This month’s open thread on climate-related topics.
Reader Interactions
55 Responses to "Unforced Variations: Feb 2025"
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The USDA has taken down most website pages that have references to climate change.
The Trump administration has ordered USDA workers to identify, archive, or unpublish materials mentioning climate change by “no later than the close of business this Friday.”
When does the firings of climate scientists begin?
USDA orders removal of climate change mentions from public websites https://abcnews.go.com/US/usda-orders-removal-climate-change-mentions-public-websites/story?id=118312216
Many of the scientists, if they work for the Federal Government, will probably be offered buyouts. Many will probably take it and cry all the way to the bank. Some may be put in other jobs where their skills can be used.
Poor, broke nations drowning in debt cannot help other nations – they cannot even help themselves. That is the path the USA is on. By cutting spending today, if the cuts are significant so that budge deficits are considerably smaller, it may mean we have a greater capacity to borrow money in the future.
Can you think of a situation in which a future administration that believes AGW is an existential threat may be happy to have a greater capacity to borrow money?
Trump and Elon doing us all a YUGE favor.
KIA said “Poor, broke nations drowning in debt cannot help other nations – they cannot even help themselves. That is the path the USA is on. By cutting spending today, if the cuts are significant so that budge deficits are considerably smaller, it may mean we have a greater capacity to borrow money in the future.”
Trump is not cutting spending today to shrink the federal debt or reduce the deficits. By most accounts hes cutting government spending, government jobs and welfare entitlements, to mainly give more tax cuts to rich people and corporates. So the federal debt will increase. Just like Trump cut taxes for the rich last time, and added a whopping great $8 trillion in federal debt. Biden borrowed trillions as well, but it appeared to be spent on welfare programmes for low income people, student loan repayments, and climate change initiatives and covid recovery. Trumps debt record:
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-did-president-trump-add-debt
nj, Here’s the truth – budget deficit by fiscal year (FY), who controlled the House and produced the budget, the calendar dates for the FY, and who signed the budget. (In the USA, the budget is controlled by the House per the Constitution, not by the President, although he does sign it.)
FIscal House Budget Fiscal Year Budget
Year Control Deficit Calendar dates Signed By
FY 2017 – Rep. 0.67 TRILLION – Oct. 2016 to Oct 2017 BHO
FY 2018 – Rep. 0.78 TRILLION – Oct. 2017 to Oct 2018 DJT
FY 2019 – Rep. 0.98 TRILLION – Oct. 2018 to Oct 2019 DJT
FY 2020 – Dem. 3.13 TRILLION!! – Oct. 2019 to Oct 2020 DJT
FY 2021 – Dem. 2.77 TRILLION!! – Oct. 2020 to Oct 2021 DJT
FY 2022 – Rep. 1.38 TRILLION – Oct. 2021 to Oct 2022 JRB
FY 2023 – Rep 1.70 TRILLION – Oct. 2022 to Oct 2023 JRB
FY 2024 – Rep 1.83 TRILLION – Oct. 2023 to Oct 2024 JRB
So, although DJT signed off on 7.66 Trillion in deficits, it was the Democrat controlled House that wrote 5.9 Trillion (77%) of those deficits FOR JUST TWO YEARS! Of course much of that was due to the COVID spending spree made worse by lower revenue due to Democrat shutdowns of the economy.
The “By all accounts…” comment is speculation. By all accounts Trump had no chance to win in 2016, and same in 2024. He won. My numbers are factual history, not speculation.
Sources:
Who controlled the House:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses#Party_divisions_by_Congress
US Deficits by year:
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/#us-deficit-by-year
US Deficits by year confirmed here:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/200410/surplus-or-deficit-of-the-us-governments-budget-since-2000/
More importantly, the truth is that DOGE is finding a lot of wasteful spending, and much of it is very embarrassing to Democrats, some of it may turn out to be unlawful. We know that DOGE is doing the right thing because of all the flak they are taking from Democrats. Can you imagine an entire political party screaming and yelling in protest at seeking out blatant waste of taxpayer dollars? That is exactly what Democrats are doing. What are they hiding? The truth of what they have been doing with our money – that’s what.
As usual, MKIA’s comment is a concatenation of crude, clumsy, clownish falsehoods and laughable nonsense.
Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for billionaires INCREASED the US national debt by TRILLIONS of dollars. Extending those tax cuts, as Trump intends to do, would add another $4.6 TRILLION to the national debit. In short, Trump — infamous as the “King Of Debt” — intends to BANKRUPT the USA.
Trump’s ILLEGAL dismantling of the Federal government — in particular of all the scientific and public health related agencies — has NOTHING to do with saving money. It is nothing more or less than an attack on the American people, on the United States as a constitutional democratic republic, as a functioning society, and as an international power.
https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-trump
https://www.budget.senate.gov/chairman/newsroom/press/extending-trump-tax-cuts-would-add-46-trillion-to-the-deficit-cbo-finds
I guess, “Prepare America for its collapse into third world status” was too long to fit on a baseball cap.
