This month’s open thread. Please stick to climate-related topics and refrain from abusive behavior.
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107 Responses to "Unforced variations: Nov 2025"
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Would weakened AMOC interact badly with positive cloud feedback? “Examining ~200,000 possible combinations of model subensembles, this multi-objective observational constraint narrows the cloud feedback uncertainty among climate models, nearly eliminates the possibility of a negative tropical shortwave cloud feedback in CO2-induced warming, and suggests a 71% increase in the tropical shortwave cloud feedback.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-53985-w
Nigel to Adam’s Lea (sole) example of Killian being “largely correct”
“ you think Killian is largely correct as follows: “If we carry on with BAU, I would not at all be surprised to see societal collapse on a global scale and a huge death toll as the consequences of unsustainable living and trashing the biosphere finally hit hard”.
I.e. Adam’s sole example of Killian being largely correct …. is a statement so vague that untestable. And because of its vagueness it brings NOTHING to the discussion that we haven’t already known for DECADES – that BAU could ultimately cause societal collapse and huge death toll has been widely shared concern for decades now – without this we wouldn’t have Kyoto, Paris or IPCC. So there is NO originality, NO new insight, and without any falsifiable argument – NOTHING to justify tie spending one’s time reading it in any detail.
Particularly that when Killian tries to go beyond meaningless vague truisms -into numbers or offering alternatives – that’s when he really goes off his rocker:
– he claimed the exponential growth of SLR – failed to prove it
– he claimed the 5% probability of extinction due to climate change – couldn’t come up even with a single source – so instead 0- he put the onus of finding these sources – on his critics
– he claimed that converting to regenerative agriculture would be our salvation – failed to show any testable numbers of the expected global reductions CO2 concentration, WHILE still producing enough food for human population
– he ignored the questions whether his revolutionary global changes (replacing all agriculture with the regenerative one and massive reduction of the non-food per capita emissions) would be FAST ENOUGH – e.g. to bring us to the net zero IN THE NEXT COUPLE OF DECADES
– he ignored the questions about the necessary MECHANISMS – HOW are you going to transform the entire global agriculture and civilization on such a short-time-scale
So he offers no numbers, no concrete answers, no feasible political and social mechanism to accomplish the dramatic change that’s necessity he advocates. The road to hell is paved with great vague ideas.
The doomers like Killian, Miell or Mo the Multi-face have the complex of the Prophet Who Has Been Telling Us This for (“Years”, “Over a decade now”), But We Never Listen. To be such a Prophet your vision must be stark – say, 5% chance of extinction of human race, the collapse of the human civilization, Armageddon, the Rupture – because what’s the Glory in predicting “it will probably will be quite bad”.
And either you believe unwaveringly your Prophet or your are a non-believer that is – an enemy – sofor them its always: “black or white”, “all or nothing”, “my way or the highway” – our Prophets of Doom reject the realistic GOOD in favour of their theoretical PERFECT – reject the combination of the already existing technological, market, and political mechanisms – either as “too little too late”. or as a diversion from THEIR “real” perfect solution. Where the perfect solution may be one or more from the following
– regenerative agriculture
– extermination of >90% of human population to bring the remaining population below its Earth’s carrying capacity for us
– increasing Earth’s evaporation, instead of ‘artificial overemphasis [on the reductions of] a trace gas”,
– Global Revolution – to overthrow the capitalism and market system
– creation of the New Man – who will be willing to sacrifice oneself and their families for the benefit of [ Idea, Party, Humankind ] – a Homo sovieticus ver. 2.0
So for me, I try not to waste my time reading the mass productions of our RC Prophets. of Doom – if I see them its mainly through the replies of other people and even then it’s like a car crash that you couldn’t look away.
in Re to Piotr, 1 Nov 2025 at 10:36 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/11/unforced-variations-nov-2025/#comment-841427
Hallo Piotr,
Thank you for your post, to that I have three following comments.
1) I think that there are at least two, although mutually intertwined, substantial distinctions between the Multitroll and the others:
While people like Geoff Miell and Killian O’Brien are (quite like you) concerned with climate and societal developments, are afraid of civilization collapse and try to mobilize the public and the policy makers for a counter action, the Multitroll hides both its true identity as well as its true intention. This intention is, contrary to others and for whatever reason, DESTRUCTION of the society wherein we live and subjugation of the world to rulers of Russia.
I therefore highly appreciate the recent pause in Multitroll’s activity, most likely caused by general ban of its last embodiment (“Mo”) by the moderators.
2) Irrespective how silly might be the idea of climate mitigation by artificial enhancement of terrestrial evapotranspiration, I think that at least the effort to clarify how well the present climate science understands the role of evapotranspiration in Earth climate regulation (and whether it considers anthropogenic interferences with land hydrological regimes as an independent climate forcing) still makes sense.
Reasoning: If these interferences anyhow contributed to the present climate change, either directly, by enhancing the Earth energy imbalance (EEI), or indirectly, by increasing Earth climate sensitivity towards changes in atmospheric concentration of non-condensing greenhouse gases (GHG), we should at least strive to prevent or restrict such harmful interferences in the future.
3) I do not think that the effort described in point 2) anyhow disproves or counteracts the efforts for restriction of anthropogenic GHG emissions. I understand your concern about possibly harmful competition for limited resources. I think, however, that you should also consider the risk that if anthropogenic disruptions inflicted to land hydrological regimes indeed contributed and/or contribute to the present climate change substantially, the present focus of mitigation efforts (almost) exclusively on GHG emissions may finally prove inefficient.
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomas Kalisz:
“1. I think that there are at least two, although mutually intertwined, substantial distinctions between the Multitroll and the others:”
I don’t think these are significant – by their fruits you shall know them –
a) all three, G. Miell. Killian and Mo the Multiface, attack the credibility of climate science and as such, are bedfellows with the deniers
b) Killian and Mo the Multiface, dismiss the good in favour of their own perfect – dismiss existing technologies and policies as a distraction/diversion from their perfect solutions . G. Miell does seem to have any alternative solution – so he goes with whatever Hansen mentions.
c) NONE of the three can show a feasible path to their goals – no mechanisms, no proof of the effect large enough and rapid enough to bring the global net zero in the next few decades,
d) all three promote doom and thus instead spurring people into action – promote the opposite apathy and abandoning any efforts – if nothing we can do, short of extermination of 7.5billions of humans. abandoning market system and/or Communism – will ever be enough t0 then why even try? Which puts them again into bed with fossil fuel interests who would love to apathy toward their actions
e) all three use the same methods as the deniers – cherry-picking a starting point and then making proclamations of the rate of AGW based on the short term data (3 year avg. of Killian a few years to 15 yrs average to claim “hiatus in AGW after 1998”
f) all three are what Lenin called – “useful idiots” of Russia and other FF interests – they extreme predictions and their extreme “solutions” – are then used by FF interests to discredit by association – all climate science and activism, particularly those who don’t agree with doomers extreme claims and extreme solutions
g) all three have minds closed – they are physically unable to admit that they may have been wrong and when proven wrong -disappear or change the subject and/or pose as victims of bullying and character assassination
Given these similarities – they differences in arguments and style are cosmetic, while they possible difference in motives – whether financial, ideological or psychological – don’t really matter to me – by their fruits, not their motivations, you shall know them
in re to Piotr, 3 Nov 2025 at 5:18 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/11/unforced-variations-nov-2025/#comment-841500
Hallo Piotr,
We can definitely discuss if Geoff Miell correctly interprets and evaluates available scientific evidence. I think, however, that his practical actions, at least his presentations that he, with a significant effort, assembled for public discussion about climate mitigation organized by Australian parliament, can be seen rather as quite exemplary active citizenship than as a destructive “doomism” or “denialism”.
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomas Kalisz: Geoff Miell correctly interprets and evaluates available scientific evidence. think, however, that his practical actions, at least his presentations that he, with a significant effort, assembled
How is this supposed to invalidate my criticism of him ??? By their fruits, not their significant efforts, you shall know them.
And his fruits are poisonous – helping the deniers to attack the credibility of the mainstream science; using, thus validating, the deniers dishonest methods (cherry-picking a data or a specific scenario that supports their ideology), providing his doomer’s claims for the deniers to use to discredit by association the climate science – with deniers presenting doomers claims and predictions as if they were representative of climate science and therefore implying that scientists are like doomers – manipulate the scientific data to fit ideological narrative, and when challenged – unable to support their claims, unable to admit it, nor change their position in response to that failure – and the spade is called a spade = portray themselves as victims of “bullying and character assassination”.
With his fruits poisonous, I don’t think the “significant effort” he put to grow and distribute these fruits – is something to be counted in his favour..
in Re to Piotr, 4 Nov 2025 at 9:56 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/11/unforced-variations-nov-2025/#comment-841553
Dear Piotr,
I am not sure that it is a fair comparison when you describe the “fruits” offered by Geoff Miell and by anonymous Multitroll as equally “poisonous”.
I think that although the “fruits” they both serve may be often the same (e.g. publications by James Hansen claiming 5m sea level rise till the end of 21th century as a significant, serious risk), it may be just the context in which they do so that still makes a difference.
I still have not found any hint against my belief that Geoff Miell wrote his petitions to his elected deputies with the aim to express honestly his concern raised by the said claims and to motivate the responsible policy makers to take measures suitable for mitigating the perceived risk.
Oppositely, the Multitroll packs the same claims into a skilfully crafted mixture with half-truths and brazen lies created and spread by enemies of the society wherein he lives, with the aim to deceive, mislead, demotivate and finally destroy the same. I therefore think that the similarity you perceive is only superficial and the difference becomes rather clear if you examine and compare in detail not only their “fruits” alone but also the way how they are served.
Greetings
Tomáš
P.S.
Should you assign as “their fruits” the entire output of a person on this website, then I respectfully disagree that the “fruits” served by Geoff Miell are the same as those served by the Multitroll. While I definitely agree that the fruits served by the Multitroll are poisoned by deliberately added lies, the fruits served by Geoff Miell may perhaps be sometimes untasty or even rotten, but I do not think they could poison anyone.
Tomas Kalisz: “ I am not sure that it is a fair comparison when you describe the “fruits” offered by Geoff Miell and by anonymous Multitroll as equally “poisonous”. ”
What difference does it make? Would you serve your daughter a tea laced with cyanide because it is not “equally poisonous” as a tea laced with polonium 210 ?
Piotr yes there are astonishing similarities between Killian, Mutli Troll and Geoff Miell. However I will add one nitpick,. All three are indeed doomers in the sense you seem to mean of embracing the most extreme climate predictions (?). But doomer is generally being used in climate discussions to mean someone who thinks things will be so catastrophic and locked in that theres no point doing any mitigation , or that nothing will save us. M Mann uses the term that way.
Killian and Geoff Miell certainly dont think things are hopeless and have each promoted various solutions, Geoff Miells being the more conventional. Only Multi troll has suggested its all hopeless. So are your categories just a bit too over simplified? Are there perhaps warmists, catastrophists, doomers and denialists?
Nigel: “Killian and Geoff Miell certainly dont think things are hopeless”
Since their extreme scenarioes assume crossing tipping points beyond which hardly anything can be done, and because neither of them has even a remotely feasible way to avert it – then the doom is IMPLIED.
And all the negatives associated with it, including the central one – sowing the apathy in the public: if the future is so bad and there is no feasible way to avert it – then what’s the point of doing ANYTHING – let’s enjoy what we have and after us – Deluge!
Which makes theirs a self-fulfilling prophecy – the apathy they had sown assures that it is the worst-case scenario that gets realized.
Piotr: – “g) all three have minds closed – they are physically unable to admit that they may have been wrong and when proven wrong -disappear or change the subject and/or pose as victims of bullying and character assassination”
And here you were recently claiming: “NGLs are not crude oil nor condensate.”
neither are “shale oil” or “oil sands”.”
…and when proven that you were wrong about your claims that “shale oil” or “oil sands” were NOT crude oil nor condensate, you remain unable to admit that you are wrong, change the subject, and double down on misrepresenting all and sundry who dare to challenge your ideologies/perspectives/fantasies.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840478
I apologised for misspelling John Pollack’s surname.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840415
Piotr, when have you ever admitted (let alone apologised for) anything you have been wrong about? Never?
Tomas Kalisz:
2) Irrespective how silly might be the idea of climate mitigation by artificial enhancement of terrestrial evapotranspiration,
Tsk, tread carefully, Tomas …. Your guru JCM – does NOT consider it “silly”. quite the opposite –
his entire claim to fame is built on the presumption that it is NOT silly, but wise and ahead of its time (given the reluctance of the climate scientist to follow his ideas).
And an antidote to climate scientists’ “ artificial overemphasis on a trace gas” that JCM blames for the wholesale destruction of Earth’s ecosystems:
“ It’s hard to imagine denying or actively minimizing the consequences to realclimates due to an artificial fixation and overemphasis on the [influence] of trace gas [CO2]” [(c) JCM]
in Re to Piotr, 7 Nov 2025 at 7:18 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/11/unforced-variations-nov-2025/#comment-841788
Hallo Piotr,
Thank you for returning to my comments of 2 Nov 2025 at 9:41 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/11/unforced-variations-nov-2025/#comment-841442
As far as I know, JCM’s stewardship efforts are directed rather to maintaining the functions of natural ecosystems, because he believes they are important generally and may be, specifically, important also for the stability of Earth climate towards anthropogenic perturbations. I am not aware that he has ever promoted “climate mitigation by artificial enhancement of terrestrial evapotranspiration”, at least if you do not consider as the “artificial enhancement” his efforts for restoration of soil health and for stabilization of other natural ecosystems.
