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John Kerry in Peru on Climate Change

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It is nice to know that the 97% consensus on climate change science is assumed to be a real thing by the leaders. This is John Kerry talking about climate change, in Peru.

He notes that scientists were telling us that climate change is real and already happening in 1988, and he notes that in Rio 1992, the UN Secretary General delcared that he was persuaded that we are on the road to tragedy. He mentioned the superstorm happening now on the West coast and says, “It’s become common place now to hear of record breaking weather events.”


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The psychology behind our failure to act on climate change

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Chris Mooney writing for the Washington Post has an article on “The 7 psychological reasons that are stopping us from acting on climate change”

He notes:

When a gigantic threat is staring you in the face, and you can’t act upon it, it’s safe to assume there’s some sort of mental blockage happening. So what’s the hangup? That’s what a new report from ecoAmerica and the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at Columbia University’s Earth Institute — entitled Connecting on Climate: A Guide to Effective Climate Change Communication — seeks to help us better understand.

The report is framed around communicating about climate change effectively — but read more closely and you’ll quickly see that the reason we need help here to begin with is that humans have some pesky attributes, ones that render us pretty poor at grappling with slow-moving, long-range, collective problems like climate change. So which traits are we talking about?

Read the rest here.


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Fisking a typical climate science denialist comment

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This one is worth looking at because it was published as a letter to the editor in an actual newspaper. Or, at least, on the web site.

A little background is in order. First, Dennis Slonka wrote an Op Ed in the Providence Journal telling us that “Climate Science Will Never Be Settled.” In it he made a number of incorrect statements about climate science, the IPCC, and Michael Mann. Then, Mann wrote a response that corrected the record. At some point, the Providence Journal corrected a small part of Slonka’s post, removing a blinding error, which demonstrates Slonka’s abysmal understanding of the situation (“This column has been edited to remove an error. No jury has found for Mann’s critics, and his defamation lawsuit is proceeding in court”).

Mann’s Op Ed is one of the rare places you’ll see him referring to his law suit, as, I assume, as a plaintiff he is probably advised to not talk about it much. He says:

If it wasn’t for all that extra CO2 in the atmosphere, Earth would be slightly cooling right now. Dozens of independent peer-reviewed studies have reached the same conclusion: rising temperatures and sea levels are directly related to the CO2 released into the atmosphere over the past two centuries by fossil fuel burning and other human activities.

More importantly, climate deniers aren’t asking questions in good faith. They’re persecuting researchers whose findings they don’t like.

I’ve written about my own strange encounters with climate denial in “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars” in the hopes that my colleagues — and the interested public — can learn from these experiences.

Indeed, attacks on scientists are nothing new. The lead industry went after Herbert Needleman, who found lead exposure impaired childhood brain development. Big Tobacco targeted public health researchers. Even the National Football League marginalized researchers who studied how players suffered from repeated concussions.

Some industry-funded groups and “think tanks” continue to smear me and pretend that my research is the linchpin of all climate science. But other scientists, who understand and have thoroughly reviewed my work, know my detractors have no idea what they’re talking about.

I finally decided to sue two groups that accused me of fraud in particularly insulting ways; contrary to Mr. Slonka’s claim that a jury had already ruled in the matter, my case is actively moving through the court system.

Despite the difficult position I find myself in in the climate debate, there is reason for hope…. (read the whole Op Ed here)

Within what seems like minutes of Mann’s Op Ed coming out, Providence Journal published a letter from a reader, George W. Shuster, responding to Mann’s post. It is almost like they had it ready. I wonder if the Providence Journal is aware of the fact that most Major Media are, these days, starting to pull back form the “false balance” position that there are two sides to the global warming “debate.” Anyway, here is George W. Shuster’s letter (George W. Shuster: Mann ignores geological facts) Fisked by yours truly. There isn’t much in the letter to begin with so this won’t take long.

Professor Michael Mann’s Dec. 11 Commentary piece (“Global warming’s dangers stare us in the face”), is typical of so many in the so-called “consensus” in that it: conflates the fact of long-term global warming with short-term “man-made” global warming; and selectively denies the sciences of geology and paleontology.

