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General Climate Discussion (1)

Posted on by SJ in Uncategorized

Update: Please head over to the new Discussions page!

Due to the incredible (and continuing) response in the comments on my post about Guy McPherson, I’m creating a fresh thread for general discussions or questions about climate here. Any comments specific to the Guy McPherson post can continue there.

625 thoughts on “General Climate Discussion (1)”

  1. Dear Scott,

    I’m starting to get into CH4 more to determine what among climate scientists would constitute The Clathrate Gun firing. Can you direct me to any scientific literature that would explore such?

    Thanks,

    Balan

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  2. I just saw that you started this thread this morning. I guess I’ll be the first to take advantage of it by asking something I’d posted in the old thread, but it isn’t McPherson related:

    http://crosscut.com/2014/06/16/environment/120507/aboard-rv-melville-ocean-acidfication-baskin/

    There was no link here back to the actual study. But acidification is even harder for me to wrap my head around than temperatures. I remember reading two Ars articles you wrote, one about how we’re “on track” to have the worst acidification in 300 mil years (is there still a chance to reverse that?), and one about phytoplankton’s response to the changing waters, so I thought I’d ask about this, specifically on timescales and degrees – how long does it take for the plankton to be affected as badly as this study calls for, and to what degree does oxygen production decrease?

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    1. Sorry- I didn’t forget about your first comment, I just hadn’t had time to answer yet.

      So, that article isn’t about anything published. It’s a sort of profile of the field work being done on a specific cruise, which will, at some point probably yield papers. It’s written sort of vaguely (for the general public). I mean, stuff like domoic acid in blooms is a real problem today (as everyone who deals with fresh seafood should know), so it’s interesting that they’re talking about conditions making that more common, but they don’t talk about how much. It’s a bit like talking about certain types of storms becoming more frequent- it’s kind of an extreme event sort of thing.

      Back to the 300 million year thing, it’s a question of trajectory. (Ocean acidification is mainly tied to the rate of atmospheric CO2 increase.) Given that records of past ocean pH are difficult to obtain, there’s plenty of uncertainty about just how far we’d have to drop to surpass the worst of conditions during those ugly periods in the past. I don’t recall them trying to give specifics on that, but this is probably a less-distant-future kind of thing than some of the things we’ve talked about. If I spitball this, my guess would be that 100-200 years of business-as-usual gets you there. Now, there’s even more uncertainty about the impact this will have on ecosystems. There’s a lot of research going on trying to figure out how different species are affected, and how quickly they can adapt or evolve in response. I can’t say that I’ve heard anyone worrying about declining oxygen, but I haven’t seen numbers on plausible hits to marine oxygen production and what effect that would have. After all, the other story of mine I think you’re referring to found that acidification could have a non-trivial effect on temperatures.

      (Sorry for the sloppy writing- time is short at the moment!)

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      1. I wasn’t worried about being forgotten – I just figured it was a question that belonged here :)

        The other story I was referring to was this, actually:

        http://arstechnica.com/science/2011/05/plankton-may-hold-up-to-ocean-acidification-better-than-expected/

        That CrossCut article’s point on oxygen confused me. Maybe I’m misreading it, but it sounds like it’s saying that phytoplankton could become more toxic to the things that eat them, not that there would be a significant population decline.

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      2. Well, there were two things there, right? One was a comment about the production of toxic compounds (which isn’t something all phytoplankton do, it’s specific to certain plankton) and the other was a reference to the fact that phytoplankton produce so much of the Earth’s oxygen.

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      3. I’m afraid I just got more confused then – if they’re just mentioning that fact, that plankton produce O2, but that’s not actually what the ongoing study is about, what does bringing it up do other than sound scary?

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      4. I think it’s one of those “think about how important these organisms are” reminders…

        Looking at it again, it definitely shouldn’t be in the headline. But that’s headlines for you.

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      6. That SimpleClimate link includes an opinion piece in the Guardian where the writer fretted that industrial activity is why we’re at 21% O2 instead of being in the upper 20s/lower 30s as in the past. I just looked through it. and one of the comments argued that the present concentration has been around for about 10 million years, largely due to forest fires around that time. Do you know of any event like that? I tried finding data, but Google searches that are some variation on “forest fire 10 million years ago” usually just turn up articles on the forest fires out west.

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      7. It’s been around this concentration for a long time, and I mean that in the geological sense. It rose around the Carboniferous, as huge amounts of carbon were buried in wetlands (instead of decaying and using up oxygen), but it fell again after a bit. (Some people think it rose high enough that forest fires became very widespread and violent.) Industrial activity hasn’t made a meaningful dent.

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      8. Just a note about that 40% figure. That was from a paper by Boyce, et al in 2010. Perhaps spurred by the criticisms, the team did more research and published earlier this year. The later paper considerably alters the conclusions which are that the declines are uncertain (in terms of being quantified) but that there has been a decline in two thirds of ocean areas and an increase in other areas.

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      9. Well, a quick look on Wikipedia (which I know is risky sometimes when looking for facts), some of the criticism came from other studies showing an increase, and something to do with cadmium (no links provided, and I definitely don’t know how without one) interfered with the 40% estimate.

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  3. Scott, does this seem accurate to you what Michael Mann in Scientific American wrote March 18th, 2014:

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-will-cross-the-climate-danger-threshold-by-2036/

    “To my wonder, I found that for an ECS of three degrees C, our planet would cross the dangerous warming threshold of two degrees C in 2036, only 22 years from now. When I considered the lower ECS value of 2.5 degrees C, the world would cross the threshold in 2046, just 10 years later [see graph on pages 78 and 79].”

    Thanks,

    Balan

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      1. Actually, I have a question about Mann’s numbers. The number I hear most often for warming already experienced is 0.8C. If we’ve warmed 0.8C, and the IPCC projects 0.3 – 0.7C by 2035, wouldn’t that put us at 1.1 – 1.5 by 2036?

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      2. That… is an excellent point. Mann was using one, very simple, mathematical model, whereas the IPCC projections include a large number of complex global climate simulations. But also, the 0.3-0.7C number is for the temperature averaged over 2016-2035 vs 1986-2005. Eyeballing the graph, the spread of temperature change by ca2036 is about 0.6-1.5C (again vs 1986-2005 average, which is about 0.6C above preindustrial) for a business-as-usual scenario of emissions. So the model Mann used would seem to take you to the top of that range.

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      3. Alright then, here’s another temperature question for you:

        All the IPCC reports seem to have been pretty consistent about the total warming by 2100 – that it’s in the range of 1.5 to 4C depending on the emissions scenario. But I see a lot of (press/blog) writing arguing that we’re on track to hit 6C by 2100. I’ve seen that mentioned a lot in ClimateProgress articles, and I’ve just heard of that book “Six Degrees” by Mark Lynas (who I don’t know much about). Is 6C supposed to be what you get by 2100 when you add in warming from feedbacks like the Arctic and ocean to the 4C number, or is it just a number within the range of uncertainty for the 4C scenario? And, if it’s in the range of uncertainty, what are the odds of hitting that? (I read an article that claimed they were around 5-10%, but again, that was a news piece).

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      4. Lynas is an interesting character, but I haven’t read that book to have an opinion on it.

        6C is definitely on the high side for 2100. The actual range for the business-as-usual projection in the last IPCC report was 2.5-4.8C, and you could argue that a couple things like permafrost that weren’t well accounted for could push that a little higher, and you could additionally argue that climate sensitivity could be higher (or lower) than the models simulate. (Of course, there’s also uncertainty around total greenhouse emissions by 2100 in a “business-as-usual” scenario.) As far as odds go, I’m not sure how well you could quantify all that.

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      6. Lynas was a full-on anti-GMO activist for a long time, including joining in the destructive raids of research plots, etc. Apparently, his exposure to science in writing Six Degrees led him to reevaluate his position on GMOs, and discover that much of what he had been campaigning on was false. You can imagine that didn’t sit well with his former community. If you google his name a bit you should find that stuff- he gave a speech in which he laid it out. (I don’t have reliable internet to find it right now.)

        I believe those wheels come out of the MIT study that was being discussed here earlier.

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  4. On the subject of headlines – I see the term “sixth mass extinction” bandied about quite a bit, and losing wildlife really depresses me (especially with big cats being so vulnerable; I’m a cat person). But most of the time I see it used, there’s no discussion of timescale, or else they assume that it’s already upon us (a la McPherson). As usual with this terrifying-sounding stuff, I went looking for more info (hoping to sleep at least without worry for the immediate decades), and found this at SkepticalScience:

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=619

    It’s from a few years ago, and I know there was some new report earlier this year (that I couldn’t find more than media write-ups on), but do the timescales – and the chance to reverse course – mentioned here still hold up?

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    2. From searches I’ve done, estimates of extinction rate vary enormously, from about 200 per year to nearly 300 per day. A lot depends on the actual number of species, which is unknown. It does seem clear, though, that the extinction rate is much higher than the background rate (of 1 species per million extant species per year).

      I believe the term is “6th extinction”. I think “mass” is implied.

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      1. E.O. Wilson wrote « The Crisis of Biological Diversity » in 1985. Interviewed in 2010:
        “It is indeed difficult to raise public awareness about the ongoing mass extinction of biodiversity. I and others have been trying for decades with every means available to us. The problem is that most people do not have much understanding of the subject, as opposed to crises in the physical environment, and extinction of species, especially in faraway places elsewhere in the world, seem to them a remote issue.”
        http://www.unesco.org/new/en/media-services/single-view/news/edward_o_wilson_the_loss_of_biodiversity_is_a_tragedy/

        Recently, at his new foundation: http://eowilsonfoundation.org/the-diversity-of-life/
        “I have said that a fifth or more of the species of plants and animals could vanish or be doomed to early extinction by the year 2020 unless better efforts are made to save them. This estimate comes from the known quantitative relation between the area of habitats and the diversity that habitats can sustain. These area-biodiversity curves are supported by the general but not universal principle that when certain groups of organisms are studied closely, such as snails and fishes and flowering plants, extinction is determined to be widespread. And the corollary: among plant and animal remains in archaeological deposits, we usually find extinct species and races. As the last forests are felled in forest strongholds like the Philippines and Ecuador, the decline of species will accelerate even more. In the world as a whole, extinction rates are already hundreds or thousands of times higher than before the coming of man. They cannot be balanced by new evolution in any period of time that has meaning for the human race.”

        Earlier:
        “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”
        — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

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  5. This applies somewhat to the McPherson discussion, but it’s a broader question, so I’ll ask it here:

    I’ve seen people who think McPherson-style doom likely claim that paleo-analogues for things like hydrate release are essentially worthless, because the rate of forcing is so much greater now. I’m sure deniers dismiss paleo-analogues as well, for different reasons. I would guess intuitively that the rate of forcing makes a difference, but I don’t know how much, or how to figure that out. Does that argument against using paleo-analogues to predict future warming hold any water?

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    1. It’s more important in terms of life’s ability to adapt. There are definitely parts of the climate system for which rate is important (e.g. glacial meltwater interaction with ocean circulation), and others for which it doesn’t matter (that is, absolute temperature is important, rate of change isn’t). So it depends on the kind of process you’re interested in.

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      1. Another example:
        http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00338-008-0381-8
        Coral Reefs, September 2008, Volume 27, Issue 3, pp 459-472
        Mass extinctions and ocean acidification: biological constraints on geological dilemmas

        “The five mass extinction events that the earth has so far experienced have impacted coral reefs as much or more than any other major ecosystem. Each has left the Earth without living reefs for at least four million years …. primary causes of mass extinctions are linked in various ways to the carbon cycle in general and ocean chemistry in particular with clear association with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The prospect of ocean acidification is potentially the most serious of all predicted outcomes of anthropogenic carbon dioxide increase. This study concludes that acidification has the potential to trigger a sixth mass extinction event and to do so independently of anthropogenic extinctions that are currently taking place.”

        (62 references cited therein)

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      2. Yes, ocean acidification is most definitely determined by rate of emissions. Important example.

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    2. This is somewhat related to the issue of paleo-analogs:

      Since the PETM is usually held up as the closest thing to what we can expect from BAU, how much warmer was the Earth, and what were the CO2 levels, right before the PETM kicked in? I’ve tried finding this online, but searches only turn up pages describing the 6C warming of the PETM itself. The Wiki page on the Paleocene doesn’t get any more specific than “it was cooler than the Cretaceous, but warmed really fast at the end.”

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      3. So, if the Paleocene was that much warmer, and the Cretaceous was warmer still, and at least some parts of the globe saw some seasonal snow in the Cretaceous, then I take it that, even under the worst plausible warming scenario, those of us whose favorite season is winter don’t have to worry about having to learn mountain climbing just to get to enough snow for a snowball fight.

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      4. Well, I don’t think the Cretaceous was warmer, but Cretaceous estimates are even more uncertain…

        As long as you don’t mind living at a pole (and can enjoy snow in the dark).

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      5. Well, to put that question more seriously – I currently live in the Midwest (eastern Nebraska) and will possibly be moving to Scotland for school within the next year. Under BAU, what is the projected change in snowfall for such areas? When I went searching, all I found was various summaries of that NYT article about the hit the ski industry could take from not long ago, which said exactly nothing about Nebraska or Scotland.

        But I could handle the dark. I’m a night owl anyway ;)

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  6. Aside — I’d welcome a pointer to anyone who has a summary of rate of change paths. I doubt that, at the rate of anthropogenic carbon-burning, we could still choose to go one way or another down some critical path by moderating our use of fossil fuels.

    I wonder, for example, about nitrogen inputs — internal combustion engines burn both fossil fuel and nitrogen (80 percent of the intake air is nitrogen; some significant part of that burns at the temperatures inside a gasoline or diesel engine, so we get nitrogen oxides as well as carbon dioxide in the exhaust).

    We know the combination of creating nitrogen fertilizer artificially burns fossil fuel; overuse of fertilizer puts nitrogen compounds into the air and water and groundwater; internal combustion engines put nitrogen oxides into the air. And the nitrogen cycle is being bushwhacked along with the carbon cycle.

    “Don’t push it faster than it can go” is good advice in a lot of ways. If only we knew enough.

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  7. http://www.newsweek.com/2014/07/11/disaster-weve-wrought-worlds-oceans-may-be-irrevocable-256962.html

    This is mostly about the oceans, but it throws in a new proposal for the “clathrate gun” mechanism – that hydrates would destabilize because of changes in ocean chemistry. The writer doesn’t say where he got this scenario from, and it’s completely new to me (well, most all of this stuff is, but this is really new). Is there any kind of research you’ve heard of that would support (or refute) this?

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    1. I honestly don’t know what they’re referring to with that suggestion.

      Other problems are likely to emerge because of the pH change. One of the suggestions is that the stable, solid form of methane—called clathrates—that lurks in the ocean sediment may be upset by changes in water chemistry and temperature, and release the gas into the atmosphere.