It is my understanding that with his words “artificial overemphasis on a trace gas”, JCM expressed certain frustration that climate science has not identified any clear link yet between unperturbed natural ecosystems on one hand and resilience of Earth climate system against anthropogenic emissions of non-condensing greenhouse gases. I think that he believes that his practical experience does corroborate this idea, although there is no theoretical support therefor.
It may be somewhat funny that, as I have recently written in my post of 8 Nov 2025 at 12:49 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/11/raising-climate-literacy/#comment-841811
the recent “climate literacy” guide
https://lunacreates.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Climate-Literacy-Guide.pdf
on one hand emphasizes the narrative that the anthropogenic climate change is caused solely by anthropogenic emissions of non-condensing greenhouse gases, and on the other hand, somewhat illogically, asserts importance of “indigenous knowledge” – without any explanation what does the “indigenous knowledge” mean nor how it should be implemented into climate policies.
I thus construed my unsupported speculation (that functioning ecosystems may stabilize Earth climate) as something that might be perhaps like beliefs of the indigenous people. Although I have never met any indigenous people and cannot say if they would (or would not) agree, I think that the experience of practitioners like JCM could be somehow comparable with their “indigenous knowledge”.
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomas Kalisz: As far as I know, JCM’s stewardship efforts are directed rather to maintaining the functions of natural ecosystems
Explain then JCM’s blaming the collapse of these natural ecosystems on “ the artificial fixation and overemphasis of a trace gas {GHGs]“.
HOW is JCM’s attacking the MOST effective way to mitigate AGW (GHGs reductions) and promoting in its place the LEAST effective one (increasing evaporation by many 10,000s km^3 of water/yr from the …. unknown source – most of the accessible ground waters are already severely overdrawn) – a “stewardship” of natural ecosystems?
With “stewards” like JCM, who needs the sworn enemies ?
in Re to Piotr, 9 Nov 2025 at 11:44 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/11/unforced-variations-nov-2025/#comment-841850
Hallo Piotr,
Although I am not sure if JCM attributed the damage of natural ecosystems to “the artificial fixation and overemphasis of a trace gas {GHGs]“, I think that an example of a such harmful “overemphasis” may be subsidies for fossil fuel replacement with so called “biomass”, wherever they incentivize forest logging for fuel pellets.
I am not aware that JCM has ever attacked reduction of anthropogenic GHG emissions by meaningful means, such as fossil fuel replacement with solar and/or wind energy, impovements in energy efficiency, and like.
As regards the possibility that unperturbed ecosystems maintained higher evapotranspiration rate, I think that conservationists argue that this (supposedly) higher rate was self-sustainable.
Indirect evidence for originally higher evapotranspiration rate (and, in parallel, higher precipitation, resulting in a stable humid hydrological regime) in originally forested regions may be the circumstance that the change of the logged and/or burned forests into landscapes with drier hydrological regimes seems to be irreversible in many regions. I am, however, afraid that nobody knows whether it might apply also for the global sum of evapotranspiration, as it appears that there are no reliable global reconstructions of past evapotranspiration nor precipitation yet.
Greetings
Tomáš
Piotr, I agree with your comments about Killian. He once claimed that Detroit could be fully self sufficient in food grown in parks and waste space and gardens etc,etc. He didn’t provide any proof. I posted a one page quite detailed analysis showing there was only enough usable space for about 20% of their food needs. That message was not well received ha ha but he couldn’t prove me wrong and I think KM posted a similar analysis same time mine appeared. Nothing wrong with self sufficiency of course and posting speculative ideas, but what really annoys me is even when his claims are numerically debunked he goes on defending them or deflecting.
Yup. It was telling to see Killian pretend studies showed a 5% chance of human extinction from anthropogenic climate change, only for Killian to bravely run away when asked to show those studies.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-841207
Yes, I recall that episode, Nigel. To be honest, I wanted Killian to be right about that, but the available space just wasn`t there when I looked at the numbers.
We appear to be living in a variation of the Minoan Warm Period. This observation is based on a 3500-year cycle I found while studying the Sun and Jovian planet orbits. Imagine my surprise when I went looking for it in the GISP2 ice-core data and discovered this:
https://localartist.org/media/temperature_sliding.gif
I think it’s the Sun. What are your thoughts?
What about the Sun? That is, what specific parameter concerning the output of the Sun has changed? By how much has it changed? In which direction? How has that parameter change affected the Earth’s climate?
Hint: You can “think” whatever you want. It means nothing. Science demands data.
A single quasi-repeat sequence does not a cycle make.
Robert Cutler typed (some standard ignorant rubbish). See at Earth (GLOBALLY not regionally) average temperature for the last 22,000 years until 2010 CE at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqtZdnpfgIc from 5:26 to 7:50 (plot at 7:00) and refute that with verifiable physical science (quantities) Bob.
Not really. You continue your usual practice of not checking your claims using out-of-sample testing, i.e. hindcasting temperature trends for time-periods outside of those you used to claim a cycle. Your supposed cycle would fail that out-of-sample testing. And if by “Minoan Warm Period” you mean 1700–1400 BCE, then you’re incorrect. Earth is globally warmer than it’s been for at least the past 125,000 years, with industrial-era global warming not being the result of a 3500-year cycle:
The GISP2 image you linked is irrelevant. GISP2 is for one location in Greenland, not the globe. And GISP2 ends by 1855, i.e. by 95 years before present, where “present” means 1950. So GISP2 does not include most industrial-era global warming. Dave Farina cites sources on that from 39:54 of this video.
And people have told you multiple times why it’s clear that changes in solar output did not drive most industrial-era global warming, especially warming since the 1960s (ex: reduction in total solar irradiance, stratospheric cooling that increases with increasing height, mesospheric cooling, thermospheric cooling, reduction in diurnal temperature range). I’ve explained this to you on Twitter/X. Strange that you’re here acting like people have not answered you on this.
All, thanks for taking the time to reply. Your replies are exactly what I expected from the regulars on this site. My highest hope was that at least one person here would exhibit intellectual honesty and curiosity and openly admit they found the result interesting. Oh well.
BTW, as I’m still trying to figure out how variations in solar activity only affect temperatures at one site in Greenland, I chose not to mention that the 3500-year pattern can also be found in the IntCal20 data
Have a great day.
RC: My highest hope was that at least one person here would exhibit intellectual honesty and curiosity and openly admit they found the result interesting.
BPL: Nope. Not one person here has your kind of intellectual integrity.
Robert Cutler said:
”
Alas, some of us have tried, but you intentionally closed the discussion at your GitHub repo forum. I recommended that you try cross-validation here:
https://github.com/bobf34/GlobalWarming/issues/2
You can’t have it both ways. Griping about not getting feedback and then getting uppity about the feedback and doing the equivalent of blocking. Good luck trying to get it published with that attitude.
BTW, nice programming structure. Clear that you have some skill at that. But put something up on GitHub and be prepare to get some feedback.
It’s a shame that Paul forced me to block everyone from posting issues on my GitHub account.
I had politely requested that he only post issues related to the code. He chose not to honor my request and then posted on this site, as a reply to my comment, an open call for people to spam my Github account with criticisms.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/as-soon-as-possible/#comment-814516
I never block for a difference of opinion, but I won’t tolerate people who lack civility.
Robert Cutler, Analyze the following time series of ordered pairs {t,y}
1,2
2,7
3,1
4,8
5,2
6,8
7,1
8,8
9,2
10,8
Is this series periodic? If so, what is the period? Predict the next y value to occur in the series. Then we can discuss periodic forcings.
Seriously Ray? Took about 2 seconds. Would have take one, but I wasn’t sure if the comma was a decimal point.
exp(1) = 2.7182818284590500
Let’s address my plot now . Do you see any periodicity? If so, how do you explain it? I’ll add that the data can be shifted two 3500-year cycles and is still matches, except that warming ends in 2150 instead of 2200.
I looked at your plot. I agree with Paul Pukite. It’s a quasi-cycle. It is completely out of phase at roughly 3400 and 1600 BCE, with a maximum juxtaposed to a minimum, in addition to the modern period. To convince me you’re onto something, you’d need to come up with a compelling physical mechanism for why your cycle works some of the time, and is completely the opposite of what happened at other times.
I say “compelling” because post hoc explanations for why and when a purported cycle fails to hold up are generally balderdash.
With that kind of erratic behavior, you’d need a lot of cycles to do a statistical analysis that showed you weren’t just eyeballing a curve to find a piece of it that pleased your fancy.
John Pollack, there’s little doubt in my mind that the Jovian planets modulate solar activity, exactly how I don’t know; there’s much we don’t understand about the Sun.
The interactions of the Sun and Jovian planets are quite complicated, and time-varying. There are many cycles with similar periods that cluster around solar system resonances. For example, I’ve identified at least 6 different 900-year “Eddy” cycles. The 3500-year cycle involves four of those 900-year cycles interacting with other cycle patterns I’ve also identified.
This plot is provided only as an example of complexities I’m exploring; it captures one type of orbital interaction.
https://localartist.org/media/GISP2corr.png
The exact 3500-year value I use for plotting is derived from the orbits of the Sun and planets as estimated in JPL Horizons solar system data. I never tweaked the cycle length to match the ice-core data. I wouldn’t describe the 3500-year cycle as a post hoc explanation; I found the cycle pattern in orbital data and then went looking for it in the GISP2 ice-core records.
I have reason to suspect the 3500-year cycle is actually a harmonic of a much longer cycle, so when I saw the out-of-phase sections my first thought was to double-shift the temperature record. Of course, there isn’t enough Holocene data to get much of an overlap after a double shift, so the phase-inverted sections are currently unexplained. While unexplained, they are not out of character for the types of interactions found in orbital data.
What’s interesting is that, while a 3500-year shift did not provide any alignment of D-O events, a double shift did produce an interesting result which may be partially explained by interactions with one of the many 1500-year cycles I’ve also identified.
https://localartist.org/media/temperature_sliding2x.gif
For convenience, here’s the 3500-year shift posted earlier.
https://localartist.org/media/temperature_sliding.gif
Robert Cutler, have fun, but be aware that you are on a well-trodden path. There is a long history of trying to connect earthly weather and climate to variations the sun and other solar system bodies, mostly fruitless. The outstanding exception is the verification of Milankovitch cycles detailed in the classic Science paper “Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages” by Hays, Imbrie, and Shackleton https://doi.org/10.1126/science.194.4270.1121
Their research featured a thorough spectral analysis conducted on long sediment cores –
well before the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores became available.
Piotr, I appreciate it that you are covering more of the many missing causal links and fallacies in Robert Cutler’s overall chain of reasoning.
I decided to focus on the cycles because I have had a lot of experience with cycle hunters in meteorology. Cycles hold a strong fascination for some people. Perhaps it is because they can be easy to find, but tend to be very loosely connected with physical causes. That also means they usually fail when tested. A weather forecaster gets a fast education when basing long-range predictions on cycles. One ends up being totally, ridiculously wrong if they aren’t causally rooted. That’s why I was noting that some of Cutler’s 3500 year offset peaks corresponded to troughs. That’s a big warning sign that you’re on the wrong track.
The proposed 3500 year cycle is also testable by using other data, such as ocean sediment cores or tree rings. If a significant modulation in solar output was occurring, it should also show up in systemic variations in the calibration between radiocarbon dating and absolute dates.
Of course, there are real cycles (other than the obvious seasonal and diurnal ones) that are causally rooted, but subject to enough noise that the outcomes aren’t always consistent in timing or effects, such as ENSO and the QBO.
Cycle hunting isn’t confined to meteorology, either. Financial predictions and astrology come to mind. If a cycle doesn’t work out, the hunter tends to keep on looking, or shift the goalposts, rather than questioning the method. I expect nothing different in this case.
So far no one has offered an alternative explanation for the periodicity in the GISP2 ice-core data. That leaves the orbits of the Sun and Jovian planets as the best explanation.
Before anyone starts to attack the GISP2 data, consider that the same periodicity can be found to varying degrees in other proxies, at different locations, using different dating methods. Note the same phase inversion in both proxies at -1550 BC,
https://localartist.org/media/TiancaiLakeGISP23500.png
As for Milankovitch cycles, they don’t explain a 70k-year cycle so people generally ignore that spectral line in their data. They also usually ignore the 400k-year rmodulation on eccentricity. It’s not difficult for me to predict that many of you will choose to ignore periodicities in climate data. That won’t make them go away.
Here’s my 3-cycle harmonic model of the glacial cycle.
https://localartist.org/media/EPICA3term2.png
Here’s a 12-cycle model that I built to better estimate the cycle periods.
https://localartist.org/media/EPICA12term.png
To promote the Robert Cutler 3.5k GISP2 cycle into something more than an exercise in curve-fitting will, I would suggest, take a bit more work than he appears to think.
The idea that this 3.5ky cycle originates from consideration of a 3.5ky cycle found elsewhere should be encouraging. (That is, if it were purely some theorising initiated by spotting this 3.5ky ‘cycle’ in the GISP2 data, it would not be. So seeing talk of planets being “the best explanation” is not encouraging.)
But that’s about the sum total of the encouraging news.
❶ This GISP2 data doesn’t extend much beyond a single cycle before the ice age appears. Mind, there are bits of this GISP2 temperature record pre-Holocene that isn’t all Dansgaard–Oeschger events, bits long enough to potentially show these alleged 3.5k cold periods and any other wobbles considered part of the cycle. That would surely be better analysis than the mentioned attempts to line up the actual Dansgaard–Oeschger events.