JCM 3 Feb 2025 “To Piotr, If you’re content with adjusting variables ad hoc to match observations, then at some point, the modeling exercise ceases to offer meaningful insights”
Sure – if we were studying an unconstrained chaotic system, in which small initial perturbation quickly evolves into massive error. But we don’t – if we did – global avg. temperature anomaly would have been swinging WIDELY from year to year, depending on whether this pesky Lorenz’ butterfly in Amazon flapped its wings left or right.
The GLOBAL CLIMATE and the general circulation models of it are nothing like that – because of the constraining forces, and the local short term variabilities pretty much cancelling each other when averaged globally and over climatological timescale of ~ 30 years. And the uncancelled tiny residual part is corrected for using the observational data that implicitely integrate the effect of ALL processes at play.
Because of the computational limitations – many (most?) of the atmospheric, oceanographic and biogeochemical processes affecting climate are simplified to the limited number of parameters, with values based on the first principles and/or observational data that implicitely integrate most of the underlying complexities.
In this case – to model our problem: “the increase in avg. absolute humidity (AH) with global T”, we have a few choices:
a) use the unadjusted first-principle (Clausius–Clapeyron) Delta AH= +7%/K
b) use the observational AH data = +6%/K
c) use a) adjusted once to reflect the observations – the major reason for the difference between 6% and 7% – is the fact 7% is based implicitely on the assumption of the unchanging relative humidity (RH).
However, both theory and observations tell us that avg. RH is decreasing with T. So we are not satisfied with just using b) – we could use instead the historic decrease in RH to do a one-time adjustment of a)’ 7% – which should bring to, or very close to 6%.
d) or we can go “all JCM” – throw our hands in the air and say that because there may be a decimal point difference between c) and b), and because on the purist grounds we also refuse to use just b)
– then …. then the results the global climate modelling “ cease to offer meaningful insights“.
And what’s your alternative JCM to my applying a single number
based on the observations, or the first principle,modified once for the reduction of RH? Incorporating in each grid and time step of the global circulation model …. the non-existing yet (if possible at all) blocks of code that would numerically (because you won’t have an analytical solution) try to reduce the … small^* uncertainty in the evaporation change signal ???
(^* small= small fraction of the 1% difference between 6% b) and 6.???? % of c) )
The conclusion – JCM uses the unattainable and/or utterly impractical “perfect” – to question the value of the well-working “good” (“ ceasing to offer meaningful insights“). By their fruits you shall know them.
On the Insidiousness of Bullshit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1RO93OS0Sk
If you’re content to tune global change in so-called ESMs to trace gases and aerosols, while fudging everything else with adjustments, that’s your prerogative. But surely, labeling such things as ESMs is misleading, and the audacious claim of the website host that climate science has subsumed all related disciplines is obviously more of an ideal than something in practice.
The entire enterprise by its nature must be designed to detect and attribute what you call “the uncancelled tiny residual part”. What is a 1% change in energy budgets, manifest exclusively through cloud radiative effects, if not precisely that – a tiny uncancelled residual?
CMIP computes a midrange continental ET increase of 0.4 mm/yr (1980–2020), potentially related to a fixed scaling. However, reanalysis and observational trends over the same period show starkly different results:
ERA5L trend: -0.2 mm/yr
FluxNET trend: 0 mm/yr
These discrepancies amount to a missing 5000 cubic km of water over 40 years after adjustment, equivalent to a 5–7% disparity for land, and 1% globally.
It is well established that coupled simulations overestimate water vapor trends. Observed global water vapor responses to surface temperature variability are consistently 4–5% per K across datasets.
Quick calcs based on 1980-2020 figures, a 1K temperature change, and applying a baseline 500mm continental ET:
CMIP
CMIP midrange trend (+0.4 mm/yr over land) → +16 mm over 40 years
This equates to a 3.2% increase in continental ET over that period.
Applying conventional 7% per K Clausius-Clapeyron scaling to oceans (0.7 area proportion) and 3.2% to land (0.3 proportion) yields a 5.86% per K increase globally.
This high bias in CMIP reflects the standard assumption that landscapes passively respond to trace gas and aerosol forcing. Evidently, CMIP fails to account for the perturbed landscape coupling to the atmosphere and the cascading consequences.
Reanalysis
ERA5L trend (-0.2 mm/yr over land) → -8 mm over 40 years
1.6% decrease in continental ET
Globally weighted, this yields a 4.32% per K increase, consistent with observed global near-surface specific humidity trends.
Observation
FluxNet flat continental ET over 40 years → 4.9% per K global vapor response, also in line with observed global water vapor response.
