The Global Warming Thread

[Unagi]

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-enviro ... ing-higher

I heard the fish were pooping too much.

"Every time you have that soil or rock or whatever it is that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise, because now you have less space in those oceans, because the bottom is moving up," Brooks said at the hearing.

On the one hand I tell myself, give up. the GOP is lost cause drown in willful ignorance and corruption. Concentrate on what isn't and just bid your fellow Americans to not vote for any of them until they go away. But then this stuff...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2tkm4iZOJ8

The Displacement Theory

Global Displacement

[Isgrimnur]

Guardian

Newly released emails show senior Environmental Protection Agency officials working closely with a conservative group that dismisses climate change to rally like-minded people for public hearings on science and global warming, counter negative news coverage and tout Scott Pruitt’s stewardship of the agency.

John Konkus, EPA’s deputy associate administrator for public affairs, repeatedly reached out to senior staffers at the Heartland Institute, according to the emails.

“If you send a list, we will make sure an invitation is sent,” Konkus wrote to the then Heartland president, Joseph Bast, in May 2017, seeking suggestions on scientists and economists the EPA could invite to an annual EPA public hearing on the agency’s science standards.

Follow-up emails show Konkus and the Heartland Institute mustering scores of potential invitees known for rejecting scientific warnings of human-caused climate change, including from groups such as Plants Need CO2, The Right Climate Stuff and Junk Science.

The emails underscore how Pruitt and senior agency officials have sought to surround themselves with people who share their vision of curbing environmental regulation and enforcement, leading to complaints from environmentalists that he is ignoring the conclusions of the majority of scientists in and out of his agency, especially when it comes to climate-changing carbon emissions.

They were obtained by the Environmental Defence Fund and the Southern Environmental Law Centre, which sued to enforce a Freedom of Information request.

The EPA maintains close working relationships with a broad range of public and private groups, and Heartland is just one of many the agency engages with “to ensure the public is informed”, said the EPA spokesman Lincoln Ferguson.

“It demonstrates the agency’s dedication to advancing President Trump’s agenda of environmental stewardship and regulatory certainty,” he said.
...
“Of course The Heartland Institute has been working with EPA on policy and personnel decisions,” Tim Huelskamp, a former Kansas Republican congressman who now leads the group, said in a statement.

“They recognised us as the pre-eminent organisation opposing the radical climate alarmism agenda and instead promoting sound science and policy,” Huelskamp wrote.

[Fretmute]

Administrtions come and go, but the military industrial complex is eternal, matte and olive drab.

Just the outside. The inside is sea foam green!

[Isgrimnur]

ars technica

In a draft memo to be circulated on Friday, the Department of Energy (DOE) argues in favor of using a wartime rule called the Defense Production Act to bail out failing coal and nuclear plants, according to Bloomberg, which obtained a copy of the memo.

The memo suggests that the Energy Department could force grid operators to buy power or electric generation capacity from a list of pre-determined power plants for two years, “to forestall any future actions toward retirement, decommissioning or deactivation.”
...
The memo allegedly wrote that "Too many of these fuel-secure plants have retired prematurely and many more have recently announced retirement." According to Bloomberg, the memo added that these coal and nuclear plants are being replaced by natural gas and renewable power generation that is not secure or resilient.

Such a statement has been contradicted by several power grid operators, including PJM, one of the largest independent system operators in the country. The recent "bomb cyclone" system of extremely cold weather in the Northeast this winter showed off that the grid could operate well despite coal retirements.
...
Initially, Perry issued a politically charged memo commissioning a study to find the regulatory causes of coal retirements. The resulting study, however, said that no particular regulation was causing coal plants to retire: instead the cheap cost of natural gas was convincing power companies to switch over to that fuel. Perry then proposed a rule that would require power purchasers to compensate coal and nuclear plants over and above the compensation they were already due for their part in supplying "baseload" energy. However, the rule had to be approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and that regulatory body found that there wasn't sufficient evidence to approve Perry's rule.
...
Update 2:43 pm: This afternoon White House Secretary Sarah Sanders said that President Trump told Energy Secretary Rick Perry to "prepare immediate steps" to prevent coal plants from early closure.

