An excellent PBS News Hour piece called “Climate change is making wildfires more extreme. Here’s how.”
It starts with California but discusses this as a world wide problem. Has a segment with Michael Mann, author of The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle
or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
It is time to hope and change the AGW to HGW (hysterical global warming
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6018447/National-Geographic-admits-no-evidence-polar-bear-video-dying-climate-change.html
https://nzconservativecoalition.org.nz/2018/07/26/msnbc-host-climate-change-news-is-a-ratings-killer-iowa-climate-science-education/
https://weather.com/storms/tornado/news/2018-05-23-year-to-date-tornadoes-united-states-near-13-year-low
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/high-temperatures-cause-suicide-rates-to-increase/565826/
More hysterical from HGW.
Reducing greenhouse emissions is not the only way to combat climate change. Well established scientific reasoning shows that climate change, whether man-made or natural, is not an existential threat. Adapting to climate change is the way man has always dealt with it in the past and the more prosperous we are, the easier it is to adapt. Mitigation (controlling CO2 emissions) requires a unified global response and will reduce our standard of living. Adaptation can occur locally with each community dealing with the specific threats they face. Adaptation is easier to handle, cheaper and more effective.
“Science is rooted in observations. If we make a prediction that is later verified with measurements, we have a proper scientific theory. A prediction, no matter how elaborately it was made or documented, that is not verified with data and observations is science fiction.”
“99.9 percent of the Earth’s surface heat capacity is in the oceans and less than 0.1 percent is in the atmosphere. Further, CO2 is only 0.04 percent of the atmosphere. It beggars belief that a trace gas (CO2), in an atmosphere that itself contains only a trace amount of the total thermal energy on the surface of the Earth, can control the climate of the Earth. This is not the tail wagging the dog, this is a flea on the tail of the dog wagging the dog.”
As you will see when you read the book, the IPCC AR5 Physical Science Basis report (2013) states on page 667 that “CO2 is the main anthropogenic control knob on climate.” This is also in the title of a paper by Lacis, et al. (2010) cited in the IPCC report. Both works acknowledge that CO2 alone does not have enough of an effect to cause problems. But, by delaying the radiative transfer of thermal energy to space, they claim the lower atmosphere will warm and that this will cause the amount of water vapor to increase in the lower atmosphere. Water vapor is a much stronger “greenhouse gas” and this will cause the problem they espouse.
In addition, the same IPCC report states on page 7 that they present “clear and robust conclusions … that the science now shows with 95 percent certainty that human activity is the dominant cause of observed warming since the mid-20th century.”
There are several problems with these ideas. Most heat transfer in the lower atmosphere, where there is a lot of water vapor, occurs via convection. Water vapor (and water) have a high heat capacity and carry a lot of latent heat, they transport most of the thermal energy near the surface in the so-called atmospheric “boundary layer.” CO2 has a low heat capacity. It is infrared active and absorbs and emits IR radiation, with a small delay, whereas latent heat can be carried by water vapor for weeks before it condenses as rain and emits it. At high altitudes, where there is little water vapor, it is responsible for emitting most of the IR to space as thermal radiation. But, near the surface water vapor does the cooling.
The oceans are very cool, with an average temperature of about 4 degrees C. As stated in the quote, they contain 1,000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere and provide a huge buffer that limits the Earth’s surface temperature. Most of the solar thermal energy that reaches the surface is absorbed by the oceans. The warmest part of the ocean is the surface of the tropical Pacific. Here heat loss due to evaporation limits the temperature to a maximum of 30 to 34 degrees C (86-93 degrees F) according to many sources, but Newell and Dopplick (1978, J. of Applied Meteorology, Vol. 18, page 822) is the original source. In isolated shallow seas, like the Red Sea or the Caribbean, or close to land in unusual meteorological conditions, sea-surface temperatures may reach as high as 34 degrees. But, in the open ocean the limit is pretty close to 30 degrees. This is the temperature where the thermal energy lost due to evaporation is about the same as the energy received from the Sun.
