I know someone is going to jump in and claim we DO know the impact of increasing/reducing our CO2 emissions in the future. I say that the current research papers confirm the opposite, even the IPCC's latest paper.
We know that it will cause systems to be more chaotic, which will require more costly adaptation. That's reason enough for mitigation.
We know more energy will cause systems to be more chaotic. We don't know how much a given reduction in human CO2 emissions will reduce the energy imbalance. We don't know HOW costly the difference in adaptation is for that unknown change in energy imbalance. I'm not seeing a strong reason here to advocate for CO2 reductions over adaptation unless the CO2 reductions are really cheap, which no meaningful ones are.
In IPCC parlance adaptation is used to reference measures to adapt to changes to the climate. The word mitigation on the other hand is reserved for efforts to reduce the actual amount of change that will occur to the climate.
That not knowing what the future effects of increased CO2 goes both ways. It could be that they will be worse than what we currently think they will be as easily as it could be they won't be as bad. One fundamental principle of risk management is the less you know about what a risk entails the more value their is in avoiding that risk. Yes, it might cost a lot of money to mitigate future climate change but not mitigating could cost more than any amount of money can cure.
Seriously? You are arguing the urgency of taking action is HIGHER the more ignorant we are?
Here's the important bit though. As the IPCC's most recent AR has observed, the satellite measurements show that for the duration of the CERES project, there has been NO TREND in the energy imbalance.
Unless the energy imbalance is zero the temperature is still changing. Increasing CO2 does not necessarily cause a change in the energy imbalance number. As CO2 increases it retains more heat energy but since the Earth is hotter it also radiates more heat so the actual imbalance may remain the same.
If you are correct, and the increase to energy imbalance from pushing CO2 concentrations up cancels that quickly from the increased temperature(nearly within the year), then you are advocating for an even lower impact from CO2 concentration increases than anybody I know of.
For reference, the actual data gives us the following pictures. From ERBS, the papers from NASA and others assessing the energy imbalance from it come up with an average annual imbalance from about '89 through '99, I forget the number but it's about 0.6W/m^2 depending your method of error corrections. That is the best guess for the imbalance each year from 89 through 99, with no real noted difference or trend in the time frame, so a flat line of steadily gaining energy. Meanwhile CO2 concentrations(Mauna Loa) in 1989 were 353ppm and by 1999 were 368ppm, so a 4% increase in CO2 made no detectable increase to energy imbalance. Same story for the following CERES program from 2000 through to today. The IPCC observed in AR5 that there is very likely NO TREND to the energy imbalance since 2000, yet CO2 has gone from 369ppm in 2000 to 397ppm in 2013. A 7.6% increase from 2000 to 2013 left no noticeable trend in the energy imbalance. Or more telling still the increase in CO2 from 1989 to 2013 was more than 12% while the energy imbalance shows us no observable trend in either satellite observation over that same time frame.
So you could spend billions getting our CO2 concentrations back to 1989 levels and find that based on our satellite records, the energy imbalance wouldn't change a bit and we'd just have that much less money to spend on adapting to rising temperatures.
I have to applaud the focus on adaptation over mitigation. These changes are happening or likely, now what can we do to adapt. The other response of trying to drastically cut CO2 emissions to avoid or reduce climate change lacks two of the most important pieces of information required to evaluate it. How much does our reduction of CO2 emission mitigate future change, and what is the reduced cost of adaptation? Without knowing those two pieces, the decision to reduce CO2 emissions to 'save future dollars' is a blind guess, and there are a lot of much, much better reasons to reduce dependency on oil from places like the ME.
I know someone is going to jump in and claim we DO know the impact of increasing/reducing our CO2 emissions in the future. I say that the current research papers confirm the opposite, even the IPCC's latest paper. We've done lots of modelling of temperature change, but have badly neglected the energy balance. You know, the actual energy in versus out of the atmosphere that is the ACTUAL greenhouse affect that CO2 functions on. Luckily we started measuring observations by satellite in the late 80s.The ERBS and CERES programs from NASA have given us direct measurements of trends in the overall energy balance at the edge of space. The most direct measurement of global warming that we can have. The summary from each program, has let us find a decade level average energy imbalance, and we've found it is in good or at least general agreement with energy levels measured via Ocean Heat Content observations.
Here's the important bit though. As the IPCC's most recent AR has observed, the satellite measurements show that for the duration of the CERES project, there has been NO TREND in the energy imbalance. The earlier ERBS data showed the same as well. Our satellite measurements have shown significant and very steady trends in energy balance cycling monthly, but the average over the years and decades we've measured is just a steady and consistent average neither shifting noticeably up or down. Meanwhile, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere over that same time have climbed like nobody's business. All our models and expectation for X degrees of warming for so much CO2 kinda hinges pretty heavy on CO2 pushing up the energy imbalance. If it's not, and observations suggest that. We may not need to be so worried as some of the panic ridden crowd wants. That said, we DO still have an annual energy imbalance adding energy to the planet, it just has been adding as much last year, as it did the year before, on back through to 2000. Even though in 2000 CO2 concentrations were lower, the imbalance just hasn't changed. We are thus facing increasing energy(general warming), but thus far our direct measurements can't detect the difference our increasing CO2 concentrations are making.
Before I get citation needed shoved down my throat, here's a peer reviewed journal article published in Geophysical Research Letters. It is comparing observed atmosphere energy imbalance to the CMIP5 model runs. It finds good agreement, but also makes the very notable observation that the energy imbalance trend is dominated by volcanic activity(ie NOT the CO2 levels that are higher than they've been in millenia). Full abstract: Observational analyses of running 5 year ocean heat content trends (Ht) and net downward top of atmosphere radiation (N) are significantly correlated (r~0.6) from 1960 to 1999, but a spike in Ht in the early 2000s is likely spurious since it is inconsistent with estimates of N from both satellite observations and climate model simulations. Variations in N between 1960 and 2000 were dominated by volcanic eruptions and are well simulated by the ensemble mean of coupled models from the Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). We find an observation-based reduction in N of 0.31±0.21Wm2 between 1999 and 2005 that potentially contributed to the recent warming slowdown, but the relative roles of external forcing and internal variability remain unclear. While present-day anomalies of N in
Here's the important bit though. As the IPCC's most recent AR has observed, the satellite measurements show that for the duration of the CERES project, there has been NO TREND in the energy imbalance. The earlier ERBS data showed the same as well. Our satellite measurements have shown significant and very steady trends in energy balance cycling monthly, but the average over the years and decades we've measured is just a steady and consistent average neither shifting noticeably up or down. Meanwhile, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere over that same time have climbed like nobody's business. All our models and expectation for X degrees of warming for so much CO2 kinda hinges pretty heavy on CO2 pushing up the energy imbalance. If it's not, and observations suggest that. We may not need to be so worried as some of the panic ridden crowd wants.
Is that your interpretation of those results, or the scientists?
Every time I look one of these "I read the study and it is clear to me that the majority of climate scientists are wrong" slashdot posts, I find that there is a good scientific explanation for how the data still fits into the prevailing AGW theories.
You seem to be making the weakest of 'appeal to authority' arguments ever. Your just waving your hands saying there must be experts out there somewhere that have an explanation, but I'm not even gonna bother pointing out either the expert or the explanation.