[stessier]

On the plus side, it's only for 2 years while they perform the study. I feel it could have been so much worse.

[Isgrimnur]

The lawsuits on this one are going to be fun.

[Zaxxon]

On the plus side, it's only for 2 years while they perform the study. I feel it could have been so much worse.

Could have been worse for sure, but that's 2 years we don't have.

[Holman]

Newest 5-Year-Plan will be completed in two years, comrades!

[Isgrimnur]

Hawaii

In a little less than three decades, Hawaii plans to be carbon neutral–the most ambitious climate goal in the United States. Governor David Ige signed a bill today committing to make the state fully carbon neutral by 2045, along with a second bill that will use carbon offsets to help fund planting trees throughout Hawaii. A third bill requires new building projects to consider how high sea levels will rise in their engineering decisions.
...
Hawaii is already a leader on climate. In 2015, the state passed a law to move to 100% renewable electricity by 2045 (shifting to renewables also helps save money on electric bills, since Hawaii has to import fossil fuels from elsewhere, and it also helps make the island more resilient to disasters). In 2017, days after Trump announced that the U.S. would pull out of the Paris climate agreement, the state passed another law to uphold the agreement’s goal to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.
...
The state is also working to become more self-sufficient. The governor aims to double local food production by 2030; right now, around 90% of what residents and tourists eat in Hawaii–6 million pounds of food a day–comes from somewhere else, on planes or ships.

Before Hawaii set its goal of carbon neutrality by 2045–meaning that it will sequester more carbon from the atmosphere than the emissions it produces–Rhode Island had the most ambitious goal to cut emissions of any state, with a goal to reduce emissions 85% below 1990 levels by 2050. But several countries also have goals to become completely carbon neutral.

The Maldives is working to become carbon neutral by 2020. Costa Rica will follow in 2021. Norway will be carbon neutral by 2030, Iceland will reach that goal by 2040, and Sweden by 2045. France and New Zealand plan to be carbon neutral by 2050. Some cities are also pursuing the goal. Copenhagen, for example, aims to be carbon neutral by 2025, and Oslo will follow in 2030. Austin, Boston, and several others plan to be carbon neutral by 2050.

[Jeff V]

Seems to me his main problem is going to be shutting down that enormous greenhouse gas emitter on the big island.

[Paingod]

I genuinely appreciate what they're trying to do. 2045 is a huge-ass long way off when you think about the accelerating pace of Climate Change, but if baby steps are the best we can do, I'll take it. I only hope future governments in place don't just rip it up and throw it out because the science is inconvenient.

[Moliere]

Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Air to Produce Gasoline?

Recycling the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by turning it back into fuel would help slow the process of global warming. An earlier estimate calculated that direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide would be prohibitively expensive at least $600 per ton. But now Carbon Engineering, located in the British Columbia, has published a detailed engineering and cost analysis of its pilot DAC plant that suggests that its technology can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for $94 to $232 per ton.

The low-end figure is based on a scenario in which electrolysis using no-carbon energy sources breaks apart water to provide both the oxygen and—crucially—the hydrogen needed to combine with the captured carbon dioxide to produce hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline and diesel. Although a lot of media reports on the study jumped immediately to the happy idea that drivers might one day be able to choose between regular, premium, or carbon-free gasoline, the company does not include in its article an engineering cost estimate for transforming the captured carbon dioxide into liquid fuels.

[hepcat]

Pruitt is so excited about the prospect of recycling carbon dioxide in the air into usable fuel that he just bought a $45,000 fork.

[LordMortis]

Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Air to Produce Gasoline?

Recycling the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by turning it back into fuel would help slow the process of global warming. An earlier estimate calculated that direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide would be prohibitively expensive at least $600 per ton. But now Carbon Engineering, located in the British Columbia, has published a detailed engineering and cost analysis of its pilot DAC plant that suggests that its technology can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for $94 to $232 per ton.

