June is the month when the Arctic Sea Ice outlook gets going, when the EPA releases its rules on power plant CO2 emissions, and when, hopefully, commenters can get back to actually having constructive and respectful conversations about climate science (and not nuclear energy, impending apocalypsi (pl) or how terrible everyone else is). Thanks.
Prokaryotes, 347
It’s useful to note that humans die of heat stress at +7C. Cornucopians may argue that access to AC changes that equation, of course. Given sufficient energy to provide the AC, of course.
My point, for years, is that “the economy” requires “civilization as we know it”, and that when civilization as we know it ends, so does the economy.
I’ll suggest, again, that the first climate-induced threat to this is from falling agricultural output caused by changing weather patterns. I’m not sure the climate models are specific enough, yet, to tell us what losses we have for each fraction of a degree, and I’ve not seen papers on that topic. Hank?
Hank Roberts #344,
“Takedown, claim by claim, with sources cited; Scott Johnson is a scientist/writer.”
Sorry, that’s not how science is done; that’s the essence of character assassination! If Guy McPherson had published his Summary and Update in a responsible journal, and a Letter to the Editor critiquing his article by Scott Johnson was submitted, then the Editor would provide Johnson’s Letter to McPherson for comment, and would publish both the Letter and Johnson’s response in tandem. What you see in Johnson’s post, and across the blogosphere, are one-sided attacks meant to present a one-sided viewpoint. That’s not to say that there are no problems in McPherson’s Summary and Update, or that some/many of Johnson’s criticism are not valid. I have stated a number of times that McPherson intertwines the good with the overly speculative. My reading is there is sufficient good that much of the speculative can be ignored, and concern about our future should be increased.
Johnson’s attack is a classical hatchet job. If that’s admirable to you, you’ve got problems!
325 Chris. Maybe we can convert the US to renewables within 35 years. However the US only constitutes 4.4% of the world’s population and only 19% of global emissions. Is the US really going to invest many 10’s of billions of dollars to convert the rest of the world? You have seen how different the climate is now to what is was in the early 1980’s. Now project another 35 years ahead. What concentration of CO2 will we have then? You will find CH4 levels would have risen significantly by then as well.
Being labelled a totalitarian is fine by me. Horses for courses!
310 Chris. Projecting the keeling curve for another 35 years assuming BAU I reach a CO2 figure around 530ppm. Still no hurry hey Chris.
Steve Fish #326,
“determine what privations you and yours are willing to endure and then work backward from this minimum to what energy resources will be required while at the same time eliminating fossil carbon pollution. Let’s be serious here.”
Your comment to Lawrence Coleman, quoted above, must surely rank as one of the most inane comments ever posted on RC! That’s the basis for a plan to insure survival of our species????? If we had asked the troops who were destined to invade Okinawa to come up with a plan starting with what they were willing to endure, what do you think we would have gotten? Their starting point would have been ‘I want to get through this battle without a scratch’, and the plan would have evolved from that. One could only imagine what the outcome of such an approach would be.
The starting point for any RATIONAL plan is the objective: what do we want to accomplish. Once that has been determined, then alternate approaches to achieving that objective are developed. In the present climate case, the objective is to insure the survival of our species. It is not to insure everyone remains comfortable, or, as the Jacobsen article that Dudley references states, “transforming the United States from dependence on fossil fuels to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050”. Your goal is absolutely senseless, and Dudley’s is approach-based, not objective based. The planetary goal is not to sell renewables as fast as is possible, although it appears to be the goal you and Dudley have chosen. The goal is species survival, and if renewables by 2050 can accomplish that, or even part of that, great. That needs to be demonstrated. If you/Dudley [edit] can show that installation of renewables by 2050 will keep the global mean temperature anywhere near 1 C with reasonable certainty, go right ahead. I’ve never seen anyone come even close with renewables conversion, and some high energy efficiency technology substitution. Your post, and Dudley’s post, are just more blatant diversions from the focus on stringent FF demand reduction that is required now, in order to sell renewables to an unsuspecting public.
FP @320.