There is no “so-called” consensus. There is a consensus. It looks roughly like this:

Screen Shot 2014-12-11 at 12.19.04 PM

Also, Michael Mann has used the paleo record in his research and is quite familiar with it.

To pick just one example, Mann expresses great alarm that the sea level has risen 8 inches since the 1880s. What he fails to mention, which someone objectively recognizing the sciences I’ve cited would take into account, is that we are still coming out of the Ice Age, which has seen sea levels rise some 400 feet in the last 20,000 years. (Our beloved Block Island was once part of the mainland, and Rhode Island’s land area was much larger).

This is in correct. I’ve actually studied sea level rise in New England, when I was doing a lot of archaeology there. Sea level rise had mostly slowed or stopped prior to the Industrial period as far as we can tell, and given the most likely scenario in the absence of global warming, it was more likely that the sea level would lower a bit over coming centuries.

In fact, the rate of increase Mann agonizes over since the 1880s is actually far less than the average rise over the longer term. The long-term rate over 20,000 years comes to almost four times the rate of rise since the 1880s.

Sea level goes up and down a great deal over the long term. During the latter half or so of the Pleistocene, sea level went up and down well over 100 meters. But the current sea stand, roughly, is close to the maximum normal level for this period. (See the graph at the top of the post showing long term sea level rise, from here.) Comparing the rate of sea level rise now to the average change over 20,000 years is roughly like comparing the growth rate of a 40 year old human to the growth rate of the same person as a toddler. Interesting, but not relevant to the present situation.

Global warming is a serious issue, but the proper response should not be dictated by science deniers such as Professor Mann, who selectively pick which sciences they find handiest to recognize, and deny any others that provide inconvenient truths.

Yes, indeed, global warming is a serious issue. But calling Michael Mann a science denier is not only absurd, but it is what I refer to as a bully tactic. Bullies paint their prey with the same labels that could legitimately be applied to themselves, and often label themselves with tags that are more appropriately applied to their victims. George has at least one other letter in the same newspaper in which he refers to a champion of science in the Senate as a science denier, so this isn’t a mere slip on his part. It is a tactic.

Michael Mann has written a lot about climate change, and given many talks and interviews. But underlying all of this is his own body of peer reviewed research which has been closely examined by others in the scientific community. I’ve read pretty much all of that research myself. I can let you in on a little secret. Michael Mann is embroiled in an intense debate with other climate scientists about an important issue that is totally unsettled. It is a true debate. They are arguing over the data, its interpretation, and what it means. The debate is about the important question of what happens to tree growth shortly following major volcanic eruptions. Mann says it is likely that some trees are so badly affected by the short term climate change caused by the volcanic eruptions that they essentially stop growing, which messes up a small part of the long term record the tree rings from these plants are normally used for to track climate change over time. Others say this doesn’t happen and the record is fine the way it is, but rather, what some think about the effects of volcanic eruptions on climate, and indirectly, on trees, is not exactly right.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a debate. A scientific debate. The outcome of that debate will not affect the overall picture of climate change, but it will have an important influence, possibly, on how we calculate the rate at which increasing greenhouse gas will warm the surface of the Earth. (Long term the same outcome will probably happen, but if volcanic effects are stronger, there may be more periods of slightly less rapid warming.) Esoteric, detailed, important, not paradigm changing, not an inconvenient truth, and to most people, mind numbingly boring if you get into the details. But it is an example of the kinds of debate that are real in climate science. The uncertainty introduced by George W. Shuster in his letter are only in his head. He has this wrong, which is fine, because (I guess, but it is obvious) he is not a scientist in this area of research.


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Happy Anniversary Real Climate

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Ten Years of RealClimate

In the spring of 2004, when we (individually) first started talking to people about starting a blog on climate science, almost everyone thought it was a great idea, but very few thought it was something they should get involved in. Today, scientists communicating on social media is far more commonplace. On the occasion of our 10 year anniversary today it is worth reflecting on the impact of those changes, what we’ve learned and where we go next.

Why we started and why we continue

RealClimate is one of the more important climate science blogs out there. If you don’t know about it, you should!