The low-end figure is based on a scenario in which electrolysis using no-carbon energy sources breaks apart water to provide both the oxygen and—crucially—the hydrogen needed to combine with the captured carbon dioxide to produce hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline and diesel. Although a lot of media reports on the study jumped immediately to the happy idea that drivers might one day be able to choose between regular, premium, or carbon-free gasoline, the company does not include in its article an engineering cost estimate for transforming the captured carbon dioxide into liquid fuels.

These are the sorts of things I wonder why people way smarter than I can comprehend haven't come up with. They understand plants and filters and catalytic converters and can make tubes out of monofilaments mere atoms thick. I'd think they'd their collective mind to this and wrap it up by dinner.

[stessier]

Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Air to Produce Gasoline?

Recycling the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by turning it back into fuel would help slow the process of global warming. An earlier estimate calculated that direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide would be prohibitively expensive at least $600 per ton. But now Carbon Engineering, located in the British Columbia, has published a detailed engineering and cost analysis of its pilot DAC plant that suggests that its technology can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for $94 to $232 per ton.

The low-end figure is based on a scenario in which electrolysis using no-carbon energy sources breaks apart water to provide both the oxygen and—crucially—the hydrogen needed to combine with the captured carbon dioxide to produce hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline and diesel. Although a lot of media reports on the study jumped immediately to the happy idea that drivers might one day be able to choose between regular, premium, or carbon-free gasoline, the company does not include in its article an engineering cost estimate for transforming the captured carbon dioxide into liquid fuels.

These are the sorts of things I wonder why people way smarter than I can comprehend haven't come up with. They understand plants and filters and catalytic converters and can make tubes out of monofilaments mere atoms thick. I'd think they'd their collective mind to this and wrap it up by dinner.

It can be done. It's not easy though and quite expensive. And there's some question if it could be done fast enough to make a difference.

[LordMortis]

It can be done. It's not easy though and quite expensive. And there's some question if it could be done fast enough to make a difference.

Then get smarter!!!!

[GreenGoo]

Well you see education has a shrinking budget and 1/2 the country despises ivory tower intellectuals and anyone with "book" smarts are viewed with suspicion and not someone "I'd like to have a beer with" so getting smarter is far more arduous than it should be, and that doesn't even touch on your personal preference that the fed government not be involved in education, so...


Or did you mean smarter genetically? Like, evolve faster? Well half the country thinks evolution is a lie and the fed already struggles to counter this propaganda, the same fed government that you feel should stay out of the state business of education so...

If I were a climate scientist I'd seriously consider giving the finger to the American people and becoming a plumber. Jobs are plentiful and pay pretty well and you are unlikely to be called a public enemy by prominent politicians including the president.

But sure, scientists will "get smarter" when demanded to by the very people who revile them over their bud lights on a daily basis.

Sure, no problem. Putting a yoke around their necks to drag the human race kicking and screaming into the future against their wishes is a dream job. Feel free to cut their budgets some more. There's always work making cellphones smaller. Publicly funded research is socialism anyway.

What could go wrong?


Phew.

[Moliere]

Signing the Paris Agreement doesn't mean they will actually do anything.

Adopting the Paris Agreement in 2015 and committing
to pursue efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C was a
major step forward in safeguarding our planet’s future. Yet
the contributions proposed at the Paris talks are nowhere
close enough to keep temperature rise below this threshold.
Hence the EU, like all other countries in the world, needs to
urgently and substantially increase its action, well beyond the
currently agreed targets.
...
The ranking shows that all EU countries are off target: they
are failing to increase their climate action in line with the
Paris Agreement goal. No single EU country is performing
sufficiently in both ambition and progress in reducing carbon
emissions. Countries can and must to do more to achieve the
goals of the Paris Agreement.

For this reason, the top position of the ranking is unoccupied.
Sweden comes out as leader of the pack, followed by Portugal,
France, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Aside from this
group, a vast majority of Member States achieve a score of less
than half of the possible points.

On the one hand, some countries score highly on ‘ambition’
due to their promotion of ambitious targets at EU level. Here,
Sweden, Luxembourg and France score the most points.
Unfortunately however, most countries that advocate for more
ambitious policies for the future are currently lagging behind in
achieving targets for 2020 and reducing carbon emissions.