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  8. Something that I’ve never been able to get a good definition on is the term “collapse” when applied to ice sheets like Greenland or West Antarctica. Does it mean total disintegration, or does it mean a certain degree of damage, the way “functionally” ice free isn’t technically the same as no ice at all?

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    1. It means a large retreat to find a stable position. For example, I’m currently working on a story about a past “collapse” of the Greenland Ice Sheet in which it might have shrunk to cover two small areas of the continent that would equal (total) about a quarter of its current area. If you can imagine playing a million years of history on fast forward in your head, “collapse” is a pretty appropriate word.

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  9. I don’t always grasp what the IPCC means when they use terms like “low confidence/high confidence.” In the last reports assessment of abrupt climate change probabilities, it said that there was “low confidence in projections” of the collapse of tropical and boreal forests. In this context, does “low confidence” mean that a major collapse of these forests is considered unlikely, or that there are too many uncertainties on this issue for a confident projection to be made?

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    1. The Technical Summary (which isn’t the only place) starts with a box explaining the confidence and uncertainty language. http://climatechange2013.org/
      Basically, high confidence means “robust evidence and/or high agreement” among studies. Low confidence means “limited evidence and/or low agreement”.

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      1. Right, but I’m asking more about the context. On this chart:

        On most of the abrupt scenarios, an estimate on how likely an event is is given, and then a statement of confidence in that estimate is also given. The forest dieback scenario was phrased differently, and that’s where I get confused; whether there isn’t a solid consensus among projections, or whether there’s a dearth of evidence for any projections.

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      2. Ah, I see. Well, you’ll notice that probabilities aren’t given for the low confidence ones, but are for the medium-high confidences ones. Imagine that you’ve got only one study that projects forest dieback in some region, and that model isn’t known to be outstanding at projecting that process. That’s low confidence, and there’s no sense estimating a probability from such scant evidence. On the other hand, you could have many models and observational (modern and paleo) studies relating to something like the Atlantic circulation collapse. There could very well be a spread in projections based on that information (and a probability could be calculated), but you can have high confidence that the assessment has a firm scientific basis. If the spread is large enough, you might end up downgrading it to medium confidence even though there’s quite a bit of evidence (as in the case of Arctic summer sea ice).

        Is that a better answer?

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  10. In another thread, Balan wrote:
    “Scott,

    Damn. That’s worrisome. I’m trying to wrap my head around the implications of this rapid warming. How is best to describe this ever increasing warming? It’s not exponential, or doubling every so often, but increasing at some rate which I’m unable to calculate. Just based purely on past CO2 measurements over past 40 years, can we predict where we will be in 40 more years assuming BAU? Can you either give me link where I can try to chart it, or to a scientist that already has? I’m just looking for this data set only.

    Thanks,

    Balan”

    You shouldn’t forget that the climate forcing due to CO2 is logarithmic. The reason climate sensitivity is discussed in terms of doubling CO2 isn’t that it’s some special point in the future, but that the sensitivity is the same for any doubling. (i.e., 100 to 200 ppm, or 800 to 1600 ppm) This comes down to the fact that CO2 molecules are basically catching infrared photons. Other CO2 molecules can get in your way (if you are a CO2 molecule) and catch the photons before you do. The more crowded it gets, the less each molecule does.

    The BAU scenarios that are used on based on exactly what you’re talking about, plus attempts to account for other real-world trends like population growth, urbanization, economic development energy efficiency, and energy choices. The new “RCP” scenarios don’t break down quite like this in the final product, but the previous generation (“SRES”) shows atmospheric CO2 for each scenario: http://www.ipcc-data.org/observ/ddc_co2.html

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    1. Dear Scott,

      Thanks for this! Very interesting.

      Looks to me that by 2020 at current rates we will be at between CO2 atmospheric concentrations of 412-415 ppm. The A1FI worst-case scenario looks like by 2050 we’ll be at >540 ppm, which assumes that annual growth in CO2 concentrations will grow more or less beyond 3 ppm. Hmmm.

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  11. To support those wanting to learn more about climate change, and especially regarding the latest IPCC report, here are two links I found particularly interesting:

    Expert Reactions to IPPC AR5 (Science Media Centre; Sept 17, 2013)

    http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-ipcc-ar5/

    What climate scientists talk about now: As the IPCC prepares to release its latest report, Pilita Clark meets some of the key scientists behind it (Financial Times; August 2, 2013)

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/4084c8ee-fa36-11e2-98e0-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2auvAiDsX

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  12. Scott, if you know, would you be so kind to detail for us lay scientists the different methods employed to measure methane, and where it’s usually measured? If you’re not sure, could you direct us to some resources that could help us to learn more. I already looked around Google, found some sources (found a really awesome one, but lost it somehow), but nothing that summarizes everything.

    I believe there are several key locations for measurement.

    1. Stratosphere
    2. Troposphere
    3. In-situ (on the ground, and underground)

    Also, ways to measure it can be the following:

    1. Satellite
    2. High-speed and altitude jet aircraft
    3. Weather balloons

    Thanks!

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      1. Dear Scott, please delete previous one that has confusion duplication, and allow this one to stand. Thanks!

        Thanks, Scott. While I found this link useful to a minor degree because of its basic information, it’s super outdated not having picked up CH4 measurements since 2007, stating “Methane was steadily increasing in the 1980’s, it’s growth rate slowed in the 1990’s, and it has had a near-zero growth rate for the last few years.” Geez. Does NOAA update their webpages less often than the IPCC report is issued, or they just don’t take methane measurements seriously? Doesn’t inspire me in their diligence. Additionally, they only measure at two locations on its own (see more info below) – both on Hawaii: Mauna Loa (The Big Island) and Kumukahi (Maui). Yikes! No wonder they haven’t detected any CH4!!! It does not mention satellite, jet aircraft nor underwater retrieval measurements or methods. Hmmm.

        Various methods for measurement are:

        Flow meters
        Methane GC (gas chromatography) with flame ionization detection
        Valve Switch Box
        Flasks in Sampler

        Organizations which measure and monitor methane:

        NOAA ESRL GMD Carbon Cycle-Greenhouse Gases group (CCGG) with a mission to “determine baseline levels, trends and causes of variability …”

        CCGG has a global cooperative air sampling network, but semi-continuous sampling only happens in observatories and towers, nothing higher than tower level. Other measurements are only done discretely (whose exact meaning remains ambiguous), and jets do not go higher than 65oN making it hard to measure high latitude emissions if present.

        It would appear that NOAA and its global measurement network are not testing for CH4 in the troposphere nor stratosphere at all above 65oN. Wow! Is this a case for see no evil, hear no evil? I wonder. ing higher than tower level. Other measurements are only done discretely (whose exact meaning remains ambiguous), and jets do not go higher than 65oN making it hard to measure high latitude emissions if present.

        It would appear that NOAA and its global measurement network are not testing for CH4 in the troposhere nor stratosphere at all above 65oN. Wow! Is this a case for see no evil, hear no evil? I wonder.

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      2. I was just trying to find a page relevant to the sampling for this database, which I think you’ve seen: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/flask.php

        As you can see, there are sampling stations north of 65N.

        They are sampling the troposphere, which is well-mixed. It’s not a stratospheric database, where methane is less prevalent. For a quick example: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1966.tb00230.x/pdf and more detail: http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/32/85/85/PDF/acp-8-2421-2008.pdf

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  13. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/sep/28/met-office-study-global-warming?guni=Article:in%20body%20link

    This is an old article, and I suppose it illustrates how complicated some of this stuff is, but there’s one big point that throws me – this groups is predicting 4C 40 years ahead of most projections, but it’s also claiming that we have until the 2030s to avoid that. Most of what I’ve read suggests that we need to start turning course between 2015-202X to avoid “dangerous” warming, though “dangerous” isn’t always defined. So my question(s) are – if they’re predicting X amount of warming so far in advance, how do they allow more time to solve it, and if 4C between 2060 and 2070 is within the realm of the plausible, how plausible is it under BAU?

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    1. Best not to use the term “prediction”. Basically, they created another projection using an emissions scenario higher than any of the other ones- hence greater warming. BAU, after all, isn’t set in stone, so I suppose you can argue about how much is emitted if nothing is done.

      I think that the term “dangerous warming” in these news stories is usually a reference to the +2C goal. You can (basically) bend your emissions downward ahead of any goal/target/limit and stay beneath it. In their “peaking in the 2030s” scenario, how drastically emissions come down afterward (and how high the peak is) determines whether you land at, say, 2.5C or 3.8C…

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      1. So, they would’ve assumed a scenario beyond A1F1 in this graph?:

        (Incidentally – SkS hasn’t updated that graphic since 2012. Do you know of any similar tracking of emissions/concentrations vs projections that would be up-to-date?)

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      2. Reading again, I think they used A1F1… I think A2 was considered the best-estimate BAU scenario, with A1F1 being even more extreme. Sorry for reading that wrong the first time.

        I vaguely remember trying to find an up-to-date version of that (an older copy of it, actually), but think I settled on the figure in the last IPCC report…

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      3. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that one, if it’s this:

        Are we still tracking around A2 then? I’m not really clear on how much x amount of emissions comes out to x ppm.

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      4. I think they’re all so close at this point that it’s not very helpful, in terms of CO2 concentration. WG3 technical summary would be the place to look, but I didn’t spot anything including the old “SRES” scenarios like A2.

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      5. What’s all so close together – the different emissions scenarios?

        And I just stumbled on a very similar claim to that Guardian article: http://www.webcitation.org/5ul6K9Jmt

        Since Kevin Anderson popped up a few times in the McPherson thread – how familiar are you with his work/public presentations, and what do you make of them? I couldn’t find much beyond articles similar to this one (some of which claim that he argues for 4C by 2050, but I would guess that’s a typo or error).

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      6. The CO2 concentrations of the different scenarios, yeah.

        No, I hadn’t run into Anderson until recently. I don’t know what to think about what he’s saying, because I don’t know what it’s based on.

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  15. I see abot of scientific talk on here but not much common sense Real World observation. If it takes 40 years for the effects of carbon emissions to take effect, I don’t see how anybody could think we have a chance given than we have passed the turning point and are now already seeing unprecedented hurricanes, typhoons, flooding, droughts. Things will only get worse as the massive later emissions catch up with us. Most of your analysis emphasize the increasing global temperature and how it isn’t going to get rapidly warmer anytime soon, but what about the storms, droughts, tsunamis, volcanoes, sinkholes, and most leathally for us, the airborne pathogens that are going to get progressively worse in just the next decade or so? Even if it the earrth’s temperature doesn’t drastically increase, we have clearly broken the delicate balance that we inherited. Can any of your studies calculate when the first exotic airborne pathogens will emerge that could potentially wipe out the human race?

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    1. Sorry, Joel. Exotic airborne pathogens? Never heard of them. Can you share more with some links? Thanks.

      As for the long delay, yes, we have discussed this some over on the other thread How Guy McPherson Gets It Wrong, but this GM actually got more or less right, with the exception that the delay does not play out linearly (I think he knows this; he just says 40 years for simplicity), but could show its effects at various stages of release. Ultimately, the kicker is the same – we don’t actually see and feel the effects for some decades later, and this lulls many into a false sense of security and complacency. I think it would be great to focus more on this here. Do say more.

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  17. I was thinking of the permafrost model that you covered in this story:

    http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/09/how-much-carbon-is-released-into-the-atmosphere-by-thawing-permafrost/

    I looked up the abstract in Nature Geoscience, and I had a few questions. In your coverage, you say that by 2100, the model projected 0.25C (range of 0.1-0.7) of warming added by permafrost, and 0.3C (range of 0.13-1.69) by 2300. It wasn’t clear to me if the 2300 numbers represented the total amount of warming created by permafrost, or additional warming on top of the 0.1-0.7C by 2100.

    But when I looked up the original paper, the abstract doesn’t mention any numbers for temperature increase by 2100, only estimates on how many petagrams would be released by then. The only temperature estimates given was the 0.13-1.69C by 2300. Was there discussion of temperature by 2100 in the full report not mentioned in the abstract?

    Like

    1. Yep, the temperature numbers are in the paper. I could email it to you if you’re curious. The 2300 numbers are total, not on top of the 2100 warming.

      Like

      1. Thanks, I would be interested in that.

        If the 2300 numbers are total, then I’m a bit confused – if you take 0.25C by 2100 and 0.3 by 2300 as most likely figures, then that seems to imply that the amount of input that permafrost has into the Earth system falls off big time after 2100 and stays low for two hundred years.

        Like

      1. Balan, I was quoting you above, you wrote: “jets do not go higher than 65oN”

        Can you explain your thinking about that?
        Why do you think jets don’t go higher than 65 degrees north?
        What’s your source for that claim?
        Why do you rely on that source to post the statement?

        I’m interested in where people get their information about climate subjects,
        and which sources they consider so reliable that they post what they found there.

        Like

  19. http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2010/06/04/climate/

    I’m posting this mainly in the hope that someone knows where to get bigger versions of those maps. But since this is a few years old, I’d be curious to know how well this holds up. A common concern I read about is the Amazon turning into savanna by the end of the century, but even the worst-case scenario of this study has the whole region remaining some kind of forest.

    Like

    1. I read the paper- wanted to cover it but was in the middle of moving. The negative feedback is in play over long time frames (thousands of years).

      Like

  21. PIOMAS released their data on volume and thickness for July, and by that metric, the ice is at the “healthiest” it’s been in years.

    But I just now noticed something: the minimum volume corresponds to the minimum extent and area in September, but according to this graph, minimum thickness comes in mid-October. What’s the reason for that?

    Like

    1. Interesting- I hadn’t noticed that before. I think it has to be because you’re growing thin ice at the end of the melt season as extent starts to expand again, which pulls down the average. But you should ask in the comments on Neven’s blog- I’m sure somebody would tell you all about it. http://neven1.typepad.com/

      Like

  22. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/25646-peak-water-methane-blowholes-and-ice-free-arctic-cruises-the-climate-crisis-deepens

    Key NOAA quote:

    “The planet is changing more rapidly . . . than any time of modern civilization.” 

    That means the doomers are gaining momentum, and the ‘denialists’ are facing an ever increasing uphill battle in keeping the populace’s spirits up. I look forward to the coming developments to see who gets it right. But I really don’t look forward to those actual physical developments, because they are happening at an increasingly alarming and scary pace that frightens even the doomers.

    Like

    1. This is a bit off-topic from the specific link you posted, but it’s been on my chest for a while: Dahr Jamail seems to have fallen sway to the McPhersons of the world ever since he wrote an article about him last year. Just one example: he copied McPherson’s “timeline of escalating predictions” that Scott broke apart word for word, with absolutely no apparent effort put in to seeing if the timeline was actually accurate. Jamail argues by example why more pieces like Scott’s or Michael Tobis’s should be out there – Jamail is a journalist of repute who could be very helpful if he accurately reported the challenges and the opportunities to face them, but he seems to be slipping down the black hole instead.

      Like

      1. Dear Will,

        I’d encourage you to contact him directly to challenge him point by point, but I read that article and didn’t see that much particularly wrong with it. Regardless, I’d love it if you later posted your discussions with him on what you talked about here.

