here comes the next ice age

[Mynnion]

Snopes carried this if anyone is interested.

http://www.snopes.com/2017/02/08/noaa-scientists-climate-change-data/

[Seriati]

Snopes is interesting, they seem to not quite understand how the adjustments were done between the buoys and ship based data.  Unless I'm misunderstanding, they hang their hat on the buoys being given "greater" weight, but skip over the fact that temperatures from the buoys were adjusted upwards before given than weight (rather than the temperatures from the ships being adjusted downwards).  Unless I'm misreading all of this, I'm hard pressed to understand the direction of that adjustment when it appears universally agreed that ship based temperatures are warmer because of the heat generated by the ships themselves.

They also seem to be relying more on opinion here than fact.  For example concluding that the paper had little impact on the conference because a single state department source made that claim.  They could just as easily have reviewed news accounts at the time, or other references that implied it did have an impact.

[LetterRip]

I debated this on Facebook a bit,

1) He made some pretty basic science errors in his accusations (the adjusting the bouy data - the adjusting the buoy date vs adjusting the ship data didn't matter - either was perfectly valid - the buoy data adjustment was simply to make it easeier to compare to previous research - basically adding buoys over time created an artificial cooling trend)

2) His claims about the need for extensive verification only applied to datasets that were not being updated (satellite data needs extensive vetting because there are lots of places for errors to creep in, the buoy and ship data could be vetted far faster)

3) He had been demoted before retiring and thus appeared to have a grudge

4) There appears to be confusion between using different model versions (there were claims about things being 'redone entirely' but basically there are new versions of model and datasets published each year).

[LetterRip]

Seriati,

the adjusting direction doesn't matter since we are only interested in the trend.

Say you have a group of 16 thermometers in a 3x3 grid (each corner and crossing point) and you are measuring temperature changes over time.  Then you want increased coverage so you decided to add a thermometer at the center of each grid cell, but you don't have access to the same thermometers, you only have a new batch that has a 2 degree lower temperature (say the original thermometers were all miscalibrated by 2 degrees).

Each time you add a thermometer, if you directly average without calibrating to the same standard, you will reduce the average temperature each time you add a thermometer.

Say it has a constant 100 F reading at all points with the original thermometers - 16*100/16 = 100.  Then add 1 thermomenter and you get (16*100 + 1*98)/17 = 99.88
add 9 (16*100 + 9*98)/25 = 99.28

So our water appears to have cooled over time, even though the temperature is actually constant, we have just used thermomenters that are calibrated differently.

We can either calibrate the new thermometers so that 98 is read as 100, or we can retroactively calibrate the original thermometers so that 100 is adjusted to 98.

Since we are only interested in the trend over time, the direction of calibration is irrelevant.  The trend (in our case staying exactly the same) is present regardless of which choice you make.  An important consideration is comparison with past analysis, which would lead you to keep the data with the longest history as the baseline.

[Seriati]

I understand how adjustments work guys.  There's also a basic premise that you should adjust the less reliable data to the more reliable data, not the other way.

I also get the point about trend, but again, unless I'm mistaken they were also interested in the temperatures themselves, and were using that data in connection with land-based data.  I don't think it's as harmless a directional error as you imply.

I've also spoken multiple times about instrumentation deficiencies.  The hard fact is, we don't have 100 years of direct data with reliable instrumentation for a global temperature.  We don't even have 60 years.  Adjustments and tweaks have occurred repeatedly throughout the data sets and the cumulative impact of the decisions made in those adjustments is enough to show any result we want to see.   I agree that there is no good reason to believe that anyone is creating a deliberate misleading trend, but if you understand what they're doing, you have to understand that it's well within the realm of possibility that they could do so accidentally. 

These kind of choices do matter, and this one seems harder to justify that you imply (at least if you really understand the science).

[LetterRip]

Seriati,

Adjustments and tweaks have occurred repeatedly throughout the data sets and the cumulative impact of the decisions made in those adjustments is enough to show any result we want to see.

That is most definitely not the case.  The majority of the adjustments have had a cooling impact on data (ie the elimination of heat island effects) and the adjustments have all had to be extremely clear errors in the data with extensive statistical justification in both the determination that an error exists and in the method of accounting for the error.

The hard fact is, we don't have 100 years of direct data with reliable instrumentation for a global temperature.

Due to the huge number of data points the random errors should average out, only systematic errors should introduce trends and those can be spotted via statistical analysis.  It is actually difficult to introduce errors that will introduce a trend (asside from bugs in analysis software).

[Seriati]

Seriati,

Adjustments and tweaks have occurred repeatedly throughout the data sets and the cumulative impact of the decisions made in those adjustments is enough to show any result we want to see.

That is most definitely not the case.  The majority of the adjustments have had a cooling impact on data (ie the elimination of heat island effects) and the adjustments have all had to be extremely clear errors in the data with extensive statistical justification in both the determination that an error exists and in the method of accounting for the error.

LR seriously, you realize that for large parts of the globe we have no direct current measurements, and if you go back even 30 years that percentage is so high its laughable.  The official data is constantly being adjusted and massaged to appear to present complete coverage.  There is absolutely no reason to believe that adjustments have a bias towards cooling, not sure where you'd even get that idea. 

And I agree, the intent behind the adjustments is a good faith desire to get to an accurate picture.  Nonetheless there's no legitimate way not to acknowledge that the entire trend is potentially within the adjustment factor (not that I'm saying it actually is).

The hard fact is, we don't have 100 years of direct data with reliable instrumentation for a global temperature.

Due to the huge number of data points the random errors should average out, only systematic errors should introduce trends and those can be spotted via statistical analysis.  It is actually difficult to introduce errors that will introduce a trend (asside from bugs in analysis software).

Yep statistical analysis should be able to spot a trend (like say a global warming trend or a global warming pause) that is the direct result of non-random or systematic error.  One would expect truly random error to average out as you say, but no amount of error in adjustment is actually random in that sense.  It's like if you were flipping coins and marked every 50th one tails to correct for the extra weight on the heads side.  Could such an adjustment have merit? 

Are you honestly unaware of the level of fudge in the data, or are you making a different argument about whether its still reliable?

[Wayward Son]

Here's another reason we don't trust Trump to be able to do the right thing.

One of the people Trump has mentioned as a Science Advisor is physicist Will Happer.

Happer does not believe in AGW.

Why?

Q: So you really do see global warming as a non-problem, not as something worth investing in?

A. Absolutely. Not only a non-problem. I see the CO2 as good, you know. Let me be clear. I don’t think it’s a problem at all, I think it’s a good thing. It’s just incredible when people keep talking about carbon pollution when you and I are sitting here breathing out, you know, 40,000 parts per million of CO2 with every exhalation. So I mean it’s shameful to do all of this propaganda on what’s a beneficial natural part of the atmosphere that has never been stable but most of the time much higher than now.

This statement, from a scientist, is like a government expert saying that assault rifles should be banned because they are automatic weapons. 

Even with my basic understanding of climate change, I can see that this man is completely ignorant of the science, and apparently science in general.  But in his own mind, he's smarter than all other climate scientists put together.  Ignorant and arrogant.

With advisors like him, Trump will have no choice but to mess things up.

[TheDeamon]

A. Absolutely. Not only a non-problem. I see the CO2 as good, you know. Let me be clear. I don’t think it’s a problem at all, I think it’s a good thing. It’s just incredible when people keep talking about carbon pollution when you and I are sitting here breathing out, you know, 40,000 parts per million of CO2 with every exhalation. So I mean it’s shameful to do all of this propaganda on what’s a beneficial natural part of the atmosphere that has never been stable but most of the time much higher than now.

This statement, from a scientist, is like a government expert saying that assault rifles should be banned because they are automatic weapons. 

Even with my basic understanding of climate change, I can see that this man is completely ignorant of the science, and apparently science in general.  But in his own mind, he's smarter than all other climate scientists put together.  Ignorant and arrogant.[/quote]

Yes and no, I'm inclined to say CO2 is beneficial as well, but probably not for the reasons you'd think. Have you seen the studies and examples of plant growth under varying levels of CO2 exposure?

The plants exposed to levels that are claimed for "historic normal" levels of CO2 are positively anemic, nearly "starvation level" for many/most plants. Even without factoring in other things, it would certainly account for issues with wide spread famine in much of the world by that "forcing" alone. (The plants had to work that much harder for every little bit of hydrocarbon it obtained; incidentally, this probably also accounts for issues with "tree ring data" that skeptics also like to point towards, because of the observed (high) growth rates in trees during "the modern era")

So yes, CO2 is an inherent "super food" for plants even before any of its other side effects come into play. Within that specific context, CO2 is beneficial. Now if you want to claim that AGW completely offets the observable faster tree/plant growth benefits those elevated levels present, that's entirely up to you.

[NobleHunter]

Did they use modern plants or ones contemporary to the levels of CO2 in question? While it's an interesting experiment, I think it would be difficult to get valid data.

The real point is that the effects of CO2 on plant growth is largely irrelevant to the AGW question. We're still screwed if plants can grow really well in Siberia but the Great Plains are a desert and the coasts have receded by 5 miles due to rising sea-levels.

[TheDeamon]

The real point is that the effects of CO2 on plant growth is largely irrelevant to the AGW question. We're still screwed if plants can grow really well in Siberia but the Great Plains are a desert and the coasts have receded by 5 miles due to rising sea-levels.

Not necessarily, of course, this gets into geo-engineering solutions. Algae is a thing that engages in photosynthesis, it also is a very effective as both a carbon sink and feedstuff for fisheries. There are tens of thousands of square miles of "iron depleted" ocean out there. We could start seeding the oceans with iron, and thus trigger a significant increase in the amount of photosynthesis happening on/near the surface of the ocean, and use that to suck out a lot of the CO2 in the atmosphere where it then either enters the food chain, or finds it way to bottom of the ocean for longer term storage and sequestration.

Except we've currently banned the practice under international law, outside of some exceedingly narrow carve outs for "further scientific study" that virtually nobody is actually bothering to pursue, and for that ones that are trying, they're getting stymied by environmental activist groups every step along the way.

[TheDrake]

What TheDaemon points out is the fundamental difficulty with trying to solve this problem - and I do think it is a problem.

Many environmentalists rule out any option that doesn't involve the privation of humanity. Significant numbers oppose tidal power, wind power, sometimes even solar power. Obviously opposing any massive seeding to the ocean, but also pipelines (which would result in a decrease of emissions used to transport fuel by other means).

I'd say they want us to live like the Amish, but I'm sure they would be horrified by the number of trees that would be burned as firewood, fertilizer runoff, etc.

I'm well aware that there are environmentalists who also support nuclear and other energies, and who act the opposite of what I am describing. But the most vocal members of those groups oppose the very concept of humans having energy, when you get right down to it.
Short of encasing the planet in biodomed cities that they wouldn't want us to build (cuts off migration paths), I'm not really sure how one would please all of them.

IF global warming / climate change is in fact a crisis, then we should be throwing out all other concerns to handle that one threat.