This energy is transmitted all over the world, mostly by ocean currents, but also by wind. It is emitted to space, mostly by CO2, in net emitting areas like the poles and the Sahara, and from the upper atmosphere. Thunderstorms are a main mechanism for transporting thermal energy to the upper atmosphere where it is easily emitted to space. Thus the point of the quote is that the atmosphere (and thus CO2, a trace gas in the atmosphere) cannot “control” the climate as long as oceans exist. The oceans are the main control. If they were to completely disappear somehow (unlikely) then CO2 may play a role in long-term climate. But, as long as they exist, the maximum ocean surface temperature is 30-34 degrees. Since the oceans cover 70% of the Earth’s surface, this limits the maximum surface temperature.
In the first quote I state that 99.9% of the heat capacity is in the oceans and 0.1% is in the atmosphere. I ignored the heat capacity of the land because temperature measurements on land are made in the air above the land. Normally at about 2 meters altitude.
Finally, what I tried to do in the quote, was step back from the CO2 greenhouse effect (GHE), and look at the larger picture of recent warming. GHE is not climate and climate is not GHE, it is much more complicated than that regardless of what the warmists want us to believe. In the quote, I don’t care if the GHE contributed to current warming or by how much. I just wanted to show that any effect of CO2 is small in the context of the oceans. The Earth is warming; thus, it is retaining some thermal energy, and as the IPCC says in AR5 (The Physical Science Basis, page 265) the oceans have retained 64% of the energy. All the retained thermal energy for the past 50 or 60 years, at most, has increased the Southern Ocean temperature less than 0.07 degrees (see Wunsch, 2018, Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography, vol. 70, issue 1)! And this is the ocean where all oceans meet, the deep oceans, with the exception of the Antarctic bottom water, have cooled since 1990 (Wunsch and Heimbach, 2014, American Meteorological Society Journal, August 2014).
Some of recent warming is natural and some is probably due to the CO2 GHE, the warming is obviously due to additional thermal energy being retained. I’m just saying it doesn’t matter. Were it all due to CO2 GHE and the effect lasted another 200 years, the Southern Ocean would warm a whopping 0.6 degrees, at most, since the effect of CO2 diminishes as more is added and because some recent estimates of warming since the 1990s are less than 0.02 degrees (see here). The warming, regardless of the cause is not important or a problem due to the high heat capacity of the oceans. That is the point of the quote.
“The warming, regardless of the cause is not important or a problem due to the high heat capacity of the oceans. That is the point of the quote.”
That’s exactly 180 degrees wrong in my view.
Unattributed Andy Mays cure rather than prevention model is very very screwed up.
Wanna be a little careful downplaying
OHC and only considering CO2 and not aerosols. Aerosols are fucking dramatic, even on a big sink like oceans.
Mr Agung is a great illustration if ya wanna cross reference 1963 and OHC.
And they are artificially suppressing OHC now.
It’s funny about aerosols. Ya never see a denier carry on about em.
They might completely deny the sea level has changed since 1900 or that there’s the CO2 fraction is not rising or if if it is it’s not anthropogenic or it dosnt matter cuz CO2 dosnt do nothing anyway, but nary a whisper about aerosols. Never once seen a claim of faked aerosol data.
Even when the subset volcano cult carry on its always about direct thermal heat under WAIS or CO2 or some other bullshit. Never about what they actually do do!
No, it’s pretty much all human:
https://skepticalscience.com/wigley-santer-2012-attribution.html
and more…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_change#/media/File:Attribution_of_global_warming.jpg
You saying it doesn’t make it so. Read AR5:
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/
https://weather.com/storms/tornado/news/2018-05-23-year-to-date-tornadoes-united-states-near-13-year-low
http://nzconservativecoalition.org.nz/2018/07/26/msnbc-host-climate-change-news-is-a-ratings-killer-iowa-climate-science-education/
AGW and all of its components are dead.
