Climate Change(d)?

[T.G.G. Moogly]

.... And Death Valley tied it's all-time record from last year, for possibly the hottest temp recorded on Earth.

You are still talking weather, not climate. Climate is about LONG TERM changes. Extreme weather isn't climate. Yes, Death Valley measured a temperature of 130F recently and the news media made a big deal about it. However a Death Valley temperature of 134F was recorded in 1913, over a hundred years ago. I can only imagine how a repeat of the 1930s dust bowl (of 80 to 90 years ago) would be covered.

Yes however, long term global temperature averages have risen... that is climate. Long term global temperatures have been rising since the depths of the Little Ice Age (the coldest period of the Holocene) in the 1800s. The question for climatologists is how much of that global temperature rise is attributable to anthropogenic causes and how much is attributable to otherwise natural climate change.

Academic. Regardless the source shouldn't we be reacting? "Hey Floridians, Relax! We just determined that the rising sea levels are 51% non anthropogenic! Whew! Close call!

So carry on with business as usual. Houston does not have a problem."

 

[bilby]

.... And Death Valley tied it's all-time record from last year, for possibly the hottest temp recorded on Earth.

You are still talking weather, not climate. Climate is about LONG TERM changes. Extreme weather isn't climate. Yes, Death Valley measured a temperature of 130F recently and the news media made a big deal about it. However a Death Valley temperature of 134F was recorded in 1913, over a hundred years ago. I can only imagine how a repeat of the 1930s dust bowl (of 80 to 90 years ago) would be covered.

Yes however, long term global temperature averages have risen... that is climate. Long term global temperatures have been rising since the depths of the Little Ice Age (the coldest period of the Holocene) in the 1800s. The question for climatologists is how much of that global temperature rise is attributable to anthropogenic causes and how much is attributable to otherwise natural climate change.

Academic. Regardless the source shouldn't we be reacting? "Hey Floridians, Relax! We just determined that the rising sea levels are 51% non anthropogenic! Whew! Close call!

So carry on with business as usual. Houston does not have a problem."

Well Houston is about 37m above sea level, so it probably doesn't have much of a problem in the medium term. Galveston, on the other hand...

 

[Swammerdami]

If you roll a pair of dice ten times, and double-sixes appear eight times, you can say "Odds are good these dice are loaded." With care, you may be able to come up with a probability estimate. A "thousand-year flood" or "thousand-year heat wave" figures to happen once a year if you have a thousand venues. A burst of several independent thousand-year events is less likely to occur by chance.

Some scientists have tried to estimate such probabilities. Developing a sound probability model for such things is very difficult, but their efforts are not necessarily wrong.

... Houston does not have a problem."

Yeah, we know. Tom Hanks said "Houston, WE have a problem."

 

[steve_bank]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/17/us/great-salt-lake-drought-dying/index.html

The Great Salt Lake is shrinking, It coud afct millions of birds and create toxic dust.

The fiddling while Rome burns metaphor seems to apply.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGanLUnjoPI[/YOUTUBE]

Carl Sagan's reflections and predictions about a coming "celebration of ignorance." Definitely worth the four minutes to watch.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

.... And Death Valley tied it's all-time record from last year, for possibly the hottest temp recorded on Earth.

You are still talking weather, not climate. Climate is about LONG TERM changes. Extreme weather isn't climate. Yes, Death Valley measured a temperature of 130F recently and the news media made a big deal about it. However a Death Valley temperature of 134F was recorded in 1913, over a hundred years ago. I can only imagine how a repeat of the 1930s dust bowl (of 80 to 90 years ago) would be covered.

Note that all of the records above 130F are considered highly suspect. 130F is probably a tie for the all time world high.

 

[SLD]

Climate change science is one thing I don’t understand. It seems harder to comprehend than things like evolution or astronomy. I don’t really understand what exactly leads to the conclusion that anthropogenic climate change is real versus ordinary long term deviations. I strongly suspect that it’s real because I do trust scientists generally and understand that the overwhelming scientific consensus is that it’s real.