[TheDeamon]

What TheDaemon points out is the fundamental difficulty with trying to solve this problem - and I do think it is a problem.

Many environmentalists rule out any option that doesn't involve the privation of humanity. Significant numbers oppose tidal power, wind power, sometimes even solar power. Obviously opposing any massive seeding to the ocean, but also pipelines (which would result in a decrease of emissions used to transport fuel by other means).

The iron seeding opposition baffles me in a number of ways, most of what I've seen on it is almost pure scare mongering, and minimal science based on an extreme worst case("over fertilization") scenario where you instead end up with red algae everywhere. Knowing where that tipping point is, and how to avoid reaching it would be highly, and insanely helpful. But no, because that tipping point simply exists, we shouldn't play in that domain at all in their book.

In many respects, I'd think it would be something many environmental groups would want to investigate seriously given how concerned they are over "ocean acidification" due to increasing levels of CO2 in those warmer ocean waters. Seems to me that significantly increasing the population of algae would rather directly address that issue, so long as it is done in an effective manner... Which admittedly does warrant further study so we know what form that would take.

As those ocean going algae and plankton consumes the CO2 that is already dissolved in the water, and thus directly lowers it's CO2 content(acidity) until the much slower atmospheric exchange soaks more CO2 back in, which it should in turn immediately address once more.

It also has a knock-on effect of helping trigger larger marine life populations, which would help with the multitude of endangered marine animal species that are out there as you increase their food supply. It also provides a boon to the national fisheries of the regions where this could be done, potentially making it much easier to feed hundreds of millions of people.

But no, we can't do it because "it's not natural, and we don't understand it." So we shouldn't do anything to help understand it?

[TheDeamon]

I'm well aware that there are environmentalists who also support nuclear and other energies, and who act the opposite of what I am describing. But the most vocal members of those groups oppose the very concept of humans having energy, when you get right down to it.
Short of encasing the planet in biodomed cities that they wouldn't want us to build (cuts off migration paths), I'm not really sure how one would please all of them.

IF global warming / climate change is in fact a crisis, then we should be throwing out all other concerns to handle that one threat.

I pretty much agree with Rush Limbaugh on his declaration back in the 1990's, and there has been little to dissuade me from it since. While I don't think the particular brush he used should have been as broad as it was, it still shines a light on a truth many people don't want to really acknowledge.

That being: That the AGW Global Warming "community" is the preferred refuge of communists thw world over after the fall of the Soviet Union. It provides them with a great cover under which they can pursue socialistic and communistic "solutions to the problem of Climate Change." Likewise, it provides them with a means to further "put the brakes on" further "capitalistic expansion" into the world, or even to simply expand within its own existing sphere.

"Enviromentalist groups" and lobbies are the single largest obstacle for governments and corporations alike to overcome when it comes to doing anything which might improve the lives of people in any particular area. That isn't to say everything that a (local) government or any given business was actually pursuing anything that was in the (environmental) "best interest" of the communities involved, as that often isn't the case.

A good example recently would be the Oroville Dam in California, where environmental groups had (correctly) identified a deficiency in the construction of the Dam, and pursued a legal recourse in getting it corrected. Where, surprise surprise, they wanted more concrete, not less. So environmental groups can be "responsible" in the exercise of their role as watchdogs.

The problem is when they go overboard, and when/how to draw that line, currently the line is a crazy zig-zag of them sometimes holding far too much power where they can easily more than triple the cost of projects for completely trivial reasons(often resulting in their abandonment), and other times not enough(Oroville).

And a big tell in the (international) Climate Change (mitigation) crowd, in particular the louder/loudest ones, is looking at what their "solutions" are. Or more particularly, what they aren't. Although they seem to be really effective at shuffling money around, and claiming a lot of income redistribution is necessary("to help the poor"), as well as expansions of government powers. Huh, I wonder where they might have picked up that idea from?

Meanwhile, any serious pursuit of technologies or techniques that might have more immediate and significant impacts? Forbidden, and likely to result in your getting called all kinds of nasty things.

[Wayward Son]

What TheDaemon points out is the fundamental difficulty with trying to solve this problem - and I do think it is a problem.

Many environmentalists rule out any option that doesn't involve the privation of humanity. Significant numbers oppose tidal power, wind power, sometimes even solar power. Obviously opposing any massive seeding to the ocean, but also pipelines (which would result in a decrease of emissions used to transport fuel by other means).

I'd say they want us to live like the Amish, but I'm sure they would be horrified by the number of trees that would be burned as firewood, fertilizer runoff, etc.

I'm well aware that there are environmentalists who also support nuclear and other energies, and who act the opposite of what I am describing. But the most vocal members of those groups oppose the very concept of humans having energy, when you get right down to it.
Short of encasing the planet in biodomed cities that they wouldn't want us to build (cuts off migration paths), I'm not really sure how one would please all of them.

IF global warming / climate change is in fact a crisis, then we should be throwing out all other concerns to handle that one threat.

Extreme environmentalists are a problem, along with AGW denialists like Will Happer, who are the most vocal members of the skeptics.  Such denialists refuse to acknowledge the likelihood of AGW and oppose any ideas that would address it, and many times any studies that might confirm it, lest it makes their position weaker.

The obvious answer is David Brin's TWODA--Things We Ought To Do Anyway.  Cut down on fossil fuels use, because we'll cut down on pollution and dependence on foreign oil anyway.  Conserve and use less resources, because it'll be cheaper and help preserve the environment anyway.  Prevent methane escapes because it's dangerous and wasteful, anyway.  Things that have benefits beyond just cutting down on greenhouse gases.  No one should be fighting against stuff like that.  Those are things we can all agree upon.

Then we can negotiate the rest.  Allow more nuclear plants if we can close X-number of dirty coal plants.  Temporary gasoline tax to fund iron seeding of the oceans.

Sure, there will be people on both sides who will refuse to negotiate.  But we've always had to ignore the fringes to get anything done in this country.  We can do it again.  We just have to decide to, and start.

[TheDeamon]

Allow more nuclear plants if we can close X-number of dirty coal plants.  Temporary gasoline tax to fund iron seeding of the oceans.

On the iron seeding thing, I do think there is a legitimate "too much of a good thing" point on it, so the eco groups are right to be cautious on it. The outright ban at the international level was overkill.

As to funding it if/when legalized, I don't think it would need much "extra help" as fishery managers would be eager financers for it, as well as Dam operators in the US and elsewhere no doubt. Improved feeding grounds to their salmon runs means a greater chance of improving the size of those runs moving forward as bigger/stonger/more viable fish return from the ocean to make their way through all of the slackwater reservoirs those dams have created. If proven a viable strategy, dumping tons of iron into the ocean every year is potentially a much cheaper option than some of the other alternatives they're looking at.

Heck, if proven viable, it'd probably be a popular target for charitable donations. Of course, that throws a wrench in the whole concept of "cap and trade" because a CO2 sink isn't supposed to be popular and potentially provide a bevy of other follow-on benefits(in this case, to fisheries). You're supposed to be finance efforts to plant trees in random places, or undoubtedly, plant trees that they'll then likely try to discretely sell to the lumber industry decades later in order to then get someone else to pay them plant new trees in the same place.

You're not supposed to donate it to something that could have a more immediate pay out, and could benefit you directly when you next visit the grocery store looking for some fish.

[Seriati]

Apologies because this is only related to the macro topic.  It does not relate at all to the underlying science just to the economic balance that has been completely lacking in the formation of policies in the area of the environment. 

It's obviously an opinion piece and I have not independently verified any of the claims, but these kind of factors really go a long way to explaining why people who are pro-environment may generally oppose the types of policies that our governments want to and actually implement. 

https://www.creators.com/read/stephen-moore

I found the claim that the UK is burning wood pellets, with a worse carbon result that fossil fuels, to generate power "renewably" particularly interesting and emblematic of the complaint I have with existing regulations and policies pursued by governments resulting in worse overall results in the pursuit of supposed goods.

[LetterRip]

Actually burning wood is better than coal in terms of emissisions and worse than NG.  However, because wood is created from recent carbon in the air, whereas NG and coal are based on using ancient stores of carbon - using wood is carbon neutral and shouldn't contribute to global warming.

So your article was mistaken.

Australia saw prices surge - due to the increase in the price of NG (there was a cheap source in Queensland that started liquifying and exporting which doubled prices) and coal plant closures.  The coal plants were closed due to falling electricity demand, they were aging (40+ years old) and maintenance was expensive, and there were relatively small.  Although it was the most 'emission intensive' plants that were closed.  A large component of the price increase was due to delayed maintenance and infrastructure - the same issue that happened in the Us when energy production was privatized - short term profits were driving by not doing infrastructure buildout and maintenance - causing sharp price increases down the road when the maintenance and buildout turned critical.

The 'institute for energy research' used as a 'source' is created, owned and ran by the Koches - you might be familiar with their extensive coal holdings.

Basically your article is full of BS.

[Seriati]

Actually burning wood is better than coal in terms of emissisions and worse than NG.  However, because wood is created from recent carbon in the air, whereas NG and coal are based on using ancient stores of carbon - using wood is carbon neutral and shouldn't contribute to global warming.

So your article was mistaken.

I take your point, but your own analysis is also flawed.  Burning wood is not in fact carbon neutral - you should look at the scientific dispute on that "fact."  If burning wood results in deforestation it is actually a double negative as the wood burned is very carbon polluting (more than coal based on energy produced, not clear why you think otherwise), and removal of forests removes a giant sink.  Even if replanted, you've exchanged older growth, which is much more efficient at carbon sequestration with new growth, leading to a net loss.  You've also ignored that there's no guarantee that any of the burned fuel will end up in trees.

I agree though you are correct that with proper management, the impact could be mitigated for wood in a way that its difficult to match with coal.

Australia saw prices surge - due to the increase in the price of NG (there was a cheap source in Queensland that started liquifying and exporting which doubled prices) and coal plant closures.  The coal plants were closed due to falling electricity demand, they were aging (40+ years old) and maintenance was expensive, and there were relatively small.  Although it was the most 'emission intensive' plants that were closed.  A large component of the price increase was due to delayed maintenance and infrastructure - the same issue that happened in the Us when energy production was privatized - short term profits were driving by not doing infrastructure buildout and maintenance - causing sharp price increases down the road when the maintenance and buildout turned critical.

Calling BS on that.  The biggest difficulty faced in updating and modernizing those plants is not "private greed" is the radicalization of environmental regulations that force extreme costs on those plants, which are often grandfathered in part but would face completely uneconomical requirements to modernize and become cleaner.  You don't get credit for solving a problem that the environmental lobby created in the first place.

And by the way, your sources themselves are most likely relying on a report that ignored the subsidies provided to the wind industry in S. Australia (which is where the references to the increase from $100 to over $10,000 a mwh are based).  The actual bills for consumers about doubled after they closed their Coal plants because they had wind shortages, which forced more NG to be purchased - a known risk -  but they deliberately ignored the impact of the costs of the subsidies in setting those bills (which makes them a fake price, rather than a measure of cost).  I grant it is tough to get clean reporting on this, so there's no way to be sure about what the real numbers are.