Read the rest of the story here.


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Global warming’s dangers stare us in face: Op Ed by Michael Mann

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The Providence Journal has published an Op Ed by climate scientist Michael Mann. You should read the whole thing, but I found the following paragraphs to be one of the better written descriptions of the situation we are in:

Here’s what my fellow scientists and I know: Thermometers and satellites all point to the fact that the world is rapidly warming. Glaciers are shrinking, the ocean is heating and expanding, precipitation is falling in heavier doses, and we’re watching the Arctic icecap shrink away.

Why the rapid warming? Heat-trapping carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has increased about 40 percent since pre-industrial times. It comes from major industries that extract and burn coal and oil, as well as tropical deforestation.

Now, climate risks are staring us in the face….

Mann reminds us that those who support climate science denialism such as Dennis Slonk, who had previously written for the Journal, insist that denialists are merely asking legitimate questions of scientists and the science. Mann then asks, if this is so, why have deniers in Congress called for criminal investigations of the scientists, and why would someone send a climate scientist a package of mysterious white powder, which, even if the powder is inert (as it turned out to be) is probably a terrorist act.

I recommend reading this Op Ed, it is quite enlightening.

Michael Mann also has an Op Ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, HERE.


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Here’s a Quiz: How Much Methane is Seeping from Old Wells?

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Peter Sinclair has a post on this topic.

One is – we assume that US carbon emissions are on the downswing, and to the best of my knowledge, that’s true. However, there are some emissions that we don’t count, because they are poorly understood. These include the gentle seeping of powerful greenhouse gases from thousands of abandoned wells around the country.

So, what are we doing about this? Interesting story here.


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Australian scientists announce solar energy record

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AUSTRALIAN SCIENTISTS have set a new record in increasing the efficiency of solar panels, which they hope could eventually lead to cheaper sources of renewable energy.

..the researchers were able to convert more than 40 per cent of sunlight hitting the panels into electricity.

“This is the highest efficiency ever reported for sunlight conversion into electricity…We used commercial solar cells, but in a new way, so these efficiency improvements are readily accessible to the solar industry,”…

While traditional methods use a single solar cell, which limits the conversion of sunlight to electricity to about 33 per cent, the newer technology splits the sunlight across four different cells, each optimised for the fraction of the sunlight they receive, which boosts the efficiency level, Green said.

The four-way solar cells can be used at the centre of a field of mirrors which are arranged to concentrate the Sun’s rays. …

Read all about it HERE.

Hat tip: Astrostevo


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Is the age of oil, gas, and coal over? Almost?

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Well, not yet, but one can hope for a rapid transition .

Check out this piece at Motherboard:

?In just 15 years, the world as we know it will have transformed forever. The ?age of oil, gas, coal and nuclear will be over. A new age of clean power and smarter cars will fundamentally, totally, and permanently disrupt the existing fossil fuel-dependent industrial infrastructure in a way that even the most starry-eyed proponents of ‘green energy’ could never have imagined.

These are not the airy-fairy hopes of a tree-hugging hippy living off the land in an eco-commune. It’s the startling verdict of ?Tony Seba, a lecturer in business entrepreneurship, disruption and clean energy at Stanford University and a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur….

Read it here.


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Typhoon Hagupit (Ruby): Update and what you can do to help

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The outer reaches of Typhoon Hagupit are already affecting the target region in the Philippines. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the areas most under the gun, but the potential for serious problems covers a very large area. The storm has gone through quite a few changes over the last couple of days, but is probably strengthening somewhat right now. No matter what happens, it is going to hit the Philippines as a very serious storm.

Jeff Masters has an update here.

This is the same area that was hit with Typhoon Haiyan last year. Haiyan was a bigger storm. But, Haiyan was also one of the biggest typhoons ever observed (I think people are still arguing over whether it was the biggest, second biggest, etc.). There is potential for very high storm surges, serious winds, very heavy rains (over two feet in some places) which could cause devastating mudslides and flooding.

