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BAU wow wow

Filed under: — gavin @ 30 January 2020

How should we discuss scenarios of future emissions? What is the range of scenarios we should explore? These are constant issues in climate modeling and policy discussions, and need to be reassessed every few years as knowledge improves.

I discussed some of this in a post on worst case scenarios a few months ago, but the issue has gained more prominence with a commentary by Zeke Hausfather and Glen Peters in Nature this week (which itself partially derives from ongoing twitter arguments which I won’t link to because there are only so many rabbit holes that you want to fall into).

My brief response to this is here though:

Mike Mann has a short discussion on this as well. But there are many different perspectives around – ranging from the merely posturing to the credible and constructive. The bigger questions are certainly worth discussing, but if the upshot of the current focus is that we just stop using the term ‘business-as-usual’ (as was suggested in the last IPCC report), then that is fine with me, but just not very substantive.

References

  1. Z. Hausfather, and G.P. Peters, "Emissions – the ‘business as usual’ story is misleading", Nature, vol. 577, pp. 618-620, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00177-3

Sensitive But Unclassified

Filed under: — gavin @ 6 November 2019

The US federal government goes to quite a lot of effort to (mostly successfully) keep sensitive but unclassified (SBU) information (like personal data) out of the hands of people who would abuse it. But when it comes to the latest climate models, quite a few are SBU as well.

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IPCC Special Report on Land

Filed under: — group @ 8 August 2019

Thread for discussions of the new special report. [Boosting a comment from alan2102].

Climate Change and Land
An IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems


Land degradation accelerates global climate change. Al Jazeera English
Published on Aug 8, 2019

New UN report highlights vicious cycle of climate change, land degradation. CNA
Published on Aug 8, 2019

New IPCC Report Warns of Vicious Cycle Between Soil Degradation and Climate Change. The Real News Network
Published on Aug 8, 2019

Absence and Evidence

Filed under: — group @ 25 June 2019

Guest commentary by Michael Tobis, a retired climate scientist. He is a software developer and science writer living in Ottawa, Ontario.

A recent opinion piece by economist Ross McKitrick in the Financial Post, which attracted considerable attention in Canada, carried the provocative headline “This scientist proved climate change isn’t causing extreme weather – so politicians attacked”.

In fact, the scientist referenced in the headline, Roger Pielke Jr., proved no such thing. He examined some data, but he did not find compelling evidence regarding whether or not human influence is causing or influencing extreme events.

Should such a commonplace failure be broadly promoted as a decisive result that merits public interest?

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Koonin’s case for yet another review of climate science

Filed under: — gavin @ 15 June 2019

We watch long YouTube videos so you don’t have to.

In the seemingly endless deliberations on whether there should be a ‘red team’ exercise to review various climate science reports, Scott Waldman reported last week that the original architect of the idea, Steve Koonin, had given a talk on touching on the topic at Purdue University in Indiana last month. Since the talk is online, I thought it might be worth a viewing.

[Spoiler alert. It wasn’t].

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The best case for worst case scenarios

Filed under: — gavin @ 26 February 2019

The “end of the world” or “good for you” are the two least likely among the spectrum of potential outcomes.

Stephen Schneider

Scientists have been looking at best, middling and worst case scenarios for anthropogenic climate change for decades. For instance, Stephen Schneider himself took a turn back in 2009. And others have postulated both far more rosy and far more catastrophic possibilities as well (with somewhat variable evidentiary bases).

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References

  1. S. Schneider, "The worst-case scenario", Nature, vol. 458, pp. 1104-1105, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/4581104a

Bending low with Bated breath

Filed under: — gavin @ 22 December 2018

“Shall I bend low and in a bondman’s key,
With bated breath and whisp’ring humbleness…?”

Shylock (Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3)

As dark nights draw in, the venerable contrarians at the GWPF are still up late commissioning silly pseudo-rebuttals to mainstream science. The latest, [but see update below] which no-one was awaiting with any kind of breath, is by Dr. Ray Bates (rtd.) which purports to be a take-down of the recent #SR15 report. As Peter Thorne (an IPCC author) correctly noted, this report is a “cut-and-paste of long-debunked arguments”. I’ve grown a little weary of diving down to rebut every repetitive piece of nonsense, but this one has a few funny aspects that make it worthwhile to do so.

When they go low, we go “sigh…”.

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IPCC Special Report on 1.5ºC

Filed under: — gavin @ 7 October 2018

Responding to climate change is far more like a marathon than a sprint.

The IPCC 1.5ºC Special report (#SR15) has been released:

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Model Independence Day

Filed under: — gavin @ 4 July 2018

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all models are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creators with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are a DOI, Runability and Inclusion in the CMIP ensemble mean.

Well, not quite. But it is Independence Day in the US, and coincidentally there is a new discussion paper (Abramowitz et al) (direct link) posted on model independence just posted at Earth System Dynamics.

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References

  1. G. Abramowitz, N. Herger, E. Gutmann, D. Hammerling, R. Knutti, M. Leduc, R. Lorenz, R. Pincus, and G.A. Schmidt, "Model dependence in multi-model climate ensembles: weighting, sub-selection and out-of-sample testing", 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/esd-2018-51

If you doubt that the AMOC has weakened, read this

Filed under: — stefan @ 28 May 2018

A few weeks ago, we’ve argued in a paper in Nature that the Atlantic overturning circulation (sometimes popularly dubbed the Gulf Stream System) has weakened significantly since the late 19th Century, with most of the decline happening since the mid-20th Century. We have since received much praise for our study from colleagues around the world (thanks for that). But there were also some questions and criticisms in the media, so I’d like to present a forum here for discussing these questions and hope that others (particularly those with a different view) will weigh in in the comments section below. More »

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