This month’s open thread. As usual try to remain substantive and avoid insults and personal attacks on other commenters. Any sock-puppetry or abusive comments will just be deleted on sight. Also, please don’t outsource your comments to ChatGPT – cut-and-pastes of long-winded LLM output are tedious and add precisely nothing to the conversation. There are real things happening in climate – please focus on them.
“One of Trump’s biggest climate decisions is overdue”
By SARA SCHONHARDT | 09/22/2025 06:25 AM EDT
“The deadline has passed for his Cabinet to identify treaties like the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change they want axed.”
.
https://www.eenews.net/articles/one-of-trumps-biggest-climate-decisions-is-overdue/
Where the hell is Congress on this? Did Trump tear up Article I and forget to post about it?
David, Congress is in the usual place… but in a completely supine position.
In Re to Mo Yunus, 22 SEP 2025 AT 2:46 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/unforced-variations-sep-2025/#comment-839627
Dear Mo,
Proponents of “sun dimming” have not clarified yet if their idea is safe for Earth hydrological regime. Professor In Axel Kleidon with his collaborators warn that due to fundamental thermodynamics, cancelling Earth energy imbalance (EEI) caused by increased concentration of non-condensing greenhouse gases (GHG) by making stratosphere more opaque for incoming solar radiation would prevent surface warming AT THE EXPENSE of global water cycle weakening.
I am afraid that no one knows yet how the respective decrease of global annual precipitation would have been distributed geographically and temporally. I think that until this question is clarified, we cannot be sure that geoengineering with artificial stratospheric aerosols indeed could be suitable as a cure for anthropogenic global warming.
Best regards
Tomáš
Dear Tomáš
I agree we cannot be sure that geoengineering with artificial stratospheric aerosols could be suitable for anything. All Theoretical.
Though I am less interested in the technical science aspects, what strikes me more is the growing sense and appearance of panic among mainstream climate scientists—especially the Americans, such as Hausfather and colleagues. And their reaction to the EPA.
This anxiety seems to have intensified since the (still undefined) 2023–2024 warming spike, combined with ongoing record-breaking measurements: rising CO₂ ppm, steadily increasing emissions, and so on.
It is as if they have little confidence that the solutions they recommend can actually be implemented. The mitigation goals set by the IPCC—Net Zero by 2050, or even 2060—look increasingly unachievable. Obviously so. The oft-repeated notion that “we” still have “agency” feels decidedly anaemic.
Meanwhile, the United States alone still accounts for roughly a quarter of global GDP, and a similar share of resource consumption.
Yet Some Believe (or Say) — “The world can still come together and rapidly reduce emissions to limit warming to well-below 2C this century.”
Check out Revisiting the Geoengineering Question
We probably shouldn’t do it, but if we do it we need narrow bounds
Zeke Hausfather
https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/revisiting-the-geoengineering-question
Quote (We) are cooling the climate today by emitting 75 million metric tons of sulfur dioxide into the lower atmosphere, almost entirely as a byproduct of burning fossil fuels. This cooling offsets about 0.5C of warming that would have otherwise occurred from CO2 and other greenhouse gases
Sulfur emissions are declining sharply as countries started cleaning up air pollution. Global SO2 emissions today are 48% lower than they were in 1979 and 40% lower than in 2006 (China saw a massive 70% decline since 2008!). This is the primary contributor to the acceleration in global warming in recent years. Cutting air pollution saves lives and is unequivocally worth doing, but it is also driving about a quarter (~0.14C) of the approximately 0.5C warming the world has experienced between 2007 and 2024.
Remembering they said in the NYT article :
“Now more of the underlying greenhouse gas warming is showing through, accelerating climate change.”
VS I said :
“This is because the overall radiative forcing (the net change in Earth’s energy balance) is now greater. Less energy is being reflected back into space by aerosols, so more is being absorbed by greenhouse gases, leading to a consistently faster rise in global temperatures for the same level of CO₂ emissions.” by Mo Yunus
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/unforced-variations-sep-2025/#comment-839529
Not looking good at all.
Tomáš Kalisz says
22 Sep 2025 at 12:30 PM
Does climate sensitivity depend on water availability for evaporation from the land? Or doesn’t?
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/unforced-variations-sep-2025/#comment-839674
ok maybe this will help?
Climate sensitivity is a global measure of how much Earth warms for a given forcing (usually the equilibrium response to doubled CO₂). The IPCC defines it as being set by fast feedbacks such as water vapour, clouds, lapse rate, and ice–albedo – not by land water availability. Soil moisture and evapotranspiration strongly influence regional heat and extremes, but they do not alter global climate sensitivity.
(IPCC AR6 WG1 Glossary; Ch. 8, p. 8-46; Seneviratne et al. 2010 Nature).
Also look up
Byrne & O’Gorman (2016), J. Climate:2016
Understanding Decreases in Land Relative Humidity with Global Warming: Conceptual Model and GCM Simulations
Showed land–atmosphere coupling amplifies continental heat extremes under climate change, but does not modify global ECS estimates derived from coupled models.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/29/24/jcli-d-16-0351.1.xml
But, multiple studies show that local and regional climate is measurably altered by human management of ecosystems (forests, soils, water, wetlands). Deforestation warms; irrigation and vegetation restoration cool. Conservation biologists have been calling for these water–energy–vegetation couplings to be integrated into climate policy, beyond just CO₂ accounting.
Alkama & Cescatti (2016)
Found that large-scale deforestation leads to significant local surface warming, not just via CO₂ release but also through reduced evapotranspiration and changes in albedo.
Changes in forest cover affect the local climate by modulating the land-atmosphere fluxes of energy and water. The magnitude of this biophysical effect is still debated in the scientific community and currently ignored in climate treaties.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aac8083
Makarieva & Gorshkov (2010), Hydrology and Earth System Sciences:
‘The Biotic Pump: Condensation, atmospheric dynamics, and climate’,
Proposed that forests actively regulate rainfall and pressure systems by recycling moisture and driving atmospheric circulation, not just passively responding.
https://bioticregulation.ru/common/pdf/ijw10.pdf
Gudmundsson, L., S.I. Seneviratne, and X. Zhang, 2017: Anthropogenic climate
change detected in European renewable freshwater resources. Nature Climate
Change, 7(11), 813–816, doi:10.1038/nclimate3416.
and
Attribution of hydrological change in Heihe River Basin to climate and land use change in the past three decades 2016
The contributions of climate and land use change (LUCC) to hydrological change in Heihe River Basin (HRB), Northwest China were quantified using detailed climatic, land use and hydrological data, along with the process-based SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) hydrological model. The results showed that for the 1980s, the changes in the basin hydrological change were due more to LUCC (74.5%) than to climate change (21.3%).
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep33704
both above refd in ipcc report pg 292, 298
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SR15_Chapter3_Low_Res.pdf
Vegetation responses to climate change in the Qilian Mountain Nature Reserve, Northwest China
2021 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351989421002481
It is not easy to find particular information in published climate science papers. There is no universal Library system. Consider Seeking out other venues to search, like https://www.reddit.com/r/climatechange/ and https://scholar.google.com/ and the IPCC. Narrow framed less popular forums have their limitations. Not enough people for one. An ineffective historical data search option. two.
Good luck.
FYI
The world is shifting to a less ambitious pace of emissions reductions. Our probabilistic model shows global warming is likely to reach 2.3 C as soon as 2040. Geoeconomic security concerns are taking precedence over long-term sustainability goals
Climate adaptation and resilience remain insufficient to cope with the potential economic damage associated with climate change.
15-Sep-2025 | 07:13 EDT
Sustainability Insights: Why Planning For A 2.3°C Warmer World Is Critical This Decade And Next
https://www.spglobal.com/ratings/en/regulatory/article/sustainability-insights-why-planning-for-a-23c-warmer-world-is-critical-this-decade-and-next-s101644796
— Using probabilistic analysis, we estimate a 90% likelihood that, by 2040, the average global temperature will exceed the Paris Agreement’s goal of 1.5° Celsius (1.5 C) above pre-industrial levels. And there is a 50% likelihood of it exceeding 2.3 C. This suggests that–as a baseline–all sectors, including households, may want to prepare for the impacts of physical climate risks associated with a 2.3 C world.
— If we’re not ready, there’s a 50% chance that economic costs from global warming would accumulate to 9%-33% by 2040. This is our finding after integrating the potential economic impacts of climate change into our probabilistic model. In a more extreme case (90th percentile), the average temperature could be 2.8 C higher than preindustrial levels by that time.
— The Public Sector provides more than 97% of adaptation finance.
How any climate scientist could have enough spare time to waste it on arguing minutia over the DoE Climate Working Group report or the EPA Endangerment Finding astounds me. Isn’t there “bigger fish to fry” out there? More critical concerns in desperate need of addressing and communicating to the Public and Politicians all over the world?
We can only assume they all know what they’re doing and have faith they are on the job. And SPGlobal (and the UK Actuaries a few months back) are seriously off base.
Mo Yunus, you post a very useful link expressing concerns about 1) the rate of global warming and 2) the challenges of adaptation and you then wonder how scientists have time to spend on the details of the DOE report. I would remind you this is the report that is to being used to undermine the global warming claims, and by implication any need for adaptation or mitigation so surely scientists should make some effort to debunk the report in detail?
nigel: “ Mo Yunus, you post a very useful link expressing concerns about 1) the rate of global warming and 2) the challenges of adaptation you then wonder how scientists have time to spend on the details of the DOE report
Nigel, this assumes that “Mo” is open to persuasion, He/she/it is not – it’s almost certainly a new mutation of Multitroll – so all he/she/it cares is its usefulness in attacking climate scientists – that’s why Mo’s previous short-lived mutation – Bernhard – in two parallel posts attacked scientists for speaking up and for … not speaking up.
And if he/it cares about “the rate of global warming and the challenges of adaptation6” – he/it would defend climate scientists and attack deniers, NOT the vice versa (the “Mo” persona have just claimed that calling denialists denialists – is “unfair and immoral“.
And the motivation is simple – gratification of troll’s ego – the lower the best climate scientists, the higher I (Mo/Bernhard/Pedro/Dharma/Escobar/Ned etc) in comparison. The banality of the internet trolls.
Piotr, I was just wondering if Mo Yunus / Mo Hummus might be another version of the multitroll. He / she expresses remarkably similar views. and is posting a lot of comments. The writing style is different to an extent, but the multitroll may have figured out he / she needs to change the writing style, given I made numerous comments on how the sock puppets had exactly the same writing style. I was anticipating an attempt to change the writing style might be made.