If you want to go ahead and look at the latest IPCC report, they have temperature predictions out to the year 2100. Based on their scenarios, the temperature out at 2100 is expected to range from just a bit cooler than today, all the way up to 4.5C warmer than today. The scenarios are based on expected forcing, ie the energy imbalance, over those years. With the last 30 years(the entirety of the satellite record) showing a very much linear energy increase in energy to the system, that helps us make a guess which of the scenarios the IPCC used we might want to look at as an expected case or best guess. It turns out the IPCC's two lowest scenarios fall just below and just above a linear increase of forcing through to 2100. These are RCP secnario's 4.5 and 2.6, adn if you look in chapter 11 of the IPCC fifth AR you can find figure 11.9 is temeprature projected for Scenario 4.5, and it even graphs the observed temperature against the projected for us, and low and behold the observed tracks right along the lower limit of the projections. That's kind of exactly what we might expect from the observations of the energy imbalance from satellites matching that same point on the scenarios main variable. If you look in Chapter 12, you can see where they plot out to the year 2300, and even there scenario 4.5 hits around the 2C mark and scenario 2.6 is under 1C, so if we observe that current energy trends with our current increasing CO2 match the middle ground of those scenarios, it is rather in keeping with mainstream science to say, hey that's a good best guess. Incidentally, that also averages out at the 1.5C that the article is all excited for us to work hard to meet.
For all the people saying we need to panic in case CO2 levels force the very non linear worst cases from the IPCC on us, I think it fair to observe the current record. To notice that the CO2 levels since 1900 have risen very rapidly indeed, as rapidly as we project them to continue increasing in the IPCC worst case scenarios. During that timeframe though, the energy imbalance/forcing has NOT been none linear, but instead from the entirety of the satellite record has been increasing very linearly indeed, and with peaks and troughs of that linear average dominated by volcanic activity. In chapter 12 and figure 12.15 you can compare for yourself the actual mainstream basis for the scenarios the IPCC used, it graphs both historical and projected Top Of Atmosphere energy imbalance. Note also that the historical older than 1980 though is reconstructions with admitted large ma
IPCC Synthesis report (link) P.4 (very first chapter): "Ocean warming dominates the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90% of the energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010 (high confidence), with only about 1% stored in the atmosphere. "
So there IS an increased energy storage in the climate system according the IPCC. Which stands to reason: temprature increase (where before there was none) without a higher energy absorbtion is termodynamically nonsense.
There has absolutely been an energy increase. The energy imbalance I was talking about is the net energy gain at the edge of space, that is how much more energy in/out was there in a year. The satellite results show us that the earth has been gaining more energy than it bleeds off for the entire satellite record. The rate at which energy has been accumulating is where there has been no trend. From 1960 through to today, what little trend there has been in more/less energy being gained has been dominated by volcanic activity and NOT the major increases to CO2 concentrations. Since 2000, the IPCC notes the imbalance has had no trend at all from volcanoes, CO2 or anything, we've just had an overall balance of more energy still coming in than out, but a decade and a half of increasing CO2 emissions have had no observable increase to the rate energy is being trapped.
Funny, because the conclusion of the cited article looks a bit different:
We find a reduction of 0.31±0.21 Wm2 in No between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s which may have contributed to the recent slowdown in global surface warming. This is consistent with minor volcanoes [Solomon et al., 2011; Fyfe et al., 2013; Haywood et al., 2014; Santer et al., 2014], an extended and deeper solar minimum [Lean, 2009; Kaufmann et al., 2011], and possible nitrate and indirect aerosol effects
Slowdown in global surface warming, it's not reduction. If you look at the graphics you see that temperature, except for some minor exception, is always growing. So instead of worrying about the climate, we can just hope in some major vulcan activity....
Go back to high school and retake reading comprehension and basic physics please. I know that is far too rude and confrontational, but it doesn't sound like you read my post at all, which is tiresome.
I stated myself that surface temperature has been consistently rising. I and anyone trusting the meteorology community agrees that even the current 'slowdown' is as you reference, a matter of warming but at a slower rate than previously and than expected.
I don't comprehend where you ever got the notion I believed or claimed otherwise? I pointed out that the rate of net energy/radiation coming into the planet is the more important and direct measure. The basic physics of the greenhouse effect is trapping incoming radiation so that more is coming in than going out. The resulting extra energy leads to warming. What I observed and you again reference yourself in your quote of the article is that the changes to that energy imbalance at t edge of space, is dominated by volcanic activity since the 60s. With the major increases we've contributed to CO2 contributions in that same time, that gives some hope things aren't as bleak as many fear mongers wish. With no notable trend in the energy imbalance in the whole Ceres results of the last decade and a half, we certainly seem less likely to be facing catastrophic sensitivity to CO2. The increases of a decade and a half being in essence undetectable in the core measure of changes to the energy imbalance.
The basic physics of climate change is that increasing levels of gases trap more energy from the sun, increasing the amount of energy in our atmosphere and climate system. We know by and large, most of the energy is stored in the oceans as water holds energy much better than gases in the air.
With such a simple observation, I'd like to make the observation that it seems too few of the IPCC guys pushing for policy stuff are paying any attention to the energy budget. Instead, we have the only basis scientifically being that the average surface temperature is warming, and CO2 levels are rising and we are the ones pushing them up. That's all well and good, and they are important observations. About 30 years ago though we started sending up satellites to measure incoming and outgoing radiation. The ERBS and CERES programs from NASA have given us direct measurements of trends in the overall energy balance at the edge of space. The most direct measurement of global warming that we can have. The summary from each program, has let us find a decade level average energy imbalance, and we've found it is in good or at least general agreement with energy levels measured via Ocean Heat Content observations.
Here's the important bit though. As the IPCC's most recent AR has observed, the satellite measurements show that for the duration of the CERES project, there has been NO TREND in the energy imbalance. The earlier ERBS data showed the same as well. Our satellite measurements have shown significant and very steady trends in energy balance cycling monthly, but the average over the years and decades we've measured is just a steady and consistent average neither shifting noticeably up or down. Meanwhile, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere over that same time have climbed like nobody's business. All our models and expectation for X degrees of warming for so much CO2 kinda hinges pretty heavy on CO2 pushing up the energy imbalance. If it's not, and observations suggest that. We may not need to be so worried as some of the panic ridden crowd wants.
Before I get citation needed shoved down my throat, here's a peer reviewed journal article published in Geophysical Research Letters. It is comparing observed atmosphere energy imbalance to the CMIP5 model runs. It finds good agreement, but also makes the very notable observation that the energy imbalance trend is dominated by volcanic activity(ie NOT the CO2 levels that are higher than they've been in millenia). Full abstract: Observational analyses of running 5 year ocean heat content trends (Ht) and net downward top of atmosphere radiation (N) are significantly correlated (r~0.6) from 1960 to 1999, but a spike in Ht in the early 2000s is likely spurious since it is inconsistent with estimates of N from both satellite observations and climate model simulations. Variations in N between 1960 and 2000 were dominated by volcanic eruptions and are well simulated by the ensemble mean of coupled models from the Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). We find an observation-based reduction in N of 0.31±0.21Wm2 between 1999 and 2005 that potentially contributed to the recent warming slowdown, but the relative roles of external forcing and internal variability remain unclear. While present-day anomalies of N in the CMIP5 ensemble mean and observations agree, this may be due to a cancelation of errors in outgoing longwave and absorbed solar radiation.
Ukraine willingly gave up (as in "sold") most of its arsenal period. They didn't do ot because they were nice people (only Poles are less friendly), but because they couldn't afford the maintenance and needed money to steal. It has been one of most corrupt countries in the world for over 20 years - since they became an actual state.
Thanks for agreeing and confirming the only facts I pointed out: Ukraine willingly gave up it's nuclear arsenal. Russia is now invading Ukraine.
What country flew an airplane into any U.S. building? Terrorist group of Saudis, who were former apid CIA agents in Soviet-Afghanistan war, did that. Maybe our CIA should cut that kind of shit out, eh?