Reanalysis and observation capture a strong signal of increasingly limited continental moisture, invisible in global ESMs. It is glaring that the missing link is the direct human depletion of water tables, surface drainage, ecological destruction, soil deterioration, direct annihilation of fauna, reduced nutrient cycling, and the associated massive continental desiccation. I do not understand what motivates people to refuse this. It seems to be well known everywhere except on climate pages.
Summary:
There is no theoretical basis for why specific humidity should be decreasing across vast swaths of the continents, nor is there any uniform adjustment capturing persistent biases everywhere. As discussed at length – despite your efforts to obfuscate – deficiencies in global hydroclimate parameterizations introduce up to 0.5 K errors in temperature attribution and far more acute attribution problems for unnatural hydrological and temperature extremes.
For any serious practitioner, it is obvious that UNFCCC mandates fail to grasp the extent of ongoing eco-hydrological deterioration, which are captured only under other flimsy frameworks such as UNFCCD and UNCBD. This key issue is introducing significant attribution problems for observed global changes impacting real communities, real climates, and perceived factors of increasing environmental hazards.
The culmination of misguided policy advice, reductionist educational programming, and a dime-a-dozen army of smug, know-it-all, bias-infected, phony-environmentalist-bullshitters is unsettling
(to say the least).
in Re to JCM, 5 Feb 2025 at 12:22 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-829970
Dear Sir,
You are not alone who feels unsettled. A few days ago, Dr. Makarieva published on her blog a text
https://bioticregulation.substack.com/p/seeing-forests-through-clouds-a-300
of a brief to Science that – although it was not published by this respectable journal – might perhaps anyway deserve an attention.
The text of the brief is attached below.
Best regards
Tomáš
—–
Seeing Forests Through Clouds
Goessling et al. (1) link the record-breaking warming anomaly of 2023 to a global albedo decline due to reduced low-level cloud cover. What caused the reduction remains unclear. Goessling et al. considered several geophysical mechanisms, including ocean surface warming and declining aerosol emissions, but did not discuss the biosphere. We propose that disruption of global biospheric functioning could be a cause, as supported by three lines of evidence that have not yet been jointly considered.
First, plant functioning plays a key role in cloud formation (2–7). In one model study, converting land from swamp to desert raised global temperature by 8 K due to reduced cloud cover (8). In the Amazon, the low-level cloud cover increases markedly with the photosynthetic activity of the underlying forest (9).
Second, in 2023, photosynthesis on land experienced a globally significant disruption, as signalled by the complete disappearance of the terrestrial carbon sink (10). Terrestrial ecosystems, which typically absorb approximately one-fourth of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, anomalously ceased this function. This breakdown was attributed to Canadian wildfires and the record-breaking drought in the Amazon (11).
Third, Goessling et al. focus on changes over oceans, but their maps show that some of the largest reductions in cloud cover in 2023 were over land, including over Amazonian and Congolian forests. Another cloud reduction hotspot is evident over Canada. Besides, precipitation over land in 2023 had a major negative anomaly, −0.08 mm/day (12).
Growing pressure on forests is known to induce nonlinear feedbacks, including abrupt changes in ecosystem functioning (13–15). Feedbacks of similar strength in global climate models are unknown (16). The biospheric breakdown in 2023 may have triggered massive cloud cover reduction facilitating the abrupt warming.
If verified, the good news is that the recent extra warmth could wane if the forests partially self-recover. With the many unknowns remaining, we urge more integrative thinking and emphasize the importance of urgently curbing forest exploitation to stabilize both the climate and the biosphere (17,18).
Anastassia M. Makarieva, Andrei V. Nefiodov, Antonio D. Nobre, Luz A. Cuartas, Paulo Nobre, Germán Poveda, José A. Marengo, Anja Rammig, Susan A. Masino, Ugo Bardi, Juan F. Salazar, William R. Moomaw, Scott R. Saleska (authors’ affiliations at https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.17208 )
Cited references
1. H. F. Goessling, T. Rackow, T. Jung, Recent global temperature surge intensified by record-low planetary albedo. Science 387 (6729), 68–73 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adq7280
2. D. F. Zhao, et al., Environmental conditions regulate the impact of plants on cloud formation. Nat. Commun. 8 (1), 14067 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14067
3. T. Dror-Schwartz, I. Koren, O. Altaratz, R. Heiblum, On the abundance and common properties of continental, organized shallow (green) clouds. IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens. 59 (6), 4570–4578 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2020.3023085
4. S. Cerasoli, J. Yin, A. Porporato, Cloud cooling effects of afforestation and reforestation at midlatitudes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 118 (33), e2026241118 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas. 2026241118
5. G. Duveiller, et al., Revealing the widespread potential of forests to increase low level cloud cover. Nat. Commun. 12, 4337 (2021), https://doi.org10.1038/s41467-021-24551-5
6. R. Xu, et al., Contrasting impacts of forests on cloud cover based on satellite observations. Nat. Commun. 13, 670 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28161-7
7. D. Ellison, J. Pokorný, M. Wild, Even cooler insights: On the power of forests to (water the Earth and) cool the planet. Glob. Change Biol. 30 (2), e17195 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17195
8. M. M. Laguë, G. R. Quetin, W. R. Boos, Reduced terrestrial evaporation increases atmospheric water vapor by generating cloud feedbacks. Environ. Res. Lett. 18 (7), 074021 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acdbe1.