Further to my comment @323 about the geeky hockey stick analyses, I did think to take a look within hockey-stick-geekland and the data your geek was using is not hard to find from there. And here it is in data1400.txt
I’m not sure why the geek baulks at using the last 4 of the 1400-1980 data sets. Then, he’s not very good at explaining himself. And how the data yields his graph remains baffling. I note he now shows a graph using all 412 data sets which looks to all the world like he has created the hockey stick by repeating his method but the extra comments he gives concerning his repeated method (I assume repeated – “I went back and did it with the full set of 415 proxies.”) raises more questions than answers.
As for the 17 data sets 1400-1980, the geek is entirely disingenuous saying that the hockey stick is but an “artifact.” Given he is apparently attached to a university, spouting arrant nonsense like that is ill advised.
Plotting out the 17 data sets, they aren’t entirely a bag of individual hockey sticks but that was never suggested. The 17 do contain three that would work against the creation of a hockey stick, two very similar – shades of HHLamb (with MWP & LIA) and one with a cold 1900s. But of the rest there are 2 x mega hockey sticks, 4 x full hockey sticks (although one has a ‘regency flush’ in the early 1800s), 4 x 1900s as warm as any previous century and 4 x 1900s warm but not matching the warmest (one of which had a cold early 1900s).
How these should be properly combined to create a temperature record is what MBH98 was all about. But any simplistic combination will always yield a hockey stick. Apparently your geek is oblivious to this situation.
Edward Greisch wrote: “I don’t do anti-renewables rants.”
In fact, Edward, you do — and often.
What is worse is that you personally attack me, and others who post simple, factual information that is favorable to wind or solar energy, as paid shills for the Koch Brothers (who in reality are funding a nationwide campaign to block and even roll back the rapid growth of wind and solar).
You SPECIFICALLY asked me how much the Koch Brothers were “paying me” to post positive comments about solar energy — which is to say, on the basis of NOTHING WHATSOEVER, except that you don’t like my comments, you accused me of being a PAID LIAR.
You owe me — and every other commenter on this site — an apology.
Of course, you probably won’t see this comment, since the de facto moderation policy here seems to be that repeated malicious personal attacks on advocates of renewable energy are acceptable, but complaints about such attacks are not.
Diogenes, i am among the readers who have read your same argument over and over and over again. I really doubt you practice what you preach if you are on an energy using computer all day making these arguments. I don’t think you are going to get anywhere with your case unless you can lead by example. You may be right for all I know with respect to the argument you make. So…why aren’t you acting? Seriously, why? It smells of hypocrisy.
Re- Comment by MAXMARE — 17 Jun 2014 @ 7:33 PM, ~#336
Let me get this straight- You think that the death of 2 to 3 billion people (2,000,000,000 to 3,000,000,000) from starvation, pestilence, and war (a very optimistic estimate) is acceptable, you think that I am proposing BAU (business as usual), and wonder why I might think that you are wrong.
Steve
The first major crop losses would be to extreme weather events. For example an unexpected drought, or flood or a few warm nights so the corn does not pollinate.
These are unexpected, and therefor not climate. If they were climate we could change crops, or install irrigation or put levees around the fields to prevent flooding.
We can plan for climate. We can change our plans for climate change. It will be the unexpected weather that gets us
Re- Comment by DIOGENES — 18 Jun 2014 @ 6:26 AM, ~#340
You use the corn alcohol straw man to justify your argument that renewables are too expensive (i.e. “what we can expect from renewables are basement-level EROIs”) when you should know that EROI (energy return on investment) excludes externalities such as environmental damage and human misery. In your 19 Jun 2014 @ 4:58 AM, ~#352 you, an anonymous blogger without any expertise, dare to lecture this group on “how science is done.” And, in 19 Jun 2014 @ 7:45 AM, ~#355, you deprecate 100% renewables by 2050 when your idea is exactly the same. The problem is that medieval renewables can’t support 7 to 10 billion people.
Is that about it? No, throughout, you continue to use juvenile name calling and unsupported allegations of motive to bolster your ideas. Steve
Edward Greisch @350 “Try to tell that to an economist.”