The 'institute for energy research' used as a 'source' is created, owned and ran by the Koches - you might be familiar with their extensive coal holdings.

And?  Really, and?   Why engage in a poisoning the well fallacy argument?

Basically your article is full of BS.

Well you showed one example where there was more to the story than implied (though the opinion piece was accurate in what it actually said) where you did not include the full story either.  Does that mean you looked at a BS source?

And on the second, you did what you accuse me of and relied uncritically on an biased source yourself, when its apparent that a major part of their problem was that Wind power (which they got essentially for "free" on their bills) did not live up to its promises and received very costly subsidies - which if they had been charged through to the consumers would have made for a really gross cost expansion rather than just a doubling.

That brings up a consistent issue with policies established by the left, they uniformly act to hide the real costs from consumers.  People rarely realize that their too high power bills for of couple thousand dollars a year, are actually much higher because you have a couple of thousand in your taxes that's "subsidizing" that bill.

[Wayward Son]

The articles is all well-and-good about pointing out the expense of going "green."  And we should be careful to make sure burning wood doesn't increase the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

But the obvious question is, "So what?"

CO2 is a greenhouse gas.  Increased levels in the atmosphere will trap more heat.  Unless something else counteracts that (and so far no one has shown anything that will, AFAIK), it will warm our planet.  The CO2 is also being absorbed by the oceans, causing ocean acidification.  And increased heat is being absorbed by the oceans, causing bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef among other things (as reported again just today).  Not to mention the increased heat is melting the polar ice caps, which will raise the levels of the oceans.  And that increased heat in the atmosphere is expected to increase the size of deserts and increase flooding in wetter areas.  All which means that food production will become harder and more expensive, even as population increases, which means more civil unrest internationally.

You have to balance all of that against increased energy costs.

And you may not even have to do that.  According to this article talking with ex-Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, the trend is toward lower carbon energy production simply from market forces.

Since 2008, costs have fallen 41 percent for land-based wind power and 64 percent for utility-scale solar power. The cost of efficient LED light bulbs has fallen 94 percent since 2008. The cost of battery storage has declined 70 percent over that period, making electric vehicles more affordable.

Certainly costs should be a major faction in considering what we should do to address AGW (along with making sure what we do actually accomplishes the goal).  But simply saying that it will cost too much--well, you also have to consider the cost of not doing it.

[TheDeamon]

CO2 is a greenhouse gas.  Increased levels in the atmosphere will trap more heat.  Unless something else counteracts that (and so far no one has shown anything that will, AFAIK), it will warm our planet.

There are a number of options that rather directly impact and offset such things. But they fall broadly under the aegis of "geo-engineering" and a short list of other things which have largely been declared to be illegal under international laws and treaties.

edit: Also In regards to some of the glacial events occuring in Antartica, some recent studies suggest that part of what is being seen in one region in particular may very well be geothermal in nature rather than Global Warming.

[TheDeamon]

Australia saw prices surge - due to the increase in the price of NG (there was a cheap source in Queensland that started liquifying and exporting which doubled prices) and coal plant closures.  The coal plants were closed due to falling electricity demand, they were aging (40+ years old) and maintenance was expensive, and there were relatively small.  Although it was the most 'emission intensive' plants that were closed.

Australia also has "other issues" hitting their power grid in various regions. IIRC there was an article a few years back talking about entire cities becoming energy exporters at certain times of the day because of wide spread adoption of home solar power and a mandate for the power companies to buy any excess energy those home owners produce.

Problem is, that since that production is solar in nature, it isn't a good baseline power source. But as they're mandated to buy/use it, and they need to match the load, that means the baseline power plants then have to shed production capacity in order to match demand.

In this case, it is a particularly bad problem for coal fired plants because they're almost universally boiler plants. (As are Nuclear power plants, and geothermal to a large extent) You can't just make boiling water suddenly not boil. It doesn't work that way. Newer natural gas, petroleum, and other such plants don't use boilers anymore, they use turbines. So when they get told to reduce production, they just slow the turbine(reduces its supply) or turn it off. Once demand picks up, they increase the fuel supply, or simply turn it back on.

Meanwhile that boiler plant is trying to bring things back to a nice rolling boil that generates lots of steam. Turning those boilers "on and off" is where the baseline grid operators are getting hammered, and those types of plants are the ones that are going away because of the emphasis on Solar/Wind and "renewable" intermittent power.

[Wayward Son]

Also In regards to some of the glacial events occuring in Antartica, some recent studies suggest that part of what is being seen in one region in particular may very well be geothermal in nature rather than Global Warming.

While interesting, it does not address the similar melting in the Arctic, nor the rising of water temperatures.  So that would just be adding to the problem of Antarctic melting.

[Crunch]

OK, then answer me a couple of questions.

CO2 produces warming in the atmosphere.  How do you know it doesn't procedure "significant warming?"  And if the concentration doubles, how do you know it won't produce significant warming then?  What is your conclusive evidence of this?

Remember, it does produce warming.  How can you know it is not "significant," or won't be in the future?

I just read an article about warming, recalled this and thought I'd provide some answers.

How do I know CO2 doesn't provide "significant warming"? Depends on what significanct is. But,  do know that current CO2 level are about 400 ppm. Human activity accounts for about 3.5% of it - or 14 ppm.  The other 386 ppm comes from natural sources. Whatever warming is created is by CO2, 96.5% of it comes from sources we cannot control and the goal of AGW would be to eliminate that very minimal amount of human activity. While CO2 in general provides warming, the 3.5% from human is not a significant impact.

And if the concentration doubles, how do you know it won't produce significant warming then? Because the impact of CO2 is logarithmic where the the first 20 ppm accounts for over half of the heating effect we get from CO2. The entire effect that CO2 provides on warming is essentially done as more than 90% of all possible warming from CO2 has already been delivered. . Doubling, or even quadrupling, CO2 will increase the warming effect less than 10%. This is not climate science or computer modeling, its math and repeatable, verifiable,  experimentation that's irrefutable. Future CO2 won't produce significant warming because its mathematically impossible.

Now the article that promoted me to recall:

Research shows a natural cooling cycle that occurs every 230 years began in 2014 and will send temperatures plummeting even further by 2019.

As for those record temperatures brought in 2016 by an exceptionally strong El Niño, the satellites now show that in recent months global temperatures have plummeted by more that 0.6 degrees: just as happened 17 years ago after a similarly strong El Niño had also made 1998 the “hottest year on record”.

This means the global temperature trend has now shown no further warming for 19 years. But the BBC won’t be telling us any of this. And we are still stuck with that insanely damaging Climate Change Act, which in this election will scarcely get a mention.

Scientists are also expecting a “huge reduction” in solar activity for 33 years between 2020 and 2053 that will cause thermometers to crash.

Both cycles suggest Earth is entering a global cooling cycle that could have devastating consequences for global economy, human life and society as we know it.

If predictions of the world-wide big freeze come true, the plot to 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow would not be far from reality during winter. ...

David Dilley, CEO of Global Weather Oscillations, told Daily Star Online global warming and cooling cycles are determined by the gravitational forces of the Earth, moon and sun.

Each cycle lasts around 120,000 years, with sub-cycles of around 230 years.

He said: “We have had five warming cycles since about 900AD, each followed by a dramatic cooling cycle.

“The last global warming cycle ended in 1790 and the year 2020 is 230 following this – thus I have been talking about rapid cooling beginning in 2019.”

He said the oncoming cooling will send temperatures plummeting to lows last seen in the 1940s – when the mercury bottomed out at -21C during winter in the UK.

He said: “Cooling from 2019 into about 2020 to 2021 will bring world temperatures back to where they were in the 1940s through the 1960s.

[TheDeamon]

Since 2008, costs have fallen 41 percent for land-based wind power and 64 percent for utility-scale solar power. The cost of efficient LED light bulbs has fallen 94 percent since 2008. The cost of battery storage has declined 70 percent over that period, making electric vehicles more affordable.

Certainly costs should be a major faction in considering what we should do to address AGW (along with making sure what we do actually accomplishes the goal).  But simply saying that it will cost too much--well, you also have to consider the cost of not doing it.

Now for a time-traveling response.

Well, some of this cycles into adaptation vs mitigation vs geoengineering. Some of the more extreme mitigation measures are acknowledged by nearly everyone as being VERY expensive(costing well into the Trillions of Dollars over the next century). What they don't like to talk about, or even want anybody to fund studies in, is cost estimates for adaptation, or to even speak of Geo-Engineering(which they've essentially made illegal to even research under international law). Because they're afraid those options "distract from the conversation" even if they're very relevant.

A several billion dollar budget for civil engineering research into adapting skyscrapers for continued use after their lowest levels are flooded out(in a Venice like scenario) could achieve a lot. (Which isn't to mention other potential applications for such knowledge, such as deliberately building such structures in areas that already are under water)

Which isn't to mention that going the route of the Netherlands is an option for many areas as well. For that matter, funding such efforts for third world nations is reasonably viable too.  Except many/most environmental groups aren't big fans of what the Netherlands has done and is doing, so that's largely verboten as well. On the smaller scale, we already have historical precedents of other avenues that could be pursued for other smaller structures. Galveston, Texas in the early 20th Century is a poster child for this as I recall, and wiki also concurs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston,_Texas#Hurricane_of_1900_and_recovery

Following the storm, a 10-mile (16 km) long, 17 foot (5.2 m) high seawall was built to protect the city from floods and hurricane storm surges. A team of engineers including Henry Martyn Robert (Robert's Rules of Order) designed the plan to raise much of the existing city to a sufficient elevation behind a seawall so that confidence in the city could be maintained.

Which basically boils down to "put the town on jacks/rollers" move the building off their existing foundations, "build up" the underlying land to increase the elevation of the structure to a designated height, rebuild the foundation for the relevant structure, then return structure to it's initial location, just at a higher elevation then it enjoyed previously. No need to build a dike, although a seawall of some kind might be in order to account for the elevation changes created. This is stuff we could do 100 years ago, and stuff that is still being done today(relocation of buildings that were never built with being moved in mind). Is it expensive? Yes. But it is something that definitely can be done with existing tech, but discussion of doing such things isn't to be placed on the table for serious discussion, at least not on a state or national level in the US because well, environmental groups will get unhappy.

Which is particularly baffling at this point considering some of those same groups are already saying that even if we cut our emissions to 0 today, there still is going to be several feet of sea level rise before things turn around and head the other way. So it seems to me that there are probably at least a few communities that need to be pursuing an adaptation strategy already, either with dikes and levees, or by raising the land level of their community to get out of the anticipated flood plain.

Likewise, if people were being serious "true believers" on this matter,  they'd be pushing communities in such threatened areas to mandate that any new construction (development level) activity for buildings will have their "ground level" at __ elevation above a given baseline. Precisely so they don't have need to take such extra measures later for those structures. But nope, Environmental groups don't like it because of it's disruptive environment impact, and everyone else doesn't like it because it'll make new construction in those areas more expensive--they'd rather risk being permanently flooded out in 50 years or less.