Yes there’s a lot of ego gratification going on. And narcissism, which means over confidence and extreme difficulty accepting that he / she could be wrong.
nigelj says
25 Sep 2025 at 3:29 PM
Yes there’s a lot of ego gratification going on. And narcissism, which means over confidence and extreme difficulty accepting that he / she could be wrong.
Stated without a hint of doubt. You know I can hear you. LOL
Mo Hummus was my high school nickname. A healthy sense of humour might help.
nigelj says
23 Sep 2025 at 7:19 PM
I would remind you this is the report that is to being used to undermine the global warming claims, and by implication any need for adaptation or mitigation so surely scientists should make some effort to debunk the report in detail?
Honestly I do not think they should. But why should scientists care what you or I think? They don’t.
Why do I think they should? DoE is only one govt dept in one nation of the world. Guided by an unhinged unstable extreme US administration that will not last long. And will not listen anyway. The report raises nothing that has not been raised before to little or no effect. It is 5 authors of next to no significance or credibility in the climate science field or at the IPCC or the UNFCCC discussions and debates. All globally obscure outliers, of little import to climate science itself, and with very tiny numbers of adherents or followers. Especially outside the US political echo chambers.
The DOE report does not undermine any climate science or global warming claims of any importance. The report does not undermine the widespread and well known urgent need for adaptation or mitigation. Nor undermine the fact that this global warming response must all be guided and directed and more often funded by national governments from all over the world.
The report is a mosquito bite to an elephant. The EPA endangerment finding about GHGs of no scientific consequence whatsoever. Of zero relevance to the UNFCCC process or the Paris Agreement itself.
The US has already abandoned the Kyoto and Paris Agreement and Trump is pushing to extricate the US from the UNFCCC treaty system as well. Anything UN is anathema to him, MAGA and most Americans already. There is nothing any scientist or institution can do about that. Or to stop the existing level of rejection of the science and rampant crank conspiracy theories and fake news across America. Trump is a mirror effect of how and what people think. He is not an outlier or an accident.
At the end of the day the EPA decisions come down to a legal matter to be argued in the US courts. There was already enough legal evidence to support agw climate science and the endangerment finding before the DOE CWG wrote a word in their report. Politics is the only thing that will sort that out longer term in the US.
The current Regulations barely make a marginal [de minimus] difference anyway. If someone was pushing for banning ICE engines and setting a new global standard for mitigation and there were climate scientists and institutions supporting that call publicly maybe their science rebuttal might make a difference. As it is, to me it all seems like a complete waste of time for no useful outcome.
The US is and has always been an outlier and a belligerent destabilising force on the IPCC and the UNFCCC COP deliberations from the beginning. The US is unreliable. Change their minds every other year. Lack long term commitment. Are politically unstable. Ideologically opposed to the principles of the UN and the UNFCCC. The rest of the world would be better off ignoring them and going their own way. By producing their own data and climate science analysis and action plans without them. Without NASA. NOAA, or the NASEM, the EIA DOE or the EPA. Without their politically influenced universities thinktanks ngos or the White House and Congress. Without any reference to the US Media, Fox Facebook Youtube Instagram or X, or all the American people as well – until they fix their entrenched political economic social and ideological problems themselves.
Really the whole thing, the EPA DOE CWG saga, is a social media beat up in my opinion. And so is the response to it. A nothing burger is what it is. Let the courts sort it out and then forget about it. There are more critically important things these institutions and climate scientists and bloggers could be applying themselves to instead.
All the subsequent handwaving has nothing to do with a genuine concern about global warming at all. More likely little more than hurt feelings, fragile reputations, and payback for past offenses. That is only my opinion that no one’ll care for or agree with anyway. Me, I’m over it. But you did ask. lol.
Mo Yunus, the DOE report is indeed junk science and is produced by America only, but its been in global media, and could be persuasive to people who matter globally, so I think it should be debunked fairly robustly.
At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7GN96BUCEo at 5:54 to 6:05 “El Nino is unlkely … El Nino has many precedents”. Yebbut I’ll bet you dollars for doughnuts that El Ninos since 2014 or maybe more so since 2022 don’t have much precedents like this.
“Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus Nature Climate Change 4, 222–227 (2014) doi:10.1038/nclimate2106 Received 11 September 2013 Accepted 18 December 2013 Published online 09 February 2014 Corrected online 14 February 2014
Matthew H. England, Shayne McGregor, Paul Spence, Gerald A. Meehl, Axel Timmermann, Wenju Cai, Alex Sen Gupta, Michael J. McPhaden, Ariaan Purich & Agus Santoso Affiliations
“Here we show that a pronounced strengthening in Pacific trade winds over the past two decades—unprecedented in observations/reanalysis data and not captured by climate models—is sufficient to account for the cooling of the tropical Pacific and a substantial slowdown in surface warming through increased subsurface ocean heat uptake.”
“the researchers don’t expect the current pressure difference between the two ocean basins to last. When it does end, they expect to see some rapid changes, including a sudden acceleration of global average surface temperatures.“
Wind is a confounding indicator. Observation of increased winds may be meaningless as it can likely be the result of the formation of an El Nino itself — wind is driven by an atmospheric pressure gradient, and such a gradient is developed during the initiation of a subsurface thermocline ENSO dipole extending spatially along the equatorial Pacific.
Incidentally, discussion of confounding indicators is in the recent news. MAGA doctors and scientists are being pushed by Trump and RFK Jr to claim that Tylenol usage is leading to increased autism rates. Yet an obvious confounding indicator to this claimed correlation is that older women (> 35 y) giving birth are more likely to have autistic children, while they are also more likely to take Tylenol as a normal course of aging with accompanying aches&pains. Another confounding possibility is that there is an unknown illness contributing to autism, which is expressed by increased usage of Tylenol.
So wind associated with an ENSO spike is akin to Tylenol associated with adverse birth outcomes, both are there more as a result of some other underlying causal factor. Open to further discussion on this, as ENSO has an obvious overlooked causal factor.
Paul Pukite “wind is driven by an atmospheric pressure gradient”. Yep it’s a massive mutually-reinforcing +ve feedback and that’s why Piotr was incorrect when he too-confidently stated that my hobbyist trend fitting of +0.20 to +0.23 / decade for El Ninos but only +0.165 / decade for La Nina & ENSO neutral (with my straight line trends higher for ENSO neutral than for La Nina and higher for El Ninos than for ENSO neutral of course) was inconsistent with Matthew England work of a stronger wind trend. They are .not inconsistent if the mutually-reinforcing +ve feedback is strong enough because it’s in BOTH directions of operation. When Piotr also demanded that I violate your copyright on the Moon and explain it to everybody myself (so I Mooned him royally).
As long as you acknowledge that your “wind is driven by an atmospheric pressure gradient” is to also include driving by the Atlantic Ocean by its pressure gradient (I’ve no idea of the details of the coupling only that it exists and Matt England says a warming Atlantic is the Atlantic SST direction that pushes Pacific wind harder. Per https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agKayS6h6xA at 21:38 to 23:20
The above is not ENSO-caused. The above is caused by warming Atlantic effect on the ENSO cycles and is not an ENSO cycle because it is much longer duration and perhaps is a 1-off for the centuries or millennia. I’m not assigning time to figuring out details of the coupling over South America vis a vis Atlantic vs Pacific SSTs, ratio of change or just SST difference or whatever but be my guest and do that analysis so’s we know whether that was (I think it’s ending/ended) a 1-off or happens every 99 years now.
Yet ENSO isn’t a root cause for anything either — in the closed system, the root cause is likely periodic tidal cycles interacting with the seasonal solar cycle, both eternal drivers. These tidal cycles together with the unrelenting force of the Coriolis effect can conceivably generate the imbalance of events across the ocean basins. So when the various ocean indices happen to briefly synchronize, such as the synchronization of the Pacific (ENSO), Atlantic (AMO), and Indian (IOD) ocean indices in 2023-2024, we witnessed a significant spike in global temperature.
Two of the most significant long-period tidal factors Mf and Mm have periods that alias close to one another when amplified by an annual cycle. This fact is not well known, if at all. What it implies is that there is a slow cycle of over 100 years that may be a factor in the multidecadal oscillations in the AMO and PDO
The A.I. Bubble Is Coming for Your Browser. Artificial-intelligence startups, like the makers of the “smart” web browser Dia, are being acquired for vast sums. But it’s not yet clear which products can transcend the hype. – https://archive.ph/zY3fm
This doesn’t even address the polluting energy and water sinks as data centers metastasize.
Susan,
I can’t wait for this utterly disgusting, dogsh*t, wasteful bubble to finally collapse. My background is in system administration, but I’ve been tracking GAI developments for a while now and nothing made me so bitter about IT as LLMs. These models don’t provide anything of any substantial value, have no adoption, waste resources (OpenAI alone is allegedly worth $300B, yet has no path to profitability and annually spends $9B to loose $4B) and only fuel some radically delusional hopium straight into the veins of their boosters. The article you linked is sadly yet another proof of that – it’s clear to anyone who’s been following this tech since the beginning that the money simple was never there, yet these damn companies will do literally ANYTHING to secure another round of VC funding, just to stay afloat for a bit longer. Just imagine what else this money could’ve been spent on – worst case scenario you could just burn it, at least you’d be warm.
Sorry for a rant, but I hate LLMs with passion. If you want to learn a bit more about them, feel free to check out BetterOffline podcast (https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-better-offline-150284547/). Ed does way better job than me at explaining these things.
I am hardly an expert in Artificial Intelligence, but I do have a lot of experience scrounging for data to train various models I’ve developed in my day job. So, you might say that I relate to the problems AIs face.
I think that part of the problem is that today’s billionaire class made their fortunes in the Wild West of cyber-wilderness. Nobody knew what the Internet would be when Al Gore opened it up to the general public. Those of us who were naïve thought it might usher in a new era where everybody had reliable information at our fingertips. (I’ll wait while you stop laughing.) Predictably, though, it became a race to monetize the new territory–and the current billionaire class are the ones who “went west, young man,” usually quitting college to do so, and figured out how to cash in. As such, the only thing they know how to do is look for the “next big thing”. They are a bit like the railway robber barons of old trying to figure out what to do with their ill-gotten gains now that the frontier was closing.