        Cheers,

        Balan

        Like

  23. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-grundvig/methane-blowholes-the-nex_b_5688019.html?utm_hp_ref=climate-change

    This is just an opinion piece, and it mostly concerns things covered in the other thread, but one statement gave me pause:

    “What few people realize is that our carbon footprint began to altar the earth’s geological clock 12,000 years ago. When Jesus Christ lived, he was supposed to walk on ice, not water.

    In BCE, our ancient ancestors clear-cut the land for rice cultivation in Asia and farming in Europe and the Mid East. Their scorched earth living removed hundreds of thousands of square miles of forests. Those forests were carbon banks that have kept the earth balanced in a cycle of 90,000 years Ice Age and 10,000 years of warmth for the last four such epochs, according to geologist Kirsten Peters in her book, The Whole Story on Climate Change.”

    Is this assessment within the realm of plausibility? I know that I’ve read elsewhere that the Earth was still on a long-term cooling trend as recently as the early 1900s, and I’ve never heard anyone claim that 0 AD was “supposed” to be in an Ice Age.

    Like

    1. The cooling trend of the last ~6,000 years is actually kind of up for debate, as I recently learned: http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/08/models-challenge-temperature-reconstruction-of-last-12000-years/

      The idea that humans began changing the climate thousands of years ago is Bill Ruddiman’s. He (et al) just published a nice review of that: http://anr.sagepub.com/content/1/2/147.full.pdf+html (open access)

      The crack about JC is an (hopefully artistically licensed) exaggeration of Ruddiman’s idea. We’re talking about a difference of maybe 1C– still quite a long way off from proper ice age conditions. And anyway, Israel is a bit far south for glaciation…

      Like

      1. I disagree with SJ on this in that CO2 levels did appear to rise slightly with the beginning and continuation of agriculture, and this awareness seems to be absent from his reply, and important to note – which significance adds to our climate change dilemma and needed solutions.

        Balan

        Like

      3. Hi, Scott.

        About a week after having returned from my trip. Happy to be back! How did your move to NY go? Hope you are settling in. :)

        I see where the confusion arose…we seem to be talking about different things. In my comments, I’m talking about the slight rise in CO2 in ppm at the beginning of agriculture, which shows an uptick in emissions, and you are talking about the cooling trend of the last 6,000 years. Basically, my understanding of this issue is so limited I’m not really confident in my own thoughts, but did notice the uptick in CO2 emissions around 10,000 years ago. I thought, “Wow! That’s interesting! It must be from agricultural practices on a global scale. I believe the papers you cited above concur with this, but there is a lot of other factors to consider, such as orbital changes in sunlight.

        Cheers!

        Balan

        Like

      4. All’s well- thanks. Much pizza has been eaten.

        I see. I don’t believe there’s agreement on what we can attribute to humans in that time period. It’s kind of a tough question to gain confidence in, and I don’t think it has received enough research attention to progress that far. Ruddiman’s proposal is certainly plausible, it’s just my impression that it remains an open question.

        But yes, the issue of how temperatures evolved between ~12,000 and ~4,000 years ago is a separate question.

        Like

    1. Hmm, not really. I find the coverage of the leaked drafts before publication to be irritating, so I haven’t looked at it much. The synthesis report is useful to an extent, but there won’t be anything new in it, obviously. The things noted in that Grist article fit in with that, but it will be good to have them expressed clearly.

      Like

      1. One should expect there not to be anything new, that’s true, so I suppose the attempt to play it as somehow more “stark” than the earlier text might just be media hype. Or then the writers’ effort to bring together all the threads that matter. I do not really understand the writing process of this amount of authors, or where that stands in terms of peer review etc.
        But the more general question is how cautious do the authors feel pressed to be, and why.

        Like

      2. So, the synthesis is written by a collection of authors from each of the three (already released) sections, plus a couple people who actually work for the IPCC. (Actual list here: http://www.ipcc-syr.nl/index.php/authors-and-review-editors) Their mission is to summarize the three sections and be the simplest, clearest part of the report. When you say “pressed to be”, I assume you mean by the evidence, and yeah, I’d agree that’s the general question. That, too, should be nothing new, and is a thing that evolves slowly.

        I don’t know if I’ve said what you were interested to hear.

        Like

      3. Hey, all. I have a different reaction than SJ to this “leak”. The IPCC summaries are co-opted by huge fossil fuel money lobbying government representatives to water-down and dilute them, as discusses previously in SJs post HGMGIW. It would seem prudent for scientists to issue summaries that circumvent government representatives and try to bypass official channels and describe it more accurately, as Dr. Peter Wadhams did so well by saying we are already baked in for 4 C. SJ, do you see this happening in this case? Your thoughts on this?

        Thanks,

        Balan

        Like

      4. The Synthesis Report has a Summary for Policymakers that gets approved by governments, just like all the other sections. The Synthesis Report itself gets approved section-by-section, which is actually more than any other part of the report goes through.

        Again, the governments can’t touch the facts. Some things were left out of the SPMs (but appear in the rest of the report, obviously), most notably stuff about historic emissions where governments bicker about who should be most culpable. I just don’t see it as being that big of a deal.

        Like

  25. SJ,
    New to the community and forgive me if you answered this before. I teach HS physics and chemistry so i can follow most of the science, but I still don’t get how someone concludes that Earth will be turned into a Venusian hellscape in 15 years. From what i’ve read most of Venus’ warming is caused by the water vapor that boiled off as the Sun baked the oceans. Since the vast majority of our water is still liquid and in the oceans, that seems a long time off. With the venting of methane into the artic atmosphere I still can’t imagine that drastic of an effect on a human time scale. I know we’re in for a rude awakening as hydrocarbon supplies deplete and warming continues to compound, but the elimination of life on earth? The complete breakdown of photosynthesis? This seems beyond hyperbolic and ethically reprehensible.

    Like

    1. I would say you’re not wrong, and your head-scratching is not dissimilar from my own. You’re right that Venus boiled off its water, but then UV radiation eventually split the water molecules, and it lost its hydrogen to space. That’s what it takes to hit full runaway hell mode. Venus’ atmosphere is almost entirely carbon dioxide.

      Like

  26. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26122?cmpid=NLC|NSNS|2014-0903-GLOBAL&utm_medium=NLC&utm_source=NSNS&#.VA0iRsJdWSq

    I don’t know if you’ve seen the studies cited here, or the ones that predict the current “pause” to endure for another 15 years. I know these two concepts aren’t mutually exclusive, but if you had to make a call on how long this “pause” might last, or if future natural variations would be overwhelmed, what would you make?

    Like

    1. I get the feeling that a couple years to a decade is a reasonable guess, but nobody’s sure. My gut reaction is to doubt that future variation will be overwhelmed, but England and Watanabe know their stuff…

      Like

      1. Could increased amounts of energy in the system give a boost to some of the forces that drive variation?

        Like

      3. Aha.

        New topic, but one of the related NS articles is this one: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329850.800-burning-blue-sky-earths-cloud-shield-is-failing.html

        As I’m not a subscriber, I can’t read the full article, so all I have is the first paragraph-and-a-half plus the description “It’s the clouds that stop the oceans boiling. But as the planet warms, our main defence against the sun’s fierce heat is weakening.” If you have access to the article, could you give some idea on what it’s all about and to what extent “boiling oceans” is accurate vs. headline grabbing?

        Like

      4. Hmm… sounds like someone having fun with a headline. I don’t have a subscription, either. It seems like a feature rather than a news story about a new study? I can’t think of any recent papers it could be about, at any rate… Maybe it’s a story about the cloud feedback and climate change?

        As far as the “boiling oceans” thing, condensing atmospheric water vapor is an important factor in preventing a true runaway greenhouse effect. (Although, to be a pedant, “boiled ocean” is precisely what clouds are…) If you want, this is described well in lecture 12 (Ice and Water Vapor Feedbacks) of Archer’s old version of his online course: http://forecast.uchicago.edu/lectures.html

        Like

      5. Actually – what IS the cloud feedback of climate change? I’ve only seen this mentioned in passing in articles and papers focused on something else. I know water vapor is a greenhouse gas, and more warming creates more water vapor in the air, but if warming causes more and longer-lived storm systems, that seems to imply more clouds lasting longer. I’ve also heard a little bit about geo-engineering schemes to promote “cloud brightening,” but without a good understanding on what that means.

        Like

      6. Ah, so fortunately, it’s complicated… 1) Water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas. 2) Droplets of water vapor in clouds are reflective, reducing solar heating. 3) But only low clouds. High clouds are diffuse enough (and for other reasons, too) that they absorb more IR than they reflect sunlight.

        Now, we know that warming boosts evaporation and atmospheric water vapor along with it. So the question is basically how does that change the coverage of low clouds? This is less about storms than more mundane clouds- particularly over the oceans. Since cloud formation is one of the toughest things to model (everything has to be parameterized because it’s microscopic), this becomes a tough nut to crack. The short answer is that we’re pretty sure the net effect is a positive feedback, not a negative one.

        The brightness (reflectivity) of clouds depends on droplet size, so the suggestion is that if you add aerosols for the tiniest stage of droplet to form around, you get more but smaller droplets. That would increase the reflectivity and provide a cooling influence.

        Like

      7. Really enjoying your curiosity here, Will. And thanks for such a lucid response, Scott! Looking forward in the coming months to descending in my submersible to explore the ocean of climate science.

        Like

      8. I imagine this is highly uncertain as well, but – as a positive feedback, how big a punch would this have by, say, the usual 2100 date?

        And does climate change have an effect on the size of of the droplets?

        Like

      9. Can’t think of a place I’ve seen it broken out like that… It’s one of the drivers of the range given for climate sensitivity. This will help a bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Sh1B-rV60#t=490 And check out these: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/01/a-bit-more-sensitive/ , http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/01/on-sensitivity-part-ii-constraining-cloud-feedback-without-cloud-observations/#more-13501

        Re: droplet size changing with temperature- Not in any obvious way I can think of. I suppose that more water vapor with the same number of aerosols could mean bigger droplets, but I think that way oversimplifies it and would be minor…

        Like

  27. Perspectives on a fracked planet:
    http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/26000-owl-of-minervas-view-isis-and-our-times

    The likely end of the era of civilization is foreshadowed in a new draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the generally conservative monitor of what is happening to the physical world.
    The report concludes that increasing greenhouse gas emissions risk “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems” over the coming decades. The world is nearing the temperature when loss of the vast ice sheet over Greenland will be unstoppable. Along with melting Antarctic ice, that could raise sea levels to inundate major cities as well as coastal plains.

    The IPCC report reaffirms that the “vast majority” of known fuel reserves must be left in the ground to avert intolerable risks to future generations. Meanwhile the major energy corporations make no secret of their goal of exploiting these reserves and discovering new ones.
    A day before its summary of the IPCC conclusions, The New York Times reported that huge Midwestern grain stocks are rotting so that the products of the North Dakota oil boom can be shipped by rail to Asia and Europe.

    Like

    1. It’s not clear from my formatting that the above is two AGW-relevant excerpts from a more general “the end is near” article from NC. Chomsky has an eye for irony and an ear for understatement.

      Like

  28. JH explains the obvious need and easy and fair way of implementing carbon emissions regulation.

    He says the world won’t act until the world leaders act, i.e., US and China. He says China is ready and is waiting for the US to make a move.

    Like

  29. Peter Wadhams has 3 new videos from 3, 2, and 1 month(s) ago.
    https://www.youtube.com/results?search_sort=video_date_uploaded&search_query=peter+wadhams

    El Nino in 2015 will bring first ice-free summer minimum in the Arctic.
    Catastrophic methane release will ensue (timetable vague).

    New studies refining estimates of Earth’s CO2 sensitivity show 4C is already baked in.
    It is not enough anymore to “just” stop emitting carbon–we must remove it!

    He notes that the IPCC, while admitting that 4C is baked in, neglect to mention that it implies the end of civilization.

    Like

    1. Bill, thanks so much for these links. Excuse me, but Jesus F$%^ing Christ! We are already backed in for 4 C. I notice Robert Scribbler saying the same thing.

      Scott, how is he coming to this 4 C?!

      Wow, Wadhams is morphing towards GM… more and more scientists are trending toward GM’s general position.

      Very very worried,

      Balan

      Like

      1. I didn’t try to track it down- long-term (millennial) equilibrium based on analogy with the Pliocene (when CO2 was roughly this high and temp was a few degrees higher), maybe?

        I don’t think it’s fair to say “more scientists are trending toward GM’s general position”…

        Like

      2. Perhaps you’re right, Scott. Instead, I wanted to have said, a very prominent scientists is saying that even if we stop all emissions now, we will reach 4 C by 2100 – that’s light years away from GM’s general position that it’s too late so enjoy your life now, whereas Wadhams is at least trying to research ways of getting the GHGs out of the air. Such a cheery difference, but nonetheless significant.

        Like

      3. Well, if that’s what Wadhams is saying, he’s wrong. But again, I’m guessing it’s not.

        Like

      4. Scott, Wadhams in the video mentions that new climate research is revealing that IPCC reports are off on its sensitivity. Are you aware of anything regarding this “new research” that would lead Earth to 4 C without further GHG emissions? Thanks!

        Like

      5. Definitely not. The only recent studies and arguments have been about the lower end of the sensitivity range. The 2007 report changed the usual (equilibrium climate sensitivity for doubled CO2) range from 1.5 – 4.5 C to 2 – 4.5 C, and the latest report bumped it back to 1.5 – 4.5 C, at least partly because of a few recent studies getting low numbers by analyzing temperature change over the last few decades. There’s been criticism of those studies and some criticism of expanding the likely range. Nothing has come out to move the central weight of the consensus off ~3 C.

        Like

      6. SJ wrote:
        “Definitely not. The only recent studies and arguments have been about the lower end of the sensitivity range. The 2007 report changed the usual (equilibrium climate sensitivity for doubled CO2) range from 1.5 – 4.5 C to 2 – 4.5 C, and the latest report bumped it back to 1.5 – 4.5 C, at least partly because of a few recent studies getting low numbers by analyzing temperature change over the last few decades. There’s been criticism of those studies and some criticism of expanding the likely range. Nothing has come out to move the central weight of the consensus off ~3 C.”

        Then, clearly, Wadhams was not limiting his review of Climate Sensitivity estimates to those appearing in IPCC reports. His criteria would be what is most convincing scientifically, not which publication it came from.

        Wikipedia has a summary of recent work in the area: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity#Other_experimental_estimates

        Like

      7. I’m talking about all research, not some subset. (Not that the IPCC writers consider a subset…) The sparse Wiki list doesn’t really add anything. Only the last one is newer than the last IPCC report, anyway, and it refers to the millennia-scale “Earth system sensitivity”, not the centuries-scale “equilibrium climate sensitivity” we were talking about.

        In general, remember– a mountain of research has been published on this. One study does not move a mountain. It contributes to its shape.