No billyR, you’re just ignorant. What’s dead (it was probably never alive) is your integrity.
A series of books about fire.
“In early July 2018, there were twenty-nine large uncontained fires burning across the United States. “We shouldn’t be seeing this type of fire behavior this early in the year,” Chris Anthony, a division chief at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told The New York Times. It has been an unusually dry winter and spring in much of the West, however, and by the end of June three times as much land had already burned in California as burned in the first half of 2017, which was the state’s worst fire year ever.”
The review continues with an examination of U.S. fire policy and the complex causes of the current blazes.
Northern Canada and Alaska:
“But the size, frequency, range, and intensity of wildfires in Alaska and northern Canada have increased far more rapidly than in lower, more populated latitudes. Megafires have become every-year events up north. Soot and ash from these northern fires is blackening glaciers and the Greenland ice cap, causing them to melt at an even faster rate.”
The smoke from these fires travels around the globe and has notable health effects:
“Air quality in New York and Chicago has been measurably degraded by Canadian wildfires. An Australian-Canadian research team, looking at global wildfires, estimated that between 260,000 and 600,000 deaths may be attributable to wildfire smoke each year.”
Not to mention the effect of these fires on carbon emissions.
Also “a longer view of fire on earth.”
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/08/16/wildfires-california-burning/
Somehow, I also think that this is pertinent and deserves a post of its own:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/06/domino-effect-of-climate-events-could-push-earth-into-a-hothouse-state
Just something I thought of related to fire and climate change. I heard ages ago that a warming climate will increase lighting in arctic areas.
Which ups the fire risk I spose if there’s an increase in ground strikes.
Makes me wonder about cloud to cloud / groundstrike ratio and if that may change or is it a set ratio no matter the frequency of lighting events?
Anyone here a lightning fan who could answer?
Notice how the Russian Fire Department Representative, BillyR, was here early in the morning to try and put out fires that might threaten the fossil fuel income of Mother Russia.
“In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is.”
Case in point. ” The warming, regardless of the cause is not important or a problem due to the high heat capacity of the oceans. ”
So, the oceans are warming, but it is not important? Well, it certainly is not important if you are a science ignoramus mining other people’s ideas to make a hodge podge of nonsense. It is not important if you are a parasite on the blood sucking end of the fossil fuel food chain.
Warming oceans mean less oxygen in the ocean, more devestating rain storms, rising ocean levels, more flooding, and basically, an overall perturbance of what had been a relatively stable system during the rapid growth period of human population of the planet. Higher fossil fuel usage also implies a more acidic ocean due to more oxides of nitrogen, sulfur, and carbon ending up there . All of this points to more destruction of, and rearrangment of , the web of life on Earth and in the ocean. As time goes by, more and more physical systems related to life will start making very rapid, violent snaps to new equilibria, and the resulting changes in all likelihood won’t be very good for most of the humans living at the time.
I relate these things, not to instill a sense of hysteria . People aware of these things are not hysterical, just realistic. The trends are there, clear to see by people who are not easily misled by their innumeracy.
BillyR’s lengthy screed reminds me of a child who has put off doing a term paper until the last minute, and then blindingly mines quotes to try and justify their ill thought out thesis. Billy, this topic is way out of your league and the league of your Russia Troll farm cohorts. But keep trying. Your insistance on flat Earthe denialism is hysterically funny.
Note that BillyR does the typical denier trick of quoting from a source which they fail to identify.
This nonsense is produced by petrophysicist Andy May in and around his book ‘Climate Catastrophe! Science or Science Fiction?’.
I’ll simply quote one sensible review comment from Amazon.com site:
But of course the resident troll would not understand that basic point of science.
More on the new PNAS paper.
“In an alarming report published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 16 scientists warned that — thanks to a series of dramatic positive-feedback loops they suggest might be significantly underestimated by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which effectively establishes the boundaries of acceptable discourse on global warming — the planet may already be heading down a far more harrowing warming path than most scientists, and certainly most nonscientists, understand.”