❷ There is the problem mentioned up-thread by Robert Cutler of these wobbles are “only affect … one site in Greenland.” And it’s perhaps not just a “one site” problem. This data provided by The Arctic Data Center includes NGRIP & NEEM ice core data from other Greenland sites with those prominent cold wobbles appearing far noisier (along with slower warming into the Holocene), wobbles which are also far noisier in the GRIP2 data presented. (See Fig 1 of Martin et al (2024) although Fig 2 is probably clearer.)
❸ If there is a sign of the cycle appearing in IntCal20 data as stated up-thread, it does need properly presenting. (I don’t see the Lake Tiancai data as convincing.)
❹ The NEEM data does run back to the Eemian. Would it show any signs of a 3.5ky cycle back then when the Holocene data apparently does not?
❺ It isn’t clear what parts of the similarities of the GISP2 series presented are being lauded as part of the 3.5ky cycle. And given the cycle is seen as being a “3500-year cycle involves four … 900-year cycles interacting with other cycle patterns,” setting out exactly what is being seen as part of the cycle is surely required.
The similarities of the GISP2 data when shifted 3.5ky makes for an interesting feature but making more of it does require a lot more work.
You’ve never studied Fourrier analysis, have you?
John Pollack 8 Nov: “ Robert Cutler. […]there is a long history of trying to connect earthly weather and climate to variations the sun and other solar system bodies, mostly fruitless. The outstanding exception is the verification of Milankovitch cycles detailed in the classic Science paper “Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages” by Hays, Imbrie, and Shackleton https://doi.org/10.1126/science.194.4270.1121
John, because of the intellectual capacity of Robert Cutler, you probably should have been explicit in pointing that this “ exceptional verification of Milankovitch cycles” DOES NOT offer any support R. Cutler’ attempt to disprove human responsibility for the AGW, as clearly stated in his opening thesis:
R, Cutler: ” We appear to be living in a variation of the Minoan Warm Period. ”
Sliding a graph of an only tangentially relevant data to the right, Mr. Cutler – proves nothing.
Other than perhaps – the similarity to that famous “Family Guy” Peter Griffin maneuver ? ;-)
But back to your main reason for being here: the intellectual FRAUD you promote with your
” We appear to be living in a variation of the Minoan Warm Period:
1. relies on the fallacy that if climate had changed before human impact then humans can’t possibly change the climate. That’s akin to saying that an arsonist caught with two empty gas cans, his eyebrows singed, at the origin of a forest fires – COULDN’T POSSIBLY started this fire because “fires had been burning long before humans”
2. relies on missing the reality that large changes in T in the past despite limited change in the amount of solar energy arriving at Earth – point to the importance of FEEDBACKs in amplifying even small external signals. And since these feedbacks (particularly ice albedo and water cycle feedbacks) are still in place today – having massively amplified the past small changes in solar forcing, they also amplify TODAY the (much larger!) forcing by human emissions of GHGs.
Therefore, the lesson from prehuman warming periods is OPPOSITE to that promoted by the deniers – it proves that today’s climate is MUCH MORE, not less, sensitive to human actions. As already seen in the CERES data – the warming from the increasing GHGs has been greatly AMPLIFIED by the cloud feedback.
3. relies on NOT providing the non-human MECHANISM that would have caused the sharp increase in global temperature in the last 50+ years
4. relies on comparing apples and watermelons – LOCAL is not GLOBAL, Mr. Cutler, ergo you CAN’T compare the magnitude and rate of LOCAL warming in …. some location on Greenland, with the magnitude and rate of the GLOBAL warming measured over the entire globe – you can’t pretend that these are comparable data.
I guess the peer-review of your fellow professional climatologists from
“https://localartist.org” didn’t pick on that last point, eh? ;-)
Re. “…there’s little doubt in my mind that the Jovian planets modulate solar activity, exactly how I don’t know; there’s much we don’t understand about the Sun. ”
The fact that there is little doubt in your mind over said hypothesis is your problem.
Again, which specific solar parameters have changed? By how much? In which direction? Through what mechanism?
As one of my profs was wont to say, “Labor in the laboratory is valuable. Oratory is not.” Nor is “thinking” with “little doubt”.
So you again failed in your attempts to disinform.
Robert Cutler My highest hope was that at least one person here would exhibit intellectual honesty and curiosity and openly admit they found the result interesting. Oh well.
i.e.:
– Robert Cutler: “2+2 = 13.65″
– people on RC: ” this is wrong”
– Robert Cutler: “not a single person here have exhibited intellectual honesty and curiosity to admit that they found the result interesting. Oh well”
In the thread on the putative vanishing sea ice, I flippantly cited “Clippy” as an example of the poor judgment shown in the past by Bill Gates (to be fair, he’s also made some good decisions–e.g. identifying malaria as a serious obstacle to development in the tropics). But there is a reason why Clippy has been on my mind–namely, that the current dominant AI models–Large Language Models (LLM)–really are only about two evolutionary steps beyond Clippy, while at the same time consuming VAST amounts of energy.
I am actually a fan of AI–I think it is potentially a tremendous boon for society. However, I think the reliance on LLMs and efforts to turn LLMs into a Artificial General Super-Intelligence are a big mistake. First, LLMs are inherently susceptible to hallucinations–that is, when they get beyond the constraints imposed by their training dataset, they start to bullshit. Add to this that in general, their training dataset is limited to easily accessible, public domain material, and you have a technology that can produce a competent but shallow survey of just about any topic, but is completely unreliable if you try to dig deeper. Indeed, I could get the same from an average college sophomore with a term paper due the following day. And all this at a huge cost in electronics, dollars and energy–not to mention unemployment of all those college sophomores and their equivalents.
Add to this the possible harms that can come if these models are ever in situations where they are really in control. Imagine an AI with a boss like Elon Musk in charge of the nuclear arsenal suddenly becoming a “Mechahitler”. The absolute last thing we need is an glitchy AI revolution pushed forward by billionaires who are advocating it simply because it is the “next big thing”.
I’d like to introduce a topic here that was pounded into our heads when I was in the Peace Corps: Appropriate Technology (AT). AT was the basic idea that there was an optimal technological solution for a problem in a given society. It didn’t have to be brand new or shiny. It just had to work and benefit the society over all without subverting the values of the society generally. Why install photovoltaics to drive blowers to dehydrate and preserve the season’s excess mango crop when you could use passive solar food driers at a fraction of the cost that would be available to everyone?
In the same sense, why implement an Artificial super-intelligence that doesn’t significantly outperform the average human worker and even more important doesn’t give you anything innovative and beneficial. There are AI technologies out there that are already producing new drugs and new materials that would be effectively impossible to develop with the human mind just due to the volume of calculations required. However, these are not broad, but instead, specialized AIs–supplementing rather than replacing human brains. The human brain is already a pretty good general intelligence. We don’t need one made of silicon. What we need is appropriate AI technology.
The same also applies to industrialization of developing countries. If they choose appropriate technologies that bring benefits to the whole population, they can reach prosperity without making the same mistakes the current crop of industrial countries have made. There is no reason for them to match us in terms of per capita energy consumption. There is no reason for them to produce energy with the same obsolete, polluting technologies we do. There is no reason for capital and wealth to be concentrated in the hands of a few. There is no reason why a path to prosperity–true prosperity–cannot be sustainable.
Yes! Thank you for making these points; I agree that’s a sensible/rational/moral approach. ( ) (See also/cont. from https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/unforced-variations-sep-2025/comment-page-2/#comment-839785 … https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/unforced-variations-sep-2025/comment-page-2/#comment-840054 ,
“We’ve Lost Control of AI” – SciShow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90C3XVjUMqE )
(I do wonder if AI art would be of particular benefit to people with mind-blindness.???)
Thanks for the SciShow reference. He’s particularly good.
I think that Bill Gates represents the nicer end of the “business as usual” spectrum that is in an enormous race to develop LLMs into an AGI system. As you noted, they are willing to enlist absolutely huge amounts of energy to run the necessary data centers. That extra energy will be coming mostly from fossil fuels for at least the next 5-10 years ( and probably a lot longer if modular nukes don’t work out to power them.)
The clearest picture emerges if you look at the amount of money being spent. From the front page of the Nov. 1-2 WSJ “Silicon Valley’s largest companies are already planning to pour $400 billion into artificial intelligence efforts this year. They all say it’s nowhere near enough.” Contrast that to the amount of money being spent on food and health assistance to poor nations, scientific research, green energy, climate mitigation, or just about anything else. This spending dwarfs anything short of the governmental spending to maintain the current human power structure through military and social programs.
Why spend so much money? Aside from the sci-fi version of idolatry in attempting to construct a mighty AGI computer, it comes down to owning the means of production. If I can replace a bunch of workers with a machine that appears to be under my corporate control, it’s an exciting project worth the money and effort. At the mere prospect, all thoughts of staying within any bounds on FF emissions have been quickly abandoned. As a side project, or maybe just a necessary sop, we can throw enough money at the poor to keep them more-or-less quiet. Or maybe it would just be cheaper to bring in the troops when the riots start.
I don’t see how you get to appropriate AI technology from where we’re heading.
Ray , in correctly focusing on LLM training as an obstacle to AGI evolution :
“In general, their training dataset is limited to easily accessible, public domain material, ”
you may be overlooking one serious constraint- training datasets are limited to and skewed in favor materials that are physically robust enough to scan and upload, and concentrated in libraries and archives using commonplace cataloging systems.
The economic constraints than limit journal access to most of the quarter of a million or more in print also keep much of the science published before the rise of the internet out of circulation.
Opinion piece by George Monbiot yesterday in The Guardian expands nicely on points Ray and several of us have made about Gates’ motivations and reasoning in writing his letter to the COP30 folks.
Amongst the links in the article was one to a study published a few years ago in Perspectives in Politics which “found that the ultra-rich have radically different political views from the great majority.” Not exactly a shocking revelation of course, but the study offers insights into these folks thinking I thought might be interesting and seems (imo) to be just as, if not more so, prevalent today.
“Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans
Benjamin I. Page, Larry M. Bartels, and Jason Seawright
https://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/jnd260/cab/CAB2012%20-%20Page1.pdf
Link to The Guardian article:
“I wish we could ignore Bill Gates on the climate crisis. But he’s a billionaire, so we can’t”
George Monbiot Last modified on Sat 8 Nov 2025 07.43 EST
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/08/bill-gates-climate-crisis-billionaire-essay-cop30
A question on the idea of climate change mitigation and/or coral reef protection by artificial hydrosol creation, described in the article “Bright Water: Hydrosols, Water Conservation and Climate Change”
https://bravenewclimate.com/files/bitstream/handle/1/4737323/seitz_brightwater_sequence-1.pdf
and in patent application US 2010/282441
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20100282441A1/en
mentioned by
Russell Seitz, 10 Aug 2025 at 2:56 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/07/the-endangerment-of-the-endangerment-finding/#comment-837289
—
Dear Dr. Seitz,
In your comment of 18 Aug 2025 at 7:53 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/07/the-endangerment-of-the-endangerment-finding/comment-page-2/#comment-837873 ,
you refer to Dr. Thomas Goreau allegedly pursuing (or having pursued) your idea.
As I think that the proposed concept definitely deserves a practical proof, I tried to find out if the idea has already been tested in a field experiment. Although Dr. Goreau indeed seemed to consider the idea,
https://globalcoral.org/_oldgcra/ring_of_bright_water.html
a report on coral protection from the year 2018
https://sites.rutgers.edu/coralbase/wp-content/uploads/sites/64/2019/02/NAS-interim-report.pdf
does not mention any field experiments already arranged to prove this concept.
A Perplexity search that I made additionally for field experiments directed to coral reef protection also failed to reveal any information that your proposal has been pursued further.
Are you sure that it has been (or is being) examined, irrespective whether by Dr. Goreau or by anyone else?
Thank you in advance and best regards
Tomáš
Here is the ResearchGate link page for the 2011 Climatic Change paper:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225164197_Bright_water_Hydrosols_water_conservation_and_climate_change/citations?latestCitations=PB%3A397304964
the present citation count is 98. At last account Tom Goreau was focused on coral restoration in the SE Caribbean in the wake of Hurricane Beryl
re Paul Pukite : https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-841266 , https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-841316
(see https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-841301 )
1 The Orbital/Rotational Geometry:
In the oscillation of lunar declination δ (the latitude of the sublunar point on Earth (point at which Moon appears directly overhead ie. at zenith)), the tropical month is dominant. If the Moon’s orbit were not inclined 4.99° – 5.30° to Earth’s orbit around the Sun (ecliptic), δ would oscillate (not exactly sinusoidally, AFAICT) from −23.44° to +23.44° and back over a tropical month. The draconic month is superimposed on this, creating a ~ 1/18.6 yr beat frequency ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon#Inclination_to_the_equator_and_lunar_standstill ) – it’s not simply a linear superposition of two (not exactly*? sinusoidal) components, though; eg. as I recall from one of my earlier explanations on the matter, there is a timing wobble over the 18.6 yr period.
(apr-2024/#comment-820883 , dec-2024/#comment-828414 , /#comment-828125 )
You could try to argue that some part of the system is simply more responsive to one frequency than another, but your mathematical symmetry justification is just not justified. In addition to two principle contributions to a δ cycle, there’s the anomalistic month. Any modulation cycle of either the semidiurnal and diurnal tidal components as well as the zonally-symmetric component would (aside from geographical/etc. effects) also be zonally symmetric in principle – the first two are not zonally symmetric at any one time, but consider their effects integrated over their cycles (solar and lunar days and half days (as seen on Earth)) (see 2nd -next paragraph).
