There has been a lot of commentary about perceived disagreements among climate scientists about whether climate change is (or will soon be) accelerating. As with most punditry, there is less here than it might seem.
Last year, Jim Hansen and colleagues published a long paper that included a figure suggesting that they expected that global temperature trends from 2011 to increase above the recent linear trends.
This has meshed with another argument around whether an acceleration of global temperatures in recent decades can already be detected. Tamino has made a case that it can be, if some of the ‘noise’ in the record is factored out (notably the linear impacts of ENSO and volcanoes). However, it not so obvious that the recent El Niño can be so easily removed in such a way. In my recent Nature commentary, I pointed out the difficulties explaining quantitatively why 2023 was so warm. Without further clarity on that, deciding whether we have yet seen an acceleration or not is a bit ambiguous.
Another view of the future is given by the results of climate models. We’ve discussed some of the issues with the latest CMIP6 round of simulations many times in recent years, nonetheless, by screening the model ensemble based on the likely range of climate sensitivity, we can create projections that align closely with assessed projections from the last IPCC report. These projections are the basis of our updated comparisons of CMIP6 models to observations, and specifically this graph:
It is worth remembering what the CMIP6 projections are based on. These simulations used historical GHG concentrations and aerosol emissions to 2014, and a mid-range scenario (SSP2-4.5) thereafter, which has continued increases of CO2 and CH4 as well as forecast decreases in aerosol emissions. The screening uses the likely range of 1.8 to 2.2ºC of transient climate response, roughly equivalent to to a screening uses equilibrium climate sensitivity of 2.5 to 4ºC for a doubling of CO2 (Hausfather et al, 2022).
The question naturally arises as to who is correct, Hansen et al or the models?
We can assess this by extending our graph to 2050, and plotting Hansen et al’s projected range on top:
Remarkably, the Hansen et al projections are basically indistinguishable from what the mean of the TCR-screened CMIP6 models are projecting. Or, to put it another way, everybody is (or should be) expecting an acceleration of climate warming (in the absence of dramatic cuts in GHG emissions) (CarbonBrief has a similar analysis), even if we might differ on whether it is yet detectable.
Update (4/4): I was prodded to provide a histogram focused on the trends in the ensembles. Happy to oblige (note that this is only one run per model):
References
- J.E. Hansen, M. Sato, L. Simons, L.S. Nazarenko, I. Sangha, P. Kharecha, J.C. Zachos, K. von Schuckmann, N.G. Loeb, M.B. Osman, Q. Jin, G. Tselioudis, E. Jeong, A. Lacis, R. Ruedy, G. Russell, J. Cao, and J. Li, "Global warming in the pipeline", Oxford Open Climate Change, vol. 3, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfclm/kgad008
- G. Schmidt, "Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory", Nature, vol. 627, pp. 467-467, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00816-z
- Z. Hausfather, K. Marvel, G.A. Schmidt, J.W. Nielsen-Gammon, and M. Zelinka, "Climate simulations: recognize the ‘hot model’ problem", Nature, vol. 605, pp. 26-29, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01192-2
Thank you for this very informative piece.
Is there a version of the last graph that shows the post-2010 trend (with or without confidence intervals) for?:
– Hansen et al.’s projection
– screened CMIP6
– all CMIP6
– continuation of 1970-2010 linear trend
I ask because the yellow window for Hansen et al. doesn’t start in the same place as the red line for ‘screened CMIP6’ nor the gray line for ‘all CMIP6’.
And as you said before, if one wants to show the trend then show the trend:
“If Spencer just wanted to show the trends, he should just show the trends (and their uncertainty)!”
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/01/spencers-shenanigans/
Gavin, as a total eclipse is the greatest of solar shenanigans permit me to comment on Monday’s.
Much is being broadcast about eye protection, but little about the art and science of experiencing the event. A total eclipse must be seen to be believed, but what you will see will depend heavily on what you don’t see beforehand.
Two eclipses have left me with some counterintuitive advice.
Partial eclipses are hardly worth watching the sun go from disc to crescent and back is about as exciting as watching the grass grow . If you can , drive straight through the edge of the moon’s shadow beforehand , to its midline, where instead of blinking out for seconds the sun disappears for four full minutes.
This is where the art comes in. the problem is that your night vision takes longer to turn on than the eclipse lasts.
When you go outside to watch the sun set , you get a quarter hour of twilight before the stars come out for your night vision to develop fully..
Totality is different. There is no twilight- the sky goes black instantly in the opposite of a flash! So, if you dazzle your eyes beforehand watching the shrinking sun- even with safety glasses, you will miss most of what you have just minutes in a lifetime to see;
You can’t dark adapt in three minutes flat ! But you can do something Galileo or Newton never dreamed of :
Watch the shrinking disc on your cel phone indoors in a dark room, and instead of bedazzled , you can step out a second or two after the sun goes out and see not just the corona in all its active sun glory, but the whole solar system strung out on both sides of the sun at once.
At the very least you can enjoy one well dark adapted eye by the piratical expedientof putting on an opaque black eyepatch ten minutes before the main event.
Intriguing but permanently damaging your vision is a high price to pay for a mistake in timing.
Not much risk of that, I’d say–the difference between totality and a near-total partial eclipse is unmistakable. When totality arrives, you know–whether you are outside watching, or inside watching virtually.
The bed TV seeing comes with binoculars and I’d course dark adaption helps
Is over-focusing on the minutiae of the current warming to the detriment of taking action?
I know this is a site for climate scientists, but the more pressing issue is surely the total lack of practical actions, be they about reducing emissions, adaptation or geoengineering.
At the end of the day, whether next year will be, +1.50 or +1.55 is of little importance since we seem totally unable to heed the warning…
The ‘first responder’ to weather extremes from any source is affordable, reliable, abundant energy.
That is not wind, solar, and batteries.
“Robert Bradley says”
who cares what the paid speechwriter for Ken Lay of ENRON has to say?
christophe meudec,
If there’s one thing that scientists understand it’s significant figures. Because a number looks small doesn’t mean it’s trivial, in particular with regard to the ability to make predictions. That’s important. That’s their job.
The information about climate change is out there; everybody knows it whether they want to believe it or not. In fact the problem is that a large number of people don’t give a flying f* what the science says no matter what. One thing that climate scientists are not expert at doing is turning fools into gold.
Want change? Step up and put your shoulder to the wheel.
Fine. But where are the social scientists expertise in helping to turn the tide of inaction?
People do change their attitudes e.g. child labour, smoking, polluting. How do we start moving towards acting and fight the capitalist and liberal ideologies of individual freedom above all else?
Perhaps this Tweet has leads
https://x.com/Klimaatzuster/status/1777944620170609123
Cook, one of the authors of the original 98% concurrence among experts studies, has a degree in cognitive psych and has worked in the climate area for many years including right here from time to time.
Do they? We still have notjob politicians trying to soften child labor laws, anti-pollution laws and regulations. Hell, we have folks trying to overturn the entire concept of government regulation by agencies, which would mean agencies could do only what they were explicitly authorized to do by Congressional legislation–and would have to go back to Congress any time anything new came along.
This isn’t about individual freedom. This is about the rich stomping on the freedoms of the rest of us and avoiding any consequences for doing so.
We educate ourselves first. Then we share what we know… in line with some of the social scientist’s recommendations, calmly and with a firm basis in fact. We organize to spread the word through social groupings of various sorts. We vote climate. And we may undertake various forms of protest as well.
Christope, you ask “But where are the social scientists expertise in helping to turn the tide of inaction?” but I think “inaction” is not the accurate view.
There is action. Is it enough, or fast enough? Arguably not. But still, consider how much extra CO2 there’d be in the system today if emissions levels in the UK, and Germany and elsewhere weren’t below emissions levels in the 1960s.
Consider that the petrostate of Texas has rapidly become one of the biggest producers of renewable power, and that multiple states in the windy, yet conservative, plains in the USA are quickly approaching and passing 40, 50, 60% or more of their electrical generation from wind power.
Impacts of climate change appear to be accelerating. But transition to fossil-free energy and transportation are also accelerating.
Capitalists can make money with renewables, capitalists can make profits on electrified vehicles.
What’s less likely is that the existing car companies will be those profiting from EVs, or that the fossil industries can also be the ones at the top of the new energy industries – though they are dipping toes into geothermal drilling and offshore platforms with wind turbines instead of oil rigs.
Do you think that the aerosol (negative) forcing is greater than what is currently assumed in IPCC reports? This seems to be a bone of contention.
[Response: There are a lot of moving parts to that – somethings have changed more (marine shipping), some may have changed less, and emissions from biomass burning are a bit of a wild card. You need to run the new emissions data through a model and see. Hasn’t been done yet (but soon!). – gavin]
Does the reduction is sulphur/aerosols from shipping impact climate formation (reducing albedo)?
Gavin – Thank you. Very helpful.
When I adjust the graphs to have identical grids for 1980 – 2040 by 0.0C to 2.0C i find the mid-point temperature projection for 2040 (Middle of Hansen et al’s Yellow band) is::
1) 1.90C on Hansen et al graph.
2) 1.35 on the comparison graph.
This conflicts with the overall point in your article about the projections being similar.
Please can you help me understand this.
[Response: Different baseline. Hansen’s graph is with respect to the late 19th C, while mine is w.r.t 1980-1999. The difference is a shift of 0.54ºC. – gavin]
A particularly useful and clear analysis, thanks!
If there is general agreement that the most likely situation, within large error bars, is an acceleration, there should be a clear (most likely) cause. If I’m not mistaken, the scenario has a leveling off of CO2 emissions, so that would leave accelerating methane and decelerating aerosols as the explanation, weighted one way or another?
(By the way, 23rd annual update of my Discovery of Global Warming website went online today.)
Thank you for your lasting, and continuing, contributions to public understanding, Dr. Weart.
Thanks, Spencer, I’ll start flogging the latest update among the denialati immediately. Good to hear you are still at it.
Spencer,
Surely we should have been expecting acceleration in ΔT even if ΔF remains constant. The roughly ΔF=+0.4Wm^-2 over a decade will have a large decade-long warming effect but afterwards a continuing smaller warming effect which will add to the smaller warming effect from each of the previous decades-worth of ΔF=+0.4Wm^-2, these accumulations resulting in an increasing ΔT appearing though the decades.
Surely, what has been remarkable is the lack of acceleration in ΔT over the period 1980-2010, especially with the volcanic contribution depressing the net ΔF through the 1980s & 1990s.
As for variations in ΔF from GHGs, NOAA AGGI shows the highest period of ΔF was the 1980s, highest due to the large CFC emissions. ΔF from non-CO2/CH4 GHG emissions has remained flat since the mid-1990s at abut ΔF=+0.05Wm^-2/decade.
The CH4 ΔF dropped to zero in the 2000s but has been on the rise again since, back up to ΔF=+0.07Wm^-2/decade in the latest numbers.
The CO2 ΔF is shown rising through to the mid-2010s with the plateauing in recent years hopefully a sign of progress to the much-needed downward trend. (Over short time-spans, the impact of the likes of ENSO on ΔCO2 does decouple emissions from ΔF.)
AGGI Increases
Average decadal values – all GHGs (& for CO2)
to 1992 … +0.42 Wm^-2decade … … (+0.22 Wm^-2decade)
to 2002 … +0.30 Wm^-2decade … … (+0.23 Wm^-2decade)
to 2012 … +0.33 Wm^-2decade … … (+0.28 Wm^-2decade)
to 2022 … +0.40 Wm^-2decade … … (+0.32 Wm^-2decade)
Getting a proper grip on aerosols remains work-in-progress, eg Hodnebrog et al (2024) ‘Recent reductions in aerosol emissions have increased Earth’s energy imbalance’ put it as aerosol reductions unmasking a decades-worth of AGW (+0.4Wm^-2) 2001-19, but with big error-bars (+/-50%).
(And echoing the thoughts above, that would be ‘Twenty-three cheers for the Discovery of Global Warming website, “Hip hip…”)
+++++
Spencer says
4 Apr 2024 at 9:27 PM
If I’m not mistaken, the scenario has a leveling off of CO2 emissions ….
You are clearly mistaken. Spencer. There has been no leveling off of CO2 emissions as shown in atmospheric measurements coupled with increasing fossil fuel energy / cement etc use and agriculture land use impacts rising.
Your chosen “scenario” (much like Gavin’s) must be theoretical, because it is not real world, nor accurate or true. (same goes for the other respondents)
Kind Regards ….. the Data will Out.
A correction for Spencer says
4 Apr 2024 at 9:27 PM
Sorry, I just now saw new annual global and MOA CO2 levels were much much lower than I thought thye were …. so that is where you were saying “leveling out” … and the current info does suggest that (surprising to me) but it is what it is.
Anyways….. let’s wait and see what next year is?
(others keep saying that to me and others often, thought I try it out myself. Yeah, maybe next year, maybe the next AR7, the next round of CMIP models, the next winter, the next summer everything could be different? )
Prof Schmidt, in your recent Nature piece you wrote, “the 2023 temperature anomaly has come out of the blue, revealing an unprecedented knowledge gap perhaps for the first time since about 40 years ago …”
But in the piece above you write “everybody is [or should be] expecting an acceleration of climate warming”
I understood from the Nature piece and others’ writings that many scientists, including yourself, are actually puzzled and worried by the sudden warming over the last 10 months or so.
These statements seem to be in contradiction, but perhaps I have not understood it right. Could you please clarify?
And thank you for the effort you put in in communicating climate science to folks like us.
Nagraj Adve,
member, Teachers Against the Climate Crisis, Delhi
[Response: We can have confidence in the long term trends and the acceleration of those trends because that’s basically the climate signal. But the year-to-year up and downs around those trends are what was strange about 2023. – gavin]
Nagraj, first, thank you for your service as a teacher.
As to your comment, sometimes communication suffers from imprecise use of terminology. I ask questions to try to help with that, although sometimes I am told that they are too nuanced.
In this case, I would ask whether GMST should be described as “climate” or “weather”? Any thoughts?
Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory
Taking into account all known factors, the planet warmed 0.2 °C more last year than climate scientists expected.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00816-z
So that’s False then? Because here we are saying that Climate models DO explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly plus everyone was already expecting this kind of “accelerated warming” all along.
aka square the circle?
Meanwhile when discussing issues and graphs we still insist on using different baselines. How could that cause anyone any problems at all. Of course not, it;s clear as mud to the hoi polloi on the street.
Oh well.
and regarding this point – “Last year, Jim Hansen and colleagues published a long paper that included a figure suggesting that they expected that global temperature trends from 2011 to increase above the recent linear trends. ”
The preprint came out in 2022 – and from that day forward Hansen was pilloried by a very large number of climate scientists across the world. That undermining of what his paper presented has not stopped.
Unless I imagined all of it? Well it’s “possible”, I suppose. But it is weird how so many other people “observed” the exact same thing, Hansen included. Well, he is getting old, I suppose. (sigh)
Ned Kelly,
1) Don’t confuse long-term trends (e.g. what Gavin is talking about here) with short-term fluctuations.
2) I hardly think you could clime that Hansen has been pilloried. Scientific disagreements can sometimes appear harsh to outsiders. And the disagreement here has more to do with emphasis than substance. Don’t confuse climate science with climateball.
3) Hansen’s predictions are not outside the range that has been coming from so-called mainstream climate scientists. He is making some slightly more pessimistic assumptions–and the work is important if for no other reason than to show how sensitive results can be to the range of assumptions one entertains.
4) Note that it is quite hard to alter assumptions and get a result that is reassuring. The uncertainties greatly favor the hazardous rather than the sanguine side of the argument.
Ray Ladbury says a lot.
5 Apr 2024 at 2:27 PM
FOR THE RECORD –
https://nitter.poast.org/MichaelEMann/search?f=tweets&q=hansen&since=&until=&near=
Hansen is not an outlier. (SEE GRAPH)
https://nitter.poast.org/LeonSimons8/status/1773739983016231004#m
Source
https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2024-42/ (M Mann is in the author list)
Overlaying Fig 25 on top of CMIP6 graphs misrepresents the contents of Hansen’s paper.
“Correlation does not imply causation” refers to the inability to legitimately deduce a cause-and-effect relationship between two events or variables solely on the basis of an observed association or correlation between them.
Hansen et al in fact are directly challenging the efficacy and reliability of CMIP6 GCMs for multiple scientific reasons. I recommend that people actually read the paper
https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889?login=false
The vociferous criticisms of Hansen’s paper by his ‘peers’ since the Pre-Print was published are easy to find online (if one looks for it) I think it’s undeniable it happened, and still is.
This new approach of claiming Hansen’s graphs *fits* the CMIP6 graph could have been done anytime in the last 18 months wasn’t. – – so why now suddenly two ‘independent’ scientists simultaneously do this kind of comparison?
Meanwhile Hausfarther says today the 1.5C limit ship has sailed – not possible anymore. Big call. Especially by someone with “firm positions” like him. What took him so long?
Anyways … Kind Regards … The Real Data will Out in the end.
Gavin: – “There has been a lot of commentary about perceived disagreements among climate scientists about whether climate change is, or will soon, accelerate. As with most punditry, there is less here than it might seem.”
There’s an interesting graphic showing Copernicus ERA5 data up to 2 Apr 2024, where the GMST (relative to 1850-1900 baseline) has exceeded:
● +0.50 °C for 14,818 days;
● +0.75 °C for 9,262 days;
● +1.00 °C for 4,735 days;
● +1.25 °C for 1,662 days;
● +1.50 °C for 506 days;
● +1.75 °C for 100 days;
● +2.00 °C for 6 days.
Per the table, the GMST has reached (or is estimated will likely reach) these “milestone” thresholds:
● +0.50 °C in 1984;
● +0.75 °C in 2000;
● +1.00 °C in 2012;
● +1.25 °C in 2021;
● +1.35-1.42 °C now;
● +1.50 °C estimated in 2028-2033;
● +1.75 °C estimated in 2035-2040;
● +2.00 °C estimated in 2045-2050.
https://parisagreementtemperatureindex.com/1000-day-climate-graphic-design/
The periods between the observed “Climate Milestones” keep dropping. I’d suggest the data indicates a clear acceleration in the rate of warming.
I think I am confused.
Gavin says above:
“Or, to put it another way, everybody is (or should be) expecting an acceleration of climate warming”
Zeke Hausfather says:
“Why the recent ‘acceleration’ in global warming is what scientists expect ”
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-why-the-recent-acceleration-in-global-warming-is-what-scientists-expect/
Michael Mann says: November 1, 2023 while criticising James Hansen’s ‘Pipeline’ paper …..
3. There is, furthermore, no statistical support for the claim that surface warming is currently accelerating.
https://michaelmann.net/content/comments-new-article-james-hansen
Mike says a lot more than just that ….. Or was my mind playing tricks on me? (smile)
They all 3 say pretty much the same thing. There is presently no crystal clear statistical evidence for acceleration. Think about it…for small exponents, a linear term describes the results quite nicely for a long time. For example, consider the following R script which plots y = x^1.1 versus y=1.58x for 100 observations (x = 1 to 100).. Can’t do stats of course as there is no error, but it should be obvious even to our denial crew that if there is any scatter at all, the linear equation predicts every bit as well as the exponential and won’t be able to be differentiated until more observations are collected.
y = 1:100
trend_exp = function (x,exp) {
x^exp
}
trend_linear = function(x,slope) {
x*slope
}
plot(trend_exp(y,1.1))
lines(trend_linear(y,1.58))
Changing the definition of y to 1:200 shows that a divergence does begin to occur after enough time goes by. Such is the nature of exponentials before the exponent term has a chance to really kick in.
Whoops on typo…first line should be x=1:100 of course.
x^1.1 is NOT exponential, just slightly “faster” than linear (x^1, written simply as x) and “slower” than quadratic (x^2)
What you were probably thinking about is 1.1^x
Nope. What I was actually thinking about was a power equation (like your said quadratic except with a low power) and clumsily typed exponential.
No, there is a possibility that warming has accelerated from 0.2 to 0.3 per decade but only during the past 15 years.
Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, one of the vice-chairs of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), noted the planet has been warming at a pace of 0.3C per decade over the past 15 years, almost double the 0.18C per decade trend since the 1970s. “Is this within the range of climate variability or signal of accelerated warming? My concern is it might be too late if we just wait to see,” she tweeted.
from the Guardian article here.
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2024/apr/09/tenth-consecutive-monthly-heat-record-alarms-confounds-climate-scientists?CMP=twt_a-environment_b-gdneco
I know it is a newspaper article and hence not good enough for a lot of people but it is quoting climate scientists.
jgnfld says
5 Apr 2024 at 5:06 PM
They all 3 say pretty much the same thing.
We appear have very different dictionary definitions for the word *same*,
Mine is https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/same
AND Note in particular what James Hansen says in late March 2024 —
“The scientists reject, without any evidence to the contrary, the evidence we presented that IPCC’s best estimates for climate sensitivity and human-made aerosol forcing are substantial underestimates. They rule out, without evidence, our suggestion that decreases of aerosols, especially those produced by ships, are a significant climate forcing that is causing global warming acceleration.” See Page 3 –
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/Hopium.MarchEmail.2024.03.29.pdf
FWIW this is Mann’s position on Hansen’s work via Twitter/X
Ned Kelly says – 3 Apr 2024 at 9:46 PM
“It is absolutely absurd to attribute the warming spike to aerosols.” M Mann
See his full comment here:-
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/unforced-variations-apr-2024/#comment-820882
Another published Study on Aerosols to add to the list:
Perspectives on shipping emissions and their impacts on the surface ocean and lower atmosphere: An environmental-social-economic dimension
Collections: Knowledge Domain: Atmospheric Science , Special Feature: Boundary Shift: The Air-Sea Interface in a Changing Climate
October 18 2023 Zongbo Shi et al
https://online.ucpress.edu/elementa/article/11/1/00052/197500/Perspectives-on-shipping-emissions-and-their
AND
Robust acceleration of Earth system heating observed over the past six decades
27 December 2023 Audrey Minière et al
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-49353-1
Integration of air quality and climate change policies in shipping:
The case of sulphur emissions regulation
March 2020 Christos A. Kontovas
https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/12041/1/Kontovas%202020%20JMPO-Accepted.pdf
The average sulphur content of residual fuels was 2.51% in 2012 and it went down to 0.51% (2022 data for vessels not using scrubbers). #SOx #emissions are directly related to the sulfur content!
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FF3A5Juxa8AAe6rp.png
New CEDS global emission time series
SO2 Emission estimates to 2022
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKUjFqsXgAAV8U-.jpg
Discussions continue on whose data graph is the right one for SO2 emissions, globally and over oceans.
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKZtjRaXwAAbJlr.jpg
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKaLvOAWYAASpEn.jpg
Models don’t take into account the reduction of aerosols over western-central Europe and underestimate regional warming by ~0.5 °C!! And summer warming by ~1.0 °C!
Exacerbated summer European warming not captured by climate models
neglecting long-term aerosol changes
06 April 2024 Dominik L. Schumacher et al
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01332-8
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379642493_Exacerbated_summer_European_warming_not_captured_by_climate_models_neglecting_long-term_aerosol_changes
For Germany observed warming is higher than median RCP8.5 warming simulated by regional climate models. For calendar year and for summer only
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKt4RCTWQAAsKad.png
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKt4R9fWEAAlMGk.png
And another Paper published
Substantial cooling effect from aerosol-induced increase in tropical marine cloud cover
11 April 2024 Ying Chen et al
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01427-z
quote
We observe a large enhancement in reflected sunlight, mainly due to an aerosol-induced increase in cloud cover. This observed strong negative aerosol forcing suggests that the current level of global warming is driven by a weaker net radiative forcing than previously thought, arising from the competing effects of greenhouse gases and aerosols. This implies a greater sensitivity of Earth’s climate to radiative forcing and therefore a larger warming response to both rising greenhouse gas concentrations and reductions in atmospheric aerosols due to air quality measures. However, our findings also indicate that mitigation of global warming via marine cloud brightening is plausible and is most effective in humid and stable conditions in the tropics where solar radiation is strong.
Main
Aerosol-induced increases in liquid cloud opacity cool the Earth by enhancing reflection of sunlight back to space and offset a large, yet poorly quantified, portion of greenhouse gas warming1. The climate impacts of aerosol–cloud interactions (ACI) have been widely debated in the past few decades and still constitute one of the largest uncertainties in the estimate of radiative forcing1,2,3, impeding a better understanding of climate sensitivity4 and the remaining carbon emissions budget for avoiding overshooting the +1.5 °C climate target
[end quote]
The real world Data and the Accumulated Evidence of Science will Out (eventually)
Kind regards ….
NK: I think I am confused.
BPL: I won’t. It’s too easy.