9. R. H. Heiblum, I. Koren, G. Feingold, On the link between Amazonian forest properties and shallow cumulus cloud fields. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 14 (12), 6063–6074 (2014), https://doi.org/10.5194/ acp-14-6063-2014
10. P. Ke, et al., Low latency carbon budget analysis reveals a large decline of the land carbon sink in 2023. Natl. Sci. Rev. 11 (12), nwae367 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwae367
11. J.-C. Espinoza, et al., The new record of drought and warmth in the Amazon in 2023 related to regional and global climatic features. Sci. Rep. 14 (1), 8107 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-58782-5.
12. R. F. Adler, G. Gu, Global precipitation for the year 2023 and how it relates to longer term variations and trends. Atmosphere 15 (5), 535 (2024), https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos15050535
13. D. C. Zemp, et al., Self-amplified Amazon forest loss due to vegetation-atmosphere feedbacks. Nat. Commun. 8, 14681 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14681
14. A. M. Makarieva, et al., The role of ecosystem transpiration in creating alternate moisture regimes by influencing atmospheric moisture convergence. Glob. Change Biol. 29 (9), 25362556 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16644
15. B. M. Flores, et al., Critical transitions in the Amazon forest system. Nature 626 (7999), 555–564 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06970-0
16. W. R. Boos, T. Storelvmo, Reply to Levermann et al.: Linear scaling for monsoons based on well-verified balance between adiabatic cooling and latent heat release. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 113 (17), E2350–E2351 (2016), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1603626113
17. W. R. Moomaw, S. A. Masino, E. K. Faison, Intact forests in the United States: Proforestation mitigates climate change and serves the greatest good. Front. For. Glob. Change 2 (2019), https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2019.00027
18. A. M. Makarieva, A. V. Nefiodov, A. Rammig, A. D. Nobre, Re-appraisal of the global climatic role of natural forests for improved climate projections and policies. Front. For. Glob. Change 6 (2023), https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2023.1150191
JCM: “ On the Insidiousness of Bullshit: https://www.youtube.com…
Who needs Youtube, when we have … your body of work?
JCM: If you’re content to tune global change in so-called ESMs to trace gases and aerosols, while fudging everything else with adjustments
A classic denier’s insistence on calling the GHGs mere “trace gases” – to imply that if they are “trace gases” then they must have “trace” influence on the climate. Ask yourself – if JCM offered you a tea and assured you that polonium-210 was present there only in “trace” conc. – would you drink it?
(1g of it is enough to kill 50 mln of people – assuming 60kg per person thats 1/300,000,000,000.
That’s 0.0000000003% vs. 0.04% of “trace” CO2.
And isn’t JCM hobby horse – water vapour – on average only about 6 times more abundant than CO2? And to make it better – its contribution to AGW – is entirely dependent of the influence of …these trace gases – more Co2 warms Earth – water vapour makes the warming larger, less Co2 cools the Earth – water vapour makes the cooling larger.
And while humans HAVE a major influence on “the trace gasses”, they have practically no influence on water vapour, which residence time in air, and thus the influence on the climate – is measured in DAYS, compared to DECADES for CO2.
So yes – when studying AGW – it makes sense to concentrate on the DRIVERS of AGW, and represent the non-drivers through a combination of simple first-principle functions, and observations – which our dear JCM tries to discredit as “fudging everything else“.
To my question: “And what’s your ALTERNATIVE, JCM “? – no answer- for some reason didn’t suggest a BETTER (and workable!) alternative in which all biogeochemical processes that might affect climate could be explicitly modelled in every grid element and in every time-step of a global circulation model.
But it all makes sense from the psychological point of view – if I, JCM , can see problems that Gavin and other top climate modellers in the world can’t, or won’t, then I, JCM, must be very, very, very smart!
Doge staffers enter NOAA headquarters and incite reports of cuts and threats: Members reportedly sought access to IT systems at agency that Project 2025 has called ‘harmful to US prosperity’ – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/04/doge-noaa-headquarters
“They apparently just sort of walked past security and said: ‘Get out of my way,’ and they’re looking for access for the IT systems, as they have in other agencies,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a former Noaa official who is now a fellow at the University of New Hampshire. “They will have access to the entire computer system, a lot of which is confidential information.”