Note the helical paths (δ of Moon and Sun, and sublunar/subsolar longitude on Earth(‘s rotating frame of reference)).
2 Tidal bulge shape (see also end of comment)
The ‘raw’(*1) equilibrium tidal bulges (RETB) (ie. the local vertical displacement h of surfaces of constant gravitational potential energy per unit mass), in linear(*2) approx., can be decomposed into a semidiurnal, diurnal, and zonally-symmetric component; the amplitude of the semidiurnal part is maximum at δ=0°, and goes to 0 as δ goes to ±90°; The diurnal part is max. at δ = ±45°, going to 0 as δ goes to 0°, ±90°. zonally-symmetric component amplitude is 0 at δ or ø = ½ acos(⅓) ≈ 35.2644°, reversing sign across those values (As neither the Moon nor Sun ever exceeds δ = ±30°, we can note that the minimum amplitude of this part occurs at the lunistices (esp. major standstills) and solstices, respectively; also, the range is therefore less than the amplitude at δ = 0°).
None of these components have a zonally-average that is asymmetric across the equator, because of course they add to form a tidal bulge shape (RETB) that has mirror symmetry across the low tide great circle (α = 90°). But this is from a linear(*2) approx., which has errors. For (RETB linear approx.) A ≈ maybe ~ 53 or 54 cm (lunar; solar A is a bit less than half of lunar A AIUI at least for average R_EM (Earth-Moon) = 385,000 km and…)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon# :
average R_EM (Earth-Moon) = 385,000 km
R_EM semi-major axis = R_EM0 = 384,748 km
R_EM apogee = 405,507 km
R_EM max. apogee = 406,700 km
R_EM perigee= 363,300 km
R_EM min. perigee = 356400 km
Using R_EM min. perigee ≈ 0.926 R_EM0 ≈ about 55.9 Earth radii = (R_EM / r),
[ (R_EM / r) ±1 ] ÷(R_EM / r) ≈ 1.0179, 0.9821 (dif. ∆≈ 0.0358);
squares and their ∆: 1.0361 , 0.965 , 0.072
cubes and their ∆: 1.055 , 0.9473 , 0.107
and the ratio of the cubes R_EM0³/ R_EMmin.perigee³ ≈ 1.26
So we can
Multiply the original A (~54 cm) by 1.26 , getting 68 cm
For a rough estimate of the difference in the two high tide’s h, I’d take (10.7 % of A) ÷ √2 to get 7.57 cm.
But the difference in mass will be smaller because the closer bulge has less area. Based on the shift in the low tide, sin(∆α) = r/R_EM ≈ 0.0179 is a fraction of hemisphere that is shifted from one side to the other of the low tide (?**)(***based on where a ray from the Moon is tangent to Earth’s surface), so the closer bulge would be (1−r/R_EM) ÷ (1+r/R_EM) ≈ 0.965 of the farther in terms of area, but actually less than that because the deformation would be smooth (the whole low tide band would shift and the difference in areas of higher tide would be proportionately greater)… going by area covering a solid angle as seen from the Moon’s center, … 1.107÷√2 * [(0.965÷1.0361)÷√2] ≈ 1.031 (if I used ratios 1.055/0.9473 * (0.965÷1.0361), I get 1.036 ) … so maybe 3.6 % of 68 cm … 2.448 cm effective equivalent ∆h … but in case I screwed that up, let’s try 7.57 cm. 7.57 over, um, maybe ~1/4 of a hemisphere (=pi*r^2), moving through a great circle of … say 10 km height (10 km * 2*pi*r), that’s a displacement of ~ 7.57 cm * (6371 km or … use 6378 km) / 20 km = 24.141 m. Multiply by an f = 1E−4 per s (characteristic of midlatitudes) to get 2.4 mm/s, which is ~ 1/10,000 the amplitude of the QBO if I recall correctly. (And f is smaller towards the equator, and δ would remain within ±30° so some of the asymmetry would be lost in the zonal average. Also, the tidal forcing on the atmosphere depends on the equilibrium tidal bulge (ETB) minus the underlying response of the solid and liquid Earth, although there’s some gravitional feedback from the tidal mass, and it won’t be aligned perfectly with ETB (time lag, geography/inhomgenieties), etc.)
OTOH, if we consider the displacement for the zonally-symmetric tide…
———————-
(*1) ‘raw’(*1) equilibrium tide link texthttps://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/science-denial-is-still-an-issue-ahead-of-cop28/#comment-817865 :
“h = height of equilibrium tide (displacement of geopotential surface which would be at sea level), without feedback from gravity of tides”
(lost track of link:) “A is ‘raw’ equilibrium bulge height = difference between highest and lowest displacements of a geopotential surface, not including gravitational feedback (of the mass redistribution caused by/of the tides”
(*2) linear approx. uses the gradient of the components of the Moon’s (or other tide-raising mass’s) gravitational acceleration/field g_m, evaluated at the center of the Earth (where g_m = g_m0), to compute the spatial variation in g’(r,ø,λ) = g_m−g_m0.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/science-denial-is-still-an-issue-ahead-of-cop28/#comment-817865 :
Patrick, Why are you torturing yourself with those scribbles? Look, my GFD argument hinges on impulse driven alignment of the seasonal cycle with a strong lunar component. Guess what? It’s the same sort of alignment that occurs with generic (i.e. non-location-specific) lunar eclipse modes. Out of the tropical, anomalistic, and draconic lunar cycles, it’s well known that only the draconic cycle sets the synchronization. IOW, lunar eclipse modes are fundamentally aligned to the draconic cycle, because node alignment is the geometrical precondition for eclipses. You can argue to your heart’s content that only the tropical cycle has any significance, but all I’m doing is pointing out that wavenumber=0 phenomena such as QBO are much more tuned to the aliased draconic/annual cycle. As it should be, because QBO is also independent of longitudinal location. (also for the geophysical Chandler wobble, as I am also rightly proud to have discovered)
This is a YouTube animation I made showing the pattern of when the QBO reversal kicks in:
https://youtu.be/KHX6xBEcUcU
Now, for the other indices that I am modeling, ranging from the geospatially narrow sea-level sites to the wider ENSO climate indices, a mix of tropical and draconic cycles play more of a role. This always leads to a clear 18.6 year cycle in the overall modulation, with the anomalistic cycle also showing a significant component, often showing a an additional 6 year or 4.4 year modulation. The 6-year modulation is a beat frequency between the draconic cycle and the anomalistic cycle. Significantly this 6-year cycle is under intense scrutiny as being unexplained in several global instrumental readings =>
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Earth+%226-year-cycle%22
But will they even consider a lunar causal factor? No, and I’ve tried as a part of the open review process on several of these articles.
This is the issue with emergent discoveries — you can go back and bang your head against the wall reciting the known geometry for the orbit of the moon (which stands correct) but when it comes down to it, it won’t contribute anything new, as you’re just beating a dead horse. Only by the application of a perturbation to the system (annual impulse, non-linear modulation, etc) will an emergent behavior arise in a model. For example, no one in the tidal analysis discipline uses any of the textbook lunar gravitation force weighting factors as a first-principles algorithm — as you are implying they should. Why? Simply because it doesn’t calibrate correctly to real world measurements. Instead, what they do is apply a multiple linear regression or spectral analysis decomposition to identify and calibrate the weights of the various tidal factors for the short term. And these require constant re-calibration from month to month and year to year as you will find on any the tidal chart prediction web sites. So for the regional sea-level monitoring sites I am modeling for this project (https://pukpr.github.io/results/image_results.html), the results are cross-validating that this approach can be used for the long term!
So the real issue is that no one (in a practically significant way, a deep dive so to speak) has looked at the margins of the lunar/annual synchronization problem statement. Richard Lindzen obviously hasn’t, otherwise he would have pointed out it’s suitability as a QBO forcing model. That’s all Lindzen’s fault, not mine, so don’t go blaming me for turning over rocks that they apparently wished to remain undisturbed. I am just cranking out cross-validation after cross-validation, N times over.
And just wait for the AI models to kick in.
BTW, feel free to place any of the above into an LLM prompt and see how it responds.
h = A [ cos²(α) – H]
dV = h dA = A [ cos²(α) – H] · ( 2ϖ·r sin(α) ·r·dα )
= 2ϖ·r² · A · [ ½ { 1 + cos(2α) } ·sin(α) – H sin(α) ] · dα
= 2ϖ·r² · A · [ ½ sin(α) + ½ sin(α) cos(2α) – H sin(α) ] · dα
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trigonometric_identities#Product-to-sum_and_sum-to-product_identities )
= ϖ·r² · A · [ sin(α) + ½ {sin(3α) + sin(−α) } – 2H sin(α) ] · dα
= ϖ·r² · A · [ sin(α) + ½ {sin(3α) − sin(α) } – 2H sin(α) ] · dα
= ϖ·r² · A · [ ½ {sin(3α) + sin(α) } – 2H sin(α) ] · dα
→∫_0^α₀→
V(α₀) = ϖ·r² · A · [ – ⅙ cos(3α) – ½ cos(α) + 2H cos(α) ] |_0^α₀
= ϖ·r² · A · [ ⅙ + ½ − 2H – ⅙ cos(3α₀) – ½ cos(α₀) + 2H cos(α₀) ]
= ϖ·r² · A · [ ⅔ – ⅙ cos(3α₀) – ½ cos(α₀) + 2H { cos(α₀) – 1 } ]
V(180°) = 0 = ϖ·r² · A · [ ⅔ + ⅙ + ½ – 4H ] = 4ϖ·r² · A · [ ⅓ – H ]
H = ⅓
oops! Notation error fixed: (A~1 m , r= 6371 km or 6378 km, depending…)
h = A [ cos²(α) – H]
dV = h d{Area} = A [ cos²(α) – H] · ( 2ϖ·r sin(α) ·r·dα )
= 2ϖ·r² · A · [ ½ { 1 + cos(2α) } ·sin(α) – H sin(α) ] · dα
= …
ϖ is supposed to be pi = π
V(α) = ϖ·r² · A · [ ⅔ – ⅙ cos(3α) – ½ cos(α) + ⅔ { cos(α) – 1 } ]
= ϖ·r² · A · [ – ⅙ cos(3α) + ⅙ cos(α) ]
= ⅙ ϖ·r² · A · [ cos(α) – cos(3α) ]
——— —– —–
Let 0 = ϖ·r² · A · [ ½ {sin(3α) + sin(α) } – ⅔ sin(α) ]
½ sin(3α) + ½ sin(α) = ⅔ sin(α)
½ sin(3α) = ⅙ sin(α)
3 sin(3α) = sin(α)
α ≈ 54.736° , 125.264° , … ( 90° − α ≈ ±35.264° , …)
V(α) = ⅙ ϖ·r² · A · [ cos(α) – cos(3α) ]
≈ ± 0.2566 ϖ·r² · A
0.2566 π·r² · A ÷ (2πr · z)
= 0.2566 r · A ÷ (2 · z)
0.2566 · 6371 km · 1 m ÷ (2 · 7 km) ≈ 117 m
117 m · 1E−4 s¯¹ = 1.17 cm/s
Oops! Should have calculated horizontal displacement amplitude ∆χ (range is 2× as much) using the vertical area 2πr·sin(α) · z at the same α (of max |V|), α_{max|V|} ≈54.736° , 125.264° :
∆χ ≈ 0.2566 π·r² · A ÷ (2πr·0.8165· z) = 0.2566 ·r · A ÷ (0.8165· 2·z)
≈ 143 m
∆χ = ⅙ [ cos(α) – cos(3α) ] · ϖ·r² · A ÷ (2πr· sin(α)· z)
= { ⅙ [ cos(α) – cos(3α) ] ÷ sin(α) } · r · A ÷ (2 · z)
But max ∆χ seems to be at 45°, ≈ 152 m (smaller sin(α)). 2Ω·∆χ ≈ 2.2 cm/s ~ max horizontal speed, either directly (semidiurnal frequency of ∆χ (not accounting for slightly longer “solar and lunar days and half days (as seen on Earth)”) or by max f, if ∆χ_max occurred near ø = ±90°
Ω ≈ 7.29212 E-05 s¯¹ ≈ 2π ÷ (86164.1 s)
“2.2 cm/s ~ max horizontal speed” amplitude
→·2Ω, → =1.61 E-06 m/s²
1 m · 9.81 m/s² · 2π ÷ (π · 6378 km) ≈ 3.076 E-06 m/s²
…
…
I should have used the symbol ∆z above to be more clear: as it is the span and not the position that matters.
Anyway, for a 1 m ETB (equilibrium tidal bulge) the pressure gradient acceleration amplitude (~3.1 E-6 m/s²) is roughly 2× the acceleration amplitude that would be needed to keep up with the ETB (semidiurnal) applied to an equivalent 7 km layer at Earth’s surface, from which I conclude that the atmosphere c/would have ∆χ of significant fraction of above values. ∆χ would be altered by the Coriolis effect.
(I remembered the scale height is ~7 km; the e-folding height of – density or pressure? (not same because atm. not isothermal over z, but anyway) – would be the thickness of a constant density layer of the same mass path of all overlying air (relative to any z). This would work at all heights (though scale height will vary with T).
So this series of calculations is not about trying to calculate would will happen but rather to get a sense of the potential magnitude of effects.