        Like

      9. SJ wrote:
        “I’m talking about all research, not some subset. (Not that the IPCC writers consider a subset…) The sparse Wiki list doesn’t really add anything. Only the last one is newer than the last IPCC report, anyway, and it refers to the millennia-scale “Earth system sensitivity”, not the centuries-scale “equilibrium climate sensitivity” we were talking about.

        In general, remember– a mountain of research has been published on this. One study does not move a mountain. It contributes to its shape.”

        Wadhams would not promote a particular estimate/analysis over other ones or over the IPCC consensus unless he thought it had convincing superiority. So, you are left with a choice of opinions, Wadhams vs IPCC. The other alternative is to start a new post and argue from the facts.

        Like

      10. Go find some facts beyond “I heard one person say x” if you want to talk turkey. Actually, you could even back up to square one and explain exactly what Wadhams actually said about this. I’m not even sure what you’re claiming anymore. I think you might be arguing as a hip-shot. We are talking about ECS being in the neighborhood of 3C.

        In case anyone’s curious, you could take a look at this survey of researchers: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es501998e
        Figure 8, specifically, displays the results on climate sensitivity.

        Like

      12. Balan wrote:
        “Wow, Wadhams is morphing towards GM… more and more scientists are trending toward GM’s general position.”

        I think this is a fair assessment. Science has been legitimately skeptical of the methane hypothesis (vis, towering figures such as Hansen and Francis); so, as the evidence waxes, hope wanes.

        An increasingly familiar refrain:
        “Climate Scientist: “We’re Fucked” Over Methane”
        (Jason Box interview, Youtube, uploaded Aug. 10, 2014)

        Another example:
        “the way we’re going now the oceans will be dead by 2050”
        https://fractalplanet.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/how-guy-mcpherson-gets-it-wrong/comment-page-5/#comment-2197
        Certainly GMesque in magnitude and attitude.
        My original post neglected to credit Richard Heinberg with the quote from Earle.
        It was a recent video, it was a small outdoors gathering at someone’s house, I believe, but looking through his entire list (7 pages) of videos on Youtube, I can’t find it now!

        I believe GM is at least slightly “mad”, but in no way stupid. Perhaps “touched by God”. It’s wrong to ascribe motive, but my mind does it anyway. In the absence of petro-dollar-funded propaganda to ensnare the popular imagination, he has resorted to sensationalistic lies to cut through the noise and reach people with a truth he feels deeply. Problem is, the sensationalism grows truer every day. I liken him to the Unibomber–someone who deeply felt the sickness of our society and times but disdained any futile means of sane or conventional communication. The Unibomber was perhaps more symbol–GM, more prophet. But each has an element of the other.

        Like

      13. Regarding death of oceans, climate change aside, just the runoff from commercial and industrial agriculture is enough by 2040 to kill the oceans through massive dead zones of de-oxygenated water. I remember there was some UN report a few years back that I was citing in my classes to students. Did a five minute search on Google but didn’t find it. These days it seems that climate change is overwhelming other long-term degenerative practices.

        Here’s a link from NOAA on Vision 2040: The Future of U.S. Marine Fisheries:

        Click to access vision_2040_final_draft.pdf

        Like

      14. “Truth is superior to provability”
        “Notions of feedback and non-linearity”
        Kurt Godel, famous logician and mathematician. Incompleteness theorem (related to complexity theory, I believe).
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del
        All mentioned early in the documenatary.

        The story of Ted Kaczynski (more prophet than I was aware):
        Youtube: “The Net: The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet”
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Netz
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski#Prison

        Ken Kesey
        The Grateful Dead
        Andy Warhol

        It’s all connected!

        Like

      15. wordpress is inserting a line of empty space before each hyperlink. This screws with the visual logic. NOT LIKE!

        Like

      16. Bill, I prefer the space b/w links, actually. I think you’re going a bit overboard on the all things are connected comment. OTOH, just watch an Al Jazeera story of a First Nation in the Grand Canyon fighting developers from stealing their water and a community elder said something to the effect of, “We don’t separate things like the white man.” Famous professor of comparative religions Houston Smith said once in something I recall reading or watching of his, for better or worse, when entering a Western libraryit cannot give you an overall connecting principle to all creation because everything is divided into parts, whereas in indigenous traditions there is a unifying thread permeating their entire cosmology, even if their founding myth was being born out of a lake or stream. Ironically, science itself tells us much the same, that we evolved from the oceans, and even more, from The Big Bang (expansion). Fun. And like all indigenous peoples, the one thing they all hold in common is reverence for the Earth Mother. If we don’t reclaim this ethic and integrate it into all our systems, well… It goes without saying.

        Like

      17. Balan wrote:
        “Bill, I prefer the space b/w links”

        It’s aesthetics (at least–I would argue that it goes beyond aesthetics). Some people are careless and inconsistent about it. Others, like me, are obsessive. Bottom line, there’s no reason to preclude your choice. It’s not like the characters are going to get mixed up if they’re too close together.
        http://SHEESH

        Like

      18. If you put the link in-line, then you get it on the next line–i.e., no inserted space. So, now I can have my preferred formatting. Bad luck for those who like in-line links (whom are many). I believe that includes you, Balan. Now. See how it feels!

        Like

      19. Balan wrote:
        ” I think you’re going a bit overboard on the all things are connected comment. OTOH…”

        Thanks for including the refutation–makes my job easier. LOL

        BTW, I wasn’t saying ALL THINGS–just the things in the documentary that I listed. The plot of the documentary was how all these things link up. Engrossing until about the middle, which was where I fell asleep.

        Balan wrote
        “If we don’t reclaim this ethic and integrate it into all our systems, well… It goes without saying.”

        The center cannot hold?
        Things fall apart?

        Like

    2. Excuse me, I’m confusing

      1) 4C@equilibrium already baked in (ref. “Peter Wadhams For The Motion opt” on Youtube, uploaded Aug. 8, 2014.)

      with

      2) 4C projected for the end of the century, 2C by mid-century, assuming conservative BAU, per the IPCC (ref. “Professor Peter Wadhams Discusses Subsea Permafrost Methane Releases And Impacts on Civilisation”, on Youtube, uploaded June 28, 2014)

      Like

      2. balan wrote:
        “Does this assume all GHG emissions stop now?”

        No. It’s the “conservative Business As Usual” scenario from the IPCC report. i.e., one of the BAU scenarios, but one of the least aggressive ones in terms of how bad emissions will be. So, it’s assuming quite a lot of future emissions.

        I apologize for the confusion.

        Like

      3. Balan wrote:
        “Does this assume all GHG emissions stop now?”

        In the same video he says if man-made emissions stop now, in about a hundred years time, we would be at 2C. This was in pointing out the fallacy of some people saying we have to keep warming below 2C.

        Like

  30. Youtube: Gwynne Dyer on Climate Wars
    Gwynne Dyer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwynne_Dyer

    Nice bit of reporting. Dyer spent a year and a half researching the AGW problem, did 80 or 90 interviews with scientists and government people.

    Does the Pentagon believe in climate change?
    Why has IPCC failed in its mission?
    What is up with 2C?
    Why Pakistan is F**Ked.
    Who will feed the world when all the grain is gone?
    And more.

    This is remarkably up-to-date, well-informed and comprehensive. It is the first Youtube I’ve seen that represents the evidently incipient consensus that 2-3C is the take-off point for large, unstoppable methane feedback. First I had heard of this was in an email from Nick Breeze, who has a series of videos on Youtube with Wadhams, Wasdell, Shakhova and others. He cited the paleontologist Michael Benton as an example of one scientist with this opinion. Benton mentions this in his 2005 book “When Life Nearly Died”, but does not go into the science behind it. But since the science is at least 10 years old now, I expect to see it showing up more and more. Previously, the common understanding seems to have been that it took 5 or 6 degrees of warming to set the methane free. For example, see the Permian extinction documentary, Youtube: The Day the Earth Nearly Died, which began as a BBC series in 2002 and featured Benton and other scientists as interviewees. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_The_Earth_Nearly_Died So, somewhere in between then and 2005, the opinion started to shift. Shakhova, et al are now producing evidence of subsea permafrost thawing that seems to support this opinion in realtime.

    Like

    2. bill shockley wrote:
      “Why has IPCC failed in its mission?”

      Apparently, Gwynne Dyer was wrong—IPCC has SUCCEEDED in its mission. According to this commenter (Sept. 2012):

      … The IPCC was set up under Reagan, Thatcher & Gorbachev not as a forum to evaluate the science of climate but to give governments a lowest common denominator veto over just what is presented to the public as the consensus of scientific understanding…

      and

      but we are heading into a time of consequences when global losses and damages are liable to arouse deadly serious public anger. At that point an accurate outline of our predicament and its resolution will be critically valuable to the chances of success. The core question of course is whether scientists will be willing to assemble such an independent body. Regards, Lewis

      The entire comment is worth reading.
      http://www.climatecodered.org/2012/09/as-arctic-system-changes-we-must-adjust.html

      Like

      2. SJ wrote:
        “Utter conspiracy nonsense. Please don’t post any more of it here.”

        You’re right, it is a worthless post. Stating the obvious, denying the obvious… both make for bad conversation.

        Like

    1. Interesting. I mean, the oceans have warmed- that shouldn’t be ignored. But this sounds more like “weather” than “climate”. Ocean and atmospheric circulation are complicated beasts, and there’s plenty of sloshing driving short-term variability. That includes El Nino and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation they’re talking about.

      Where it gets really complicated is trying to figure out whether long-term, anthropogenic warming alters any of the sloshing. Here’s an example of how complex these processes are: http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/08/strong-la-ninas-recently-blame-the-atlantic-and-a-volcano/

      Like

  32. Here’s a study along the lines of what Benton suggests (2-3C methane take-off point):
    In February 2013, scientists using radiometric dating techniques on Russian cave formations to measure historic melting rates warned that a +1.5ºC global rise in temperature compared to pre-industrial was enough to start a general permafrost melt. They found that “global climates only slightly warmer than today are sufficient to thaw extensive regions of permafrost.” Lead researcher Anton Vaks says that: “1.5ºC appears to be something of a tipping point” (10).
    http://www.climatecodered.org/2014/06/carbon-budgets-climate-sensitivity-and.html

    The linked blog post also brings forth some of the research Wadhams may be referring to when he says he favors a higher than conventional value for ECS. Note that IPCC are no longer able to claim a single favored value.
    “No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies” (IPCC 2013). This is quoted in the linked blog post by David Spratt.

    The post is making the same point about the available carbon budget as Wadhams was making: it’s less than zero.

    Like

    1. @Scott

      Noticing you haven’t commented on Bill’s post. Does this indicate agreement, apathy or a third possibility?

      Like

      1. Apathy. I’m content to let Bill express himself, whether I agree or not. And I don’t always need to wade in when I disagree.

        Like

      2. I finally read that Spratt article, and the stuff on ECS left me pretty confused, mostly thanks to this paragraph:

        “However a recent paper by Sherwood, Bony et al. looking at clouds and atmospheric convective mixing finds that on ‘the basis of the available data… the new understanding presented here pushes the likely long-term global warming towards the upper end of model ranges.’ Taking ‘the available observations at face value,’ they write, “implies a most likely climate sensitivity of about 4°C, with a lower limit of about 3°C'”

        I found that Sherwood study, but it’s naturally behind a paywall, so all I have to go on is this paragraph, which threw me because Spratt quotes Sherwood as predicting that the high end of models is likely in “long-term,” even though they’re talking about short-term ECS. I also read the Nuccitelli Guardian article and the section in the IPCC report (didn’t know they had decided they couldn’t give a best estimate). I still see the 3C ECS value (sometimes pushed up to 3.2) presented almost everywhere, but if the IPCC didn’t feel it could name a best estimate on ECS, I’d be curious to know the confidence level on the ECS range.

        Like

      3. I think you gathered this, but that study is one of a number that evaluate the models on some (assumingly important) parameter, and note commonalities between the models that score best in that test. Some of these studies have found that the higher-sensitivity models were the ones that did best on that parameter. (There are lots of model-data comparisons, of course, and I’m sure others won’t have that same result. Model evaluations are incredibly complex, which shouldn’t be a surprise given how many facets there are to evaluate.)

        But to your question, it’s just the ambiguity of “long-term”. They are talking about ECS, which is on the scale of a century or three. “Short-term” is probably used more commonly for decadal scale stuff, which is where we’re more likely to be talking about the Transient Climate Response number.

        3C has been the most common ECS number given for quite a while, but the AR5 lead authors backed off of that. Some have disputed that decision, but presumably others have felt it was appropriate. The 1.5-4.5C range is the “likely” range, which is report code for the 66% confidence range.

        Like

      4. “But to your question, it’s just the ambiguity of ‘long-term.’ They are talking about ECS, which is on the scale of a century or three. “Short-term” is probably used more commonly for decadal scale stuff, which is where we’re more likely to be talking about the Transient Climate Response number.”

        Ah. So, if we end up doubling CO2 to 560ppm, but for some reason stabilize right at that level, it would take 1-300 years before we hit 3C (or whatever the ECS is)?

        Like

      5. Basically, yeah. Transient Climate Response is defined as the temperature change at the exact time you hit double CO2.

        Like

  33. Two things.

    One: this interesting prediction: http://solarindustrymag.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.14464

    Maybe it’s too optimistic, maybe not, but it’s something.

    Two: I noticed on the comments section of that Ecoshock show you were on, a woman keeps bringing up trees dying of ozone. A quick Google search done during a family gathering (ie not much time to look) yielded an article about ozone decreasing tree growth (nothing on dying) in northern and temperate latitudes, and a few articles on how trees can make ground level ozone worse when they exhale. Do you have any good resources/studies/fun facts on that issue you could recommend?

    Like

    1. Google probably brought me to the same paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2008.01774.x/abstract Nothing else comes to mind.
      Regardless of whether it “kills trees”, the effect described is not truly a feedback. You could call it a “knock-on”, I guess, but the cause is ozone pollution– not warming. If it results in more warming, that doesn’t produce more ozone pollution.

      That study doesn’t include the effect of CO2 fertilization, or positive/negative (regionally) effects of warming on plant biomass, so it shouldn’t be taken to predict a decline in the overall plant carbon sink.

      Like

  34. Youtube: A 50 Year Plan for Surviving Climate Change

    This is the first non-GM video I’ve seen that integrates economic/climate/environment emerging catastrophes. You’ve got the peak-oilers like Heinberg that don’t pay much attention to climate or environment, but have a very close analysis/argument on why the industrial economy cannot survive. You’ve got people like Synthia Earle who know about the ocean and know that it cannot survive, irrespective of what happens with the climate. And then, of course, the climate doomers, too many to mention. Wadhams, Shakhova, Francis, Hansen and many less well known. But none of these express or attempt a comprehensive analysis that considers or integrates all of the systems that are failing. I’m starting to see this as one unique thing about GM. This video (I forget the professor’s name) does well integrating all of the above and even gives time-delineated (short, medium and long-term) guides for personal and community-based strategies for coping/surviving. Bleak, unemotional, matter-of-fact. Everything comes off as old-hat if you’ve been through the GM wars. Although I do find his “short” timeframe a bit disturbing: the next 10 years.