When this sort of storm hits people often want to know what they can do to help. I’ve learned about a recent project that you may be interested in. This is by Direct Relief. As background, let’s look at a relatively objective source of information about Direct Relief, Wikipedia:

Direct Relief (formerly known as Direct Relief International) is a private humanitarian nonprofit organization based in Santa Barbara, California, with a mission to “improve the health and lives of people affected by poverty or emergency situations by mobilizing and providing essential medical resources needed for their care.”[1] Founded in 1948 by Estonian immigrant William D. Zimdin, the organization is headed by President and CEO Thomas Tighe and a 31-member Board of Directors.[5] Direct Relief has received a 100% fundraising efficiency rating by Forbes,[6] been ranked by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as California’s largest international relief organization,[7] and topped Charity Navigator’s 2014 list of “10 of the Best Charities Everyone’s Heard Of.[8]” Direct Relief is the first nonprofit organization in the United States to be designated by The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) as a Verified-Accredited Wholesale Distributor licensed to distribute pharmaceutical medicines to all 50 U.S. States and Washington, D.C.[9]

So it is an experienced organization, gets the money you give it out into the field efficiently, and is secular. All things I’m sure you want to see in an organization you make a donation to.

But the Hagupit situation offers an additional opportunity because Direct Relief has a new project in the field there, which looks promising. I was planning on talking to someone at Direct Relief about it, to find out more, but I think he got stuck in a meeting at the UN or something, so we’ll probably talk later (and I’ll report on that to you). Meanwhile, check this out:

Direct Relief’s Emergency Response Team is monitoring Typhoon Hagupit (locally known as Ruby), as it approaches the Philippines. On its current trajectory, the typhoon is expected to make landfall in the Eastern Visayas in the next 72 hours and could affect 4.5 million people.

Direct Relief already has staff on the ground ready to respond in the event of a disaster and has reached out to local partners and health officials located in high-risk regions 5, 6, 7 and 8.

There are also three strategically pre-positioned typhoon modules ready to be rapidly utilized in the event of an emergency. These modules contain enough medicines and supplies supplies to treat 5,000 people for a month following a disaster.

Philippine authorities are currently in the process of evacuating vulnerable communities. Vice Mayor of Tacloban city, Jerry Yaokasin, stated that “we will now strictly enforce forced evacuation.” Yaokasin said that “we have no more excuses, we have gone through Yolanda, and to lose that many lives, it’s beyond our conscience already.”

Direct Relief’s staff on the ground will be maintaining contact with partners and monitoring the situation as it develops in the next 72 hours.

There are three things you will find at Direct Relief’s web site.

<li>First, there is <a href="http://www.directrelief.org/hpp/?extent=99.1924,-1.6963,144.8076,27.1137">a monitor of the storm's path</a>, an interactive googly mappy think which is very cool.</li>


<li>Second, there is more information about <a href="http://www.directrelief.org/2014/12/monitoring-typhoon-hagupit-approaches-philippines/">Direct Relief and the situation in the Philippines</a>; they have one of the better organized web sites for disaster relief non profits. </li>


<li>Third, and most importantly, <a href="https://secure2.convio.net/dri/site/Donation2?df_id=2105&2105.donation=form1&_ga=1.168290657.1168894472.1417733221">there is a way to donate money</a>. </li>

When donating, frankly, I’d suggest the “wherever it is needed most” or “disaster relief” options. They are already there, on the ground; they will be relieving people as it happens. I have a feeling they know best where to spend the money.


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How Addressing Climate Change Can Fit In A Positive Economic Agenda

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From Bernie Sanders’ “An Economic Agenda for America: 12 Steps Forward”

The United States must lead the world in reversing climate change and make certain that this planet is habitable for our children and grandchildren. We must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energies. Millions of homes and buildings need to be weatherized, our transportation system needs to be energy efficient and we need to greatly accelerate the progress we are already seeing in wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and other forms of sustainable energy. Transforming our energy system will not only protect the environment, it will create good paying jobs.


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2014 will not be the warmest year on record, but global warming is still real.

