Climate change is crap

Our esteemed PM, the Cane Toad, is on record as saying that "climate change is crap".

I was trying to work out why the Right is so hostile to the very concept of climate change.  But before I get there, I think it's worth summing up how I, a non-scientist but a reasonably intelligent thinker, see things.  Let me sum it up.

1) We have known that the world is much warmer than it should be since Fourier (1824).  He stated that the world was warmer than it would be in a vacuum.  It was left to later scientists to work out why.  By the way, that's nearly 200 years ago.  Global warming is not some recently concocted unhinged communist plot.

2) Arrhenius, in 1896 forecast global warming would occur as the amount of CO2 rose in the atmosphere as by then the "blanketing effect" of CO2 and the physics of light/EM spectrum refraction/dispersal were clearly understood.  He forecast that a doubling of CO2 would lead to a 5-6 C increase in global temperature, only he thought it would take thousands of years.

3) Since his time, the measurement of atmospheric CO2 has improved greatly.  It is a matter of scientific measurement that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen steadily since the industrial age began. Recently the concentration of atmospheric CO2 passed the 400 ppm mark, the highest it's been for hundreds of thousands of years.

4) Although we are not sure how much warming will result from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 we are sure it will warm.  The earliest models in the 70s suggested 2 degrees C, not quite as alarming as Arrhenius' calculation but still bad enough.  In 1979 the US NRC estimated somewhere between 2 and 3.5 C rise.  The models since then have provided different answers, pretty much between those extremes, with a bias towards the lower end, depending on their estimation of the impacts of aerosols (which reduce warming by reflecting incoming infra red radiation back into space) and other global warming gases like CFCs which are far more potent than CO2 but are also far less abundant.   But all the answers suggest that temps will rise, the only debate is by how much.

5) And in fact --- surprise! --- it is a fact of scientific measurement that global temperatures have  risen since the 1850s.  It is a fact, etc, that glaciers have retreated, that the Arctic ice cover has retreated, that the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps are melting, the sea level has risen, and recent analysis suggest that this process has accelerated.

How simple is that?  Even Tony Abbott could understand that.

You can read an excellent summary of the steadily increasing understanding of our climate and of climate change here.   What is abundantly clear is that we have gone step by step from ignorance through to deeper insight, and at each stage of the way, since this was science not religion, at each stage, there were doubts and alternative theories,  and new evidence changed scientists' minds.

Here is a record of forecasts made and results subsequently confirmed.

The chart below is a simplified version of the chart from this post, and I've fitted a moving average to smooth out the data spikes.

Source.  Smoothed by me, using 13 term Henderson curve

There is now an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that global warming exists and is anthropogenic, i.e., caused by mankind.

So why is the Right so dead against this consensus?  The reason these nongs persist with their piffle is that for them it has become part of the culture war.  The Left "believes in" global warming, it advocates collective (i.e., "socialist" action, how we laughed) so therefore it is to be vigorously opposed by the Right, not because of logic, not because they are correct, but just because.  Not that the cheques from "think tanks" funded by demented plutocrats and coalminers hurt.   Our own prime minister, Cane Toad Tony, is of that ilk, still fighting the adolescent battles of uni now he is in power.  What a tool.

The good news to set against this shameful, dishonest and damaging campaign run by the global warming denialists  is that the ever declining prices of solar power (both PV and CSP); the precipitous fall in battery costs, and the slower but inexorable decline in wind power costs will make it -- has already made it in some places -- cheaper to switch to renewables than to continue with coal.  Moreover, the world's largest emitter (China) has taken a high-level commitment to reduce the energy intensity of GDP dramatically and will cap and then cut CO2 emissions.  Their suddenly found moral fervour is greatly helped by the fact that renewables are now close to grid parity.

It will be very hard for the unhinged Right to stand in the way of market forces though no doubt they will try.

Global warming warning --- 85 years ago

 [From a toot by Ed Hawkins]

85 years ago.

In April 1938, Guy Callendar published his seminal paper showing that Earth’s land areas had warmed over the previous 50 years.

He also suggested that man-made CO₂ emissions had caused around half of the observed warming.

85 years ago.

https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/

The theory that increasing greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere would cause warming was developed earlier by Fourier, Foote, Tyndall, Arrhenius & others.

Their work enabled Callendar to join the pieces together and demonstrate a human-caused increase in both CO2 & global land temperatures and, importantly, link these together.

The work of Plass, Keeling, Revelle, Manabe & others would subsequently solidify these ideas.

Climate science has a long history we should use to communicate more.

 

Well he wasn't the first:  a woman called Eunice Foote proved in 1856 that CO2 trapped more heat than air, and maintained it longer.   Then there was Fourier, a French polymath genius.  And Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist.  Science has been clear about global warming for 170 years.

And still we do too little to avert catastrophe.  Politicians, owned by fossil fuel companies.  Other companies pretending to care, but just greenwashing.  Right-wing idiots, too stupid to realise they've been had.  And hoi polloi, hoping that somebody else will solve the problem.