    Like

    1. I think you’re being a bit overly dismissive of Heinberg. He does address climate change in the three books I’ve read, though, admittedly, to nowhere near the same level that GM does. GM’s big subject is climate change but also addresses other issues in a lesser way. Actually, Greer also covers many issues, as does Kunstler.

      Thanks for the link; I’m over my data limit, at the moment, so viewing it will have to wait.

      Like

    2. mikeroberts wrote:
      “I think you’re being a bit overly dismissive of Heinberg. He does address climate change in the three books I’ve read, though, admittedly, to nowhere near the same level that GM does. GM’s big subject is climate change but also addresses other issues in a lesser way. Actually, Greer also covers many issues, as does Kunstler.”

      You’re right that many others also treat the big picture and muliple facets. But with Heinberg, although he does great work on peak-oil and how oil relates to the world economy and the evolution of the species and our present population predicament, climate change is a decided sidelight for him, and from what I’ve seen, his views are not well developed or well-informed. I could be wrong–I didn’t have a large sampling of his climate thoughts.

      I think Bud Nye would say the difficulty in being comprehensive is an aspect of complexity. To really do a good job in just one area, nowadays, requires complete dedication over most of a lifetime.

      Like

    1. These claims that Wadhams says there is no physics behind his prediction are silly. We’ve been over this already. The established, non-linear trend, points to 2015, and that will happen, plus or minus an allowance for margin of error, unless the disappearance of sea-ice creates a countering negative feedback. He cites physical causes: the albedo effect, primarily. Mazlowsiki’s arctic climate model, which is a fine-grained physical model, agrees with the trend.

      Whether he will or won’t place money on his prediction is
      1) hearsay
      2) also silly. How much should he have to wager to speak what he believes? How much have the others wagered on their bet that sea-ice extent will be 40% less than the 1979-2005 average by the end of the century, which is the consensus view in the most recent IPCC report, and which HAS ALREADY BEEN BREACHED? LOL

      Wadhams’ prediction doesn’t wager the survival of humanity and the planet if he’s off by a few years. I would also like to point out that, for whatever reason, Wadhams is sticking his neck way out as it is, since the Mazlowski model predicts 2016+-3 years, so I don’t know why Wadhams would boldly predict, specifically, 2015. The natural variation in the sea ice data is huge. But I’LL BET that, as usual, he has good reason for saying what he says.

      Have these guys placed any bets on what Shakhova will turn up on her present voyage? I didn’t think so, because they already know they’re wrong.

      Like

      1. How much have the others wagered on their bet that sea-ice extent will be 40% less than the 1979-2005 average by the end of the century, which is the consensus view in the most recent IPCC report, and which HAS ALREADY BEEN BREACHED?

        Come on, play fair, you already know that’s not the “consensus view”, as everyone recognizes that the sea ice models aren’t doing well enough. Haven’t I quoted you the language from the report to that effect?

        If you want to argue, you’ll have to take it up with the scientists at the conference, who don’t seem to be very impressed with Wadhams’ prediction. You could bet, if you were feeling reasonable, that they have good reasons for saying what they say.

        I ran into this relevant post about Mazlowski on the conference twitter stream: http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/12/could-arctic-summers-be-sea-ice-free-in-three-years%E2%80%99-time/

        Like

      2. bill shockley wrote:
        “How much have the others wagered on their bet that sea-ice extent will be 40% less than the 1979-2005 average by the end of the century, which is the consensus view in the most recent IPCC report, and which HAS ALREADY BEEN BREACHED?”

        SJ wrote:
        “Come on, play fair, you already know that’s not the “consensus view”, as everyone recognizes that the sea ice models aren’t doing well enough. Haven’t I quoted you the language from the report to that effect?”

        You may have. I pay no attention to it because it’s too cumbersome and abbreviations give me headaches (CMIP5.8XXX, etc). I misquoted the Spratt post we were discussing. Pardon me. He is indeed referring to the model. Why is that model even included in the report?

        SJ wrote:
        “If you want to argue, you’ll have to take it up with the scientists at the conference, who don’t seem to be very impressed with Wadhams’ prediction. You could bet, if you were feeling reasonable, that they have good reasons for saying what they say.”

        My guess is they’re feeling cocky because of the big rebound this year in the summer ice minimum. Typical denier behavior.

        SJ wrote:
        “I ran into this relevant post about Mazlowski on the conference twitter stream: http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/12/could-arctic-summers-be-sea-ice-free-in-three-years%E2%80%99-time/”

        I really don’t know what the confusion is regarding the two “models”. Wadhams presumably knows which figures come from which model, so it’s just another skeptics’ ploy.

        Notice that the scientist he consults directly for the article, Serreze, thinks the arctic ocean will be ice-free at the September minimum by 2030.

        This is not too far from the Maslowski model, it’s a difference of 11-16 years. But the only way it could take that long is if a negative feedback develops.

        I noticed also that the author cited Ahmed’s statement of contrition in his argument with Planet 3.0 (Tobis?) but overlooked Ahmed’s further reflections and retraction of that contrition: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/sep/05/jury-out-arctic-methane-catastrophe-risk-real

        Like

      3. You have jumped the shark, my friend.

        Calling climate-scientists-not-named-Wadhams (including the director of NASA’s climate unit) “deniers”? Accusing them of making a big deal about the last two years of higher Arctic extent? (They’re not morons. This was a sea ice conference. Everyone there knows better.) Come now. Please.

        Serreze, thinks the arctic ocean will be ice-free at the September minimum by 2030.

        Uhhh, yeah. I’m pretty sure that’s what I told you was a reasonable consensus estimate (2020s-2030s) months ago.

        Why is that model even included in the report?

        The IPCC reports are “state of the science” reports. That includes evaluations and analysis of all models being used, including their short-comings. There’s a lot more to these things than running a poll for scientists and going with the average on various questions…

        You may have. I pay no attention to it because it’s too cumbersome and abbreviations give me headaches (CMIP5.8XXX, etc).

        Look, I totally get that some of this stuff is dense and difficult to process, but I’ll make note of the fact that you “pay no attention” when I provide you with source information.

        Like

      4. But if you’d like a poll…

        Like

      5. bill shockley wrote:
        “Serreze, thinks the arctic ocean will be ice-free at the September minimum by 2030.”

        SJ wrote:
        Uhhh, yeah. I’m pretty sure that’s what I told you was a reasonable consensus estimate (2020s-2030s) months ago.”

        No, you were completely leaving out the volume chart and pointing to a linear interpretation of the area or extent chart, which was pointing to 2050 or 2060. The current, reasonable-model consensus, according to the CarbonBrief author, is 2050.

        “Using only models that come close to reproducing the rate of ice loss in the last few decades, the date for nearly sea ice-free summers jumps forward to about 2050.”
        http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/12/could-arctic-summers-be-sea-ice-free-in-three-years%E2%80%99-time/

        SJ wrote:
        “Calling climate-scientists-not-named-Wadhams (including the director of NASA’s climate unit) “deniers”? Accusing them of making a big deal about the last two years of higher Arctic extent? (They’re not morons. This was a sea ice conference. Everyone there knows better.) Come now. Please.”

        And I suppose that was a respectful way to discredit Wadhams, accusing him of backing down from a bet? Or, how about Tobis saying that Shakhova “makes stuff up”. I haven’t seen Wadhams and Shakhova displaying this kind of disrespect to their fellow scientists. If it’s about discrediting a person using logical fallacies or personal attacks, then I put it in the denier bin.

        SJ wrote:
        “Look, I totally get that some of this stuff is dense and difficult to process, but I’ll make note of the fact that you “pay no attention” when I provide you with source information.”

        Whatever. The world would have been better off without the IPCC.

        Like

      6. Whatever. The world would have been better off without the IPCC.

        That’s the spirit.

        No, you were completely leaving out the volume chart and pointing to a linear interpretation of the area or extent chart, which was pointing to 2050 or 2060. The current, reasonable-model consensus, according to the CarbonBrief author, is 2050.

        I assume you’re talking about this Excel chart I made to illustrate a point? https://fractalplanet.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/piomas_trendlines.png
        In February, I wrote this to you on the Ars forums:

        “I think most scientists are still expecting the Arctic decline to be faster than those projections. I hear people talking “ice-free” summer minimum in the Arctic circa 2030s-2040s. If you look at the 7th page of that chapter PDF, you’ll see “A nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean (sea ice extent less than 1 × 106 km2) in September before mid-century is likely [>66% probability] under RCP8.5 [the business-as-usual emissions scenarios] (medium confidence), based on an assessment of a subset of models that most closely reproduce the climatological mean state and 1979‒2012 trend of the Arctic sea ice cover.”

        Like

      7. If you would like to be consistent in your opinion, you should revise your original post:

        “–GM cites a Peter Wadhams prediction of ice-free Arctic summers by 2015 or 2016 (more than once, I think). Apart from Wieslaw Maslowski, you won’t find other sea ice researchers making such a dire prediction. As you can see, it would take a truly incredible change in the next couple years for this prediction to come true.”
        https://fractalplanet.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/how-guy-mcpherson-gets-it-wrong/

        If you extend the trend line in the linked chart (the “as you can see” link), it crosses the 1mm-sq-km line at about 2058.

        So, which is it, you’ve managed to profess
        a) 2020 – 2030
        b) 2030 – 2040
        c) ~2058

        Like

      8. I have never claimed that any of the trend lines on any of these charts should be used to extrapolate ice-free dates. The extent chart you’re pointing to is the standard NSIDC chart available on their website. I linked it in the post so people could see how recent years looked.

        But you caught me! Months ago I thought 2030s-2040s was the best answer, and this time 2020s-2030s was what came to mind! I don’t have a specific result or number to point to, so I won’t beat myself up too much that I don’t have my vague range fixed.

        Like

      9. SJ wrote:
        “In February, I wrote this to you on the Ars forums:

        “I think most scientists are still expecting the Arctic decline to be faster than those projections. I hear people talking “ice-free” summer minimum in the Arctic circa 2030s-2040s. If you look at the 7th page of that chapter PDF, you’ll see “A nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean (sea ice extent less than 1 × 106 km2) in September before mid-century is likely [>66% probability] under RCP8.5 [the business-as-usual emissions scenarios] (medium confidence), based on an assessment of a subset of models that most closely reproduce the climatological mean state and 1979‒2012 trend of the Arctic sea ice cover.””

        The ars forums are easily searchable and the search engine is very good. I am not able to find such a comment as you claim here.

        Like

  37. You know, reading through some of the statements by both SJ and Bill, I have to say, it still appears rather too easy when someone says or represents something we don’t happen to agree with or like, we demonize the man (or woman). We get insulting. I DON’T mean that either SJ or Bill are attacking each other but the person in question, here being Peter Wadhams, other places being Guy McPherson or whoever. We try to find something personal about the individual in question that we dislike to smear their character and hope that runs over their message as well. Ask a politician. They know exactly how that game is played. That old saying, Don’t like the message, shoot the messenger comes to mind. Not exactly fair play. People can be perfectly fine individuals, honestly convinced of their interpretation of the subject at hand and still be absolutely flat wrong. Or absolutely right. If everyone who believes something (anything) we happen to disagree with is evil, deserves to be humiliated, have their personal flaws put on public display, what a world.

    Like

    1. Hi Daniel-

      I definitely agree that this often happens. (In fact, I noticed some of the comments on my recent interview with Alex Smith have turned to trying to discredit me so my arguments about what McPherson is claiming can be ignored.)

      Just to clarify, I haven’t intended to say anything about the character of Peter Wadhams here. (Nor would I.) I have tried in the past to show Bill and others that Wadhams’ prediction of imminent Arctic sea ice disappearance is a fringe view in the scientific community. I couldn’t resist passing along this evidence from a recent conference that most of his peers don’t buy his prediction, so people could see I wasn’t making this up. I happen to think that the best way to inform yourself is to take in the whole community rather than focusing on one individual, so I’ve tried to help people see where the rest of the community is at. My apologies if this hasn’t come across well.

      On a side note about McPherson, I agree exactly with you when you say that “People can be perfectly fine individuals, honestly convinced of their interpretation of the subject at hand and still be absolutely flat wrong.” I’m on record here saying that I find Guy to be a likable, genuine person. It’s the argument I believe is bad, not the person. That doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated with him when he continues that argument, particularly when I think he argues poorly, but that doesn’t mean I question his motives.

      Like

  38. SJ, I think that’s fair of you. If all public discourse could be conducted it that way, absent the usual name calling, this really would be a different planet. Highlighting every character flaw, personality idiosyncrasy and personal mistake in an effort to discredit a message is dirty pool. Best left to politicians.

    On another note, just curious you understand, if as you and others have stated, the arctic IS warming, what effect will that have on the so-called methane clathrates supposedly buried beneath the ice and the permafrost? After all, ice freezes at about 32 degrees F. Wouldn’t that mean that it melts at approx 33 degrees F and above? If the arctic is warming at least a month maybe two each year, wouldn’t a thaw to 33 or higher during those months mean that the ice that otherwise holds that methane in place is losing that ability? Is there something else besides ice that performs that task as well, such that the ice can melt completely without affecting the methane below? I understand that the arctic is warming faster than any place else on the planet. If it warms above the freezing point, what is it that would prevent the methane from escaping? Thanks SJ.

    Like

    1. Here’s something to get you started with the clathrate question, as it’s more complicated than I think you’re guessing: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/11/arctic-and-american-methane-in-context/
      You see, these things exist at great depths below the seafloor, and warming at the surface takes a long time to penetrate. It’s not some sudden tipping point, where we hit the switch one year and all the methane comes out over the next five. Some have proposed that there is free methane gas within the seafloor permafrost of the Siberian shelf, but even if that’s true, the permafrost is thick and thaws gradually, as well. (After all, the permafrost beneath the Siberian shelf has been thawing for thousands of years– since it was covered by rising sea levels coming out of the last ice age. The Arctic Ocean, while far from warm, is much warmer than the Siberian air.)

      Like

  39. Incidentally, it strikes me that there’s not a lot of difference between an ice free arctic in 2016 or 2020. Or 2030. Or 2040. Those dates are quite close and many of us will still be relatively young then. The real question, it seems to me, is what will an ice free arctic (and presumably Greenland) mean for the earth, if anything? Will sea levels really rise and if so, enough to flood coastal cities? Will methane be released in quantity and what will that mean? How much methane is up there anyway? If atmospheric pollution does take 25 – 50 years to reach a point in our atmosphere where it begins to warm the planet, how much hotter is this place going to get in 20 years or so? Will these events build upon themselves, the so-called feedback loops? If yes to any of this, what are we standing here arguing about? 2016 or 2030 or whatever? Environmental collapse in 20 or 30 years is is still collapse.