Prof Michael E. Mann
@MichaelEMann
Apr 1
James Hansen is right. The IPCC models are NOT trustworthy, because they’re missing a well-documented, critical climate feedback:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-sheep-albedo-feedbacki/
From – https://nitter.poast.org/MichaelEMann/status/1774778954735350008#m
Ned Kelly Apr. 5: “ Prof Michael E. Mann @MichaelEMann Apr 1:
James Hansen is right. The IPCC models are NOT trustworthy, because they’re missing a well-documented, critical climate feedback:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-sheep-albedo-feedbacki/”
You have noted the date of “Prof Michael E. Mann” post? And the date of the RC article he offers in his “admitting” that he was wrong and Hansen was right? ;-)
On reflection I find this short article far too simplistic and narrow-casted. And as a result it is imo less than helpful
There is much more to Hansen’s paper than Figure 24 – and a very simple comparison to the CMIP6 models
I suspect many who comment on it have never read it, or if they have did not understand it or absorb what was being said. It is a very complex integrated detailed paper and analysis. It says far more than what others have said about it. Much ‘mud has been thrown’ and imo none of it sticks. The paper has been repeatedly misrepresented.
If you (the reader) have not read it yet, I strongly recommend you do – and slowly and mindfully.
https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889?login=false
When I say — “I suspect many who comment on (Hansen’s paper) have never read it,…. or understand it” I was not referring to anyone in this place specifically, but generally speaking about the many comments I have seen since the pre-print was made public in late 2022. From both climate scientists and general commentators.
Overlaying Fig 25 on top of CMIP6 graphs grossly misrepresents the contents of Hansen’s paper, and the basis for that Fig 25 graph.
“Correlation does not imply causation” refers to the inability to legitimately deduce a cause-and-effect relationship between two events or variables solely on the basis of an observed association or correlation between them. It is a logical fallacy to draw a correlation where none exists.
‘Pipeline’ is NOT an endorsement for the assumptions within nor the output of CMIP6 simulations nor projected future temperatures – far from it. Hansen et al in fact are directly challenging the efficacy and reliability of CMIP6 GCMs for multiple scientific reasons.
I recommend that people actually read the paper – all of it. Slowly and carefully.
https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889?login=false
Everything needed to have written what is produced here by Gavin and in Hausfather’s carbon brief paper now was available in 2022. But since then nothing was said on this “new narrative” of Correlation “hey look the graphs are in agreement!”
It begs the question – so why now simultaneously more than 18 months later???
This has the appearance of possibly being an opportunistic Misuse of Hansen’s Graph in Figure 25 – which was not provided nor intended as a support of CMIP6 models and projections. Read the Paper itself to see why.
What has changed today is that Zeke and Gavin both suddenly make the very same arguments and draw the same Coincidental comparisons / Correlation that in fact misrepresents what Hansen et al actually says about the CMIP6 models and the science in his Paper.
Please go read it. Read what he says in it about his prior Ice Melt paper and how that was blackballed (by a ideological cabal (?) of mainstream / reticent climate scientists), just like his Pipeline paper has been blackballed with false claims and misrepresentations repeatedly being made about what it states and shows.
What I have been seeing before and now here, including some of the responses, has many of the hallmarks of what are typically described as logical fallacies, unfounded sophistry, motivated denial, and typical cognitive dissonance at play. Of course no one (myself included) can really know another’s intentions nor what is going on in their minds to make them act the way they do, but we can see what they do and say.
““Correlation does not imply causation” refers to the inability to legitimately deduce a cause-and-effect relationship between two events or variables solely on the basis of an observed association or correlation between them.”
True. But many do not realize that in a suppoedly “true” experiment, the assumption is that the experimenters themselves (or some other entity which can be assumed to be acting with full experimenter knowledge and control) 100% caused the differences between the treatment and control conditions and then the correlation is performed. I really can’t think of a study I’ve ever read that could assure me that this is true. All those trying to use this old bromide simply do not understand this.
Causation always involves correlation. How we form said correlations is what allows causal inferences or not. This is why astrophysicists say the universe is 14 odd billion years old with some assurance and why we figure the sun will probably come up tomorrow even though no experimenter-caused differences are possible even in principle.
jgnfld says
10 Apr 2024 at 9:02 AM
Comparing two graphs based on completely different assumptions/hypotheses is not a “true experiment”. It’s only a narrative debating tactic, a distraction, and not the scientific methodology at work. Or it might be something, such as cognitive dissonance and the like.
But thanks for your distraction too which is completely side-stepping the actual import of what was said and what Hansen’s et al graphs are “truly” based upon. Good for you.
I have read Hansen’s paper in detail, although that was a while ago now. Hansen’s arguments are well thought through.. They include paleodata and claims for a greater negative feedback of sulfate aerosols than predicted by CIMP6 models. He gives a tightly constrained equilibrium climate sensitivity of 4.8°C ± 1.2°C for doubled CO2, well above the 2.5 to 4ºC (central 3ºC) from CIMP6.
I think Gavin’s rejection of Hansen’s arguments is sadly facile, which is not his usual approach.
Hansen’s greater estimated climate sensitivity is borne out by the greater slope of the yellow band in comparison figure His estimates at least appear to start near the historical temperature record. The new CIMP6 and screened CIMP6 (a somewhat arbitrary contrivance) both start above the historical record, and have a lower slope, due to lower estimates of climate sensitivity. Not surprisingly they intercept with Hansen’s forecasts later on.
The true failing of the CIMP6 and “screened” CIMP6 is the hindcasts. They spend 15 years above the historical record from 2005 to 2020.
There IS more here than this article claims..
Don’t forget Xu et al ‘Global warming will happen faster than you think’ Nature v564 30-32 2018
https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07586-5
Highlighted the aerosol trends, the impact on radiative forcing and EEI, and the climate implications
short article full text open access here
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329411074_Global_warming_will_happen_faster_than_we_think
The issue is that the true ENSO signal can’t be extracted from the global signal unless there is an adequate model for ENSO to be used to discriminate against. This can happen with sea-level rise as well but is more easily dealt with. Consider the tidal signal and how readily that can be removed from SLR since a calibrated tidal model can easily be produced.
But its even worse with the AMO signal, as that has the large multidecadal variability associated with it. How to discriminate that readily is a tough nut to crack since any trend can look like a part of AMO. Of course, that doesn’t mean we should give up trying to model these indices. My latest crack at it employs a new cross-validation metric that I have been experimenting with called Dynamic Time Warping. The use of DTW is quite common in time-series analysis such as speech recognition and other machine learning experiments. Described on the blog link below, with model fit examples for ENSO, AMO, and PDO (which also has a decadal discrimination issue).
https://geoenergymath.com/2024/03/08/dynamic-time-warping/
I’m quite convinced that climate modelers should look into a DTW metric as well since it can more easily match patterns that may be obscured by slight shifts in timing. (BTW, I also contributed the DTW algorithm to a ML symbolic regression GitHub project here: https://github.com/MilesCranmer/PySR/discussions/563#)
What does Hansen et al actually think, believe and say?
See for yourself here, ignore self-appointed third parties claiming they know, when they do not.
An Intimate Conversation with Leading Climate Scientists To Discuss New Research on Global Warming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXDWpBlPCY8
nov 2023
Ahead of the upcoming COP28, renowned climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen, and his co-authors present the novel findings of his new paper “Global Warming in the Pipeline.”
Read the paper: https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889?login=false
The event was moderated by Professor Jeffrey Sachs and features interventions by the following individuals:
– Dr. James Hansen, Lead Author and Director, Climate Science, Awareness, and Solutions, Columbia University Earth Institute
– Leon Simons, The Club of Rome Netherlands, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands
– Dr. Norman G. Loeb, CERES Principal Investigator, NASA
-Dr. George Tselioudis, Author and Research Physical Scientist, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
– Dr. Pushker Kharecha, Author and Associate Research Scientist, Director, Climate Science, Awareness, and Solutions, Columbia Climate School
Read the Paper in full, watch the presentation, think about what is written and said or don’t. Your choice.
Gavin, How alarmed are you by the Noaa report showing the yearly increase in Co2? https://research.noaa.gov/2024/04/05/no-sign-of-greenhouse-gases-increases-slowing-in-2023/ I am curious to know how well we are measuring our own carbon emissions vs. those that come about through natural negative or positive feedback loops, such increased fire, tilling soil, increases in decomposition, etc. Thanks
Two types of measurement of the artificial component are available to us.
1) We know how much fossil fuel is being burned around the world every year. That gives us an estimate via stoichiometry (e.g. we know all the molecular weights for C + O => CO2 or CH4 + 2 O2 => CO2 + 2 H2O).
2) We know the radioisotope signature of fossil fuel carbon versus carbon from the biosphere or from volcanoes.
Since the two tally, we can be pretty sure about the amount due to artificial sources.
I presume Gavin is too busy to answer your question, Mr. Pratt, so let me try:
Natural sources of CO2 were in equilibrium with natural sinks until the Industrial Revolution, when humans began transferring fossil carbon to the atmosphere by the gigatonnes. The rising atmospheric C02 concentration of the past three centuries is measured from gas bubbles trapped in glacial ice of known age, and directly from the atmosphere after 1960. At the pre-industrial, long-term (since the last glaciation) equilibrium CO2 concentration of about 280 ppm, global mean surface temperature remained at around 15 °C for thousands of years. Any increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration since about 1700 is anthropogenic, i.e. due to our own emissions exceeding the natural withdrawal rate. See this explanation on MIT’s climate portal: How much carbon dioxide does the Earth naturally absorb? Also see Analysis: Why scientists think 100% of global warming is due to humans by Dr. Zeke Hausfather on CarbonBrief. Does that answer your question?
Hello Christopher, Here in Brtish Columbia, not well. Especially wildfires, forest waste decomposition, hydropower reservoirs, permafrost, “Reported” GHG inventory numbers are about 1/5 of total.
Also short-term GWP/GTP of CH4 at 120(P. Balcombe et al) means that we are under accounting CH4 by almost a factor of 5! The basis of my thesis if I can find a faculty Supervisor, somewhere. Lol!
Cheers, Roger. roger.bryenton@earthlink.net
Mr. Pratt asked: “I am curious to know how well we are measuring our own carbon emissions vs. those that come about through natural negative or positive feedback loops, such increased fire, tilling soil, increases in decomposition, etc. ”
In case my first reply wasn’t a complete answer to his question, this book chapter on the National Academy of Sciences website, published a year ago, goes deep into the details of how anthropogenic GHG emissions are measured: Current Approaches for Quantifying Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gas Emissions.
Christopher Pratt says
6 Apr 2024 at 5:29 AM
Christopher be assured that no one here is in the least bit “alarmed by the Noaa report showing the yearly increase RATE in Co2”
No one cares or noticed his a yoy rate of 5ppm some months and over 4ppm for the year.
No, what they will emphasise is how “accurate” all their Data seems to be – to them. And how complex it all is to calculate, and how smart they are therefore.
Of course there is a total disconnect between actual atmospheric GHG concentrations and it’s warming potential increasing rapidly and human derived Data of energy use / estimated emissions. Never the twain shall meet.
They do not care. Fossil fuel energy use will continue to rise non-stop. But the Elect will still be claiming a high level of accuracy in all their numbers and the efficacy of Science to solve human problems – even when it doesn’t.
Reality is – stop expecting climate scientists to solve this dangerous catastrophic problem. They are way out of their depth. Not capable – this they have proved during the last 35 years repeatedly.
Solutions must be found elsewhere, from other more eclectic and wise sources. All the best, Cheers
PS for Christopher Pratt says
6 Apr 2024 at 5:29 AM
(a correction, sort of re CO2 ) I was amazed to just see 2023 global co2 levels were quite low +2.5 ppm or so, much lower than Moa and even they were under 3 ppm for the year 2023. Anyways…. it is what it is
Much denial about acceleration.
This article states “everybody is (or should be) expecting an acceleration of climate warming (in the absence of dramatic cuts in GHG emissions)”. The concern I have with this statement is that it totally leaves out the possibility that warming will be mitigated with higher albedo, with emission cuts only a marginal factor. It is entirely possible that acceleration could be prevented with sunlight reflection, but for some very weird reason this simple observation is just ignored by the mainstream climate industry.
Rober T. Apr. 7: “The concern I have with this statement is that it totally leaves out the possibility that warming will be mitigated with higher albedo,”
So why hasn’t it over the last 60-70 years?
If you want to prom0te your “concerns” (here: that perhaps we should continue burning fossil fuels, in the hope that the albedo although failed do so in the past, will bail us out in the future)
– show the plausible mechanism by which the future may be completely different from the past – i.e. how albedo may magically acquire new ability to cancel warming much more effectively than in the past.
Because the reality seem to suggest the opposite – in recent years albedo decreases instead of increasing, Which, ironically for your thesis, may cause/contribute to, not cancel, the warming acceleration ….
So why haven’t it done so far?
To advance your concerns you have to do your homework first – show a plausible mechanism that would make the future different from the past (change the past lack of success in mitigation into
Sorry, that first equation should have read C + O2 => CO2, not C + O => CO2. I wish there were a way to go back and edit these things. I’m lousy at proofreading.
Hello Gavin et al.
I believe much of the recent warming is due to short-term GWP/GTP of methane, at 120 CO2e, as per Paul Balcombe et al.
Although it is 1% of CO2 concentration, with warming at 120 x, it has an equal atmospheric heating effect. Yes?
Thus if we include massive wildfires, arctic permafrost melting, etc this helps explain recent exponential CH4 and thus global warming.
Thank you.
My email is [removed for online safety]
Cheers
Roger:
That is an existential analytic truth, so thank you. Some have understood this truth for many years including those you reference, and also Howarth at Cornell, etc.. However, no industry or government entity dare mention this factual reality because it would show the “fracking industry” to be a scam, and actually an accelerant for global heating (due to leakage all along the supply, processing, transport, storage and use chain). That heating is then followed throughout Earth’s history by biogeochemical feedback heating amplification of that initial heating.
I wonder how wrong it would be to say that since methane concentration is not going away but actually rising, and with some 100 – 120 GWP for the gas itself, then with an approaching 2000 ppb, or 2 ppm, then we have a rather constant 2 x 100 ppm,e for a total with 420 ppm (CO2) in excess of 600 ppm,e, excluding all other factors.
And Hansen says to throw in another 100 ppm,e for albedo change!
I find this a bit disingenuous. You published a Nature article saying “Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory” (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00816-z). But now you are saying there’s nothing to see here. On the one hand it’s a big deal, but now oops it’s nothing. Some humility would be helpful.
Hansen (and Hausfather) deserve more credit for anticipating and explaining the “huge heat anomaly” on the basis of a reduction in sulfur in shipping fuels.
https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shipping-rules-are-affecting-global-warming/
Hansen makes specific estimates and predictions, based partly on paleodata, that Charney (fast-feedback) equilibrium climate sensitivity is 4.8°C ± 1.2, and notes this is well above the 3°C central estimate and range of 2.5 to 4ºC in CMIP6 projections.
Screening models to fit past trends is a contrivance that ignores the physical processes underlying the models. This lot don’t fit so we just throw them away.
Hansen at least has a physical explaination for the acceleration and a well constrained range based on that physics.
Hansen may be wrong but his methods a least have a better physical explanation.
Bruce Tabor says
7 Apr 2024 at 11:18 AM
HI Bruce, thanks for your comment which I mostly agree with wholeheartedly.
Where I vary is that Hausfather understates the impacts of the reduction of Aerosols by an oder of magnitude. eg see his comment here per yoru link :
“Carbon Brief analysis shows that the likely side-effect of the 2020 regulations to cut air pollution from shipping is to increase global temperatures by around 0.05C by 2050. This is equivalent to approximately two additional years of emissions.”
Please see my comment below https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/much-ado-about-acceleration/#comment-821129
and what Hansen says — it’s already 0.5C impact already! Equivalent to a CO2 increase of 40ppm just from the Shipping Aerosols reduction (iirc)….. or 100ppm all up the variance in ASR recently.
As Hansen says this is a BFD …. a big f***ing deal !
also see
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/unforced-variations-apr-2024/#comment-821103
and my lists of refs there fwiw.
All the best. Time and Data will resolve this soon enough. Because Opinions and Entrenched Beliefs do not count.
Bruce Tabor,
You quote the title of the Nature article rather than the article itself which says “If the anomaly does not stabilize by August — a reasonable expectation based on previous El Niño events — then the world will be in uncharted territory.” In previous El Niño events, the global temperature anomaly has peaked in the spring of following year and thus resumed a bit of ‘stability’ by the following August.
The yet unexplained temperature anomaly of 2023 led to the worry expressed by many that the ” “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas” temperatures of 2023 would be added-to by the El Niño peak temperature. Into 2024 and the global temperatures have been falling since November so this worry has passed.
And as that spring peak of global El Niño warming has been appearing earlier through recent El Niño events – 1998 May, 2010 early April, 2016 February and this last a big response, it leads me to wonder in the absence of anything else explaining the 2023 temperatures – were those ” “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas” temperatures of 2023 the global response to El Niño, now come even earlier and more strongly due to the warming world?
But note that I say there is an“absence of anything else” being suggested that explains properly 2023. The AGW acceleration argued by Hansen et al (2023) doesn’t. The Hausfather article even says it doesn’t.
And I would add that Hansen et al (2023) do not give their ECS estimates as the reason for the argued acceleration. The reason given is the aerosol thing and his analysis backing that up falls rather heavily on the findings of Brauer et al (2020) ‘The Turning Point of the Aerosol Era’. Perhaps rather too heavily.
As for the main thrust of argument suggesting the OP above is papering over differences between Hansen et al (2023) and other more accepted climate analyses – that is perhaps best explained by one word.
In his AGW acceleration explainer Zeke Hausfather tells us
The “one word” is emboldened.
A more detailed (less-broad) look shows Hansen is suggesting that net AGW forcing has been running at +0.3Wm^-2/decade but now due to the reversal of an accumulated -1.5Wm^-2 aerosol forcing, that net forcing will have increased to +0.5Wm^-2 or +0.6Wm^-2/decade “for a few decades post-2010”. Thus we get a sudden acceleration in AGW temperature rise. Previously this has been +0.18ºC/decade (and remarkably constant).
Hansen et al project a new rate of AGW +0.27 to +0.36ºC/decade for the period 2011-50.
Hausefather compares this with the AR6 2015-50 rate (SSP2-4.5) of +0.17 to +0.34ºC/decade and to the full CMIP ensemble +0.2 to +0.4ºC/decade and calls these “broadly in line”.
The Hansen et al projected rate is the highest but starting from a lower 2011 point. So the central projections of Hansen et al match the CMIP ensemble central projections and the AR6 central projection sits 0.2ºC below.
That is the sum total of detail folk are hand-waving over.
MA Rodger says
10 Apr 2024 at 5:32 AM
“..the global response to El Niño, now come even earlier and more strongly due to the warming world?”
NK: A genuine curiosity but not relevant to the point at hand and this short commentary by Gavin on RC, and his other comments this year about “hansen/record temp spike”
MAR: “The AGW acceleration argued by Hansen et al (2023) doesn’t. The Hausfather article even says it doesn’t.”:
NK: Hansen’s arguments do explain it – assuming his assumptions and basis are correct. Hausfather is wrong and entirely dismisses, without evidence claiming Hansen is wrong. Hausfather relies on existing assumptions (contained in AR6/CMIP6/ECS/SOx aerosol forcing numbers etc) that Hansen rejects outright – and explains why in his Pipeline paper and in other commentary/articles. Hausfather (and all the others Gavin included) simply DENY Hansen is correct based on their own assumptions they are correct and the assumptions they rely on are correct.
No one has actually argued against the details Hansen et al have argued, nor backed up their own denials with solid evidence that I have seen or heard about. Instead they use rhetoric and narratives; not evidence. Which is the same thing that MAR does here. He merely denies Hansen is correct while ignoring the evidence and the arguments Hansen presents. .
MAR: “this acceleration is broadly in line with projections from the latest generation of climate models and the recent sixth assessment report (AR6) ”
NK: That is not correct. Any slight increase in warming rate of the models is a coincidence unrelated to the reasons given by Hansen et al. They might “appear to agree” but they agree for all the wrong reasons. The reasons given are totally different and unconnected by each “side”. Correlations does not equal Causation.
Secondly, it is made easier for anyone’s alt projections to “broadly be in line with models/ar6” because those projections in themselves are so broad already one could drive a bus through them. What blatantly obvious also is the observations data has suddenly swung from the lower end of the range to the extreme top of that very BROAD range in 2023 — after floating well below the Mean for over a decade plus.
The “right answers” will only be found in accurate Data, and not broad ranges in modeled graphs and their coloured distributions. In the hard evidence not visual yardsticks comparing what is “apples with oranges” and presenting such depictions as being based on the same things when they are not.
MAR: “…Hansen et al (2023) do not give their ECS estimates as the reason for the argued acceleration.”
NK: Another incorrect inaccurate claim, and again not supported by any evidence at all by MAR. This is “rhetoric” not science nor evidence. It begs the question if MAR has read the Paper and articles by Hansen, heard his in-depth explanations in multiple interviews/videos, let alone understood what was being said.
Because Hansen makes patently clear that what happened in 2023 is very much so partially based upon the accepted modeled/AR6 numbers for ECS @ 3.0C being wrong … his arguments being ECS is closer to the midpoint of 4.8C. He says this repeatedly.
And that is precisely why when SOx Aerosols have bee rapidly reduced after a long term reduction period the effects have been so high in temperature changes because the Forcing effects of this change are far greater then the “accepted science” assumed by the IPCC and the CMIP6 data suggests. Hansen in fact specifically points to the reasons for the temperature Spike in 2023 over and above that expected from El Nino —- Hansen et al explain Gavin’s missing 0.2C perfectly well!
People just need to read what he has written and stop listening to Hausfather et al who only deny what Hansen says but do not prove he is wrong or show any errors in his work. Instead they ignore it then deny it completely – as MAR does here again.
MAR: lastly doubles down to say: ” So the central projections of Hansen et al match the CMIP ensemble central projections and the AR6 central projection sits 0.2ºC below.”
NK: It only appears so, but For All the Wrong Reasons!
Please read the Hansen’s paper, read his articles, and listen to his explanations in interviews and videos if you wish to the know what it contains and what the Hansen et al arguments really are as to why the ECS and the CMIP6 models (plus all the assumptions mainstream climate scientists are relying upon to deny what Hansen says) are wrong,.
No hand-waving or histrionics are required because REFS with good Data alone are sufficient:
Conversation with Leading Climate Scientists To Discuss New Research on Global Warming
Hansen et al Pipeline paper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXDWpBlPCY8
Dr. James E. Hansen in Conversation with Paul Beckwith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTWUJ8Lvl-U
Global warming in the pipeline James E Hansen et al 2023
https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889?searchresult=1&login=false
Citations
https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?cites=4045509275128937674&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en
Climate Impact of Decreasing Atmospheric Sulphate Aerosols and the Risk of a Termination Shock – November 2021 Leon Simons, James E. Hansen, Yann Dufournet
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356378673_Climate_Impact_of_Decreasing_Atmospheric_Sulphate_Aerosols_and_the_Risk_of_a_Termination_Shock?channel=doi&linkId=619775253068c54fa50008bb&showFulltext=true
Global Warming Acceleration: Hope vs Hopium
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/Hopium.MarchEmail.2024.03.29.pdf
Global Warming Acceleration: Causes and Consequences
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/AnnualT2023.2024.01.12.pdf
Global Warming is Accelerating. Why? Will We Fly Blind?
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/FlyingBlind.14September2023.pdf
The Climate Dice are Loaded. Now, a New Frontier?
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/ClimateDice.13July2023.pdf
Mainstream Climate Science: The New Denialism?
March 2024 – Jonathon Porritt
https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1bci3cy/mainstream_climate_science_the_new_denialism/?rdt=44559
Kind Regards …
MA Rodger says
10 Apr 2024 at 5:32 AM
“..the global response to El Niño, now come even earlier and more strongly due to the warming world?”
NK: A genuine curiosity but I’ll pass because it’s off-topic for this thread/article about Hansen;s various hypotheses of late and the 2023 into 2024 record temp spikes
MAR: “The AGW acceleration argued by Hansen et al (2023) doesn’t. The Hausfather article even says it doesn’t.”:
NK: IMO Hansen’s arguments do explain it – assuming his assumptions of the evidence / limited evidence and basic facts are correct. Hansen this willl take some time to be confirmed beyond doubt.
Whereas Hausfather is wrong imo and he entirely dismisses the arguments, without providing any direct evidence, simply claiming Hansen is wrong. Hausfather relies on existing assumptions (contained in AR6/CMIP6/ECS/SOx aerosol forcing numbers etc) which Hansen rejects outright – and explains why in his Pipeline paper and in other commentary/articles. Hausfather (and all the others Gavin included) just deny Hansen is correct based on their own assumptions perspectives they are correct, the evidence they rely upon is correct, and all the assumptions within the Models they rely on are also correct.
But no where do they, or have they since 2022 shown using evidence / data 9vs the existing assumptions) beyond doubt that Hansen’s work is wrong or exactly where and why it is wrong.
Hansen says in late March 2024 —
“The scientists reject, without any evidence to the contrary, the evidence we presented that IPCC’s best estimates for climate sensitivity and human-made aerosol forcing are substantial underestimates. They rule out, without evidence, our suggestion that decreases of aerosols, especially those produced by ships, are a significant climate forcing that is causing global warming acceleration.” See Page 3 –
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/Hopium.MarchEmail.2024.03.29.pdf
There have been many rhetorical assertions made, but I am not aware of anyone who has actually argued against the details evidence or analysis Hansen et al have argued for, nor have others backed up their own denials Hansen could be right with solid evidence — well none that I have seen or heard about.