Besides, they probably also anticipate that if flooding does actually become a serious concern, Uncle Sam will helpfully show up with a check to help finance the mass relocation effort a decade or so before it's "too late" to do anything. Talk about your Moral Hazards.

[Wayward Son]

How do I know CO2 doesn't provide "significant warming"? Depends on what significant is. But,  do know that current CO2 level are about 400 ppm. Human activity accounts for about 3.5% of it - or 14 ppm.  The other 386 ppm comes from natural sources. Whatever warming is created is by CO2, 96.5% of it comes from sources we cannot control and the goal of AGW would be to eliminate that very minimal amount of human activity. While CO2 in general provides warming, the 3.5% from human is not a significant impact.

Reminds me of an argument from an old member of this board, G2.  He also missed a significant point about this.

Sure, we have only added 3.5% of the total CO2 level in the atmosphere.  But greenhouse gases do a lot of work.  Greenhouse gases warm our planet an average of 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  So as far as total warming, it isn't significant.  But that is not what everyone talks about when they talk about warming of our planet.

For purposes of human habitation, 3 degrees centigrade is "significant" (about 5 degrees Fahrenheit).  At that temperature, 90 percent of summers would be warmer than 95 percent of the summers in the 20th century.  IOW, imagine the hottest summer a decade ago being considered a remarkable "cool" summer.

In graphic terms, consider what the world would be like just 4.5 degrees C cooler.  Got your skis waxed-up?

So a relatively small effect on the total temperature increase from greenhouse gases can have a major effect on our climate.

And if the concentration doubles, how do you know it won't produce significant warming then? Because the impact of CO2 is logarithmic where the  the first 20 ppm accounts for over half of the heating effect we get from CO2. The entire effect that CO2 provides on warming is essentially done as more than 90% of all possible warming from CO2 has already been delivered. . Doubling, or even quadrupling, CO2 will increase the warming effect less than 10%. This is not climate science or computer modeling, its math and repeatable, verifiable,  experimentation that's irrefutable. Future CO2 won't produce significant warming because its mathematically impossible.

And if our climate was a nice, linear system, that would be true.

But it ain't.  Not by a long shot.

Our climate system is what is called in mathematics a chaotic system, which has two significant properties.  One if that the precise path a chaotic system takes is dependent on the initial conditions.  IOW, if you start the system at, say, x=1, it will have different values over time than if you started it at x=2.  At, say, t=5, the first one might have a value of x=5, while the second one might have a value of x=2.  It's weird, but that's the way it is.  Climate does not follow a straight, predictable line.

The second property is that it is non-linear.  A linear system increases proportionally to the input.  So if you double the input, you double the output.  In non-linear systems, that is not true.  You can double the input, and half the output.  Or quadruple the output.  It all depends on the system and where it is at when you changed the input.

What this all comes down to is you can't know exactly how our climate will react to the increase of CO2.  The added heat may melt polar ice, which will increase the area of dark rocks that was under the ice, which will absorb more heat, which will increase the overall temperature.  Increased temperature could increase evaporation, which could increase cloud cover, which would reflect more sunlight back into space, cooling the Earth.  It would also increase the amount of radiation reflected back to the Earth, increasing the temperature.

So when you calculate how much effect the increased CO2 will have, you also have to calculate how these feedback mechanisms will be affected.  So, no, it's not a mathematical impossibility.  In fact, it is a mathematical certainty that Earth's climate does not work the way your simplistic model works.  It is much more complicated than that, and you have to take that complexity into account before you can be certain that CO2 won't continue to increase the Earth's temperature, as all the sophisticated climate models show.

As for those record temperatures brought in 2016 by an exceptionally strong El Niño, the satellites now show that in recent months global temperatures have plummeted by more that 0.6 degrees: just as happened 17 years ago after a similarly strong El Niño had also made 1998 the “hottest year on record”.

This means the global temperature trend has now shown no further warming for 19 years.

I call B.S.   This is just a recycling of the specious argument used back in 1998.  Because of a very simple, very obvious observation.

The new records are higher than the old ones. 

You don't have stable cycles that keep getting higher each time.  Look at the charts.  The average temperature between 1998 and 2016 was higher than the 20 years before that.  The last 3 years were all record-breaking.  And the records are higher than in the last 180 years.  So where is this "cycle" that is going to drop temperatures?  I don't see it.

Yes, we will have a reduction in temperatures in the next decade.  We always have a reduction from the high of an El Nino year.  There is that cycle.  But the trend is still up.  The Earth is still warming.  Don't think a reduction from the previous high means a downward trend.

And even if there will be a "huge reduction" in solar activity in the next few decades, what happens after that?  When solar activity returns to normal, and we have all this CO2 in the atmosphere to capture more of it's heat?  It is ludicrous to argue that we shouldn't worry about increasing greenhouse gases in our atmosphere because there will be a temporary decrease in heat from the sun.  Because in a decade or so it will return to normal, but it will take 100 to 1000 years, or more, for the Earth to return CO2 levels to the ones we are used to--the ones we have based our agriculture on.

It would be nice to get a short reprieve, but that's all it would be.  Short.

[Fenring]

I can't contribute materially to this conversation, but I will note that I'll laugh my a** off if, one day, we learn that the planet is destined for massive cooling and everyone begins discussing ways to warm the planet. It's sort of a joke scenario I imagine happening, which has nothing to do with what our focus should be right now.

[LetterRip]

Fenring,

I can't contribute materially to this conversation, but I will note that I'll laugh my a** off if, one day, we learn that the planet is destined for massive cooling and everyone begins discussing ways to warm the planet. It's sort of a joke scenario I imagine happening, which has nothing to do with what our focus should be right now.

There is a reasonable chance that will happen.  Our global society is tuned to a fairly narrow range of temperatures due to how and where our technology developed.  It will be quite easy to warm the planet a modest amount - burning forests; releasing methane and other potent GHGs - it is far easier to create than to pull it out of the air.

[Seriati]

Reminds me of an argument from an old member of this board, G2.  He also missed a significant point about this.

Sure, we have only added 3.5% of the total CO2 level in the atmosphere.  But greenhouse gases do a lot of work.  Greenhouse gases warm our planet an average of 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  So as far as total warming, it isn't significant.  But that is not what everyone talks about when they talk about warming of our planet.

You literally just hand waived over what could be a completely valid objection.  If an increase/decrease in the human caused portion is not likely to have a dramatic impact on the end results because the vast majority of the impact has already occured (and keep in mind, we're talking about carbon, when water vapor is the greenhouse gas that contributes most of the impact) is it worthwhile?  If your model is premised on the complete elimination of human contributed carbon its improbable, if you are asking for say a 20% total reduction in carbon emissions (which by the way, none of the proposals made to date would even come close to that), would it really do anything but cause a slight slow in the trend?

For purposes of human habitation, 3 degrees centigrade is "significant" (about 5 degrees Fahrenheit).  At that temperature, 90 percent of summers would be warmer than 95 percent of the summers in the 20th century.  IOW, imagine the hottest summer a decade ago being considered a remarkable "cool" summer.

Except you don't get to 3 degrees centigrade just from carbon emissions you have to have a runaway feedback loop to get there.

And if our climate was a nice, linear system, that would be true.

But it ain't.  Not by a long shot.

Our climate system is what is called in mathematics a chaotic system, which has two significant properties.

What's funny is trying to use the rules of a model as if they applied to that which is being modeled.  Our climate appears to be chaotic, and thus you can attempt to use certain techniques approximate possible results, but that doesn't mean it is the same thing as the model.  This is just a pure speculation on your part.

What this all comes down to is you can't know exactly how our climate will react to the increase of CO2.

This I agree with.  It's literally been my thesis for as long as we've been having this discussion.

It is much more complicated than that, and you have to take that complexity into account before you can be certain that CO2 won't continue to increase the Earth's temperature, as all the sophisticated climate models show.

Lol, "all" sophisticated climate models show that because they were designed to show that result.  It's literally pre-programed into them.  It's begging the question when your model spits out the assumptions as a result.  In fact, it would be a sign of a gross error in a model (given our limited understanding of the interactions involved) for it not to show that result, which by the way, notwithstanding your claims, is solely a linearly driven (and not chaotic) result.

The new records are higher than the old ones. 

Last year (and recalculations of several other past years) make it look that way.  But the orthodoxy and actual manipulations certainly leave room for doubt.

Which leaves us where we began.  What can reasonably and cost effectively be done?  It looks to me like you could completely tank the global economy and still not have a meaningful impact on the carbon rates or the green house gas rates, but kill millions or tens of millions of people with poverty.  Is that the goal?

[TheDeamon]

You don't have stable cycles that keep getting higher each time.  Look at the charts.  The average temperature between 1998 and 2016 was higher than the 20 years before that.  The last 3 years were all record-breaking.  And the records are higher than in the last 180 years.  So where is this "cycle" that is going to drop temperatures?  I don't see it.

Actually, this data point can be subjected to argumentation, it's been a few months since I looked at the data relevant, but IIRC. When you look at the raw data there last 3 years aren't so spectacular. It's when you look at the interpolated data, you know, where they make calculations about what what conditions were like in a given location based on observations from other areas, rather than anything actually measured, that results in the "warmest years on record" claims.

So that isn't to sat there is no credible basis for the assertion, but there is also a credible basis for asserting that the claim may also be much ado about nothing.

[Pete at Home]

I can't contribute materially to this conversation, but I will note that I'll laugh my a** off if, one day, we learn that the planet is destined for massive cooling and everyone begins discussing ways to warm the planet. It's sort of a joke scenario I imagine happening, which has nothing to do with what our focus should be right now.

It's not only possible, but in the long run, inevitable, and it's also a key question of teraforming on Mars, for example.  Terraforming Mars would obviously require use of heavy greenhouse gasses.  I would recommend Sulphur Hexafloride, since it's heaviness would make it slow to leave the atmosphere, plus it's non-toxic, and an extreme greenhouse gas.  Dumping a few megatons of sulphur hexafloride into the Earth's atmosphere would push us towards Venus temperatures.

But obviously, humanity's greatest effect on climate is not by our puny release of CO2, but rather because we have mostly exterminated the carbon sinks in the biosphere and make no signs of stopping.  In that light, Kyoto is just another flavor of climate change denial, since it focuses on emissions and does so little on deforestation.

[TheDeamon]

But obviously, humanity's greatest effect on climate is not by our puny release of CO2, but rather because we have mostly exterminated the carbon sinks in the biosphere and make no signs of stopping.  In that light, Kyoto is just another flavor of climate change denial, since it focuses on emissions and does so little on deforestation.

Oh, we did one better on our "carbon sinks." Forest Managers, in their desire to plant trees which provide better yields for lumber/paper mills upon harvest, have replanted most forests with trees that have darker leaves/needles than the trees that were there previously. Thus making the forests darker(and thus heat absorbent) than they would have been had Mankind not intervened. Of course, this also ignores a number of other land-use changes that would cause areas to retain more heat from solar radiation than would have happened otherwise. Like turning thousands of square miles of high plain grassland into verdant fields of irrigated (And very green) crops instead of the pale yellows and golds they would have been otherwise(or that such crops, in particular Corn, are notorious for being water intensive because corn releases a lot of moisture into the surrounding atmosphere... Which then creates lots of ambient humidity, which becomes fuel for local "garden variety thunderstorms" which can then become supercells and spawn massive tornados. Thank you Corn Ethanol).