Cross-equatorial flow can result in a significant easterly tendency if the displacements are large enough – ie. if the fluid traverses a region where f is significant before getting to the equator.
Re …“ lunar eclipse modes. Out of the tropical, anomalistic, and draconic lunar cycles, it’s well known that only the draconic cycle sets the synchronization.”… Feels like a goalpost change. You talked about δ, so I considered δ.
“ For example, no one in the tidal analysis discipline uses any of the textbook lunar gravitation force weighting factors as a first-principles algorithm — as you are implying they should.” I’m not involved in that work, but I get that when the universe runs the computer model for you, complete with all the details of ocean bathymetry, sandbars and the like, then it’s nice to take advantage of that – Such as by using analog computers to run Fourier analysis (“The Most Powerful Computers You’ve Never Heard Of” – Veritasium https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgF3OX8nT0w )… TBC
(lost track of link:) “A is ‘raw’ equilibrium bulge height = difference between highest and lowest displacements of a geopotential surface, not including gravitational feedback (of the mass redistribution caused by/of the tides”: Link found! https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/04/unforced-variations-apr-2024/#comment-821362
Patrick, All bets are off in estimating the magnitude of effects when dealing with gravity-assisted modulation of a stratification whereby the stratification is defined by slight density differences. This leads to what is called a reduced gravity environment; and with a much smaller effective gravity=g’ , any tidal motion becomes much more pronounced. This is not quite a reciprocal relationship to the delta difference of layers, but that’s the progression. The other behavior that emerges is that the phase speed of internal waves slows down as the square root of g’, so that it will favor the longer-period tidal factors — i.e. monthly instead of the daily(diurnal) tidal cycles, the latter of which will get filtered out as the phase speed of the internal waves can’t keep up to the diurnal cycles.
So this is the case with the ocean’s thermocline and also with stratospheric layers, both showing very slight density differences and thus highly sensitive to reduced effective gravity. Do you think any of this is well known?
There always can be terminology disconnects. What I do is consider all the effects and then do the model pattern matching to observations. I believe I have taken account each of the fundamental cycles and the significant harmonics and cross-harmonics. One needs to realize that once a non-linear mixing is applied, the number of harmonics will quickly multiply and their magnitudes will rise from being imperceptible to contributing more strongly to the response.
The lesson in all this is that you can’t fall into the trap of working from a first-principles calculation of expected magnitudes. One has to pattern match against observed time-series and then rigorously cross-validate fitted models against held-out intervals and compare to related observations, whereby the common-modes of forcing aren’t expected to change much. The impact of such a unified/universal model is that it will cover a lot of ground, and thus explain many of the reversion to the mean properties of different climate indices and longer-range tidal variations measured at a number of coastal stations with sufficient data (at least 75 years worth from my experience).
Carl Sagan once said that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, so I’m not expecting anyone to accept all this blindly. That’s why I keep pushing for a cumulative solution — since none of this can be verified via controlled experiments, the best approach is to keep archiving a repository of modeling results.
Recent results here:
https://gist.github.com/pukpr/7d256e5595ff435421431d48d1df8d19?permalink_comment_id=5850760#gistcomment-5850760
and
https://geoenergymath.com/2025/11/05/amo-dat-p/
Correction:
amplitude of whatev · 2π ÷ (period or wavelength) = amplitude of (slope or rate of change of) whatev
(1 m / 2) · 9.81 m/s² · 2π ÷ (π · 6378 km) ≈ 1.538 E-6 m/s²
Multiplying by 0.535±0.005 gives 0.815 – 0.831 µm/s², which roughly matches what I remember (well, I remember the first non-0 digit was 8) for the semidiurnal component of |g’| for the Moon @ average R_EM (Earth-Moon) = 385,000 km, which I think gave the A ~ 53 or 54 (?) cm RETB (A = high – low).
Patrick, We’re dealing with fluid dynamics here, so the identification of orbital forcing modes is just a start. No need to calculate the amplitudes exactly. The right-hand side of the dynamics is found directly from data rather than assumed from first principles. That idea is a key building block for separating base forcing, intrinsic dynamics, and additional terms that might be latent. Classical fluid dynamics involves this intermediate layer, referred to as a stream function, in solving Navier-Stokes or simplified variations such as Laplace’s tidal equations (LTE) which are set up specifically for MET and climate research.
Back when I was researching for my book Mathematical Geoenergy, I tried to solve the LTE under reduced dimensionality conditions and came up with a nonlinear formulation that existed as an analytical closed-form expression. These are also called reduced-order models (ROM). Since that time I have been searching for the parameters and forcing that best represents the dynamics of the data. Sometimes this is relatively easy, such as for the QBO where the non-linear form appears fairly mild , most likely only a perturbation of a linear form. Where it’s more difficult is in cases of ocean dynamics such as the varying mean sea-level height extremes and ultimately in behaviors such as ENSO.
To get an idea of the mind-blowing aspect in all this , watch YT videos by Steven Brunton, where he explains approaches to modeling the fluid dynamics and this hidden latent layer. He is the smoothest technical speaker I’ve ever watched, and is applying all this to machine learning. Lots of room for improvement in this area.
Watch this space.
The important aspect of the QBO findings is that the hidden latent layer of the fluid dynamics formulation is more exposed for stratospheric media than for the denser fluid at the ocean’s surface or subsurface thermocline. The low inertia, high compressibility, and rapid adjustment of the atmosphere means that any forcing will directly generate internal oscillations, whereas denser fluids have a much larger inertia and so will evolve with complex lag factors.
So as a premise, consider that the base pattern found for the QBO, consisting of a strong draconic cycle interacting with an annual impulse, means that it provides a starting point of the hidden latent layer that could potentially be used in modeling oceanic climate cycles (such as ENSO, NAO, etc) or extended sea-level height variations. I would not expect that the oceanic response would be nearly as linear as that for the stratospheric QBO response, and further that it could be highly nonlinear given the phase lags, nodes, and internal standing waves observed in the ocean.
Given that background, I will provide a few links to show how this has shaken out. The first is a post where I applied a common latent forcing to model AMO, which was calibrated from a model of the long-term sea-level variation at a coastal site on the Baltic at Warnemunde: https://geoenergymath.com/2025/11/05/amo-dat-p/
Second is a GitHub Gist thread from a variety of SLH sites and other climate indices. Note that all these share very similar hidden layer forcings — the tidal factors all track shown by correlated tidal forcings and histograms of tidal factor amplitudes:
https://gist.github.com/pukpr/7d256e5595ff435421431d48d1df8d19
Last is a thread circling back to QBO, showing how similar all the latent forcing layers are across the models, and thus validating and making interpretable the starting point of the closer to linear QBO:
https://gist.github.com/pukpr/0b7ac85fad1ea36f65a9b50d6c30958b?permalink_comment_id=5856989#gistcomment-5856989
This is the best possible outcome as Brunton describes the importance of creating interpretable and generalizable models of fluids. There is a real physical meaning here, which hasn’t been touched and scrambled via a neural net training session.
https://youtu.be/NxAn0oglMVw
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/11/unforced-variations-nov-2025/#comment-841456 :
Correction: (concerning the effect of nonlinear tidal g’ for the Moon @ R_EM min. perigee = = 356,400 km)
“7.57 over, um, maybe ~1/4 of a hemisphere (=pi*r^2), moving through a great circle of … say 10 km height (10 km * 2*pi*r), that’s a displacement of ~ 7.57 cm * (6371 km or … use 6378 km) / 20 km = 24.141 m.”
That’s actually ½ a hemisphere equivalent. In light of farther math, a better estimate may be ⅓ hemisphere (⅔ of what was calculated), though this would be largely cancelled by changing from a ∆z = 10 km to ∆z = 7 km. Of course I expect the displacement would then again be smaller, taking other things into account…
Speaking of terminology, I believe you had used the term “mountain torque” to refer to the tidal torque exerted on Earth’s asymmetrical geological (near-surface) mass distribution. Just so you’re aware, others may use it to refer to angular momentum exchange between the atmosphere and solid Earth via pressure variations between different slopes of topographic features:
“Mountain Torques and the Equatorial Components of Global Angular Momentum” – Joseph Egger, Klaus-P. Hoinka (2000) https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/57/14/1520-0469_2000_057_2319_mtatec_2.0.co_2.xml
https://psl.noaa.gov/psd1/review/Chap04/sec3_body.html
https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~nnn/LAB/DEMOS/karman.html :
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2000GL011829
https://en.termwiki.com/EN/mountain_torque#:~:text=The%20torque%20about%20a%20given%20axis%20exerted%20on,of%20pressure%20on%20two%20sides%20of%20a%20mountain.
From EOS on Halloween:
“In Arctic Soils, Methane-Eating Microbes Just Might Win Out over Methane Makers
Methanotrophs, including those that capture methane from the air, seem to outcompete methanogens in dry environments, a new study shows.”
https://eos.org/articles/in-arctic-soils-methane-eating-microbes-just-might-win-out-over-methane-makers
–Just might– is completely unquantified according to the article, but it notes the research is based on Arctic soil sampling that began in 2010, so let’s say a good start in examining the conditions. The article also links to the paper, which I’m not looking at right now, and two parts of the EOS article that were interesting were that there’s not a lot of species diversity among the samples (my guess is colder climates are less species-rich generally) but another interesting bit was they noted that the iron-rich water from all that glacial scraping is also leading to iron-consuming bacteria outcompeting methane producers in appropriate conditions. (That bit was in a separate paper they mention, which studied the Copper River Delta..)
I’m not going to let the article headline’s “just might” get me relaxed about what will happen as the Arctic thaws, but at least researchers are starting to fill in blanks. And also bringing back old song lyrics to match:
b fagan, thanks for bringing microbes into the conversation. It may be a thin hope against the magnitude of the problems we face (becoming all too real in our daily lives), but it’s something. The idea of scientific collaboration is under attack, but scientific open borders have been of great benefit to all of us.
here are some (overlapping) links (I saw something else recently, but have forgotten where, related to those undersea vents (where, as I understand it, much of modern life began))
Microbiology Leaders Launch Global Climate Change Strategy – https://asm.org/press-releases/2025/september/microbiology-leaders-launch-global-climate-change
Microbes without borders: uniting societies for climate action – https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12459658/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK613918/ [sadly government repositories of knowledge are being dismantled at speed by the predatory ignoramuses in charge]
Hi Susan, yeah – I posted because it’s something that would be useful for us to know, but certainly too early to know if the methane eaters will outdo the methane exhalers.
Microbes without borders? Well, from reading your links, methane metabolisms in thawing soils is somewhere the world’s microbiologists can inform us – as one link said: “actively seeking microbiology-informed insights to address critical knowledge gaps in existing climate solutions.”
The press releases themselves read like the kind of organization-speak I’ve never liked, but to have microbiology research working towards solving problems – I can’t argue with the premise. Every aspect of how our outsized impact on the biosphere needs lots of reconsideration.
Geoff Miell “ MWP1a occurred around the time of an abrupt Northern Hemisphere warming of 4–5 °C giving mean rates of roughly 40–60 mm. Why is difficult to accept that the global mean rate of SLR would continue to accelerate over time to similar magnitudes (or maybe more) occurring during the MWP1a?”
Because we don’t have the couple km of ice over half of North America and portion of Eurasia to melt (the contribution of Antarctica and Greenland to MWP1a SLR was minor)?
And we don’t have massive meltwater lakes that suddenly find a way to drain into the ocean ?
And that’s “why it is difficult to accept your 10-FOLD (or maybe more) increase of SLR over today’s value?
Some difficult awful news on climate change and a pair of news stories on the Lancet report:
https://lancetcountdown.org/2025-report/
.
“Rising heat kills one person a minute worldwide, major report reveals
Biggest analysis of its kind finds millions are dying each year from combined effects of failure to tackle climate crisis”
Damian Carrington Environment editor
Tue 28 Oct 2025 20.01 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/29/rising-heat-kills-one-person-a-minute-worldwide-lancet-countdown
.
“Climate change inaction being paid for in millions of lives every year, global findings suggest”
by Lancet
edited by Sadie Harley, reviewed by Robert Egan
October 28, 2025
https://phys.org/news/2025-10-climate-inaction-paid-millions-year.html
A quick question: how does recent acceleration of AGW (with projections by Leon Simons of reaching 2⁰C of warming by 2035 and 4⁰C by 2084, for instance) relate to Transient Climate Response and ECS? If I understand correctly, reaching some sort of (transient) equilibrium can take from decades (for TCR) to centuries (for ECS), yet this didn’t stop Leon from linearly extrapolating rate of warming from Rahmstorf & Foster (2025) and other people taking it as given.
Am I missing something here? Leaving our (somewhat controversial) future capacity of burning cheap FFs aside, what physical mechanisms would need to be at play to achieve such huge GMST increase in just 59 years?
Julian, it’s simply meaningless cherry picking by Leon Simons. There’s significant natural variations and an unnatural variation been going on. The ocean is a big deal of course. Rahmstorf & Foster (2025) concludes (I paraphrase perfectly in case bods not following don’t follow scientific jargon) “we don’t have a clue whether warming the next 15 years will be a higher rate or a lower rate than the last 15 years). My own input effort if I ever get to it will be a suggestion that 2014 CE be upward adjusted by 0.065 degrees for the unnatural variation.
Barry E Finch: – “Rahmstorf & Foster (2025) concludes (I paraphrase perfectly in case bods not following don’t follow scientific jargon) “we don’t have a clue whether warming the next 15 years will be a higher rate or a lower rate than the last 15 years).”