Instead there has been much debating rhetoric and narratives deployed; but not evidence. Which is the same thing that MAR is doing here above. He’s debating without providing any specific evidence or data to challnege what Hansen et al have said and presented in published peer reviewed papers … plus his many artiles etc.
Again, MAR merely denies Hansen is correct while ignoring the evidence and the arguments Hansen presents. .
MAR: “this acceleration is broadly in line with projections from the latest generation of climate models and the recent sixth assessment report (AR6) ”
NK: I cannot see that is correct. The current acceleration is nothing like that shown in AR6. It is already more than that shown by Hansen in his Pipeline paper. Any slight increase in warming rate of the models is a coincidence unrelated to the reasons given by Hansen et al. These “graphs” might “appear to agree” but they agree for all the wrong reasons.
The reasons given are totally different and unconnected by each “side”. Correlations does not equal Causation. These two Graphs are based on completely different assumptions and climate forcing behavior. Saying they “look the same” misrepresents / distorts how they were created.
Secondly, it is made easier for anyone’s alt projections to “broadly be in line with models/ar6” because those projections in themselves are so broad already one could drive a bus through them (- that was rhetorical exaggeration not science.) What should also be obvious imho is the observations data has suddenly swung from the lower end of the range to the extreme top of that very BROAD range in 2023 — after floating well below the Mean for over a decade plus. HOw so? Maybe enso maybe more than enso alone.
The “right answers” will only be found in accurate Data, and not broad ranges in modeled graphs and their coloured distributions. In the hard evidence not visual yardsticks comparing what is “apples with oranges” and presenting such depictions as being based on the same things when they are not.
MAR: “…Hansen et al (2023) do not give their ECS estimates as the reason for the argued acceleration.”
NK: Another incorrect inaccurate claim imo, and again not supported by any evidence provided by MAR. This is “rhetoric” not science nor evidence – which is fine, it’s ok to discuss things. But it begs the question if MAR has read / is clear on what Hansen has actually already provided?
Because (to me iirc) Hansen makes patently clear that what happened in 2023 is very much partially based upon the accepted modeled/AR6 numbers for ECS @ 3.0C being wrong … his arguments being ECS is closer to the midpoint of 4.8C. He says this repeatedly.
And that is precisely why when SOx Aerosols have bee rapidly reduced after a long term reduction period the effects have been so high in temperature changes because the Forcing effects of this aerosol change are far greater at a ECS of 4.8C than at the “accepted science” assumed by the IPCC and the CMIP6 data suggests.
iirc Hansen in fact specifically points to these reasons for the temperature Spike in 2023 over and above that expected from a regular El Nino — it’s the aerosols forcing manifesting — and imo from what I have read (understood) is that Hansen et al explains Gavin’s “missing 0.2C” perfectly well!
It’s the crux of Hansen’s argument / hypothesis behind his Paper and articles of late.
I still posit people just need to carefully read what he has written and put everyone else on pause while they take it all in.
MAR: lastly doubles down to say: ” So the central projections of Hansen et al match the CMIP ensemble central projections and the AR6 central projection sits 0.2ºC below.”
NK: It only appears so, but For All the Wrong Reasons!
Please read the Hansen’s paper, read his articles, and listen to his explanations in interviews and videos if you wish to the know what it contains and what the Hansen et al arguments really are as to why the ECS and the CMIP6 models (plus all the assumptions mainstream climate scientists are relying upon to deny what Hansen says) are wrong,.
Repeating that Hansen has said these matters will be resolved as time unfolds and ore Data comes to hand this year and the next couple as well. So, no hand-waving or histrionics are required because REFS with good Data alone will be sufficient to judge who is right: In the meantime at least read first hand what Hansen et al are actually saying – because much has been distorted far beyond his words and numbers.
In particular Hansen’s many articles of late —
Global Warming Acceleration: Hope vs Hopium
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/Hopium.MarchEmail.2024.03.29.pdf
Global Warming Acceleration: Causes and Consequences
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/AnnualT2023.2024.01.12.pdf
Global Warming is Accelerating. Why? Will We Fly Blind?
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/FlyingBlind.14September2023.pdf
The Climate Dice are Loaded. Now, a New Frontier?
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/ClimateDice.13July2023.pdf
Additional related Refs can be found on UV
Ned Kelly says — 9 Apr 2024 at 2:12 AM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/unforced-variations-apr-2024/#comment-821121
– Scroll to see the series of posts with Hansen related links.
Kind Regards NK
Ned Kelly (10 Apr, 0532hrs & 11 Apr, 708hrs),
If you insist on being so prolific (& verbose) in these RC threads, you do need to avoid writing nonsense.
❶ (1) So speculation that the “bananas” temperatures of 2023 based on evidence from the temperature record is “not relevant” to what you term the “hansen/record temp spike” when obviously it does have, as this “record temp spike” = the “bananas”.
❷ (2) You again say Hansen’s arguments explain the “record temp spike”/“bananas”? You say this requires “assuming his assumptions and basis are correct” but do not then explain this bold statement. I suppose Hansen et al (2023) could be wielded to cobble together an explanation for the “record temp spike”/“bananas”, but it does not explicitly do so, understandable as it was first submitted prior to the arrival of the “record temp spike”/“bananas”. And this absence was my point (which you attempt to refute). Your silence on the explanation here should not be replaced by silly hand-waving and ad hominem insults.
You then continue by insisting Hausfather is wrong. Oddly, his account was previously introduced (not by you, apparently, but you made no objection) to support this same bold assertion. Your reason for your objecting now perhaps mixes up two separate Hausfather articles. The one at issue here (actually Hausfather & Forster which was referenced) does not mention Hansen but simply assesses the impact of reduced shipping pollution and concludes it is small.
❸(3) I consider your dismissal of the ‘broad argument as more froth and breathy hand-waving. Refuting it would be to suggest there is some level of sense hidden within it. (Maybe there is. Perhaps the two graphs were drawn using incompatible inks!) There is not.
❹(4) The world-wide-web may hold countless “multiple interviews/videos” of Hansen but the paper Hansen et al (2023) is included included (“the Paper” I am accused of not reading) in your sources of your ECS assertions. So in absence of any other proper reference, Hansen et al (2023) will be the sole point of reference (as it was in my comment you take issue-with).
Hansen et al argue that the pre-2010 warming was bring driven by a net anthropogenic forcing ΔF of +0.3Wm^-2 and post-2010 ΔF=+0.5Wm^-2 or +0.6Wm^-2. Thus the rate of global warming would increase from the recorded +0.18ºC pre-2010 to +0.27ºC-+0.36ºC/decade. ECS (whatever its value) is a constant both pre- & post-2010. (Perhaps you need some educating on the reason behind ECS being either high or low.)
❺(5) “lastly” (Oh that it were!!!)
I’m accused of being wrong and again not having read Hansen et al and the rest of the canon (although we await the equivalent of the Councils of Hippo/Carthage so heresy is understandable but still of course entirely unforgivable!!). I note the list of videos and stuff I’m supposed to use to convert me into a true believer prominently includes the conference paper (or the abstract for it) by that dreadful spouter Leon Simons. This Gospel according to Leon Simons should be properly written up and published but outside the conference papers (which may provide a proper account) we have but the abstract which itself exhibits poor scholarship. (Note the reference to Loeb et al (2021) badly misrepresents to paper.) (Note the ambiguity set out in the concluding remarks is very poorly explained – is the difficulty in the prediction of future emissions or the impact of such emissions?)
Ned Kelly,
You appear as incapable of managing your commenting as you were with your previous sock-puppeteering (woof woof). If you had half a brain you would be able to collect the points of error you see in my comment and directly rebut them. Instead all you are able to manage is pantomime and a long list of URLs which presumably contain thousands of words of corrective punishment. (Perhaps we should be grateful that that vast verbiage remains stuck down those URLs and is not plastered into these comment threads adding to your already over-bearing presence.)
And of course, if you had a full grasp of things, you would appreciate the situation. That is as follows:-
The negative climate forcing from aerosols had grown to become equal in magnitude to perhaps three decades-worth of the AGW forcings, something like -1.5Wm^-2. This negative forcing would thus masked a considerable part of the total AGW forcing (today about +4Wm^-2 according to NOAA AGGI). There is a lot of uncertainty with this aerosol effect but let’s accept these numbers and the effective global equivalence of them.
There is additionally uncertainty over the timing of the build-up of the aerosol effect and knowing how quickly it will diminish, both recently and in future.
Hansen et al takes a stab at this all with his net forcing pre-2010 of +0.3Wm^-2 and +0.5/0.6Wm^-2 post-2010 and thus an increase in the AGW ΔT from +0.18ºC/decade to +0.32ºC/decade (as per their Fig 24. And the logic perhaps is that there is several decades of this boosted AGW (although the positive AGW should be subject to mitigating factors through those decades if mankind has even half a brain).
Of course aerosols could reduced more quickly and/or not completely, as per Bauer et al (2022) (which is a major source used by Hansen et al 2023) and adopting the simplistic on/off sequence of Hansen et al (2023) may be a poor choice based solely on the presently apparent break-point in the rate of ΔT in 2013.
What remains unproven (except in the imagination of Leon Simons and his disciples) is the connection between aerosols and the 2023 “bananas” temperatures. There has been no attempt to explain the physics of such a connection and until that is done (not an impossible task) the connection remains laughable.
[As it is, the aerosols -> “bananas” argument is be analogous to saying the football suddenly changed its trajectory and missed the goal because there was a sudden gust of wind (and there was) which caught it and whisked it away into the crowd at the other end of the ground. Of course, stuff like that doesn’t just happen. Footballs are not balloons!!]
Ned Kelly. You may or may not agree with this situational account but you are welcome to present sensible points of disagreement.
MAR. NK did post material where Hansen has argued that reductions in industrial aerosols going back more than ten years added to reductions in the shipping aerosols in 2020 warmed the oceans and this heat energy all came out in the 2023 the unusually hot year. Seems like a possible physics based mechanism. We know accumulating heat can come out later in el nino years.
I was initially sceptical that shipping aerosol reductions would be enough to explain things, because the 2023 el nino was only moderate, but when you factor in industrial aerosols reductions going back 10 years thats a lot of warming building up.
However I’m reluctant to take firm sides on the 2023 issue, because I don’t have enough technical knowledge. I cant find NKs specific Hansen reference, because he posts so many.
MAR says: “Blah blah blah rhetoric.”
I have provided multiple refs links and quotes. On this thread and also UV. I have explained my thinking more than enough already.
What you do with that MAR s not my problem. Nor do I actually care.
Kind regards
Anyways …..
NK. MAR provides substance.* You respond with insults.
See the difference? Don’t bother with ‘kind regards’.
*MARodger: It’s time to let him crow on his heap of self righteousness, no matter how much it might stink. You’re feeding him and he will bore on … and on … and on. The rest of us deserve a break.
NK: Whatever
I imagine a world in which the failure to influence policymakers is more important to the egos of climate scientists than who is more accurate in their calculation of the consequences of that failure.
Maybe if climate scientists started calling this disease “atmospheric poisoning” instead of the vague term :”climate change” which the public doesn’t understand we’d summon more political will.
I long for the day when scientists are more concerned with their failure to influence policymakers than with their egos about who can best quantify the result of that failure.
The science of why policymakers are not responding to a threat which promises to disrupt global supplies and result in a massive involuntary population reduction is far more important than splitting hairs over arguments like this.
We have the solution. We last unpacked it here in America in 1942 when we rationed essential goods like gasoline, butter and coffee in the effort to win a war.
CO2 rationing is coming. Much later than ideal, but it is inevitable.
Rich, I can only guess that you don’t know too many scientists. We’re an odd bunch, and most of us would much rather get lost in the intricacies of a model or an experiment than talk to a politician.
Climate scientists have don their job in spades. They have provided overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence that we are changing the climate and that it poses significant risks to physical and economic health. It is not the fault of the science or the scientists that people have largely turned out to be too stupid to understand the threat.
If I recall correctly, this was predicted years ago as the ultimate fallback position when the denial loop finally breaks down — blame the scientists. I envision James Inhofe returning to the Senate floor to proclaim “well gosh, I’m the victim here. I was all open-minded and ready to accept the evidence if only you’d tried harder to convince me.”
Ray et al.: The takeover by the class bore who exploits RealClimate’s audience to make himself feel he’s doing something is almost complete. Sad. Here’s Katharine Hayhoe who does real work, much preferable to yelling at people who already know how bad things are.
“Contrary to what many think, I don’t spend my time talking to dismissives and my only helpful tip is this: don’t bother, unless (a) you enjoy arguing and never getting anywhere or (b) there are other people listening who need to know there are solid answers to their objections.”
It hardly feels worth trying to get a word in edgewise. Meanwhile, there’s a big extreme weather outbreak in New Orleans/Baton Rouge area. Live reports here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbWPQNoQMwU [this will probably be closed by the time this is posted]
Rich Kleinman says
8 Apr 2024 at 10:59 AM
Thankyou Rich. You hit the nail on the head there.
Contrary to Ray’s “opinion” it is the climate scientists fault they have repeatedly and profoundly failed to communicate and influence both politicians and the general public.
That is 100% THEIR RESPONSIBILITY ALONE – and it still is – no different than Einstein et al communicating the dire threat of Nuclear Weapons to the world in the 1940s onward.
Rich is especially right because there is a elect group of mainstream celebrity climate scientists who care far more about themselves and their Models being right than anything else in the world!
They do not influence politicians but they do influence and lord it over (or try to) any climate scientists who says a word against their ELECT OPINIONS. They essentially are able to control the Media Narratives now – and suppress reporting of alternative views and new studies being published.
It is what they do naturally. They believe they are right, and always will be – and they MUST defend themselves and their Science from “evil science deniers” — there is a large degree of self-inflicted exaggerated paranoia going on in this circle – Their enemies surround them and are attacking them 24/7
That is all they see now. Hansen is just as bad now – a dire threat – in their very distorted view of the world
The proof is there for all to see – all one needs to do is actually open your eyes and look. It is everywhere and has been for years. They cannot stop themselves actually.
Oh, bollocks, codswallop and buncombe. The problem is entirely the fault of those deliberately peddling lies about this. Victor, for instance. Exxon, for another (and much bigger). And… well, we could all name a boatload of ’em.
THEY are the ones to blame.
Kevin McKinney says
12 Apr 2024 at 2:02 PM
It’s Victors Fault!
Oh please. Listen to what you are saying!
“it is the climate scientists fault they have repeatedly and profoundly failed to communicate and influence both politicians and the general public. ”
I don’t agree with this assertion at all. Climate scientists have been publishing the science behind climate change, the cause (human activities) and the risks of continuing on a business as usual path for decades. That is the job of scientists, to publish the best understanding of our world based on a combination of current understanding, observation, experiment, facts and logic and they can do no more. The question now we know and have known for decades is what we do about it, and that is not a scientific issue, that is a value issue. There are people who believe it is serious enough that we should be transitioning to sustainability and large emissions reductions asap. There are people who believe we should do nothing that compromises personal freedom and convenience, and there are people who don’t care because even if the consequences are catastrophic, they’ll be dead and won’t have to deal with it. If people on a country-population scale collectively decide to do nothing more than the easy actions which ultimately achieve little because they like their five long haul flight holidays a year, their nice suburban house with a well paid job 50 miles away that they have to drive too, and regularly buying new stuff that is perfectly usable because it stimulates fluffy feelings, or alternatively, because they are struggling to makle ends meet and choosing between heating and eating is far more important to them, despite what scientists have been saying since well before I was born, how can they be held responsible? In the end you can tell people what you like but you cannot force them to listen, take notice and act (at least not without dictatorial measures). It is no different to a doctor warning a patient they need to improve their diet and do more exercise otherwise they are at serious risk of a major heart attack, and the patient refuses because they prefer eating sugary fatty foods and lounging around. Any heart attack that consequencly happens is not the fault of the doctor.
Adam Lea.
I agree with you. I would just add another reason that people don’t listen to experts and why mitigation is slow is the way our brains are hardwired to respond best to immediate threats not longer term challenges like the climate problem. As previously explained. Its an unpleasant truth, that means mitigation might only be at moderate levels until climate change takes some sort of sudden and dramatic turn for the worse.
Ned Kelly seems to be arguing (from his other posts) that if climate scientists were a bit more dramatic in their use of language and less reticent in their predictions it would galvanise the public to take much stronger action. I have my doubts. James Hansen is a very strong communicator and he doesn’t understate the risks for society, and he hasn’t been able to convince governments or the public to take drastic action.
Another example. If people dont see 1 – 2 M SLR this century as a problem its hard to see why they would see 3M or more as a problem and suddenly take massive action.
That said I do sincerely hope scientists communicate clearly, concisely and incisively and non emotively, and tell everyone how bad it will get. This seems a safe approach. And I well aware I could communicate better myself. BUT scientists have communicated the scientific findings in detail, and I just don’t see that scientists communications ‘style’ is a magic wand of some sort that would make a massive difference..
nigelj: – Another example. If people dont see 1 – 2 M SLR this century as a problem its hard to see why they would see 3M or more as a problem and suddenly take massive action.”
I’d suggest most people base their “world view” on past experiences, which for the past 6,000 years or so of human history, has been remarkably stable as far as SLR is concerned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Holocene_sea_level_rise#/media/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
I’d suggest for most people, SLR is simply not on their ‘radar’.
Only those people that are living on or near low-lying coastal lands are directly experiencing the consequences of an accelerating and relentless SLR.
The “sea level rise deniers” ignore the realities faced by property owners and local governments struggling to deal with “blue sky flooding events” happening more each decade due to rising sea level.
https://johnenglander.net/5-dumb-sea-level-rise-denials/
Per the WMO’s Mar 2024 report State of the Global Climate 2023, in Fig 6 (on page 6):
• 2.13 mm/year (averaged from period Jan 1993 through Dec 2002);
• 3.33 mm/year (averaged from period Jan 2003 through Dec 2012);
• 4.77 mm/year (averaged from period Jan 1014 through Dec 2023);
SLR acceleration at 0.12 ± 0.05 mm/y².
https://library.wmo.int/records/item/68835-state-of-the-global-climate-2023
The rate of SLR increasing from 2.13 mm/y to the 4.77 mm/y, over the 21-year period, yields an annual acceleration of 3.91%, or about an 18-year doubling rate.
I’d suggest most people intuitively don’t fully understand that the rate of SLR of around 5.0 mm/y (now, i.e. in 2024) will inevitably accelerate and become 10 mm/y in a decade or so, which then becomes 20 mm/y in another decade or so, and so on. Within the duration of a human lifetime the rate of SLR becomes substantial.
The late Albert Allen Bartlett said:
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Allen_Bartlett
The acceleration of the rate of SLR will continue while ever the energy inputs into the Earth System, and more particularly into the cryosphere and oceans, increase.
That raises critical questions about whether it would be worthwhile to continue defending coastal infrastructure/property, or instead, abandon them and retreat. How do you defend against an apparently relentless SLR?
Thanks for the comment Adam Lea.
Keeping in mind, Heart attacks only kill the patient – not everyone living around him. There’s also the lack of relevance in such analogies / logical fallacies.
My Wisdom Rule #27:
“Never engage with people who assert things that are not actually facts,
and pull up completely irrelevant ones, and massively over-simplify things,
most especially when it comes to climate change”.
But that’s OK to me because it’s proven unavoidable. We can’t help it. I’ve provided many useful related refs before on this topic, there is no point repeating them. People believe what they believe.
Meanwhile there are people like kevin anderson have been “right” for almost 20 years now
Choosing to Fail, with Climate Scientist Kevin Anderson
https://invidious.poast.org/watch?v=tVFSJINGueM&t=1000s
[ how many will instead choose to argue if he is really a climate scientists or not? ]
Back to the topic of the thread though, and what climate scientists do and say –
AND Note in particular what James Hansen says in late March 2024 —
“The scientists reject, without any evidence to the contrary, the evidence we presented that IPCC’s best estimates for climate sensitivity and human-made aerosol forcing are substantial underestimates. They rule out, without evidence, our suggestion that decreases of aerosols, especially those produced by ships, are a significant climate forcing that is causing global warming acceleration.” See Page 3 –
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/Hopium.MarchEmail.2024.03.29.pdf
FWIW this is Mann’s position on Hansen’s work via Twitter/X
Ned Kelly says – 3 Apr 2024 at 9:46 PM
“It is absolutely absurd to attribute the warming spike to aerosols.” M Mann
See his full comment here:-
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/unforced-variations-apr-2024/#comment-820882
Kind regards ….
Rich Kleinman:
I agree with this much of your comment, although I wouldn’t call arguments about acceleration “splitting hairs”. For the rest, I’ll echo Ray and spilgard: climate scientists have done the job they set out to do, and any attempt to blame them for the lack of collective action to date should be firmly rejected.
How did I come to that opinion, you ask? I was never employed to publish peer-reviewed research, but I trained in physical and biological sciences to the doctoral level before finding an easier way to make a living. I can tell you that of the people I know who do publish their work in the natural sciences, few if any would consider it their job to influence policy makers. The science of why policymakers aren’t responding to the demonstrated threat of climate change, OTOH, is largely within the realm of the behavioral sciences, namely Economics, Psychology, Sociology, and even “Political Science”. I, for one, would like to see more expert discussion of those methodologically distinct fields here on RC; I know RC’s authors are primarily physical scientists, however, and that managing comments on guest posts would distract the moderators even more from their day jobs. Yet having been briefly exposed to Environmental Economics, I’m cognizant of anthropogenic global warming as the biggest Tragedy of the Commons in human history. And I’m all too aware that any collective action against shared threats, especially on a global scale, is only partially influenced by the peer-reviewed findings of natural science! For better or worse, philosophers are not today’s kings.
In Re to Mal Adapted, 10 Apr 2024 at 11:58 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/much-ado-about-acceleration/#comment-821198
Dear MA,
I think that the people complaining about laziness or imcompetence of
– climate scientists allegedly not informing the public and/or politicians properly,
– politicians allegedly not listening to climate scientists and
– climate denialists in general public allegedly undermining the necessary “climate saving” action
forget that feasibility of their plans depends on the good will of despotic regimes like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and of powerful corporations that do not have any clear motivation to participate thereon, and often do have even a quite opposite motivation.
Personally, I see plans based on the assumption of a such common good will ridiculous.
There is no clear motivation even for a broad public in rich countries, as you can see on protests of “yellow coats” in France and like.
That is why I seek the ways how various technical transformations that might be helpful for the desired purpose (like fuel replacement with electricity from (truly) renewable sources like wind and sun) could be made economically attractive.
An example of such efforts might be providing a technology for a much cheaper electricity storage than ever before. That could in my opinion incentivize the desired transformation to renewable energy sources significantly more efficiently and make it much cheaper and much quicker than any subsidies. And that leaves me with the fact that subsidies are always provided at the expense of other important needs, such as e.g. defence against despotic regimes in neighbourhood.
Unfortunately, the more I deal with the idea of “making transformation to renewables economically attractive” and the more I discuss possible partial solutions therefor, the more I see how counter-productive is the widespread obsession with the centrally organized and subsidies-based top-down approach which is quite generaly, in media as well as on this discussion forum, considered as the single available solution, although it is based on the above mentioned questionable assumption of a general common good will.
Greetings
Tomáš
I would say, Tomas, that it’s not an assumption of “a general common good will”–that’s clearly absent in many polities today. What it is, is an assumption of a general enlightened self-interest.
Unfortunately, that commodity–to call it so–appears also to be in shorter supply than many of us had assumed. I’m somewhat hopeful that there is enough enlightenment–by which I mean mostly the ability to face plain facts honestly–to get us through this crisis without bringing the worst consequences down on our heads. (Clearly, I can’t write “unscathed”, as that is a ship that sailed long ago.) But the relative popularity of Trump clearly illustrates that that is not a ‘slam dunk’ by any means.
In Re to Kevin McKinney, 16 Apr 2024 at 10:13 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/much-ado-about-acceleration/#comment-821354
Hallo Kevin,
Thank you very much for your feedback.
It appears that we have similar views on this topics, however, I am not going to arrive at analyzing fine differences between various grounds of human preference for immediate benefits over long-term benefits. I would like to just say that I doubt that an enlightenment about (supposed) long-term threats and about (more or less uncertain) benefits of a prevention against such threats is efficient if said prevention comprises any short-term threats / risks / discomfort for the participants.
In this respect, I think that policies directed to prevention and/or mitigation of such long-term threats and risks should not rely on the enlightenment but rather seek measures that do not comprise obvious short-term discomfort hampering their public acceptance. Ideal and most effective way towards such goals might in my opinion consist in finding measures and policies that combine the desired long-term benefit with some short-term benefits.
In other words, you will meet very few “denialists” if you offer climate change mitigation measures that almost everyone will benefit from. Offer electric cars that are cheaper and perform better than cars with an internal combustion engine, and you will face hardly any opposition against them. Offer electricity that is cheaper and more convenient than fuel, and hardly anybody will protest.
