would adjust to the new incomes, etc. They live on that much in China. There's no reason we can't have the Chinese economy in America.
None of those eight papers appear to be written by sociologists or historians
Only if you don't take a second to check. Authors of climate consensus studies — including Naomi Oreskes (Science historian), Ed Maibach (Professor of Communication), J. Stuart Carlton (Social Scientist), and John Cook (web page designer/climate communicator)
These studies are often executed by sociologists and science historians, although it's not clear why a physical scientist would be unqualified to perform a literature review.
So, there is a consensus because the science is clear and unambiguous,
Yes.
and the science is clear and unambiguous because there is a consensus?
No,
Americans could bring manufacturing back home in a heartbeat but they need to be competitive. Foxconn employees make $17/day in China. American's could have it all: cheap gadgets and manufacturing jobs, They just need to be more realistic in terms of salaries. Trump's plan to get rid of the federal minimum wage will make America competitive again.
All eight? You may not like the findings, but you will have a hard time finding a paper that finds otherwise. Anyone who looks at this finds the same. There is a strong consensus. This is not surprising to anyone who has taken even a cursory review of the literature.
Consensus doesn't mean a literature review
Needless to say, scientists disagree with you. If the science clearly and unambiguously shows something to be true, then there is considered to be a consensus around that fact.
Please read the papers means you are stuck on the idea of only listening to the people who wrote them.
As opposed to making things up whole cloth? Well yes. That's the whole point of science.
No. This is a literature review. Please read the papers.
Using either SkepticalScience or Wattsupwiththat as a reference is generally inflammatory
What? The SkepticalScience.com link references 8 published papers all showing a strong consensus. If you don't like Skeptical Science then maybe read the published papers. The site is always well sourced.
Claims that a Consensus is somehow relevant in scientific endeavors is nonsensical.
The parent didn't claim that the consensus was relevant to the science. The consensus is informed by the science, not the other way around. The parent just pointed out that the science shows that man made global warming is real and that any crazy hand waving about a Chinese conspiracy is, well, crazy.
Before flaming or marking me a troll or something, look it up. Google "roman grapes england". Know when you're being lied to by a bunch of people that want to take your money.
Very sage advise. You could even just Google "grapes England" and find that grapes are still grown in England. But then your last sentence there would seem a tad ironic.
Regarding our bet, things aren't looking so good for you: http://www.realclimate.org/ind...
Do you really think going from 0.025% to 0.040% atmospheric CO2 is what's driving all temperature change?
A change from 0.025 to 0.04 would cause a direct impact of 2.5 Wm^-2 based on radiative transfer codes. Over the surface of the Earth that is equivalent to 1,600,000 Hiroshima bombs per day. Yes, this is certainly what is causing most (possibly more than all) of the warming over the last 60 years.
When you consider that warmer air holds more H2O (a far more potent heat trapping molecule) then you begin to see that the overall impact is even larger than the direct effect.
global warming is actually beneficial for the first couple of degrees for humanity as a whole, according to the IPCC even (AR5)
That finding relies on a paper by Richard Tol called “The Economic Effects of Climate Change”. It found that any benefits are sunk after 1C warming. Since we've already warmed by 1C, any further warming will have detrimental effects. The impact is non-linear so things do go down hill quite fast after the next 1C. This was an aggregate of previous studies. Unfortunately "Gremlins intervened" and among other issues, minus signs were dropped from two of the impact studies. The corrected paper is quite a bit less optimistic.
The CO2 based models are still getting it hopelessly wrong.
CMIP3 from the IPCC AR4 is pretty much bang on.
No correlation at an annual timescale. Seasonal factors drive CO2 over that timescale. CO2 goes down in the northern hemisphere summer (as plant growth absorbs CO2) and up during northern hemisphere winter as plants die off and release CO2. The cause of the long term trend however is obvious and confirmed with carbon isotope analysis.
Last week a study suggested earth's plant life is absorbing a greater percentage of global CO2 emissions -- although reductions in China could also be significant.
That sentence seems to confuse two different phenomena. This story is about emissions - how much we emit. The previous story is about the airborne fraction - how much of what we emit stays in the atmosphere vs. being absorbed by plants or the ocean.
The green line here shows the trend in atmospheric CO2: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/g...
does not imply and probably does not mean "the amount has declined" but rather "it increased a little less than last year"
Not quite that even. It means the amount that it is speeding up is somewhat less.
WHY is this not being allowed for in predictive models?
It is. CO2 growth rate is not generally an output of the models. CO2 growth rate is largely determined by what policies we put in place. The IPCC produces several projections showing how climate will react to mild, moderate, and high CO2 growth. Which pathway we follow is largely up to us.
That slowdown is on the second derivative. The acceleration has slowed if the paper is right. Here's what that looks like: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/e... . The red curve is CO2.
Please do read the links. Please also read Soden 2005 which uses "satellite measurements to highlight a distinct radiative signature of upper tropospheric moistening over the period 1982 to 2004." and finds "The observed moistening is accurately captured by climate model simulations" - that is, the moistening that emerges from the physics coded into the models.
As the atmosphere warms it will moisten. That is confirmed by the models, it's confirmed by observations, and it's confirmed by basic physics. Hornwumpus is right about only one thing:
Water vapor is by far the largest greenhouse gas. If the increase in temperature caused by CO2 results in a large increase in atmospheric water vapor CO2 induced global warming will be bad,