On the other hand, some countries achieve a high score on
‘progress’ due to the fact that they are overachieving their
2020 climate and energy targets. Here, Croatia, Romania and
Greece score the most points. However, countries that are
on track to meet their current targets mostly do so because
the targets were set too low and are easy to reach. These
countries are opposing more ambitious policies for the future,
because they want to keep on seeming to ‘overachieve’.

[Isgrimnur]

[Isgrimnur]

Texas

The Texas Supreme Court handed a loss to local government on Friday, striking down a Laredo ban on plastic bags. The decision imperils about a dozen other cities' bans across the state.

In a decision viewed as one of the court’s most highly-politicized of the term, justices ruled unanimously that a state law on solid waste disposal pre-empted the local ordinance. That decision drew immediate responses from both sides of the aisle, with high praise from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican who had weighed in against the bans, and condemnation from environmental groups, which had argued the ban kept at bay the harsh environmental damage brought by plastics.
...
The court said in a unanimous holding that its intent was not to wade into the "roving, roiling debate over local control of public affairs" but simply to resolve the legal question at hand.
...
The Laredo Merchants Association sued the city back in March 2015, arguing that the city’s ban on single-use bags conflicted with a state law regulating solid waste disposal. But the question stretches back even further than that. In 2014, then-Attorney General Greg Abbott issued a non-binding opinion advising that bag bans are legal if they are not aimed at “solid waste management.” That murky phrase, which appears in the Texas Health and Safety Code, has become the fulcrum for debate on the issue.

The Laredo case, which made its way to the Texas Supreme Court in January, has focused on that semantic difference. Lawyers for the city, led by former Texas Supreme Court Justice Dale Wainwright, argued that the bags are not garbage and are therefore are not covered by the relevant state law. Lawyers on the other side, who have been joined by the Texas Attorney General’s Office, argue that they are.

[Rip]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/thirty-yea ... 1529623442

With that testimony and an accompanying paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Mr. Hansen lit the bonfire of the greenhouse vanities, igniting a world-wide debate that continues today about the energy structure of the entire planet. President Obama’s environmental policies were predicated on similar models of rapid, high-cost warming. But the 30th anniversary of Mr. Hansen’s predictions affords an opportunity to see how well his forecasts have done—and to reconsider environmental policy accordingly.

[Isgrimnur]

Paywalled WSJ article written by Pat Michaels and Ryan Maue, both of the Cato Institute, an organization with a long history of global warming denialism.

[Rip]

Paywalled WSJ article written by Pat Michaels and Ryan Maue, both of the Cato Institute, an organization with a long history of global warming denialism.

Facts are facts and theirs our undeniable.

Gist is of the dire predictions made by James E. Hansen the one that was least pessimistic came true. But he based it on carbon emissions being capped at 2000 levels. Which didn't happen. Bottom line grossly overstated what temps would do (he called for a .7-1 degree Celsius increase depending which or the tow worst case scenario). What we got was the best case scenario in results without doing much of anything. Yeah us!

The science you all claim to love is speaking.

[Enough]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/thirty-yea ... 1529623442

With that testimony and an accompanying paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Mr. Hansen lit the bonfire of the greenhouse vanities, igniting a world-wide debate that continues today about the energy structure of the entire planet. President Obama’s environmental policies were predicated on similar models of rapid, high-cost warming. But the 30th anniversary of Mr. Hansen’s predictions affords an opportunity to see how well his forecasts have done—and to reconsider environmental policy accordingly.

James Hansen wishes he wasn't so right about global warming

The hotter world that Hansen envisioned in 1988 has pretty much come true so far, more or less. Three decades later, most climate scientists interviewed rave about the accuracy of Hansen's predictions given the technology of the time.

Hansen won't say, "I told you so."

"I don't want to be right in that sense," Hansen told The Associated Press, in an interview is his New York penthouse apartment. That's because being right means the world is warming at an unprecedented pace and ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland are melting.

Hansen said what he really wishes happened is "that the warning be heeded and actions be taken."