Project 2025, written by several former Trump staffers, has called for the agency to be “broken up and downsized”, claiming the agency is “harmful to US prosperity” for its role in climate science.
Rosenberg noted it’s been a longtime goal of corporations that rely on Noaa data to prevent the agency from making the data public, instead of giving it directly to private corporations that create products based on it, such as weather forecasting services.
Are we at peak obscurantism and anti-science yet? It’s a critical time to resume the discussion started by Gavin on science as value free and expand it to scientists must be engaged in advocacy and elected office. Advocacy for what? For science as foundational to knowledge, to human civilization, to modernity, to survival of our species and of the biosphere. For science as foundational to democracy and policies for the common good. For protection against obscurantism and ignorance. If not, we will be soon “reality free”.
I cannot access at the moment the Mauna Loa Observatory website, but NOOA’s main website is still accessible.
Is anybody archiving all the government data that is now being taken down? I tried to use the wayback machine for Mauna Loa Lab, but cannot find recent data. Probably because I don’t know how to search. Can anybody help?
I poked around without much success.
FWIW there’s this
https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20220523044300/https://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/earth/gcdc/
and this
https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20220523090339/https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.php/acd/campaigns/mauna-loa
Entering
“mauna loa observatory” “data archived”
in Google gives an AI generated list of places data is archived… officially
https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/
Today I was unable to access two NOAA websites –
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/ (SSTs, OLR, etc.)
and
https://gml.noaa.gov/grad/solcalc/ (NOAA solar calculator)
The Trump staffers and his entire administration are acting like fascist thugs, and the ancient book burners.
Shoud the last paragraph read like this: “……. instead, giving it directly to private corporations that create products based on it,…….”
Seems to make more sense if you remove the “of” between instead and giving.
I’ll bet that data is backed up at least daily to a remote location.
Be optimistic: 16 days down and ONLY 1,445 to go. That’ll go by in a flash!
The outrageous removal of public information is proceeding at an astonishingly rapid pace. I was a more than a little staggered by a suggestion that scientists
unpublish
anything mentioning climate change/global warming
https://thinc.blog/2025/02/01/problem-solved-trump-begins-purging-climate-change-from-us-websites/
Also, an order has gone out to stop the installation of electric charging stations!
>”Doge staffers enter NOAA headquarters and incite reports of cuts and threats…”
Am I the only one who finds the title and the entire situation utterly surreal? For anyone who understands Musk’s infatuation with cryptocurrency, it’s pretty clear what the “Doge” – a government agency that isn’t really government agency – is a reference to and after seeing this – https://web.archive.org/web/20250121062633/https://www.doge.gov/ – it’s even more obvious. In other words: there are now a bunch of cryptobros in key positions of power with little understanding of the problem domain whatsoever lead by a divorced funny dog cryptocurrency space guy who just so happens to own one of the largest social media platforms in the world and is a right-wing accelerationist.
What the hell is happening?
Did the simulation break on January 20? Suddenly, climate scientists have troubles explaining extra heat, US president is doing blatant crypto scams, Hansen declares 2C dead, random people are roaming the governmental agencies… and it hasn’t even been a month.
It’s just so bizarre.
“Surreal.” While you were sleeping…
Julian, you’re not alone. My first go-to was “absurdist.” Last night on Washington Week the word was “Dadaist.”
One night, years ago, I was sleeping in my apartment and suddenly woke up to a bright orange light shining through my curtains. I went out to make sense of it, and imagine my confusion and shock when confronted with a wall of flames.
Turns out some college students had been barbecuing on a porch of the complex next door. When they were done, they had just dumped the hot ashes into the shrubbery below and, long story short, their building burned down. (Fortunately ours didn’t catch.)
AOC: “What’s Happening & How You Can Take Action”
…take a deep breath and self-regulate…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVgNJf6CsBA
It’s off-the-cuff and runs long, but she has a respectably analytic turn of mind in her approach to the matter, imo, no doubt due in part to her early interest in science (sp. microbiology).
Back to climate science. Today class, let’s look at the California wildfires:
Victor Davis Hansen on the leadership failures:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7VwqPIhI5y4
Victor Davis Hansen explains the Central Valley Project:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jb8MFevyDvA
Victor Davis Hansen on questions raised by the fires:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NN5wgyJzmys
Victor Davis Hansen on the CA wildfires and DEI:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BJldyWx-4xY
The above short videos are all part of a much longer video – the CA wildfire discussion starts at about 25:00 in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-1RZML5FnE
The DEI stuff is especially obnoxious, but the whole thing is basically crap.
Victor Davis Hansen appears to be a historian, classicist, and conservative commentator. He has no expertise in science, forest fires, management of forest fires or in urban design or in technolgy. Sorry Im not going to waste my time on his videos.