Climate change first 'went viral' 70 years ago

From The Conversation

We have grown so used to many things. To the pictures of wildfires and cremated animals, to the ice sheets calving into the ocean, to the promises of world leaders that they will heed the “last chance” warning of the scientists.

It’s hard for anyone under the age of 40 to remember a time when carbon dioxide build-up, whether it was “the greenhouse effect”, or “global warming” or “climate change” or now “climate crisis”, wasn’t in the news.

The long hot summer of 1988 – 35 years ago – is held as the moment that world leaders began to mouth the right pieties.

Presidential candidate (and soon to be president) George H.W. Bush said he would use the “White House effect” to fix the Greenhouse Effect (he didn’t). UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher warned of a giant experiment being conducted “with the system of this planet itself”.

Thirty-five years. But it was actually 35 years before that – fully 70 years ago this month – that the danger of carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere first travelled around the world.

That carbon dioxide trapped heat was uncontroversial. Irish scientist John Tyndall (possibly drawing on the work of an American, Eunice Foote) had shown that it did back in the mid-1800s.

In 1895, Swedish Nobel prize winner Svante Arrhenius had suggested that – over hundreds of years – the build-up of carbon dioxide released when humans burn oil, coal and gas might trap so much heat as to melt the tundra and make freezing winters a thing of the past.

His work was challenged, but the idea occasionally popped up in popular journals. In 1938 English steam engineer Guy Callendar suggested to the Royal Meteorological Society in London that warming was underway.

But it was in early May, 1953, at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, that Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass – who had been corresponding with Callendar – told the gathered scientists that trouble was afoot.

Plass said that:

The large increase in industrial activity during the present century is discharging so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the average temperature is rising at the rate of 1.5 degrees per century.

This got picked up by the Associated Press and other wire services and appeared in newspapers all around the world (even as far afield as the Sydney Morning Herald). Plass’s warning also popped up in Newsweek on May 18 and in Time on May 25.

The fact that the world was warming was already uncontroversial among scientists. But the emphatic connection with carbon dioxide made by Plass, as opposed to competing theories such as orbital wobbles or sunspot activity, was newsworthy.

Plass had become interested in the question of carbon dioxide buildup while working for the Ford Motor Company. He looked at how carbon dioxide actually functions in the real world, not just at sea level (without getting too technical. Many scientists had dismissed Arrhenius’s earlier work on the basis of false confidence that carbon dioxide worked the same there as in the stratosphere).

Plass kept working on the issue, with technical and popular publications through the rest of the 1950s. In 1956, he had an academic article on “the carbon dioxide theory of climate change” published in the Swedish scientific journal Tellus, and also a popular article in the American Scientist. And he was present at the first major meetings to discuss carbon dioxide build up.

Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide theory started getting more coverage among science journalists. One, George Wendt, wrote up the findings in the then well-regarded UNESCO Courier, and this got excerpted in the Irish Times in 1954, the same year that British journalists started mentioning it.

In 1957 the then-new magazine New Scientist mentioned it. By the end of the 1950s, anyone who read a newspaper could have been aware of the basic idea.

Throughout the 50s and 60s US, Swedish, German and Soviet scientists were examining the issue. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson even namechecked carbon dioxide build-up in an address to Congress.

By the end of the 1960s international collaboration was beginning, though there was caution still. For instance, in April 1969 the American scientist Charles Keeling, who had been measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at a Hawaiian observatory, revealed that he had been asked to change the title of a lecture from, “If carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is changing man’s environment, what will we do about it?” to “Is carbon dioxide from fossil fuel changing man’s environment?”

For climate historians like me, the 1970s are a fascinating period of intense measurement, modelling, observation and thinking which, by the end of the decade, produced a working consensus that there was serious trouble ahead. In effect, Plass had nailed it.

When Plass spoke out, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was at about 310 parts per million. Today, they’re 423 or so. Every year, as we burn more oil, coal and gas, the concentration climbs and more heat is trapped.

By the time Plass’s warning is 100 years old, the concentrations will be much higher. There’s a very good chance we will have gone over the 2°C warming level that used to be regarded as “safe”.

The Irish Times discusses climate change, way back in 1954. Irish Times / allouryesterdays.info

 

700 natural 'thermometers' show unprecedented warmth

I talked about adjusting measured global temperatures here.

Widespread global use of thermometers didn't exist before the early 19th century, so how do we get estimates of global temperatures before that?   We use proxies.  For example, we can estimate past annual temperatures from tree rings.  NOAA has a good explanation here.  Clearly, the more proxies we have, the more certain we are about temperatures pre-thermometers.

Planet Earth is warmer than it has been for at least 2,000 years, according to a study that took its temperature from 692 different “natural thermometers” on every continent and ocean on the planet.

In the most comprehensive assessment of how the climate has changed over the period to date, researchers looked at a host of sources of historic information, including tree rings, ice cores, lake and sea sediments, corals, mineral deposits and written records.