Then of course we have Urban heat islands, and so on and so forth.

It isn't just CO2 that's warming us up and screwing with the weather.

[Crunch]

It is much more complicated than that, and you have to take that complexity into account before you can be certain that CO2 won't continue to increase the Earth's temperature, as all the sophisticated climate models show.

Your argument boils down to claiming that the system is so complex that basic chemistry and mathematics don't apply.  I'm sorry but not only is that not right, it's not even wrong. It's just nonsense.

The effect of CO2 is strongly logarithmic, you need to understand what that means.  Going from 0 ppm - 20 ppm accounts for over half of all potential warming in a system and over 90% at 100 ppm. By the time we hit the pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm, the effect of more CO2 in the atmosphere was flat (you can see the graph of it here).  Looking at the chart, you can clearly see that going from 400 ppm to 1100 ppm has an extremely low impact.  This is pretty basic science and mathematics that applies no matter what.  Due to this strong logarithmic effect, the few ppm we added in the last 100 years are of minimal impact, that's just the science of it and that won't change no matter how much we might wish it so.

[Wayward Son]

Reminds me of an argument from an old member of this board, G2.  He also missed a significant point about this.

Sure, we have only added 3.5% of the total CO2 level in the atmosphere.  But greenhouse gases do a lot of work.  Greenhouse gases warm our planet an average of 60 degrees Fahrenheit.  So as far as total warming, it isn't significant.  But that is not what everyone talks about when they talk about warming of our planet.

You literally just hand waived over what could be a completely valid objection.  If an increase/decrease in the human caused portion is not likely to have a dramatic impact on the end results because the vast majority of the impact has already occured (and keep in mind, we're talking about carbon, when water vapor is the greenhouse gas that contributes most of the impact) is it worthwhile?  If your model is premised on the complete elimination of human contributed carbon its improbable, if you are asking for say a 20% total reduction in carbon emissions (which by the way, none of the proposals made to date would even come close to that), would it really do anything but cause a slight slow in the trend?

What I was saying is that the greenhouse gases contribute a huge amount of warming to our world, so a minor increase would seem to have a negligible impact on our climate.  But that relatively "negligible impact" actually is a huge impact on the environment that humans, and most life on Earth, are used to and depend on.

A 4 degree C decrease out of 15.5 degree C doesn't look that large, but it is large enough to cause glaciers to cover NYC.  Another 4 degrees C is enough to make Earth a snowball.  How dramatic would 4 degrees C higher look like?

And if the proposals we have now won't make much of a difference, perhaps we need better proposals?   Or do you want to have higher sea levels, acidic oceans, hotter summers, larger deserts, and more flooding, and all the other problems that go with a warming world?  Because that is what our best estimate is for what will happen.

For purposes of human habitation, 3 degrees centigrade is "significant" (about 5 degrees Fahrenheit).  At that temperature, 90 percent of summers would be warmer than 95 percent of the summers in the 20th century.  IOW, imagine the hottest summer a decade ago being considered a remarkable "cool" summer.

Except you don't get to 3 degrees centigrade just from carbon emissions you have to have a runaway feedback loop to get there.

Sorry, but you are wrong.  These are the estimates without a "runaway feedback loop." Here is a chart from a class on climate change that I took*:

CO2 (ppm)       Average Temp Increase (Equilibrium)
340 (320-380)                 1 degree C
540 (440-760)                 3 degree C
840 (620-1490)               5 degree C

No runaway feedback loop.

And if our climate was a nice, linear system, that would be true.

But it ain't.  Not by a long shot.

Our climate system is what is called in mathematics a chaotic system, which has two significant properties.

What's funny is trying to use the rules of a model as if they applied to that which is being modeled.  Our climate appears to be chaotic, and thus you can attempt to use certain techniques approximate possible results, but that doesn't mean it is the same thing as the model.  This is just a pure speculation on your part.

What this all comes down to is you can't know exactly how our climate will react to the increase of CO2.

This I agree with.  It's literally been my thesis for as long as we've been having this discussion.

But just because you can't know exactly how the climate will react doesn't mean you can't know generally.  And from all the models, generally it ain't good.

It is much more complicated than that, and you have to take that complexity into account before you can be certain that CO2 won't continue to increase the Earth's temperature, as all the sophisticated climate models show.

Lol, "all" sophisticated climate models show that because they were designed to show that result.  It's literally pre-programed into them.  It's begging the question when your model spits out the assumptions as a result.  In fact, it would be a sign of a gross error in a model (given our limited understanding of the interactions involved) for it not to show that result, which by the way, notwithstanding your claims, is solely a linearly driven (and not chaotic) result.

"Literally pre-programmed?"  Where are you getting this B.S.?  How would you do that, with a program that is designed to evaluate the entire surface of the Earth in 110 km square portions and calculate the interactions between these portions?  One which doesn't give exactly the same result each time it is run, so that they have to average the results together?  And which is based on the thermal interactions in the atmosphere, on equations that were the first example of a chaotic system?

And what do you mean by "solely a linearly driven...result?"  The results wiggle all around.  Sure, they to show a linear trend.  But linear regression is hardly a "linear result."

The new records are higher than the old ones. 

Last year (and recalculations of several other past years) make it look that way.  But the orthodoxy and actual manipulations certainly leave room for doubt.

Which leaves us where we began.  What can reasonably and cost effectively be done?  It looks to me like you could completely tank the global economy and still not have a meaningful impact on the carbon rates or the green house gas rates, but kill millions or tens of millions of people with poverty.  Is that the goal?

Our climate doesn't give a damn about its economic impact.  It is going to do what it will do.  Our best estimates of what it will do with higher levels of CO2 are spelled out: increased desertification, sea level rise, flooding in the wetter areas, lower crop yields due to higher temperatures, etc.  The picture is not pretty.

But that has nothing to do with how we respond to it.  We have plenty of options.  We can try to live in more hostile conditions.  We can spend lots of money trying to remove the CO2 after it is in the atmosphere.  Or we can try to find ways to prevent more CO2 from getting into the atmosphere.  Doubtlessly, we will have to do all three.  But there is not just one answer to this problem.  If you don't like the answers that are proposed, why not try to find something else that will work?  Why not do things that will slow the process, so we have time to find other solutions?  But to do nothing because it "costs too much"--that's like looking at a hole in a sinking ship and saying, "well, it's too costly to fix, so let's just ignore it." 

Let's start by doing whatever we can that won't bankrupt the world economy, and then continue to look for solutions.  Because we, and our children, are going to be dealing with the results whether it's economical or not.

*Climate Change in Four Dimensions, from U.C. San Diego.  Available on-line on Coursera.

[Wayward Son]

It is much more complicated than that, and you have to take that complexity into account before you can be certain that CO2 won't continue to increase the Earth's temperature, as all the sophisticated climate models show.

Your argument boils down to claiming that the system is so complex that basic chemistry and mathematics don't apply.  I'm sorry but not only is that not right, it's not even wrong. It's just nonsense.

The effect of CO2 is strongly logarithmic, you need to understand what that means.  Going from 0 ppm - 20 ppm accounts for over half of all potential warming in a system and over 90% at 100 ppm. By the time we hit the pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm, the effect of more CO2 in the atmosphere was flat (you can see the graph of it here).  Looking at the chart, you can clearly see that going from 400 ppm to 1100 ppm has an extremely low impact.  This is pretty basic science and mathematics that applies no matter what.  Due to this strong logarithmic effect, the few ppm we added in the last 100 years are of minimal impact, that's just the science of it and that won't change no matter how much we might wish it so.

Crunch, do you seriously believe that climatologist, who program supercomputers to make climate models, can't do mathematics?  That if you came to one of them and told them this, that they'd say, "OMG, I didn't think of that!  I need to redo all my calculations right now!"?  That none of the grad students they have working with them, who do most of the grunt work, didn't notice this little thing?

Have you ever actually looked to see what the answer might be?

Here's one to start with.

Because exponential growth of CO2 concentration causes only linear raise in temperature, people sometimes think that subsequent emissions will result in ever slower temperature increases. Well, the most persistent myths are based on technically true statements - that’s true also in this case.

It is true, that for each doubling of CO2 concentration, temperature increases by a constant value. However, at the current level of CO2 content in the atmosphere a good approximate relation is that for each 500 GtC (1833 bn tons of CO2) we can expect equilibrium temperature increase by approximately 1°C. Moreover, because of the continuing exponential growth of CO2 emissions the temperature increase will also accelerate.

So, yes, the temperature effects of CO2 are no longer growing exponentially.  But they are still growing linearly.  And this linear growth, while almost flat compared to the effects at the beginning (0 - 20 ppm), are still significant enough to increase the average temperature by 3 degrees C if the concentration doubles.

Just because it is relatively flat doesn't mean it is actually flat, and that if it makes only a relatively small changes doesn't mean it is a small change to us.

[Wayward Son]

A 4 degree C decrease out of 15.5 degree C doesn't look that large, but it is large enough to cause glaciers to cover NYC.

Oops.  Bad conversion.    60 degrees F converts to 33.33 degrees C, not 15.5.  The sentence should read "A 4 degree C decrease out of 33.33 degrees C doesn't look that large..."

[Crunch]

Crunch, do you seriously believe that climatologist, who program supercomputers to make climate models, can't do mathematics?  That if you came to one of them and told them this, that they'd say, "OMG, I didn't think of that!  I need to redo all my calculations right now!"?  That none of the grad students they have working with them, who do most of the grunt work, didn't notice this little thing?

I know about something called "appeal to authority":

An argument from authority, also called an appeal to authority, is a form of logical and persuasive argument using expert opinion to defend the likelihood of the reliability of a claim. It is well-known as a fallacy...

So using that argument is decidedly unpersuasive.  I can just as easily trot out contradictory authority. You can engage in the "dueling authorities" all you want but as it's merely a logical fallacy and nothing but a distraction, I'd prefer not.

From the chart here, you can see that by the time we hit 500 ppm the effect of increasing CO2 will be barely incremental.  This is basic science, verified and still verifiable via experimentation.  It does not change no matter how complex a framework we devise for it or at the whim of ideological desires and nothing will change that.

At 400 ppm, CO2 has reached ~87+% of its potential warming effect in the earth's atmosphere. Going from 400 ppm to 1000 ppm will essentially consume the remaining 13% of the potential effect.   Because the vast majority of CO2 is from natural sources (96.5%), it is scientifically and mathematically impossible for man-made sources (only 3.5% of CO2) to have a large potential impact and not even a significant one as we are approaching saturation.  Again, that is just basic science and math and should be obvious to the lay person.