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/theres-worse-climate-news-than-the-mendocino-complex-fire.html
“No billyR, you’re just ignorant. What’s dead (it was probably never alive) is your integrity.”
Thank you for the eulogy, dean. Is this the kinder and gentler dean???
HAIL AZOLLA:
No, it is not a open source, software or a search engine but
rather a solution for carbon sequestration, which can them
be used to grow more leftist ideology.
Of course this process will require more time than the left
will allowed because they want drive-in results.
This is indeed the answer and an economic one; however it does
require patience.
I am quite sure that the entire broad (<— another laugh but please
minimize your CO2) of HGW, will wholly accept not only its prose
but also the source, especially the demanding L.A.
I fully endorse this article and the link below.
http://www.climatefoundation.org/azolla.html
REMEMBER, hail your fellow HGW friend today and tomorrow!!
Bernard J
I figure Wolfgang Pauli uttered a more accurate description.
Looks like the sad git is still up-voting his own posts.
First link to Daily Mail = commentor who can’t be taken seriously.
Hail Azollaian Jazzet:
“First link to Daily Mail = commentor who can’t be taken serious”
Can we take commentor from climatefoundation.org serious?
The messengers to Stalin and Hitler had the same fear, so they just
lied.
“Looks like the sad git is still up-voting his own posts.”
L.A., I see you thumbed yourself up, too.
The normal and somewhat reasonable, GL, is now
linking PBS, a well known climatic hysteria propaganda
front, for the tax funded Enviro Freaks.
The real title for this thread should be:
Never let a crisis go unused for the dissemination of
the advancement of HGW.
Perhaps, women heat flashes can also be linked to
your AGW ?
Many years ago, when it became apparent that even the abilities to computer model climate were unable to account for the complexities of future feedback loops, [which seemed to me to be on an accelerated timeline] I wrote that I wondered at what point would the science denialists finally admit the reality.
Many responded to those writings that “slow boiling frogs” just die rather than jump.
They were right.
Sorry to let you down BillyR, well you let yourself down really, but no.
The only times I up-voted my posts was the two I have acknowledged previously. One under anonymous (I had not expected to suddenly not be recognised) and the next post under my Lionel A name.
So sorry about but that you shoot yourself again – take out that tompion next time, or avoid the Judas pistol.
“Hysteria, in the colloquial use of the term, means ungovernable emotional excess.”
Now, where are we seeing signs of hysteria on this blog ?
Grandiose Troll : “climatic hysteria propaganda front” Response: [crickets…..]
More hysterical from HGW. [WTF does that mean in English? Probably makes sense in Russian…]
Perhaps, women heat flashes can also be linked to your AGW ? [Which one of the Russian trolls that populate the BillyR puppet wrote that piece of second language gibberish? Back to the gulag with you. ]
Can we take commentor from climatefoundation.org serious? [Jesus, St. Petersburg. If you are going to waste our time with your fossil fuel suck up puppets, can you at least send someone with a decent grasp of the language?]
Russia, desperate to save its major source of income, flails out at climatologists again and again. Pathetic.
I’m in need of some radiative help if anyone is able. It’s about explaining to
deniers or interested people a bit of a seeming paradox. There’s an idea that because of increased GHGs, the biosphere is said to retain more heat so then we should see at the same time less OLR. It was popular a few years ago in a certain quasi academic denier set.
Observations show more OLR I believe. Which is as it should be.
People get a bit tetchy about it cuz it’s counter intuitive.
But I’m not real good at explaining why and I’d love help to improve my current way. Any improvements would be really bloody nice. Here is my current way, roughly.
GHGs don’t trap all outgoing longwave. It’s a leaky system. This is obvious.
Let’s start by saying we are in a balanced situation. Everything is very stable.
Then add some further GHG, be it CO2 or whatever.
The system heats up in response and sends out increased OLR.