Then you bring up WMD, Saddam had no working WMD nor WMD program when US invaded. What he did have were long-expired weapons with UN tags on them, that were built with dual-use tech and billions of dollars given to him by...wait for it..the United States of America. Because at the time he was our bestest pal, even made an honorary citizen of Detroit by the mayor for his donations to church, etc.
I'd second the SA blame for 911, but even more directly responsible than them would have to be Pakistan.
The American support for the mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan times wasn't solely to Al Qaida chaps, but to anyone willing to fight the Russians, including Al Qaida and the Taliban and the Afghan Northern Alliance folks that were their enemies. It's not lying per se to claim that America supported people that would later become key players in the Taliban and Al Qaida, but it's certainly less than half of the truth.
Pakistan however had continued to support the Taliban right on through. Part of Pakistan's war planning against India was 'strategic depth' into Afghanistan where the friendly and allied Taliban forces gave room for them to move into and operate alongside. The Taliban being as largely uneducated and prone to fanatacism as they were made Al Qaida a moderate voice for Pakistan to work with the Taliban through as well. Pakistan's ISI(equivalent of the CIA) was deeply, deeply in bed with the Taliban and Al Qaida. When the towers went down, the American response was who could have or might have done this? The immediate response in tribal Pakistan was different and two fold. First, shock that Bin Laden actually went through with it and actually did it. The second, was when the Americans go to war with the Taliban, whose side will Pakistan take, and bets where 50/50.
Make no mistake, the Afghan war was 100% about Pakistan's response and ensuring that it and it's nuclear arsenal took sides against jihadists and severed it's buddy, buddy relationship with them. It was never stated outright publicly though, because that would be impolite and push Pakistan to refusing on principal, which it very nearly did anyways.
Perhaps they would stop building chemical or biological WMDs if we would stop killing those that decide to cooperate and indeed put an end to their WMD programs.
The one positive thing to come out of the Iraq war was that Qaddafi did put an end to his WMD programs, out of fear that he would be next. Look how he was rewarded. That episode guaranteed that no tin horn dictator will EVER give up their WMD program.
Indeed. And all Gadhafi had done was use his military to crush and murder peaceful protests, and when that turned ugly, promising to 'exterminate the cockroaches house by house'. Stopping him was certainly an unjustifiable failure of international relations.
Often by the United States of America or other western powers. When nations see that having a nuke prevents other nations from toppling them, nukes become vital for stability.
Perhaps we should stop driving them towards nuclear weapons by invading them for oil and minerals.
Perhaps the most salient point was made in another thread. The Ukraine, as one of the only nations to ever willingly give up a nuclear arsenal, is in the process of being invaded. I'm not sure if you care about the distinction that in this case it is Russia doing the invading and not the evil America or her western allies.
Often by the United States of America or other western powers. When nations see that having a nuke prevents other nations from toppling them, nukes become vital for stability.
Perhaps we should stop driving them towards nuclear weapons by invading them for oil and minerals.
So if you could travel back in time, you'd undo recent interventions. You would go back and change things so that today in your preferred reality, Afghanistan is still ruled by the Taliban with Bin Laden still living as their guest, Gadhafi still ruling Libya after completing the genocide he promised his opponents, and Saddam still ruling Iraq.
This is just another way to say "The US is bad and everyone else is oh-so-wonderful" which is a popular theme around/.
I'm sorry America can't be as moral and upright as North Korea, Cuba, Russia, Iran, and all the other paragons of virtue that you love so much.
Well said and amen to that. American bad behaviour can't be looked at in a vacuum, you have to compare it to alternatives and look at the corresponding actions of other major players. Otherwise your just crying that the world is a bad and cruel place...
Thanks for the 45 years of environmental activism, it was nice knowin' ye.
(I assume you hold companies to the same standard.)
One strike?
45 years of activism?
Let's look at that activism, or more specifically 2 of the biggest issues they are 'working' on.
1. Anti-GMO activism and fear mongering. Despite the absence of any scientific basis for it and a mass of scientific evidence showing GMO crops are no more dangerous than their non-GMO counter parts Greenpeace is fighting hard to get them banned. A campaign of misinformation and fear mongering on the subject is their trademark. What's worse, in reality GMO crops have changed Ag practices to use much safer pesticides and in many cases fewer pesticides, but Greenpeace is steadfastly against it.
2.Anti-Nuclear power lobbying. They've been doing this since their founding, but what really compounds the matter is that Greenpeace of late has at the exact same time been lobbying hard for a reduction of CO2 emissions. I'm afraid a pretty basic litmus test to me is that if you oppose nuclear power AND demand a reduction in CO2 emissions sooner than later, you most likely don't know what your about. When putting forward activist campaigns on both fronts you are causing harm on both fronts by condemning one of the best existing solutions to a problem you purportedly care about. That just makes people willing to listen to both fronts turn around and stop caring when they follow both campaigns to their inevitable conclusions.
There are dozens upon dozens of reports, all easily accessible on the internet, that state in no uncertain terms that the US grid is perfectly capable of handing lots and lots of intermittent power. The last report I read, now outdated as its from 2012, said that California was able to use up to 100% embedded PV. That means you could install PV on everyone's home and office to net meter to zero and the grid would handle it just fine.
I don't much care how much you protest, night time is gonna be wanting for power if that's your install base. Either that, or somebody is gonna be spending a lot of money storing the solar energy generated during the day for use overnight. THAT cost is certainly excluded in current solar price listings.
Just checked and it is in a different chapter. The IPCC 5th assessment has the observed energy balance discussed in Chapter 2: Observations: Surface and Atmosphere. The summary is as follows:
Satellite records of top of the atmosphere radiation fluxes have been substantially extended since AR4, and it is unlikely that significant trends exist in global and tropical radiation budgets since 2000.
Given the significant increase in measured anthropogenic GHGs over that same time frame and the estimated forcing(greenhouse effect), we should be a little surprised at this result. More importantly, we should be seriously expecting the energy imbalance to track more closely over time in the future and in the long term. If the non trend stretches into a second decade, I expect a whole lot of new research into that to dominate. Our modelling exercises will be rather irrelevant if the primary input(forcings/energy imbalance) stops matching with observations.
I'll keep an eye out for "energy imbalance" while reading the pdf(s?), but I *do* wonder how they measure that. Temperature I can understand, but energy imbalance seems like something that would either need to be estimated, or derived from a model.
You'll find it at the top of chapter even in the bullet pointed summary/overview, with details later in the doc. Might be in a different chapter/pdf of the IPCC report, but it's based not on the models but from the CERES and other satellite top of atmosphere direct measurements of radiation in vs radiation out. If you go to the IPCC site and pull up the 5th assessment report it's in one of the chapters from the "Basic Science" report. The most important and real measure of our impact through CO2 emissions is going to show up most clearly here. As noted, temperature is gonna fluctuate a lot based on how much energy the oceans are absorbing/releasing but the radiation in and out imbalance is where the actual greenhouse effect is truly acting and taking place.
The first link is to an image of fig 11.9 from page 981 of the IPCC report in the second link. I thought I'd attributed as from the IPCC report prior but might've missed it. That's the page though for more info on the first link.
The last decade being warming slower than expected has had explanations, but the more important metric of global energy imbalance hasn't trended up/down that decade either and the oceans have little to do with that end.