It works in my opinion also oppositely. There might be known long-term risks, but if you offer a short-term benefit, there arises an extremely strong push to somehow cope with the risk, so that it becomes generally acceptable. This weekend, I searched a little bit for history of sodium industrial use and read again about the fascinating history of industrial tetraethyl lead use that is tightly linked to sodium. If you read German or are willing to use translater, it is amazingly summarized on German Wikipedia
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethylblei
I think this impressive story illustrates amazingly how the above mentioned societal mechanism opened the way towards a massive environmental pollution despite of known human health risks, and helped maintaining it for decades.
It is why I look sceptically on all well meant efforts to convince (“enlighten”) people that climate change mitigation is what they really NEED, and see as much more promising the indirect approach – finding how they will WANT it. And the simplest way how to persuade peole is usually through MONEY – if we can earn and/or spare them, most of us will do so.
I think human curiosity and creativity and human desire for a better, more convenient and more pleasant life are the strongest driving forces of societal changes. Policies that harness them have the best prospect to succeed, policies that neglect or suppress them are very likely to fail – irrespective whether the idea behind them is noble or rogue.
If I say “cheaper”, I do not mean that you have to do so by subsidizing the respective goods, according to well-proven principle “rob Peter to pay Paul”. Another way how to make goods cheaper and better is disruptive technical innovation, a thing that is, unfortunately, particualrly efficiently suppressed by publicly subsidizing established but ineffective technologies.
Greetings
Tomáš
Multiple comments / statements by Gavin Schmidt in this Australian news report April 9th 2024
The world has been its hottest on record for 10 months straight. Scientists can’t fully explain why
By weather reporter Tyne Logan
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-09/data-can-t-explain-off-the-charts-heat/103649190
In short: Leading climate scientists say there is a margin to the extreme heat the world has experienced over the past year that can’t be explained by global warming or known climate drivers.
All predictions for the global temperature increase by global climate institutions fell way short of the actual number of 1.44 degrees Celsius.
What’s next? Scientists say the coming summer in the northern hemisphere will give clues to if it’s just a “blip” or part of a worrying pattern.
Last month was the hottest March on record, marking the 10th month in a row to reach that title, according to the European Union’s key climate service Copernicus.
In Europe, the temperature for March was 2.12 degrees Celsius above the historical average, marking the second-warmest March on record for the continent.
Around the rest of the globe, temperatures were furthest above average over parts of Antarctica, Greenland, eastern North America, eastern Russia, Central America, parts of South America, and southern Australia.
The continuation of record-breaking heat comes after 2023 was officially declared the hottest year on record, by a long way.
NASA’s senior climate advisor Gavin Schmidt says while climate change and the onset of El Niño explain a significant portion of last year’s heat, together with other contributing factors, there is still a margin of heat at the top that can’t be explained.
He said that was concerning. “If we can’t explain what’s going on, then that has real consequences for what we can say is going to happen in the future,” Dr Schmidt said.
For about a decade, he and other climate science institutes have been making predictions of global temperatures for the year ahead. But all of those predictions for 2023 fell short of what occurred – the closest prediction was still almost 0.2 degrees Celsius off the mark.
SEE GRAPH – Projections underestimate ‘off-the-charts’ year
Scientists did not expect temperatures in 2023 to be all that exceptional.
Temperature projections for 2024 from the UK Met Office, NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt, and Carbon Brief, relative to pre-industrial (1880-99) temperatures and compared to the historical average of six different datasets produced by the WMO. Credit: Carbon Brief
It may not sound like much, but Dr Schmidt said in the context of the world’s climate, it’s huge. “Those predictions, based on what was happening right at the beginning of the year failed ugly.”
Dr Schmidt said there was always room for error, but usually scientists could explain what occurred upon looking back at the data. He said this time it was not adding up. And the climate models were giving them no answers either.
“It means there’s something missing in what we’re thinking about here,” he said.
“Either something has changed in the system and things are responding differently to how they responded in the past, or there are other elements that are happening that we didn’t take into account.”
SEE CHART – Global rankings show the world has experienced record heat for 10 months.
Many aerosols act like a “shade” to incoming sunlight, reflecting it into space. So, fewer of them would have a warming effect. But Dr Schmidt said, while it made some difference, it didn’t seem to be enough to explain just how hot it had been.
“When you put that into a model and you say, ‘Is that warming effect large enough to give you this the big difference between 2022 and 2023,’ the answer is no, not really as far as we can tell,” he said.
then we all fall down the rabbit hole of mysteries like the old meme of the great hiatus from 1998 to muddy the scientific waters and the available Data already tio hand in multiple published science papers.
con’t https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-09/data-can-t-explain-off-the-charts-heat/103649190
——————-
Well, maybe it is true that the warming effect of aerosols (ir their cooling effect, including the cloud effects) are MUCH greater than the “numbers” Gavin et al are using in their 2024 calculations and in their CMIP6 Climate models? Many highly qualified credible climate scientists have been pointing this out for literally years now!
Is anyone listening or looking at the known data / evidence? Seems not of one follows their public comments.
And similarly, maybe the ECS set at +3C is also wrong, as shown by both the hot models in CMIP6 and other multiple lines of evidence provided in magain mulitiple publcished science papers already.
Perhaps James Hansen et al 2023 is in fact correct and the the ECS is actually more like circa 4.8C — meaning the GCMs are generally all underestimating the warming effects of CO2 (GHGs) as well as underestimating the ESTIMATES of Aerosol cooling on that warming.
Maybe, just maybe Hansen and many many others are correct that the EFFECTS ie ASSUMED FORCING of Aerosols and Cloud Behavior which was and still is intentionally minimized in the MODELS for DECADES so that the output could actually match Observations is and always has been WRONG ???
The lines of evidence showing this, suggesting this are many and profound. But continually being denied, and then dismissed as wild unfounded conjecture …. based upon ….. yes, the very Models being criticized for being wrong. That takes some chutzpah!
Thankfully there is this giant geoengineering experiment being performed right now which may just finally put a nail in the coffin of the voices of the very outspoken dismissive group of scientists who deny it is possible.
Hansen says it will take only a few years from now to clear up the errors / contradictions / confirm who is definitively right or wrong based on the DATA alone one way or another.
It looks like it is all about the timeline (what is a statistically significant time for accelerated warming to be acknowledged as being real – 27 years ?) but can we continue to wait for more data. If it is 0.2C or 0.3C per decade BAU does it really matter ?
Aha, now I get it – “Much ado about acceleration” ?
Is motivated by, a retort to this from James Hansen in late March, which refers to Gavin’s commentary.
“Much ado is being made about the increase of global SST in 2023. It suffices to reference a single article by Scott Dance, because Dance comprehensively describes fears and speculations of climate researchers who describe ocean surface warming as inexplicable.”
(as per Gavin Schmidt here https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/03/20/record-ocean-heat-climate/ )
and in articular by Hansen — “The scientists reject, without any evidence to the contrary, the evidence we presented that IPCC’s best estimates for climate sensitivity and human-made aerosol forcing are substantial underestimates. They rule out, without evidence, our suggestion that decreases of aerosols, especially those produced by ships, are a significant climate forcing that is causing global warming acceleration.”
See Page 3 – http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/Hopium.MarchEmail.2024.03.29.pdf
A not so subtle tete-a-tete across the interwebs (smile)
With the rapid desulphurisation (especially over the oceans) seeing the (regional distribution) of the warming are crucial here. If the CO2 ECS factor and the SO₂ emissions forcing assumptions are wrong in the climate models (s proposed they are), but the modeled surface temperature comes out roughly the same as observations and so it appears right, then they are right for the wrong reasons.
This would explain the rapid SOx reductions since 2020, especially over the NH oceans and the associated (regional) increases of ASR, EEI, SST & SAT. But this is not what Gavin (or @hausfath today on @CarbonBrief) are directly addressing in their commentaries about “acceleration being expected”..
It’s getting harder and harder to deny the Data that @NASA and @NOAA observations are telling use.
see ref https://nitter.poast.org/LeonSimons8/status/1775904193561162077#m
Hansen reports that global warming in 2010-2023 is 0.30°C/decade, which is 67% faster than 0.18°C/decade in 1970-2010 period. The recent warming is different, peaking at 30-60°N region; and for clarity Hansen shows the zonal-mean temperature trend both linear in latitude and area-weighted. Such an acceleration of warming does not simply “happen” – it implies an increased climate forcing (a new imposed change of Earth’s energy balance).
Global absorbed solar radiation (ASR) has increased dramatically since 2010, by more than 1.4 W/m2, equivalent to a CO2 increase of more than 100 ppm. The geographical distribution (global map) of ASR is used to infer that the forcing due to decreased ship aerosols (IMO 2020) is at least ~0.5 W/m2. A smaller, additional, forcing is inferred from increased ASR over Europe, which also is likely from reduced aerosols. This implies an equivalent CO2 increase of approx. 40ppm due to aerosol decreases.
ASR increases strongly since 2020 at latitudes 30-60°N, the region of reduced aerosols we have discussed. In the region where ship aerosols are expected to have a large effect (30-60°N) and in the entire region where ship effects may be most significant (30°S-60°N), ASR increases in 2015-2020 and increases more in 2020-2023.
Hansen concludes –
The largest SST change is at 30-60°N (Fig. 5), the region with decreased aerosols. That
SST increase did not appear suddenly in 2023 – it was well underway in 2020. During 2020-2022 the tropics were in a La Nina cooling trend with the La Nina depth disguised by the effect of accelerated global warming on the temperature of upper ocean layers.
Global SST made a big jump in 2023 because tropical, midlatitude, and polar temperature changes were all suddenly in warming phase. There is no basis for fear that new physics has come into play.
The tropics will cool as the El Nino fades later this year, although the present large planetary energy imbalance will inhibit the size of the global temperature decline.
Ref see http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/Hopium.MarchEmail.2024.03.29.pdf
and more info here as well
Global Warming is Accelerating. Why? Will We Fly Blind?
14 September 2023 James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Reto Ruedy, and Leon Simons
Proximate cause of accelerated warming is an increase of Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI), but what caused that? Indirect evidence points to a decline in the cooling effect of human-made aerosols. Failure to measure aerosol climate forcing is partly compensated by precise monitoring of EEI details. However, there are no adequate plans to continue even this vital EEI monitoring.
Suspicion that global warming was accelerating was created by the warming rate between the 1997-98 and 2015-16 El Ninos.3 The rate of warming between those super El Ninos was 0.24°C/decade, exceeding the 1970-2010 rate of 0.18°C/decade.
EEI increased greatly in the past decade. The imbalance so far in the 2020s (1.36 W/m2) is almost double the rate (0.71 W/m2) during the calibration period (mid-2005 through mid-2015) in which satellite data for EEI (with great precision in temporal change) are put on an absolute scale via decadal-mean in situ (Argo float) ocean heat storage data.
Ref see http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/FlyingBlind.14September2023.pdf
There is a recent paper by CICERO from Oslo Norway (Center for International Climate Research)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01324-8.pdf
The paper supports the recent work and letters of James Hansen and his research team.
The PR for the research paper:
Cleanup of air pollution heats the Earth
Recent reductions in emissions of tiny particles, the major cause of air pollution globally, have led to more heat in the Earth’s climate system. This is shown in a new international study led by CICERO and published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment.
Yes excellent addition GlenM – also see my comment/quotes from
Ned Kelly says
4 Apr 2024 at 12:42 AM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/unforced-variations-apr-2024/#comment-820893
Includes a commentary article by the authors
Kind Regards
The Data and Real World Observations Will Out.
An interesting post on X (twitter) yesterday by ZHausfather, He now posts; “The ship has largely sailed on limiting warming to 1.5C at this point, barring us getting very lucky with low climate sensitivity or actively geoengineering the climate.”
He is finally bringing up two of JEHansen’s points… 1.5C is gone and geoengineering.
The “very lucky” comment should be “gobsmackingly, very lucky”.
https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1777719953267003494?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
Tamino has prepared a graph of global mean temperature from 1950 – 2023 with adjusted temperature data, specifically ENSO, volcanic activity and solar activity removed.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2024/02/16/adjusted-global-temperature-data/
The acceleration in warming over the full period is much clearer, and it looks like a slightly steeper acceleration from approx. 2010 – 2023. Just my eyeballing of course, so not definitive, but it does seem to support Hansens contention that AGW is accelerating faster over about the last decade.
Nigel: “ Just my eyeballing of course, so not definitive, but it does seem to support Hansens contention that AGW is accelerating faster over about the last decade.
NIgel,
it’s all in the eye of the eyeballer,… ;-). Depends, when you start – if you start around 1980, then the acceleration is faster only in the last year. One swallow does not a spring make.
Piotr,
Tamino does post again specifically on the subject of ‘acceleration’ and the first graphic features (NOAA global temp) a plot in which “Since 1975 [ie 1975-2023], the trend has risen steadily.” There is no good evidence to be found for acceleration.
But at the end of the post, after showing various OHC/SLR with statistical evidence for post-1975 acceleration, he addresses the NOAA global temperature with natural wobbles removed using MLR. While Tamino does not say the point of acceleration in 2013 in the global temperatures is statistical (ie identified using break-point analysis), the acceleration is obvious beyond argument.
The one question remaining is the new rate of AGW which relies on too few data points and too many wobbles to give good indication of the increased trend. (OLR shows it +0.40+/-0.06[2sd]/decade 2023-23 but +0.34+/-0.07/decade 2013-22, 0.29+/-0.08/decade 2014-22).
Thanks MAR and Nigel, my point was much more modest – I didn’t discuss the reality of acceleration – but merely the subjectivity of the eyeballing of the same graph
– Nigel brought up tamino’s 2024/02/16 graph and in that particular graph I don’s see acceleration since 1980s – which now Nigel seems to have supported with the NOAA graph from 2024/02/20 (the one at t the top) that show linear increase since late 1970ies.
I didn’t refer to the acceleration in _other_ graphs.
Piotr. I agree an obvious acceleration in one year like 2023 doesn’t signify much because its only one years data However I will clarify what I’m seeing in Tamino’s adjusted data graph. The years 2013 -2023 as a whole still look to me like a slightly steeper line than 1980 – 2013, so the last ten years look like the trend has changed from the previous trend, and is thus accelerating. This all looks like it would remain true, even if you excluded 2023. Putting it another way there is a step change in warming around 2013.. .
I have just found this by Tamino, who shows a clear step change in warming around 2013 in a graph near the bottom of the page.:
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2024/02/20/accelerations/
nigelj says
12 Apr 2024 at 3:37 PM
“Piotr. I agree an obvious acceleration in one year like 2023 doesn’t signify much because its only one years data.”
————————–
nigelj, remain alert.
The issue at hand about “acceleration” is NOT about one year 2023 nor about one years Data.
Don’t let spurious rhetoric distract you from the scientific facts, the actual data going back years and decades, and logical well-founded analysis / hypothesis by very credible scientists vs internet forum commentaries.
.
NK. Yes I know all that. As per the paragraph where I said: “The years 2013 -2023 as a whole still look to me like a slightly steeper line than 1980 – 2013, so the last ten years look like the trend has changed from the previous trend, and is thus accelerating….” :)
—————————-
Piotr; Fair comments. I’ve always been quite good at eyeballing graphs accurately. Blows own trumpet.
Nigel: Piotr; Fair comments. I’ve always been quite good at eyeballing graphs accurately. Blows own trumpet.
… like this? ;-)
Piotr. Ha ha I suppose I asked for that. However my trumpet is actually somewhat larger:
https://www.facebook.com/UBMarchingBand/photos/a.428025920554614/1230791410278057/?type=3
Another ignored warning from 2018
For decades, scientists and policymakers
have framed the climate-policy debate in
a simple way: scientists analyse long-term
goals, and policymakers pretend to honour
them. Those days are over. Serious climate
policy must focus more on the near-term and
on feasibility.
Global warming will happen faster than we think
December 2018 Nature 564
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329411074_Global_warming_will_happen_faster_than_we_think
IPCC – GCMs – are not fit for purpose. They keep failing. Climate scientists keep denying they are failing.
There’s a core group of climate scientists who maintain they and their work has never been wrong.
It is they who are living in denial. Hansen is not the Outlier.
Anyways … Kind Regards,
The Data will Out
New Paper released 06 April 2024
Exacerbated summer European warming not captured by climate models
neglecting long-term aerosol changes
Dominik L. Schumacher, Jitendra Singh, Mathias Hauser, Erich M. Fischer, Martin Wild & Sonia I. Seneviratne
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01332-8
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379642493_Exacerbated_summer_European_warming_not_captured_by_climate_models_neglecting_long-term_aerosol_changes
Abstract
In much of western-central Europe, summer temperatures have surged three times faster than the global mean warming since 1980, yet this is not captured by most climate model simulations. Here we disentangle this warming into thermodynamic and circulation-induced contributions, and show that the latter is the main reason why numerically simulated warming is weaker than observed. Crucially, regional climate models from the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment with constant aerosol forcings systematically show the strongest discrepancies from observations: in these simulations, the regional brightening and associated thermodynamic warming due to aerosol reductions is not represented. We estimate an effect of ~0.5 °C over western-central Europe for our model ensemble, and the discrepancy to climate models with evolving aerosols increases in future projections. To better reap the benefits of regional high-resolution simulations, it is thus imperative to represent the relevant external forcings and associated responses across the entire climate model chain.
Fig. 1: Summer warming in Europe underestimated by global and regional climate simulations.
see full size image https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01332-8/figures/1
Kind Regards
Ned Kelley: constant aerosol forcings systematically show the strongest discrepancies from observations:
That abstract appears to my eye to lend support to James Hansen’s argument about the lack of good data on aerosols (though I hope the new PACE satellite data will help here), how they are conflated as adjustable parameters in cloud models that cannot disambiguate, and the more recent changes in sulfur in shipping fuels.
Regarding Ned Kellys comments 9 April,
“Contrary to Ray’s “opinion” it is the climate scientists fault they have repeatedly and profoundly failed to communicate and influence both politicians and the general public.”
I would say the main reason for lack of action on mitigation of climate change is because climate change not perceived as a huge and urgent threat by most people and politicians. Our brains are hardwired to respond most urgently to immediate and obvious threats like covid, rather than slowly unfolding threats like climate change even although they are ultimately more serious. Climate change just doesn’t cause the same rush of adrenalin with most people. References:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5530483
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qkv5a3/apocalypse-neuro-why-our-brain-cant-process-the-planets-gravest-threats
Scientists have communicated the climate findings in an unemotive way highlighting the problem areas, in the way they normally do with scientific issues, and normally this is enough to convince politicians to take robust action, for example the ozone hole problem and the covid issue. But this hasn’t happened with climate change perhaps because its not perceived as an immediate threat like the ozone hole, or covid back in 2020.
Scientists do obviously need to robustly communicate risks and scale of the problem. Scientific communications on climate are not always ideal, but I just don’t see it as the main issue in the slow response to the climate problem. Sure people can be stupid as well but again not the main problem here.
Given the way human brains work, it seems important that what solutions we have such as wind and solar power and electric cars, changes to diets, more use of bicycles etcetera are promoted on their wider benefits, and improving costs and economics, rather than only their climate benefits. Because I cant see another rational solution. You cant get around human psychology.
But it seems to me that any solution to the problem of resource limits, of which AGW is only one example, is fundamentally incompatible with an economic system based on perpetual growth as a central paradigm. Changing this would require the dismantling and restructuring of the entire system. It’s difficult to see how climate scientists might accomplish this.
Jonathan David says
11 Apr 2024 at 8:08 AM
” It’s difficult to see how climate scientists might accomplish this. ”
I believe you’ve possibly not looking at this the best way – while I am one who thinks “the dismantling and restructuring of the entire system” is the only thing that might have a positive effect on energy use/climate and many other parts of the metacrisis/polycrisis we have — this is NOT something that climate scientists need to accomplish …. it is NOT their JOB to do that.
For those climate scientists able to be multi-domain research experts – by all means they might “promote” such solutions along those lines … part of the problems I have is where climate scientists who are definitely not multi-domain experts continue presenting Pollyanna solutions to the politicians and the public that are irrational and or actually impossible .
and that what they do say is not seriously a solution — reduce ghgs and cut fossil fuel emissions and stop fossil fuel companies controlling the world – are NOT in fact viable practical solutions at all.
Flawed Theories that claim remaining under +1.5C is even possible are ludicrous as well – as is the “theory” currently that Net zero by 2050 is plausible let alone will solve anything that actually drives GHG emissions – climate scientists are offering “solutions” that are not in fact solutions and not realistic or capable of being implemented.
If however they said something like — the solutions to climate change lay in the general direction of totally changing the current economic systems of the world and reevaluating what is and what is not important for human and ecological well being on earth as well as how human civilization utilizes energy consumption (and just left it at that because it is BEYOND their expertise levels to advise )…
……. then that would be fine to me …. but they cannot even bring themselves to say that.
Saying we have to rapidly decrease CO2 emissions is a NON-Solution that helps no one understand what the REAL problem is. Just swapping CO2 emitting energy use for Renewables is in fact not possible — it is NOT an either or switch. It is impossible to do that.
And climate scientists should stop claiming it is possible – what Mann et al says imho actually rises to the level of gross disinformation or worse. He and they are not qualified to make such declarations. They are factually wrong and misleading the world as to what the problem is what is the real causes of the problems and the real potential solutions to those problems.
I’m serious. Mann et al are actually not qualified to be advising anyone on these issues. His expertise is on past evidence of proxy data and models etc ….. and not multi-domain complex and systemic global solutions to save humanity from destruction.
But maybe I am only repeating myself …. and talking to the wall. Anyways …. Kind Regards
==============================
Refs
https://metacrisis.org/META-CRISIS/00.+%F0%9F%91%8B+About/Start+Here
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/
eg one minor example
21 Sept 2023
The blind spots of the energy transition by Olivia Lazard, fellow at Carnegie Europe, recorded live at Stockholm Impact Week 2023.
Stockholm Impact Week is an annual Summit hosted by Norrsken and the City of Stockholm, dedicated to defining the critical issues of our time and enabling solutions to them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4zVxNbjXCw
Steve Keen: “On the Origins of Energy Blindness”
This video should be watched by everyone, everywhere. How Keen is able to explain in (mostly) plain language how the human race got here to the verge of collapse is absolutely incredible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrMWSkzrMYg
Daniel Schmachtenberger “Bend Not Break Part 1: Energy Blindness”
In the first of a five-part series, Nate and Daniel outline the macro risks and pathways for civilization to ‘bend’ and avoid ‘breaking’ in coming decades.
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/05-daniel-schmactenberger
I put it to you that mostly climate scientists , the IPCC, the UNFCCC Paris agreement, Net Zero by 2050, and the “Cherry-picked” CMIP6 models; ignoring and badmouthing Hansen Simons et al etc etc etc are getting in the way of actually recognizing the real problems, identifying their causes and discovering the practical necessary HUMAN solutions long term.
But then there’s the Wall
(smile)
NK: Saying we have to rapidly decrease CO2 emissions is a NON-Solution that helps no one understand what the REAL problem is. Just swapping CO2 emitting energy use for Renewables is in fact not possible
BPL: And yet it’s happening. Funny how that works.
Barton Paul Levenson says
14 Apr 2024 at 6:07 AM
BPL: And yet it’s happening. Funny how that works.
@36 minutes – Choosing to Fail, with Climate Scientist Kevin Anderson
https://youtu.be/tVFSJINGueM?si=xn9XQIjLCCsVptp5&t=2166
“The IPCC Working Group 3 is just Exxon in Disguise!”
nigelj says
10 Apr 2024 at 4:04 PM
Sorry, but I completely and totally disagree. As do many others all over the world. I think it is in fact incredibly obvious and has been for decades what I say on this topic is correct and clear.
Hausfather just stated meekly with barely a whimper on twitter the 1.5c was dead. I and many others were saying that was dead before it was agreed in Paris in 2015. The IPCC SR15 report was ludicrous from the very beginning. Who wrote that? Climate Scientists did. Who supported the impossible to meet goal? Climate Scientists did. 2C is equally doomed in short order.
HANSEN – “A Miracle Will Occur” Is Not Sensible Climate Policy
07 December 2023
James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, Makiko Sato
The COP28 Chairman and the United Nations Secretary General say that the goal to
keep global warming below 1.5°C is alive, albeit barely, implying that the looser goal
of the 2015 Paris Agreement (to keep warming well below 2°C) is still viable. We find
that even the 2°C goal is dead if policy is limited to emission reductions and plausible
CO2 removal.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/Miracle.2023.12.07.pdf
Scientific Reticence: A Threat to Humanity and Nature
Facing Future 19 Nov 2017 COP23
A discussion of how the hesitancy among scientists to express the gravity of our situation is a major block to our understanding and response to climate change, with James Hansen, Pam Peterson, and Philip Duffy, director of the Woods Hole Research Center.
The reticence arises from political pressure, institutional conservatism, so-called ‘objectivity’, aversion to controversy, etc. But when the data and the conclusions it leads to are alarming, isn’t it imperative that the alarm be transmitted publicly? Here is another facet of society’s apparent inability to assess and respond appropriately to the present immense, existential threat of climate change.
23 minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7z61UZoppM
09 March 2024
Is scientific reticence the new climate denialism?
Jonathon Porritt (technically, Sir Jonathon Espie Porritt, 2nd Baronet, CBE) has an excellent piece out, called “Mainstream climate science: The new denialism?”