    Like

    1. Yes, the precise date is largely academic. First off, Arctic sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet are totally different things. We will see a sea-ice-free Arctic summer (which is actually defined as anything less than 1 million square kilometers of sea ice) at some point. This will have no noticeable impact on sea level. Keep in mind that we’re not talking about ice-free in the winter, as it’s still plenty cold to regrow sea ice, though the maximum extent of that decreases, as well. There’s nothing all that special about “ice-free” summers, climatically speaking. It’s not going to suddenly change something. Decreasing sea ice obviously does have an impact, but it doesn’t jump to some new level once you hit this milestone. It’s not going to trigger some huge spike of methane. (As for how much methane is there, see this graphic I linked to recently: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/09/the-story-of-methane-in-our-climate-in-five-pie-charts/)

      We will definitely not, however, see an ice free Greenland this century. It would take centuries to millennia to melt all of that mighty ice sheet. We’re likely looking at 1-2 meters of global sea level rise by 2100, assuming we don’t reduce our greenhouse emissions. In that scenario, the climate model projections that account for positive and negative feedbacks (though these models, like all models, are imperfect and incomplete) tell us to expect around 4C (7F) warming by 2100. “Environmental collapse” is a vague concept, which makes it doubly impossible to predict.

      Like

    2. SJ wrote:
      ” Decreasing sea ice obviously does have an impact, but it doesn’t jump to some new level once you hit this milestone.”

      You make it sound like there is no potential for abrupt change relating to the sea ice. I don’t think this has been proven. If I’m wrong, please point me to the proof.

      As we’ve discussed many times, ice volume is declining much more rapidly than ice area. This leads to a point where the ice is so thin, that in one summer it can go from a very large coverage area to essentially zero. If this happens, it is definitely a tipping point because of the huge loss of albedo and the resultant warming of the ocean, which would delay and decrease the refreeze by a huge amount.

      Here’s how the ice volume curve looks now with the last two data points included. The zero-point is pushed back about 4 years, to make it 2019-2020 +- 3 years. No guarantee that it will behave:

      Like

      1. If year after year, your simplified extrapolation keeps pushing out farther, maybe that extrapolation isn’t the best thing to rely on, eh?

        The sudden tipping point you’re talking about just doesn’t exist like that. It’s more gradual. And do you remember the post I’ve linked several times, which talks about a negative feedback at low sea ice thickness and extent slowing the decrease? http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/04/arctic-sea-ice-volume-piomas-prediction-and-the-perils-of-extrapolation/
        ref: http://www.uwpcc.washington.edu/documents/PCC/bitz_and_roe_preprint.pdf

        This stuff is complicated. You can’t pretend it isn’t and reckon your way through it.

        Like

      3. That’s an isolated floe, though. I’m talking about the whole system, and the ocean heating consequences, and all that. I’m not disputing you get acceleration, I’m just saying there’s more to it than that, and losing sea ice one summer doesn’t flip the Arctic Ocean into an entirely new mode.

        Like

      4. Yes, an isolated floe but a pretty big one. There will be more “isolated” floes as we go on.

        If you haven’t seen this already, it’s worth a look. A two part examination of the Arctic sea ice dynamics. It got a thumbs up from a practicing climate scientist on another site. It does include a prediction of summer ice free Arctic, which may not be borne out but the rest looks very understandable and reasonable.

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      5. Well, not to be a negative Nellie, but I’m not going to become a Wasdell fan anytime soon. (Calling yourself “the Apollo-Gaia Project” isn’t a great way to start…) What he says about aerosol emissions explaining the recent surface warming slowdown isn’t correct… (Maybe this is older than the upload date, and he didn’t have the benefit of the research that has come out clarifying the causes.) All the stuff about “the straight line argument” for Arctic sea ice decline is a red herring. There is no such thing. What scientists are looking at and thinking about is much more complicated than that. And of course, the larger extents of the past two years don’t exactly fall in line, and ought to hint that “let Excel draw a line through some points” is perhaps not the most scientific way to evaluate the physical processes in play.

        So again, maybe I should be more charitable, but I’m just not impressed with what this guy puts out.

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      6. Mmm, OK Scott. Actually, I’d rather take Mark Chocrane’s opinion of it. The name of the project is irrelevant and I don’t know why you mentioned it. I also thought the comment about cooling was wrong but may be a consequence of using HADCRUT3, possibly. No matter, they are a good description of the dynamics of Arctic sea ice, IMO. Highly recommended.

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      7. Mark’s actually an ecologist, and clearly a smart guy, but I don’t agree with his opinion about David Wasdell.
        I mention the “project”, because it’s a little weird and grandiose. If I made up a logo, and started describing things I had written on my blog as “some of my work for the Fractal Planet Project”, it would be awkward. You can tell that when people refer to Wasdell, they think the “Apollo-Gaia Project” is some real institution or scientific collaboration, when really it’s just a name he gives to himself. I’ve seen other people do this- folks with websites claiming to disprove Einstein or prove that the universe is made of tiny spinning tortoises. Thankfully Wasdell isn’t that far off the rails, but it was a red flag to me. More importantly, he seems to be a hobbyist with a keen interest but who isn’t plugged into the literature.

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      8. It’s more than just a name he gives to himself. The origins of the project are described in this document and a brief background was given in a Club of Rome presentation:

        “Anyway from my study here in Meridian House I look back, Robert, on the 8 years since we met. You are absolutely right that the fundamental points we were looking at at the time were the feedback processes in climate change, feedback processes which accelerate and amplify the effects of the human system.

        Now just before I was invited to Norfolk, Virginia, we had put together a paper on feedback processes and had come up with an understanding that was a bit like this.

        It is a topology of climate change that ranges from the safety of the Holocene, undisturbed by the industrial revolution, the emergence of carbon dioxide emissions that push us upwards and over a tipping point towards catastrophic behaviour, an extinction event and the overall threat of runaway global heating. Where were we on that? Well we were somewhere up towards the summit and in danger of moving across it into the downward slope of danger. The task was to stay this side of the tipping point and emerge with a solution that would give good quality survival for the future of humanity. And at the end of my presentation in Norfolk, I made these comments:

        “That we will need to convene with the utmost urgency a global analysis and modelling capacity to test the conceptual feedback model, to quantify the complex feedback system, and to determine the time frame of its behaviour” and to do that somewhat better than was being done in the computer models of the day. Then I went on like this:
        “We need also” – and this is to do with institutional behaviours isn’t it – “to develop and operationalize an emergency strategy to move our global society towards a negative carbon economy” – (that is a draw-down economy) – “within the shortest possible timescale. And also to develop the most effective institutional instruments to manage the transition.” And as you have been speaking in the last day, we realise that the institutional instruments that we have in place are not fit for the task of solving the problems of the global problematique.

        Well that was in September. I worked closely with John Schellnhuber from the climate research institute in Potsdam and we were looking at tipping points and complexity. I did a seminar with him at the Royal Academy in Brussels about 9 months later after which I was facilitator and rapporteur for one of the European Commission conferences on complexity science. John was one of the participants and it was there that he made this point:

        He said: “The possibility of a tipping point in the Earth system as a whole, which prevents the recovery of stable equilibrium and leads to a process of runaway climate change, is now the critical research agenda requiring the concentration of global resources in a ‘Manhattan project’ style of engagement”. And then he concluded:
        “All other work on impact assessment, mitigation and adaptation depends on the outcome of this over-arching issue”.
        He also said in private and several times later on in public, that he saw this agenda as “absolutely scary”. No institution in the world was prepared to put funds into its research. Even Potsdam itself was not able to do that. The fear was that any such institution would be seen as scary, fear-mongering and alarmist. And I am not surprised I need a drink of water at this point!
        Anyway, we were left with the agenda. I went and briefed John’s team in Potsdam, and then had some time later on with Jim Lovelock here in the UK. We rejected the “Manhattan” name for the project and eventually came up with the name of the “Apollo-Gaia Project”.
        …
        And it is my privilege and a joy – I was originally asked to produce a report for the Club of Rome – but this is the best we can do, so today we have a “Presentation to the club of Rome”, rather than a book. Maybe the book follows, I don’t know. And I have been asked to provide a scene setting keynote for the rest of the Club’s conference here in Ottawa.        ”

        Be that as it may, the explanation of Arctic Sea Ice dynamics is very thorough and I’m happy to go with Mark’s assessment, though you seem to disparage him as “an ecologist”. He clearly understands a lot about climate science as evidenced by his comments in that thread I linked to. I realise that you’d like to think this can all be turned around somehow and are reluctant to entertain any notion that we’ll be in for some pretty dark times ahead (though I agree, currently, that it doesn’t include extinction, in the near term).

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      9. I am not disparaging Mark when I clarify that he is an ecologist and not a climate scientist (as you had described him).

        This has nothing to do with my best guess about future human behavior. That’s completely separate from and irrelevant to the science of the climate system. I realize that expressing human “optimism” has marked me as untrustworthy (on any topic) to many who are convinced otherwise, and while this is frustrating, I can understand where it comes from. But come on. It’s not that Wasdell doesn’t interest me because his outlook is dire, it’s that I don’t find him informative or see his analysis reflecting the actual research. I would disagree that his sea ice video was thorough (I must be sounding cranky at this point, but I’m honestly not trying to rag on you), as it mainly focused on some elementary basics of Arctic sea ice monitoring, but didn’t go into any real detail on the complex processes that affect it (wind/movement, atmospheric and ocean circulation…) beyond albedo feedback. I don’t remember anything being off until he starting running too far with the extrapolation stuff, but that doesn’t make it thorough in my book. A nice introduction to some concepts, sure, but extent, thickness/volume, albedo feedback is only scratching the surface.

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      10. I described Mark as a climate scientist because that is how I came across him. He has also published on climate change issues.

        Regarding your optimism. That’s understandable but I’ve realised over the last few years that humans, collectively, are behaviourally incapable (one of many such essays there) of taking the necessary actions to halt or reverse the decline in our biosphere which is caused by their bhaviours (myself included).

        If you’re already well educated on Arctic Ice Sheet Dynamics then you might find Wasdell’s words of little value. To everyone else, do take a look.

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      11. SJ wrote:
        “And of course, the larger extents of the past two years don’t exactly fall in line, and ought to hint that “let Excel draw a line through some points” is perhaps not the most scientific way to evaluate the physical processes in play.”

        This is not a logical fallacy but simply ignorance of how science works. Do you think that the head of the “Polar Ocean Physics Group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics” at the University of Cambridge doesn’t know the difference between and relative merits of physical modeling and induction?

        What does the time vs height chart look like when you drop an object from progressively higher points? It is not exponential but it looks a lot like exponential. Is it reasonable to believe that you can predict the time of fall from an untested height by mere extrapolation? There is no inherent flaw with extrapolation. The law of gravity IS AN EXTRTAPOLATION. In complex systems with no detailed historical precedents, everyone is guessing. In fact, models are nothing more than induction applied to complex systems. Wadhams’ contempt for models was born of the misuse/abuse of models by modelers who thought they were smarter than nature and could disregard what was actually happening in the arctic. The exponential free-fall of Arctic sea-ice will stay in place until some emerging, countervailing force becomes strong enough to divert it. The exact trajectory of the free-fall can’t be known with certainty because of the large variability within the system. I haven’t seen the actual number for September sea ice volume, but it looks to be on the edge of challenging the exponential slope. But weighing all the factors, I don’t think Wadhams/Maslowski are going to end up being off by more than a few years. And taken within the context of the future of the planet, it is much better to be off by a few years on the safe side than off by a few or, especially, off by thirty or fifty or a hundred or so (current and not so long-ago models), on the dangerous side. It defies credulity to not see the difference.

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      12. This is not a logical fallacy but simply ignorance of how science works. Do you think that the head of the “Polar Ocean Physics Group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics” at the University of Cambridge doesn’t know the difference between and relative merits of physical modeling and induction?

        I’m really, really sick of getting this argument from you. Go complain to all the other sea ice researchers who think extrapolation is inappropriate. You know, the ones you implicitly assume don’t know what they’re talking about when you repeatedly assert that Wadhams is Scientific Perfection Incarnate.

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      13. SJ wrote:
        “Go complain to all the other sea ice researchers who think extrapolation is inappropriate.”

        I would gladly do it if I thought that one of them would give me something other than the circular reasoning of “extrapolation is wrong”.

        I’m not encouraged when they say Wadhams thinks he doesn’t need physics.

        The closest he’s come to that is his contempt for models when they were ignoring the data and their modeling results were off by thousands of percent. He said “I don’t need models—I’ve got data. And from that they twisted it into “I don’t need physics”.

        But NO ONE has put forth a cogent argument demonstrating some inherent error in using extrapolation. It is used all the time in physics—and math also (calculus: you remember those proofs where you take an integral and diminish a dimension to zero and voila, the volume of a sphere?)—and has to be one of the main stratagems for solving problems. I’ve already tried to show that modeling is essentially extrapolation applied to complex systems. Forget Wadhams and disprove that abstract concept.

        You’re sick of arguing but you haven’t put forth any arguments. All you have is the circular “extrapolations are bad” and then refer me to others who share that opinion without proof.

        In case I’m banished in the next post, Hasta la Vista everyone!

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      14. Then, again, we’ve settled it. You don’t value the opinion of any scientist but Peter Wadhams. There can be nothing to talk about.

        They didn’t twist anything into “I don’t need physics.” He was apparently asked, during his talk, if his curve was the result of calculating any physical processes or if it was just a mathematical extrapolation. He apparently answered that it was the latter, because that’s what it is.

        But NO ONE has put forth a cogent argument demonstrating some inherent error in using extrapolation.

        Dear lord. Haven’t I linked you this post three or four times already? http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/04/arctic-sea-ice-volume-piomas-prediction-and-the-perils-of-extrapolation/
        Have you ever read it?

        And how about the lunacy of the Arctic News Blog temperature extrapolation? I’ve beat that horse to death, as well.

        Extrapolation assumes that only one variable controls the property in question, and that all else is held constant or insignificant. It’s very sensitive to start and end points when that assumption is invalid, which should be an obvious indication that you can’t be very confident in the future predicted values.

        Or to see how a statistician approaches this: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/ice-free/

        I’ve already tried to show that modeling is essentially extrapolation applied to complex systems.

        If I’m understanding you correctly, you are severely and completely wrong. That isn’t even remotely how climate models work. Modeling involves capturing mathematical descriptions of individual physical processes and letting them interact in response to boundary conditions. If you think that’s extrapolation, I don’t think you know what “extrapolation” means.

        Sea ice is not an ice cube in a glass of water. There’s so much more going on.

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      15. SJ wrote:
        “He was apparently asked, during his talk, if his curve was the result of calculating any physical processes or if it was just a mathematical extrapolation. He apparently answered that it was the latter, because that’s what it is.”

        And proceeds to be ridiculed for it as if it’s the height of dishonesty and stupidity. Of course it was a mathematical extrapolation. It’s obvious, and he never tried to represent it as anything else. Plotted data points+measurement error bars with a curve running through it. How could it be anything else? Making a deal out of it was malicious political rhetoric, not scientific criticism.