They weren't. Hansen, now 77, regrets not being "able to make this story clear enough for the public."

Hansen projected that by 2017, the globe's five-year average temperature would be about 1.85 degrees (1.03 degree Celsius) higher than the 1950 to 1980 NASA-calculated average. NASA's five-year average global temperature ending in 2017 was 1.48 degrees above the 30-year average. (He did not take into account that the sun would be cooling a tad, which would reduce warming nearly two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit, said the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Jeff Severinghaus.)

Hansen also predicted a certain number of days of extreme weather—temperature above 95 degrees, freezing days, and nights when the temperatures that don't drop below 75—per year for four U.S. cities in the decade of the 2010s.

Hansen's forecast generally underestimated this decade's warming in Washington, overestimated it in Omaha, was about right in New York and mixed in Memphis.

Clara Deser, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said Hansen's global temperature forecast was "incredible" and his extremes for the cities were "astounding" in their accuracy. Berkeley Earth's Zeke Hausfather gives Hansen's predictions a 7 or 8 for accuracy, out of 10; he said Hansen calculated that the climate would respond a bit more to carbon dioxide than scientists now think.

Of note, Hansen has recently joined forces with my high school buddy Michael Shellenberger to stump for the pro-nukes org Michael formed, Environmental Progress. The argument is basically no other energy source exists to decarbonize the economy at scale.

[Enough]

Paywalled WSJ article written by Pat Michaels and Ryan Maue, both of the Cato Institute, an organization with a long history of global warming denialism.

Facts are facts and theirs our undeniable.

Gist is of the dire predictions made by James E. Hansen the one that was least pessimistic came true. But he based it on carbon emissions being capped at 2000 levels. Which didn't happen. Bottom line grossly overstated what temps would do (he called for a .7-1 degree Celsius increase depending which or the tow worst case scenario). What we got was the best case scenario in results without doing much of anything. Yeah us!

The science you all claim to love is speaking.

If you valued science 1% as much as Hansen that would be a great, great thing. I love ya in EBG topics but lordie dude you have no place to be calling for scientific decision making unless you are preparing to leave the troll farm you have been residing in since Drumpf came to be.

[Rip]

Well something isn't jiving.

Mr. Hansen’s testimony described three possible scenarios for the future of carbon dioxide emissions. He called Scenario A “business as usual,” as it maintained the accelerating emissions growth typical of the 1970s and ’80s. This scenario predicted the earth would warm 1 degree Celsius by 2018. Scenario B set emissions lower, rising at the same rate today as in 1988. Mr. Hansen called this outcome the “most plausible,” and predicted it would lead to about 0.7 degree of warming by this year. He added a final projection, Scenario C, which he deemed highly unlikely: constant emissions beginning in 2000. In that forecast, temperatures would rise a few tenths of a degree before flatlining after 2000.

Thirty years of data have been collected since Mr. Hansen outlined his scenarios—enough to determine which was closest to reality. And the winner is Scenario C. Global surface temperature has not increased significantly since 2000, discounting the larger-than-usual El Niño of 2015-16. Assessed by Mr. Hansen’s model, surface temperatures are behaving as if we had capped 18 years ago the carbon-dioxide emissions responsible for the enhanced greenhouse effect. But we didn’t. And it isn’t just Mr. Hansen who got it wrong. Models devised by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have, on average, predicted about twice as much warming as has been observed since global satellite temperature monitoring began 40 years ago.

What about Mr. Hansen’s other claims? Outside the warming models, his only explicit claim in the testimony was that the late ’80s and ’90s would see “greater than average warming in the southeast U.S. and the Midwest.” No such spike has been measured in these regions.

As observed temperatures diverged over the years from his predictions, Mr. Hansen doubled down. In a 2007 case on auto emissions, he stated in his deposition that most of Greenland’s ice would soon melt, raising sea levels 23 feet over the course of 100 years. Subsequent research published in Nature magazine on the history of Greenland’s ice cap demonstrated this to be impossible. Much of Greenland’s surface melts every summer, meaning rapid melting might reasonably be expected to occur in a dramatically warming world. But not in the one we live in. The Nature study found only modest ice loss after 6,000 years of much warmer temperatures than human activity could ever sustain.