Porritt focusses on the “deceit” of “mainstream scientists, NGOs and commentators” have been “holding back” because of the alleged need to “protect people from the truth of climate change”, noting that this strategy has not worked “as a way of enlisting the huge numbers of people required to force our politicians to start getting serious”.
And he concludes that “we have to see off this patronising, manipulative, self-serving deceit ONCE AND FOR ALL”.
Here is an extract from the early part of Porritt’s analysis, in which he starts by summarising his analysis:
The speed with which the climate is now changing is faster than (almost) all scientists thought possible.
There is now zero prospect of holding the average temperature increase this century to below 1.5°C; even 2°C is beginning to slip out of reach. The vast majority of climate scientists know this, but rarely if ever give voice to this critically important reality.
At the same time, the vast majority of people still haven’t a clue about what’s going on – and what this means for them and everything they hold dear.
[ snipped ]
A similar analysis, focusing on the underestimation of existential climate risks by mainstream science, and particular the IPCC, was published by Ian Dunlop and myself in 2018 under the title “What Lies Beneath”, with a foreword by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber which amongst other things said that:
It [What Lies Beneath] is the critical overview of well-informed intellectuals who sit outside the climate-science community, which has developed over the last fifty years. All such expert communities are prone to what the French call deformation professionelle and the German betriebsblindheit.
Expressed in plain English, experts tend to establish a peer world-view which becomes ever more rigid and focussed. Yet the crucial insights regarding the issue in question may lurk at the fringes, as this report suggests. This is particularly true when the issue is the very survival of our civilisation, where conventional means of analysis may become useless.
http://www.climatecodered.org/2024/03/is-scientific-reticence-new-climate.html
The full article is here:
https://www.jonathonporritt.com/mainstream-climate-science-the-new-denialism/
COVID proved beyond doubt FEAR WORKS IN PR – no matter what Hayhoe et al wish to believe.
This confronting advertising campaign ran for only three weeks in the 1980s, but it is seared on the nation’s collective memory
At first, only gays and IV drug users were being killed by AIDS.
But now we know every one of us could be devastated by it.
So warned the infamous “Grim Reaper” advertisement that aired on Australian television for three weeks in mid-1987. The hooded Reaper rolled a bowling ball down an alley towards men, women and children standing as pins.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6750787/how-australia-tackled-the-aids-crisis/
In Australia, the Grim Reaper commercial has remained a memorable example of a confronting but effective government public service campaign decades since its original airing, and continues to inspire subsequent government public service advertising campaigns. It has been recognised as a landmark public health initiative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grim_Reaper_(advertisement)
“The doctors cannot stop it, the government cannot stop it, the scientists cannot stop it, except by helping us to stop it”
The ‘Silence=Death’ slogan was not at all literal – it was intended to encourage people to ask what it was about, as a way of opening conversations about the AIDS crisis.
https://healthequitymatters.org.au/article/saved-lives-gay-community-australian-response-aids/
“Australia,” Fighting a Rising Tide: The Response to AIDS in East Asia;
https://jcie.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/RisingTide-australia.pdf
2020 Hansen ..
December 14: Global Warming Acceleration
October 14: Accelerated Global Warming
September 7: Sentinel for the Home Planet: Paper by von Schuckmann et al.
February 3: Climate Models vs. Real World
2018
October 15: Global Warming Acceleration Plus Miscellaneous
August 15: Hot Spots and Acceleration of Global Warming
2017
October 26: Scientific Reticence: a DRAFT Discussion
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/
I could go on …. the references are endless on this matter. Re-Read Killian et al on Risk Averse even
It’s now 2024 and counting …. imho the IPCC and the UNFCCC are not fit for purpose. The proof is in the Pudding and Denial of it is no excuse.
Ned Kelly.
I believe that even if climate scientists screamed from the rooftops that climate change is really bad, twice as bad as thought, civilsation ending (using maximum motivation by fear) it wouldn’t lead to a massive increase in the mitigation response, because as I said human brains are hardwired to prioritise immediate serious threats not longer term unfolding problems like climate change not peaking until later this century. As per the links I posted.
Your copy and paste information is good but I don’t see how it changes what I said.
James Hansen is a good scientist, and good communicator, but even he has clearly failed to convince congress to take decisive action. Its clearly not Hansens fault.
Other factors clearly contribute to the slow mitigation response such as the denialist campaign and influence of money in politics, anti regulation ideology, etc,etc as mentioned by Mal Adapted and other people.
However I believe its still important for scientists to still provide the numbers, admit that climate science is looking worse than originally thought, not to be too reticent, and laypeople to help spread awareness of the climate problem. Commonsense says this will at least help promote improved mitigation and every bit helps.
I agree that communication of scientific results is critical. However, I would argue that the transmission of information on climate change is many faceted. Scientists are trained to communicate with other scientists. This is absolutely essential for the Scientific Method to work. Results from individual investigators must be verified and reproduced by other independent investigations. This is vital to resolve disputes and to add to the existing knowledge base in a field. This doesn’t happen without communication between scientists. Asking scientists to devote too much time to communicating with other groups is not really an effective strategy.
Fortunately, there is an entire army of intermediary knowledge providers who can interface with scientists themselves as well as the general public or policy makers. I would point to educators, activists, journalists, popularizers and even sympathetic politicians. Addressing this group should arguably be the primary function of a blog such as RC,
Nigel:
First, I’d like to propose a definition of “climate-change denier” to include anyone who denies, i.e. rejects, any of the following propositions: the globe is warming; it’s anthropogenic; and the aggregate costs of the ensuing climate change, already being paid in money and grief, will mount as long as fossil carbon is transferred to the atmosphere by the gigatonnes annually.
I agree that rejection of any of those consensus claims has diverse, layered motives, both conscious and unconscious. I’m comfortable calling it all denial. Some forms may be less resistant to eventual acceptance of the consensus, and to collective action to cap global warming. Some climate-science deniers may keep it to themselves, but vote for denialist politicians; other, more resolute deniers may publicly reject one or more consensus claims, on proliferating mass-media channels; they are somehow motivated to propagate climate-science denial in the public sphere. Let’s call them “denialists”: public propagators of denial. Denialists actively seek to impede enactment of sound climate policy.
What are the cognitive sources of climate-science denial? Humans can easily downgrade the perceived threat of climate change as remote from their own lives. For some of those, direct experience or prominent media coverage of newly extreme weather may change their minds. Others are more actively hostile to the scientific consensus, for pecuniary and/or ideological reasons, and will aggressively resist collective action regardless of new evidence (here I’ll observe that AFAICT, ideology is more firmly held when it supports the holder’s economic interest: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” -St. Matthew). Still others, raised in a theistic milieu and not well-educated in the basics of the scientific worldview, simply don’t credit science with any epistemic authority. They’re already convinced that climate is subject not to humanity’s will, but God’s. They rely on ignorance and personal incredulity to avoid thinking about the need for collective action.
I don’t know what communications strategy would assemble a sufficient majority of US voters in support of collective action, against the full range of denial, i.e. the public or private rejection of any of the elements of the consensus. I do know, however, that the task for climate realists is made enormously more difficult by the investment of fossil-carbon wealth in the documented long-term campaign of mass disinformation, not to mention legislative vote-buying, SCOTUS-packing, and other forms of pernicious influence, by those to whom $trillions in annual profits accrue. Even if scientists could advocate publicly for acceptance of their findings without compromising science’s reputation for impartiality, what chance does even the most earnest public testimony by climate scientists have against that much power?
In light of the widely accessible reports of disciplined investigative journalists and other fact-checked sources, it’s apparent that if not for the political power of carbon capital, the US economy would be substantially decarbonized by now. I’m with Ms. Anderson, inter alia: let those of us here who support collective action to decarbonize quit slap-fighting each other, and recognize who our actual opponents are. It’s not climate scientists!
Mal,
Yes!
And FWIW, NYT op-ed.
Why Republicans Turned Against the Environment
Paul Krugman (2022)
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/15/opinion/republicans-environment-climate.html
Takeaway:
Messy.
Messy indeed, Radge. As an old white male American, I fully acknowledge the centrality of race in US politics, but usually shy away from offering opinions about it. AFAICT, the partisan divide on climate change was evident before 2008, although it clearly intensified after Obama’s election. Then there was the CRU email hack of 2009, ruthlessly exploited by professional disinformers to drive down public acceptance of the scientific consensus. But yes, I imagine some US voters, especially in my demographic, may not have explicitly rejected the consensus until they heard that Obama accepted it!
Thinking more about classes of denier, I don’t know whether the number of US voters who aren’t actively hostile to science but don’t consider it authoritative in their lives, is sufficient to turn any elections; nonetheless, the lead editorial in Science this week advises scientists to Teach philosophy of science:
Dunno. IMHO there’s nothing wrong with trying to teach the foundations of the scientific way of looking at the universe, nor would it be entirely quixotic. I for one wish to see some exposure to the cumulative, self-correcting character of the centuries-long, international, collective scientific enterprise, introduced no later than secondary school. It would fit nicely in a curriculum along with J. Nielsen-Gammon’s scientific metaliteracy.
Yes, Mal, but there’s this blog called RealClimate which illustrates the problem with that suggestion.
The problem is, people need to be educated in fundamentals of logic and metaphysics, and quantitative reasoning, and scientific reasoning…. the idea that science is virtuous because it is open to change is not going to change anyone’s mind about anything.
People with a science background aren’t interested in educating the public, instead they engage in the framing offered by the trolls and denialists, which is almost always wrong at those fundamental levels.
Not going to change in the majority of post-secondary education, much less HS.
Zebra,
Well, I don’t see it as an either/or situation, and while denialists may try to frame a discussion a certain way, that’s not to say that a response has to take place within that frame. I think the scientists who created this site have posted articles here which handle that problem effectively.
The idea of scientific metaliteracy may seem less objectionable if we see what is actually meant by it:
Metaliteracy in general is accepted and applied in a wide variety of educational settings,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaliteracy , which is to say, it’s not something made out of whole cloth. It’s a “real thing,” so to speak.
Radge, not sure if I was unclear or you misread.
What I described is the “old-fashioned” version of metaliteracy… learning about science and reason as part of a general education, whether you are focused on a specific field in science or anything else. That is what’s missing, for me. There was a philosophy of science even before there was the label science, much less the problem of the internet.
My objection to what Mal said was specifically about the narrow point of science being open to change, which I think may even be a turn-off to many in the Authoritarian cohort voting in the next election.
As to RC, the contributors are less guilty than the “science team” commenters, but still get sucked in to the troll/denialist framing sometimes. The example I’ve pointed out in the past is how one responds to Anything But CO2 themes.
If you want to educate the public about how science works, you don’t jump into discussing the flaws in someone’s reasoning about solar output or water vapor. You ask them, if they claim those as a forcing, to explain what happened to the energy retained by CO2. Science works by building on known effects and underlying principles.
The public can’t evaluate the argument about water vapor; rather, it creates the illusion that the physics of CO2 is in doubt. Which, of course, is their goal.
The problem is that most people who study science like to teach and lecture about the details. If you want the public to be scientifically literate and rational, your schools have to use people focused on the meta stuff.
Zebra: “People with a science background aren’t interested in educating the public,…”
I disagree. The existence of this blog shows that scientists are very interested in educating the public. Many Nobel Laureates have dedicated a significant proportion of their later careers to public education (e.g. Richard Feynmann, Leon Lederman…).
The problem in my experience is that it is very difficult to get good folks to teach science at primary and secondary, and the curricula provide almost zero insight into how the scientific method actually works. As a result, people go into adulthood with completely unrealistic ideas of how science works and even what it is. This makes people vulnerable to either perceiving science as “magic,” capable of anything, instantaneously, or to the view of scientists as corrupt madmen.
The thing is that the scientific method is the original brain hack. It was introduced (even in Bacon’s Novum Organum) as a way of combatting the fallacies and biases that are inherent to human cognition. And clearly it works. Using the scientific method, we’ve been able to understand reality on distance scales from femtometers to megaparsecs and timescales from attoseconds to billions of years! But because it is a brain hack, our brains are inherently resistant to it. It takes discipline as well as faith that the outcome will be worth the effort. That, really, is what you get from your training as a scientist.
zebra,
Hmm. From past discussions about this, and it’s been quite a while, I’m pretty sure there’s more underlying Mal’s comment than just the fact that science is self-correcting. In any case, the way I see it, we’re talking more epistemology than metaphysics, supplementary to (not opposed to) the things you mention, and aimed at understanding the reliability of how science is done.
What are the checks and balances of peer review, the attitudes and values that make a good scientist, how are scientists educated and mentored, what is a citation index… How has the way that scientists do what they do changed over time and why? And so on… but also understanding that the institutions of science don’t exist in a vacuum, and that it’s worth understanding how and why science comes under attack. You kinda can’t have one without the other. I mean you can, but you’d be limping around on one leg, it seems to me.
I hope I’m getting the nesting right, as I only had the option to reply to zebra’s objection to teaching scientific philosophy and metaliteracy. Radge wrote:
Thanks, Radge, you understand perfectly. I for one think you should be teaching History and Philosophy of Science to high school students. That may be more than anyone has a right to ask, however!
Radge,
But what exactly is supposed to be taught?? That “science” didn’t exist prior to the formation of The Royal Society? As I recall, Thales of Miletus got “peer reviewed” by Anaximander quite a bit before that, and people had already figured out lots of stuff about how the universe works.
Also, the history of science includes many examples of interactions (conflicts) with the existing cultural paradigm, so that isn’t going to be neglected, if you teach it thoroughly.
My point, which may not be getting across, is that I quite agree with what Mal quoted about “the public” not having time and effort to follow the details… in fact, I just said that with my example about ABC. And I also agree with your input on the Obama issue.
So, there will be people whom you can never reach, but for the rest, I’ll ask the same question I just asked Ray….”what’s your plan?”. Just telling people about the bureaucratic and social characteristics of the world of science is going to result, at whatever educational level, in snores.
Zebra,
Going straight to what starts to make sense to me:
The whole talk is worth a read, IMO.
So the idea is to formally (and informally) teach useful heuristics, and no, I don’t think that this is necessarily a short term solution. But if you look at many of the underlying misconceptions that repeatedly crop up here, it should be clear that there are some serious gaps in people’s education that could have been nipped in the bud before becoming malignant. That should provide a pointer to what’s needed for the future.
To your first question, a good illustration might be how Wegener and his ideas about continental drift are sometimes taught (apparently in misleading ways) including what changes in the world of science had to evolve to bring us to plate tectonics. You don’t necessarily have to go back to Thales, not that it’s a bad idea.
Personally a good chunk of what I’ve learned about how science works, came from extracurricular reading (and even from RC at some point) and not necessarily from science classes– although you eventually start to marinate in it anyway… Don’t take it for granted.
Radge Havers, 20 Apr 2024 at 5:26 PM
Such an outstanding post, I’ve read and reread the wayback Neilsen-Gammon. I don’t 100% agree (if I did, I’d be showing I neither read nor thought about it) but it brings us all back to a more useful frame. My own peripheral science education was so unusual and wide ranging, I don’t think I can even imagine what it’s like to not know what scientists are like and how science is done, but I don’t share his disapproval of some of the messaging.
To some extent, this is covered in the change between 2013 and now, as work on attribution proceeds, and better understanding of the overall ‘loaded dice’ relationship between weather extremes and climate change occur. We have also entered into a consequential time where it should no longer be possible to dismiss the overall weirding of weather.
Another way to put it is to dismiss the magical thinking of right and wrong, perfect and imperfect, and the exploitation of expectation to prevent action. Tempting to rant but that will keep for another day. At least we should realize that we’re all human and absolutes are unnatural. The desire to be absolutely right and acknowledged as such gets in the way of paying attention to mostly better.
Here’s the link again: https://web.archive.org/web/20130213192911/http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2013/02/scientific-meta-literacy/
One more: a useful compendium of practical action (a little too encyclopedic these days) is Peter Sinclair’s This is Not Cool: https://thinc.blog/ [checked today’s and recommend scrolling past to his coverage of practical action]
Radge,
I appreciate that you actually gave a concrete answer to a question, which is a rarity around here. But before we get to that, I’m going to critique much of the piece you quoted (I did read the whole thing.) I think that illuminates the issues.
What I found strange was his complaint about lab courses at MIT, and particularly those for non-science majors.
“Well, active learning is certainly effective, and students do learn a great deal by being actively engaged in science, but none of this helps with scientific meta-literacy. ”
Now, I will confess to a bias here, because at one point I spent some time and effort on exactly this activity… designing lab-oriented courses (physics) for people who were not going to continue beyond the requirement. I like to think that when I tested the concepts, the students learned a little. But I learned a lot.
So, what issues? Well, my experience was with students (a range of ages) in community college situations, not MIT. So the first issue is, are we going to define who is “the public”?
I doubt that anyone who attended MIT, whatever their major, is going to be incapable of sorting out the climate question, if they are being objective about it. Seriously, they need Scientific Metaliteracy 101 for that??
But I do think my students back in the day are a very good sample of “the public”… a wide range of backgrounds and abilities…, and they exhibited many of the problematic characteristics that Ray complains about (without offering a concrete solution, eh). What I learned from them was:
“Well, active learning is certainly effective, and students do learn a great deal by being actively engaged in science…”
Good enough for MIT, good enough for me. If you want students to be engaged with, and more confident about, science and mathematics (real mathematics), allow them to play at it. (Starting as early as possible.) That’s how they can internalize the reality of cause and effect, and quantitative reasoning, and other scientific meta-concepts, and so “make intelligent decisions in the real world”.
But very much of education is still stuck in the anti-intellectual, authoritarian, rote, paradigm, which has been obsolete for a long time….. if you want to produce educated citizens. (I’m guessing Ray wouldn’t want to change that.)
As to plate tectonics, sure, an interesting lesson to have in a history of science course, but I’m not sure how it relates to the enterprise part of science. As with many advances, I thought it was the result of improved instrumentation and resources (funding), much of which was part of the cold war business. But maybe I missed something?
Zebra, I am not prescribing a solution to scientific illiteracy because a comment on a blog is not sufficient space to give it the attention it deserves. The solutions are not easy, but I think a good place to start would be to emphasize the value of subject-matter expertise and of the scientific method in general. And over and above all, in my opinion, people need to realize that understanding science is going to enrich their lives: If you can look at the photos of the lava lake on Io or the latest results from the LHC or JWST and not feel wonder, then your soul is dead.
And just because one has a degree from a technical university does not mean one truly understands the scientific method in all its diversity and power. Doing science does not require understanding in detail why it works. This is why you sometimes have physicists making the absurd claim that geology or biology aren’t “real sciences” (e.g. Sheldon from “The Big Bang Theory”). I’ve actually seen this from my peers before, and it’s embarrassing.
And actually, the example of plate tectonics/continental drift is an interesting one. Science is often criticized for not adopting the idea of continental drift more rapidly. The thing is that one of the biggest objections raised to the theory was that the theory seemingly required continental plates to move through SOLID ROCK! It was only with the development of high-pressure petrology that this objection was removed. And the resulting theory of plate tectonics was much more powerful than Wegner’s original qualitative framework.
The point is that science worked as intended. The “theory” didn’t gain general acceptance until understanding of the mechanisms was sufficient to yield meaningful predictions. Up to that point, it wasn’t really a scientific theory. However, there was nothing to keep geologists from using the predictions of the theory to do useful studies–e.g. attributing the alluvial deposits of diamonds in Brazil to the diamond pipes in Southern Africa. This added evidence for the ideas and smoothed its acceptance once the theory was mature.
Another example is the Higgs mechanism for generation of mass in families of elementary particles. A lot of the original ideas for this came from the father of our own Susan Anderson. However, it took years and the contributions of dozens of theorists before the theory was ready for prime time…and it took nearly 50 years for the work to receive a Nobel Prize.
zebra,
Wasn’t Richard Linden a professor at MIT?
Well, this example may be peculiar to my limited experience, but it illustrates the kind of thing I have in mind. I believe it’s also germane to some of the posts I’ve seen here, though no doubt there are better examples more directly related to climate change.
What I’ve encountered is the notion that Wegener was some sort of lone wolf who just popped up out of nowhere, had a brilliant, unheard of idea, and was mocked by scientists locked in evil orthodoxy until one day, with great weeping and gnashing of teeth, they had to admit that they were wrong, wrong, wrong the whole time. Et voila! Proof that scientists as a group are idiots.
A few brief points; the idea of continental drift had been around since the 1600s. In the early 20th century, Wegener correctly pointed to evidence of matching geology on the continents facing each other across the Atlantic Ocean. He believed, however, that continents were dragged across solid crust by tidal forces. It wasn’t until a burst of innovation during WWII provided the technology for physicists to find that the mechanism for moving continents involved seafloor spreading and plate tectonics, not tides.
So what does that address?
— The Galileo gambit.
— The oddly unquestioned talking point that it necessarily takes a certain large and set number of years for science to “mature”. In fact the pace of growth and change in science and technology has been rapidly increasing.
— That contrary to what some folks say, science is actually an intensely cooperative AND competitive endeavor that can cross disciplines that provide convergent evidence.
You can probably come up with some more that are escaping me at the moment.
Pick one. Let’s say maturity, and a certain poster rushing in with the claim that climatology must be an immature science– by implication infantilizing climate scientists who in turn need the paternal guidance of certain individuals who will condescend to help them sort things out.
Now why would anybody take exception to that? /s
OK this is getting long. You catch my “drift” though.
Susan,
Thank you for the great link. I can’t help myself. I have to say that I was relieved to see that the kitteh in Dubai was rescued. Certainly one way to briefly scale down and connect a dire situation to a relatable narrative.
Perhaps tangential to meta-literacy (or not) I found a neglected copy of “The Art of Scientific Investigation” by W.I.B. Beveridge (1950). Is this still a classic or has it been superseded by something more up to date?
I flipped through it, and it looks like a must read for everybody, not just scientists.
I agree, FWIW.
Ray,
So you disagree with my statement that people with a science background aren’t interested in educating the public, and then you tell us
“The problem in my experience is that it is very difficult to get good folks to teach science at primary and secondary,”
???
Not sure who these “good folks” are, exactly, And I’m not sure what “science” you think should be taught in K12.
Once upon a time, a good “liberal arts” education was supposed to teach the kind of things that I mentioned… logic, philosophy of science, quantitative/scientific reasoning, critical thinking, and so on. That would be through a combination of courses, which might include a required science topic class to give people experience with the process.
If you have any concrete suggestions about how we might achieve the desired result, I would be happy to hear them.
I’m not sure what is confusing you. People who love science and devote the time to really understanding it generally want to work in science, not in wiping the noses of rug rats and apathetic teenagers who’d rather be playing games on line. As someone who has actually done science education for secondary teachers, my biggest challenge was overcoming the rear my students had of science. Far from being able to ground the students in sound logical and philosophical principles–let alone math and probability–the best I was able to muster was somewhat restoring the sense of wonder that underlies the whole motivation for science.
This is how I’d start, because until people understand the motivation for and utility of science, the fear of the subject is likely to dominate and be transferred to the next generation as it was to the last.
Ray, what’s confusing is that you said you disagreed with me and then said exactly what I said.
And I am now also confused by your statement that you were teaching people who wanted to teach high school science but they were “afraid” of science. What level was this, and what was their background? Why would they want to teach a subject they weren’t comfortable with themselves???
I ask people to be concrete and specific because I don’t think it’s helpful for me to guess what they are trying to say. Why do you think that the general public is “afraid” of science and mathematics as it is currently taught, and what should change?
(Might be nice if Mal would pitch in and answer that as well, since he started this.)
Zebra, Where we disagree is on your assertion that scientists are not interested in educating the public. We are. I often go out of my way to try and stimulate peoples’ interest in science and to explain what I do in terms that are understandable–and hopefully not too boring–to my audience. The problems arise when peoples’ curiosity has been dulled or when they are outright hostile to science.
As to the teacher trainees I had in class, In the US, it is not uncommon for a person to be teaching a subject in which they do not have a degree. There are unfortunately a lot of math teachers out there who don’t like math. There are a lot of physics teachers that have never done physics. Those who do love the field tend to become researcher in it. Some of them wind up also being good communicators for laymen, and many do not.
The problem we face here is that the science is telling people something they really don’t want to hear. That makes people resistant. Some of it has scary implications–and that makes them resistant. And the solutions are difficult and could result in hardship. Success is not a given.
So you combine a population that has little understanding of the scientific method with scientific results that are challenging, complicated and threatening, and you have a recipe for distrust. That won’t be resolved by a few more scientists going into the political trenches–which in some cases could actually make things work.
What to do? All I know to do is keep emphasizing the astounding track record of science. It has literally changed the why humans live, the way we look at the world and the way we see ourselves. And the changes have been overwhelmingly for the better. And when science is wrong, the ones who correct it are scientists. There is no other human endeavor that comes close to that track record of success. Ultimately, it comes down to that xkcd cartoon:
https://xkcd.com/54/
Well it is an interesting conversation, excuse for butting in but this really stood out to me:
Ray Ladbury says
22 Apr 2024 at 12:31 AM
” And when science is wrong, the ones who correct it are scientists. ”
Yes. Yet the following is also true and self-evidently so:
When science is wrong, the ones who push back against it being corrected are scientists.