He understands the water supply of California very well. His family has farmed there for several generations. That is what he was discussing, not climate science. He also understands the politics because he lives there and pays attention. You don’t have to be a scientist to understand that the information he presented is irrefutably true.
I had a comment on your videos, but it didn’t get posted.
The talker is a pseudoscientist and a Youtube video is not peer reviewed.
Uh, VDH has no scientific background or training. Of COURSE you would get your “scientific climate information” from a highly trained classicist!
I’m sure the answers to all your climate questions are in a scroll somewhere! For the rest of us, well we’ll look at rather more rational sources.
Victor Davis Hanson was a well-known scholar and writer who wrote about military history at the end of the last century and into the beginning of this century. After taking a foolish position in favor of George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq, and praising Donald Rumsfeld (!), he lost a lot of credibility as an independent thinker and currently thrives in the wingnut welfare environment of National Review, the Claremont Institute and the Hoover Institution. He has no expertise in climate science of course, and the above cited videos are useless to all but the most stubborn deniers.
Meanwhile, the dumbest man to ever hold the presidency (and the subject of a book written by the above cited VD Hanson) opined that California simply had to turn on a valve, located somewhere in the state, and the water would flow from the Pacific Northwest, downhill to Southern California. North is up on a map, South is down. To prove just how little he knows about California water, he ordered the military to release a couple billion gallons of water, allotted to farmers in the central valley for irrigation use next summer, where it uselessly flooded fields 200 miles away from the LA fires, a week too late.
https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/california-reservoirs-lose-water-trump-20147181.php
To the “How did I get to this point?” question: after citing an arguably pro-segregationist political position that is being used to eliminate positions held by minorities and women, Trump is obviously mentally ill and VD Hanson is getting paid to opine with clicks and views, but just making a science blog worse for everybody else can’t be all that fulfilling. Better to speculate about all the new land that Trump says will be created by rising sea levels.
After all the years on Real Climate, you still resort to non-science, non-peer reviewed work. Further proof that you are not hear to learn a thing. And reflecting very poorly about your failure to learn the scientific method. Or your ability to ascertain facts and not just scientific ones (see your vile comments after the Pittsburgh synagogue shootings for exhibit A).smdh
The answer sadly, is the reason that nazis were handed power. The rest of the Weimar politicians were either complacent, afraid, or thought they could take advantage. Or worse, they believed what the Nazis were selling. Either way they let the cancer spread until it was too late.
Tomáš Kalisz: “ If […] how JCM several times mentioned”
and here is your problem.
In re to Piotr, 4 FEB 2025 AT 10:32 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-829931
Dear Piotr,
Thank you for the detailed explanation of your view. If the amount of an “adjustable” surface energy flow (that is in each specific model distributed arbitrarily among latent heat, sensible heat and radiation, to achieve a fit with reality) is as high as about 20 W/ m2 – how JCM several times mentioned – then I would agree that there are constraints but I would not say that the range is “tiny”.
Greetings
Tomáš
zebra (comment @UV January),
The detail of the annual CO2 cycle is indeed an attractive set of data for those wanting to see what is afoot in the carbon cycle but any grown-up analysis does need some considerable respectfulness.
For instance, just consider that the rate of the annual CO2 rise relative to the size of the annual wobble is three-times more today than in 1959. This will itself have a big effect on timing of those annual max and min (which Curran & Curran are analysing). Thus, if the annual cycle were a constant sine wave atop the rate of CO2 increase, we would expect to see the max arriving 7-days later and the min 7-days earlier. What we actually see in the MLO data is the max arriving later during the period 1959-2000, roughly 10-days later, but after 2000 perhaps tending to arrive earlier by a handful of days. And the minimum has been tending to arrive later throughout, again by about 10-days.
Such complications as this mean any simplistic approach just won’t hack it.
Mind, with the area of natural biosphere ever-shrinking and plant-life experiencing CO2 levels they haven’t met for 15 million years, this on top of the many effects AGW is imposing onto it, the ability of the biosphere to absorb its share of the ever-increasing levels of carbon should not be assumed.
MA, here’s that article again:
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.7668#msdynttrid=UeW6EaXg5nRRG7_TUg_rzg0GFx9MuZrUFfE1EukXHbY
They are only talking about the value of the difference (d in fig.1 ), I don’t see any reference to timing. I don’t think anyone disagrees with the physics of NH vegetation being the primary factor in that d number.
You seem to be talking about the length of seasons, which I don’t think anyone questions as undergoing change.
WRT your last paragraph, here’s a well-written discussion:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332223002476
Tomáš Kalisz (comment @UV January),
In answer to your quesition “Am I right?”, no, you are wrong.