Several more of Mr. Hansen’s predictions can now be judged by history. Have hurricanes gotten stronger, as Mr. Hansen predicted in a 2016 study? No. Satellite data from 1970 onward shows no evidence of this in relation to global surface temperature. Have storms caused increasing amounts of damage in the U.S.? Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show no such increase in damage, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product. How about stronger tornadoes? The opposite may be true, as NOAA data offers some evidence of a decline. The list of what didn’t happen is long and tedious.

The problem with Mr. Hansen’s models—and the U.N.’s—is that they don’t consider more-precise measures of how aerosol emissions counter warming caused by greenhouse gases. Several newer climate models account for this trend and routinely project about half the warming predicted by U.N. models, placing their numbers much closer to observed temperatures. The most recent of these was published in April by Nic Lewis and Judith Curry in the Journal of Climate, a reliably mainstream journal.

These corrected climate predictions raise a crucial question: Why should people world-wide pay drastic costs to cut emissions when the global temperature is acting as if those cuts have already been made?

On the 30th anniversary of Mr. Hansen’s galvanizing testimony, it’s time to acknowledge that the rapid warming he predicted isn’t happening. Climate researchers and policy makers should adopt the more modest forecasts that are consistent with observed temperatures.

That would be a lukewarm policy, consistent with a lukewarming planet.

Not sure what gives. Please feel free to pint out factual errors.

[Enough]

And on your Cato 'scholars":

Over the years, many people have misrepresented what was predicted and what could have been expected. Most (in)famously, Pat Michaels testified in Congress about climate changes and claimed that the predictions were wrong by 300% (!) – but his conclusion was drawn from a doctored graph (Cato Institute version) of the predictions where he erased the lower two scenarios....

Undoubtedly there will be claims this week that Scenario A was the most accurate projection of the forcings [Narrator: It was not]. Or they will show only the CO2 projection (and ignore the other factors). Similarly, someone will claim that the projections have been “falsified” because the temperature trends in Scenario B are statistically distinguishable from those in the real world. But this sleight of hand is trying to conflate a very specific set of hypotheses (the forcings combined with the model used) which no-one expects (or expected) to perfectly match reality, with the much more robust and valid prediction that the trajectory of greenhouse gases would lead to substantive warming by now – as indeed it has.

[Rip]

And on your Cato 'scholars":

Over the years, many people have misrepresented what was predicted and what could have been expected. Most (in)famously, Pat Michaels testified in Congress about climate changes and claimed that the predictions were wrong by 300% (!) – but his conclusion was drawn from a doctored graph (Cato Institute version) of the predictions where he erased the lower two scenarios....

Undoubtedly there will be claims this week that Scenario A was the most accurate projection of the forcings [Narrator: It was not]. Or they will show only the CO2 projection (and ignore the other factors). Similarly, someone will claim that the projections have been “falsified” because the temperature trends in Scenario B are statistically distinguishable from those in the real world. But this sleight of hand is trying to conflate a very specific set of hypotheses (the forcings combined with the model used) which no-one expects (or expected) to perfectly match reality, with the much more robust and valid prediction that the trajectory of greenhouse gases would lead to substantive warming by now – as indeed it has.

Therein lies the rub. How much reality is lower than the predictions. More important how much warming and/or lack of is substantive. I don't doubt that CO2 levels play into warming/cooling. Just a matter of how much and whether there are other factors that may counteract it in ways we don't anticipate. We should be doing all kinds of studying and watching while cutting back where feasible without harming our economics too bad until we can collect data from an appropriate period of time for such things. The phrase 100 year storm kinda defines what would be a reasonable time-frame for evaluating such things. Call me in 70 years and I will be happy to go all crisis mode and join into the protest if avg temp is another 4-5 degrees fahrenheit.

[GreenGoo]

Thank god scientists in other countries aren't trying to do their jobs with all the Rips tied to their necks like American scientists are forced to do.

How can a single individual be wrong about so many things? It's like he's got a bone to pick with reality. I've never seen a contrarian try to take on reality like this before.