They assume that the next big thing must be AI and they are looking for a bandwagon to jump on. LLMs are the first bandwagon to arrive, even though in my opinion they only really fulfill the modifier in the name AI. I’ve said before that they are two evolutionary steps beyond Microsoft’s Clippy. Do an AI search, and you will likely get a summary that could have been written by an only moderately bright High School sophomore the night before a term paper was due. This is bound to be disappointing, especially if the topic is one the searcher understands in some detail. Even more disillusioning, start asking questions to probe deeper, and you are likely to get hallucinations–aka bullshit. This is an unfortunate result of the LLM algorithms (they have to come up with a “best answer,” even if it isn’t very good) and the difficulty of finding reliable information with which to train the models.
It is debatable whether what you get really counts as “intelligence” at all, as the LLM has no real understanding of what it is giving you. However, it would be a mistake to dismiss AI based solely on the outputs of LLMs–which after all, just happen to be the first AI methodology to approach passing the Turing test. As such they can sort-of pass the test for an Artificial General Intelligence..
But is that what we really want in an AI? Humans–at least some of us–already do a moderately good job at passing that test. Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to develop narrower AIs that carry out tasks humans suck at–repetitive calculations, spotting motivated reasoning and other logical fallacies, etc. There are AI models out there that are already contributing to our knowledge that aren’t getting near the funding going into Chat GPT, GROK/mechahitler… Materials science, topological chemistry–even finding novel strategies for winning at Go–these are all areas where AIs have made us smarter by telling us something we didn’t know already.
In my opinion, the biggest limitations on AI at present are the limited imaginations and understanding of the broligarchy pushing the current AI bubble.
Ray Ladbury, I have played with AI tools like Google Gemini and Microsoft copilot and I have found they have just reasonable accurate overall. They are mostly right but sometimes completely wrong. However you get a feel for what issues you can trust them with. And you do get a list of sources you can double check ( and sometimes I find the AI misinterprets these sources).
But the other issue is the AI tools stunning speed . Yes you’re right a moderately bright sophimore could do the same as the AI and maybe more accurately, but not in ten seconds! So with AI you get reasonable accuracy with stunning speed. This can be very useful to get some idea of an issue you would not otherwise not have the time or energy to address. Of course if its a crucially important issue, you need to be very cautious about relying totally on just one AI tool.
One little thing. I’ve found the AI tools brilliant is as a computer instruction manual for finding out about specific things and problem solving. Here the accuracy is generally quite good and that speed advantage really helps. Way better and faster than a paper manual or online manual, or conventional google search. But you probably know all that yourself.
But regarding the LLMs and the hype around them. Just adding to your comments. The Economist Journal September 13 addition has an article “The three trillion dollar bet on AI” on page 7. This is based on the estimate that by 2028 the sums spent on world wide data centres will exceed $3 trillion. These guys are normally very pro new technology, but they are warning the profitability of AI is not guaranteed and the whole thing could end in a painful crash. They mention that previous booms like the railway mania in the UK lead to a massive crash, but at least the UK was left with rail infrastructure that is still used today. If AI crashes not only will investors be left with nothing you will just have a whole lot of useless data centres and redundant computer chips.
But I think you’re right the real use of AI might be in the more mundane applications like repetitive calculations, where its more reliable and / or faster than humans. AI is apparently already more accurate at interpreting medical scans than humans.
I think AI will prove somewhat like the internet. Things developed differently than what was expected, but there is still value there overall, despite the cursed proliferation of misinformation.
i tend to agree with all that. current LLMs are not anything to do with future AGI modes goals, imo. current AI LLM i look on them as highly advanced search engines, which still require user judgement, and skill. framing what you want carefully matters to what you will get back. probing clarifying multiple queries prompts make a huge difference. knowing they are prone to error helps, but is no reason to dump them entirely- depends on your use and if that is justified or expecting too much.
AI is far better than search to find specific content. when you can tell it exactly what to want and already know it is out there somewhere. AI is brilliant at summarizing text sources like science papers and articles books lectures or themes theory what people stand for or believe.
Use it properly its brilliant; but misuse it and you’ll end up with less than satisfactory output. but thats on the user most of the time.
people rail against it, never use it themselves and then label all of it “SLOP”. Not true. Don’t listen to those people-educate yourself. People had the same kinds of attitudes to the internet in the 1990s … now look at reality. The world would stop with it.
But if inexperienced people or with poor judgement or biased want to dump on it across the board it hardly matters at all. they are a dime a dozen on every topic.
Two aspects to LLM usage. First is the practical usage for generating software and collecting info. That part is fine and almost a necessity once you start to depend on it. The second aspect is as a mechanism for discovering emergent behaviors, which is one of the holy grail promises of AI. I don’t know if any major scientific discovery has been made yet, as that is what many people feel as the deal-maker — to be able to surpass what a human can do in a creative sense, not just recreating and repackaging previous knowledge as in software generation.
Unlike many of the commenters here. I would not consider myself a layman when it comes to AI. I’ve worked in the field of expert systems for many decades and know the traditional languages of AI development such as Prolog inside and out. So I have a built-in BS detector when it comes to claims being made.
So to give an example of a potential LLM emergent discovery, several years ago I published a finding related to mathematically characterizing wind speeds which was a generalization of what was previously been known. This was in the book Mathematical Geoenergy (Wiley, 2019). No one in the research literature has cited this formulation yet, which I find kind of disappointing since it does have applicability for anyone working on harnessing wind power as a renewable energy strategy. It’s what would consider an emergent discovery on my part, since it came out of synthesizing mathematical and other domain knowledge to create something new and novel.
So I gave hints to ChatGPT as a prompt: “Universality of wind energy probability distribution by applying maximum entropy to the mean energy observed. Data from Canada and Germany. Found a universal BesselK distribution which improves on the conventional Rayleigh distribution”
This is how ChatGPT responded:
https://chatgpt.com/share/68daa638-d51c-8006-8a55-f0eefd46fb53
Is it surprising that the ChatGPT LLM came up with the same derivation that I had published? I tried to root out if it had access to the text and it claimed that it didn’t, but when pressed ChatGPT did find the citation to the formulation because it’s in the publisher’s description of the contents.
I can’t determine if ChatGPT is lying or not, but this is the most likely way that LLMs will make emergent scientific discoveries — it will invoke a combination of matching to mathematical patterns and drawing from across disparate scientific domains to reveal something novel in an observed behavior that may not have been previously known,
YMMV, but I find LLM’s to be amazing algorithms. The problem that people encounter when they try to criticize them is they run up against the embedded knowledge that they are deriving from, and that’s difficult to challenge.
“I’ve worked in the field of expert systems for many decades and know the traditional languages of AI development such as Prolog inside and out.”
(1) Expert systems (explicit rules and logical inference, rule based systems) using Lisp and Prolog for examples and;
(2) LLMs (learn patterns from billions of examples) using artificial neural networks as a massive statistical engine are built generally with Python and C++ and GPUs;
are altogether different things.
For example:
https://phys.org/news/2025-09-ai-tensor-network-based-framework.html
Not a rule in sight.
Ray Ladbury: “Materials science, topological chemistry–even finding novel strategies for winning at Go–these are all areas where AIs have made us smarter by telling us something we didn’t know already.” ( https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/unforced-variations-sep-2025/comment-page-2/#comment-839968 )
Yes, and (from what I’ve heard/read) their use in folding proteins, and in designing fusion reactors!
“Should Computers Run the World? – with Hannah Fry” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzhpf1Ai7Z4
Been awhile since I watched, but from what I recall, a major point was that computers tend to be more sensitive (detection of something), while humans tend to be more selective (what is that something?). Also the pigeon radiologists bit was funny.
I also like Angela Collier’s perspective (it’s a tool. You have to know how to use it/what to use it for) [it’s a very energy hungry tool, so I’d advise using sparingly]):
“vibe physics” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMoz3gSXBcY
“there is nothing new here” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFGcqWbwvyc
“the malicious optimism of AI-first companies” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKmAg4S2KeE
“AI does not exist but it will ruin everything anyway” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUrOxh_0leE
Although … aren’t all computers AI? (In fact, if we just look at memory, a diary/journal is a prosthetic one. Also, quipu…) And would an A(G)I qualify as a person?, and would it get to vote when it turns 18?
Tomáš Kalisz says
24 Sep 2025 at 6:40 PM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/unforced-variations-sep-2025/#comment-839801
Oppositely, there are hints, like
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-40641-y
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36794-5
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scib.2024.02.033
that seem to support my speculation …………………………………….
Good references, in particular 3rd one
Importance of soil moisture conservation in mitigating climate change
Zhiyan Zuo 2024
2.3. Climate sensitivities of the climate models
We used the definition of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) from the IPCC Assessment Report 6 to categorize the models in this study into low and high climate sensitivity groups (ECS 3 ℃, respectively)
We computed the time points at which global warming would reach 1.5 ℃ and 2.0 ℃ relative to pre-industrial global mean SAT, both with and without maintaining soil moisture, under conditions of low and high climate sensitivity (Fig. 2b).
3.3. Delaying climate change signal through soil moisture preservation
The cascading effects associated with the steady soil moisture strategy introduce delays in the signal emergence over a substantial portion of global land, specifically exceeding 83.0%. Notably, more than 48.5% of global land experiences delays exceeding 10 years (Fig. 3c). Remarkably, delays of up to 20 years occur over regions including Europe, central North America, and mid-latitude zones ranging from 20° to 40°S. These areas are often characterized as land-atmosphere coupling hotspots
Comprehensive simulations conducted by CMIP6’s LSMIP, LUMIP, and ScenarioMIP experiments provide compelling evidence that maintaining current levels of soil moisture could mitigate global warming, delay the emergence of climate change signals, and contribute to achieving the critical 1.5 ℃ and 2.0 ℃ warming targets under the SSP1-2.6 scenario. Afforestation could effectively maintain stable soil moisture levels.
4. Discussion and conclusion
Crucially, when compared with alternative strategies such as carbon sequestration, carbon capture, and other geoengineering interventions, the steady soil moisture strategy emerges as a safer and more actionable option. Therefore, it should be duly considered as a viable and practical approach for both mitigating and effectively addressing climate change
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209592732400135X?via%3Dihub
Deep google scholar searching and or querying ai llm apps may help find more.
This is why THE climate strategy is regenerative land management. Adding 1% per year of soil carbon globally would both add HUGE quantities of water to soils, but also HUGE quantities of long-term carbon storage.
Reducing consumption 80 to 90% and regenerative land management gets us into negative emissions trajectories. Actually going fully regenerative gets us into survivable range. And far more quickly than is understood by but a few.
Read Burn by Albert Bates and,,,, can never remember her name… :-(
Reducing consumption 80 to 90% and regenerative land management gets us into negative emissions trajectories. Actually going fully regenerative gets us into survivable range. And far more quickly than is understood by but a few.
Reply to Killian
Yes. And will never be implemented by an nation state.