I happen to be wading through Thomas Piketty’s massive and oh-so-trendy tome, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”. He’s supposedly a good guy as economists go, but I still think he’s a fool. One of the fundamental concepts underlying economics is the discount rate, and I don’t agree with it at all. Since future costs are discounted exponentially, a few decades into the future the value of any cost is effectively zero. According to that logic we shouldn’t do anything about climate change because it’s only going to inflict suffering on our children. OK not my children since I don’t have any, but you know what I mean. And I don’t agree with the idea of externalities either. To me that’s just a polite way of saying that dumping your trash in the yards of powerless people is good business. It’s telling that most of economic theory developed during the period of maximum “exuberance” when the US was still mostly empty and EROI of 100:1 was commonplace. No wonder the answer to every question is growth. So why am I reading this cleverly disguised mind poison? Good question.
Economics appears to be a thin veneer of justification for the view that a) growth is always good, because b) the goal of existence is to make things cushy for the haves, regardless of the consequences. I’m much more sympathetic to Jared Diamond’s hypothesis in “Collapse,” which is that societies are undone by five things: 1) climate change, 2) environmental destruction, 3) hostile neighbors, 4) excessively friendly neighbors, and 5) stubbornness in the face of one or more of the preceding. A society that says something like, “well our cows are toast and we could switch to fishing, but people aren’t meant to eat fish because [insert deity] says so,” is a dead society. About the only thing Piketty seems to have right is that growth of the order that fueled modernity is historically speaking an anomaly, very unlikely to be sustained or repeated.
@345:
Where is this documented? Everything I found on the GISTEMP site refers to “base period 1951-1980” without saying that each month’s base period is separately tabulated.
I’m a little confused.
It seems we can discuss atmospheric science, the environmental and economic risks implied by our models, and even remedies as long as atomic energy is not discussed (as the topic seems so divisive)?
If we were going to meaningfully respond to ocean acidification, must we not produce something on the order of 10^11 tons of ions (like Ca or Mg) to neutralize the oceanic CO2 within decades? What kind of energy system can scale like that? Is there really another option other than using a compact, efficient, high temperature, highly scalable, carbon-free energy source to reduce the ions?
“despite this ignorance, it is clear that Earth’s climate system has proven itself to be an angry beast….”
— W. S. Broecker
355:
“That needs to be demonstrated.”
It is being demonstrated. Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the halls. http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterdetwiler/2014/06/03/q1-solar-installation-figures-the-juggernaut-keeps-rolling/
Lawrence (#353),
When the US converts the world to democracy, it does no do it by paying for democracy in other countries. It strategically isolated and defeats totalitarian regimes and sweeps their sick ideology into the dustbin. There is no need to be other than the Shining City on the Hill to get the rest of the world to go for renewable energy. They’ve already adopted the solid state electronics we invented for everything else. The trend will continue for energy as well.
From an airplane, to a guitar to a solar panel, these machines kill fascists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_machine_kills_fascists
355 Dio was his usual abrasive self.
Steve Fish had it right. The two variables are consumption and clean production. By determining what minimum consumption we’d live with, we then know how much low carbon production we’ll need. If it can’t be done, then we rethink.
Too Little, Too Late? Oops? 19 June 2014 James Hansen
… I have been working, for a few years, on a paper aimed at a clear quantitative response to the “too late?” and “oops?” questions….
If the goal is to decarbonize by 2050, can someone please explain what happens to air travel, rail travel, cargo ships and international trade? I can see electric cars for short hauls and perhaps medium hauls, but you need to burn fuel to fly planes and diesel for cargo ships, or will we have nuclear powered trains and boats?
Hank quotes a famous one:
“despite this ignorance, it is clear that Earth’s climate system has proven itself to be an angry beast….”
– W. S. Broecker
I laughed out loud at that one :)
I was actually looking more for your super-librarian skills in finding recent papers tying agricultural output changes to temperature rise.
That said, I think your quote might well be more to the point.
What the hell are we doing with this sharp stick? Why are we not smart enough to heed the snarling beast?
355: DIOGENES. BOY! Do you get it!!
360 Chris. Read the article on solar. Good news! Here in Australia our newly elected gov. has scrapped the carbon tax, wound back funding for renewables. Refuses to even raise Climate change at the G20 meeting in Brisbane. Scrapped the federal climate change office. Is going to dismantle another office to create funding for renewable schemes. That comes from a liberal right wing party. No wonder I’m feeling despondent.