It's sad. And a little unstable.

[Isgrimnur]

Call me when I'm dead and the damage is already done.

Truly the statement of a reasonable man.

[Daehawk]

I get a little smirk out of thinking of the future when global warming deniers will freeze to death.

[Enough]

And on your Cato 'scholars":

Over the years, many people have misrepresented what was predicted and what could have been expected. Most (in)famously, Pat Michaels testified in Congress about climate changes and claimed that the predictions were wrong by 300% (!) – but his conclusion was drawn from a doctored graph (Cato Institute version) of the predictions where he erased the lower two scenarios....

Undoubtedly there will be claims this week that Scenario A was the most accurate projection of the forcings [Narrator: It was not]. Or they will show only the CO2 projection (and ignore the other factors). Similarly, someone will claim that the projections have been “falsified” because the temperature trends in Scenario B are statistically distinguishable from those in the real world. But this sleight of hand is trying to conflate a very specific set of hypotheses (the forcings combined with the model used) which no-one expects (or expected) to perfectly match reality, with the much more robust and valid prediction that the trajectory of greenhouse gases would lead to substantive warming by now – as indeed it has.

Therein lies the rub. How much reality is lower than the predictions. More important how much warming and/or lack of is substantive. I don't doubt that CO2 levels play into warming/cooling. Just a matter of how much and whether there are other factors that may counteract it in ways we don't anticipate. We should be doing all kinds of studying and watching while cutting back where feasible without harming our economics too bad until we can collect data from an appropriate period of time for such things. The phrase 100 year storm kinda defines what would be a reasonable time-frame for evaluating such things. Call me in 70 years and I will be happy to go all crisis mode and join into the protest if avg temp is another 4-5 degrees fahrenheit.

Just so you understand that your WSJ rubbish opinion piece was literally written by the same CATO folks who have a clear record of deceiving Congress (and apparently you) on warming. I would avoid flexing your scientific bonofides by citing them in the future.

I had honestly hoped that you were posting some recent good news we got on climate from actual reputable scientists. What a disappointment to see Drudge and his allies seem to have completely missed it in the race to attack Hansen on the 30 year anniversary. It would have for once been an accurate push back on the dangers of climate change.

Observed rapid bedrock uplift in Amundsen Sea Embayment promotes ice-sheet stability

Basically, the melting of ice is resulting in bounce-back uplift of a greater amount than expected. IE, when the ice melts and the ground goes up faster than expected from the loss of weight and that's potentially buying us a hundred years more before catastrophic flooding. Here's a great write up from my uni.

And you also reveal yourself to be a fan of fighting out of control forest fires vs investing a smaller amount in defensible perimeters around your house before the fire hits. I mean this is basically your logic: Sure our forest is full of dead timber, ya we've been in drought for years, but call me when it's burned down to the ground and I will join you in your forest health concerns. So please, go ahead and enjoy your cedar shake roof and gorgeous storybook-esque fire-ladder pondorosa trees leaning up on your house. No way am I clearing out that space until after a catastrophic fire proves it to me that my family and property is at risk. So smart, so adaptive! OH and if you think this is a lame analogy, maybe it gets more interesting when you realize for each degree C of warming that we can expect about 200-400% increases in the area burned by wildfire in parts of the western United States. So you will wait to freak out until after an 800% increase in wildfires among other things, how generous.

[Enough]

I mean, my god. Just look at observations vs what Hansen predicted 30 years ago with much more crude data and tech than we have now:



I'd say that's pretty fing impressive predictive power. Observations are basically smack dab in the middle of the three scenarios.

[Rip]

And on your Cato 'scholars":

Over the years, many people have misrepresented what was predicted and what could have been expected. Most (in)famously, Pat Michaels testified in Congress about climate changes and claimed that the predictions were wrong by 300% (!) – but his conclusion was drawn from a doctored graph (Cato Institute version) of the predictions where he erased the lower two scenarios....