“I’m pessimistic about the future,” he says. “But I’m optimistic about people.” Luke Kemp
Collapse has historically benefited the 99%. That’s the amazing conclusion of Luke Kemp, author of Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/02/self-termination-history-and-future-of-societal-collapse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMbtY4ljEMQ
AND
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7JsDrHrRsI
AND
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbKymchp-54
The influence of psychopaths and the dark triad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90ePY2MQ3-Q
The ‘people’ left will eventually get to pro-social collective modes of healthy living and regeneration practices. The psychopaths will meet their bitter end.
Piotr 24 Sep 2025 at 6:34 PM “5. because as a result, GMST has a huge advantage in communicating the science and in its potential to influence the politicians” (“reply” button messed up missing). Yep for sure. Also, a huge disadvantage in that it gets the living daylights kicked out of it by changes in ocean vertical & horizontal movement all the time and volcanism changes now & then. Huge advantage for the Fossils of course and I have vague recollections of them using that advantage now & then (actually the Alarmists also).
Barry E Finch: Also [GMST has] a huge disadvantage in that it gets the living daylights kicked out of it by changes in ocean vertical & horizontal movement all the time and volcanism changes now & then.Huge advantage for the Fossils of course”
And this …. wouldn’t be the case, if we used EEI instead?
(the discussion was about zebra’s superiority of EEI over GMST).
Good point Piotr. I forgot even though I was pointing out couple years back that there’s a huge EEI swing in 2010-2011 when bods were ooohing and aaahing about the recent bananas in the EEI peak. I think it must be intrinsically less flakey than GMST though. I was actually thinking more of plots of OHC anomaly but of course EEI is its 1st derivative, which causes swings as big-looking as GMST though I think not as fast. You are correct (between you & the GMST bloke I’m unsure though). I suppose both EEI and GMST combo cannot be avoided for removing ocean noise but that’s getting complicated if it’s for showing other bods rather than for those who kind of know what’s going on.
Barry: I suppose both EEI and GMST combo cannot be avoided for removing ocean noise but that’s getting complicated if it’s for showing other bods rather than for those who kind of know what’s going on.
My main point was about the ease of communication – EEI may be good “for those who kind of know what’s going on”, but will be confusing and off-putting when used to communicate to the public:
“4. The politicians and the public intuitively know what “air temperature” is. Hardly any understands what are the different components that make up the EEI. As a result, GMST has a huge advantage in communicating the science and in its potential to influence the politicians.”
And what an irony that I had to explain it to zebra, the very same zebra who earlier patronizingly lectured scientists on the virtue of the …. SIMPLICITY in conveying the information to the public:
an earlier zebra: ” A good illustration of why scientists are always going to lose debates with the fakers. Simplicity works, but scientists can’t stop themselves from babbling on and on about trivialities. And even the people who acknowledge the problem often can’t stop themselves from doing it.”
Do what I tell you, not what I do, eh?
P.S. That’s in the addition to the other reasons why we can’t replace GMST with EEI:
===========
1. because many processes (ice melting, thermal expansion) depend on temperature, and only very indirectly and confoundedly, on EEI
2. because measuring the GMST is a child’s play comparing to measuring all components of global EEI
3. because of its simplicity – we have a long history of measuring the surface air temperature thus giving us insight into long term trends. Not the case with EEI.
===========
in Re to Piotr, 26 Sep 2025 at 9:56 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/unforced-variations-sep-2025/comment-page-2/#comment-839911 ,
Hallo Piotr,
On 24 Sep 2025 at 5:27 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/time-and-tide-gauges-wait-for-no-voortman/#comment-839794 ,
I tried to make you aware of two studies
https://bg.copernicus.org/articles/17/2987/2020/
and
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2024GL108654
cited by MA Rodger on 21 Aug 2025 at 2:29 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/08/unforced-variations-aug-2025/comment-page-2/#comment-838092 .
According to him, global sea level rise can be interpreted rather as a consequence of Earth energy imbalance (EEI) than as a consequence of rising global mean surface temperature (GMST), because it appears that EEI (and a continuing sea level rise) can persist long after the GMST rise stops.
In this respect, your opinion that thermal expansion depends on temperature might be incorrect if you, under temperature, mean GMST.
Actually, in the light of the publications cited by MA Rodger, it rather appears that depending on the intensity of heat transport from the surface into deep ocean, it may be possible that the ocean volume expands thermally without a substantial GMST increase.
Greetings
Tomáš
Kris Van Steenbergen worried about potential imminent destabilization re: Theatres.
about https://x.com/KrVaSt/status/1970546440876499319?t=f5ko7zCk1CmLxmiRjI5KSw&s=19
Thanks for posting that, was looking for it. It prompted a search and I posted some bits and bobs (including scientific links) about Thwaites and measurement which will appear in due course in comments on Ice Measurement article.
For anybody who can’t or won’t click through to Killian’s Xter link: “A new, significant, big crack in the center of the Thwaites Glacier painfully demonstrates that the glacier tongue is accelerating westward (and soon eastward), due to basal melting that has occurred primarily during the winter months this year. This suggests rapid fragmentation.”
Er…. Thwaites.
You’re welcome.
If your “Xter link” (whatever that is) referring to some new significant, big crack ~300 km inland from the calving face of the TEIS (~250 km inland from the Western melange)? Because that’s about where the centre of the Thwaites Glacier is.
The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research has released a report titled Seven of nine planetary boundaries now breached – ocean acidification joins the danger zone. Here’s an excerpt:
It is my view that widespread public battles and mega submissions over minutiae (the CWG report and the EPA findings) are distractions to the core issues about addressing global warming responses. In the US and globally. Resources and time are scarce commodities. Wasting them on a Hill not worth Dying for will never Win the real War.
A handful of incompetent nobodies being put up on pedestals by thousands of climate scientists and across the media as if they are dire threats to the core of climate science credibility is a self-defeating approach.
Doing so will never change Minds. But only entrench them deeper into error. Like Trump’s UN speech shows again calling it a hoax. The opposite of the cooperation and agreement required to solve the systemic problems. In the current media/political environment, silence is often interpreted as acquiescence or weakness. Many scientists feel compelled to respond to protect public trust in science. I fear the opposite has been and will continue to be the outcome instead – doubling down on a “us vs them” mindset typically leads to only one historical outcome.
That is not what Mandela, MLK, JFK, RFK, Carl Sagan, Ghandi or Jesus preached. ymmv of course. You might know better.
Mo Yunus. I think its important the DOE climate reports are rebutted by climate scientists. While rebuttals are unlikely to convince the hard core maga people, some warmists and fence sitters may decide the DOE report is accurate, unless its rebutted.
nigel, do you also think it is important for these same scientists and US institutions and academia to rebut what Trump just said at the UNGA last week?
Mo Yunus, I assume you mean Trumps false claims that climate change is a con job. I would expect scientists to briefly say its not a con job, and say climate change is the result of scientific research. Perhaps they could point out the logical absurdity of governments trying to con people. I wouldnt see a need to go into any huge detail. The reason being its evidence free tin foil hat material. There’s no point trying to counter it with science. There’s no point writing reports on it. And I doubt Trump is convincing anyone but people already convinced its a con job like his core maga base. And if was a scientist, I personally would only respond on this one if asked by the media.
In comparison the EPA report is more insidious because it is detailed and presents evidence, although its all cherry picked. But because its detailed and superficially convincing to perhaps a very significant number of people, it needs a thorough rebuttal and proactively done.
I could be wrong but that’s how I would approach it.
May clearer heads prevail We are fast running out of time.
https://forestpolicypub.com/2025/09/08/we-need-to-reframe-and-reorient-the-climate-sciences-comments-on-the-cwg-report-i/
1 of 3
NASA Tech Briefs “Motion Design Insider” – progress on a new type of flying device that would finally allow longer-term observing of conditions within the mesosphere. Start of the article below, more at the link. I picture labs where people are now trying to figure out which bits of smartphone sensors can go into small, extremely lightweight flying disks.
A New Window into Earth’s Upper Atmosphere
“Between 50 and 100 kilometers (30-60 miles) above Earth’s surface lies a largely unstudied stretch of the atmosphere, called the mesosphere. It’s too high for airplanes and weather balloons, too low for satellites, and nearly impossible to monitor with existing technology. But understanding this layer of the atmosphere could improve the accuracy of weather forecasts and climate models.
A new study published in Nature by researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), University of Chicago, and others introduces a novel way to reach this unexplored near-space zone: lightweight flying structures that can float using nothing but sunlight.
“We are studying this strange physics mechanism called photophoresis and its ability to levitate very lightweight objects when you shine light on them,” said Ben Schafer, lead author of the paper and a former Harvard graduate student in the research groups of Joost Vlassak, the Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Materials Engineering at SEAS, and David Keith, now a professor at the University of Chicago.
Photophoresis occurs when gas molecules bounce more forcefully off the warm side of an object than the cool side, creating continuous momentum and lift. This effect only happens in extremely low-pressure environments, which are exactly the conditions found in the mesosphere.
The researchers built thin, centimeter-scale membranes from ceramic alumina, with a layer of chromium on the bottom to absorb sunlight. When light hits this structure, the heat difference between the top and bottom surfaces initiates a photophoretic lifting force, which exceeds the structure’s weight.”
At the end of the article is the source, a Harvard press release, which links to the Nature paper. Decades ago, my uncle the aerospace engineer got me introduced to NASA Tech Briefs accidentally – a copy was mixed in with the stack of the comics my cousins had, and it was a lot more interesting than what Archie and the gang were up to.
Same physics mechanism as Crookes radiometer, explained in 1879
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crookes_radiometer
As September approaches its final week, the global temperature data is showing that the Sept 2025 anomaly is going to be a bigly bit up on August’s.
The Sept average to the 24th is sitting at +0.65ºC. August was +0.49ºC which itself reversed a previous decline in SAT through the year, bottoming-out in July +0.45ºC. If the upward SAT wobbles add a final bigly push in the coming week, Sept 2025 may even rival Sept 2024 (+0.72ºC) for the 2nd warmest September on record although the top September spot is out of reach, Sept 2023 (+0.93ºC) being the all-time monthly record in ERA5 SAT
So far the recent increasing anomaly has been due to SH anomalies. The NH has in very-recent days shown a bit of ‘upwardness’ and has managed to poke its head above the pre-bananas!!! trend line.
I have been of the view that the NH is the one to watch but the SH has been showing banana-ish behaviour since July.
I’ve just migrated my various graphics showing the progress of the 2023 “bananas!!!” to a separate Banana Watch webpage to assist reference to them.