[Seriati]

You literally just hand waived over what could be a completely valid objection.  If an increase/decrease in the human caused portion is not likely to have a dramatic impact on the end results because the vast majority of the impact has already occured (and keep in mind, we're talking about carbon, when water vapor is the greenhouse gas that contributes most of the impact) is it worthwhile?  If your model is premised on the complete elimination of human contributed carbon its improbable, if you are asking for say a 20% total reduction in carbon emissions (which by the way, none of the proposals made to date would even come close to that), would it really do anything but cause a slight slow in the trend?

What I was saying is that the greenhouse gases contribute a huge amount of warming to our world, so a minor increase would seem to have a negligible impact on our climate.  But that relatively "negligible impact" actually is a huge impact on the environment that humans, and most life on Earth, are used to and depend on.

Which is exactly why I said that you were hand-waving away a valid objection.  There's a logic fail in using "greenhouse gases contribute a huge amount" to a give a heavy weight to the "minor increase" that has a "huge impact" as you put it.

You can't assume that a tiny contribution to greater whole (like a single vote to an election) has any real impact on its own.  And you're ignoring that this is a direct criticism of how many "votes" are really at stake.  If Crunch is correct on the impact then the actual reductions in carbon (most policies don't even result in a net carbon reduction, let alone anything that would materially reduce carbon production by humanity) are unlikely to be material.  Even if you could eliminate all human caused carbon emissions (literally impossible), you may not see a material impact on climate, but it's certainly questionable whether the percentage decreases contemplated would have any impact, particularly if you don't also include population controls (heck, just increased food production, with irrigation (and evaporation) and methane producing meat sources are probably of greater impact than any potential carbon savings discussed).

A 4 degree C decrease out of 15.5 degree C doesn't look that large, but it is large enough to cause glaciers to cover NYC.  Another 4 degrees C is enough to make Earth a snowball.  How dramatic would 4 degrees C higher look like?

And?  I don't agree that you've shown any reason to believe that a 4 degree C change (what is that almost 7 F) is even on the table.   Certainly, I see no possibility that any now existing or currently proposed environmental legislation could even in theory cause that large of an impact.

And if the proposals we have now won't make much of a difference, perhaps we need better proposals?   Or do you want to have higher sea levels, acidic oceans, hotter summers, larger deserts, and more flooding, and all the other problems that go with a warming world?  Because that is what our best estimate is for what will happen.

What I want is proposals that are balanced and have a real meaningful impact.  Environmental legislation that doesn't help the environment but rewards bad environmental actors like China is a complete waste of time.  Rules that impose massive costs for marginal benefits are just stupid.

Except you don't get to 3 degrees centigrade just from carbon emissions you have to have a runaway feedback loop to get there.

Sorry, but you are wrong.  These are the estimates without a "runaway feedback loop." Here is a chart from a class on climate change that I took*:

CO2 (ppm)       Average Temp Increase (Equilibrium)
340 (320-380)                 1 degree C
540 (440-760)                 3 degree C
840 (620-1490)               5 degree C

No runaway feedback loop.

Lol.  If you have a chart that lays it out for you like that, at best it was written for grade school consumers, and is more propaganda than science.  Why don't you go back and find the source and then we can discuss it.

But just because you can't know exactly how the climate will react doesn't mean you can't know generally.  And from all the models, generally it ain't good.

You missed the point on that.  The evidence that we accurately know on a general basis isn't all that great, we definitely don't know on a specific basis.

It is much more complicated than that, and you have to take that complexity into account before you can be certain that CO2 won't continue to increase the Earth's temperature, as all the sophisticated climate models show.

Lol, "all" sophisticated climate models show that because they were designed to show that result.  It's literally pre-programed into them.  It's begging the question when your model spits out the assumptions as a result.  In fact, it would be a sign of a gross error in a model (given our limited understanding of the interactions involved) for it not to show that result, which by the way, notwithstanding your claims, is solely a linearly driven (and not chaotic) result.

"Literally pre-programmed?"  Where are you getting this B.S.?

From understanding how models are constructed.  We've been over this a number of times.  Models are not magically created, they don't come out of the ether as black boxes, all they are is literally assumptions layered on one another.  One of the assumptions HAS to be that CO2 causes increases in global temperature.  There is no legitimate way to exclude that, which doesn't mean it's correct, just that it reflects our best guess of how carbon works in an open system from our observations of it in a closed system. 

A computer model can not generate a surprise result, everything in it is a forced conclusion.  That means that over enough iterations a pre-programmed pressure will always appear in the results.  That's not a conclusion of the model though it's an ASSUMPTION.

How would you do that, with a program that is designed to evaluate the entire surface of the Earth in 110 km square portions and calculate the interactions between these portions?

What program do you think could do that?  We don't have data in those packets.  If you have generated data for them, you've effected played make believe.

One which doesn't give exactly the same result each time it is run, so that they have to average the results together?

Lol.  That's exactly the point of a model.  It appears to create significance by running multiple iterations, but all it will ever do is regress to the mean of the pre-programmed results.

All models are logical constructs.  It's a basic premise that they can not create new information, they can only reveal results that flow of a necessity from their assumptions.  If you assume x=1, then no matter how many iterations you run, the "conclusion" that the model puts out that x=1 is not a conclusion.

And what do you mean by "solely a linearly driven...result?"  The results wiggle all around.  Sure, they to show a linear trend.  But linear regression is hardly a "linear result."

Exactly what I said.  The impact of carbon is programmed into the models.  Therefore increasing or decreasing carbon inputs will cause the model to move in the same direction, you may not see it any single run, but over enough runs that assumption will always cause the same impact.  Pretty much the model adds nothing to the debate.

Our climate doesn't give a damn about its economic impact.

But you should.  Spending billions on something that won't help the environment, starves programs that could help of any resources.  Banning people from doing things in reasonably polluting ways, opens the door to them doing it in excessively polluting ways (every time a first world factory is closed in favor of a third world one the environmental picture gets worse, yet this is the intended result of existing "climate" accords).

If you don't like the answers that are proposed, why not try to find something else that will work?  Why not do things that will slow the process, so we have time to find other solutions?  But to do nothing because it "costs too much"--that's like looking at a hole in a sinking ship and saying, "well, it's too costly to fix, so let's just ignore it." 

Guy one, "Hey did you hear about the new accounting report?  Hey why did you jump off the bridge?"

Guy two, " I had to do something."

I never proposed doing nothing.  I reject doing the wrong thing.  You want to make a real impact, increase the first world carbon allowances and engage in aggressively putting the 3rd world out of business.  You could use military force on polluters.  You could invade subsistence croppers who slash and burn.  Don't like those options?  Why not support aggressive carbon sequestration technologies?  You could make healthcare illegal, less people, less power used, less toxic drug research, less net impact on the environment.  You could institute a global one child policy.   Lots of end results if you don't care about the costs, but I think you do care about the costs, you just don't care about other peoples' money.

[Crunch]

Except you don't get to 3 degrees centigrade just from carbon emissions you have to have a runaway feedback loop to get there.

Sorry, but you are wrong.  These are the estimates without a "runaway feedback loop." Here is a chart from a class on climate change that I took*:

CO2 (ppm)       Average Temp Increase (Equilibrium)
340 (320-380)                 1 degree C
540 (440-760)                 3 degree C
840 (620-1490)               5 degree C

No runaway feedback loop.

Lol.  If you have a chart that lays it out for you like that, at best it was written for grade school consumers, and is more propaganda than science.  Why don't you go back and find the source and then we can discuss it.

So that you know, the data being presented in that chart is demonstrably false.  There have been many times in Earth's past where CO2 levels were much, much, higher (over 4000 ppm even) and temperatures did not increase at all much less as much as the above.  In one period when the Earth was above 5000 ppm. it was actually vastly colder than now and the planet was heavily glaciated. 

Also, it completely contradicts the logarithmic nature of CO2's effect.  It cannot possibly be accurate.

[TheDeamon]

Crunch, do you seriously believe that climatologist, who program supercomputers to make climate models, can't do mathematics?  That if you came to one of them and told them this, that they'd say, "OMG, I didn't think of that!  I need to redo all my calculations right now!"?  That none of the grad students they have working with them, who do most of the grunt work, didn't notice this little thing?

Actually, while they haven't found any "magic bullets" the reliability of the underlying code(and its assumptions--in particular the "forcings" they attribute to CO2 and other factors), as well as the efficacy of the models themselves is regularly called into question by the very community that is doing the modeling.

The regional models work "reasonably well" on short time frames, but as you progress further, it becomes reliant on outside influences (from neighboring regions/"global models")  to continue to progress the simulation. Global models also have their own range of issues, in particular when it comes to making accurate predictions in regards to specific regions(where regional forecasts by global models have absolutely horrid track records). And even at the meta-level, the Global models have issues with simply forecasting either the global mean or average temperature.

There is a reason why a lot of the "doom and gloom" prognostications have shifted back to the meta-level after initially trying to use those vaunted computer models to "show" what the world was going to look like in ___ years, like they were inclined to do 20-some years ago. They know the models have issues, and they're not opening that avenue for generating further skepticism about their abilities to project things into the future.

[TheDeamon]

Which leaves us where we began.  What can reasonably and cost effectively be done?  It looks to me like you could completely tank the global economy and still not have a meaningful impact on the carbon rates or the green house gas rates, but kill millions or tens of millions of people with poverty.  Is that the goal?

Our climate doesn't give a damn about its economic impact.  It is going to do what it will do.  Our best estimates of what it will do with higher levels of CO2 are spelled out: increased desertification, sea level rise, flooding in the wetter areas, lower crop yields due to higher temperatures, etc.  The picture is not pretty.

But that has nothing to do with how we respond to it.  We have plenty of options.  We can try to live in more hostile conditions.  We can spend lots of money trying to remove the CO2 after it is in the atmosphere.  Or we can try to find ways to prevent more CO2 from getting into the atmosphere.  Doubtlessly, we will have to do all three.  But there is not just one answer to this problem.  If you don't like the answers that are proposed, why not try to find something else that will work?  Why not do things that will slow the process, so we have time to find other solutions?  But to do nothing because it "costs too much"--that's like looking at a hole in a sinking ship and saying, "well, it's too costly to fix, so let's just ignore it." 

Let's start by doing whatever we can that won't bankrupt the world economy, and then continue to look for solutions.  Because we, and our children, are going to be dealing with the results whether it's economical or not.

*Climate Change in Four Dimensions, from U.C. San Diego.  Available on-line on Coursera.

Might want to pay a visit to  this site here to start getting your feet wet:
http://www.lomborg.com/

I could quote page after page of his stuff, but I'll just link to him instead.

For the record, he is NOT a skeptic, although many in the AGW crowd want to label him as such. He openly says AGW is real, and that its happening. His "thing" however, is that the many of the approaches being pursued which are sucking up all of the money, while well intentioned,  are misguided and very highly inefficient, and by extension, ineffective.

[Pete at Home]

What can reasonably and cost effectively be done?  It looks to me like you could completely tank the global economy and still not have a meaningful impact on the carbon rates or the green house gas rates, but kill millions or tens of millions of people with poverty.  Is that the goal?