Undoubtedly there will be claims this week that Scenario A was the most accurate projection of the forcings [Narrator: It was not]. Or they will show only the CO2 projection (and ignore the other factors). Similarly, someone will claim that the projections have been “falsified” because the temperature trends in Scenario B are statistically distinguishable from those in the real world. But this sleight of hand is trying to conflate a very specific set of hypotheses (the forcings combined with the model used) which no-one expects (or expected) to perfectly match reality, with the much more robust and valid prediction that the trajectory of greenhouse gases would lead to substantive warming by now – as indeed it has.

Therein lies the rub. How much reality is lower than the predictions. More important how much warming and/or lack of is substantive. I don't doubt that CO2 levels play into warming/cooling. Just a matter of how much and whether there are other factors that may counteract it in ways we don't anticipate. We should be doing all kinds of studying and watching while cutting back where feasible without harming our economics too bad until we can collect data from an appropriate period of time for such things. The phrase 100 year storm kinda defines what would be a reasonable time-frame for evaluating such things. Call me in 70 years and I will be happy to go all crisis mode and join into the protest if avg temp is another 4-5 degrees fahrenheit.

Just so you understand that your WSJ rubbish opinion piece was literally written by the same CATO folks who have a clear record of deceiving Congress (and apparently you) on warming. I would avoid flexing your scientific bonofides by citing them in the future.

I had honestly hoped that you were posting some recent good news we got on climate from actual reputable scientists. What a disappointment to see Drudge and his allies seem to have completely missed it in the race to attack Hansen on the 30 year anniversary. It would have for once been an accurate push back on the dangers of climate change.

Observed rapid bedrock uplift in Amundsen Sea Embayment promotes ice-sheet stability

Basically, the melting of ice is resulting in bounce-back uplift of a greater amount than expected. IE, when the ice melts and the ground goes up faster than expected from the loss of weight and that's potentially buying us a hundred years more before catastrophic flooding. Here's a great write up from my uni.

And you also reveal yourself to be a fan of fighting out of control forest fires vs investing a smaller amount in defensible perimeters around your house before the fire hits. I mean this is basically your logic: Sure our forest is full of dead timber, ya we've been in drought for years, but call me when it's burned down to the ground and I will join you in your forest health concerns. So please, go ahead and enjoy your cedar shake roof and gorgeous storybook-esque fire-ladder pondorosa trees leaning up on your house. No way am I clearing out that space until after a catastrophic fire proves it to me that my family and property is at risk. So smart, so adaptive! OH and if you think this is a lame analogy, maybe it gets more interesting when you realize for each degree C of warming that we can expect about 200-400% increases in the area burned by wildfire in parts of the western United States. So you will wait to freak out until after an 800% increase in wildfires among other things, how generous.

You must have missed that my numbers were in fahrenheit. At current rates (which we have no idea if the rate will stay the same) we won't have one degree celsius increase until like I said I will join the protest. So no I am not waiting until an 800% increase. That would be like 300 years more to wait if rates remain the same. It only went up half a degree the last 30 years, if by some chance it goes up a full degree celcius more before 70 years are up again I will join the sky is falling clique.

[hepcat]

I get a little smirk out of thinking of the future when global warming deniers will freeze to death.

Except that will also take out those who warned them too.

Although I just decided to do some Fox News scientific research. I went outside and there was still weather, so...fake news, y’all.

[Unagi]

I get a little smirk out of thinking of the future when global warming deniers will freeze to death.

You don't have kids.

[Fitzy]

I get a little smirk out of thinking of the future when global warming deniers will freeze to death.

Except that will also take out those who warned them too.

I have played a lot of Dwarf Fortress and I recently purchased a steel pick. Given that I can now survive 2-3 years in DF, I think I’ll be ready to lead an underground colony by the time dangerous levels of climate change arrive. You’re welcome to join us, but I have to warn you after seeing your Conan posts, that pants are not optional.

[GreenGoo]

Anyone know where Sepiche lives? If dwarf fortress is an indicator of future survival, I'm hanging off of his coat tails.

[stessier]

I'm getting pretty good at Factorio - I can get us off this rock! If we save room in the rocket for jztemple, he can terraform Mars for us and we should be good to go!

[Holman]

Probably best to start putting hours into MAD MAX.