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I’m going out on a limb here. 2014 has been a very warm year. We’ve had a number of record setting months. But, a couple of months were also coolish, and November was one of them. December started out cool (like November ended) globally, but actually over the last few days the global average temperature has been going up. But, unless December gets really warm really fast, is is probably true that we will break some records but not all. This entire discussion, however, is problematic for a number of reasons.

How much does one year matter?

How warm or cold a given year is does not matter much for the overall trend. The upward march of global surface temperature is squiggly, but on average upward. Expect variation. Decadal trends are more important and more relevant. Global warming is continuing at the surface (sea surface and land based thermometers).

The graph above is a quick and dirty depiction of warming, using NASA’s GISS temperature record. The Y axis scale is anomaly in hundreds of degrees C, the X axis is months since the beginning of a 12 month moving average from January 1980. The point is just to show a) the increase in temperature just over the last few decades and b) how it squiggles up and down. We appear to be in an upward squiggle at the moment.

There are multiple temperature records

There are multiple “records” and they are assembled in slightly different ways and thus have slightly different data. They all show the same long term warming, and they all tend to correlate with each other. But they are slightly different. Some databases probably under-sample certain regions, for example. If we have a year that is very warm in relation to the most recent “hottest” year, it is unlikely to be so much warmer that it blows the previous record away by a huge number. Actually, that could happen, but it is more likely that some of the data sets are going to break the record while others do not.

Warmest year since when?

Not so much related to this specific year but important to keep in mind: This is the instrumental record. When we speak of record breaking years, we are usually comparing a particular year (like 2014) to each and every other year in a database that has been assembled from instrumental measurements. These databases variously go back in time to some point in the 19th century. They all start after CO2 was being release into the atmosphere at levels that probably matter, but way before the huge increase that has caused our present climate crisis. So, the instrumental records do measure, and as it turns out, demonstrate global warming. When we try to extend this record back in time, we lose track of variation in two ways. First, the proxyindicators (indirect measurements) used to estimate what the instruments would say were there instruments (and a time machine, presumably) have their own variation, so a number from ancient times is not perfectly comparable to a measurement from, say, 2013. Second, there is variation and conflation across time. We generally can’t point to a particular datum on a long term squiggle of global temperature from ancient times and say it represents a particular year.

What we can say is that for a particular period of time in the past the likely range of annual temperatures then was such that a given number (like, for example, this year’s annual global average) would likely be outside that range. When we do this, all of the recent years of global surface temperature are very very unlikely to have been exceeded by any actual annual temperature since the last interglacial (over 100,000 years ago). Most of the last one to two million years have seen mostly glacial and occasional interglacial conditions, but with the difference between those to climate settings increasing more recently and being less in the more distant past. It is possible that some years during interglacials over the last one or two million years exceeded our current warm temperatures (of the last couple of decades) but not many. As you go back in time, the chances of that increase because it was a bit warmer. For various reasons we are more confident about the last 800,000 years or so (as having few if any warmer years). When you get back to two to three million years there were time periods that may well have had lots of years warmer than the 21st century to date average. To get to consistent temperatures, for most years, warmer than present, you probably have to go back father.

So, we have this sentence: “2014 is the first or second warmest year since _______ .” That will likely be what we can say in a few weeks, after the data are measured, collected, processed, and made available. Or, we may be able to change that sentence to “2014 is the warmest since _____ in all of our instrumental records” or perhaps “2014 is the warmest since _____ in X out of Y of our instrumental records.”

Filling in the blank involves inserting the first year of the relevant instrumental records (such as “1880”) but it can also be filled in with older dated depending on how we feel about variation in the older, proxyindicator records. But it should also be rewritten a bit to include the probabilistic component.

This is just the surface temperature and does not reflect the totality of planetary warming

Personally, I think we should try to refer to these numbers as “surface warming” or the “surface temperature” and continuously remind people that this is only part of the story. How do you measure your body temperature? A thermometer stuck in an orifice will do. Or one of those magical strips on the forehead. Or an ear thermometer. But these are all surface measurements of your body and are subject to error or variation. The better measurement is the one the medical examiner uses in estimating time of death; stick the thermometer into the liver (they have special pointy thermometers for this purpose, and only do it on dead people.)