Thus gathered in one place are:-
❶ Global daily ERA5 SAT reanalysis 2022-to-date,
❷ NH & SH daily SAT 2014-to-date (sadly with a different anomaly base but with the same pre-bananas trend lines plotted that shouldn’t be too confusing),
❸ The NH daily SAT 2023-25 plotted year-on-year (which has been more of a contributor to the “bananas!!!” so perhaps should be more worthwhile monitoring),
❹ Daily ERA5 SST 60N-60S 1979-to-date &
❺ 2013-to-date.
These SST numbers are less wobbly and thus should be more indicative of the progress of the “bananas!!!”
Before I forget Kevin Trenberth says month-to-month random cloud changes is 0.62 w/m**2 (I assume that’s +/-) which cloud noise is a fair chunk of change. At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agKayS6h6xA at 5:57. Incidentally, that video I think is where I got the idea in 2014 that EEI circa 2000 was more like 0.7 w/m**2 than 0.4 w/m**2 and that CERES EEI wasn’t ready for Prime Time, but you confirmed it was around 0.35 w/m**2 if memory serves.
I have often called the necessary, i.e. non-negotiable, response to climate dangers a “back to the future” sort of thing.
Just so.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/archaeologists-stunned-excavation-reveals-long-235500043.html
On the topic of drivel in the popular Social Media (so not Realclimate, which nobody ever sees) has anybody just happened to come across the published science, glaciology or paleo-climate, that’s asserted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4fIDNi979s at 2:40 to 2:50 “Recent research … sea levels could rise as much as 20 feet by the end of the century”. Not shown let alone discussed in this video which is only about that and nothing else. Obviously, +6 m by 2100 CE would require all couple of hundred ice sheet glaciers to flow at average 10x their present flow rates the next 75 years so would all be flowing at average 20x their present flow rates.
Barry E Finch,
The video helpfully provides a transcript that runs:-
The video-quote from Prof Bill McGuire with its “published in 2001” looks a bit out-of-date. Looking back, McGuire has in the past wielded a 6m/20ft SLR warning but in 500y not 100y. The 100y thus could be a misunderstanding by the video blogger, as appears to be the case in this 2015 blog and perhaps also in another 2015 blog that says “nearly” 20ft SLR in 100y was considered not impossible by one of our RC hosts:-
Hansen’s 5m SLR by 2100 projections (as in Hansen et al (2016)) would require an incredible amount of energy directed to ice-melt. Suggesting 20ft/6m SLR by 2100 with the acceleration now starting a decade later would take even more explaining.
Barry E Finch: Obviously, +6 m by 2100 CE would require all couple of hundred ice sheet glaciers to flow at average 10x their present flow rates the next 75 years
But for the sake of argument – aren’t the present/recent rates measured when the ice shelves are still relatively stable – still moored and by being so – block the flow of their own ice into the ocean, as well as the flow of ice from the continent?
Now, even small amount of seawater penetrating between the icesheet and bedrock would lubricate the flow of the ice into the deep water, first from ice shelves, then also from the continent -where up to now – the ice had to push hard against the anchored ice shelves.
In such a scenario we could have a very different ice-flow regime than the one at present…
Whether this would happen before 2100 that’s a different story ….
Piotr, I assume that most by far marine-terminating glaciers have ice shelves simply because there are 45 ice shelves for Antarctica (glaciers I dunno) and 125 glaciers for Greenland (ice shelves I dunno) and I haven’t been hearing about the bananas disintegration of ice shelves over the last 13 years, only Thwaites, Larsen A, B and something about a small glacier in East Antarctica.
“In such a scenario we could have a very different ice-flow regime” Yes of course and yes to all preceding. I’ve spent several hundred hours on this and forgotten it all. However I haven’t read what IPCC AR6 has to support its 0.75 m SLR by 2100 with the 1.5 m SLR l0w-likelihood high-impact scenario. Eric Rignot has said scientists sort-of think that marine-terminating glaciers will accelerate to 6-7 times their speed with the ice shelf after the ice shelf has disintegrated and Eric Rignot has said another time without explanation his opinion that maximum possible SLR is 4.5 m per century (answering audience question about that). Of course I did the simple calculation and it matches. So that’s 5.5 * (2,200 Ant + 600 Green) = 15.4 Trillion tonnes / year which is 1,540 Trillion tonnes per century which is +4.28 m per century and I suppose add a guess of 0.22 m for thermal expansion and the insult and you have that 4.5 m per century.
This “6-7 times their speed” and 4.5 m per century absolute possible maximum seem quite ad hoc but that’s what I’ve come across and I suppose I really should read IPCC AR6 when I’ve time but that wouldn’t address any queries or objections by bods on Realclimate UV because they are real scientists as you read from their comments here and not Lukewarmers like the bods who type IPCC AR6.
“Whether this would happen before 2100” I sure hope you mean whether all ice shelves disintegrate before 2100 (I dunno, too complicated for me) and not 6 m of SLR, which is gobsmackingly-bananas idiotic. You understand that, right? Since the Larsen C A68 trillion-tonne berg roamed for 3.5 years before being essentially gone and another trillion-tonne berg B22A was hung up on a pinning point for 20 years before getting free and moving into the circumpolar current I can do a quick visual.
Removing an absurdly-impossible 2 m for Greenland just to dispense with Greenland (36 times the annual rate of Greenland’s loss the last 20 years starting in 2026) leaves 1,440 Trillion tonnes of ice off Antarctica, a gobsmacking trillion-tonne monster like Larsen C A68 every 19 days starting this weekend and running for 74 years. Picture if the 1st one gets caught just 200 km off shore and another piles into it. Picture an ice jam because 800 m isn’t deep enough ocean. At 2100 if this ice doesn’t melt it’s a ring around Antarctica that is 15,000 km circumference, 48 km wide and 2,000 m thick. That’s the chunk of ice that raises sea level by 4 m. By 2100 CE is so idiotic that it needs a new word to describe how idiotic it is.
On the separate topic around here lately about whether it’s better to provide lies & drivel for the team or not, with Antarctica theme so I don’t have to SPAM with multiple comments, there’s a link above to a Kris Van Steenbergen providing outrageous falsehood “new, significant, big crack in the center of the Thwaites Glacier”. There’s no significant, big crack in the centre of Thwaites Glacier, that place is 800 km across with ice that must be about 3,000 m thick (1,600 m ASL and 1,400 m BSL, something roughly like that. There’d be more Mainstream News if the continent of Antarctica was now splitting into 3 pieces instead of the old traditional 2 pieces.
3 pieces 2 pieces S.B. 4 pieces 3 pieces. Stupid little Peninsular I forget.
Thanks, Barry, for providing some numbers in response to my purely qualitative speculation of
“we could have a very different ice-flow regime than the one at present…”,
If I got it right – while you agree with my speculation in general – that the rates of flow may increase greatly once the blocking by iceshelves begins to fail on the large enough scale – it won’ t happen nowhere quickly enough to provide, the listed by MAR:
– Hansen’s 5m SLR by 2100 (as in Hansen et al (2016)) or
– the 6m SLR by 2100 , as according to MAR – misunderstood by the video-blogger from Bill McGuire “6m by 2500”.
It’s good for me, although I suspect it might not so be for the doomers wielding Hansen as their battle-hammer.
Barry E Finch: – “Obviously, +6 m by 2100 CE would require all couple of hundred ice sheet glaciers to flow at average 10x their present flow rates the next 75 years so would all be flowing at average 20x their present flow rates.”
Sea level rise (SLR) is relentless and demonstrably accelerating. I’d suggest one metre of global mean SLR would be catastrophic for many coastal properties and infrastructure.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/07/the-endangerment-of-the-endangerment-finding/#comment-837095
For example, see Slide #16 headlined Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport at 1 m SLR at:
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/submissions/91844/0026%20Geoff%20Miell.pdf
Geoff Miell says 27 Sep 2025 at 7:19 PM When Fossils cannot refute a point of physical science I’ve made they instead switch to something else(s) to pretend that they have refuted by typing items that I’ve usually understood for years, and even when I provided information about the GoogleysTubes video and not at them. I’ve read them do it to others also. Since I started in 2013 I dunno whether Fossils telling me things I’ve understood for years already in a silly pretense that they replied to me numbers in the tens of thousands or has reached the hundreds of thousands. Even though Social Media is new to me these other bods don’t even understand that there’s always the option of them simply making their own comment about something some place. I suppose they don’t want to look showy by making their own comments about things.
A helpful translation to explain what Barry is trying to convey in his native tongue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrZlWw8Di10
Barry E Finch: – “When Fossils cannot refute a point of physical science I’ve made…”
It seems to me there’s more drivel and almost incoherent ramblings from a RC resident denier of reality. Per the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics journal 2016 paper by Hansen et al. titled Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 °C global warming could be dangerous, included (bold text my emphasis):
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-3761-2016
Where have you published scientific papers on climate, and more particularly on sea level rise, Barry E Finch?
It seems to me that based on satellite altimetry measurements for the period Jan 1993 through to Dec 2023, the doubling time of the rate of global mean sea level rise (SLR) has been about 18 years.
See Slide #12 headlined Global mean SLR is approaching 6 mm/year at:
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/submissions/91844/0026%20Geoff%20Miell.pdf
And glaciologist Professor Dr Jason Box suggests “by 2050, 40 centimetres above 2000 levels”
See Slide #13 headlined Sea level rise is increasing exponentially.
The global mean sea level has risen about 9 cm since the beginning of year-2000. That suggests a doubling time between 10 and 13 years in order to reach 40 cm above year-2000 levels by year-2050. NOAA’s Feb 2022 report on SLR suggests global mean SLR projection range 0.15 to 0.43 m by 2050 in Table 2.3.
See Slide #15 headlined Global mean sea level rise scenarios.
Who would/should we be more inclined to take notice of re likely SLR outcomes? James Hansen, NOAA and/or Jason Box; or Barry E Finch?
We should ask Eric Rignot what doubling period he has calculated for ice mass loss the next 500 years based on ice sheet dynamics because he’s like 98 times more wittier than I am. He’d reply something that’s a Keeper.
I can only do like:
Historical doubling period: == VG math skills, British 2nd Form level.
Predicted doubling period: == Worthless, lazy rubbish of bods who are too lazy (no Income in it usually) to study some topic that they Babble’O’Fest about.
Socialite == No physics, too lazy. Personally motivated. Inherently dishonest. “Fact” is something that doesn’t exist for them. Worthless for physical science. Totally worthless.