It's an error to ascribe a single "goal" to those who advocate that we pay attention to the havoc that humans are wreaking on the ecology.

I think it's obvious that Kyoto's primary goal was to create a global pretext for redistributing assets to the third world.  That the secondary goal was to enrich certain sectors of the economy (ethanol) on the pretense or reducing "carbon footprint", without regard for the fact that as Deamon pointed out, the bastards were exchanging carbon sinks for heat sinks.    Nevertheless, there remain a few diehards like Greenpeace who actually give a damn about reducing deforestation and destruction of the oceans.

[LetterRip]

Lomborg did an awful job, every page he wrote was filled with errors of interpretation or fact.  His understanding of the material was atrocious and either deliberate deception or gross incompetence.

[Wayward Son]

Crunch, do you seriously believe that climatologist, who program supercomputers to make climate models, can't do mathematics?  That if you came to one of them and told them this, that they'd say, "OMG, I didn't think of that!  I need to redo all my calculations right now!"?  That none of the grad students they have working with them, who do most of the grunt work, didn't notice this little thing?

I know about something called "appeal to authority":

An argument from authority, also called an appeal to authority, is a form of logical and persuasive argument using expert opinion to defend the likelihood of the reliability of a claim. It is well-known as a fallacy...

So using that argument is decidedly unpersuasive.  I can just as easily trot out contradictory authority. You can engage in the "dueling authorities" all you want but as it's merely a logical fallacy and nothing but a distraction, I'd prefer not.

From the chart here, you can see that by the time we hit 500 ppm the effect of increasing CO2 will be barely incremental.  This is basic science, verified and still verifiable via experimentation.  It does not change no matter how complex a framework we devise for it or at the whim of ideological desires and nothing will change that.

At 400 ppm, CO2 has reached ~87+% of its potential warming effect in the earth's atmosphere. Going from 400 ppm to 1000 ppm will essentially consume the remaining 13% of the potential effect.   Because the vast majority of CO2 is from natural sources (96.5%), it is scientifically and mathematically impossible for man-made sources (only 3.5% of CO2) to have a large potential impact and not even a significant one as we are approaching saturation.  Again, that is just basic science and math and should be obvious to the lay person.

While "appeal to authority" is a fallacy for logical proofs, it is not as absolute as you make it.

Consider if your family car is overheating.  You take it to 10 repair shops, and the 9 of the factory-trained technicians, working with the best testing equipment, determined that your car had a cracked engine block.  The tenth did not think that was the problem, but didn't know what it was.

Or if your daughter had a persistent fever, lasting over two weeks.  You take her to 10 doctors, who make various tests, and 9 of them determine that she has leukemia.  The tenth doesn't think it's leukemia, but doesn't know what it is.

Would you say it is an "appeal to authority" to say that your car has a cracked block and your daughter has leukemia?

If you thought that the overheating was due to a leaking hose line, and the fever was due to a cold, would it be an "appeal to authority" to say that you are most likely wrong, because the technicians would have checked for leaking hose lines, and the doctors would know if it was merely a minor virus?

Of course, in both cases, they could be wrong.  But the good money would be that it is you who are wrong.

Because experts actually have more experience and more knowledge than most laymen.  And so they are right more often than most laymen.

Given that, the correct way to prove that something is wrong is to examine the argument itself.  Why the auto techs believe you have a cracked block.  Why the doctors believe your daughter has leukemia.  And, since this is a fairly simple issue, I could probably find an explanation of why you are wrong.

But before I go through the trouble, I just need one small thing from you.

I need you to acknowledge that you probably are wrong.

Because there are some people who will believe they have a leaky hose no matter what their car mechanic says.  And others who will believe that their daughter doesn't have cancer, because they know better.

In climate debates, these people are called "deniers."

So, if you will admit that you could be wrong, I will try to find a good explanation of why.

But if not--if you think you've found a proof that no climatologist with a PhD has ever come across that proves they are wrong, and you have absolutely no doubt about it--then it would just be a waste of time for both of us.

Because while an "appeal to authority" is not absolute proof of a contention, it is a good indication in the real world.  Because in reality, there are people who are more informed and knowledgeable than all of us.  And we all have to listen to them to function in this world of ours.

[Wayward Son]

Which is exactly why I said that you were hand-waving away a valid objection.  There's a logic fail in using "greenhouse gases contribute a huge amount" to a give a heavy weight to the "minor increase" that has a "huge impact" as you put it.

You can't assume that a tiny contribution to greater whole (like a single vote to an election) has any real impact on its own.  And you're ignoring that this is a direct criticism of how many "votes" are really at stake.  If Crunch is correct on the impact then the actual reductions in carbon (most policies don't even result in a net carbon reduction, let alone anything that would materially reduce carbon production by humanity) are unlikely to be material.  Even if you could eliminate all human caused carbon emissions (literally impossible), you may not see a material impact on climate, but it's certainly questionable whether the percentage decreases contemplated would have any impact, particularly if you don't also include population controls (heck, just increased food production, with irrigation (and evaporation) and methane producing meat sources are probably of greater impact than any potential carbon savings discussed).

OK, let me define my term here.

When I say "huge impact," I mean that the CO2 level itself leads to a change in temperature that impacts our ability to live, such as sea level rises, desertification, acidification of the oceans, etc.  I don't care how big a temperature change it is nor how big a percentage it is to the total effect.  If that change leads to a significant reduction in my, and the rest of humanity's, ability to survive, then it is a "huge impact."

Everything else is just hand-waving.

I don't agree that you've shown any reason to believe that a 4 degree C change (what is that almost 7 F) is even on the table.   Certainly, I see no possibility that any now existing or currently proposed environmental legislation could even in theory cause that large of an impact.

Credible sources say it is an extremely likely outcome.  Why don't you see it as a possibility?

What I want is proposals that are balanced and have a real meaningful impact.  Environmental legislation that doesn't help the environment but rewards bad environmental actors like China is a complete waste of time.  Rules that impose massive costs for marginal benefits are just stupid.

Great.  So does everyone else.  But we can't agree to start looking at them until we agree that there is an actual problem for them to address.  Work with those who acknowledge the problem to come up with such proposals, and oppose those who say that the problem doesn't even exist.

Lol.  If you have a chart that lays it out for you like that, at best it was written for grade school consumers, and is more propaganda than science.  Why don't you go back and find the source and then we can discuss it.

I'll see if I can find it.  My copies of the course are buried somewhere... 

The evidence that we accurately know on a general basis isn't all that great, we definitely don't know on a specific basis.

Again, credible sources say that we have a pretty good general accuracy.

One of the assumptions HAS to be that CO2 causes increases in global temperature.  There is no legitimate way to exclude that, which doesn't mean it's correct, just that it reflects our best guess of how carbon works in an open system from our observations of it in a closed system.

How would you program that?  I mean, with dozens of systems being modeled, from solar input to convection currents to ocean absorption to cloud cover to methane levels, how to you program that the main cause HAS to be CO2?  Yes, you have to include the basic amount of energy absorption by CO2 into the model.  But if something else is causing the warming that we are seeing, how do you make sure that the CO2 is THE culprit?  Couldn't you tweek the methane variables, or the HFC variables, or one of the many other variables to account for it, too?  If those models are just as good, why hasn't someone done so already?

The group that comes up with a superior climate model gets the accolades and distinction.  In Trump words, they are "the winners."   I don't see why they would all play to the same assumption unless it didn't, or more likely couldn't, work without it.

A computer model can not generate a surprise result, everything in it is a forced conclusion.

I still don't know what that means.  I am sure most of the early models gave results that were far off the historical record.  Some probably predicted that the Earth had a runaway greenhouse effect back in 1970.   Those would be "surprise results."  They will work with the program until it conforms to reality, of course, but that is hardly a "forced conclusion."  It is goal of the project; to make a model that reflect reality.  Once you've done that, then you can analyze what factors created this conclusion, but it is hardly a foregone conclusion.  It's just too complex for that.  Otherwise, they wouldn't be using supercomputers to run the models.

How would you do that, with a program that is designed to evaluate the entire surface of the Earth in 110 km square portions and calculate the interactions between these portions?

What program do you think could do that?  We don't have data in those packets.  If you have generated data for them, you've effected played make believe.

According to my notes, that is the computational resolution of T106 L56 Atmospheric GCM, created by Center for Climate System Research (CCSR), National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) and Frontier Research Center for Global Change (FRCGC).  Certainly they do not have unique measurement for every one of those grids, but they are not complete unknowns, either.  (You can't have hurricane-force winds in one grid and calm in the adjacent grid, for instance.)  Estimates are far from "make believe."

It appears to create significance by running multiple iterations, but all it will ever do is regress to the mean of the pre-programmed results.

Sure, but the results may be wildly different than what you expected.  Just ask any beginning programmer.

From what I understand, the different iterations don't "regress" in any way.  They run independent of the other iteration.  One might follow the average of the runs, the next might be wildly different.  If there is a path, yes, it is a result of the programming.  But the idea is to make a program that works the same way the climate does.

The impact of carbon is programmed into the models.  Therefore increasing or decreasing carbon inputs will cause the model to move in the same direction, you may not see it any single run, but over enough runs that assumption will always cause the same impact.  Pretty much the model adds nothing to the debate.

But we know that CO2 impacts the climate.  We know it traps heat.  We know how much it should reflect back onto the planet.  What we don't know is exactly how that interacts with the rest of the climate, because it is a chaotic system.  A small change could cause a large change in another part of the system.  Which it could do consistently.  And chaotic systems do have "tipping points," where the whole system switches to a new equilibrium.  This is why we should worry about a "runaway greenhouse effect."  There could a point where everything changes, pretty much permanently.

The models you are familiar with, how many were for chaotic systems?

Our climate doesn't give a damn about its economic impact.

But you should.

I do.  If you've noticed, I haven't advocated any particular plan for addressing climate change.  I don't think there is only one way to do so.  And considering the world's political state, I suspect the solution is going to be more complex than the climate itself.

But, unless we want to deal with the consequences, we must do something.  The solution will not be ideal.  But neither will not finding a solution.

I never proposed doing nothing.  I reject doing the wrong thing.

Agreed.

But doing nothing is also the wrong thing.

So let's so something, even if it is less than ideal, even if it won't completely solve the problem but may only postpone it.  Let's do the reasonable things, the Things We Ought To Do Anyway as David Brin says.  Let's cut down coal burning for power.  Let's use more PV.  Let's increase gas mileage on cars.  Yes, they will cost us some, but not that much, and they will cut air pollution and decrease our use of foreign oil.  And then we can find other ways to address the problem.

But prevention of a problem is always cheaper than mitigation.

And, as AA will tell you, before you can address a problem, you have to admit that it exists.

[Wayward Son]

Except you don't get to 3 degrees centigrade just from carbon emissions you have to have a runaway feedback loop to get there.

Sorry, but you are wrong.  These are the estimates without a "runaway feedback loop." Here is a chart from a class on climate change that I took*:

CO2 (ppm)       Average Temp Increase (Equilibrium)
340 (320-380)                 1 degree C
540 (440-760)                 3 degree C
840 (620-1490)               5 degree C

No runaway feedback loop.