The climate models they are looking at do make predictions on the year to year stuff, but mainly as trends, but at an accuracy levels that's about as good as your local weatherman predicting weather 10 days from now. They can do it, but if you rely on it you are a fool because noise and random events have more local bearing than the trend. But once you get out to looking at climate change at the decade level the noise in the system is mitigated and the real data and trends become apparent... even at that the models are an estimation. There are IMO massive aspects of climate change that the models don't address because the systems aren't fully understood and in some case aren't understood at all.
I think I gave your post too much credit with my previous response. Your chunk here is decrying the state of the art climate models as severely as anyone I've heard...
Worst case is the model vastly underestimate the impacts of these inputs and in fact the consequences of global climate change are far more severe than predicted. For example, not a single model predicts much more than a gradual but small decline in the glaciers in Antarctica which will cause relatively minor sea level increases. If the models are wrong and in reality those glaciers melt, much of the worlds population is going to be displaced as sea levels increase 100's of feet (30+ meters).
If we are going to just entirely through out all the models and all of climate science we can claim whatever pleases us. Might as well include that we might be going into an ice age too. Then we can fret over what catastrophic glaciation we'll face if we don't maintain our CO2 emissions. Or we could, you know, stick with the scientific method and data...
Some say the models are alarmist. Others fear they aren't alarmist enough. Only time will really show how good the models are... But if the models predictions are dire at that point and we haven't made reductions in C02 levels by that time, we may have already damned ourselves and our grandchildren to the worst climate change can offer. And that worst is a pretty scary future where humanity destroys itself in a fight over dwindling food and resources and displaced people.
So you're argument is in essence that because of our ignorance of the consequences of actions, we should obviously be taking the action you recommend? Go ahead and start your own cult then, but don't come crying to anyone when the scientific community rejects all your hocus pocus as being nothing more than your own personal whim and fancy.
Even if it was true, a decade is literally a single data point in climate change analysis. Climate change is not local weather, it's not monthly predictions or even year to year values. About the smallest relative measure of time used in studying global climate change is roughly a decade. Any average data point less than a decade has a higher probability of being noise than actual average climate data. The climate models they are looking at do make predictions on the year to year stuff, but mainly as trends, but at an accuracy levels that's about as good as your local weatherman predicting weather 10 days from now. They can do it, but if you rely on it you are a fool because noise and random events have more local bearing than the trend. But once you get out to looking at climate change at the decade level the noise in the system is mitigated and the real data and trends become apparent. At that decade level the planet has been warming consistently and at an increasing rate since the industrial revolution.
And even at that the models are an estimation. There are IMO massive aspects of climate change that the models don't address because the systems aren't fully understood and in some case aren't understood at all. Inter-ocean currents that help regulate global temperatures are not understood very well, certainly not the same level as say wind patterns. Though we understand the basic mechanism we don't really understand the extent or how the climate change will affect them. As a result there are portions of the models inputs that are simply guesswork and will be refined as time goes on and more data is developed that will allow them to better tune the models. That in fact is the scariest thing about climate change, which is that our models could be completely wrong, in the wrong direction. Best case scenario is the oceans are able to absorb much of the additional heat with very little impact to global climate. Worst case is the model vastly underestimate the impacts of these inputs and in fact the consequences of global climate change are far more severe than predicted. For example, not a single model predicts much more than a gradual but small decline in the glaciers in Antarctica which will cause relatively minor sea level increases. If the models are wrong and in reality those glaciers melt, much of the worlds population is going to be displaced as sea levels increase 100's of feet (30+ meters).
Some say the models are alarmist. Others fear they aren't alarmist enough. Only time will really show how good the models are. But don't think even a decade of data contradictory to the models (not that there is mind you, that's a common myth others have addressed) is relevant, because a single data point isn't a prediction of a trend or even useful as an evaluation of the predictions. By the time 2030 rolls around we'll have tuned the models to be pretty good predictors, likely even of year to year trends. But if the models predictions are dire at that point and we haven't made reductions in C02 levels by that time, we may have already damned ourselves and our grandchildren to the worst climate change can offer. And that worst is a pretty scary future where humanity destroys itself in a fight over dwindling food and resources and displaced people.
"Even if this were true?", this is from the IPCC report, you know, the team that was awarded a noble prize for their work on climate change. And you are right, in climate change a decade should be viewed as a single data point. When it comes to assessing modern climate models, we have only that one data point. So it can also be viewed as 100% of the data points we have. It also means the instrumental record we compare our models to, have a grand total of 11-12 data points to compare to.
Overall, if the models are being assessed, there's an awfull lot of reason to be cautious about placing to high a confidence in something we are just starting out with and still have serious challenges comparing/testing our results from.
Those are great links. Thanks for posting them. But they appear to show the models almost exactly as bad as the the grandparent: both indicate reality is at the very bottom of the model prediction distribution. It's unfortunate that the grandparent is from such a sketchy source, as it demonstrates greater respect for the principles of visual display of information. It shows one thing, it shows it well, and axis that people care about (the vertical) is given reasonable scaling instead of being compressed away by cramming in multiple additional graphs.
Furthermore, consider the lameness of the first claim in the AR5 chapter you like
I couldn't agree more with you, my liking for the chapter though is mostly for the graph, which rather strikingly shows a high end bias, thus far, on model predictions versus reality. It also shows the models making rather modest projections on short term temperature change, temperatures would need to stay static for the next 20 plus years still to even get outside the low end error bars of model predictions... Science soundly and emphatically suggesting the catastrophic alarmists are as anti-science as those they are attacking.
This sounds good, until you realize that the best thing that can be said of the models' predictive capacity is that it is better than chance. That is what "positive skill means", and that is all it means.
As someone who has worked in predictive modelling, this is something that people only say when their model has no practical predictive utility. It is easy to get models that show results that are by any measure many standard deviations away from chance, but that are still completely useless for the kind of predictions required by policy makers.
Thanks for adding this, as again I couldn't agree more. I've played around with modelling for plasma physics just a bit and that really crushes my opinion of anyone placing to heavy an emphasis on current climate modelling. With the enormous number of variables that climate models must gloss over or approximate, and the sparsity of test data to compare runs against you just can NOT claim high confidence in most of what is being done today. It's not unscientific as you point out to be trying, nor is it without merit. But the limitations on what we can do is pretty huge, and pushing that back is very, very hard work and claiming otherwise is a sign you are dishonest or don't know what you are about.
Bullshit. The chart came from one Dr. Roy Spencer, who is not only a climatologist who has made a career out of claiming he's right and most scientists are wrong, but is also a noted creationist ("intelligent design, as a theory of origins, is no more religious, and no less scientific, than evolutionism" is my favorite quote from him on the topic).
To your point of "I may be wrong", let me say, yes.... yes you are.
For those wanting a similar graph of models versus measured there is a graph from the IPCC AR5 report here. It shows models aren't as bad as the grandparent, but it DOES clearly show the last decade or more trending at the very low end of the models.
Why is everyone avoiding actual models from actual research? googleusercontent is also not a recognized climate expert.
The IPCC is, if you look back I linked to the actual IPCC AR5 article for the original. The thing is that it's a couple hundred pages as a pdf document, so I included a link to just the graph as well. If that's too avoidy for you, it's not my problem.
Which is a graph that has been lampooned as grossly inaccurate for calibrating against a 5 year temperature average instead of a 30 year temperature average which shifts things a good deal.
To bypass that controversy compare a graph from the IPCC itself then instead, you can verify it in their AR5 report here. Not nearly as bad, but very clearly showing the last decade or more trending at the very low end of the models.
Slashdot Mirror
I know someone is going to jump in and claim we DO know the impact of increasing/reducing our CO2 emissions in the future. I say that the current research papers confirm the opposite, even the IPCC's latest paper.