I’m betting that >90% of the bods who Post on RC UV understood those things I just typed instantly upon presentations of this & that way back years ago. The others Socialites, pathetic pretense of physical science knowledge. Aces for Politics, money. Worthless for this stuff.
Thanks, Barry, for providing some numbers in response to my purely qualitative speculation of
“we could have a very different ice-flow regime than the one at present…”,
If I got it right – while you agree with my speculation in general – that the rates of flow may increase greatly once the blocking by iceshelves begins to fail on the large enough scale – it won’ t happen nowhere quickly enough to provide, the listed by MAR:
– Hansen’s 5m SLR by 2100 (as in Hansen et al (2016)) or
– the 6m SLR by 2100 , as according to MAR – misunderstood by the video-blogger from Bill McGuire “6m by 2500”.
It’s good for me, although I suspect it might not so be for the doomers wielding Hansen as their battle-hammer.
Geoff Miell: quoting Hansen: “ We hypothesize that ice mass loss from the most vulnerable ice, sufficient to raise sea level several meters, is better approximated as exponential than by a more linear response . Doubling times of 10, 20 or 40 years yield multi-meter sea level rise in about 50, 100 or 200 years.
Beware of Greeks bearing numerical extrapolation of the past data.
There is entire RC thread: “But you said the ice was going to disappear in 10 years! with the cautionary tale of the dangers of numerical extrapolation without physics.:
In the opening article there, Gavin describes how Wieslaw Maslowski, in 2007, predicted the end of the summer ice by 2015. “ However, this prediction was not directly based on his ice model, but rather on an “extrapolation of the ice volume from his model“.
In other words, despite using high quality input data from the past (from “the one of the highest resolution ice models available”) – after he numerically extrapolated the past trends onto the future without accounting for the physics – he ended up with …. a massively wrong prediction, and by doings so – fueled denialism (But you said the ice was going to disappear in 10 years!” ever since).
Hansen seems to be doing the same – calculates the doubling time as a numerical extrapolation from the past data: “ Recent ice melt doubling times are near the lower end of the 10–40-year range, ” i.e. purely statistical extrapolation, no physical mechanism supporting it provided. And bases on this numerical extrapolation only – he indicates MULTIMETER SLR in the next 50-100 years.
Let’s hope the history does not repeat itself, particularly that the failure of this prediction would allow the deniers to dismiss , via guilt by association, all work of Hansen , and by extension, climate science in general, in the way that the failed extrapolation by the much less known Maslowski never could.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions ….
Re: “See Slide #12 headlined Global mean SLR is approaching 6 mm/year”
No, it’s approaching 5 mm/year:
Your position seems prone to exaggeration, based on my response to elsewhere.
Re: “And glaciologist Professor Dr Jason Box suggests “by 2050, 40 centimetres above 2000 levels”
See Slide #13 headlined Sea level rise is increasing exponentially.”
Sea level rise does not follow random exponential functions. That would be mechanism-free curve fitting. Sea level rise increase occurs due to warming that causes thermal expansion of ocean water and melts land ice that then flows into the ocean. The amount of sea level rise thus depends on warming, which in turn depends on the amount of forcing. Hence why sea level rise scenarios differ based on projected forcing from greenhouse gas emissions. Claiming 40cm (0.4m) from 2000 to 2050 is assuming a high emissions scenario. No plausible emissions scenario is getting to 20ft (6m) of sea level rise by 2100.
Barry E Finch (at 29 Sep 2025 at 8:17 AM): – “We should ask Eric Rignot what doubling period he has calculated for ice mass loss the next 500 years based on ice sheet dynamics because he’s like 98 times more wittier than I am.”
What has Eric Rignot actually said, aye Barry? Let’s see now…
For example, at the April 2019 General Meeting of the American Philosophical Society, as shown in the YouTube video titled On Sheet Ice Melt in a Warming Climate and What We Should Do About It, glaciologist Professor Eric Rignot confirmed that the whole of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is now committed to melting. Rignot said (bold text my emphasis) from time interval 0:02:11:
“Now, we know it takes a long time to build an ice sheet, and it takes less time to melt it away. We know that from paleo-records. We also know that the last time this transition happened, following the last glacial maximum, 25 thousand years ago, er, the rate of sea-level rise was not uniform, and there was a particular event called Meltwater Pulse 1A, about fourteen thousand years ago, where sea level was rising four metres per century, and they did that for four centuries, and that corresponded to the collapse of the northern ice sheets; er, also some parts of Antarctica that have yet to be identified that contributed to that. So, right now, sea level is raising, rising about thirty centimetres per century, but we know there’s the possibility that it could do this ten times faster because it did that in the past and, what causes that is the, is the ice sheets.”
https://youtu.be/DnOykSCOf0c?t=131
And Rignot said from time interval 0:21:03:
“So right now, we are on a rate of one metre per century, but an interesting result from paleo-records is that when the climate of the planet was about half a degree warmer than present, or maybe just the same as present, right, during the last interglacial, sea level was six to nine metres higher. That means the main part of Greenland was gone, West Antarctica was gone, and some part of East Antarctica yet-to-be-identified was gone as well. It’s likely that if we bring the climate system to the same level we will also commit ourselves to six to nine metres sea level rise. What the paleo-record doesn’t tell us is how long it’s going to take to do that. Damage doesn’t start at six to nine metres sea level rise, right. The damage on us starts at about a metre sea level rise.”
https://youtu.be/DnOykSCOf0c?t=1263
Who would/should we be more inclined to take notice of re likely SLR outcomes? James Hansen, Eric Rignot, NOAA and/or Jason Box; or Barry E Finch?
Atomsk’s Sanakan (at 29 Sep 2025 at 6:20 PM): – “No, it’s approaching 5 mm/year:”
And yet:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-025-00667-w
It seems 5.9 mm/year rate of global mean SLR in year-2024 is approaching 6 mm/year for me, but apparently not for Atomsk’s Sanakan.
Atomsk’s Sanakan (at 29 Sep 2025 at 6:20 PM): – “Sea level rise increase occurs due to warming that causes thermal expansion of ocean water and melts land ice that then flows into the ocean. The amount of sea level rise thus depends on warming, which in turn depends on the amount of forcing.”
Meanwhile, planet Earth’s albedo is at a record low…
See Slide #10 headlined Planet Earth’s albedo is at a record low at:
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/submissions/91844/0026%20Geoff%20Miell.pdf
…and per the CERES data for May 2025, the 36-month running mean for the EEI grew slightly to the energy equivalence of 11.36 Hiroshima-magnitude nuclear bomb detonations per second.
See Slide #11 headlined EEI now equivalent to 11.36 ‘Hiroshimas’/s
Atomsk’s Sanakan (at 29 Sep 2025 at 6:20 PM): – “Claiming 40cm (0.4m) from 2000 to 2050 is assuming a high emissions scenario.”
Meanwhile, atmospheric CO₂ concentrations continue to rise, with an observed jump of approximately 3.5 ppm in 2024
https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/global_trend.png
I’d suggest humanity is still continuing on a high GHG emissions scenario.
Atomsk’s Sanakan (at 29 Sep 2025 at 6:20 PM): – “No plausible emissions scenario is getting to 20ft (6m) of sea level rise by 2100.”
It seems you lack imagination – still thinking linearly, not non-linearly.
Johan Rockström, joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, highlights 16 climate tipping points:
* Greenland ice sheet collapse
* West Antarctic ice sheet collapse
* Tropical coral reef die off
* Northern permafrost abrupt thaw
* Labrador Sea current collapse
* Barents Sea ice loss
* Mountain glaciers loss
* Atlantic current collapse
* Northern forest dieback – south
* Northern forest expansion – north
* West African monsoon shift
* East Antarctic glacier collapse
* Amazon rainforest dieback
* Northern permafrost dieback
* Arctic winter sea ice collapse
* East Antarctic ice sheet collapse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl6VhCAeEfQ&t=575s
I’d suggest a permafrost abrupt thaw as one example, would have something to do with increasing the climate forcing, and thus accelerating the rate of global mean SLR substantially faster than current observations.
MA Rodger says
Barry E Finch says
Atomsk’s Sanakan says
Piotr says
Hansen’s 5m SLR by 2100 projections (as in Hansen et al (2016)) would require etc,
– Hansen’s 5m SLR by 2100 (as in Hansen et al (2016)) or
– the 6m SLR by 2100 , as according to MAR
It’s good for me, although I suspect it might not so be for the doomers wielding Hansen as their battle-hammer.
Hansen seems to be doing the same – calculates the doubling time as a numerical extrapolation from the past data:
Let’s hope the history does not repeat itself, particularly that the failure of this prediction would allow the deniers to dismiss , via guilt by association, all work of Hansen , and by extension, climate science in general,
Geoff Miell says
What has Eric Rignot actually said,
Who would/should we be more inclined to take notice of re likely SLR outcomes? James Hansen, NOAA and/or Jason Box; or Barry E Finch?
Mo Yunus asks requests:
I have checked this Hansen paper https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/16/3761/2016/acp-16-3761-2016.pdf
Would any of you be able to copy paste from that, with a page number where in text or table that Hansen et al projects or predict or states his conclusion or opinion that SLR will be +5 metres by 2100? Because I cannot find it anywhere, not even supplementary info. Thank you.
My other question is: What exactly do you have against James Hansen’s climate science work and his peer reviewed findings?
Or
is this commentary above solely about people you believe are and label as “doomers” for some reason, referencing his work and exaggerating it or misrepresenting what his papers contain and conclude?
It is not clear.
thank you.
Atomsk’s Sanakan says
29 Sep 2025 at 6:20 PM
Re: “See Slide #12 headlined Global mean SLR is approaching 6 mm/year”
No, it’s approaching 5 mm/year:
WMO: “The long-term rate of sea-level rise has more than doubled since the start of the satellite record, increasing from 2.1 mm per year between 1993 and 2002 to 4.7 mm per year between 2015 and 2024.”
Your position seems prone to exaggeration, …
Mo Yunus asks: Do you know you are dealing with averaged mean estimates calculated across decades of a major variability of SLR estimates calculated using statistics, while you are claiming arguing that a difference of only 1mm per year (versus multi-metre SLR over decades to hundred of years) equates to an “exaggeration”? There are 1000 mm in a metre.
Slide #12 says >
According to a NASA-led analysis, last year’s rate (2024) of rise was 0.23 inches (0.59 centimetres) per year.
That equals +5.9mm per year
Slide #13 J. Box says >
I would not be at all surprised to see the
rate of global mean sea level rise (SLR)
accelerate further, from 5.9 mm/year in
2024 to 10 mm/year sometime in the
2030s.