357 SecularAnimist: I don’t owe you anything. You, SecularAnimist, owe the rest of us a patent on your new battery and the math that shows how little it costs, preferably a negative cost, and that it uses only infinitely available materials. No unobtainium.
Chris Dudley #349,
You say;
‘I see the consumption growth in their baseline as having to do with development. So long as environmental impacts are reduced during this phase, the “limits to growth” don’t really kick in.’
Maybe, if the impacts are reduced fast enough to stay or return within those limits in time. But if we’ve already crossed those limits so far that we need to to reduce the impacts even faster than you propose, I guess that could mean shrinking consumption at least for the richest parts of the world, precisely to leave space for development for the poorer parts of the world.
The best indicators I know (like ‘planetary boundaries’ and ‘ecological footprint’) suggest we’ve already crossed some important limits, or are very close, so it seems very risky to assume growth in the baseline can continue as the IPCC does. It seems their models do not take potential limits to growth into account, so they may be very misleading.
Chris Dudley #360,
“That needs to be demonstrated”
You selectively extract a part of my statement, then offer the usual solar installation statistics that SA, McKinney, Fish rely on as proof of something. The context was:
“The goal is species survival, and if renewables by 2050 can accomplish that, or even part of that, great. That needs to be demonstrated. If you/Dudley [edit] can show that installation of renewables by 2050 will keep the global mean temperature anywhere near 1 C with reasonable certainty, go right ahead.”
In other words, show the consequences of rapid solar/renewables installation on what it will do to place a lid on climate change, not what it will do to enrich the Windfall proponents and their front men. I have never seen such proof; I don’t believe it exists. Show me the temperature/concentration consequences!
> looking for … librarian skills
I often point out _that_ one should make the effort to ask a librarian for help.
Don’t mistake amateur results for professional help
Is anyone keeping up with the GIS melt? I’m assuming that at some point in the near future it too will be in a state of irreversible decline. Are there any credible projections for the future of the Greenland ice?
Thanks.
David (#351),
Some synthesis work was done by IPCC WGII. Look at Figure SPM.7 here http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WG2AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf Digging into the basis for this in underlying report is not entirely satisfying, but it is a start.
Réf: “Getting to Zero paper”. I find the concept that dividing GDP by energy to give cents GDP/kW, whichh is supposed to be meaningful a bit hard to swallow. Information, intellectual property and financial services which are characteristics of advanced economies have high cents GDP/kWh values whereas manufacturing and agriculture for example have low ratios.
Some one earlier mentioned Germany electricity prices being high due to renewables. That is wrong on at least two counts. Firstly DE electricity prices for large users is average for Europe: see http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/submitViewTableAction.do
However small users and households pay above average prices: http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=nrg_pc_204_c&lang=en This due to the way in which the “Energiewende” (energy transformation) is financed. The energy transformation broadly embraces efficiency, renewables and sustainable development. These are paid for by a levy (EEG Umlag). However, bizarrely the really big electricity users are given a massive exemption from this levy paying only 0.05 cents/kWh, other users pay 6.24 cents/kWh. No that is not a typo small users pay over 100 times more than the big users. Here is one of the clearest explanations of the functioning of the levy that I have found: http://www.iwr-institut.de/en/press/background-informations/renewable-energy-is-subsidised-the-state-does-not-pay-a-cent
In addition, thanks to renewables, the wholesale price of electricity is lower due to the “Merit Order Effect”.
“When the us converts the world to democracy…” CD you really are a piece of work.
@ Thomas #1
I believe one of my earlier comments #299 (GETTING TO ZERO: Is renewable energy economically viable) addresses your question regarding the potential role of renewables in the context of mitigation. In summary, they appear to be counterproductive, particularly at scale (see below). More to the point on mitigation, or PLAN B:
Regarding the Ethical Mitigation of Global Warming
Our prime directive is to decouple the economy from carbon dioxide emissions as fast as possible. What is the scale of the problem? The global economy is measured at about 17 terawatts of power, providing on average just over 2 kW per capita. Western Europe has managed a highly developed civilization at about 5 kW per capita. The United States almost achieves 10 kW per capita. To raise the global average to merely 5 kW would require around 50 terawatts of power by 2050. How much more energy will be required to neutralize excess oceanic carbonic acid to secure our food chain? How much more energy will we need to insure that the space industry is vigorous enough to safeguard us from that other inevitable environmental disaster, an asteroid impact? How about all of those extra infrastructure costs that will be necessary for coastal protection and recovery? Do we want even more energy to clean up the oceanic gyres of unwanted polymer residue? Do we want to capture excess CO2 from the environment for sequestration so that we may lower atmospheric CO2 concentration? Should we use oceanic CO2 as feedstock for carbon-neutral fuels?