        Points on a graph represent the physical reality. Take the simple and pure example of a falling object. Measuements of time and distance are plotted. Numbers represent the underlying physics of the law of gravitation. Abstract the numbers into a formula for gravitational force and then extrapolate the time and speed of any object in free fall.
        A simple system.
        One law.
        Solvable with algebra.

        Add an element. Say the object is a ball made of steel and you place a strong electromagnet directly underneath it and turn it on. How much faster will it fall? You can make the exact same kind of chart as the falling object chart by imagining that gravity is zero. Now you have extrapolation number two. Combine the two under an integral (forgive me if I never was that good at calculus and can’t give you the exact way to do it), and you have a complex extrapolation. Or this could be done with a computer, incrementally updating the calculations, step by step for each bit of space traveled. But with such a pure and simple system with known laws of force, I believe you could get an exact answer through calculus.
        A fairly simple but, by definition, complex extrapolation.
        Two laws.
        Solvable with calculus or, with less accuracy, with a computer.

        Now take the example of declining ice in the arctic. No one would argue that the system is not made up of complementary and opposing physical forces. They combine in a super-complex way to give you the output chart as presented by Wadhams. With infinite knowledge and infinite computing power you could make a model to accurately predict the rate of loss down to the cubic centimeter. But, each element in the model would be fundamentally no different from each of the two elements in the magnetism + gravity example.
        Elements beyond counting.
        An extremely complex extrapolation with levels of feedback.
        Solvable with gargantuan knowledge and computing power.

        So why did Wadhams prefer his extrapolative chart over the available models. I believe it’s too obvious to belabor, but I will explain it briefly. Two reasons: First, was the irrational and inept crowd of modelers that were off by thousands of percent and refused to modify their models to accommodate reality. Second, sea ice came so close to disappearing—in 2012 it was within 2 or 3 summers of precedented decline potential to completely disappear. It was simply intuitively impossible not to prefer the evidence of the nearness and momentum, to the abstract stupidity being spouted by the models. It’s like a bus bearing down on you but your calculations say you have plenty of time to move. Despite the fact that you know your calculations have been consistently way off when watching from the sidewalk.

        The more unknowns you have, the less a model is going to be predictive and that’s where we are as of now with Arctic sea ice. The “polar” opposite of the gravity/magnetic, 2-element example with its perfect predictive potential.

        BTW, this comment is an example of extrapolative logic.

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      16. First, was the irrational and inept crowd of modelers that were off by thousands of percent and refused to modify their models to accommodate reality.

        You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.

        Edit: I should flesh this out. I’m just low on patience today.

        The data-model mismatch for Arctic sea ice (and in the opposite direction for Antarctic sea ice, for that matter, though natural variability is becoming the clear answer there) is not about people “refusing to modify their models to accommodate reality”. That’s not how modeling works. It’s about 1) our imperfect understanding of what is going on with the sea ice 2) our imperfect representation of the known processes in the models. There are lots of other targets the modelers use when working on their models, and they toil away on these details, trying to iteratively create a more realistic simulation. They don’t ignore the mismatch in extent, etc., and they don’t assume their models are complete and accurate. Those models can teach them things about how sea ice should behave, and this knowledge can be applied to evaluating how things may be playing out in reality. This is how science works.

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      17. bill shockley wrote:
        “First, was the irrational and inept crowd of modelers that were off by thousands of percent and refused to modify their models to accommodate reality.”

        sj responded:
        “You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.
        Edit: I should flesh this out. I’m just low on patience today.”

        Compare versions, then, with Wadhams on the subject:

        Nafeez Ahmed:
        Why do the climate models not match empirical observations – and why is your estimate of the Arctic sea ice disappearance so different from most model projections?

        Peter Wadhams:
        The modellers did not pay sufficient regard to observations, especially of ice thickness. They considered certain physical processes in the model, then when the rate of retreat greatly outstripped the predictions of the model, they ignored the observations and stuck with the model. A very great physicist, Richard Feynmann, said that when a model comes up against measurements that contradict it, it is the measurements that must be preferred and the model must be abandoned or changed. Scientists who have a lot of their credibility bound up in a model are reluctant to do this. Then there are a number of key processes that can only be represented if the model has a very fine grid scale, such effects as the break-up of ice due to waves generated in the large areas of open water that we now have in summer; or the additional weakening of the ice by meltwater pools that melt their way right through the ice sheet. A modeller who represents all these fine scale processes is Wiselaw Maslowsky (Monterey) and his models agree with my empirical predictions.”

        Sounds to me like he was closely involved and had his eyes open.

        Of course, there’s always two sides to a story and he could be miserably biased and making the whole thing up. Habits die hard and he has a lifetime of gathering frivolous data from below the ice in his yellow submarine.

        I wonder if he could document his story in detail if someone asked?

        Perhaps “inept and irrational” is extreme, but I’ve done modeling on my computer and I know how bound up you can get in the “reality” you’ve created.

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      19. SJ wrote:
        “If year after year, your simplified extrapolation keeps pushing out farther, maybe that extrapolation isn’t the best thing to rely on, eh?”

        This is similar to what you protested against with the Carana charts–extrapolating from 2 points. There is huge variability in the sea ice thickness data, so one year the curve may be pushed out a few years, the next year it may be pushed back. The 2-year rebound is not unprecedented, and it followed a period of steep, nearly continuous decline. This series, that lasted for 11 years, apparently lulled some of the best into believing that vaiability had narrowed with intensity of warming. Wrong! As I said before, interruptions in the overall trajectory bring out the deniers.

        SJ wrote:
        “The sudden tipping point you’re talking about just doesn’t exist like that. It’s more gradual.”

        This is not proof. This is your claim. See “circular reasoning” in the logical fallacy list.

        SJ wrote:
        “And do you remember the post I’ve linked several times, which talks about a negative feedback at low sea ice thickness and extent slowing the decrease?”

        This is a paper from 2004 and considers a fundamental characteristic of ice thermodynamics. It’s not something that Wadhams would be ignorant of or that wouldn’t be incorporated into Maslowski’s model. What I would expect as a spoiler would be something in the climate system, such as increased clouds because of warmer air (warmer air, that holds more moisture) or perhaps a change in heat production and transfer to the air because of warmer seas. That could change the weather dynamics in the Arctic. I’ve heard such things suggested.

        SJ wrote:
        “This stuff is complicated. You can’t pretend it isn’t and reckon your way through it.”

        Thanks. I’ll forward your sentiment to Wadhams, who himself, seems to have been taken in by the data; and Maslowski, who obviously created a much too simplified model. (Although, 2015 and 2016 are not here yet and Wadhams/Maslowski may yet be right).

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      20. Opps! I forgot to mention that

        1) I’m using the 2007 volume number for 2014. I haven’t checked for the actual number yet, so that point may be off by a bit.

        2) The data is from PIOMAS. I should have labeled it on the chart itself but it’s too late now.

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  40. Thanks for the info SJ.

    I’ve heard a lot of speculation about what effects a few degrees rise in temperature might have on our planet. Frankly, I’ve been very skeptical about the dire predictions some have made. How could one degree or even 6 degrees increase in average temperatures cause any harm at all (other than melting a little ice in the arctic, which might actually be a good thing for the economy)? I mean, in an average day, normal outside temperature can fluctuate by say 50 degrees or more in a single day. I don’t see any damage to the environment because of these huge temperature fluctuations. But we’re supposed to believe that one degree can mean the difference between a healthy planet and extinction? Really?

    I tend to think nature is a little hardier than that. I understand that a rise to higher average temperatures sets a new bar and is a permanent increase, but it seems to me that given time, the environment can adapt to just about anything. They say the carbon we pump into the atmosphere is actually healthy for plants as they consume carbon to live. Seems to me an increase in carbon might actually produce a greener planet (perhaps we’ve been going about this all wrong. Maybe we should be pumping more carbon into the air).

    So I guess the question is, how fast can the environment adapt? And if, say, the environment was slow to adapt, how much temperature increase can it withstand before problems develop? My guess, a whole lot more than 6 degrees. What do you think?

    Thanks again SJ.

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    1. I know “a few degrees” doesn’t sound like much, but you have to understand that a few degrees change in the global average is a huge change. At the peak of the last ice age, when a two-mile-thick ice sheet covered Canada and down into the US, the average global temperature was 4-6C (7-11F) warmer colder. So you can imagine that a 4C warmer (than today) world is a very different one.

      The problem is the rate at which we’re driving that change. What we’re heading towards for this century is far, far faster than past natural climate changes. It will absolutely be much too fast for many species to adapt. It’s too fast for us to adapt our systems too, as well. There are enormous costs and serious damages associated with this scenario. Guy McPherson’s “human extinction in 20 years” stuff is nonsense, but that doesn’t mean the situation is fine.

      With any change, there are benefits and costs. Sure, agriculture in some colder places will improve, but it will take a hit in other places- especially near the equator. And sure, the loss of Arctic sea ice may come with some short-term economic benefits (shipping, oil production), but that can’t last. And just ask the folks living in northern Canada and Russia how much damage their infrastructure is taking from the thawing permafrost which is caving beneath structures. Rising CO2 does have a “fertilization effect” on many (not all) plants, but perturbations of temperature and precipitation have large negative effects in many areas. The scientists who study this stuff consider all these angles, and it’s the balance of all this stuff that they describe as a huge problem. There is zero doubt about that.

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    2. As Scott has indirectly mentioned please don’t think that you’re the only person to have thought of these issues, and yet scientists still think there is a major problem, Daniel. Why don’t you?

      It’s not a linear correlation – more CO2 equals more plant growth. There has been research into this and it’s not all good. Even the optimistic realists talk about a net benefit (really) only until about 2080, then it’s all downhill.

      A few degrees on average means huge fluctuations at the extremes. Remember that the temperature over land is increasing more rapidly that over the oceans (which are themselves heating, internally, much more rapidly recently, but that’s another issue) than over land. I don’t recall the projections but there may be an average increase over land of 6 or 7 degrees C and, consequently, deadly heatwaves will become more frequent. Also, the night time temperatures will be higher, as well as the daytime temperatures. This could have devastating consequences on ecosystems, as well as individual species. Even though many regions (perhaps across most of the inhabited globe) have overlapping temperature ranges, they don’t all have the same species mix. So saying that we survive huge diurnal temperature ranges is irrelevant.

      I think McPherson’s line with this is that 4 degrees increase and up will increase the periods when the wet bulb temperature makes it impossible for humans and many other mammals to thermoregulate. You’re wrong that humans could withstand an average temperature of way more than 6 degrees above baseline and I doubt they could survive at 6 degrees. Even well below that (Hansen et al 2013 argue that above 1 degree is dangerous) could cause massive problems for all life.

      It seems like you’re happy for the experiment to be done in real time, on you and everyone living or about to be born, to find out that there is a reason that humans haven’t been around in such temperatures before. Bizarre.

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  41. Wow. Thanks SJ. I’ll take it from you.

    A question though. If the world was 7 -11 F WARMER during the last ice age, why was there more ice, incredibly more ice than there is now when the world is so much cooler? They say the arctic is the worlds refrigerator. There’s not a whole lot of ice up there these day I hear and yet the world is cooler than it was at the peak of the last ice age? Of course there’s Greenland and the Antarctic to help cool our planet today but presumably those places were also frozen over during the last ice age, so why is the world cooler today with so much less ice? I mean, they’re saying that if the earth warms much more, so much ice will melt that it will flood our coastal cities. Sounds to me like a warmer planet will create a new ice age instead. That’s a mindbender. All that ice that once covered Canada and the US must have come from somewhere. The ocean is my guess and if so, doesn’t that mean a substantially LOWER ocean? Was that a typo? Or maybe world climate is a whole lot more complex than I and probably most other people think it is.

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    1. Err, whoops. Colder, not warmer. I meant to say 4-6C colder. Sorry to send you on a mental goose chase.

      But yeah, global sea level was about 300 ft lower at the peak of the last ice age (20,000 years ago) because that water went into the ice sheets.

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  42. One other question (by the way, I appreciate the time you’re taking to answer my rather daft questions). If a warming climate will have adverse effects on the planet (a big if, I think) when do you think those effects to manifest themselves, roughly? I get the feedback loop thing. Things out of control do tend to grow rather exponentially, 1 – 2, 2 -4, 4-8 etc. Like the proverbial snowball. I get that. If that’s so with the climate, when do you envision a time, a moment when people suddenly stand up and look around and realize that we screwed up? Or, that we’re screwed?

    I know where having a few droughts here and there, ice melting, whathaveyou, but when do you think things will have gone too far if we do nothing about the warming? By the way, I STRONGLY doubt that we’re going to do anything of substance to combat climate change until it’s too late (if it’s real at all. Sorry, I have to be fair). People just aren’t built that way. We’re likely going to continue doing what we’ve been doing and all the more so as our population continues to grow.

    I’ll tell you SJ my opinion on where the real problem lies. As Ceaser is reputed to have said once (via Shakespear),

    “The fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves.”

    We, man, has come into the world with a winning combination of attributes that will someday cause our downfall. We are both Aggressive and Intelligent. Deadly combination to be sure. In my opinion, for whatever it’s worth, those two qualities will undoubtedly spell our demise. It’s just a question of when.

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    1. I don’t imagine an “oh-shit” moment in time. The effects will continually worsen and become more expensive, and the stragglers who are wedded to denying the reality will come up with reasons to convince themselves they’re still right. I’ve stated my opinion here before (and gotten chewed out for it) that I think we will muster a response to this that avoids the worst of things. There have been baby steps already, with signs that things may turn. Is it as fast as it should be? Absolutely not. We should have been farther along than this 15 years ago. But it’s not nothing. As always, your mileage may vary, and we’ll see.

      There is truly no scientific debate about whether we’re changing the climate, and whether that’s bad news, though. None. Newspaper columnists be damned. The scientists know the big picture, and have for a long time.

      I would suggest watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RyvpsIx47E It’s my favorite basic summary.

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      1. Scott, have you heard about Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson’s recent conversions on climate change this year? Please note that both Rubin and Paulson are policy elites, Rubin at Citibank and Paulson at Goldman Sachs as well as former Treasury Secretary under Bush Jr. – and both are very wealthy.

        Here is Robert Rubin sounding alarm bells:
        http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2014/08/ignoring-climate-risks-could-sink-us-economy/?utm_source=Climate+News+Network&utm_campaign=964e47d8c6-FOR_IMMEDIATE_RELEASE8_3_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_be2a364987-964e47d8c6-38735413

        Here is Henry Paulson’s Op-Ed in the NYTs in favor of a carbon tax:

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      3. If you like Scott’s link above by Richard Alley, Earth: An Operators’ Manual, then you’ll like these two follow-up documentaries by the same producer/director.