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/submissions/91844/0026%20Geoff%20Miell.pdf
I believe, less pedantry, dropping any bias may help improve the observation skill limit blind spots and improve the accuracy of your claims.
Taking up perceived errors may be better directed at the scientists producing the work and sincere people like GEOFF using it for positive effect — government enquiries etc. Anthony Watts and Koonin are easy to find if you seek an argument with the dysfunctional bad faith actors. You should be ashamed of yourself.
SLR is accelerating on a multi-decadal time-scale but at shorter time-scales remains very wobbly. The satellite SLR data on the Met Office SLR dashboard yields 10y & 20y OLS results as plotted HERE (graphic PLOTTED 30th September 2025) suggests the current rate of SLR is now ~5mm/y and the acceleration over the last few decades was running at (1.5mm/18y ≈) 0.85mm/decade. If there is an exponential rate of SLR, it is not doubling fast enough to reveal itself with the 30 years of data available.
Re: “It seems 5.9 mm/year rate of global mean SLR in year-2024 is approaching 6 mm/year for me, but apparently not for Atomsk’s Sanakan.”
Your sources didn’t say it’s approaching 6 mm/year. That’s just your non-expert + incorrect calculation. If you think otherwise, then quote where that paper says the trend is approaching 6 mm/year. You won’t because it never says that. Here’s what it looks like when a source discusses a rate:
I already showed you the WMO report that explains the trend through 2024 is approaching 5 mm/year, not 6 mm/year. Yet you ignored that report, acted like it was just me saying it, and then cited a source that doesn’t support your claim. That confirms you’re operating in bad faith and can be disregarded in the rest of what you say.
Re: “I believe, less pedantry, dropping any bias may help improve the observation skill limit blind spots and improve the accuracy of your claims.
Taking up perceived errors may be better directed at the scientists producing the work and sincere people like GEOFF using it for positive effect — government enquiries etc. Anthony Watts and Koonin are easy to find if you seek an argument with the dysfunctional bad faith actors. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Sorry, but I care about accuracy, even it means correcting inaccuracies from people you think suit your ideological/policy agenda. Ironically, you claim to care about accuracy, yet call it ‘pedantry’ when inaccuracies are rebutted.
Re: “According to a NASA-led analysis, last year’s rate (2024) of rise was 0.23 inches (0.59 centimetres) per year. That equals +5.9mm per year”
Yet the study does not claim the rate is 6 mm/year, because researchers are competent enough not to calculate the trend based on just 2023 and 2024. Otherwise, one would falsely claim a pause in sea level rise just because sea level dropped for 2 years. Hence why I cited sources from experts that actually trends. If you can why it’s wrong for Bjorn Lomborg to cherry pick short time-periods to claim a pause in sea level rise, then you should see why its wrong to cherry-pick two years to inflate the rise to 6 mm/year. At least maintain some intellectual consistency and commitment to accuracy, regardless of whether that suits your preferred ideological/policy narrative.
Mo Yunus,
I don’t think that your “check” of Hansen et al (2016) was very thorough. Perhaps if you had started by reading the Abstract, you might have spotted the following passage:-
As the paper goes on to explain, Hansen et al (2016) “germinated” from arguments set out in Hansen (2007) which proposed the 5m SLR by 2100 as a plausible projection.
As to your second question, for myself I have nothing against James Hansen but I do question the veracity of his ‘5m SLR by 2100’ estimate as a conclusion to “the fundamental issue (of) linearity versus non-linearity” and thus strongly dispute it when it is presented as something more than an outlier.
in Re to Geoff Miell, 29 Sep 2025 at 6:54 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/unforced-variations-sep-2025/comment-page-2/#comment-840007
Dear Geoff,
In Dr. Rignot’s statements cited by you, I see remarkable the following thought
““So right now, we are on a rate of one metre per century, but an interesting result from paleo-records is that when the climate of the planet was about half a degree warmer than present, or maybe just the same as present, right, during the last interglacial, sea level was six to nine metres higher. That means the main part of Greenland was gone, West Antarctica was gone, and some part of East Antarctica yet-to-be-identified was gone as well. It’s likely that if we bring the climate system to the same level we will also commit ourselves to six to nine metres sea level rise.”,
particularly with respect to the last sentence thereof.
It appears that Dr. Rignot assumes that we can bring the Earth climate to “the same level” as it was during the last interglacial. Unfortunately, I do not understand what it exactly means.
If the more-less regular switching between glacials and interglacials was, in accordance with Milankovič’s theory, caused by variations in Northern Hemisphere insolation due to variations in Earth orbital movement, then an exactly same position / insolation in the present era should cause the same sea level as in the last interglacial. It should apply at least in pre-industrial era when supposed anthropogenic interferences with Earth climate were negligible.
Nevertheless, Dr. Rignot says the sea level during the last interglacial was 6-9 m higher than the present. It suggests that the present orbital parameters are not exactly the same as during the last interglacial. If so, I would expect that to establish “the same level” of climate, we should correct the present Earth orbital parameters so that they fit with the last interglacial perfectly. I cannot imagine how we could accomplish this task.
Oppositely, if Dr. Rignot perhaps assumes that the same global mean surface temperature (GMST) may be a sufficient parameter characterizing “the same level” of Earth climate, it would have been in my opinion a quite bold assumption that may be, in fact, completely invalid, because the state of Earth climate may then still differ from the last interglacial in plenty of parameters that may be comparably important as the GMST.
I do not dare to assess how Dr. Rignot actually meant what he said, however, I do not think that any reliable conclusion can be drawn based on his statements that, at least as you cited them, sound really confusing.
Greetings
Tomáš
Mo Yunus (at 29 Sep 2025 at 10:20 PM): – “Slide #13 J. Box says >
I would not be at all surprised to see the
rate of global mean sea level rise (SLR)
accelerate further, from 5.9 mm/year in
2024 to 10 mm/year sometime in the
2030s.”
On Slide #13 in my Submission (#26) Attachment, glaciologist Professor Dr Jason Box’s quote is shown in BLUE colour. You should be able to tell because it is bounded by QUOTATION characters. There’s also a helpful link to a video of Professor Box making those statements.
The statements shown in RED colour are mine (i.e. Geoff Miell’s), NOT Jason Box’s. They are influenced by what I’m aware Box, Hansen and Rignot have said.
Atomsk’s Sanakan (at 30 Sep 2025 at 8:35 AM): – “Your sources didn’t say it’s approaching 6 mm/year.
On Slide #12 in my Submission (#26) Attachment, I included this statement (bold text my emphasis):
… and there’s this link at the bottom of Slide #12 that relates to both the 5.9 mm/year rate and the Josh Willis quote:
https://sealevel.nasa.gov/news/282/nasa-analysis-shows-unexpected-amount-of-sea-level-rise-in-2024
That’s the basis of the heading Global mean SLR is approaching 6 mm/year
Atomsk’s Sanakan, did you even bother to look closely? No?
Atomsk’s Sanakan (at 30 Sep 2025 at 8:35 AM): – “I already showed you the WMO report that explains the trend through 2024 is approaching 5 mm/year, not 6 mm/year.”
The WMO report you referred to included: “…4.7 mm per year between 2015 and 2024.”
I’d suggest the 4.7 mm/year SLR is a decadal mean rate over the period 2015-2024 on a RISING TREND. I’d suggest therefore, the annual rate of SLR for year-2024 (i.e. 5.9 mm/year) is higher than the decadal mean rate for the period 2015-2024 (i.e. 4.7 mm/year).
Atomsk’s Sanakan (at 30 Sep 2025 at 8:35 AM): – “Yet you ignored that report, acted like it was just me saying it, and then cited a source that doesn’t support your claim.”
I used the WMO’s State of the Global Climate 2023, because it included Figure 6, which shows the decadal mean rates of SLR for the periods Jan 1993-Dec 2002 (2.13 mm/year), Jan 2003-Dec 2012 (3.33 mm/year), and Jan 2014-Dec 2023 (4.77 mm/year), highlighting the clear ACCELERATION TREND since satellite altimetry began in 1993.
It seems to me you don’t look closely enough, and seem to take things way too personally.
Atomsk’s Sanakan (at 30 Sep 2025 at 8:35 AM): – “That confirms you’re operating in bad faith and can be disregarded in the rest of what you say.”
It seems to me you perceive things that just aren’t there, perhaps because you apparently don’t look closely enough at what’s provided. And it seems to me you are looking for any excuses to disregard inconvenient truths that don’t fit with your ideological narratives.
I’d suggest the annual mean rate of SLR of 5.9 mm/year for year-2024 is probably an outlier for awhile. So far, year-2024 has been the hottest year on record, together with high SST. This year (i.e. 2025) is tracking to be perhaps the third warmest year on record, after 2024 and 2023. So, I’m expecting the annual mean rate of SLR for this year (i.e. 2025) to most likely be at or above 5.0 mm/year but not as high as 5.9 mm/year. We’ll see next year when the satellite altimetry data becomes available as confirmation (or not).
Whether global mean SLR reaches 5 m by 2100 relative to the year-2000 baseline, or not is academic. As Eric Rignot said: “The damage on us starts at about a metre sea level rise.”
When do I think 1 m of global mean SLR is plausible? I think at the moment it’s some time in the 2060s.
I think we will have a good indication of how the Earth System SLR is tracking towards that by the early 2030s, with four decades of satellite altimetry data available.
If the rate of global mean SLR is approximately tracking along a 13-year doubling curve, then by year-2030 the rate would be around 6.9 mm/year, and by year-2035 the rate would be around 9.0 mm/year. If those waypoints track later, then 1 m of global mean SLR would likely arrive later, etc.
Re: “I’d suggest the 4.7 mm/year SLR is a decadal mean rate over the period 2015-2024 on a RISING TREND. I’d suggest therefore, the annual rate of SLR for year-2024 (i.e. 5.9 mm/year) is higher than the decadal mean rate for the period 2015-2024 (i.e. 4.7 mm/year).”
I’d suggest your cherry-picking is as bad or worse than that of the denialist Bjorn Lomborg:
Re: “and there’s this link at the bottom of Slide #12 that relates to both the 5.9 mm/year rate and the Josh Willis quote”
You mean the press piece that says?:
No, sea level rise is not approaching 6 mm-year just because you used Lomborg’s misleading tactic of cherry-picking a short timeframe. Otherwise one could claim sea level rise is approaching 0 mm/year or a negative value by cherry-picking a short timeframe. Hence why published papers and academic sources like the WMO report don’t engage in that cherry-picking. They instead use longer timeframes with more robust trends.