Why paraphrase when you could quote exactly what Stefan Rahmstorf & Grant Foster wrote in their pre-print paper for all to see for people to make their own conclusions? You wouldn’t want to put your own spin on it, aye Barry?
From line 72 in the Stefan Rahmstorf & Grant Foster (2025 preprint):
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6079807/v1
The +1.5 °C GMST anomaly (relative to pre-industrial age) “will” be exceeded “by late 2026”, based on the datasets examined by Stefan Rahmstorf & Grant Foster.
Whether the Earth System continues to warm beyond exceeding the +1.5 °C GMST anomaly “at such a fast pace”, or slows, or continues “accelerating to even faster rates”, I’d suggest, is dependent on how much more GHGs humanity continues to emit into the atmosphere, and whether we/humanity begin atmospheric carbon drawdown and/or solar radiation management (SRM) methods at large-scale, over the next few decades, or not.
Julian,
Leon Simons is not in any way a reliable climate commentator, more ‘shock-jock’ than somebody to be trusted.
His projections for timing +2°C, & +4°C AGW thresholds are easily created but should have been set against other data (eg CMIP6 models) but Simons’ message generally is that the likes of CMIP6 are nonsense and the world has already stoked a right-royal AGW Armageddon.
AGW is deadly-serious enough without such exaggeration.
Looking at CMIP6 numbers, they show AGW has been running cooler than expected since 2000 with the ‘raw’ GMST running at +0.18°C/dec 2000-15. That’s zero acceleration since the 1980s. Meanwhile CMIP6 models were showing acceleration, perhaps +0.25°C/dec 2000-15, and rising. If there is some sense to such a stark GMST-CMIP6 discrepancy, a simplistic consideration would suggest we were due a correction, a period of rapid warming at a rate which would not be representative of the underlying rate of AGW.
In addition, we have yet to grasp the cause of the “bananas!!” temperatures of 2023-24 and the resulting implications for 2025-&-beyond.
Rahmstorf & Foster (Pre-Print) ‘Global Warming has Accelerated Significantly’ is an interesting diagnostic. It shows a statistically-significant GMST acceleration when it is MLR-adjusted for SolVol&ENSO. But these ‘adjusted’ underlying AGW rates for 2015-24 (≈ 0.4°C/dec) include the 2023-24 “bananas!!” (Rahmstorf & Foster do say their adjustments are “approximate so it is possible that, for instance, the effect of El Niño on 2023-24 temperatures is not completely eliminated”) and also include that 2005-14 rate which after adjustment (2004-15 at ≈ 0.2°C/dec) remains well below that modelled by CMIP6.
But such blather doesn’t address the question “What physical mechanisms would need to be at play to achieve such huge GMST increase in just 59 years?”
It would require some feedback mechanism to increase in strength to make such a nonsense of the CMIP6 modelling. And for that there are a few ‘usual suspects’.
One ‘usual suspect’ which is sort-of invoked by Leon Simons has at least a whiff of some evidential basis in the increasing EEI seen in the CERES data”. If the EEI can be lain at the door of marine pollution regs (& I don’t see that), it would not provide a giant new climate feedback. But if it is a new amplification of cloud feedback running riot, that could perhaps be the start of something big enough to massively increase the rate of AGW through coming decades.
I’m sure other ‘usual suspects’ could be invoked (separately or collectively) if you want to scare the horses. But perhaps first an understanding of the 2023-25 “bananas!!” would be a more responsible approach.
MA Rodger,
Eh, so at the end of the day, it’s still comes down to figuring out those pesky 2023-2024 years. Guess we’ll just have to wait a bit more for definite answers what happened back then.
Thank you for a reply, much appreciated!
“those pesky 2023-2024 years. Guess we’ll just have to wait a bit more for definite answers what happened back then”. Well, either you found the peer-reviewed paper by Matthew H. England to be credible or you didn’t. Same point as that for the paper 11 years earlier (my 0.065 degrees that I can’t find time for).
Julian, there’s huge self-contradiction by Leon Simons on the very topic that is his self-stated Expert Topic. A reliable physical scientist definitely shouldn’t contradict himself so hugely on the matter of his-her own Expert Topic. It’s only self-contradiction though if Leon Simons agrees about his expert topic with James Hansen and other co-authors in Jim Hansen’s group,
Dr. James Hansen, Lead Author and Director, Climate Science, Awareness, and Solutions, Columbia University Earth Institute
Dr. Pushker Kharecha, Deputy Director, Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions, Columbia University Earth Institute
Dr. Susanne Bauer, Climate Researcher, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
If Leon Simons substantively disagrees with these scientists above then my criticism of Leon Simons self-contradiction is incorrect, but I’ve not come across Leon Simons criticizing the work of those 3 scientists above, which work obviously makes nonsense of Leon Simons’ prediction, itself supposedly based on Grant Foster & Stefan Rahmstorf definitely-a-non-prediction.
‘Musk will get richer, people will get unemployed’: Nobel Laureate Hinton on AI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1Hf-o1SzL4
Oh for God’s sake, can we please stop boosting Silicon Valley AI doomers? I admit I’ve only skimmed through this video (I can hardly put up with AI BS nowadays), but he’s yapping about the exact same things as other AI doomers do: that soon (how soon?) AI will outsmart us, it’ll replace hundreds of millions of workers and we won’t be able to control it. Reality however, is different – the current overinvestment in DCs and GPUs for LLMs (and other models based on Vaswani et al. architecture from 2017) is deeply unprofitable and have yet to yield meaningful returns. AI models aren’t improving exponentially and the industry writ large is in deep stagnation with no sensible path to profitability, showing ever more blatant signs of a speculative bubble.
If you’re worried about AI, don’t be. I deeply believe there are more pressing matters to spend our energy on than listening to whatever BS AI boosters preach from their Ivory Towers. AI in its current (and even future, since LLMs are a technological dead end) state is not and will never be a threat.
Geoff Hinton is not an AI doomer. Sadly, “AI doomer” is a label which includes two very different groups of people. The idea behind the religion of AI is to harvest all the energy in the universe and preserve a few gazillionaires for eternity, replacing themselves (and us) with machines. The other group are concerned with present effects (the coming market bubble collapse) and downsides of said project of replacing ourselves with machines.
I’ve posted this useful review before:
https://archive.ph/4CSJV – “Fresh off a Ph.D. in astrophysics, science journalist Adam Becker moved to Silicon Valley with an academic’s acclimation to hearing the word “no.” “In academic science, you need to doubt yourself,” he says. “That’s essential to the process.” So it was strange to find himself suddenly surrounded by a culture that branded itself as data-oriented and scientific but where, he soon came to realize, the ideas were more grounded in science fiction than in actual science and the grip on reality was tenuous at best. “What this sort of crystallized for me,” says Becker, “was that these tech guys — who people think of as knowing a lot about science — actually, don’t really know anything about science at all.”
“In More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity … Becker subjects Silicon Valley’s ideology to some much-needed critical scrutiny, poking holes in — and a decent amount of fun at — the outlandish ideas that so many tech billionaires take as gospel. In so doing, he champions reality while also exposing the dangers of letting the tech billionaires push us toward a future that could never actually exist.”
For anyone interested: 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/xMvFp
I was a Computer Programmer for mathematical-scientific 1968-1973 and for engineering-control-monitoring with some Commercial 1973-1996 and I was simultaneous amused & annoyed when that Windfall Boondoggle “Millennium Bug” hit the News. Fancy making huge, easy profits by looking through and fixing Rubbish computer programs you wrote that couldn’t even do the trivially-simple thing of handling dates & times properly for numerous decades. Making huge profits off your own gross incompetence. Amused obviously and annoyed that I wasn’t in on the Scam for quick, easy ripoff money. I wrote all date-times to work for 32,768 days (90 years) from 1950 CE if they needed retrospective and from the date I wrote the Program if not. I figured if it breaks after 90 years and they sue me for incompetence I’ll deal with it then. If computers were cheaper I’d have written to work for 1,073,741,824 days.
Geoff Miell: “ And here you were recently claiming: “NGLs are not crude oil nor condensate.” “neither are “shale oil” or “oil sands”.” …and when proven that you were wrong about your claims that “shale oil” or “oil sands” were NOT crude oil nor condensate, you remain unable to admit that you are wrong,”
Could you be any more confused? Let me help:
1. It was YOU, not me, who “ recently claimed: “NGLs are not crude oil nor condensate.”
2. The legend of the graph you QUOTED, states: “ [Oil production] includes crude oil, shale oil, oil sands, condensates and NGLs
If they are listed separately, then it isn’t it OBVIOUS that “ NGLs are NOT crude oil nor condensate.?” The same question for NGLs and condensates”
Or too complicated for you, let me simplify it- It’s like if I said “Common orchard fruit include apples, pears and plums”, and then you lectured me: “apples are not pears, nor plums”
You see the absurdity of that, right?
3. GM: “ when proven that you were wrong about your claims that “shale oil” or “oil sands” were NOT crude oil nor condensate “
Are you even reading what you write? It’s like:
“I. Geoff Miell. have proven that Piotr ‘s claim: “ apples are NOT prears nor plums ” to be wrong!” ;-)
And based on such a grotesque logic you lecture me how it is you who proved me wrong and how it is I who “ remains unable to admit that I are wrong, changes the subject, and doubles down on misrepresenting all and sundry who dare to challenge your ideologies/perspectives/fantasies. ? ;-)
Ladies and Gentlemen, Geoff Miell, in a nutshell.
P.S. Geoff Miell: ” I apologised for misspelling John Pollack’s surname (and gives a link to it … ;-)]
Boo-hoo, cry me a river – there is nothing at stake in this apology – its a trivial typo, and it is not like you had an option to get out on technicality (John knows the spelling of his own name). The real test is whether you are able to admit being wrong in a consequential case – say when were accusing the opponent:
remains unable to admit that you are wrong, changes the subject, and doubles down on misrepresenting all and sundry who dare to challenge your ideologies /perspectives/ fantasies.
on the basis of your lapses in your logic and/or in your comprehension. [see above].
I guess we will see whether you are able to take responsibility for your action, or will it be … as usual.
Piotr, it’s clear to me you live in an alternate reality. Your Gish gallop BS-fest fools only you. And your diatribes continue to distract from my question:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/11/unforced-variations-nov-2025/#comment-841525
Steve Bannon once famously declared that the way to win in politics is to “flood the zone with shit.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/steve-bannon-jan-6-trial-arguments/
It seems to me Piotr is following Steve Bannon’s advice.
Geoff Miell: “ Steve Bannon once famously declared that the way to win in politics is to “flood the zone with shit.” It seems to me Piotr is following “Steve Bannon’s advice.”
It seems to me that Geoff Miell, unable to defend his nonsensical accusations, tries to shoot the messenger via by association with Steve Bannon.
And to make it better, in the same thread in which he put himself up as a paragon of the ability to apologize for being wrong. Geoff Miell – everybody! ;-)
But no, my challenge to your intellect and ethic – cannot be waived off by associating me with …Steve Bannon. And here is that challenge, for the record:
=====
Geoff Miell: “ when proven that you were wrong about your claims that “shale oil” or “oil sands” were NOT crude oil nor condensate
Except you proving me wrong is only in your head: the legend of the graph you QUOTED yourself in your “proof” states: [Oil data] include crude oil, shale oil, oil sands, condensates and NGLs”
See? If shale oil, oil sands and NGLs are LISTED SEPARATELY from “crude oil”, then they CAN’T “be crude oil”, can they?
Ergo, your imagining yourself triumphantly having me proven wrong about my claim that “shale oil” or “oil sands” were NOT crude oil” is just a measure of your delusions.
=====
And on that baseless belief that you have “proven [me] wrong” you went … full Bannon on me, to use your own source – you “flooded the zone with shit””:
G Miell: – Gish gallop BS-fest”
– “[ flooding the zone with shit.”
– “ [when proven that you were wrong] you remain unable to admit that you are wrong, change the subject, and double down on misrepresenting all and sundry who dare to challenge your ideologies/perspectives/fantasies.”
Looks like an apt, if unwitting, self-diagnosis, Mr. Miell.
Piotr, your comments on 8 Oct 2025 at 5:46 PM included:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840465
Piotr, you stated that “neither are “shale oil” or “oil sands”” in relation to crude oil and condensate. I proved that “shale oil” AND “oil sands” are a form of crude oil in my response at:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840478
There is nowhere in my comments where I claim NGLs are crude oil or condensate. You even quote me stating: “NGLs are not crude oil nor condensate.”
It seems to me you are attempting to rewrite history by substituting some figment of your fantasy. That’s what you seem to do often here.
And you made this claim: “all three have minds closed – they are physically unable to admit that they may have been wrong and when proven wrong -disappear or change the subject…”
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/11/unforced-variations-nov-2025/#comment-841500
It seems to me you are the one projecting your own apparent character flaws.
It seems to me you continue to be physically unable to admit you are wrong because you certainly haven’t acknowledged at all you were wrong when you, Piotr, (NOT me) made the statement: “neither are “shale oil” or “oil sands”” in relation to whether they are crude oil or condensate.
Piotr, how many times are you going to continue to argue over your inability to admit you are wrong? How many more times are you going to flood the zone with your BS?
Geoff Miell “ There is nowhere in my comments where I claim NGLs are crude oil or condensate. You even quote me stating: “NGLs are not crude oil nor condensate.”