We know that it will cause systems to be more chaotic, which will require more costly adaptation. That's reason enough for mitigation.
We know more energy will cause systems to be more chaotic. We don't know how much a given reduction in human CO2 emissions will reduce the energy imbalance. We don't know HOW costly the difference in adaptation is for that unknown change in energy imbalance. I'm not seeing a strong reason here to advocate for CO2 reductions over adaptation unless the CO2 reductions are really cheap, which no meaningful ones are.
Adaptation is a form of mitigation.
In IPCC parlance adaptation is used to reference measures to adapt to changes to the climate. The word mitigation on the other hand is reserved for efforts to reduce the actual amount of change that will occur to the climate.
That not knowing what the future effects of increased CO2 goes both ways. It could be that they will be worse than what we currently think they will be as easily as it could be they won't be as bad. One fundamental principle of risk management is the less you know about what a risk entails the more value their is in avoiding that risk. Yes, it might cost a lot of money to mitigate future climate change but not mitigating could cost more than any amount of money can cure.
Seriously? You are arguing the urgency of taking action is HIGHER the more ignorant we are?
Here's the important bit though. As the IPCC's most recent AR has observed, the satellite measurements show that for the duration of the CERES project, there has been NO TREND in the energy imbalance.
Unless the energy imbalance is zero the temperature is still changing. Increasing CO2 does not necessarily cause a change in the energy imbalance number. As CO2 increases it retains more heat energy but since the Earth is hotter it also radiates more heat so the actual imbalance may remain the same.
If you are correct, and the increase to energy imbalance from pushing CO2 concentrations up cancels that quickly from the increased temperature(nearly within the year), then you are advocating for an even lower impact from CO2 concentration increases than anybody I know of.
For reference, the actual data gives us the following pictures.
From ERBS, the papers from NASA and others assessing the energy imbalance from it come up with an average annual imbalance from about '89 through '99, I forget the number but it's about 0.6W/m^2 depending your method of error corrections. That is the best guess for the imbalance each year from 89 through 99, with no real noted difference or trend in the time frame, so a flat line of steadily gaining energy. Meanwhile CO2 concentrations(Mauna Loa) in 1989 were 353ppm and by 1999 were 368ppm, so a 4% increase in CO2 made no detectable increase to energy imbalance. Same story for the following CERES program from 2000 through to today. The IPCC observed in AR5 that there is very likely NO TREND to the energy imbalance since 2000, yet CO2 has gone from 369ppm in 2000 to 397ppm in 2013. A 7.6% increase from 2000 to 2013 left no noticeable trend in the energy imbalance. Or more telling still the increase in CO2 from 1989 to 2013 was more than 12% while the energy imbalance shows us no observable trend in either satellite observation over that same time frame.
So you could spend billions getting our CO2 concentrations back to 1989 levels and find that based on our satellite records, the energy imbalance wouldn't change a bit and we'd just have that much less money to spend on adapting to rising temperatures.
I have to applaud the focus on adaptation over mitigation. These changes are happening or likely, now what can we do to adapt. The other response of trying to drastically cut CO2 emissions to avoid or reduce climate change lacks two of the most important pieces of information required to evaluate it. How much does our reduction of CO2 emission mitigate future change, and what is the reduced cost of adaptation? Without knowing those two pieces, the decision to reduce CO2 emissions to 'save future dollars' is a blind guess, and there are a lot of much, much better reasons to reduce dependency on oil from places like the ME.
I know someone is going to jump in and claim we DO know the impact of increasing/reducing our CO2 emissions in the future. I say that the current research papers confirm the opposite, even the IPCC's latest paper. We've done lots of modelling of temperature change, but have badly neglected the energy balance. You know, the actual energy in versus out of the atmosphere that is the ACTUAL greenhouse affect that CO2 functions on. Luckily we started measuring observations by satellite in the late 80s.The ERBS and CERES programs from NASA have given us direct measurements of trends in the overall energy balance at the edge of space. The most direct measurement of global warming that we can have. The summary from each program, has let us find a decade level average energy imbalance, and we've found it is in good or at least general agreement with energy levels measured via Ocean Heat Content observations.
Here's the important bit though. As the IPCC's most recent AR has observed, the satellite measurements show that for the duration of the CERES project, there has been NO TREND in the energy imbalance. The earlier ERBS data showed the same as well. Our satellite measurements have shown significant and very steady trends in energy balance cycling monthly, but the average over the years and decades we've measured is just a steady and consistent average neither shifting noticeably up or down. Meanwhile, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere over that same time have climbed like nobody's business. All our models and expectation for X degrees of warming for so much CO2 kinda hinges pretty heavy on CO2 pushing up the energy imbalance. If it's not, and observations suggest that. We may not need to be so worried as some of the panic ridden crowd wants. That said, we DO still have an annual energy imbalance adding energy to the planet, it just has been adding as much last year, as it did the year before, on back through to 2000. Even though in 2000 CO2 concentrations were lower, the imbalance just hasn't changed. We are thus facing increasing energy(general warming), but thus far our direct measurements can't detect the difference our increasing CO2 concentrations are making.
Before I get citation needed shoved down my throat, here's a peer reviewed journal article published in Geophysical Research Letters. It is comparing observed atmosphere energy imbalance to the CMIP5 model runs. It finds good agreement, but also makes the very notable observation that the energy imbalance trend is dominated by volcanic activity(ie NOT the CO2 levels that are higher than they've been in millenia). Full abstract:
Observational analyses of running 5 year ocean heat content trends (Ht) and net downward top of atmosphere radiation (N) are significantly correlated (r~0.6) from 1960 to 1999, but a spike in Ht in the early 2000s is likely spurious since it is inconsistent with estimates of N from both satellite observations and climate model simulations. Variations in N between 1960 and 2000 were dominated by volcanic eruptions and are well simulated by the ensemble mean of coupled models from the Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). We find an observation-based reduction in N of 0.31±0.21Wm2 between 1999 and 2005 that potentially contributed to the recent warming slowdown, but the relative roles of external forcing and internal variability remain unclear. While present-day anomalies of N in
Here's the important bit though. As the IPCC's most recent AR has observed, the satellite measurements show that for the duration of the CERES project, there has been NO TREND in the energy imbalance. The earlier ERBS data showed the same as well. Our satellite measurements have shown significant and very steady trends in energy balance cycling monthly, but the average over the years and decades we've measured is just a steady and consistent average neither shifting noticeably up or down. Meanwhile, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere over that same time have climbed like nobody's business. All our models and expectation for X degrees of warming for so much CO2 kinda hinges pretty heavy on CO2 pushing up the energy imbalance. If it's not, and observations suggest that. We may not need to be so worried as some of the panic ridden crowd wants.
Is that your interpretation of those results, or the scientists?
Every time I look one of these "I read the study and it is clear to me that the majority of climate scientists are wrong" slashdot posts, I find that there is a good scientific explanation for how the data still fits into the prevailing AGW theories.
You seem to be making the weakest of 'appeal to authority' arguments ever. Your just waving your hands saying there must be experts out there somewhere that have an explanation, but I'm not even gonna bother pointing out either the expert or the explanation.