In their various papers, Curran & Curran did not strive “to “delineate” (in the Keeling curve, from each other) the contribution from fossil fuels combustion and the contribution from other sources, usually summarized as “land use”.” Anthropogenic emissions comprise Fossil Fuel Use (usually quoted as including “Industrial Processes” which are basically ‘cement production’) and Land Use Change. The increased biosphere carbon sink due to the elevation of atmospheric CO2 and global temperature & longer growing season due to AGW, which is what Curran & Curran were considering, is not seen as ‘anthropogenic’ and is accounted separately from Land Use Change.
This being the case, your further questions are not meaningful.
In Re to MA Rodger, 6 Feb 2025 at 5:40 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-829992
and 6 Feb 2025 at 5:45 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/02/unforced-variations-feb-2025/#comment-829993
Dear MA Rodger,
Many thanks for your explanations.
Best regards
Tomáš
P.S.
I am still curious about methods enabling that the non-anthropogenic “changes in the carbon sink” are separated from anthropogenic CO2 emissions due to “land use change”.
And, of course, about methods enabling that both of these contributions to the observed changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations are separated from CO2 emissions due to athropogenic fossil fuel combustion (and cement production).
Can someone advise?
MA Rodger: clear and uncomplicated:
“Am I right” no, you are wrong …. This being the case, your further questions are not meaningful.
This may not be the case in other extended arguments, but when it is, that should be the end.
It’s remarkably quite in here….
Silence == Complicity.
Back to climate science it is: the latest –03 Feb 2025, Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?, from JE Hansen, et al https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00139157.2025.2434494
The paper Hansen et al (2025) ‘Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?’ runs to 20,000 words although this is including a 4,000-word Jim Hansen ‘Epilogue’. I would suggest such a presentation is not the best way of setting out apparently new science, which it seems to purport to be.
I am somewhat sceptical of the thesis that the “bananas” temperatures of 2023/24 can have resulted from a climate forcing but maybe there is something buried within those 20,000 words that stacks up enough to support this climate forcing theory.
Also note the 2023 study Global warming in the pipeline
https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889?login=false and see the related video https://climatestate.com/2024/07/01/climate-scientists-discuss-research-on-global-warming/
In my opinion Lovelock was spot on in 2009 when he showed his temperature chart and the sudden jump, but with a potential jump to 8 or 10C around 2050. https://climatestate.com/2015/09/02/abrupt-climate-change-theory-lovelock-and-white/
.. with a potential of a second jump later … but Lovelock is spot on!
Made a post on this extensive paper.
Study: The acceleration of global warming may cut off key ocean current by 2050 https://climatestate.com/2025/02/07/study-the-acceleration-of-global-warming-may-cut-off-key-ocean-current-by-2050/
Can someone summarise how the sea level rise works in response to AMOC slowing and or shutdown?
FYI:
“A run of record-breaking global temperatures has continued, even with a La Niña weather pattern cooling the tropical Pacific. The Copernicus Climate Change Service said last month was the warmest January on record, with surface – air temperatures 1.75C above preindustrial levels.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/06/hottest-january-on-record-climate-scientists-global-temperatures-high
I am wondering by “how much” climate change, as a whole, increased the severity of the LA wildfires:
1) World Weather Attribution says that
*”Compared to a 1.3°C cooler climate this is an increase in likelihood of about 35% and an increase in the intensity of the FWI of about 6%.”* https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/climate-change-increased-the-likelihood-of-wildfire-disaster-in-highly-exposed-los-angeles-area/
This kind of statement is often confusing; readers believe that an event becomes both 35% more likely AND 6% more intense. As in other cases, my first impression is that it is one OR the other – the first statement is about the probability at constant FWI and the second is about the increase in FWI at constant frequency (see figure 3.2 – peak January FWI vs return period).
A confirmation that this is indeed the correct understanding, even if it looks obvious, would reassure me.
2) The 6% increase in FWI is not negligible, but it does not seem huge (not being an expert in this I only make a simplistic comparison to other regions/seasons). Is this the “full picture” regarding the link with climate change? FWI accounts for drought, but could other factors contribute to the disaster – in particular, a long-term degradation of the forests/vegetation which could be partly connected to climate change, as suggested for other regions? And/or possibly other (non-climate) changes due to human activities?
In conclusion : is an assessment of the “compound” role of climate change, beyond what is in the FWI, possible – or maybe already available?
Thanks for responses (and possibly reading suggestions!)
Phillipe, last month I offered an alternative way to present this topic, which might be more useful to “the public”. Here are the definitions:
1. We define “climate” as the system state of the climate system.
2. We define “the event” as a specific complex system of measurable phenomena.
3. There are two planets, identical except for the energy content of their respective climate systems. A (that’s us) has considerably more energy than B as a result of GHG and other anthropogenic factors.
It seems to me reasonable, then, to say that the event (“the fire”) was caused by the anthropogenic difference in energy… that it would not have happened on planet B.