        POWERING THE PLANET

        ENERGY QUEST USA

        Liked by 1 person

      4. Scott, just wanted to really thank you for this video and introducing me to Dr. Richard Alley at Pen State, and his really positive and uplifting documentary. I really felt hopeful watching it in many ways, and how he really sums up the big picture into easily understandable concepts. Learning how the Pentagon is taking climate change seriously really impressed me, and that is awesome ammunition, if I may say so, to convince climate skeptics. Alley seems to me like such a grounded scientists, nothing dogmatic, and still concerned without being alarmist, more or less.

        At the same time, regarding your comment above that you don’t imagine an ‘oh-shit’ moment, I noticed that Alley himself wrote an article After watching his three documentaries and reading some of his articles, it would seem that the star of your favorite summary might be thinking differently than yourself. National Public Radio’s Richard Harris filed this report below in which “the National Academy of Sciences is calling for an early warning system to alert us to abrupt and potentially catastrophic events triggered by climate change.” Richard Alley is one of the scientists featured in the piece, comparing abrupt climate change as the “drunk driver” of climate change.

        Ready — Or Not. Abrupt Climate Changes Worry Scientists Most
        http://www.npr.org/2013/12/03/248474721/ready-or-not-quick-climate-changes-worry-scientists-most

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      5. I don’t think the two things conflict at all. What I’m saying is that human beings are extraordinarily good at filtering information and defending their opinions from evidential assault. This is my “human pessimism”. I really struggle to come up with a plausible event that would overwhelm that phenomenon. If we finally get over the hump and get that big opinion shift, it will be for cultural reasons, not increasing evidence (as if there isn’t enough evidence already). The tipping points that article is talking about aren’t The-Day-After-Tomorrow-huge-freezing-tsunamis. The research indicating that we’ve crossed them would likely be complicated and esoteric, and the effects would come in gradually on the human timescale (even if it’s in the blink of a geologic eye). I have a very hard time believing that would “convert the heathens”.

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  43. SJ, I’m guessing from what you said about sea lever during the last ice age that were the earth 7-11 degrees warmer, the sea level could maybe rise by the same amount? We be going to work in a canoe.

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    1. Not over our lifetimes, no. It took thousands of years for that sea level change to play out. Again, we’re most likely talking 1-2 meters by the end of this century. Even if we stabilize temperatures (but don’t bring them back down), though, sea level will continue creeping higher for hundreds of years.

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  44. Thanks SJ. Good information there. Here are 3 videos I watched that I thought were quite good for explaining the issue. There all relatively short. Here’re the the links and why I liked these videos,

    At just over 39 minutes, the longest video but, in my humble opinion, excellent at explaining climate change in terms even I could understand.

    About 5 and a half minutes. A video by Nasa’s Tom Wagner again explaining climate change in layman’s terms. I like the guy, seems very honest.

    8 minutes, 4 seconds. This one was a bit of a shock. This is exactly why I think the so-called PTB will deliberately march us all off the cliff one day in the pursuit of stability (and profit). By the way, I didn’t know Peter Wadhams has been personally travelling to the Arctic via the Navy for 40 + years. That lends a bit of credibility to the man I must say. In addition to his status at Cambridge. I’d love to hear what you think of these videos.

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    1. Yep, first two are good fare to explain things. Peter Wadhams, of course, is not the only Arctic researcher who spends a lot of time there. His “within a year or two” claims (which you’ll note, were made in 2011 in that video, and haven’t exactly materialized) are on the fringe of that research community.

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      1. Scott, you are misquoting Wadhams in this video. He said in 2011, “…within a year or two…or three.” Ok, we are now in 2014, three years later and the arctic is not ice free. The ice could be gone in 2015, or 2016. Even if it’s not gone until 2018, that’s still way ahead of 2020-2030 you’ve been saying, and light years ahead of IPCC predictions which totally suck and are cause for extreme criticism. Personally, if I’m betting on physical observations versus climate modeling, my bets are on physical observations. You already lost the bet about the pingos. Do you really want to lose more money?

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      2. I’ll assume this should be taken in good humor.

        To be honest, I’m sick to death of arguing about this. If people find Wadhams to be more persuasive than the rest of the community, great. (For the record, I rather suspect this is at least partly because he is all over the media.) Go for it. He’s been saying “by 2015” for a while. It has crept forward. Sit back and find out if he’s right.

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      3. Yeah, it is in good humor. Yes, I guess we’ll all see soon enough, 2015 is next year, and 2020 is about only five years away. Woohoo! Can’t wait! Not. I agree, I am sick of it, too. I’m much more interested in the difference between ECS and ESS with respect to Michael Mann’s Scientific American article quote by Robert Scribbler. I’ll post shortly on this to get your input.

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    2. Nice video from Stefan but an incredibly optimistic view at the end (from a report that appears to aim at sustainability – hmm). My only other quibble is the apparent reinforcement of the 2C limit, even though he shows that the Greenland Ice Sheet could become unstable well before that (and may be already, at 0.85C warming). Hansen, et al (2013) showed that 1C should be the limit but it looks like that is well beyond us. With extremes having increased so much with the current amount of warming, 2C looks to be well into dangerous territory. The future doesn’t look bright.

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  45. I just finished reading this SkS article on the PETM: http://www.skepticalscience.com/the-perplexing-PETM.html

    At the end, the author argues that the climate change of the Permian is a more appropriate analogy to the current situation than the PETM due to the rate of emissions. A blog post I came across recently argued the same thing, based on the fact that the Permian began relatively cool. Yet, outside of blogs, I usually see the PETM pointed to as the more appropriate analogy. Is one more helpful than the other in predicting future warming now, or are they both just broad, general, “don’t do this” warnings?

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    1. Broad, I think. Both have tons of unknowns, and nothing is going to be perfectly analogous- especially since these all basically occur in different worlds.

      That seems like a nice PETM summary post.

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      1. “That seems like a nice PETM summary post.”

        It is, though it didn’t cover my biggest question about the PETM – why it didn’t become the sixth mass extinction. For how fast temperatures rose and by how much, I’ve been surprised to find out it didn’t cause a lot more damage than it did.

        Fun somewhat-off-topic reading: that SkS article links to another on the Permian, which links to this: https://rock.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/22/2/article/i1052-5173-22-2-4.htm

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      2. Man, was I confused by that until I realized the type was messed up. The “104-105 yr” thing (which would be bizarrely specific, not to mention ridiculously rapid) should say “10^4 – 10^5 yr”. Figure 4 clears that up.

        (Alternatively, I just realized there’s a PDF link at the top.)

        Interesting article.

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    2. Thanks for this, Will.

      I agree with the author that the Permian is a more appropriate analogy than PETM due to the rate of emissions, and with Scott that there are tons of unknowns and nothing is going to be perfectly analogous – all the more reason to err on the side of caution and, perhaps wisely, assume the worst, and work like hell to overcome it now.

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  46. Hi, Scott.

    Robert Scribbler (RS) posted this on March 21st, 2014, in which he referred to Michael Mann’s (MM) article in Scientific American, March 18th, just a few days prior (see links below). In the article, despite RS’s confessed adoration of and respect for MM, RS warns that MM “…by simply stating the facts and not telling us what they mean he is hitting us with a somewhat nerfed version of his ground-breaking Hockey Stick.” RS goes on to state in his post that MM lays out in his article “brutal facts” which to RS are “simply terrifying” in that “[f]or the simple truth is that the world has only a very, very slim hope of preventing a rapid warming to at least 2 C above 1880s levels in the near future and almost zero hope altogether of stopping such warming in the longer term.” Now stopping here, though I take issue with the last part of the previous sentence, I think he means that once feedbacks engage, it’s a runaway train wreck (like when Richard Alley talked about in his documentary Earth: The Operater’s Manual in which he’s on the rollercoaster going up and up and up). RS states that, “The first set of figures Mann provides involves the current greenhouse gas forcing. Current CO2 levels are now at the very dangerous 400 parts per million threshold. Long term, and all by itself, this forcing is enough to raise global temperatures by between 2 and 3 degrees Celsius. But hold that thought you were just about to have, because we haven’t yet included all the other greenhouse gasses in that forcing.” For this last quote, he cites his own blog post here:

    http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/what-does-a-world-at-400-parts-per-million-co2-look-like-33-2/

    The question that is forming within me reading this, and listening to Peter Wadhams, because I think he’s kinda starting to say something similar, is that the IPCC 4 C by 2100 estimates in the 5th assessment, is as to whether or not the IPCC is only taking into consideration Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS), not Earth Systems Sensitivity (ESS), ECS being the short-term warming, and ESS taking into consideration all the feedbacks as they amplify forcing long-term.

    Your thoughts on this?

    RS & MM Sources
    Robert Scribbler’s Blog Post titled, Far Worse than Being Beaten with a Hockey Stick: Michael Mann, Our Terrifying Greenhouse Gas Overburden and Heating the Earth by + 2 C by 2036:
    http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/far-worse-than-being-beaten-with-a-hockey-stick-michael-mann-our-terrifying-greenhouse-gas-overburden-and-heating-the-earth-by-2-c-by-2036/

    Michael Mann’s Scientific American article titled, Earth Will Cross the Climate Danger Threshold by 2036:
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-will-cross-the-climate-danger-threshold-by-2036/

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    1. It’s not that the work “doesn’t take ESS into consideration”, it’s that they don’t attempt to simulate out the millennia it would take to reach ESS. Uncertainties in human emissions and the climate system responses are large enough without trying to shoot that far into the future. There are model runs out to 2300 in the report.
      Here are the emissions scenarios (I think you’ve picked up enough lingo by now to know radiative forcing): https://fractalplanet.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/ar5_fig12_3a.png
      And here’s the summary of the model runs: https://fractalplanet.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/ar5_fig12_5.png

      I don’t think it’s very useful to think about the very long timescales for this because I think a scenario in which we don’t actively draw down atmospheric CO2 long before then is implausible. If you want to take the view that civilization permanently collapses or something, then the millennial impacts may be more important to you.

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  47. Personally I’ve never been comfortable with predictions that involve specific dates. Unknowns have an embarrassing habit of wrecking havoc with predictions.

    It seems following trends might be a better way of prognosticating about something that hasn’t happened yet. That’s really the best we can do, I think. Looking at ice cores from the past are one way scientists make an ‘educated guess’ about what may happen in the future. Geology is another. But the world is full of unknowns, things no one ever considered before, that can suddenly pop up and put another polish on the apple. Like arctic methane did a few years ago. Who knows what might happen in the future. Heck, climatologists can’t even get the weather for the next day right, how can we predict the weather 20 or 30 years from now?

    Still, if we look down the path we’re on, we can get a fairly good idea where we’re going, at least in the short term. For me, it appears we’ve set ourselves up for an unpleasant future at some point should we continue down this same road. I think the question isn’t so much whether that will happen or when, but whether or not man will do anything substantive to avert it.

    Wish I could be the optimist SJ is but, my opinion, I’m thinking not.

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    1. Just a couple points to clarify:

      Arctic methane didn’t start doing anything new a few years ago, as far as anyone knows. After stalling in the late 90s, methane concentrations started climbing again around 2007. The research indicates this is mostly due to methane from wetlands (which varies with moisture) and possibly expanded natural gas production (anthropogenic, I mean). I put up this figure before showing methane growth rates from pole to pole: https://fractalplanet.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/nisbet_ch4_lat.jpg

      Heck, climatologists can’t even get the weather for the next day right, how can we predict the weather 20 or 30 years from now?

      It’s important to understand the difference between weather and climate. A climatologist wouldn’t try to predict weather- that’s not what they do. Climate is the long-term statistics of weather. By one good analogy, climate determines which clothes you pack for a trip- weather determines what you wear. Weather is very chaotic and changes rapidly. In many ways, it’s easier to describe what is going on climatically, because you average through all the noise. And even if it wasn’t, they are fundamentally different activities. My favorite description of this difference is here: http://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/2014/05/tedx-talk-should-we-trust-climate-models/

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  48. SJ, I think I see what you’re saying about the differences between weather – what we’re experiencing right now, and climate – the basic average weather trends over a longer period of time. Is that right?

    You’re an optimist SJ. That’s a good thing. I wish I was. Honestly, I’m neither an optimist nor a ‘doomer’. If I we’re to try to classify myself, I’d say I’m an independent realist. It’s like declaring oneself a democrat or republican or baptist or atheist or feminist or communist or whatever. Some kind of ‘ist’. You (not you in particular) kind of have to go along with all that that implies, agree with all that each support, whatever the belief system. That can hamstring you, disallows independent thinking, puts you in a box.

    I’d like to say that everything is going to work out fine, we’ll see the problems dead ahead and address them as a world, kind of like the way we do in science fiction movies like Independence Day or Armageddon. Aliens invade or the earth is in trouble and we all rise to the occasion, we all suddenly realize that we’re all part of a whole, a single species united for a common good.

    Realistically, I just don’t see it. Politics are driving us further apart with every passing day. If we move backward in time, we can see ourselves moving closer together as a species until we finally unite in a single family somewhere in east Africa a couple million years ago. Now we’re fragmented into millions of separate categories, groups, organizations and belief systems and we’re becoming more stratified by the day. Like the way jobs have stratified. Once a doctor was a doctor, now we have people that specialize in fragments of the eye, once we had builders, now we have engineers that specialize in the quality of particular metals for particular applications. Whathaveyou.

    When I look at human nature (and I mean myself too) I see splintering, not consensus. Everyone has their own angle. Trying to get us all to agree on something as ethereal, nebulous and costly as climate change is science fiction.

    Sorry, just my two cents worth.

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  49. Hello, everyone.

    Published Sept 11th, 2014, by Yale Climate Connections on the youtube channel YaleClimateForum, titled, This Is Not Cool, by Peter Sinclair, here are climate scientists, including Jason Box, talking about high quality satellite photos demonstrating the melting of the Greenland ice sheets and the doubling of their melt-rates over the past five years, and probably continued doubling moving forward. Key points discussed are appearance and effect of positive feedbacks of moulins and hydrofracturing. Greenland sea level contribution 10 years ago was .5 mm/yr, now it is 1 mm/yr. Loss rate is expect to double at 5-12 years; in other words, the next decade it’s losing 2 mm/yr, extended to end of century means one meter loss by end of century just from Greenland. Box comments on underestimation of latest IPCC report because it doesn’t factor in these processes he’s talking about above.

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    1. Scott, what worries me above is that the Greenland melt-rates are accelerating, and the possibility that the melt-rate doubling could accelerate from 5-12 years to less than this, say 3-8 years, or something like this. As more positive feedbacks engage, it seems to me that this could be a possible outcome. Just not familiar with the science enough to even attempt going further yet.

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      1. Yeah, this is the kind of stuff Greenland researchers wrestle with. Don’t forget that there’s some natural variability, as well. (For example, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v509/n7499/full/nature13260.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20140508) I’ve heard some researchers (and I know a few, this is my wife’s field) expressing that the satellite-measured acceleration was probably amplified by some variability. Ah, I think this is the paper I was looking for: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n8/full/ngeo1874.html

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    1. Elon Musk’s TED Talk in which he predicts solar will be the “plurality” within 18 years.

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