If you want to go ahead and look at the latest IPCC report, they have temperature predictions out to the year 2100. Based on their scenarios, the temperature out at 2100 is expected to range from just a bit cooler than today, all the way up to 4.5C warmer than today. The scenarios are based on expected forcing, ie the energy imbalance, over those years. With the last 30 years(the entirety of the satellite record) showing a very much linear energy increase in energy to the system, that helps us make a guess which of the scenarios the IPCC used we might want to look at as an expected case or best guess. It turns out the IPCC's two lowest scenarios fall just below and just above a linear increase of forcing through to 2100. These are RCP secnario's 4.5 and 2.6, adn if you look in chapter 11 of the IPCC fifth AR you can find figure 11.9 is temeprature projected for Scenario 4.5, and it even graphs the observed temperature against the projected for us, and low and behold the observed tracks right along the lower limit of the projections. That's kind of exactly what we might expect from the observations of the energy imbalance from satellites matching that same point on the scenarios main variable. If you look in Chapter 12, you can see where they plot out to the year 2300, and even there scenario 4.5 hits around the 2C mark and scenario 2.6 is under 1C, so if we observe that current energy trends with our current increasing CO2 match the middle ground of those scenarios, it is rather in keeping with mainstream science to say, hey that's a good best guess. Incidentally, that also averages out at the 1.5C that the article is all excited for us to work hard to meet.
For all the people saying we need to panic in case CO2 levels force the very non linear worst cases from the IPCC on us, I think it fair to observe the current record. To notice that the CO2 levels since 1900 have risen very rapidly indeed, as rapidly as we project them to continue increasing in the IPCC worst case scenarios. During that timeframe though, the energy imbalance/forcing has NOT been none linear, but instead from the entirety of the satellite record has been increasing very linearly indeed, and with peaks and troughs of that linear average dominated by volcanic activity. In chapter 12 and figure 12.15 you can compare for yourself the actual mainstream basis for the scenarios the IPCC used, it graphs both historical and projected Top Of Atmosphere energy imbalance. Note also that the historical older than 1980 though is reconstructions with admitted large ma
IPCC Synthesis report (link) P.4 (very first chapter): "Ocean warming dominates the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90% of the energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010 (high confidence), with only about 1% stored in the atmosphere. "
So there IS an increased energy storage in the climate system according the IPCC. Which stands to reason: temprature increase (where before there was none) without a higher energy absorbtion is termodynamically nonsense.
There has absolutely been an energy increase. The energy imbalance I was talking about is the net energy gain at the edge of space, that is how much more energy in/out was there in a year. The satellite results show us that the earth has been gaining more energy than it bleeds off for the entire satellite record. The rate at which energy has been accumulating is where there has been no trend. From 1960 through to today, what little trend there has been in more/less energy being gained has been dominated by volcanic activity and NOT the major increases to CO2 concentrations. Since 2000, the IPCC notes the imbalance has had no trend at all from volcanoes, CO2 or anything, we've just had an overall balance of more energy still coming in than out, but a decade and a half of increasing CO2 emissions have had no observable increase to the rate energy is being trapped.
Funny, because the conclusion of the cited article looks a bit different:
We find a reduction of 0.31±0.21 Wm2 in No between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s which may have contributed to the recent slowdown in global surface warming. This is consistent with minor volcanoes [Solomon et al., 2011; Fyfe et al., 2013; Haywood et al., 2014; Santer et al., 2014], an extended and deeper solar minimum [Lean, 2009; Kaufmann et al., 2011], and possible nitrate and indirect aerosol effects
Slowdown in global surface warming, it's not reduction. If you look at the graphics you see that temperature, except for some minor exception, is always growing. So instead of worrying about the climate, we can just hope in some major vulcan activity....
Go back to high school and retake reading comprehension and basic physics please. I know that is far too rude and confrontational, but it doesn't sound like you read my post at all, which is tiresome.
I stated myself that surface temperature has been consistently rising. I and anyone trusting the meteorology community agrees that even the current 'slowdown' is as you reference, a matter of warming but at a slower rate than previously and than expected.
I don't comprehend where you ever got the notion I believed or claimed otherwise? I pointed out that the rate of net energy/radiation coming into the planet is the more important and direct measure. The basic physics of the greenhouse effect is trapping incoming radiation so that more is coming in than going out. The resulting extra energy leads to warming. What I observed and you again reference yourself in your quote of the article is that the changes to that energy imbalance at t edge of space, is dominated by volcanic activity since the 60s. With the major increases we've contributed to CO2 contributions in that same time, that gives some hope things aren't as bleak as many fear mongers wish. With no notable trend in the energy imbalance in the whole Ceres results of the last decade and a half, we certainly seem less likely to be facing catastrophic sensitivity to CO2. The increases of a decade and a half being in essence undetectable in the core measure of changes to the energy imbalance.
The basic physics of climate change is that increasing levels of gases trap more energy from the sun, increasing the amount of energy in our atmosphere and climate system. We know by and large, most of the energy is stored in the oceans as water holds energy much better than gases in the air.
With such a simple observation, I'd like to make the observation that it seems too few of the IPCC guys pushing for policy stuff are paying any attention to the energy budget. Instead, we have the only basis scientifically being that the average surface temperature is warming, and CO2 levels are rising and we are the ones pushing them up. That's all well and good, and they are important observations. About 30 years ago though we started sending up satellites to measure incoming and outgoing radiation. The ERBS and CERES programs from NASA have given us direct measurements of trends in the overall energy balance at the edge of space. The most direct measurement of global warming that we can have. The summary from each program, has let us find a decade level average energy imbalance, and we've found it is in good or at least general agreement with energy levels measured via Ocean Heat Content observations.
Here's the important bit though. As the IPCC's most recent AR has observed, the satellite measurements show that for the duration of the CERES project, there has been NO TREND in the energy imbalance. The earlier ERBS data showed the same as well. Our satellite measurements have shown significant and very steady trends in energy balance cycling monthly, but the average over the years and decades we've measured is just a steady and consistent average neither shifting noticeably up or down. Meanwhile, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere over that same time have climbed like nobody's business. All our models and expectation for X degrees of warming for so much CO2 kinda hinges pretty heavy on CO2 pushing up the energy imbalance. If it's not, and observations suggest that. We may not need to be so worried as some of the panic ridden crowd wants.
Before I get citation needed shoved down my throat, here's a peer reviewed journal article published in Geophysical Research Letters. It is comparing observed atmosphere energy imbalance to the CMIP5 model runs. It finds good agreement, but also makes the very notable observation that the energy imbalance trend is dominated by volcanic activity(ie NOT the CO2 levels that are higher than they've been in millenia). Full abstract:
Observational analyses of running 5 year ocean heat content trends (Ht) and net downward top of atmosphere radiation (N) are significantly correlated (r~0.6) from 1960 to 1999, but a spike in Ht in the early 2000s is likely spurious since it is inconsistent with estimates of N from both satellite observations and climate model simulations. Variations in N between 1960 and 2000 were dominated by volcanic eruptions and are well simulated by the ensemble mean of coupled models from the Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). We find an observation-based reduction in N of 0.31±0.21Wm2 between 1999 and 2005 that potentially contributed to the recent warming slowdown, but the relative roles of external forcing and internal variability remain unclear. While present-day anomalies of N in the CMIP5 ensemble mean and observations agree, this may be due to a cancelation of errors in outgoing longwave and absorbed solar radiation.
Ukraine willingly gave up (as in "sold") most of its arsenal period. They didn't do ot because they were nice people (only Poles are less friendly), but because they couldn't afford the maintenance and needed money to steal. It has been one of most corrupt countries in the world for over 20 years - since they became an actual state.
Thanks for agreeing and confirming the only facts I pointed out:
Ukraine willingly gave up it's nuclear arsenal.
Russia is now invading Ukraine.
What country flew an airplane into any U.S. building? Terrorist group of Saudis, who were former apid CIA agents in Soviet-Afghanistan war, did that. Maybe our CIA should cut that kind of shit out, eh?