The Earth’s liver is the ocean. Well, not exactly, but the majority of extra heat that happens because of the increased greenhouse effect caused mainly by human added CO2 ends up in the top 2,000 meters of the ocean (see this for a recent paper on the topic). At medium scales of time, the surface temperature does a good job of tracking the Earth’s temperature, but heat moves, to different degrees at different times, between the air and the sea, so on a year to year basis it is a rougher approximation. But it is the best approximation we’ve got, so we use it.

El Niño

Some of my colleagues have been snarking about changing the name “El Niño” to “El Annoyingo” or something like that. We are expecting an El Niño. We’ve been expecting it off and on for months. It has been a long time since a major El Niño, perhaps longer than we’ve ever had since good records have been kept. The Pacific Ocean looks very El Niño like in some ways but it is not an official El Niño. Whether or not you have an El Niño is something of a continuum.

It is generally felt that the effects of a coming El Niño are not particularly influencing the 2014 average global temperature, but if a real live El Niño emerges over the next few months, next year will be the record breaking year, as opposed to this year. Or both, one right after the other.

Other commentary

Most of the climate bloggers and publicly conversing scientists I know were probably planning to not talk about 2014 as a “warmest” or “second warmest” or “record breaking” year until after the data are in. But a couple of major news outlets have started talking about it, so now we are seeing some conversation on the topic and I’ve posted links below to some of that. I probably wouldn’t have written this post (until January) had major media not started to chime in a bit prematurely. I think it was a mistake for major media to start talking about 2014 as a warmest year when close to 10% of the data were not in, the journos were looking only at one or two data sets, and to a large extent we are talking about weather not climate. Mark my words: If 2014 turns out to be second warmest in the majority of data sets, climate science deniers will make the claim that “they claimed it would be the warmest year, but it wasn’t. Checkmate, climate change!”

CNN’s premature claim: NOAA: 2014 is shaping up as hottest year on record
BBC’s premature claim: UN climate talks begin as global temperatures break records
Reuter’s premature claim: U.S., British data show 2014 could be hottest year on record
Sensible blogging on the topic:

  • 2014 Headed Toward Hottest Year On Record — Here’s Why That’s Remarkable
    • <li><a href="http://climatecrocks.com/2014/12/03/tallying-2014-closing-in-on-a-record/">Tallying 2014: Closing in on a Record?</a></li>

<li><a href="https://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_1009_en.html">2014 on course to be one of hottest, possibly hottest, on record Exceptional heat and flooding in many parts of the world</a></li>

<li><a href="http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/12/04/a-pause-or-not-a-pause-that-is-the-question/">A pause or not a pause, that is the question.</a></li>

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    A partial history of the turkey

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    cover-320x320“As Thanksgiving ebbs into memory and Christmas looms on the horizon, Eat This Podcast concerns itself with the turkey. For a nomenclature nerd, the turkey is a wonderful bird. Why would a bird from America be named after a country on the edge of Asia? The Latin name offers a clue; the American turkey is Meleagris gallopavo, while the African guineafowl is Numida meleagris. But why did the first settlers adopt a name they were already familiar with, rather than adopt a local indigenous name such as nalaaohki pileewa for the native fowl. Simple answer: nobody knows…”

    Listen to the podcast (with extensive notes) here…


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    Thanksgiving origin

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    You know Thanksgiving has a story, linking it to the Puritans.I talk about the bigger cultural phenomenon here. But have you actually read the original story? There is a later version with more detail but this is the only nearly contemporary account:

    You shall understand, that in this little time, that a few of us have been here, we have built seven dwelling-houses, and four for the use of the plantation, and have made preparation for divers others. We set the last spring some twenty acres of Indian corn, and sowed some six acres of barley and peas, and according to the manner of the Indians, we manured our ground with herrings or rather shads, which we have in great abundance, and take with great ease at our doors. Our corn did prove well, and God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent good, but our peas not worth the gathering, for we feared they were too late sown, they came up very well, and blossomed, but the sun parched them in the blossom.

    Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after have a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the company almost a week, at which time amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest King Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain, and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.

    From Mourt’s Relations


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