And when science is eventually right, the ones who got it right (correct) are scientists.
When science is right, the ones who push back against it and deny it are scientists.
Or when the scientific consensus is right, the one’s who agree with it are scientists, and the one’s who deny it and disagree with it are also scientists.
And when the scientific consensus is wrong, the ones who go against it with new data and scientific analysis are attacked and ridiculed by ……….. scientists!
Finally: “There is no other human endeavor that comes close to that track record of success. “
Um are you absolutely certain about that belief?
Falling in love has a fairly good track record of success if the current global population is any indication.
zebra: Might be nice if Mal would pitch in and answer that as well, since he started this.
Aw, Hell no. I don’t come here to get trapped in a pointless argument, z. Radge and Ray have my position well covered, anyway. Argue with them if you must.
NK: “Well it is an interesting conversation, excuse for butting in but this really stood out to me:”
OK, you’re starting to get this. Scientists disagree because scientists are human. The process of doing science is messy, because scientists are human, and science is telling humans to think in ways we normally don’t (e.g. looking for contradictory evidence, rather than supporting evidence, looking at things according to probability, etc.). The methodology is conservative because it has to be based on a theory–even if the theory is wrong (and all of them ARE WRONG)–because you need the theory to tell you where it’s weak, where it’s surprising… The whole goal is to overturn–or at least refine–the theory so that it provides better insight into the phenomenon.
People ask the question: Who can I trust? It’s the wrong question. Don’t trust people, including scientists. Trust the method. It’s slow. It’s frustrating, but if you want to understand things, it’s the only reliable way.
As to science vs. love…well the divorce rate is 50%. And although I’ve been married to the same woman for 33 years and am still very much in love, once we are both dead, it will be as if our love never was. The science I do will live on and at least in a small way influence the next generation. I’m still gonna go with science.
NK: When science is wrong, the ones who push back against it being corrected are scientists.
BPL: And that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work. New ideas get no traction simply because they’re new ideas. There is no way to tell in advance which one of twenty new ideas is worthwhile and which 19 are scientific dead ends. Thus the sieve of peer review and replication.
Ray,
Please see my reply to Radge.
The problem with your response is simply that you say “we” (scientists) are interested in educating the public… which implies that you speak for all scientists…. and then you say scientists would rather do research than educate the public. Does not compute.
It sounds like you didn’t read what I wrote beyond that initial sentence.
Maybe what you mean is : “It would be nice if someone else figured out how to get the general public to appreciate science, but I’m too busy with really important work, like trading insults with Victor.”?
I try to apply some of the things that I learned about communicating science to (normal) people who might ask questions at RC (which is supposed to represent real science), but there seem to be fewer and fewer of those showing up in the comments list.
Ray Ladbury says “OK, you’re starting to get this.”
23 Apr 2024 at 1:14 AM
You are saying – I am the one who is starting to get this? My god, I got this DECADES AGO!
Where have you been and what have you been thinking? Certainly not correctly hearing anything I have ever said that is for certain.
Talk about totally missing the whole point in front of all your faces, and not seeing the forest for the trees you choose to hate and unscientifically dismiss out of hand!
Precocious intemperate outbursts by climate scientists on social media do not equate to published peer reviewed science papers — NOR the Scientific Method and the EVIDENCE provided in said science papers!!!
+ + + + + What Ray said!
Ned Kelly
What you are NOT getting is the essential role of theory/modeling in science. You need the model to direct the empirical investigation. As George Box says, “All models are wrong. Some models are useful.” Just because a model is wrong does not mean it is useless. The particular ways the models fail direct how we fix them. Your seeming advocacy that scientists discard the current model makes it clear that you do not understand how science is actually done–a characteristic you share with the denial crowd.
Where have I been? Doing science for 50 years. You?
Zebra,
What you seem to fail to comprehend is that science is a day job–and one that takes up far more than 40 hours a week all on its own. Surely, you are not suggesting that scientists abandon their positions doing research to take positions as kindergarten teachers, are you?
The job of scientists is to do science. That some of us also take it upon ourselves to explain our research or research that interests us is a responsibility we take on over and above our day jobs. Moreover, when a researcher offers to explain their research to a layman, that provides an invaluable opportunity to laymen to understand not just the results obtained by how the research is done. Moreover, in a democracy, citizens have a responsibility to try and understand issues that affect them–even if those issues are highly technical. To turn around and blame one’s lack of understanding on the scientists who have been trying to explain it to them is the acme of dereliction of civic duty.
+1, emphatically.
” Our brains are hardwired to respond most urgently to immediate and obvious threats like covid …”
Bad example. The denial of the seriousness of COVID and resistence to countermeasures was rampant throughout the pandemic. It is at least partly why the UK was well up there with the worst for death toll. I would say COVID denial is very similar to climate change denial, in that people might accept it when they hear about it but don’t you dare suggest doing anything that takes away any of their freedoms and convenience. It will be the same during the next pandemic because monkey man lacks the intelligence to override primitive emotions and instincts when appropriate.
Adam Lea.
The point I’m trying to make is that the government response to covid in many countries while not ideal was still much STRONGER than their response to climate change. For example covid lockdowns, mandatory mask wearing, fast tracking vaccines and treatments, closed borders, other restrictions. Compare this to weak or non existent carbon taxes,
This is probably because politicians saw covid was an immediate obvious threat with bodies piling up in hospitals so politicians were energised to take action, contrasted to climate change which is a slowly evolving threat peaking later this century so it doesn’t motivate politicians as much. As per the links I posted.
And there are many other factors in the slow response to mitigating the climate problem. I’m just highlighting one psychological factor that is a real sticky problem and is overlooked.
Yes I agree there was plenty of covid denial as well.
I see what you mean. The key difference between COVID and climate change is the timescale of consequences to emerge if nothing is done. COVID was a case of act now or you’ll potentially be looking at a complete collapse of the health service which can barely cope with an above average flu season, and a million or more deaths. Climate change consequences are framed as happening in decades, not months. Even then in the UK when we finally decided maybe we ought to do something, we started off by sending infected elderly people back to care homes which did a great job of spreading it amongst the most vulnerable people. There was much objection to lockdowns and questions over whether they acheived anything at all, pointing to the Sweedish method which was advise the public but let them decide how to mitigate consequences after hearing the facts/evidence/projections.
There are parallels between pandemics and climate change. Both require near term sacrifices for the benefit of avoiding long term catastrophe. It is possible this is easier in more socialist countries like Scandinavia than in the American-mentality-individualistic UK where personal freedom and convenience takes priority over collective responsibility and societal consequences. In both climate change and pandemics the mitigation is not cost free and governments have to balance the consequences of doing nothing with the side effects of action. In the UK, lockdowns have resulted in a surge of mental and physical health conditions which were shoved aside to treat COVID patients, and we still do not have the resources to treat. We have economic stagnation and hardship partly caused by declining citizen productivity, itself partly caused by a sizable number of the working-age population unable to work due to long term physical and mental health problems. We do not want something similar to happen with climate change mitigation where the cure risks becoming almost as bad as the disease.
If we are looking at taking action on climate change, I suggest not using COVID as an analogy# at all, because in the UK at least, the initial COVID response, the government blundering, and the social and economic costs of fighting it were awful and many people are still paying for it. You’ll likely enhance entrenched attitudes against mitigation.
Adam Lea
Regarding your points about the covid issue and whether lockdowns were the right idea, and whether the solution was worse than the problem. And how climate mitigation faces the same questions.
I think it depends on how the lockdowns are done. If done properly I think they are worth the effort, and New Zealand did them quite well. In early 2020 New Zealand (my country population about 5 million) went rapidly into a covid lockdown where most businesses had to close and people had to stay at home. This was when there were only 200 covid cases nationwide, and the government was losing track of how the cases were being transmitted.
Within about 8 weeks covid had been eliminated from the community allowing businesses to open and we were back largely to normal for several months. Eventually lockdowns were required in Auckland lasting a month or so, but there were long periods between this of normality and very little covid in the community but it came back later in 2021 and tolerance for lockdowns was decreasing.
Once the population was mostly vaccinated, covid was allowed to rip through the community – which it certainly did, but the mortality rate stayed reasonably low because we had high vaccination rates.
The mortality rate in NZ in 2020 was very roughly 300 people. By 2023 its about 3,500. I believe this is all much lower than the UK on a per capita basis. Sweden (population about 8 million) took a relaxed approach to covid and over 15,000 people died. NZs lockdowns worked well because we went into them very fast, when there were only a few community cases (200) and restrictions were tough. This enabled us to eliminate the virus and end the lockdowns and get back to normal. China did something similar.
The UK entered lockdown when there was already a lot of community spread of the virus so it was too slow and too late. Thus lockdowns had to be very long to control the virus and they didn’t control it very well. It looked like an epic disaster to me.
Having said that lockdowns In NZ certainly caused problems similar to the ones you mentioned in the UK. They cost a lot of tax payer money and governmnet borrowing keeping businesses afloat, lead to mental health issues, setbacks in education, etc, etc.
But personally I believe NZs lockdown strategy was still preferable overall to Swedens hands off approach with its voluntary measures. They still suffered all sorts of horrible covid consequences anyway.
It seems natural to me to prioritise preserving life (with the economy kept a close second). I’m in the older age group so more at risk of covid so maybe Im a bit biased, but even so once we start putting saving lives as a secondary concern to education or unlimited personal freedom ideology, or the economy I think we are on a dangerous slippery slope. But I also admit is not a simple issue to decide on and its not clear if NZ would be able to repeat the same lockdown success with another virus. A lot of things had to click into place to make our lockdowns work.
Regardless of that debate about lockdowns versus alternative approaches, if you ARE going to have a lockdown then IMO it has to be done properly and quickly or its a waste of time. And its maybe easier to do lockdowns in smaller countries than large countries, especially America with its state governments all having different ideas.
I agree that there is no point solving the climate problem if the solution is worse than the problem. This is why I push back against solutions like very ambitious simplification plans and suggestions we make massive reductions in energy use because that looks worse than the problem. I do believe renewables and electric transport are viable and are not worse than the climate problem.
I also agree covid was a bad analogy / example. Won’t be using that one again!
I hope I don’t sound like I’m crowing about NZ, and being too scathingly critical of the UK. We make our share of policy blunders on all sorts of things, but I the covid response worked well, based on numerical data in comparison to other countries.
Nijelj: I agree with your criticism of the UK. When a country and its population collectively chooses to behave like Americans, they shouldn’t be surprised when they get the same results as Americans i.e. a very bad COVID death toll, a toxic government, rammed full roads because everyone chooses to drive everywhere, poor public transport, and sucking up to populist crap that leads to things like the economic suicide known as Brexit. Perhaps if collective responsibility was a thing in the UK we could have adopted the Sweedish strategy of COVID response.
One thing worth mentioning re COVID is that London Heathrow is a global hub airport with a lot of people entering and leaving the country through there. This provides perfect conditions for bringing overseas pathogens into the country, especially when you have a population that enjoys multiple overseas holidays per year often to far away places. New Zealand is more isolated in this regard so easier to limit anything coming into the country.
Regarding climate change mitigation, I’m finding it more difficult to see humanity doing anything even remotely resembling enough over the coming decades. I keep hearing reports of a collapsing EV industry (which is one of your proposed solutions), in my social groups it is clear most people live carbon intensive lifestyles and only make easy token gestures towards reducing carbon footprint. I volunteer in a local charity shop and I find it insane the number of items of clothing donated that have never been worn and still have the price tag, or even still in their original packaging. Why are people buying this stuff then discarding it immediately, I thought there is supposed to be a cost of living crisis over here.
Adam Lea,
I think you bring up a very important point about COVID that isn’t emphasized enough–it followed trade routes. The more connected a city or country with the rest of the world, the more it suffered initially. Isolated countries fared better initially, but fared poorly in the second and third waves–partly because the roll out of the vaccines was also slower there. Countries like Vietnam were initially held up as beacons, and it was suggested (as in the climate crisis) that authoritarian regimes had an advantage in dealing with crises. However, they got hammered in the third wave, suggesting that their initial “success” had more to do with economic isolation/stagnation than any policy.
To me this suggests that democracies can be as effective as authoritarian regimes unless they let the nutjobs rule.
Replying to Adam’s comment about seeing reports of a “collapsing EV industry”–don’t you believe it, Adam:
https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales
Per that, there were 40 million EVs (both BEVs and PHEVs) on global roads in 2023; that number had more than doubled in 2 years; roughly quadrupled in 3 years; and increased by better than 10-fold in 6 years. (See the last graph on that.)
That’s from February of this year.
Some of those reports of “collapse” are more recent than that, but long-standing trends, including committed capital and planning, don’t just “collapse” in a couple of months. Light motoring is going electric over the coming decade. I will say that of the developed world, which is where this data all comes from, the increase in EVs has been weakest where you are–that is to say, in Europe. There, EVs merely increased from 5.6 million in 2022 to 8.1 million in 2023. That’s a mere 44% YOY increase. Laggards that you are! ;-)
Adam Lea.
NZ is indeed geographically isolated, but our economy has a large volume of trade and tourism on a per capita basis so our borders were very vulnerable to covid. As such they were closed to all overseas tourists early in 2020. NZ citizens returning home had to go through a quarantine facility. Overseas tourism was essentially shut down for about a year. Borders remained open for trade in goods. This is another reason we were able to eliminate covid for a time.
But it was a huge level of government control and many NZrs wanting to come home had a long wait. While it was successful overall and I had no objection to the scheme, it was controversial.
The UK appeared to keep their borders open to overseas travel. This didn’t make a lot of sense to me as it let the virus in, while then trying to reduce the virus with lockdowns.
I’m also losing hope that electric cars and other lifestyle changes will be adopted enough to keep warming under 2 degrees. I think it will only happen if the costs of Ev’s drop to the same or less than ICE cars. In fact I generally share your observations and sentiments on those sorts of issues, but I prefer to have a hopeful attitude for my own sanity.
I don’t know why so many new or near new clothes end up in opportunity shops. Some might be unwanted gifts. Although times are economically tough there are many people with money to spare and maybe they like to change their clothes often or buy on impulse and regret it so they dump their clothes at the opportunity shop. Seems a bit extravagant to me. But I suppose at least they are then available for other people to buy quite cheaply.
I like to get as much use out of clothes as possible, and by the time I stop using them they are sometimes only fit for the rubbish bin. I dont normally discard near new clothes unless theres a good reason like they didnt fit very well.
I’m reasonably well off financially but I dont crave having the biggest and best of everything. Some of my appliances are quite basic and rather old – but they still do the job just fine. I don’t really understand the mindset of always having to have the latest products and getting rid of things that are near new, often for very small improvements.
However I dont live like a poor person or a scrooge either. I do have some nice things that cost serious money, but its where I think they add real value and you get a substantial improvement in quality.
But I think the the biggest problem is dumping products in the rubbish that still have some life left in them, and dumping other products that could be recycled. This is the worst form of waste.
Kevin McKinney. Regarding sales of EV’s. You are of course right sales are still increasing robustly globally, however there has been a slowing in sales of EV sales in some countries (Norway, UK and EU, around 2022 – 2023) evident in your link. I’m starting to worry that this is because the exponential growth in EV sales over the last decade has been driven by the small group of early adopters of new technology and environmentalists with good incomes, and we are running out of these people thus causing sales to stagnate a bit. Thus sales might not increase strongly again until the costs of EVs are significantly less than ICE cars, making them irresistible to a wider group.
China still has very robust sales of EV’s but I believe EVs are very competitively priced in China compared to ICE cars. The USA seems to still have good sales but perhaps this is because Evs are subsidised?
The other possibility for the sluggish period of EV sales might be the cost of living problems over the last couple of years. So people are deferring buying a new car, or going for the cheapest options being ICE cars. Fortunately this will be a temporary situation.
But either way I hope sales of Ev’s take off again and I generally share your positive views on EVs and renewables. Despite the obvious challenges scaling up this technology it seems much more plausible and likely to be adopted than various other proposed climate solutions that expect people to make massive personal sacrifices and compromises and EVS have numerous benefits in terms of lower running costs and power and low noise..
This will be my last substantial post on this topic of hansen and aerosols etc
I have shared a few more new related papers recently and if I find other I might post them here down the track, but it looks like no one who posts comments here is interested in any of this info/data analysis nor discussing any of the data evidence, maybe unknown readers do, I don’t know … no point me belabour anything further nor talking to wall.
Hansen et al will work out eventually once enough data and objective analysis is done, versus internet commentary from all quarters which just goes in circles.
I have discovered using x/twitter to follow conversations and data info is a major pain, sometimes with dozens of windows open tracking different threads people/data – and then later unable to find it again. Very frustrating stuff. But I will offer this final summary of what I think I have found out and what it might mean, and leave it at that.
Objectivity and bias are strange creatures – as S&G sang way way back in The Boxer
“I am just a poor boy
Though my story’s seldom told
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocket full of mumbles, such are promises
All lies and jests
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest”
The PACE is sending back its new found data – maybe that might help? It might a little (some) but on the bigger questions I’m not hopeful.
See this post https://nitter.poast.org/hausfath/status/1776313881016909865#m
The global aerosol emissions database (CEDS) has now been updated through 2022.
and the graph Global SO2 with SSP projections 2022
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKa78LvbwAA1bNk.jpg
My eyes see the black trend line SO2 2008-2022 following the (model projected) Green trend line for SSP1-1.9.
It makes no logical sense to me for Zeke to say “global sulfur emissions remain reasonably in-line with the current-policy-type SSP2-4.5 scenario today” ….
There is no point in arguing with Zeke about such things either -a waste of time imo. Plus there is disagreement if the CEDS data is even correct, and of course my opinion is the whole SP methodology is seriously suspect anyway. … it’s all academic. The real question are those raised by hansen, what is the real world situation not what do the models say. OK>
Skip the next section if you wish – a bit messy, sorry .
It’s some links I did save to comments and to data/graphs etc from various people from all sides on Twitter, and cpl of related new papers.
============================================================================
Some links fwiw – I think he’s being ignored by many. BUT the info he shares is good and useful imo.
https://nitter.poast.org/LeonSimons8
(Leon sees what he wants to see too, it’s a universal issue imo, but he is still seeking more info with an open mind, though he does overdo it — I don’t think many are listening to him anymore, he’s likely blocked by many climate scientists. A pity …. but his account is packed full of DATA and refs and checks and balances)
https://nitter.poast.org/LeonSimons8/status/1775498391662866820#m
https://nitter.poast.org/LeonSimons8/status/1767509577656856739?s=20
the Community Emissions Data System (CEDS).
Where the SO2 emissions happen is indeed crucial
https://nitter.poast.org/LeonSimons8/status/1776315613423476820#m
CEDS Here with the global CAMS SO2 added and both the linear:
and the logarithmic y-axis: (scroll up too)
https://nitter.poast.org/LeonSimons8/status/1776261426669097415#m
with graph ktSO2 data CEDS 2022 global incl shipping
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKZVA0HWEAAIsGS.jpg
SOx estimates definitely wrong. Across the 2010s it was around 9-10 Tg SOx (IMO 2020 Study gives an estimate of 9.25 Tg for 2017). We went from around that in 2019 to around 1.5 Tg in 2020 (around 3 according to CEDS 2024).
https://nitter.poast.org/ckontovas/status/1776296865731846373#m
papers by @ckontovas
Decarbonization of Maritime Transport: Is There Light at the End of the Tunnel?
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/1/237
Integration of air quality and climate change policies in shipping: The case of
sulphur emissions regulation
https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/12041/1/Kontovas%202020%20JMPO-Accepted.pdf
and related
https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/aerosols-are-so2-emissions-reductions-contributing-global-warming (above unreliable / vague imho)
IMO revised GHG strategy 2023
https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/PressBriefings/pages/Revised-GHG-reduction-strategy-for-global-shipping-adopted-.aspx
Shipping expert SO ckontovas (@ckontovas) | nitter.poast.org
https://nitter.poast.org/ckontovas
ckontovas @ckontovas
Apr 6
I feel the modelling for int shipping (was the second largest contributor in 2019) is pretty questionable. Based on more recent and realistic data, my own estimates suggest around 8.5-11 Tg SO2 in 2019 and around 1.5 (20% uncertainty) for 2020.
@piersforster 8.5Tg SO2 reduction between 2019 and 2020 for shipping alone (Forster,2023) is probably correct by then it gets total SO2 in 2020 (CEDS) to 68.063 Tg. I hope that SO2 emissions for 1A1a_Electricity-public are correct otherwise the total emissions are way lower
https://nitter.poast.org/ckontovas/status/1776406065480978541
ckontovas @ckontovas
Apr 6 Replying to @ckontovas @hausfath @Peters_Glen @piersforster
re. the questionable assumptions in CEDS: shipping fuel consumption is overestimated (see 4th IMO GHG study vessel-based int. shipping), residual to total percentage too low, sulphur content (Resid S%=0.78) too high and rather strange way of modelling it too. [should be 0.55 sulpgur content ]
data ceds screen shot https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKcN4YpWYAA6Dgi.jpg
https://nitter.poast.org/ckontovas/status/1776406065480978541
That’s different from both the CEDS and the CAMS estimate. Do you have a source?
https://nitter.poast.org/LeonSimons8/status/1776285373632578029#m
graphs cams vs ceds
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKah_qvW0Aojq06.jpg
ckontovas @ckontovas
Apr 5 Replying to @LeonSimons8 @ClimateOfGavin
no idea. I checked CEDS today and some of their assumptions are wrong. Could be the definition of international shipping. Both models are based on AIS data and they overestimate the fuel consumption;
https://nitter.poast.org/LeonSimons8/status/1776285373632578029#m
Steven J Smith @StevenJSmith20
Apr 4 (1/4) The new CEDS global emission time series for BC, CO, CO2, NH3, NMVOC, NOx, OC, and SO2 is out!
github.com/JGCRI/CEDS
https://nitter.poast.org/StevenJSmith20/status/1775866627550073298#m
GRAPH SO2 emissions by region 1850-2022 CEDS
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKUjFqsXgAAV8U-.jpg
Glen Peters @Peters_Glen
Apr 5 There has been a long term decline in SO2 emissions, potentially causing an acceleration in global warming.
The latest CEDS database had data to 2019 (21/04/2021 release), but this has now been updated to include 2022 (1/04/2024).
@LeonSimons8 made an estimate, as did @piersforster in the “Indicators” paper essd.copernicus.org/articles…
Which estimates is best? Hard to verify!
CEDS is a peer-reviewed bottom up estimate of global emissions, & in a process-based sense, is the most robust (whether it is more accurate is hard to tell given uncertainties & poor data to verify).
And a bonus, from the other site, @openclimatedata compares the change in shipping emissions with the total.
SO2 has been declining in many countries for decades, and one could think of the shipping reductions as an extension of those trends.
Here is a comparison with the latest CEDS data and the SSP scenarios
https://nitter.poast.org/Peters_Glen/status/1776198489891799319#m
global so2 1960-2022 ced simons forster (glen peters)
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKZQ-X-WwAAdAuq.jpg
Glenpeters global SO2 emissions graph ced forster simons 2015-2022
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKbFUFWW4AA_Cu1.jpg
CEDS 1850-2022 intl shipping graph SO2 emissions
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKVHczJWoAAMj4a.png
logarithmic graph cams vs ceds SO2 global + shipping graphs
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKah_qvW0Aojq06.jpg
Climate Observer @climateobs
Apr 5 Replying to @Peters_Glen
The 2023 jump in absorbed solar was ~1 W/m2.
This exceeds estimates from changes in SO2. Exactly what caused this change? Rapid change in the dynamics which determine clouds? Lower level cloud effects from the H-T eruption? ENSO? Probably no way to definitively distinguish
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKaE2uWWgAAyZ-7.png
https://nitter.poast.org/climateobs/status/1776253622407319781#m
The most important @NASA graph in the world confirms increased Earth’s Energy Imbalance from aerosol reductions (+0.2 W/m²/decade) and increasing greenhouse gases (+0.34 W/m²/dec) up to 2019!
This doesn’t even include IMO 2020 shipping desulphurisation REDUCTIONS yet!!
[ which was 8-9 Tg SO2 a cut of 80% to intl shipping from 2019 OR an ADDITIONAL 13% REDUCTION of total global emissions which had already fallen by ~50% since 2005 or thereabouts ]
https://nitter.poast.org/LeonSimons8/status/1775498391662866820#m
eg by Leon
The aerosol forcing effect on Earth’s Energy Imbalance will get even higher when the 2020 80% reduction of sulphur emissions over the oceans will be included.
plus
Recent reductions in aerosol emissions have increased Earth’s energy imbalance
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01324-8
plus
Leon Simons
@LeonSimons8
Apr 4
The climate effect of aerosol reductions between 2001 and 2019 was equal to about 10 years of greenhouse gas emissions! That doesn’t include the aerosol effect of IMO 2020 shipping desulphurisation yet!
https://cicero.oslo.no/en/articles/cleanup-of-air-pollution-heats-the-earth
graph Climate forcing changes from 2001 to 2019
Aerosols 0.36 GHG 0.61 ERF Watts/2m 0.97
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKT8rWxWMAIdvFM.jpg
post https://nitter.poast.org/LeonSimons8/status/1775822522736353727#m
data via CICERO article 2024 – Cleanup of air pollution heats the Earth
https://cicero.oslo.no/en/articles/cleanup-of-air-pollution-heats-the-earth
——————-
SUMMARY info – graphs by Leon – Absorbed Solar Radiation (ASR) EEI up etc – to 2024
Why was 2023 so extreme? The data is finally in!