Then you bring up WMD, Saddam had no working WMD nor WMD program when US invaded. What he did have were long-expired weapons with UN tags on them, that were built with dual-use tech and billions of dollars given to him by ...wait for it..the United States of America. Because at the time he was our bestest pal, even made an honorary citizen of Detroit by the mayor for his donations to church, etc.
I'd second the SA blame for 911, but even more directly responsible than them would have to be Pakistan.
The American support for the mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan times wasn't solely to Al Qaida chaps, but to anyone willing to fight the Russians, including Al Qaida and the Taliban and the Afghan Northern Alliance folks that were their enemies. It's not lying per se to claim that America supported people that would later become key players in the Taliban and Al Qaida, but it's certainly less than half of the truth.
Pakistan however had continued to support the Taliban right on through. Part of Pakistan's war planning against India was 'strategic depth' into Afghanistan where the friendly and allied Taliban forces gave room for them to move into and operate alongside. The Taliban being as largely uneducated and prone to fanatacism as they were made Al Qaida a moderate voice for Pakistan to work with the Taliban through as well. Pakistan's ISI(equivalent of the CIA) was deeply, deeply in bed with the Taliban and Al Qaida. When the towers went down, the American response was who could have or might have done this? The immediate response in tribal Pakistan was different and two fold. First, shock that Bin Laden actually went through with it and actually did it. The second, was when the Americans go to war with the Taliban, whose side will Pakistan take, and bets where 50/50.
Make no mistake, the Afghan war was 100% about Pakistan's response and ensuring that it and it's nuclear arsenal took sides against jihadists and severed it's buddy, buddy relationship with them. It was never stated outright publicly though, because that would be impolite and push Pakistan to refusing on principal, which it very nearly did anyways.
Perhaps they would stop building chemical or biological WMDs if we would stop killing those that decide to cooperate and indeed put an end to their WMD programs.
The one positive thing to come out of the Iraq war was that Qaddafi did put an end to his WMD programs, out of fear that he would be next. Look how he was rewarded. That episode guaranteed that no tin horn dictator will EVER give up their WMD program.
Indeed. And all Gadhafi had done was use his military to crush and murder peaceful protests, and when that turned ugly, promising to 'exterminate the cockroaches house by house'. Stopping him was certainly an unjustifiable failure of international relations.
Often by the United States of America or other western powers. When nations see that having a nuke prevents other nations from toppling them, nukes become vital for stability.
Perhaps we should stop driving them towards nuclear weapons by invading them for oil and minerals.
Perhaps the most salient point was made in another thread. The Ukraine, as one of the only nations to ever willingly give up a nuclear arsenal, is in the process of being invaded. I'm not sure if you care about the distinction that in this case it is Russia doing the invading and not the evil America or her western allies.
Often by the United States of America or other western powers. When nations see that having a nuke prevents other nations from toppling them, nukes become vital for stability.
Perhaps we should stop driving them towards nuclear weapons by invading them for oil and minerals.
So if you could travel back in time, you'd undo recent interventions. You would go back and change things so that today in your preferred reality, Afghanistan is still ruled by the Taliban with Bin Laden still living as their guest, Gadhafi still ruling Libya after completing the genocide he promised his opponents, and Saddam still ruling Iraq.
This is just another way to say "The US is bad and everyone else is oh-so-wonderful" which is a popular theme around /.
I'm sorry America can't be as moral and upright as North Korea, Cuba, Russia, Iran, and all the other paragons of virtue that you love so much.
Well said and amen to that. American bad behaviour can't be looked at in a vacuum, you have to compare it to alternatives and look at the corresponding actions of other major players. Otherwise your just crying that the world is a bad and cruel place...
"One strike, you're out Greenpeace!"
Thanks for the 45 years of environmental activism, it was nice knowin' ye.
(I assume you hold companies to the same standard.)
One strike?
45 years of activism?
Let's look at that activism, or more specifically 2 of the biggest issues they are 'working' on.
1. Anti-GMO activism and fear mongering. Despite the absence of any scientific basis for it and a mass of scientific evidence showing GMO crops are no more dangerous than their non-GMO counter parts Greenpeace is fighting hard to get them banned. A campaign of misinformation and fear mongering on the subject is their trademark. What's worse, in reality GMO crops have changed Ag practices to use much safer pesticides and in many cases fewer pesticides, but Greenpeace is steadfastly against it.
2.Anti-Nuclear power lobbying. They've been doing this since their founding, but what really compounds the matter is that Greenpeace of late has at the exact same time been lobbying hard for a reduction of CO2 emissions. I'm afraid a pretty basic litmus test to me is that if you oppose nuclear power AND demand a reduction in CO2 emissions sooner than later, you most likely don't know what your about. When putting forward activist campaigns on both fronts you are causing harm on both fronts by condemning one of the best existing solutions to a problem you purportedly care about. That just makes people willing to listen to both fronts turn around and stop caring when they follow both campaigns to their inevitable conclusions.
> Sure, it is technically correct
No it's not.
There are dozens upon dozens of reports, all easily accessible on the internet, that state in no uncertain terms that the US grid is perfectly capable of handing lots and lots of intermittent power. The last report I read, now outdated as its from 2012, said that California was able to use up to 100% embedded PV. That means you could install PV on everyone's home and office to net meter to zero and the grid would handle it just fine.
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/8A822C08-A56C-4674-A5D2-099E48B41160/0/LDPVPotentialReportMarch2012.pdf
I don't much care how much you protest, night time is gonna be wanting for power if that's your install base. Either that, or somebody is gonna be spending a lot of money storing the solar energy generated during the day for use overnight. THAT cost is certainly excluded in current solar price listings.
Just checked and it is in a different chapter. The IPCC 5th assessment has the observed energy balance discussed in Chapter 2: Observations: Surface and Atmosphere. The summary is as follows:
Satellite records of top of the atmosphere radiation fluxes have
been substantially extended since AR4, and it is unlikely that
significant trends exist in global and tropical radiation budgets
since 2000.
Given the significant increase in measured anthropogenic GHGs over that same time frame and the estimated forcing(greenhouse effect), we should be a little surprised at this result. More importantly, we should be seriously expecting the energy imbalance to track more closely over time in the future and in the long term. If the non trend stretches into a second decade, I expect a whole lot of new research into that to dominate. Our modelling exercises will be rather irrelevant if the primary input(forcings/energy imbalance) stops matching with observations.
I'll keep an eye out for "energy imbalance" while reading the pdf(s?), but I *do* wonder how they measure that. Temperature I can understand, but energy imbalance seems like something that would either need to be estimated, or derived from a model.
You'll find it at the top of chapter even in the bullet pointed summary/overview, with details later in the doc. Might be in a different chapter/pdf of the IPCC report, but it's based not on the models but from the CERES and other satellite top of atmosphere direct measurements of radiation in vs radiation out. If you go to the IPCC site and pull up the 5th assessment report it's in one of the chapters from the "Basic Science" report. The most important and real measure of our impact through CO2 emissions is going to show up most clearly here. As noted, temperature is gonna fluctuate a lot based on how much energy the oceans are absorbing/releasing but the radiation in and out imbalance is where the actual greenhouse effect is truly acting and taking place.
The first link is to an image of fig 11.9 from page 981 of the IPCC report in the second link. I thought I'd attributed as from the IPCC report prior but might've missed it. That's the page though for more info on the first link.
The last decade being warming slower than expected has had explanations, but the more important metric of global energy imbalance hasn't trended up/down that decade either and the oceans have little to do with that end.