I understand evolution is real because I’ve read books on it and it’s fairly easy to understand the evidence. We have physical fossils that I have personally observed as well. Climate change isn’t like that. It seems to me a very technical subject. Maybe that’s why it’s treated with such skepticism amongst the general public. You just can’t say, hey the overwhelming scientific community agrees, so you should too. You’ve got to be able to explain it in rather simple terms for marginally intelligent laymen to understand. That really hasn’t been done. But maybe I’ve missed it.

 

[Shadowy Man]

So is the issue that you believe the science says that unprecedented climate change is happening but you don’t quite understand how climate scientists believe it is anthropogenic?

 

[skepticalbip]

Climate change science is one thing I don’t understand. It seems harder to comprehend than things like evolution or astronomy. I don’t really understand what exactly leads to the conclusion that anthropogenic climate change is real versus ordinary long term deviations. I strongly suspect that it’s real because I do trust scientists generally and understand that the overwhelming scientific consensus is that it’s real.

I understand evolution is real because I’ve read books on it and it’s fairly easy to understand the evidence. We have physical fossils that I have personally observed as well. Climate change isn’t like that. It seems to me a very technical subject. Maybe that’s why it’s treated with such skepticism amongst the general public. You just can’t say, hey the overwhelming scientific community agrees, so you should too. You’ve got to be able to explain it in rather simple terms for marginally intelligent laymen to understand. That really hasn’t been done. But maybe I’ve missed it.

Climatology is hard to understand because there is a lot that climatologists themselves don't understand. Much of what drives climate seems to be chaotic. But there is much that climatologists do understand... The greenhouse effect is one of the drivers that climatologists do understand and apparently the news media and politicians assume is the only climate driver.

We do, however, know that average global temperatures are, and have been, rising since the Little Ice age because of measurements from many stations around the world. Because of our understanding of the greenhouse effect and the measurements of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, we can fairly confidently conclude that at least some of the global temperature rise is due to anthropogenic CO2 releases.

 

[bilby]

Climate change science is one thing I don’t understand. It seems harder to comprehend than things like evolution or astronomy. I don’t really understand what exactly leads to the conclusion that anthropogenic climate change is real versus ordinary long term deviations. I strongly suspect that it’s real because I do trust scientists generally and understand that the overwhelming scientific consensus is that it’s real.

I understand evolution is real because I’ve read books on it and it’s fairly easy to understand the evidence. We have physical fossils that I have personally observed as well. Climate change isn’t like that. It seems to me a very technical subject. Maybe that’s why it’s treated with such skepticism amongst the general public. You just can’t say, hey the overwhelming scientific community agrees, so you should too. You’ve got to be able to explain it in rather simple terms for marginally intelligent laymen to understand. That really hasn’t been done. But maybe I’ve missed it.

Climatology is hard to understand because there is a lot that climatologists themselves don't understand. Much of what drives climate seems to be chaotic. But there is much that climatologists do understand... The greenhouse effect is one of the drivers that climatologists do understand and apparently the news media and politicians assume is the only climate driver.

We do, however, know that average global temperatures are, and have been, rising since the Little Ice age because of measurements from many stations around the world. Because of our understanding of the greenhouse effect and the measurements of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, we can fairly very confidently conclude that at least some the vast majority of the global temperature rise is due to anthropogenic CO2 releases.

FTFY.

Your doubtful tone is harshly contradicted by the mathematics.

We know that CO₂ concentrations have gone from ~280 to ~410ppm, and that the vast majority of this increase is due to the use of fossil fuels. There's some room for doubt regarding the effects that the resulting warming will have on weather patterns and even on rates of both warming and sea level increase, but that the world is warming is not in doubt; that at least 99% of the CO₂ increases are due to human activity is not in doubt; and the new equilibrium temperature at any given CO₂ concentration is not in doubt.

Current greenhouse gas concentrations add about 3W.m^-2 of heating imbalance to the Earth, compared to pre-industrial concentrations of these gases.