The size of our problem appears to be on the order of TENS of TERAWATTS, or 10^13 watts, but maybe even as high as 10^14 watts. The deeper one looks, the larger our energy needs appear to be.
POTENTIAL OF THORIUM MOLTEN SALT REACTORS:
DETAILED CALCULATIONS AND CONCEPT EVOLUTIONS
IN VIEW OF A LARGE NUCLEAR ENERGY PRODUCTION
http://democrite.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/02/55/24/PDF/democrite-00021911.pdf (note: possible rates of deployment fig. 14)
In 2013, about 460 tons of fissile (U235) was produced, which would be enough material to start hundreds of 1 GWe high temperature thermal neutron iso-breeders (Th-MSRs). This is possible because thermal iso-breeders improve critical material utilization by hundreds of times over LWRs. After startup, they are fueled with the abundant and mildly radioactive mineral thorium and can proceed to a very high burn up state. The fissile supply necessary to grow the iso-breeder fleet can be expanded with more mining (low grade ores, In Situ Leach) or breeding. One of the highest performance breeder concepts that I have seen involves using small D-D fusion charges within a very large underground reaction chamber (PACER). Other forms of fusion with lower Q, may also prove economical for breeding.
I believe a symbiotic fusion-fission economy (fusion for the neutrons, fission for the energy) has the most economic potential (the ‘old’ concept was brought up back in 2009 by Wallace Manheimer, see below), and the basic technology to accomplish this has already been pioneered. For the immediate future, GEN3+ LWRs are suitable for rapidly decarbonizing the electrical grid, but the real expansion of nuclear power will come with highly efficient GEN4 reactors.
The nuclear community has long been working on viable technological concepts to wean the globe from fossil fuels. As can be seen from the above paper, the Th232-U fuel cycle looks to have enormous potential for quickly growing a sustainable economy.
Today, China leads the world with its determination to develop the next industrial era. Canada is looking to use an MSR converter for steam to lower the environmental impact and raise the energy return of oil sands exploitation. The same high temperature technology will be applicable for synthesizing fossil carbon’s sustainable replacement. Hopefully the new EPA regulations will drive the United States to improve its nuclear deployment and development programs. Additionally, we might positively direct our evolution by focusing on the critical technological pathways for global sustainability with a Planetary Sustainability Initiative.
On a related note, in order to ease tensions between the US and China, a bill, vital to energy, industrial development, and national security, has been proposed that should encourage an expansion of domestic rare earth mining. It is called the National Rare Earth Cooperative Act of 2014. It currently sits in a Senate committee for energy and natural resources:
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s2006 (rare earth bill)
Rare earth dependencies: http://www.agiweb.org/environment/earthnotes/note.html?PublicID=8 (notice the chart of imported material dependencies)
2009 DC conference on fusion: http://www.ralphmoir.com/media/hyFusFisConf.pdf
Boundary effects for large scale wind farms could lower power density: http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2013/02/rethinking-wind-power
364 David Miller: Start with: “Drought Under Global Warming: a Review” by Aiguo Dai
http://www.atmos.albany.edu/facstaff/adai/
This was made with data on the extent of deserts from 1870 to present. The usual General Circulation [computer] Models [GCMs] were not used. Since the sensitivity was not used, the sensitivity is irrelevant. Civilization still collapses near or shortly after mid-century this century.
Search for World Food Organization.
“Six Degrees” by Mark Lynas
http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm
http://doc-snow.hubpages.com/hub/The-Two-Degree-World
I’m sure I’ve seen some articles lately, but I don’t know where. The answer is that food production drops with increasing temperature because food plants can’t take the heat.. Drought and floods increase with increasing temperature. Triple whammy.