Some of this increased OLR is retrapped by the slightly less leaky system and some isnt. The bit that isn’t results in the higher OLR.
Basically the earth is trying to equalise again by pumping out more OLW from it’s new hotter state.
The trouble is, although it’s trying to equalise , there’s the increased
GHG getting in the way of SOME of it.
A new equalibrum can be reached if
the GHGs hold steady. But until they do, in a continually increasing GHG environment, the earth will keep trying to give up a greater amount of OLR than in our original position.
So you get a situation with a steady sun, rising retained heat, and more OLR too.
I know it’s not real good but it’s the best I can do. Halp!
Oh and thanks to Greg for space to post this up. If it’s too off topic Greg, just delete it please.
LiD
What happens is that the increased atmospheric CO2 concentration raises the ‘altitude of effective emission’. This is the height at which the atmosphere is primarily radiating LW to space.
At lower altitudes, CO2 (and other GHGs) absorb and re-radiate LW, inhibiting the loss of LW radiation to space. Increasing the concentration of well-mixed GHGs slowly raises the altitude at which the atmosphere can begin to radiate LW efficiently to space. But it gets colder as the altitude of effective emission is pushed up by increased GHGs. This works to reduce the efficiency at which the atmosphere radiates. So the radiating layer of the atmosphere has to get *hotter* in order to achieve the same efficiency of LW emission that was possible at lower altitude. The only way this can happen is if the entire climate system from the oceans upwards warms up. That’s why GAT increases as CO2 concentrations increase.
” So the radiating layer of the atmosphere has to get *hotter* in order to achieve the same efficiency of LW emission that was possible at lower altitude. ”
I like this bit in terms of explaining increased OLW.
What get people confused is a bit of a semantic thing sorta.
Very brief descriscriptions of an increasing GHG effect say something like… More energy will be retained.
And people can nod and go ” OK fair enough”
But some ( I think even Marahosy and Lindzen got caught up in it, and a few other deniers are perpetuating it ) go
” Aha! If there’s retention, there should be less outgoing! The sun hasn’t changed but the biosphere is retaining
more so LESS should be leaving into space. And yet there’s more leaving according to OLW readings! ”
A simple reply of ” Hotter things radiate more ” dosnt really cut it as an explanation to em. I’ve tried.
I get the superficial paradoxical nature and looking for simple truthful pithy explanations.
I think many don’t appreciate that there is no new equilibrium until GHGs stop rising and that stops them visualising it. Cheers BBD.
It’s amazing the way that this ignores the fact that retention (energy imbalance) warms the climate system which must therefore radiate more LW at TOA. How does the system reach an new equilibrium if OLR does not increase as the system warms?
* * *
The truth is, atmospheric physics doesn’t fit into an elevator pitch so contrarian arguments from ignorance are part of the furniture. At least for now.
“The truth is, atmospheric physics doesn’t fit into an elevator pitch so contrarian arguments from ignorance are part of the furniture. At least for now.”
Yep. Spot on. That’s part of the challenge of science education it seems.
I mean it’s good people don’t accept stuff at face value. It’s healthy to be skeptical and shun what could be seen as learn by rote indoctrination. I’m glad people go ” Aha” if they see a hole in an idea.
I do the same.
It’s incumbent on propagotors of an idea to explain these little ” Aha ” moments. But it can be a challenge too.
I think absolutely clear unambiguous phrasing, with immediate reference to relevant observations is vital.
Reference to relevant consilience would be effective too. (A grounding in the concept of consilience would be an ideal foundation for all participants in a dialogue before the dialogue begins! It’s not a hard concept.)
I have wondered in the past if the Engli sh language may be a hindrance to a um ” elevator pitch ” style of science communication.
And that it could be clearer in say Polish or Urdu or that clicking language in Africa. I know just from forum participation, that there seems to be a sort of formula that the more English that is spoken, the more misunderstandings arise. Could be a universal linguistic thing.