Re: “And it seems to me you are looking for any excuses to disregard inconvenient truths that don’t fit with your ideological narratives.”
No. Unlike you I don’t have a policy position on climate, nor am I trying to influence governments. I instead care about accuracy, which is why I address your exaggerations just as I would address Lomborg’s distortions.
Re: “Whether global mean SLR reaches 5 m by 2100 relative to the year-2000 baseline, or not is academic. As Eric Rignot said: “The damage on us starts at about a metre sea level rise.”
Again, it’s a matter of accuracy. I won’t disregard accuracy by claiming it’s just ‘academic’. And even in ‘practical’ terms, 5 m of sea level rise by 2100 has a much larger impact than 1 m of sea level rise. Exaggerations matter, as noted in the most recent RealClimate post:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/but-you-said-the-ice-was-going-to-disappear-in-10-years/
There is no plausible emissions scenario that generates enough forcing to cause 5 m of sea level rise by 2100. I already showed sea level rise projections confirming that. Your response on ‘thinking linearly, not non-linearly’ is incorrect, since those projections included sea level rise acceleration and still got nowhere 5 m by 2100. Regardless of whether or not you think harm starts at 1 m, that is not an excuse for exaggerations like 5 m.
Re: “When do I think 1 m of global mean SLR is plausible? I think at the moment it’s some time in the 2060s. […] If the rate of global mean SLR is approximately tracking along a 13-year doubling curve […]”
That’s still mechanism-free curve fitting, like Nicola Scafetta’s climastrology. Sea level rise is not following a random mathematical function. Sea level rise instead depends on land ice melt and thermal expansion, which in turn depend on warming, which depends on forcing, and which finally depends on greenhouse gas emissions. So you need to specify a plausible forcing or emissions scenario for your projection, not just extrapolate a random function. No plausible emissions or forcing scenario gets to 1 m by the 2060s, as shown in the projections I previously linked to.
This is reminiscent of other mechanism-free curve fitting and extrapolations, like non-experts did with increases in reported autism rates. I doubt your proposed function would survive out-of-sample testing, unlike projections with a mechanistic basis in forcing:
Even Dr. Hansen showed how forcing- and warming-based modeling succeeds in out-of-sample hindcasting of sea level rise:
A random exponential function would fail that out-of-sample hindcasting, and thus should not be used in projecting future sea level rise. One could arbitrarily fit some other type of function to the sea level rise data, such as a cubic function. There’s no good reason to think sea level rise follows an arbitrary function in the near-future when it didn’t follow that function in the past, and instead followed what one would predict from a forcing-induced / warming-induced model.
Realising your own blind spots, the things you didn’t know you didn’t know, how your certainty sometimes outstripped your information — is not stupidity. It’s exactly what happens when a curious mind keeps digging past its own assumptions. Most people never even get to that stage; they just double down on whatever story makes them feel safe.
Age has a way of softening the edges:
You start to see the limits of your own control.
You stop needing to be “the one who fixes it.”
You care more about understanding than winning arguments.
That’s wisdom, not failure.
Every time humanity has been in a high‑stress period — printing press, industrialisation, atomic age — the new technology has acted like a force multiplier for both our best and worst instincts. What’s new now is the speed and scale. AI, networked systems, social media, cheap drones, genetic engineering — each one of these can reshape societies in a decade rather than a century. That compresses the “learning curve” so much that people can’t adjust before the next disruption arrives. It feels like chaos because, in many ways, it is.
Future Shock is a very good related book, I read many years ago. From wikiepdia: “Future Shock is a 1970 book by American futurist Alvin Toffler, written together with his wife Adelaide Farrell, in which the authors define the term “future shock” as a certain psychological state of individuals and entire societies, and a personal perception of “too much change in too short a period of time”.
Since the 1970s people proved more resilient to change than Toffler predicted. But I would say there are still limits, and maybe the last few years we are seeing these starting to see these being breached, with the surge in mental health issues with young people as they deal with the rapid growth in social media.
Geoff Miell says
29 Sep 2025 at 9:01 PM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/unforced-variations-sep-2025/comment-page-2/#comment-840009
It would be normal for you to be harassed and misrepresented and ridiculed on denier sites like WUWT, rather than on climate science forums. But here we are. You did a good job with your submission and based it on genuine science data from the experts of various aspects of warming impacts. Well done and keep it up.
I picked up your reference to this and your meaning easy enough. The others have no excuse for their biased errors and negative attitudes to your presentation or your comments here. imo.
Global sea level rose 0.59 cm in 2024 relative to 2023, reaching a total increase of 10.5 cm over the 31-year satellite record of sea level. Regionally, over 40% of the ocean reached its highest annual sea level value in 2024.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-025-00667-w
It seems 5.9 mm/year rate of global mean SLR in year-2024 is approaching 6 mm/year for me, but apparently not for Atomsk’s Sanakan.
Will they admit their error?
Meanwhile, planet Earth’s albedo is at a record low…
Johan Rockström, joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, highlights 16 climate tipping points:
….increasing the climate forcing, and thus accelerating the rate of global mean SLR substantially faster than current observations.
Obviously so. Except for deniers nirvana is about to break out at the next COP meeting slashing GHG emissions to the bone. LOL
Recommend seeing every slide (and reading the details therein) produced by Geoff. Excellent.
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/submissions/91844/0026%20Geoff%20Miell.pdf
A thousand times better than the general slop submitted to the EPA Review and DoE CWG report thus far. imo.
MA Rodger says
30 Sep 2025 at 12:40 PM
Mo Yunus,
I don’t think that your “check” of Hansen et al (2016) was very thorough. Perhaps if you had started by reading the Abstract, you might have spotted the following passage:-
The modeling, paleoclimate evidence, and ongoing observations together imply that 2ºC global warming above the preindustrial level could be dangerous. Continued high fossil fuel emissions this century are predicted to yield:- (1) … ; (2) … ; (3) … ; (4) … ; and (5) nonlinearly growing sea level rise, reaching several meters over a timescale of 50–150 years.
As the paper goes on to explain, Hansen et al (2016) “germinated” from arguments set out in Hansen (2007) which proposed the 5m SLR by 2100 as a plausible projection.
A hypothetical thought experiment is not a plausible projection for SLR of 5 m by 2100. It is NOT a prediction either. Your comments prove beyond doubt you admit by this you have nothing to support your and others claims Piotr/sanakan trolling distortions.
I general terms you are lying about what Hansen says in his papers. You should be ashamed of yourself. And everyone here should be calling all of you out for this gross public deceit and sophistry. Along with your joint incompetence. It’s disgusting and uncalled for. And unnecessary.
Geoff Miell says
30 Sep 2025 at 7:59 PM
Very well said in detail. It should not be necessary but it is when dealing with overtly disingenuous very biased players, in MAR, Piotr and AS who insist on putting words and false claims in your, mine and Hansen’s mouth constantly. I’m guessing no one else pushes back because they already know they too will be harassed and lied about too.
I restate that James Hansen has never projected nor asserted not predicted nor even partially hinted at a +5 m SLR by 2100. Not once not ever. They are lying about him as well as misrepresenting you and others as if you too are saying he did and you believe that. I sure do not. Thank you for trying to hold this misinformation to account. I doubt it will make any difference at all here.
This is excellent here :
Atomsk’s Sanakan (at 30 Sep 2025 at 8:35 AM): – “Yet you ignored that report, acted like it was just me saying it, and then cited a source that doesn’t support your claim.”
Geoff Miel: I used the WMO’s State of the Global Climate 2023, because it included Figure 6, which shows the decadal mean rates of SLR for the periods Jan 1993-Dec 2002 (2.13 mm/year), Jan 2003-Dec 2012 (3.33 mm/year), and Jan 2014-Dec 2023 (4.77 mm/year), highlighting the clear ACCELERATION TREND since satellite altimetry began in 1993.
It seems to me you don’t look closely enough, and seem to take things way too personally.
Atomsk’s Sanakan (at 30 Sep 2025 at 8:35 AM): – “That confirms you’re operating in bad faith and can be disregarded in the rest of what you say.”
Geoff Miel: It seems to me you perceive things that just aren’t there, perhaps because you apparently don’t look closely enough at what’s provided. And it seems to me you are looking for any excuses to disregard inconvenient truths that don’t fit with your ideological narratives.
5 Stars
Mo Yunus said: “I restate that James Hansen has never projected nor asserted not predicted nor even partially hinted at a +5 m SLR by 2100. Not once not ever. They are lying about him as well as misrepresenting you and others as if you too are saying he did and you believe that……”
Hansen did predict 6 metres of SLR by 2100. I had a recollection that Hansen predicted around 5 – 6 metres of SLR was possible by 2100, and a discussion of reasons. I can’t recall where, but I found this following using google. You may not be aware of it because its quite old and does not appear to be part of a major media release:
“ENVIRONMENTAL AND ENERGY STUDY INSTITUTE
122 C STREET, N.W., SUITE 630 WASHINGTON, D.C., 20001 202-628-1400 http://www.eesi.org
Climate Change Fact Sheet Release: November 2006 ”
“On August 14, 2006, Dr. James E. Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
testified in the case of the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers et. al. v. the Secretary of Vermont, Agency of Natural Resources et. al. with regard to climate change. A number of Hansen’s key points are summarized below. It should be noted that this testimony is the personal opinion of a private citizen, and does not necessarily represent the views of NASA or its affiliates.”
Some of his key points: on SLR:
“The primary issue about sea level concerns the likelihood that global warming will reach a level such
that ice sheet disintegration begins to proceed in a rapid non-linear fashion on either Greenland, West
Antarctica, or both……If Business-as-Usual global warming of 2-3°C occurs, sea level rise of at least 25±10 meters is likely. Dr. James Hansen has testified he expects about six meters of sea level rise by 2100.”
https://www.eesi.org/files/hansen_climate_testimony_06.pdf
FWIW as a non expert I think Hansen is a clever visionary that explores worst case scenarios and uses various mechanisms and what he believes are realistic assumptions. I think we need people like that, and would never say his predictions should be completely ignored. There have been periods of very rapid SLR in the past and although conditions were different back then with more ice to melt etc,etc, we are provoking comparatively very rapid warming rates that has to be considered. However I do think 2 metres by 2100 is a more credible worse case low possibility scenario based on what I’ve read.
Sockpuppet account with the usual posting style/tone, formatting, topical concerns (ex: Hansen), etc. Maybe a different IP address this time to avoid being removed like the Bernhard sockpuppet?
As MA Rodger noted:
And Tomáš Kalisz:
And nigelj:
And…