PS, a reminder on the arctic methane stuff — why it’s always important to check what’s in the newspapers against the science, and check it again next time: http://planet3.org/2013/09/05/nafeez-ahmed-responds/
Climate Progress points out an interesting deal in Utah. Rocky Mountain Power is signing a 20 year power purchase agreement with a company called First Wind. They will be buying the power from a new 320 MW solar development. We’ve already seen Austin Energy signing up for $0.05/kwh but this deal seems to have triggered a federal law requiring utilities to buy the least costly power. “The law says that if utilities can buy power from an independent provider for a lower price than it would cost them to generate the power themselves, they must.” http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/20/3451429/utah-solar-purpa/
More from Climate Code Red:
http://www.ecoshock.info/2014/06/planet-code-red.html
Another idea for cause of “pause”?
Probably it has been thought of and taken into account, but…
Increased contrails from increased jet traffic causing more high clouds, reflecting more sunlight back to space??
Somebody was telling me about “chemtrails” (not that I buy that myth) and I saw him looking up at the contrails in the sky with a real look of fear in his face. And then I thought to myself that there did seem to be a lot of contrails, wondered if there was an increase, if that could be one small factor to account for less-than-expected warming.
Hank Roberts #316,
“For example where you noted
[Response: This is almost all complete nonsense, written by people who have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. – gavin] – See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/06/unforced-variations-june-2014/comment-page-4/#comment-552429
(for which, many thanks, sanity checks always help)
I wish that comment could be linked to every post where the ‘methane emergency’ program is touted. The same story shows up many thousands of times over the past few years, over and over and over.”
That comment has some applicability to the article to which it refers. However, why isn’t that comment applied consistently and even-handedly on this blog? Is the speculation and fantasizing in the referenced article any worse than the articles and reports by the ‘establishment’ scientists, who espouse the 2 C target as something meaningful to which we should strive, who then talk about allowable carbon budgets based on that contrived target, and who then spawn myriad recommendations for ‘action’ that might achieve the 2 C target with reasonable (not high) chances of success. Is the speculation and fantasizing in the article any worse than the many posters here who fantasize that all we need are some low carbon and higher efficiency sources to avoid the climate abyss, and we can experience ‘prosperity’ at the same time? Why isn’t that comment applied uniformly to the above group of speculators and fiction writers?
You decry the attention given to the ‘methane emergency’ program. Well, maybe you need to hear what the REAL experts have to say about the methane problem, such as in this 2012 video (https://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/top-scientists-speak-on-growing-risk-of-methane-emergency/). Two of the presenters have many years of hands-on experience of actually going up to the Arctic in surface and sub-surface ships, making measurements, observing trends, and integrating both the published and UNPUBLISHED data. I would value their comments an order of magnitude more than those of blog posters and computer jockeys. It is a travesty that, on a supposed climate science blog like RC, we don’t have an article containing the views of at least three of the four in the video. It’s not that we are devoting too much attention to the methane emergency, as you imply. Given the importance, we are devoting much too little, and what little we are devoting seems to be aimed at covering up the seriousness of the problem!
Former Secretary of the Treasury Paulson has an article calling for a carbon tax. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/opinion/sunday/lessons-for-climate-change-in-the-2008-recession.html
He does not seem to be aware that the US is already regulating emissions through the Clean Air Act and that regional cap and trade for existing source regulations in on the menu. It seems to me that carbon tax advocates must, at this point, explain how their proposal will get us to an 83% cut in emissions from 2005 levels by 2035 rather than 2050. The Clean Air Act is a bird in hand. A carbon tax better be four or more birds in the bush for it to excite any interest now.
MA,
Looks like my answer to you at dotearth got lost or censored, so here it is here:
You have confused returning to the preindustrial concentration with reducing concentration at all. The initial reduction in concentration is quite rapid but there is a lingering fraction which is very persistent. The rapid reduction is what stops the warming. The lingering fraction is what makes some of the past warming irreversible without a dedicated effort to clean our mess. Examine fig. 1 here: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704.long
You are probably wrong about feedbacks if this were to happen now. The response of arctic sea ice has been much more prompt than many expected, so its behavior probably tracks warming closely and ceasing warming would stop its decline.
Another collection on ocean ecosystems, plankton, food chains and (by implication) climate change that we may well have started much earlier than we think. Does Bill Ruddiman somewhere get into ocean harvesting, as well as into land changes during the recent past, and climate change?