Lol.  If you have a chart that lays it out for you like that, at best it was written for grade school consumers, and is more propaganda than science.  Why don't you go back and find the source and then we can discuss it.

So that you know, the data being presented in that chart is demonstrably false.  There have been many times in Earth's past where CO2 levels were much, much, higher (over 4000 ppm even) and temperatures did not increase at all much less as much as the above.  In one period when the Earth was above 5000 ppm. it was actually vastly colder than now and the planet was heavily glaciated. 

Also, it completely contradicts the logarithmic nature of CO2's effect.  It cannot possibly be accurate.

Tell me, Crunch, what was the solar input at those times?  How far was the Earth from the sun?  What was the cloud cover like?  Particular matter in the atmosphere?  Reflectivity of the surface?

There are many factors that affect the average temperature of the Earth.  The current models incorporate as many as we know.  But with all those other factors, how can you say definitively that one or more of those other factors didn't overcome the heat trapping of CO2?  And, therefore, the models must be wrong?

[Crunch]

Tell me, Crunch, what was the solar input at those times?  How far was the Earth from the sun?  What was the cloud cover like?  Particular matter in the atmosphere?  Reflectivity of the surface?

We're not talking about those factors, we may presently, I don't know, but we've been specifically talking about CO2.  Trying to throw up this smoke screen and create distractions is not a viable point.

There are many factors that affect the average temperature of the Earth.  The current models incorporate as many as we know.  But with all those other factors, how can you say definitively that one or more of those other factors didn't overcome the heat trapping of CO2?  And, therefore, the models must be wrong?

We're talking about CO2 and the effect it has.  You agree it's logarithmic, then claim it's actually linear, and then put up a chart trying to make the case it's exponential. That's not even doublespeak, it's triplespeak and, frankly, non-nonsensical (i.e. it's not only not right, it's not even wrong). 

CO2 has a linear effect on heat.  That is an immutable scientific fact, we've known it for decades.  Cloud cover, atmospheric dust, whatever else is conjured up to make it appear so complex only scientists that dedicate their lives to it can understand it, doesn't matter.  CO2 is logarithmic and over 87% of all possible effect from it has already been realized.  Nothing changes that.  We have experimental data to prove it, we have the empirical data that proves it. We can test it any time we want and see that it's logarithmic. The only time we get any other result, is when the experiment is fraudulently performed.

I'm sorry but there really are only 4 lights and 2+2 will never equal 5.

[DonaldD]

If you bring up "many times in Earth's past where CO2 levels were much, much, higher" and then ignore the other factors that were different during those other times... you aren't doing it right.

[TheDeamon]

I'll just point to those "many highly regarded" tables and computer models that the IPCC referred to, where all but the most conservative (outlier) models are even close to what we've actually experienced as validation that the computer models are rather significantly flawed, and that their CO2 curve probably needs adjusted, downward.

Of course, also evidence that the economy is "decarbonizing," mostly on its own, is also mounting. Economic growth(or lack thereof) no longer tracks closely with CO2 outside of very exteme cases. (as obviously,  a strong enough downturn would lower CO2, and a strong enough upswing would increase it) by the size of the swing is becoming more pronounced now, to the point where positive economic growth is happening alongside decreasing or flat CO2 emissions.

Technology is catching up/has caught up to the 1st world in CO2 use. Now if only we could get the third world to stop using highly CO2 inefficient fuel stocks, and I'm not talking about coal. I'm talking about biomass for home heat/home cooking. Getting them hooked up to a coal fired power plant(with sufficient emission controls) would be an improvement in that regard.

[Seriati]

OK, let me define my term here.

When I say "huge impact," I mean that the CO2 level itself leads to a change in temperature that impacts our ability to live, such as sea level rises, desertification, acidification of the oceans, etc.  I don't care how big a temperature change it is nor how big a percentage it is to the total effect.  If that change leads to a significant reduction in my, and the rest of humanity's, ability to survive, then it is a "huge impact."

Everything else is just hand-waving.

Again what you did is hand-waving.  The specific point is that your claim that the change in CO2 leads to a "huge impact" is what is disputed.  Claiming that it has a huge impact definitionally doesn't fix that problem.

I don't agree that you've shown any reason to believe that a 4 degree C change (what is that almost 7 F) is even on the table.   Certainly, I see no possibility that any now existing or currently proposed environmental legislation could even in theory cause that large of an impact.

Credible sources say it is an extremely likely outcome.  Why don't you see it as a possibility?

I literally don't believe you have cited credible sources, and I'm questioning what your basis for determining the credibility of a source is.

What I want is proposals that are balanced and have a real meaningful impact.  Environmental legislation that doesn't help the environment but rewards bad environmental actors like China is a complete waste of time.  Rules that impose massive costs for marginal benefits are just stupid.

Great.  So does everyone else.  But we can't agree to start looking at them until we agree that there is an actual problem for them to address.  Work with those who acknowledge the problem to come up with such proposals, and oppose those who say that the problem doesn't even exist.

We actually don't have to agree here to make progress.  Virtually all pollutants have actual provable health impacts and other societal costs (even if its just loss of green space).  Many things can be addressed rationally and collectively, however, when you're trying to make an argument from authority and demanding solutions that don't even plausibly relate to your claims I'm gonna fight that.

The evidence that we accurately know on a general basis isn't all that great, we definitely don't know on a specific basis.

Again, credible sources say that we have a pretty good general accuracy.

Again they don't.  Just because they are the best we have doesn't make them credible.

One of the assumptions HAS to be that CO2 causes increases in global temperature.  There is no legitimate way to exclude that, which doesn't mean it's correct, just that it reflects our best guess of how carbon works in an open system from our observations of it in a closed system.

How would you program that?  I mean, with dozens of systems being modeled, from solar input to convection currents to ocean absorption to cloud cover to methane levels, how to you program that the main cause HAS to be CO2?

I don't know where to begin, it almost sounds like you have no idea what a "model" is.  You do understand that every single rule of the model is selected by a human being?  The impact of CO2 is literally programmed into the model by the researchers, failing to include it's expected impact would literally be scientific malpractice, which means it's not possible for the model not to show increases of carbon increasing global temperature.

Yes, you have to include the basic amount of energy absorption by CO2 into the model.  But if something else is causing the warming that we are seeing, how do you make sure that the CO2 is THE culprit?

There is no way for a model to do this.

Data analysis based on properly constructed studies can lead to such a conclusion. If you have real experimental data (which we don't because n=1) you can do that analysis.  We use models to generate data to do an analysis, but there is a fatal flaw to modeled data, the analysis can only show you what the model requires.  For a complex system you may get a result you didn't expect but you can't get a result that wasn't a necessary conclusion of the rules you put in.  You can get any number of Queen takes King results, but your chess model will never return Snake Eyes as an answer.

Crunching modeled data does nothing but return the modeled rules.

Couldn't you tweek the methane variables, or the HFC variables, or one of the many other variables to account for it, too?  If those models are just as good, why hasn't someone done so already?

You can't "tweak" rules in a model unless you have a rational reason to do so.  They're really compounded from micro studies.  I've walked through this a number of times.  Models heavily weight what's been studied, whether or not its really relevant.

The group that comes up with a superior climate model gets the accolades and distinction.  In Trump words, they are "the winners."   I don't see why they would all play to the same assumption unless it didn't, or more likely couldn't, work without it.

Because they all rely on the same research, and they can't ignore what they know even if they don't really know everything about it.  As an example, they can't ignore carbon forcing, even if in reality there is a mechanism they don't know that at higher carbon levels counteracts it.  Any model that fails to account for the second item would be never be correct, yet no model would ever include it.

They also have to assign weights to everything they throw into the mix, and those weights are almost exclusively unverifiable opinions.

A computer model can not generate a surprise result, everything in it is a forced conclusion.

I still don't know what that means.  I am sure most of the early models gave results that were far off the historical record.  Some probably predicted that the Earth had a runaway greenhouse effect back in 1970.   Those would be "surprise results."

They may have surprised the researcher, but they were not surprise results, as always they were the direct and inevitable results of the math the research put in.

Let me give you another example.  Ever play a video game?  If you play the same level over and over against the same computer controlled enemies, is it really possible that anything they do is surprising after a while?  No matter how intuitive the game's algorithms are there are only so many "winning" strategies that they can pursue based open the layout of the board and its rules. 

They will work with the program until it conforms to reality, of course, but that is hardly a "forced conclusion."  It is goal of the project; to make a model that reflect reality.

They work with the program because they CAN NOT work with reality.  No matter what their research will always tell you about the model and not reality.

Once you've done that, then you can analyze what factors created this conclusion, but it is hardly a foregone conclusion.  It's just too complex for that.  Otherwise, they wouldn't be using supercomputers to run the models.

Unless they add "random" to their models the results are largely a foregoing conclusion, and adding "random" is a highly questionable thing to do.  What part of nature do you derive the "random" from?

What program do you think could do that?  We don't have data in those packets.  If you have generated data for them, you've effected played make believe.

According to my notes, that is the computational resolution of T106 L56 Atmospheric GCM, created by Center for Climate System Research (CCSR), National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) and Frontier Research Center for Global Change (FRCGC).  Certainly they do not have unique measurement for every one of those grids, but they are not complete unknowns, either.  (You can't have hurricane-force winds in one grid and calm in the adjacent grid, for instance.)  Estimates are far from "make believe."

Considering that hurricanes have eyes, you literally could not have picked a worse example for your point.

I'd doubt that less than 60% of those grids have any direct measurement, when you think through the polar caps and ocean regions.  I'd doubt that more than 5% have regular measurements and even less have measurements that meet any kind of reasonable quality controls (for instance its questionable if there are quality measurements for most of Asia or Africa).

It appears to create significance by running multiple iterations, but all it will ever do is regress to the mean of the pre-programmed results.

Sure, but the results may be wildly different than what you expected.  Just ask any beginning programmer.

Completely missing the point.  Not understanding a forced conclusion of your assumptions doesn't mean it isn't a forced conclusion.

From what I understand, the different iterations don't "regress" in any way.  They run independent of the other iteration.  One might follow the average of the runs, the next might be wildly different.  If there is a path, yes, it is a result of the programming.  But the idea is to make a program that works the same way the climate does.

Yes, I agree you don't understand what is going on.  A single iteration can't regress.  But just like if you flip a coin enough times the percentage you get the coin to turn up heads regresses to 50%, the "sophisticated" climate models have to do the same.

But we know that CO2 impacts the climate.  We know it traps heat.  We know how much it should reflect back onto the planet.

We know how those operate in a closed system, we have no experimental results for how it operates on a system like the climate.  We draw inferences from what we do know, but we can't actually test them.

What we don't know is exactly how that interacts with the rest of the climate, because it is a chaotic system.

No, just no.  Whether or not its chaotic has nothing to do with why we don't know how it interacts exactly.

But prevention of a problem is always cheaper than mitigation.

This is literally not true.  There are plenty of problems that are cheaper to treat than to prevent.