I offer this in response to your question because, while science is the most noble endeavor, and can produce unintended benefits, I just don’t see the utility of the nuanced probabilities and attempt to produce detailed, precise, causal narratives. What can we do with the information? What might we generalize from it?
If the goal is to motivate “the public” to act, it’s necessary to offer explanations which they can understand and internalize. The simpler the better.
PM, think they mean climate change has caused a 6% increase in intensity of forest fires not ‘the’ 6% increase in intensity.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology names the major factors in climate change contributing to increasing bushfire risk in Australia:
http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/australias-changing-climate.shtml
The same page has a map showing the change in the number of days with dangerous weather conditions for bushfires between July 1950 to June 1987 and July 1987 to June 2024. It has increased across almost all of the continent.
Unusually warm water near the west coast of Australia has been producing extremely humid heat along the coast. The most extreme readings I’ve seen so far are reported from Port Hedland airport on Feb. 7. At
0430 UTC they had a temperature of 43C / dewpoint 18C. The arrival of a sea breeze at 0500 UTC produced a considerably more uncomfortable combination of 40/28. By 07 UTC it was 35/29. As of Feb. 8 0330 UTC they were up to 39/28, so it may get worse than yesterday.
The January TLT anomalies have been posted by UAH and NOAA STAR, both showing a significant drop from the December anomalies (UAH Dec +0.62C, Jan +0.46ºC drop – 0.16ºC,STAR Dec +0.61ºC Jan +0.47ºC drop -0.14ºC) and in both the lowest TLT anomaly seen for 18 months. Unlike the SAT anomalies, the TLT anomalies had not shown any earlier significant decline from the “bananas” values (sitting in the range +0.95ºC-to-+0.70ºC) until Nov24 from when some sort of decline seems to have set in. The STAR numbers are properly published and show the decline is a southern hemisphere (also global ocean) thing which is back down to pre-bananas temperatures while the northern hemisphere (& global land) numbers remain high.
Note this continuation of “bananas” TLT global temperatures thro’ to October-last is not what is seen in the SAT global records.
The ERA5 re-analysis for Jan has been reported on the media as the “hottest January on record” but this possibly may not be repeated with the measured SAT records, even though they all had a cooler Jan24 down -0.13ºC on adjacent months. The SAT records saw the “bananas” anomalies continue to Feb24 (bar the dip in Jan 24). March-May the anomalies were dropping but then began creeping back up again Jun24-Dec24. Will this ‘creeping back up’ continue into Jan25 for one-or-all of the SAT measured records (as seen in ERA5 re-analysis) and thus also to yield them a ‘scorchyisimo!! Jan25? That remains to be seen.
NOAA staff have reportedly been threatened with “mass layoffs of 50 percent of the workforce and 30 percent of the budget” as Elon Musk’s government efficiency taskforce visited offices this week seeking access to internal information.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
OK, Scott. What’s your plan? Do you think that expressing outrage on RC is going to tip the balance and start the revolution?
The problem is well understood, and it has been for a long time. We started studying the psychology behind the Nazi thing after WWII, and it has been successfully exploited by various actors to gain power.
We don’t need lots of moralizing; we need effective strategy and tactics, and moralizing tends to interfere with that. It wouldn’t have taken much at all to change the outcome this time, so maybe calming down and working on a coherent political approach is the best chance we have to save things in the future.
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/02/PP_2024.2.7_views-of-trump_1-01.png
Does Climate Science actually believe water vapor was warming the planet?
I know WV is usally named to be the most significant GHG. The GHE, and the role of WV within it, is a restricted look at the emission side. It comes with the energy budget as given and the lapse rate as given. On top of that it assumes the surface to emit like a perfect black body, which it is not and it does not, but that is a different story.
Evidently WV has a strong effect on the lapse rate, and the lapse rate is crucial for the magnitude of the GHE. The other GH-constituents would excert a much larger GHE if it was not for WV reducing the lapse rate. So WV does not only warm the planet by elevating the emission layer, thereby adding to the GHE, but also reducing the GHE at the same time.
Schmidt et al 2010 names 60..5W/m2 (net) and 96W/m2 (gross) contribution by WV to a GHE of 155W/m2 in total. The NASA earth energy budget on the other side has latent heat at 86.4W/m2. That is latent heat removed from the surface, in other words cooling of the surface by WV.
There is plenty of reasons to discuss these figures, but I will skip that for convenience. Taking these figures as given, if you hypothetically remove WV from the system, you would lose a 60.5W/m2 of heating AND a 86.4W/m2 of cooling. In other words, without WV Earth should be a lot hotter, based on these figures, if you add up 1 and 1.
Why would WV yet be heating?
More info was released by JE Hansen & P Kharecha related to the Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed? Paper. The two-page release — Global Warming Acceleration and Recovery, 06 Feb 2025 is at: https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2025/Acceleration.06February2025.pdf