Duh … That’s because NOBODY was arguing that YOU, G. Miell “claim NGLs ARE crude oil or condensate” My argument was on you saying the OPPOSITE! And THAT’S WHY I “ quoted [you] stating “NGLs are not crude oil nor condensate”, Sherlock.
Geoff Miell “ I proved that “shale oil” AND “oil sands” are a form of crude oil in my response ”
You proved nothing. Definitions are NOT facts – they are subjective categories so you CAN’T “prove them” wrong or right.
The ONLY thing you COULD prove – would be a logical inconsistency WITHIN the opponent’s argument – namely, that their use of these categories CONTRADICTS the definitions THEY source used..
Which obviously is NOT the case here: the Our World In Data graph I referred to – keeps “crude oil” as a SEPARATE category from “shale oil” or “oil sands”, ergo – according to the
definitions in that graph – “shale oil” or “oil sands” are NOT “crude oil”.
And YOU should have known – since it was YOU who lectured ME, arrogantly throwing the legend of teh Our World In Data graph in my face:
Geoff Miell Oct. 6: Piotr, did you check what was included as “oil” in the Our World In Data graph? No? [Oil data] Include crude oil, shale oil, oil sands, condensates and NGLs ”
See?
So you would have “proven me wrong” ONLY if you caught me using the Our World In Data data in a way INCONSISTENT with the legend of the graph. But I didn’t, so you can’t.
So all your huffing and puffing:
– ” Gish gallop BS-fest”
– “[ flooding the zone with shit.”
– “your inability to admit you are wrong? How many more times are you going to flood the zone with your BS?”
– “ [when proven that you were wrong] you remain unable to admit that you are wrong, change the subject, and double down on misrepresenting all and sundry who dare to challenge your ideologies/perspectives/fantasies.”
is founded on your inability to understand what you read, on your tortured logic, and on your projection of your cognitive and ethical faults onto the opponents.
Or in the words of the Bard – yours is “ tell of an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing.”
P.S. Instead trying to relitigate the discussion you have lost already a month ago – how about you concentrate on the newer challenges to you claim – like the one in which I have countered your arrogant:
“ Why is difficult to accept,/i> ” [the 40-60 mm/yr SLR in, “maybe more” in the near future] see reply in Piotr 3 Nov at 7:06 AM
Piotr (at 7 Nov 2025 at 6:57 PM): – “Duh … That’s because NOBODY was arguing that YOU, G. Miell “claim NGLs ARE crude oil or condensate” My argument was on you saying the OPPOSITE! And THAT’S WHY I “ quoted [you] stating “NGLs are not crude oil nor condensate”, Sherlock.”
Again, where have I claimed NGLs ARE crude oil or condensate, Piotr? Please provide any link(s) and relevant quote(s). You even quoted me:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840465
It seems to me you are bamboozled by your own Gish gallop BS.
You (NOT me) then stated:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840465
I’d suggest that would be news to the entire petroleum industry. It seems to me you are clearly ignorant of this, and now it seems you are going further and further down the rabbit hole to attempt to deny you are clearly ignorant and wrong, so that you can continue to deny you are clearly ignorant/wrong.
Piotr (at 7 Nov 2025 at 6:57 PM): – “You proved nothing. Definitions are NOT facts – they are subjective categories so you CAN’T “prove them” wrong or right.”
Definitions ARE mutually agreed by relevant parties. Next you’ll claim ‘white’ is NOT ‘white’. Or the fundamental dimensions we use to describe the world, whether it’s the SI system or imperial system, or other systems of measurements are “NOT facts”. Or driving on a particular side of the road for a given jurisdiction is “NOT facts”.
You’re attempting to move the goal posts to avoid admitting you are undeniably wrong. How convenient for you, but it just shows to me that you are acting entirely in bad faith.
Piotr (at 7 Nov 2025 at 6:57 PM): – “Which obviously is NOT the case here: the Our World In Data graph I referred to – keeps “crude oil” as a SEPARATE category from “shale oil” or “oil sands”, ergo – according to the
definitions in that graph – “shale oil” or “oil sands” are NOT “crude oil”.”
Again, you highlight your continued willful ignorance. I stated:
Petroleum geologist Art Berman stated:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840478
And the Alberta Energy Regulator states:
https://www.aer.ca/understanding-resource-development/resource-development-topics/oil-sands
Who does one believe; the petroleum industry, Art Berman, et al.; or the willfully ignorant, clueless Piotr?
Piotr (at 7 Nov 2025 at 6:57 PM): – “…is founded on your inability to understand what you read, on your tortured logic, and on your projection of your cognitive and ethical faults onto the opponents.”
It seems to me you are describing your own inabilities and shortcomings.
I’m intrigued why the moderators of RC continue to allow you, Piotr, to comment in regard to this matter. I guess they are perhaps allowing you ‘enough rope to hang yourself’ with your tortured logic, fantastical world view, multitudes of misrepresentations, character assassinations, bullying, Gish gallops, etc., so that all the world may see who you really are.
Piotr (at 7 Nov 2025 at 6:57 PM): – “P.S. Instead trying to relitigate the discussion you have lost already a month ago – how about you concentrate on the newer challenges to you claim – like the one in which I have countered your arrogant:…”
Um, lost how? It seems you missed this ongoing thread from my comments at:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/comment-page-2/#comment-841425
Meanwhile, the Hektoria Glacier on the Antarctica peninsula, shrunk by nearly 50% in just two months (i.e. Nov – Dec 2022) to mark the fastest retreat recorded in modern history – and the way it happened could have big implications for global sea level rise.
https://www.9news.com.au/world/hektoria-glacier-fastest-retreat-in-history/dc0aacbc-7342-48da-bcd4-3a2b11a80d50
It seems to me, you have no imagination for and ignorance about the possibilities, as per usual.
– Geoff Miell 6 Nov “ There is nowhere in my comments where I claim NGLs are crude oil or condensate. You even quote me stating: “NGLs are not crude oil nor condensate.”
– me: 7 Nov “NOBODY was arguing that YOU, “claimed that NGLs ARE crude oil or condensate”. My argument was based on you saying the OPPOSITE! And THAT’S WHY I quoted you stating “NGLs are not crude oil nor condensate” “, Sherlock.
– Geoff Miell 9 Nov. “Again, where have I claimed NGLs ARE crude oil or condensate, Piotr?? Please provide any link(s) and relevant quote(s).
[ enter FACEPALM emoji here]
If my argument is based on NGLs NOT being crude oil, and I am perplexed why would you attack me for that given that you yourself said “GM: “ NGL s” are NOT crude oil ” then … why on Earth would you demand from ME, that _I_ prove that you said that …… ” NGLs ARE crude oil” !???
Can you read, Mr. Miells?
G. Miell: “It seems to me you are bamboozled by your own Gish gallop BS. You (NOT me) then stated: “neither are “shale oil” or “oil sands”.https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10 ….
Duh – NOBODY claimed otherwise, Genius. See the original exchange:
– GM: “NGLs are not crude oil nor condensate”
– Piotr: “neither are “shale oil” nor “oil sands”
Geoff Miell reads the above and
1) demands that I prove that he said that …. “NGLs ARE crude oil or condensate”
2) and lectures me: You (NOT me) then stated: “neither are “shale oil” or “oil sands”.
AS IF I ever claimed otherwise….
So all the “Gish gallop bullshit” is only in YOUR self-“bamboozled” head, Mr. Miell.
And if you CAN’T understand EVEN such a simple exchange – then what’s the hope for anything even slightly more nuanced? As in my previous post, below):
===========================Piotr Nov.7 =======================================================
Geoff Miell “ I proved that “shale oil” AND “oil sands” are a form of crude oil in my response ”
Piotr: You proved nothing. Definitions are NOT facts – they are subjective categories so you CAN’T “prove them” wrong or right. The ONLY thing you COULD prove – would be a logical inconsistency WITHIN the opponent’s argument – namely, that their use of these categories CONTRADICTS the definitions THEIR source used. But THAT you could prove not:
the Our World In Data graph I referred to – keeps “crude oil” as a SEPARATE category from “shale oil” or “oil sands”, ergo – according to the definitions in that graph – “shale oil” or “oil sands” are NOT “crude oil”. And should know – it was YOU who lectured ME, arrogantly throwing the legend of the Our World In Data graph in my face:
Geoff Miell Oct. 6: Piotr, did you check what was included as “oil” in the Our World In Data graph? No? [Oil data] include crude oil, shale oil, oil sands, condensates and NGLs ”
So you would have “proven me wrong” ONLY if you caught me using the Our World In Data data in a way INCONSISTENT with the legend of the graph. But I didn’t, so you can’t.
So all your huffing and puffing:
– ” Gish gallop BS-fest”
– “[ flooding the zone with shit.”
– “your inability to admit you are wrong? How many more times are you going to flood the zone with your BS?”
– “you are bamboozled by your own Gish gallop BS”
-“you are acting entirely in bad faith”
-“t he willfully ignorant, clueless Piotr”
– “ you remain unable to admit that you are wrong, change the subject, and double down on misrepresenting all and sundry who dare to challenge your ideologies/perspectives/fantasies.”
etc. etc. etc.
is founded on YOUR inability to understand what YOU read, on YOUR tortured logic, and on YOUR projection of YOUR cognitive and ethical faults onto the others.
Or in the words of the Bard – yours is “ tale of an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing.”
===============================================================================
Piotr: – “If my argument is based on NGLs NOT being crude oil, and I am perplexed why would you attack me for that given that you yourself said “GM: “ NGL s” are NOT crude oil ” then … why on Earth would you demand from ME, that _I_ prove that you said that …… ” NGLs ARE crude oil” !???”
Clearly, you remain bamboozled by your own Gish gallop BS. MY argument with YOU, Piotr, is about YOUR claim (NOT mine) that:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/10/unforced-variations-oct-2025/#comment-840465
…in relation to “shale oil” or “oil sands”. And what’s the ENTIRE basis of YOUR claim? YOU claim that “shale oil” or “oil sands” ARE NOT crude oil nor condensate, per YOUR earlier comments:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/11/unforced-variations-nov-2025/#comment-841787
It’s just YOUR unilateral ASSUMPTION that the Our World In Data graph you referred to separates “shale oil” and “oil sands” from “crude oil”, so “shale oil” or “oil sands” can’t possibly be “crude oil”. That’s the basis of your entire WRONG claim! You don’t provide any compelling evidence/data to support your unilateral wrong ASSUMPTION/CLAIM because there isn’t any. And despite the evidence/data I’ve presented to the contrary YOU continue to double down on your false claim.
And what is the data source for the Our World In Data graph you referred to?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-production-by-region
I note that the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2025 includes page 23, headlined Oil: Crude oil and condensate production in thousands of barrels per day*, which includes in the fine print at the bottom of the data table:
All the world’s problems can be solved in a garden – Mollison or Lawton. Knowing Geoff, he likely stole it from Mollison.
But their causes can be found in an oil barrel. – Me, just now..
Prompted by….https://x.com/Williamgallus/status/1986054212510163250
Hat tip to John Mashey: Merchants of Doubt film: Merchants of Doubt (2014) … A documentary that looks at pundits-for-hire who present themselves as scientific authorities as they speak about topics like toxic chemicals, pharmaceuticals and climate change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRWEqbl1wmk
Sadly, fans of these merchants are now infesting RealClimate with long-discredited claims. This might help, if one could get them to watch it.
Australia has so much electricity from solar power that it is going to start offering free electricity to everyone for at least three hours during the day as the wholesale price of power goes negative.
https://bsky.app/profile/marklemley.bsky.social/post/3m4wrops4fs26
While Australia represents a climatic region more extreme than the U.S. Southwest, this blend of solar, wind and batteries looks to have potential, especially as polluting energy sources such as coal, oil and gas become ever more expensive relative to renewables. Full article here:
https://electrek.co/2025/11/04/australia-has-so-much-solar-that-its-offering-everyone-free-electricity-3h-day/
Thanks DOAK for sharing that. If effectively put into action by the Aussies it will be not only be nifty for them, but represent an example for others to follow as renewable energy continues ramping up.
P.S. If you hear dull thump sounds, that’s probably utility executives throwing their phones against the wall upon hearing this news! ;-)
P.S.S. Gosh, I’d quite enjoy sharing this news with a certain President, lol.
It’s not everyone in Australia getting 3 hours fee electricity, even though it’s often headlined that way in the media.
It’s for people who are are in two-and-a-bit states (New South Wales, South Australia and the south-eastern part of Queensland), out of 6 states and 2 territories, and even in the states that will implement the scheme, only people with newer interval-recording meters will get it (though it’s possible to ask to have their meters upgraded). It doesn’t actually start until July 2026.
It may be extended to cover more of the population later. I can’t get it, because I live in the Australian Capital Territory (Canberra), and it’s not yet part of the scheme. The second most populous state, Victoria, which has about 1/4 of the national population, isn’t getting it.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-04/solar-sharer-free-energy-three-hours-outlier-states/105968998
The fact that it’s happening is actually not really great news, because it points to the fact that Australia doesn’t yet have sufficient storage capability to use that excess daytime solar energy at times when the energy would actually be worth money, so it’s trying to shift demand.
Developing that storage is in Australia’s energy planning out to 2050, but we’re still quite a way off getting there.
https://www.aemo.com.au/energy-systems/major-publications/integrated-system-plan-isp
Regarding the Bill Gates memo …
It’s worth noting that Gates has been a major funder of global warming denial. The memo amounts to little more than plagiarizing Bjorn Lomborg’s tired old propaganda … which is unsurprising considering that Gates has funded Lomborg’s denialist “think tank” for years, to the tune of $3.5 MILLION ….