The climate models they are looking at do make predictions on the year to year stuff, but mainly as trends, but at an accuracy levels that's about as good as your local weatherman predicting weather 10 days from now. They can do it, but if you rely on it you are a fool because noise and random events have more local bearing than the trend. But once you get out to looking at climate change at the decade level the noise in the system is mitigated and the real data and trends become apparent ... even at that the models are an estimation. There are IMO massive aspects of climate change that the models don't address because the systems aren't fully understood and in some case aren't understood at all.
I think I gave your post too much credit with my previous response. Your chunk here is decrying the state of the art climate models as severely as anyone I've heard...
Worst case is the model vastly underestimate the impacts of these inputs and in fact the consequences of global climate change are far more severe than predicted. For example, not a single model predicts much more than a gradual but small decline in the glaciers in Antarctica which will cause relatively minor sea level increases. If the models are wrong and in reality those glaciers melt, much of the worlds population is going to be displaced as sea levels increase 100's of feet (30+ meters).
If we are going to just entirely through out all the models and all of climate science we can claim whatever pleases us. Might as well include that we might be going into an ice age too. Then we can fret over what catastrophic glaciation we'll face if we don't maintain our CO2 emissions. Or we could, you know, stick with the scientific method and data...
Some say the models are alarmist. Others fear they aren't alarmist enough. Only time will really show how good the models are... But if the models predictions are dire at that point and we haven't made reductions in C02 levels by that time, we may have already damned ourselves and our grandchildren to the worst climate change can offer. And that worst is a pretty scary future where humanity destroys itself in a fight over dwindling food and resources and displaced people.
So you're argument is in essence that because of our ignorance of the consequences of actions, we should obviously be taking the action you recommend? Go ahead and start your own cult then, but don't come crying to anyone when the scientific community rejects all your hocus pocus as being nothing more than your own personal whim and fancy.
Even if it was true, a decade is literally a single data point in climate change analysis. Climate change is not local weather, it's not monthly predictions or even year to year values. About the smallest relative measure of time used in studying global climate change is roughly a decade. Any average data point less than a decade has a higher probability of being noise than actual average climate data. The climate models they are looking at do make predictions on the year to year stuff, but mainly as trends, but at an accuracy levels that's about as good as your local weatherman predicting weather 10 days from now. They can do it, but if you rely on it you are a fool because noise and random events have more local bearing than the trend. But once you get out to looking at climate change at the decade level the noise in the system is mitigated and the real data and trends become apparent. At that decade level the planet has been warming consistently and at an increasing rate since the industrial revolution.
And even at that the models are an estimation. There are IMO massive aspects of climate change that the models don't address because the systems aren't fully understood and in some case aren't understood at all. Inter-ocean currents that help regulate global temperatures are not understood very well, certainly not the same level as say wind patterns. Though we understand the basic mechanism we don't really understand the extent or how the climate change will affect them. As a result there are portions of the models inputs that are simply guesswork and will be refined as time goes on and more data is developed that will allow them to better tune the models. That in fact is the scariest thing about climate change, which is that our models could be completely wrong, in the wrong direction. Best case scenario is the oceans are able to absorb much of the additional heat with very little impact to global climate. Worst case is the model vastly underestimate the impacts of these inputs and in fact the consequences of global climate change are far more severe than predicted. For example, not a single model predicts much more than a gradual but small decline in the glaciers in Antarctica which will cause relatively minor sea level increases. If the models are wrong and in reality those glaciers melt, much of the worlds population is going to be displaced as sea levels increase 100's of feet (30+ meters).
Some say the models are alarmist. Others fear they aren't alarmist enough. Only time will really show how good the models are. But don't think even a decade of data contradictory to the models (not that there is mind you, that's a common myth others have addressed) is relevant, because a single data point isn't a prediction of a trend or even useful as an evaluation of the predictions. By the time 2030 rolls around we'll have tuned the models to be pretty good predictors, likely even of year to year trends. But if the models predictions are dire at that point and we haven't made reductions in C02 levels by that time, we may have already damned ourselves and our grandchildren to the worst climate change can offer. And that worst is a pretty scary future where humanity destroys itself in a fight over dwindling food and resources and displaced people.
"Even if this were true?", this is from the IPCC report, you know, the team that was awarded a noble prize for their work on climate change. And you are right, in climate change a decade should be viewed as a single data point. When it comes to assessing modern climate models, we have only that one data point. So it can also be viewed as 100% of the data points we have. It also means the instrumental record we compare our models to, have a grand total of 11-12 data points to compare to.
Overall, if the models are being assessed, there's an awfull lot of reason to be cautious about placing to high a confidence in something we are just starting out with and still have serious challenges comparing/testing our results from.
Those are great links. Thanks for posting them. But they appear to show the models almost exactly as bad as the the grandparent: both indicate reality is at the very bottom of the model prediction distribution. It's unfortunate that the grandparent is from such a sketchy source, as it demonstrates greater respect for the principles of visual display of information. It shows one thing, it shows it well, and axis that people care about (the vertical) is given reasonable scaling instead of being compressed away by cramming in multiple additional graphs.
Furthermore, consider the lameness of the first claim in the AR5 chapter you like
I couldn't agree more with you, my liking for the chapter though is mostly for the graph, which rather strikingly shows a high end bias, thus far, on model predictions versus reality. It also shows the models making rather modest projections on short term temperature change, temperatures would need to stay static for the next 20 plus years still to even get outside the low end error bars of model predictions... Science soundly and emphatically suggesting the catastrophic alarmists are as anti-science as those they are attacking.
This sounds good, until you realize that the best thing that can be said of the models' predictive capacity is that it is better than chance. That is what "positive skill means", and that is all it means.
As someone who has worked in predictive modelling, this is something that people only say when their model has no practical predictive utility. It is easy to get models that show results that are by any measure many standard deviations away from chance, but that are still completely useless for the kind of predictions required by policy makers.
Thanks for adding this, as again I couldn't agree more. I've played around with modelling for plasma physics just a bit and that really crushes my opinion of anyone placing to heavy an emphasis on current climate modelling. With the enormous number of variables that climate models must gloss over or approximate, and the sparsity of test data to compare runs against you just can NOT claim high confidence in most of what is being done today. It's not unscientific as you point out to be trying, nor is it without merit. But the limitations on what we can do is pretty huge, and pushing that back is very, very hard work and claiming otherwise is a sign you are dishonest or don't know what you are about.
Bullshit. The chart came from one Dr. Roy Spencer, who is not only a climatologist who has made a career out of claiming he's right and most scientists are wrong, but is also a noted creationist ("intelligent design, as a theory of origins, is no more religious, and no less scientific, than evolutionism" is my favorite quote from him on the topic).
Here's a nice summation of how he fudged numbers in order to come up with that bogus chart: http://blog.hotwhopper.com/201...
To your point of "I may be wrong", let me say, yes.... yes you are.
For those wanting a similar graph of models versus measured there is a graph from the IPCC AR5 report here. It shows models aren't as bad as the grandparent, but it DOES clearly show the last decade or more trending at the very low end of the models.
Why is everyone avoiding actual models from actual research? googleusercontent is also not a recognized climate expert.
The IPCC is, if you look back I linked to the actual IPCC AR5 article for the original. The thing is that it's a couple hundred pages as a pdf document, so I included a link to just the graph as well. If that's too avoidy for you, it's not my problem.
Models compared with reality.
Which is a graph that has been lampooned as grossly inaccurate for calibrating against a 5 year temperature average instead of a 30 year temperature average which shifts things a good deal.
To bypass that controversy compare a graph from the IPCC itself then instead, you can verify it in their AR5 report here. Not nearly as bad, but very clearly showing the last decade or more trending at the very low end of the models.