It's a certainty that CO₂ isn't the only greenhouse gas; And that greenhouse gases are not the only drivers of changes in climate.

It's also a certainty that CO₂ emitted by human activity is by far the largest current driver of climate change, and that this driver completely dominates the current overall warming trend. All the other drivers combined are minuscule by comparison.

 

[skepticalbip]

Climate change science is one thing I don’t understand. It seems harder to comprehend than things like evolution or astronomy. I don’t really understand what exactly leads to the conclusion that anthropogenic climate change is real versus ordinary long term deviations. I strongly suspect that it’s real because I do trust scientists generally and understand that the overwhelming scientific consensus is that it’s real.

I understand evolution is real because I’ve read books on it and it’s fairly easy to understand the evidence. We have physical fossils that I have personally observed as well. Climate change isn’t like that. It seems to me a very technical subject. Maybe that’s why it’s treated with such skepticism amongst the general public. You just can’t say, hey the overwhelming scientific community agrees, so you should too. You’ve got to be able to explain it in rather simple terms for marginally intelligent laymen to understand. That really hasn’t been done. But maybe I’ve missed it.

Climatology is hard to understand because there is a lot that climatologists themselves don't understand. Much of what drives climate seems to be chaotic. But there is much that climatologists do understand... The greenhouse effect is one of the drivers that climatologists do understand and apparently the news media and politicians assume is the only climate driver.

We do, however, know that average global temperatures are, and have been, rising since the Little Ice age because of measurements from many stations around the world. Because of our understanding of the greenhouse effect and the measurements of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, we can fairly very confidently conclude that at least some the vast majority of the global temperature rise is due to anthropogenic CO2 releases.

FTFY.

Your doubtful tone is harshly contradicted by the mathematics.

We know that CO₂ concentrations have gone from ~280 to ~410ppm, and that the vast majority of this increase is due to the use of fossil fuels. There's some room for doubt regarding the effects that the resulting warming will have on weather patterns and even on rates of both warming and sea level increase, but that the world is warming is not in doubt; that at least 99% of the CO₂ increases are due to human activity is not in doubt; and the new equilibrium temperature at any given CO₂ concentration is not in doubt.

Current greenhouse gas concentrations add about 3W.m^-2 of heating imbalance to the Earth.

If that were the ONLY climate driver then your position would be valid. It wouldn't, however, account the few decades of global cooling up until the late 1970s that had climate alarmists and media screaming about the "coming ice age". CO2 levels were rising before and during this period and yet global temperatures were falling.

It was all the articles and books about "the coming ice age" that spurred my reading actual climatology research papers to see if there was anything to the hype and to seriously question the media hype.

 

[bilby]

FTFY.

Your doubtful tone is harshly contradicted by the mathematics.

We know that CO₂ concentrations have gone from ~280 to ~410ppm, and that the vast majority of this increase is due to the use of fossil fuels. There's some room for doubt regarding the effects that the resulting warming will have on weather patterns and even on rates of both warming and sea level increase, but that the world is warming is not in doubt; that at least 99% of the CO₂ increases are due to human activity is not in doubt; and the new equilibrium temperature at any given CO₂ concentration is not in doubt.

Current greenhouse gas concentrations add about 3W.m^-2 of heating imbalance to the Earth.

If that were the ONLY climate driver then your position would be valid. It wouldn't, however account the few decades of global cooling up until the late 1970s that had climate alarmists and media screaming about the "coming ice age". CO2 levels were rising before and during this period and yet global temperatures were falling.

The rate of CO₂ emissions by humans has increased massively since the mid-20th Century. About a third of the increase vs pre-industrial levels has happened since 1980.

Such a period of cooling wouldn't happen today, without some event that significantly depressed CO₂ emissions.

It wouldn't happen then without such an event either, but the scale wouldn't need to have been so massive back then. If the twentieth century had included a global economic recession (a "great depression" if you like), or a period or two of truly global military conflict (some kind of "World War"), then those events might have adequately explained a small drop in global temperatures a few decades later.