“Bill Gates’ charity has donated more than $3.5 million to a think tank run by the Danish academic and climate crisis denier Bjørn Lomborg … donations went to the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which … was created by Lomborg, who for years has argued in op-eds, lectures, and broadcast media that there are more important global issues to prioritize than climate change … Those views align closely with a controversial memo Gates recently published …”
https://www.desmog.com/2025/11/05/bill-gates-donated-climate-denier-bjorn-lomborg-copenhagen-consensus-center/
Fascinating (imo) autopsy report (1st link below) looking at the implementation of clean energy provisions of legislation by the prior U.S. administration, as reported by Politico on Nov. 4th (2nd link):
.
“Implementing Federal Clean Energy Programs: Lessons Learned from DOE & Partner Agencies”
https://energyimplementation.github.io/implementation-report.pdf
.
“Slow rollout throttled Biden’s big clean energy ambitions, former staffers say”
By KELSEY TAMBORRINO and JESSIE BLAESER
11/04/2025 05:00 AM EST
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/04/rollout-throttled-biden-big-clean-energy-00634316
Zack Labe (now at ClimateCentral) provides useful data and visuals which communicate clearly:
https://zacklabe.com/arctic-sea-ice-extentconcentration/
Not content with monkey-wrenching US climate action, the Maladminstration uses ‘gangster-like’ bullying tactics to do the same to mitigation action on the high seas:
https://nuancematters.substack.com/p/trump-kills-an-international-plan
Hi Kevin. Wonder if the 12 month postponement is to allow the nations who favor adoptance to hold their finger in the air a year from now and see what the U.S. midterms indicate about the popularity of Trump and his policies for the remainder of his term?
The Editor Got a Letter From ‘Dr. B.S.’ So Did a Lot of Other Editors. The rise of artificial intelligence has produced serial writers to science and medical journals, most likely using chatbots to boost the number of citations they’ve published. – https://archive.ph/w9AAr#selection-511.0-515.175
We are experiencing a concomitant volume of BS comments here at RealClimate. Go figure! Are you not entertained?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxqpNuqluFc
Reuters gets it right: COP30: The latest in climate science, from faster warming to coral collapse
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/cop30-gathers-whats-latest-climate-science-2025-11-09/
Summary
– Global temperatures rising faster, sea levels increasing rapidly
– Coral die-off marks first climate tipping point, Amazon and Atlantic current at risk
– US climate work hit by Trump plans to cut, but other countries still spending on science
….
SCIENCE UNDER ATTACK
The U.S. administration under climate-denying President Donald Trump is hoping to slash funding for agencies that collect and monitor climate and weather data, worrying a scientific community that says U.S. leadership will be hard to replace.
Trump’s 2026 budget request, yet to be approved by Congress, proposes halving the annual budget for NASA Earth Science to about $1 billion and cutting NOAA’s spending by more than a quarter to $4.5 billion while eliminating its climate research arm, among other cuts.
Elsewhere, however, public science spending is increasing, with record budgets for science research in China, the UK, Japan, and the European Union. The EU also last month opened its real-time weather data monitoring to public access.”
[note: I continue to think that RealClimate is ill served by giving a platform to persistent and prolific fake skeptics/climate deniers, who are returning in force thanks to the generosity of the people they seek to undermine, and enhanced by those who cannot resist arguing endlessly with them.]
Thanks, Susan. Sharing that one.
Geoff Miell “ MWP1a occurred around the time of an abrupt Northern Hemisphere warming of 4–5 °C giving mean rates of roughly 40–60 mm. Why is difficult to accept that the global mean rate of SLR would continue to accelerate over time to similar magnitudes (or maybe more) occurring during the MWP1a?”
Piotr Nov. 3 “Because we don’t have the couple km of ice over half of North America and portion of Eurasia to melt (the contribution of Antarctica and Greenland to MWP1a SLR was minor)? And we don’t have massive meltwater lakes that suddenly find a way to drain into the ocean ? And that’s “why it is difficult to accept your 10-FOLD (or maybe more) increase of SLR over today’s value?”
Geoff Miell Nov. 9: “ Meanwhile, the Hektoria Glacier on the Antarctica peninsula, shrunk by nearly 50% in just two months (i.e. Nov – Dec 2022). […] you have no imagination for and ignorance about the possibilities, as per usual.”
Brave words (your lecturing others on “no imagination and ignorance”) because if you miss the proof – then they turn against you. So let’s put you to the test:
HAS the global sea level increased by 40–60 mm, maybe more” in 2022?
So whose ignorance and arrogance have you just unwittingly proven, Mr. Miell?
Piotr: – “HAS the global sea level increased by 40–60 mm, maybe more” in 2022?”
That’s YOUR clear straw man! Relative to what baseline?
Since year-1900, global mean sea level has risen about 23 cm, and about 9 cm since year-2000.
Since continuous satellite altimetry measurements began in Jan 1993, the global mean rate of SLR has increased from around 2 mm/year (in 1993) to almost 6 mm/year (in 2024). That’s certainly more than a doubling and closer to a tripling of the rate of global mean SLR over the period of a little over three decades of satellite altimetry data. Where’s the rate of SLR going to be with 4 decades of satellite altimetry data? I wouldn’t be at all surprised by somewhere around 8-10 mm/year. Time will tell…
And while the Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) continues to remain for our planet in a net energy gain state, planet Earth will continue to warm further. A world that continues to warm means a faster and faster melt rate for land-based ice AND a higher ocean thermal expansion, which means a faster and faster rate of SLR.
And the harbingers of accelerating ice mass loss continue to accumulate, for examples: Larsen A (in 1995), Larsen B (in 2002), Conger–Glenzer (in 2022), Hektoria Glacier (in 2022); that I’d suggest clearly don’t bode well for Thwaites, Haynes, Pope, Smith & Kohler glaciers, that are already speeding up, that would be significant contributors to SLR, as glaciologist Eric Rignot suggested in 2019.
Piotr: – “So whose ignorance and arrogance have you just unwittingly proven, Mr. Miell?”
I think you continue to unwittingly prove your lack of imagination for and willful ignorance about the possibilities of a global mean rate of SLR accelerating to 40–60 mm/year within this century. Last time I checked there’s another 75 years 1 month and less than 3 weeks to go before year-2100 is done.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a global mean rate of SLR of 10 mm/year sometime in the 2030s, and 20 mm/year by 2050. That equates to around 40-50 cm of SLR relative to the year-2000 baseline by year-2050. Beyond that, who knows?
What about 2 m SLR by 2100? I think on our current SLR trajectory, that’s highly likely the minimum.
What about 4 m SLR by 2100, as glaciologist Eric Rignot suggests is possible? It’s happened before during the Meltwater Pulse 1A event, and the Earth System is currently warming at a similar rate to the one in the Northern Hemisphere during the MWP1A event.
What about 5-“several” metres SLR by 2100, as James Hansen suggests is possible? I’d suggest Hansen seems to have a track record of highlighting climate trends long before others do that in time are proved correct.
Whether it happens within these suggested timeframes, or later, or not at all, I’d suggest depends on whether humanity takes aggressive actions to cool down planet Earth very soon, or humanity continues predominantly with BAU. I think within the next 5-10 years, satellite altimetry data for global mean SLR will likely provide a good indication how close reality will be to my current SLR expectations.
It’s not over yet… The Earth System is already committed to >20 m SLR, albeit over a multi-century/millennia timeframe. Unless we/humanity aggressively cool down planet Earth, then we will lose our current coastlines due to inundation from relentless and accelerating SLR.
Here’s Elizabeth Kolbert from The New Yorker (unpaywalled link): Governments and Billionaires Retreat Ahead of COP30 Climate Talks. Worldwide, every other week seems to bring a new climate-related crisis. Increasingly, the response has seemed to be a dulled acceptance. – https://archive.ph/H8LZx
“A report issued last month by more than 150 scientists warned that the world’s coral reefs are fated to die off; even under the “most optimistic” scenarios, ocean temperatures will be too high for them to survive. The Amazon rain forest and the Greenland ice sheet, the report stated, may similarly be destined for “irreversible collapse.”
“In the first six months of this year, the cost of climate-related disasters in the U.S. set a new record: $101 billion. (Though the Trump Administration has stopped keeping track of such costs, the nonprofit group Climate Central has continued to gather the data.) [also, here at EoTS]
….
“Brazil’s target, too, has been criticized as insufficient. And, just a few weeks ago, the Brazilian government decided, for the first time, to allow oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon.
….
“Bill Gates weighed in with a memo to COP delegates. In it, Gates noted that the world’s poorest people are also the most vulnerable to the effects of rising temperatures. But, he said, these people have more acute problems than warming—namely, being poor. Therefore, he argued, money now spent on reducing emissions would be better spent on encouraging economic growth: “Health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change.”
{Lomborg (let’s all (mostly those already well off) get rich & fix it later) is Gates’ authority, and makes large amounts of money by gaming people who don’t want to face reality. See Secular Animist cite DeSmog: https://www.desmog.com/2025/11/05/bill-gates-donated-climate-denier-bjorn-lomborg-copenhagen-consensus-center/ >$3.5 million!]
“It is understandable, in the age of Trump, that people—billionaires included—would want to focus on more tractable problems than climate change, even if those problems are as immense as global poverty.
“After 30 years—or 33, if you’re counting from Rio—it’s hard not to be discouraged by all that has, and hasn’t, happened. But there is no getting away from climate change. All other problems, poverty included, are linked to it and will be exacerbated by it. The notion that you can alleviate suffering in a world of uncontrolled warming isn’t just shortsighted, it edges toward magical thinking.”
This just came out: A negative result on whether planet tides affect the sun meaningfully:
Do Planets Affect the Behavior of the Long-term Solar Activity?
MM Katsova, VN Obridko, DD Sokoloff, NV Emelianov
arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.03889
The monthly updates of temperature data I usually follow are looking a bit lonely these days. Copernicus has posted for October with surface data and UAH has posted with TLT. (It seems the drought may be over after the so-far forty-days-&-forty-nights in the desert.)
After a warm September (due in the main to Antarctic temperatures), the warm October was a more widespread affair. The latest Copernicus daily numbers at ClimatePulse show anomalies dropping with the start of November. And the latest daily SST 60N-60S anomaly is shown below +0.3°C for the first time since early March 2023, that being also below the pre-“bananas!!” long-term trend values. These SST anomalies are a lot less wobbly that SATs I would argue more indicative of the actual state of global temperature. Yet these SSTs do still wobble and one swallow does not a summer make!!
UAH TLT also showed a warm September but in both NH & SH. The October anomaly remains unchanged from September, a drop in the NH, a rise in the SH.
The UAH Oct global TLT anomaly of +0.53°C is unsurprisingly the third warmest Oct after the “bananas!!” years (2023 +0.79°C, 2024 +0.75°C), but much closer to the now-4th-placed Oct 2017 (+0.47°C).
For a comparison of SAT/SST & TLT 2022-to-date, see the yellow graphics at the foot of “Banana!!” Watch.
Some ‘innocent’ fun (cartoon good too): https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/nov/07/why-does-everyone-keep-picking-on-billionaires-at-least-they-stand-up-for-what-they-believe-in#comment-173025151
GazzaFromGrongGrong
I am the very model of a champagne-swilling billionaire,
a pillar of pollution with some major fossil-fuelling flair,
or maybe I’m a tech bro out there demonstrating expertise
in fleecing hordes of people on the internet with practised ease,
but either way I’m happy in my bubble of entitlement,
a member of the world elite, the very well-off one per cent
exploiting suckers left and right so we can go on profiting
from living in an atmosphere that lets us do most anything.
I’ve been to Mar-a-Lago where our king so great and glorious
ensures that our empowerment is constantly victorious,
a hedonistic orgy where we millionaires and billionaires
can party on regardless of the sorry state of world affairs,
but poverty and raging wars don’t matter when you’re filthy rich
as long as money can be made to scratch our economic itch
by doing heaps of cosy deals and flogging off a lot of goods,
for we must put the focus on maintaining all our livelihoods!
Some links about science I wanted to share; I think these relate to scientific literacy/metaliteracy, and the scientific method:
Tibees: “Carl Sagan’s Guide to Not Being Fooled” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YvPyUhjnEw
* Sabine Hossenfelder: “Flat Earth “Science” — Wrong, but not Stupid” *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8DQSM-b2cc (*At the time I watched this video, I was unaware of her more problematic work (eg. “Sabine is Wrong Again: Capitalism Would’ve Killed Penicillin” Rebecca Watson (Skepchick) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7XAxiJGJdg , https://www.patreon.com/posts/89594488 , eigenchris “Why Sabine Hossenfelder’s video on transgender teens is misleading” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URpE-xZnQnk … I still think this linked video is good (also her video about quantum decoherence, and free will (2 vids)– well, the 2nd of those had an apparent misinterpretation of what people (presumably) mean when they say ‘we just need the will to do it’ [it = mitigate anthropogenic climate change: energy technology transition, land use etc…] – they (presumably) don’t mean it will happen magically through force of will alone)
Parkrose Permaculture: “Billy Nye’s big fail can teach us a lesson about MAGA” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJgRjwhbVuI (communicating the science of climate change)
Hank Green:
“About Those Aliens…” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP9qYWhbSuQ
“Why it’s Never Aliens” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZYSjqr6mIc
(also https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/08/critiques-of-the-critical-review/#comment-838115 – https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/08/critiques-of-the-critical-review/#comment-838161 )