The world absorbed a lot more sunlight, as less was reflected
https://nitter.poast.org/LeonSimons8/status/1767509577656856739?s=20
—————————————–
CERES DATA vs OHC new paper preprint
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGGWamXyXwAAAYcJ.jpg
IAPv4 ocean temperature and ocean heat content
https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2024-42/
The rate of increase of Ocean Heat Content increased with 0.36 W/m² per decade from 2005 to 2023.
[ showing OHC even doubled, from 2020 – 2023 – so quite some acceleration ]
https://nitter.poast.org/LeonSimons8/status/1757981215922012620#m
–
LASTLY ckontovas @ckontovas
8 Aug 2023
the average sulphur content of residual fuels was 2.51% in 2012 and it went down to 0.51% (2022 data for vessels not using scrubbers). #SOx #emissions are directly related to the sulfur content! Can you connect the dots?
https://nitter.poast.org/ckontovas/status/1688913491237994496#m
DATA Changes avg SO2 sulphur content shipping fuels 2022 CKONTOVAS
2.5% down to 0.5% was the new IMO standard from 2020 — maybe 3000 vessels using scrubbers = zero SO2
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FF3A5Juxa8AAe6rp.png
PLUS
@IMOHQ policies – including the 2023 Revised IMO GHG strategy- do not consider the impact on Climate of SOx reductions, and the potential slippages from the use of, even, clean fuels such as Hydrogen or ammonia. My opinion, this is a very myopic view to address Climate Change!
https://nitter.poast.org/ckontovas/status/1688913491237994496#m
==================================================================================
My conclusions so faer, and a summary of key points from memory of the above plus other posts/data not shown (eg lost cant find now)
– ckontovas is suggesting CEDS/CAMS are overestimating the levels of SO 2 emissions (PACE might help define the data better>)
– that CEDS 2022 says intl shipping cut from 9 Tg to 2-3 tg – more likely down to 1.5 Tg of SO2
– global SO2 emissions already cut by Half since 2005 (and earlier) plus circa 13% cut from shipping.
– WHERE SO2 reductions occurr makes a big difference, and over the oceans it reduces Albedo (and impacts clouds) much more than over land other regions.
– Hansen et al showing OHC / temps over ocean regions with shipping SO2 reduction up to 2019
– logic suggest the EEI/OHC/CERES data etc from 2022-2023 indicate large (?) impact from IMO 2020 80% SO2 intl shipping reductions of fuel …..
– This 2020 to 2023 changes to shipping SO2 is not yet fully showing up in all the Data — yet.
– Yes El Nino drove higher 2023-2024 temperatures in oceans and GMST but more work needed to see what impact was from this shipping (and European continental) reductions of SO2 aerosols etc
My feeling is Hansen et all make sense with their hypothesis with as yet limited Data — those denying Hansen et al do NOT have genuine complete Data to refute Hansen et al or Leon Simons collections of Data so far.
iow Those claiming the current “acceleration” is normal — ie has been captured in GCMs Models, SSP, CMIP6 etc etc and is “normal” – imo have not provided adequate evidence or even any evidence — to me they all sound like rhetoric claims being as yet unfounded SPECULATION … including Zeke’s “viewing of the SSP graph at the beginning of this post.
WHY? Because Hansen’s Hypothesis is based on claiming a difference in ESC which impacts the assumptions of how much a cut in SO2 would impact temperatures ….. plus plus the existing models assumptions; plus on the actual physical forcing being caused by these SO2 reductions is GREATER than being assumed by the naysayers. That’s what it looks like to me.
Of course I do not know for certain either – I am onky saying what sounds logical and what does not (to me.)
I’m with Hansen though, in good time much more Data and anyalysis will arrive this and the following years to prove him correct one way or the other. I wll wait and see what comes.
My sense is this is the main problem – Still a man hears what he wants to hear; And disregards the rest
Which shows in the science community and activists as the difference between —
Speculation: the forming of a theory or conjecture without firm evidence.
Hypothesis: a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.
Anyways ….
You spend your life spamming these forums or do you submit peer reviewed work of your own ?
We all see the sulphur issue on Twitter and what is responsible for the 0.2C additional unaccounted for warning of 2023/24 but as yet there appears to be know definitive answer so it just ends up in a lot of speculation about the cause. Can’t we all just wait until 24 is out and then see what answers the science comes up with.
Pete bestv: APR 14: “You spend your life spamming these forums or do you submit peer reviewed work of your own ?”
That’s a … bit unfair to our Ned. He doesn’t have the chops to publish in solid peer reviewed journal dealing with climatology. So where the poor thing should share his thoughts to make him feel better about himself ( If specialists in the field can’t see what I, Ned Kelly, can, then I must be really, really, smart /i>) ?
“Advances in Climate Science Skepticism”? “Journal of Conspiracy Theories”?
That’s the promise of the Internet – the place, where anybody can post anything –
see a plumber question the scientific consensus on climate change or the efficacy of COVID vaccinations – and having their opinions given, by the power of the Internet, the same credibility as the posts of specialists in the field. It doesn’t matter if it is right – all it matters
if it is viewed. See for instance, the humbly self-titled:
“Watts Up With That – the world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change”
Another research study ref from 2023 in the northern Indian Ocean confirming other published studies on aerosols.
Saying yet again the amount of aerosol forcing on temperature is much higher than has been modeled in the GCMs CMIP6 and so on. The impacts of this forcing on global atmosphere circulation, temperature and flows is much more than modeled.
Aerosol demasking enhances climate warming over South Asia
Published: 20 May 2023 H. R. C. R. Nair et al
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-023-00367-6
Anthropogenic aerosols mask the climate warming caused by greenhouse gases (GHGs). In the absence of observational constraints, large uncertainties plague the estimates of this masking effect. Here we used the abrupt reduction in anthropogenic emissions observed during the COVID-19 societal slow-down to characterize the aerosol masking effect over South Asia. During this period, the aerosol loading decreased substantially and our observations reveal that the magnitude of this aerosol demasking corresponds to nearly three-fourths of the CO2-induced radiative forcing over South Asia.
Concurrent measurements over the northern Indian Ocean unveiled a ~7% increase in the earth’s surface-reaching solar radiation (surface brightening). Aerosol-induced atmospheric solar heating decreased by ~0.4 K d−1. Our results reveal that under clear sky conditions, anthropogenic emissions over South Asia lead to nearly 1.4 W m−2 heating at the top of the atmosphere during the period March–May. A complete phase-out of today’s fossil fuel combustion to zero-emission renewables would result in rapid aerosol demasking, while the GHGs linger on.
The impact on vertically-integrated aerosol number concentrations is reflected in the aerosol optical depth (AOD)20. AOD measured by satellites is the only globally-observed metric of aerosols and is the vertically integrated product of aerosol number concentrations and the extinction coefficient of the aerosols. During March-April-May (MAM) 2020, the regional loadings of aerosol optical depth (AOD) over SA were significantly lowered (up to ~40%)
————–
And yet another from China
Aerosols overtake greenhouse gases causing a warmer climate and more weather extremes toward carbon neutrality
09 November 2023 by Pinya Wang, Yang Yang et al
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42891-2?fromPaywallRec=false
Here, we assess the global impacts of changing greenhouse gases (GHGs), aerosols, and tropospheric ozone (O3) following a carbon neutrality pathway on climate and extreme weather events individually using the Community Earth System Model version 1 (CESM1). The results suggest that the future aerosol reductions significantly contribute to climate warming and increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weathers toward carbon neutrality and aerosol impacts far outweigh those of GHGs and tropospheric O3. It reverses the knowledge that the changing GHGs dominate the future climate changes as predicted in the middle of the road pathway.
( seems highly theoretical based on SSPs etc – above my paygrade of $0/hour
An addendum to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/much-ado-about-acceleration/#comment-821265
Aerosol demasking enhances climate warming over South Asia
Published: 20 May 2023 H. R. C. R. Nair et al
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-023-00367-6
Because it’s critically important, it relates both to 2023-24 spike in temps (especially regionally) due to aerosol decreases in ocean regions; as well as what Hansen has called our Faustian bargain several years ago now.
SEE Discussion
Scientific and policy implications
The findings in this study have significant implications for both our scientific understanding as well as for climate mitigation policy. Earlier studies have demonstrated COVID-19 shutdown induced changes in ambient air quality, primarily due to a reduction in the consumption of fossil fuel in the transportation sector. The lifetime of the majority of tropospheric aerosols is typically around a week and as a result, the aerosol loading across SA (from surface to at least 8 km in altitude) decreased by as much as 18% (Table 1) following the COVID lockdown.
The comparable decrease in atmospheric CO2 during 2020 is about 1%. This is the fundamental reason for the here detailed aerosol demasking effect on climate.
Mitigation strategies focusing on the phase-out of fossil fuels will lead to quick removal of the short-lived aerosols while the longer-lived major greenhouse gases decrease much more slowly, likely resulting in undesired net warming of the climate during a decades-long transition period. This transitory dilemma has so far received little attention yet ought to be recognized in the climate policy arena.
The second implication concerns the science of aerosol radiative forcing. The 18% decrease in the columnar aerosol loading, revealed by the large-scale geophysical perturbation experiment resulting from the COVID-19 shutdown, led to an increase in radiative forcing by 1.4 W m−2 when averaged over SA for the springtime (Table 1). This is about three-fourths of the CO2 induced radiative forcing of 1.8 W m−2 2.
If this were to happen over wide scales, as we would expect from a 100% switchover from fossil fuels to zero-emission renewables, the net radiative heating would increase drastically. This estimate also provides an opportunity for testing IPCC model predictions against observation. The observations broadly support the IPCC model predictions that aerosols have a net cooling effect on climate, with the implication that reducing aerosol sources would lead to net warming, as here quantified by observations.
The major surprise from the study is the magnitude of the COVID shutdown-induced increase in surface-reaching solar radiation, the surface brightening, of the order of 15–20 W m−2. This surface brightening has major implications for the regional climate, especially the monsoonal circulation, atmospheric circulation, and precipitation over SA, and likely also for East Asia and all tropical regions.
Other recent studies also reported weakening of the aerosol cooling effect due to the Covid-19 lockdown and a subsequent short-term warming effect. Despite a strong increase in the observed surface forcing, corresponding changes in the near-surface temperature over the land areas of SA were not resolved from satellite observations (Supplementary Figure 6a). However, sea surface temperatures increased partially in the Bay of Bengal region.
In summary, demasking the aerosol-induced surface cooling through climate mitigation actions will unveil the actual magnitude and effect of GHG-induced global warming; we shall anticipate a decades-long transitory increase in surface temperatures from planned mitigations. The global scale reductions in the aerosol loading during COVID shut-down provided this unique opportunity to witness and gauge this inadvertent impact of climate mitigation strategies.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-023-00367-6#Sec5
Comments: FWIW
One needs to grasp the above and understand it in the CONTEXT of what 2022/23 Hansen et al paper says, and what has unfolded in 2023 2024 temperature spike over and above that expected from El Nino effects.
The above relates to aerosols over and above SO2 via Maritime sources and those recent reductions.
Aerosol reduction over the oceans has far greater warming impact in lowering albedo than if that happened over land.
That AOD albedo effects is immediate over the REGION where it occurs.
While the well mixed global level of GHGs in the atmosphere remains exactly the same – very high.
The warming into the Oceans (OHC) may be cumulative only later rising to be measured as SST increases some time or years later. The measurable effects of climate change are often delayed.
This paper mirrors exactly the processes and warnings Hansen et al have been speaking to ASR EEI Aerosol reductions and the subsequent heating operating at higher levels not represented in existing assumptions and climate models – their Projections into the future, the IPCC Reports and CMIP6 outputs included.
To me this paper makes as much logical sense as Hansen et al does. Both explain their hypothesis really well and provide supporting data and evidence to back up their arguments. ASAICT
Anyways …. Kind Regards
To whom shall we believe? The claims of unanimous consent on this topic….are kindly put as, just claims. A similar issue existed decades ago with the nuclear energy industry. Scientists tend to speak at technical levels, way above the heads of the layman. The media – widely distrusted by most with the public, as represented by their 32% trust rating per Gallup – is not a voice citizens will trust. And politicians…hahaha… There’s a lack of trust on this issue because we have been lied to before on scientific matters, and by the people entrusted to tell us the truth.
Berdj Rassam, to investigate the scientific consensus on climate change, you could start with this Wikipedia article and then follow its references.
Berdj Rassam: – “To whom shall we believe?”
https://themindsjournal.com/quotes/most-people-dont-really-want-the-truth/
Meanwhile, the years between the “GMST Milestones” keep decreasing. That indicates global warming is accelerating.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/much-ado-about-acceleration/#comment-820953
The daily North Atlantic (o-60°N, o-80°W) and daily World (60°S-60°N, 0-360°E) mean sea surface temperatures (SSTs) have been at record high levels for more than a year.
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/
The daily North Atlantic SST anomaly remains at record seasonal high levels.
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1779527222677885426
The increasing Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) is accelerating the rate of warming.
https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1765665922990112978
The planet is getting progressively too hot for humans and most other species to flourish.
https://twitter.com/aeberman12/status/1776566334060384472
Food shortages historically are the biggest driver of regime change. This is where the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) emergency becomes all too real for people.
https://theconversation.com/climate-change-could-lead-to-food-related-civil-unrest-in-uk-within-50-years-say-experts-214754
The AGW emergency has already become a real and present danger for hundreds of millions of people around the world.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/unforced-variations-apr-2024/#comment-820838
When will it become real for Berdj Rassam?
BRassan: You could also visit Spencer Weart’s excellent Discovery of Global Warming. He noted somewhere on RC recently that it’s received an annual update. It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
https://history.aip.org/climate/index.htm
Driveby claims of shallow agreement by faith-based groups are spectacularly inaccurate. Science is a discipline with checks and balances and dismissing the better part of two centuries of work, using a product of science to say so, is more reflective of ignorance than of wisdom. But if you really wish to know, that’s a good place to learn something about the work.
Increasing ASR, OHC and EEI, scientific reticence, denial and data.
There are several moving parts and aspects to this issue.
Maybe this short compilation will help highlight part of it.
Hansen et al (2024) Hopium pg 9 says:
“The increase of ASR is the reason Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) since 2020 is nearly double what it was in the first decade of the 21st century.”
and pg 11 says:
“We need to communicate energy/climate science better. It is tempting to relax into comfort of scientific reticence, described in section 7.2 of our Pipeline paper. But who is going to communicate science to policymakers and the public if scientists retreat into reticence?”
Lijing Cheng @Lijing_Cheng
Apr 7
[1/9] A holistic view of the Ocean heat content in 2023 is provided by looking at in situ, satellite data (CERES, and Geodetic: altimetry minus GRACE) and CMIP6 model simulations
[6/9] For 2005–2023, CERES data show an acceleration of 0.57 ± 0.18 W/m^2/dec, consistent with the geodetic data 0.54 ± 0.39 W/m^2/dec.
However, CMIP6-MMM: 0.19 [-0.00, 0.36] W/m^2/dec.
and
[8/9] One important finding is a significant decadal variation of the ocean heating rate; which was almost “stable” since ~1990
https://nitter.poast.org/Lijing_Cheng/status/1776847060047941644#m
Graph – https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKihiewbEAARkmv.jpg
Leon Simons @LeonSimons8
Apr 10 Fact check:
Many scientists have been denying the ‘acceleration’ of global warming for years.
Even now that their own evidence supports it, many are still downplaying it.
The Earth’s Energy Imbalance more than doubled.
(See: Fig.7 EEI from CERES satellite data 2005-2015 v 2020-2023 Hansen et al 2024)
@NASA’s satellite data is not in line with models!
https://nitter.poast.org/LeonSimons8/status/1778053844162806046#m
Graph – https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKzqjGcWoAEkc5j.jpg
Evidence of accelerated warming see 2009-2023 Trend (Hausfather/Carbon Brief)
Graph – https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKzoeNAW0AQnnDn.jpg
SOURCE –
#1 Is a Recent Surge in Global Warming Detectable?
https://arxiv.org/html/2403.03388v1
Ocean heat content in 2023
04 April 2024 Lijing Cheng (Gavin Schmidt coauthor)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-024-00539-9
#2 New Record Ocean Temperatures and Related Climate Indicators in 2023
Published: 11 January 2024 Lijing Cheng (Michael E Mann coauthor)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00376-024-3378-5
#3 IAPv4 ocean temperature and ocean heat content gridded dataset
14 Feb 2024 Lijing Cheng (Michael E Mann coauthor)
https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2024-42/
#4 Global Warming Acceleration: Hope vs Hopium (Fig.7 ASR-EEI)
29 March 2024 James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/Hopium.MarchEmail.2024.03.29.pdf
——————————————————-
More info?
LIST of SCIENCE REFS regarding the issues surrounding the topic of possible accelerated warming
Scroll down several posts from
Ned Kelly says 9 Apr 2024 at 1:54 AM
PART 2 of 2
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/unforced-variations-apr-2024/#comment-821110
to
Addendum 2
ADDITIONS SINCE POSTED 10 Apr 2024 at 7:26 PM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/unforced-variations-apr-2024/#comment-821254
To Gavin, just my profound thanks for bringing up the topic. I’ve an interest in following some of it.
I know your time is precious and you must make choices where better to spend it. But should the motive and opportunity arrive again, nearer the end of 2024, I would very much appreciate a revisit of this topic with an added 6 months of 20/20 hindsight.
Aerosols were first brought to my attention, of course, from the 1971 Rasool & Schneider paper such a very long time back. And I’ve completely ignored them, since then. Now this is all coming back to roost on me like a ton of bricks.
Hansen makes specific criticisms of cloud modeling in CMIP5 and CMIP6. I won’t paraphrase. I’m sure it’s better you get it straight from the source. But he does, given my ignorance, make a credible case that conflation/lack of disambiguation with respect to aerosols remains an important problem.
But it’s also been two decades since I last spent time as an engineer-hobbyist with a small interest reading a few papers. (Global Energy and Water Experiment, through their Cloud Systems Study — GCSS, then at GEWEX dot ORG; cloud-resolving convection parameterization aka “superparameterization”; then newly added subgrid scale parameterizations and boundary-layer cloud parameterization of Lock et al., circa 2000 and 2001, and tested by GCSS; and the MRI/JMA 5 km gridding experiment over a volume of some 4000km x 3000km x 22km; centered over Japan [Yoshizaki et al., 2005.])
Much seems to be playing out. Not just unusual ocean temps this year and part of last year, but also the new data only just coming in from PACE starting a month back, or so. And I hope there may be something useful to say before 2024 ends. And if so, I’d like to hear it.
Best wishes and thanks again.
P.S. Personally, I have just today started to dig into:
Oleg Dubovik et. al., 2019, “Polarimetric remote sensing of atmospheric aerosols: Instruments,
methodologies, results, and perspectives”
“Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences 2nd Edition”, Volume 5, 2015, pages 51-66, Satellites and Satellite Remote Sensing | Aerosol Measurements, by RA Kahn.
And I just this last week exchanged some emails with Kirk Knobelspiesse at PACE and have the beginnings of a conversation, perhaps.
Jon Kirwan: – “Much seems to be playing out. Not just unusual ocean temps this year and part of last year, but also the new data only just coming in from PACE starting a month back, or so. And I hope there may be something useful to say before 2024 ends.”
I’d suggest “something useful” may occur much sooner…
In the communication by James Hansen, Makiko Sato and Reto Ruedy, dated 14 Dec 2023, titled Global Warming Acceleration: El Nino Measuring Stick Looks Good, it included:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2023/MeasuringStick.2023.12.14.pdf
That’s less than 7 weeks to go before the end of May 2024, and according to Hansen, Sato & Ruedy, we may have a much more definitive indication by then.
The global surface air temperature 365-day running average anomaly (relative to the 1850-1900 baseline, and utilizing Copernicus ERA5 data) continues to rise and rise…
Per Prof Eliot Jacobson, 8 Apr 2024 was at +1.59 °C.
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1778036429727449584
Countercurrents.org published a piece by Robert Hunziker on Apr 13, headlined Global Warming: Uncharted Territory Dead Ahead. It began with:
https://countercurrents.org/2024/04/global-warming-uncharted-territory-dead-ahead/
According to Gavin Schmidt, the answer to whether the Earth System has fundamentally changed and the ‘new normal’ has already arrived will be obvious by August 2024. That’s only 4 months away.
Meanwhile, scientists at a UN conference in Spain sound the alarm over ocean warming. Per a Phys.org Apr 12 article:
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-scientists-spain-alarm-ocean.html
Geoff Miell and Jon Kirwan: I doubt that Gavin Schmidt used the word ‘obvious’. If he did, I apologize, but my suspicion is that he implied we’d know and understand more by the end of this summer, as some of the additional inputs like El Nino/La Nina, the extra Hunga water vapor, methane, etc. will be less spectacularly recent and can be integrated better into the overall trend observations. ‘clearer understanding’ might be a better way to put it.
Like you, I’d like to know more; wouldn’t we all? But even better would be to have policymakers take more account of what we already know, and be less bent by more immediate influences like wealth, power, and especially lies and bullying.
Susan Anderson: – “Geoff Miell and Jon Kirwan: I doubt that Gavin Schmidt used the word ‘obvious’.”
Did you read the article I’ve linked to, Susan? The author included the following quote:
Thanks. [perhaps in my head I was indulging in semantics/context: what is ‘knowing’?]
If only there were some level of knowledge that could make people who matter stop devising more ways to consume / waste / extract / deceive in favor of preserving and restoring. I’m all for better understanding, but it doesn’t seem to work that way.
Endless rants and repetitions here come across as a toddler’s tantrums, despite the content being material which concerns all of us.
Curious MIT article w many refs – Now that the rules are in place and the industry is running on low-sulfur fuels, intentionally reintroducing pollution over the oceans would be a far more controversial matter.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/11/1091087/the-inadvertent-geoengineering-experiment-that-the-world-is-now-shutting-off/
Related paper from 2013 – a hypothetical SO2 shipping evaluation
https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/13/12059/2013/acp-13-12059-2013.html
And in other NKNews I believe I have worked out ME Mann’s ‘blind spots’ on this issue going back to early 2023, of Hansen’s paper and articles, and the info via Leon Simons he publicly rejects. This will all come out in the wash eventually (I hope) but in the meantime I believe Mann does not actually understand what Hansen is stating nor why – simply because he cannot “see” it – I wonder if he has read it all or checked anything within it.
as shown in his Nov 2023 critique https://michaelmann.net/content/comments-new-article-james-hansen
It’s interesting, anyways ….
Kind regards
NK: I believe Mann does not actually understand what Hansen is stating nor why
BPL: If you can’t believe that someone would honestly disagree with your position, and must be misunderstanding it, it proves that you don’t really understand the issue yourself. Confirmation bias with a vengeance.
Barton Paul Levenson says
16 Apr 2024 at 9:08 AM
NK: Whatever. I will not waste my time defending/explaining ‘statements or arguments’ I have not in fact made.
NK. You have, in fact, been taking on all comers with your claim to know better than anybody else, and your neverending extensive posting of material many of us have already seen as backup to your claim of superiority. You may not see yourself as acting this way, but it comes across that way.
Fact is, Mann and Hansen are closer to each other than they are to you.
In Re to Ned Kelly, 15 Apr 2024 at 2:34 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/much-ado-about-acceleration/#comment-821319
Dear Ned,
Let me ask a question. I do not suppose you meant by “other NKNews” the website
https://www.nknews.org/content_author/nk-news/
providing information about North Korea.
I rather think that you mentioned “NKNews” by accident, not being aware that it is a real entity.
Am I right?
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomáš Kalisz says
20 Apr 2024 at 4:47 PM
Yes, you’re right.
I was playing around (ie having fun with, making a self-deprecating joke) with this thing I labeled “Ned Kelly News” (In other NKNews) Tomas.
Kind Regards ….
Here’s a photo of Ned Kelly btw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Kelly#/media/File:Ned_Kelly_in_1880.png
Not Korean, but I denote a very strong element of Irish Socialism ( regarding entrenched Class inequality) bordering on strong healthy Communist idealism with a distinct dislike of Totalitarian Fascism and the abuse of Power.
Tomas, some supporting Data evidence for my assertions above:
The Original Jerilderie Letter, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne
“The document known as the Jerilderie Letter was dictated by famous Australian bushranger Ned Kelly to fellow Kelly Gang member Joe Byrne in 1879. It is one of only two original Kelly documents known to have survived. The Jerilderie Letter is a 56-page document of approximately 8,000 words. In the letter Kelly tries to justify his actions, including the killing of three policemen in October 1878. He describes cases of alleged police corruption and calls for justice for poor families.”
https://www.nma.gov.au/explore/features/ned-kelly-jerilderie-letter/transcription
I observe: The more things change, the more they stay the same …..
Sound familiar in style?