But perhaps such candidates for this explanation don't exist? If so, it would seriously weaken my arguments.

 

[skepticalbip]

But perhaps such candidates for this explanation don't exist? If so, it would seriously weaken my arguments.

Well there are climatologists who suggest that solar activity could be a major climate driver. As support for their suggestion they show that solar activity does correlate well with what climate science indicates are historic global temperatures. For example, the 'Holocene optimum' happened during a period of high solar activity and the 'Little Ice Age' happened during a period when there was a period of minimal sun spot activity. We are now in a period when the solar activity is the highest in the last 8000 years.

A solar study by Max Planck Institute makes their suggestion worthy of consideration:

https://www.mpg.de/research/sun-activity-high

The Sun is more active now than over the last 8000 years

A chart from the article of solar activity, not a chart of global temperature.

 

[bilby]

If the twentieth century had included a global economic recession (a "great depression" if you like), or a period or two of truly global military conflict (some kind of "World War"), then those events might have adequately explained a small drop in global temperatures a few decades later.

But perhaps such candidates for this explanation don't exist? If so, it would seriously weaken my arguments.

Well there are climatologists who suggest that solar activity could be a major climate driver.

Of course there are. Because it is.

It's just been completely swamped by the massive injection of CO₂ into the atmosphere by humans.

There's plenty of FUD to be found, but bugger all actual climatologists who think that anthropogenic CO₂ isn't currently the biggest driver of global temperature increase.

How this relates in any way to the non-existence of two world wars and a global depression in the first half ot the twentieth century, I am not so sure.

 

[skepticalbip]

If the twentieth century had included a global economic recession (a "great depression" if you like), or a period or two of truly global military conflict (some kind of "World War"), then those events might have adequately explained a small drop in global temperatures a few decades later.

But perhaps such candidates for this explanation don't exist? If so, it would seriously weaken my arguments.

Well there are climatologists who suggest that solar activity could be a major climate driver.

Of course there are. Because it is.

It's just been completely swamped by the massive injection of CO₂ into the atmosphere by humans.

There's plenty of FUD to be found, but bugger all actual climatologists who think that anthropogenic CO₂ isn't currently the biggest driver of global temperature increase.

I find the amazing correlation between the chart from Max Planck Institute's solar study and the IPCC chart of global temperatures (including the sharp up-spike at the end) to be quite suggestive that solar activity is a major driver of climate. This isn't to say that CO2 doesn't play its part.

But then I am not a climatologist (even though I have been reading scientific climate studies since the "coming ice age" hysteria) and neither are you.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If that were the ONLY climate driver then your position would be valid. It wouldn't, however, account the few decades of global cooling up until the late 1970s that had climate alarmists and media screaming about the "coming ice age". CO2 levels were rising before and during this period and yet global temperatures were falling.

It was all the articles and books about "the coming ice age" that spurred my reading actual climatology research papers to see if there was anything to the hype and to seriously question the media hype.

That was due to all the crap coming out of smokestacks. We cleaned up our act.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Of course there are. Because it is.

It's just been completely swamped by the massive injection of CO₂ into the atmosphere by humans.

There's plenty of FUD to be found, but bugger all actual climatologists who think that anthropogenic CO₂ isn't currently the biggest driver of global temperature increase.

I find the amazing correlation between the chart from Max Planck Institute's solar study and the IPCC chart of global temperatures (including the sharp up-spike at the end) to be quite suggestive that solar activity is a major driver of climate. This isn't to say that CO2 doesn't play its part.

But then I am not a climatologist (even though I have been reading scientific climate studies since the "coming ice age" hysteria) and neither are you.

What exactly is the correlation? As I understand it, the total solar irradiance has not gone up in any significant way recently. By what mechanism other than irradiance can solar activity drive global temperatures up?

 

[skepticalbip]

Of course there are. Because it is.