I’m seriously starting to wonder why the heck there’s so much information about this subject — that I would never come across but for the Internet and the time available to search from home. I wouldn’t have thought to ask a research librarian for this material, it shouldn’t be that hard to find.
Russ George: Bringing Back The Fish … Good News For The Planet
There’s a lot here and more.
A brief excerpt from his page:
Open Letter – Critical and Ignored CO2 Green Plant Climate Feedback Mechanisms
May 17, 2013
addressed to the climate scientists.
Do y’all recognize this material?
There are other scientists who have been raising this issue — William Calvin recently at the MIT Colab contest; Farley Mowat while he lived, for decades; others starting to incorporate these ocean feedbacks in models.
I hope for more.
Tony (#370),
I capitalized that. Don’t misquote me.
Chris Dudley #349,
You say;
‘I see the consumption growth in their baseline as having to do with development. So long as environmental impacts are reduced during this phase, the “limits to growth” don’t really kick in.’
Maybe, if the impacts are reduced fast enough to stay or return within those limits on time. But if we’ve already crossed those limits so far that we need to to reduce the impacts even faster than you propose, I guess that could mean shrinking consumption at least for the richest parts of the world, precisely to leave space for development for the poorer parts of the world.
The best indicators I know (like ‘planetary boundaries’ and ‘ecological footprint’) suggest we’ve already crossed some important limits, or are very close, so it seems very risky to assume growth in the baseline can continue as the IPCC does. It seems their models do not take potential limits to growth into account, so they may be very misleading.
369 turboblocke: See http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/merkel-s-switch-to-renewables-rising-energy-prices-endanger-german-industry-a-816669-2.html
Being a singularity, the Apocalypse has no plural , and what you will discover if you ask Yahoo suggests it is unwise to go looking for one:
What is the plural of apocalypse?
Best Answer
Apocalypses, I would guess. It doesn’t sound correct when I say apocalypi, and I get apocalypses when I search google.
Hope this helps,
Brandi
Jackie answered 9 months ago
God gave you like a shield so that demons don’t harm you, but when you sin or do something spiritually wrong, you open yourself up to demonic influence. For example, chanting mantras leads to demon possession. It’s not the words that get you possessed; it’s the rhythm.
Buddhists worship fake mountain Kailash in Tibet inside which demons have a UFO base. Barcode is Druid black magic curse. Mediums are shown pictures and given thoughts by demons. Demons move the Ouija board. Demons=Ghosts=Spirit Guides=Aliens. Demons never do good. Demons fly in UFOs. Crystal balls, tarot cards, barcodes, tattoos, talismans, masks, skulls, amulets, etc. attract demons. Meditation, chanting mantras, and astral projection lead to demon possession. Casting spells is asking demons for help. Ask Greek Orthodox priest to help you out (blessing your house, etc.)
Most dreams and thoughts are from demons.
MA,
Over at NYT you said: “Chris, I agree with you about the tariffs (they’re called “Border Tax Adjustments” these days), but even with the modest regulation proposed by the Obama administration, U.S. consumers won’t be paying their share of the full, global cost of our fossil fuel consumption. Obama’s proposal will lead to more replacement of coal with natural gas, which won’t solve the climate problem. Domestic prices for all fossil fuels, not just coal, have to rise enough to drive our own transition to renewables to completion.
Paired with a domestic carbon tax, a BTA would help US manufacturers compete with imports from countries that don’t control their emissions, and encourage those countries to follow our lead. So let’s lead.”
They’ve shut the forum so I’ll mention here that I don’t think there is any reason for US consumers to be paying anything extra so long as we are on track to cut emissions 83% by 2050. We are not causing the damage, those who are causing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to rise by increasing emissions are causing the damage and the bill should go to them. We and other nations can facilitate collection by using tariffs.
Blaming the good guys really isn’t going to help with accomplishing climate action.
Re 341, Hank, I would say MT is the better blogger and Wadhams is the better scientist.
For example compare what they said about Arctic sea ice in the period 2002-2007. MT considered any stated doubts that the IPCC models were not correct to be alarmist. And, yet very well validated statistical methods clearly indicated that the Arctic Sea Ice System was out of control and likely to have a melt back within a decade.