In Re to Ned Kelly, 21 Apr 2024 at 7:31 PM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/much-ado-about-acceleration/#comment-821507
and 21 Apr 2024 at 7:44 PM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/much-ado-about-acceleration/#comment-821508
Dear Ned,
Thank you very much for your reference to the Jerilderie Letter. I have read the sad story of Ned Kelly. I think I can understand that an experienced systematic injustice can bring a brave man on a path of armed fight against the system.
Nevertheless, I am very sceptical about any form of communist idealism. I am afraid that communist ideals are basically indistinguishable from any other fundamentalism. I grew up in communist Czechoslovakia; my parents experienced both nacism as well as communism. I know quite well how both nacists and communists treated their actual or supposed opponents. If you try to compare United States of America with any one of such regimes or with contemporary Russia, you are utterly wrong.
One hundred years ago, Czech writer Karel Čapek published his confession “Proč nejsem komunistou” (Why I am not a communist):
https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/877502/mod_resource/content/1/Capek_Proc%20nejsem%20komunistou.pdf
I strongly identify with his view.
I have found the original Czech version only. I hope, however, that modern machine translation tools can be already good enough to make this hundred year old wisdom sufficiently understandable in 22nd century, too.
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomáš Kalisz, you never grew up in “Communism” …. you grew up in a totalitarian dictatorship.
The PR Label “Communist” was misappropriated word and misused by the Systems in place. What you hate/detest and distrust isn’t Communism.
The State Propaganda used by both sides has been unbelievably successful ever since and pervades our shared History (unfortunately).
But, whatever …. nothing will change for the better until everything changes first. C’est la vie.
Beware of shared myths and hollywood movies. :-)
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/11/02/sheldon-wolin-and-inverted-totalitarianism
I already see at least two alternate explanations that rely on what amounts to a symmetric differences between their axioms, those of Gavin Schmidt et. al. and those of Jim Hansen et. al. And I perceive they make different predictions, given time.
As you say, Gavin believes it may only take another four months or so to discern more. (Enough to make a detection, if not yet enough to assign a quantitative likelihood measure..)
I didn’t expect to get something from Gavin exactly in four months’ time, though. That’s why I added another couple of months to let the dust settle and allow schedules (and the stars) to align somehow. I know he’s busy.
I already know that Jim Hansen will be making his opinion known in six months time. Probably monthly even.
I just wanted to let Gavin know I’d like to hear his own thinking sometime before the end of the year. Stuff happens, people forget, priorities shift. I wanted to add my voice for its importance, in hope that this nudges a revisit up a little bit on his list of things to do as we move towards the end of the year.
365-day running mean global temperature anomaly from ERA5 reached just a new decimal: 1.6°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average.
See the graph https://nitter.poast.org/mikarantane/status/1780588900844519574#m
Alt ERA5 graph
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGLX-pPrXYAAvXss.jpg
April daily crossing +2C anomaly
Clouds are complex and aerosol cloud interactions are even more complex.
This is almost impossible to model. Especially without real world experiments to compare it to.
Observational data from The great inadvertent aerosol experiment is coming available:
https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1780272459071037536
Dr. Robert Rohde @RARohde
Regional map showing how the net energy imbalance has changed since 2020.
The Southern Ocean shows a large increase in energy absorption associated with low sea ice in recent years.
The Atlantic & North Pacific changes follow recent decreases in marine sulfur aerosol pollution.
Last year, I wrote a thread on the new shipping rules that cut marine sulfur pollution by ~85%.
Due to shipping patterns, the biggest impact of that change would be expected in the North Atlantic & North Pacific, broadly consistent with the map above.
(alt) thread posts global data images
https://nitter.poast.org/LeonSimons8/status/1780272459071037536
Europe absorbed 2.2 W/m² more sunlight in the past 4 years than it did during the preceding decade.
Read the March mailing by @DrJamesEHansen, @MakikoSato6 and Pushker Kharecha for more:
https://mailchi.mp/caa/global-warming-acceleration-hope-vs-hopium
These changes in Outgoing Longwave Radiation determine how high the Energy Imbalance is and much heat accumulates.
The change in regional Energy Imbalance is equal to the change in Absorbed Solar Radiation minus the change in Outgoing Longwave Radiation:
We included it in our (@DrJamesEHansen et al. (2023)) Global warming in the pipeline paper.
In the section about The great inadvertent aerosol experiment, starting page 18:
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfclm/kgad008
may have posted wrong twitter urls above
see Dr. Robert Rohde for nasa ceres graphs etc
https://nitter.poast.org/RARohde/status/1780194101758931198#m
and https://nitter.poast.org/RARohde
eg Note-
MERRA uses EDGAR for it’s shipping emissions source inventory. However, that part of EDGAR only goes through 2018, so MERRA treats every subsequent year as having the same ship-based sulfur emissions as 2018.
MERRA doesn’t know that ship emissions have changed.
eg Berkeley Earth
@BerkeleyEarth
Apr 19
The first three months of 2024 have been very warm, but the second-half of 2024 is expected to cool modestly.
We currently estimate a 59% chance that 2024 is ultimately warmer than 2023, with near certainty (99% chance) that it is either 1st or 2nd warmest measured year.
Kind regards ….
4/20 is anniversary of #BPOilSpill. Largest ever w/ continuing impact. Remembered? Barely. PR firms on retainer to minimize & memory hole the catastrophe is my hypothesis. What about largest gas spill ever that happened the winter before the 2023 hear anomaly that occurred in the sensitive Arctic which is already known for mechanisms that create multiplier effects like Arctic amplification?
When something is important, but damaging to power, there seems to be a reverse amplification effect caused by several mechanisms. One mechanism being money supplied to PR firms. The greater the money the larger the reverse amplification. With enough reverse amplification, it may even affect top scientists indirectly. The logic hole left behind can cause a vortex that spins away any efforts to examine the important event.
Eventually it is ignored by top climate scientists when they’re listing potential reasons for the anomaly. When listing even the potential reasons declared to have a negligible effect. One wonders if it was self censored subconsciously or if it was removed in the editing process. In fact it’s possible that the 2023 heat anomaly itself is simply the logic vortex left behind when the true reason can’t be stated.
I wrote an article explaining this. It’s the only article on the internet that even considers that the largest manmade methane release ever that dumped into the Arctic amplification zone might relate to the following summer’s heat anomaly. Apparently it’s either such a stupid idea it’s not worth any examination whatsoever or it’s been encased in a logic vortex caused by reverse amplification mechanisms. https://brucecampaign.org/?p=639
While you have some points, the REAL problem is the 24/7/365.2425 unsunk accumulations of various effluents/end products. These total dwarf one-off disasters.
Disasters are good chances for PR, but the really hard work is changing the everyday equilibriums we’ve established.
4/20 is anniversary of #BPOilSpill. Largest ever w/ continuing impact. Remembered? Barely. PR firms on retainer to minimize & memory hole the catastrophe is my hypothesis. What about largest gas spill ever that happened the winter before the 2023 heat anomaly that occurred in the sensitive Arctic which is already known for mechanisms that create multiplier effects like Arctic amplification?
My friend says I should just ask why the world’s largest manmade methane release, that went into the arctic, isn’t being considered as a potential reason for the 2023 heat anomaly, especially when coupled with an unquantified multiplier effect related to arctic amplification?
I told him that I’ve tried asking straightforward before and get blown off because of early media minimization efforts and the sensitivity around the topic. He seems to think the scientific community is somehow immune to media popularity influence. I think he’s obviously wrong considering the low sulfur fuel debate has such a high amount of discussion while the Nord release has none.
At any rate, I wrote an article about it. https://brucecampaign.org/?p=639
https://brucecampaign.org/?p=639
The Data?
Mr. Knutti, what do we see on this graphic?
Reto Knutti: These are the average sea surface temperatures of the oceans, excluding the seas at the poles. Essentially it is the same as the air temperature over the water. They are measured using automated buoys, thousands of which float around in the ocean.
Understood. And what does the graphic show us in terms of content?
From March 2023, temperatures will move outside the natural range of the past. From mid-2023 they will be far, far outside. In the last twelve months, every month set a record. This also applies to land temperatures from June onwards.
Now there were not just record temperatures on land and water – they were also very clear records.
The months were the warmest by such large margins that I put it this way: If this were the measurement of an experiment, I would say something went wrong – that’s a measurement error, the thermometer probably didn’t work (laughs). At first glance it just looks so absurdly high.
Graph figure – 2023 was different: The deviation of the global mean temperature (including uncertainty)
https://www-watson-ch.translate.goog/wissen/interview/690390215-ozeantemperaturen-auf-rekordhoch-reto-knutti-ueber-das-klima-raetsel?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
original german
https://www.watson.ch/wissen/interview/690390215-ozeantemperaturen-auf-rekordhoch-reto-knutti-ueber-das-klima-raetsel
The Data?
New graphs 2003-2023 SO2 shipping emissions from CEDS and CAMS Data
Versus heating ASR W/m2 correlations
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGLdpAfrWYAAsKVL.png
The policy came into effect on January 1st, 2020. Ceds says SO2 fell to 2 Tg, and Cams says it fell to 3Tg. A 50% variation on Ceds! Both cannot be correct.
Neither CEDS/CAMS are proven 100% reliable data collections, and appear to over estimate actual emissions. As does Piers Forster output/assumptions, as does other data feeding into IPCC and GCMs …. and multiple assumptions made by climate scientists everywhere about the “possible effects” of this SO2 aerosol changes in shipping since 2020, and before that earlier reductions since 2010.
On top of these changes, Europe has also had SO2 aerosol reductions which drove a warming region in 2023 as well according to CERES etc (already posted here)
Please note shipping fuels expert ckontovas @ckontovas (mentioned here before – a published scientist)
I feel the modelling for int shipping (was the second largest contributor in 2019) is pretty questionable. Based on more recent and realistic data, my own estimates suggest around 8.5-11 Tg SO2 in 2019 and around 1.5 Tg SO2 (20% uncertainty) for 2020.
https://nitter.poast.org/ckontovas/status/1776400744846905434#m
and
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FF3A5Juxa8AAe6rp.png (2022 data)
and see
https://nitter.poast.org/ckontovas/status/1688913491237994496#m
(much more data available & already posted here)
Disinformation spreading of errors?
latest estimates (Piers Forster et al) show that global aerosol burden has actually increased since 2020, making it preposterous to claim it is responsible for the 2023 global temperature spike. ALT graphs?
https://nitter.poast.org/MichaelEMann/status/1778472533391544481#m
Related to the sudden 2023 warming 0.2K
The short-wave radiation from the sun was the biggest change taken place in the area of direct sunlight.
Long-wave radiation from CO2 increased small – greenhouse effect.
Multiple lines of Data from OHC acceleration and CERES Satellite Data already posted.
More Data coming via PACE soon will assist greatly, get a handle on these unreliable assumptions over Aerosols, SO2, and cloud impacts on Albedo etc
MUST WAIT & SEE
James Hansen et al suggested that enough Observational Data will be available this year and into next year to give good guidance on the degree of any “sustained acceleration” in global warming above modeled expectations before, and the likely root cause of the 2003 (into 2024) warming Spike we are seeing now.
see Hansen’s latest
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/Hopium.MarchEmail.2024.03.29.pdf
Ned Kelly,
What is preposterous here is you denying branding the statement from one of our hosts – “latest estimates (Piers Forster et al) show that global aerosol burden has actually increased since 2020” – as preposterous, presumably because you somehow take “since 2020” to mean something that it isn’t.
Multiple responses (6?) by me correcting Rodger error/s have not been published.
google scholar Geeta Persad
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=svMwSNYAAAAJ&hl=en
Title: Anthropogenic Aerosol as a Driver of Climate Risk
Abstract: Anthropogenic aerosol emissions are expected to change rapidly over the coming decades, driving strong, spatially complex trends in temperature, hydroclimate, and extreme events both near and far from emission sources. Under-resourced, highly populated regions often bear the brunt of aerosols’ climate and air quality effects, amplifying risk through heightened exposure and vulnerability.
However, many policy-facing evaluations of near-term climate risk, including those in the latest IPCC assessment report, underrepresent aerosols’ complex and regionally diverse climate effects, reducing them to a globally averaged offset to greenhouse gas (GHG) driven warming.
In this talk, I and my collaborators argue that this constitutes a major missing element in society’s ability to prepare for future climate change. I will share a series of case studies across regional climate modeling, heatwave hazard quantification, and agricultural impact analysis that highlight how the standard framework developed to estimate GHG-driven near-term climate risk fails for regional aerosol emissions, creating blind spots.
Finally, I outline a pathway towards progress and call for greater interaction between the aerosol research, impact modeling, scenario development, and risk assessment communities.
VIDEO Presentation
https://ig.utexas.edu/utig-seminar-series/2024/utig-seminar-series-geeta-persad-ut-austin/
Paper 2023
Rapidly evolving aerosol emissions are a dangerous omission from near-term climate risk assessments
Authors G Persad et al,
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2752-5295/acd6af/meta
———-
AND
google scholar George Tselioudis
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xc-ynkwAAAAJ&hl=en
-Dr. George Tselioudis, Author and Research Physical Scientist, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
comparing evidence from palaeoclimatology to 2xCO2 scenarios in climate models
https://invidious.poast.org/watch?v=NXDWpBlPCY8&si=Kq_AOdgA8tZfu2uA&t=1306
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGLhMEiYXIAE5flQ.png
PS Tomas and JCM may find some aspects discussed in the video lecture by Geeta Persad of value.
It’s a good video as they include each of the specific published study papers she refers to at the bottom of screen as she talks.
Kind regards … (aka good luck)
From your perspective, what are the key areas of focus or research needed to gain further clarity on whether there is indeed an acceleration in global temperature trends?
Hi Maria, As far as determining whether there is an acceleration, there probably is no substitute for additional time/data. Determining a linear trend takes a certain amount of data–roughly 30 years to determine whether the slope of a linear trend is positive, negative or 0 given the inherent fluctuations about the trend in global weather.
When you are looking at whether the trend is accelerating, the changes in slope will initially be small, so it takes time to get enough data to discern. You can see this if you use Excel to generate random numbers where the trend is quadratic, with the x^2 term having various sizes and put, for example, Gaussian noise on each value. You’re trying to determine what the best fit is to the x^2 term.
The situation is somewhat complicated by the fact that there are known differences in forcings over time–especially aerosols, which changed in the 70s and again in about 2020.
Tamino at Open Mind has looked at the question and found evidence for acceleration. However, as I said, the changes in aerosol forcing complicate the situation. Understanding the aerosol forcing better could shorten the time required to place definitive limits on the nonlinear term.
The use of shorter linear regressions, substantially shorter than 30 years is possible is possible if you use multiple ovelapping periods and take-note-of/analyse the wobbles which appear.
Using OLS over 15-year periods does show the remarkably constant rate of AGW since 1970 (+0.18ºC/decade) was ended with the 2015/16 El Niño entering the numbers. What has replaced it, I would suggest has been a period of faster AGW, perhaps +0.28ºC/decade, a bit lower (+0.25ºC) if the temperature data is adjusted to account for solar, volcanic & ENSO as per Tamino.
And now with the “absolutely gobsmacking bananas” temperatures seen in the back end of 2023, a further upward shift may be in the offing. But only “may be” because here is the point where the “no substitute for additional time/data” takes centre stage..
I’d point a different direction than these fine folks. Many would agree with them. Sometimes it’s useful to examine the path less traveled. I’d focus on the Arctic holistically and specifically on the following.
1. “Arctic Amplification” the observed phenomenon were the Arctic is warming (2, 4, 7 times?) faster than the rest of the planet. They’ve identified 4-5 mechanisms that cause this phenomenon. Since Arctic Amplification seems to change, and when it changes it seems to be in multiples, do we understand the mechanisms enough to predict amplification increases?
2. In regards to the Arctic and Arctic Amplification, is there research that helps us understand the arctic as perhaps a “Particularly Sensitive Atmospheric Area”? For example, depending on how the mechanisms of arctic amplification work, shouldn’t we be speaking about how one cars emission in the arctic is equivalent to 4-7 cars?
3. Or, regarding Arctic Amplification, are we sure that it might not have a mechanism that may make it exponential? Perhaps the 2,3,4,7 times that people point as Arctic Amplification is the beginning of exponential. Maybe even many more (we could be largely underestimating, it could be 1 arctic car’s emissions is effectively equal 10,000 below the arctic.)
4. What is the Arctic & Arctic Amplification’s role in further force multiplying climate change effects across the world? Does the problems in the Arctic serve as a lever to increase problems across the entire planet? Is it possible therefore that reducing emissions in the arctic might be 10,000 times as important as the rest of the planet?
5. If research shows this, then maybe we should be seriously considering geo-engineered efforts in the arctic now? For instance, the week that the Arctic is expected to go from -1 to 1 degree Celsius, what about cloud formation efforts then to stave off the melting point being reached for an extra day or two around the edge of the ice sheets? Seems more doable. Whatever billions that may cost, would it save 100 Trillion in costs in other parts of the world?
6. Obviously, I am concerned about this being a big part of what is happening. I think that the world’s largest manmade release of methane spilled into the arctic, an area with an amplification effect, without effective methane sinks and this largely explains the disaster of 2023 and today. What we need therefore is spill cleanup/ mitigation now. Conceivably the survival of much of the planet depends on scientists recognizing this and demanding a prescriptive and effectively targeted action towards the effects of the spill.
Here is my article about it. https://brucecampaign.org/?p=639
We shoudn’t try geoengineering until we try reducing or eliminating CO2 emissions.
“We shoudn’t try geoengineering until we try reducing or eliminating CO2 emissions.”
Too late?
“Joe Neubarth
26 July 2022 ·
For those people who do not know what is going to happen in the next few years, the vast majority of filthy rich Republicans have built underground shelters stocked with food and water as well as lots of alcohol to party with. They do not intend to stay underground for long, as they plan on using Nuclear Weapons to blast Dirt, Dust and Sulfur from dormant volcanoes at high latitudes such as from the Aleutian Islands and mainland Alaska. I have never heard of any mention of Russian Volcanoes. I have been told by others that volcanos at the southern tip of South America may also be used.
The Dirt, Dust and Sulfur will create a nuclear winter that will last 14 to 16 months, last I heard. The Rich will come out of their shelters anytime during the Nuclear Winter, though it would be best to stay underground for at least a few days after the modern Nuclear Bomb Blasts in the dormant volcanoes. Since the modern Nukes are Fusion weapons as opposed to mainly Fission weapons as tested and used during and after WWII, the radiation intensity should be abated within a week or so.
Meanwhile, the people who do not have shelters will gradually die from the cold and the Republican goal of reducing global population to below half a billion as specified on the Georgia Guidestones (Preferably less than 300 million people as the Rich Republicans now tell me) will become a reality.
When the Nuclear Winter wanes, green life will start growing abundantly. The tremendous Green Growth will suck a lot of CO2 out of the atmosphere. Since factories will not be in operation CO2 generation from industry will be a thing of memory. With Billions of people and animals gone, the release of CO2 from animals will also greatly decrease. The Nuclear Winter will have slowed down the release of methane from the melting permafrost. With CO2 decreasing and Methane slowing in its release rate from the permafrost, the climate will come back down to temperatures that were common 20 years ago.
Slowly, temperatures will go down to levels from a century ago. No factories and few people and large animal herds will be gone. If you are a Rich Republican you will rejoice at your good fortune. If you are not rich but alive, the Republicans might enslave you for manual labor, but do not expect any favors. You will just be slave labor and expendable at any time.”?
https://www.facebook.com/JoseBarbaNueva/posts/pfbid031CiMcdgY21NL2Gve14gD9XW3cdqFmGevBnH4XnEoeegmDe5MsmnRuadEPQfgXWFvl
More wisdom from Facebook? If this scenario were true, in addition to many more important things that would be lost, it would destroy most of the wealth of the world – a substantial proportion of which is owned by rich Republicans. So why aren’t the financial markets crashing?
James Charles: – “When the Nuclear Winter wanes, green life will start growing abundantly. The tremendous Green Growth will suck a lot of CO2 out of the atmosphere. Since factories will not be in operation CO2 generation from industry will be a thing of memory.”
And who is this author of this fantasy, Joe Neubarth? Is he a climate scientist? No? Will the hoped-for “tremendous Green Growth” eventuate?
I’d suggest you should be paying far more attention to Professor Schellnhuber, who said in Oct 2018:
“So, just for you to remember, the Holocene… Holocene mode of operation, the last twelve-thousand years where human civilisation was created, will not come back, not for the next millions of years. It’s just… done!”
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/01/unforced-variations-feb-2024/#comment-818872
And why is the Holocene “just… done”? Schellnhuber displays a slide from time interval 0:24:12, titled Where on Earth are We Heading: Pliocene or Miocene? and says:
“If you just push it, according to some atmospheric calculation, by two degrees or one-point-five degrees, or will it just spin out of control and just… go down a slippery slope? If you look back in Earth’s history, there are two alternatives. So, what I’m talking about is of course based on computer simulations and everything, but in particular, it’s based on empirical evidence because we can reconstruct the fate of the planet and the climate system for millions and millions of years. So if you look back, there are two… er… alternatives, actually… Let me see… [switch slides, then back] Yes, we go back to that…
You either end up with say, 500 ppm – we have now 410 and we are on the course of towards 500 ppm – you either end up in the so-called Mid-Pliocene, that was three million years ago, where the Earth in fact was two or three degrees warmer, and sea level was at least ten metres higher. But under the same condition, more or less, you could also go back to the Mid-Miocene, fifteen million years ago, where the Earth was five degrees warmer and sea level was sixty metres higher. So with the same boundary condition, you could either have a situation where human civilisation could simply not exist, or something – forget the Holocene – if we would go into the Pliocene, we might… we might somehow adapt to it, we might manage it, just so! But this is what the paper said. The jury is still out on that. And what is the knack here, what is the real secret here, ja? Its path dependence. If the boundary conditions are the same, but you could end up in two different states, it depends on the path you have taken for this trajectory, ja? And we simply don’t know yet, whether the current path will lead us fifteen million years back, or just three million years back. So, look up the paper. It is… the summary of what… thousands of scientists have put together. It’s a meta study. But… it is posing the most important questions of all, actually: Do we still have a chance to preserve civilisation on Earth? And I think this is well within the context of a Peccei Lecture.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK2XLeGmHtE
In terms of CO₂ equivalents, the atmosphere in 2022 contained 523 ppm, of which 417 is CO₂ alone. The rest comes from other gases.
https://gml.noaa.gov/aggi/
That suggests to me the Earth System is on a trajectory towards a Miocene-like climate, and as Schellnhuber suggests “where human civilisation could simply not exist”.
A nuclear winter would certainly disrupt and probably destroy civilisation, thereby impeding/halting any possible efforts to remove excess GHGs currently in the atmosphere and deploy solar radiation management (SRM) technologies, for those people who may have managed to survive the nuclear holocaust.
Careful what one wishes for!
I think this qualifies as “dumber than owlshit”! The poster is clearly a waste of oxygen.
Hi Bruce.
I can;t see being a driver myself. Not enough methane was released. so to me it’s background noise. Also to me the arctic amplification is a response to other things and not a driver of things. I think you’;ve got the dog y the tail here.
However, when it come sot your other article re “I really think people are giving the US too much credit for goodness that is undeserved. A declining empire is a dangerous beast. ” I concur you are on the money there my dear fellow. Sad but true, and nothing will stop what is unfolding, anymore than anyone could have stopped the 2003 invasion of Iraq and bat shit crazy and totally unjustified as that was. Who wins’ I can predict, ( I know who should lose badly and pay the highest price), but life doesn’t always work out like that. I do know that life will never be the same though. We’ll see. Not too long to wait now. And then we’ll find out how the long term trajectories change regarding global warming and geopolitical / economic systems come as a result.
I believe the impact on global climate change action policies will be profound once the power dynamics are reconfigured. Or maybe that’s only my version of Hopium?
Umm, I’m actually a climate scientist. And here’s the actual data—you will note that one estimate (attributed to a Twitter account rather than a peer-reviewed study) is an outlier: (See Graph)
https://nitter.poast.org/MichaelEMann/search?f=tweets&q=leonsimons8&since=&until=&near=
Another “study” not part of any IPCC Scientific Consensus …. but this time we’ll use it because it fits my social media narrative if not the Science
Much has already been said, retracted and admitted about that Forster et al 2023 “study” which isn’t. :-)
The Data will arrive all in good Time … no hurry worry.
Reposting this info – related to abiove posts (if they were publsihed) some good folks here appear to have missed this Data points before, sorry. It’s even hard for me to find things, there are so many Data points in this Saga already.
see and scroll down
https://nitter.poast.org/search?f=tweets&q=forster+aerosols&since=&until=&near=
Note by forster et al 2023
https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGKpQ5GjWkAAbGcR.jpg
found in
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/15/2295/2023/
see 4 Effective radiative forcing (ERF)
Table 3 + Figure 2 a & b (as per links above)
TITLE Indicators of Global Climate Change 2022: annual update of large-scale indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence Piers M. Forster et al.
Published June 2023
Not yet part of any IPCC Scientific Consensus – it’s a just a single paper – so probably/potentially much ado about nothing. :-)