It's just been completely swamped by the massive injection of CO₂ into the atmosphere by humans.

There's plenty of FUD to be found, but bugger all actual climatologists who think that anthropogenic CO₂ isn't currently the biggest driver of global temperature increase.

I find the amazing correlation between the chart from Max Planck Institute's solar study and the IPCC chart of global temperatures (including the sharp up-spike at the end) to be quite suggestive that solar activity is a major driver of climate. This isn't to say that CO2 doesn't play its part.

But then I am not a climatologist (even though I have been reading scientific climate studies since the "coming ice age" hysteria) and neither are you.

What exactly is the correlation? As I understand it, the total solar irradiance has not gone up in any significant way recently. By what mechanism other than irradiance can solar activity drive global temperatures up?

I am neither a solar scientist nor a climatologist. My major was physics. But my experience is that there is likely a link when there is a close correlation between two events, especially when that correlation persists over extended periods... in this case over thousands of years. I have no idea how solar activity could drive climate but there does appear to be a link. Perhaps it has something to do with the way that the solar wind, which is more intense during active solar phases, interacts with the upper atmosphere... perhaps it is something else. Not knowing the the details of how something happens but attempting to is why climatology is a scientific study rather than an engineering discipline where the nitty gritty of how something works is known.

I summarily discount the likelihood that Earth's climate drives solar activity.

 

[Shadowy Man]

What exactly is the correlation? As I understand it, the total solar irradiance has not gone up in any significant way recently. By what mechanism other than irradiance can solar activity drive global temperatures up?

I am neither a solar scientist nor a climatologist. My major was physics. But my experience is that there is likely a link when there is a close correlation between two events, especially when that correlation persists over extended periods... in this case over thousands of years. I have no idea how solar activity could drive climate but there does appear to be a link. Perhaps it has something to do with the way that the solar wind, which is more intense during active solar phases, interacts with the upper atmosphere... perhaps it is something else. Not knowing the the details of how something happens but attempting to is why climatology is a scientific study rather than an engineering discipline where the nitty gritty of how something works is known.

I summarily discount the likelihood that Earth's climate drives solar activity.

Point me to the correlation. I have not seen nor do I understand there to be a strong connection between solar activity and global temperature rise. Upper atmosphere temperatures, which do often correlate with solar activity, are not the same nor do they have the same inputs as tropospheric temperatures.

 

[skepticalbip]

What exactly is the correlation? As I understand it, the total solar irradiance has not gone up in any significant way recently. By what mechanism other than irradiance can solar activity drive global temperatures up?

I am neither a solar scientist nor a climatologist. My major was physics. But my experience is that there is likely a link when there is a close correlation between two events, especially when that correlation persists over extended periods... in this case over thousands of years. I have no idea how solar activity could drive climate but there does appear to be a link. Perhaps it has something to do with the way that the solar wind, which is more intense during active solar phases, interacts with the upper atmosphere... perhaps it is something else. Not knowing the the details of how something happens but attempting to is why climatology is a scientific study rather than an engineering discipline where the nitty gritty of how something works is known.

I summarily discount the likelihood that Earth's climate drives solar activity.

Point me to the correlation. I have not seen nor do I understand there to be a strong connection between solar activity and global temperature rise. Upper atmosphere temperatures, which do often correlate with solar activity, are not the same nor do they have the same inputs as tropospheric temperatures.

I linked a solar study from Max Planck Institute above (post 93). I also included a chart of solar activity from that study that could easily be confused for the IPCC global temperature chart if someone doesn't look at the labels for the axis. If two graphs covering thousands of years can easily be confused then the correlation is obvious. Note: correlation does not mean causation but such close correlation over thousands of years does certainly suggest a strong indication of causation.

Correlations:
Where the IPCC chart shows global temperatures higher, the Max Planck study shows solar activity higher. Where the IPCC chart shows global temperatures lower, the Max Planck study shows solar activity lower. And this trend was over thousands of years, including the current up-spike in both.