What they found confirmed the famous “hockey stick” graph, showing an undulating, but broadly flat, line followed by a sharp uptick that begins at around 1900.

The only plausible explanation for this sudden change is fossil fuel emissions, which have increased the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from about 280 parts per million in the 19th century to more than 400 today.

The warming effect was predicted by the Nobel Prize-winning Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius in 1895.

[Read more here]

The "Hockey Stick" chart of global temperatures was first devised by Mann, Bradley and Hughes (MBH) in 1999.  The denialists had an immediate bulgy, and Mann's life was threatened.  Makes you wonder doesn't it--why should ordinary folk care about some academic study on global temperatures, unless of course, they were in the pay of those whose profits and revenues were threatened by steps to reduce global warming?

This new study confirms the general shape of the MBH99 study.  One of the authors of the study describes how much work they had to do to get this reconstruction here.

The chart below shows the original MBH Hockey Stick with an overlay of this latest estimate.  The blue line shows a smoothed version of the original MBH99 calculation.  The green line shows a 30 year moving average of the latest estimate.  The red line is a smoothed version of measured temperatures.  The pale blue shading shows the error margin of the original MBH99 estimates.  Note that the error term is less likely at the edges and more likely towards the centre.  Note also that the error term of the new estimate should be appreciably lower because more time series were used in its calculation.  Also, the red line only goes up to 2013.  Since then temperatures have risen another 0.3 degrees.

The original northern hemisphere hockey stick graph of Mann, Bradley & Hughes 1999, smoothed curve shown in blue with its uncertainty range in light blue, overlaid with green dots showing the 30-year global average of the PAGES 2k Consortium 2013 reconstruction. The red curve shows measured global mean temperature, according to HadCRUT4 data from 1850 to 2013.  Source: Wikipedia

References:

Climate change: Nearly 700 'natural thermometers' demonstrate the world is warmer than its ever been

Svante Arrhenius

The Hockey Stick is Alive; long live the Hockey Stick

The Hockey Stick Graph

Climate change: the AHA! moment

Source: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut3/diagnostics/comparison.html

When ppl first started talking seriously  about the risks of globule warming in the 70s (Arrhenius produced a prescient analysis of the risks in the late 1800s!) , the cost of doing something to stop it seemed prohibitive.  Alternatives to coal and oil were extremely expensive.  Moreover, poor countries just starting out on their massive eco development were dirt poor; naturally their focus was on development not clean air.  But the cost of solar and wind power fell steadily, as did the cost of batteries: solar by 18% per annum for most of the last 40 years, wind by about half that, batteries by 13% per year (in 15 years, the cost of a laptop battery has gone from US$2000 to US$250).  And China, India, Brazil etc got richer and things like clean air and water became more important to them. 

At the same time, all the cheap sources of oil have been found and extracted.  All new oil supplies are harder to extract and more expensive.  That's true of coal too, the big discoveries in Oz are pricey to produce because of all the new infrastructure required,  So the cost curve of renewables is falling steadily and inexorably, while electricity generated from fossil fuels is getting more expensive.  Meanwhile, the evidence of global warming is becoming ever stronger.  Recently, for example,  there has been new analysis showing that the glacial melt in Antarctica and Greenland is much faster than had been thought and it is now clear that the forecasts of sea level rise made just a few years ago are far too conservative.  

So we've reached an AHA! moment. 

1. Renewables are on the cusp of becoming cheaper than fossil fuels and are getting cheaper every year.  Why resist that (unless you are a coal miner or oiler or are otherwise part of the fossil fuel economy)?  It will be interesting to see how the right squirms now it is market forces leading to creative destruction of their fave industries.
2. China, the world's largest emitter of CO2 is taking steps to cut emissions radically, not just because climate change is creating immense problems for them, but also because coal is filthy, and the air over China is lethal.  The top six emitters (China, United States, India, Russia, Japan and Germany) produce nearly 2/3 of global energy-related CO2 emissions (data for 2009; China is surely even bigger now).  The top three over 45%.  Modi, the new PM of India, "wants to see solar panels on every rooftop" (India has more sun in winter than summer because of the monsoon), China wants to cut energy intensity by 50% over (I think, couldn't find the reference) 6 years, the US will cut emissions by 30%   If the top 3 agree, and start concerted action, (a) emissions will start to fall, and (b) everybody else will be obliged to follow.
3. Forest burning (mostly Brazil, Indonesia, Borneo and Oz) contributes 15% of global emissions (i.e., not energy related).  A man-to-man chat with these guys, armed with a cricket bat, will no doubt see dramatic reforms.  
4. Global warming is obvious -- and terrifying.  We need to start acting NOW.  Fortunately, thanks to technological advance, the transition costs will be low.

My grandchildren won't drive petrol-driven cars, or use coal-fired electricity.  The VERY BAD NEWS:  Even if atmospheric CO2 peaks NOW, global temps will keep on rising, droughts and floods will worsen, and the sea level will go on rising.  And of course, it WON'T peak now.  Soon, I'm sure.  Soon enough, I hope.

Three years ago I installed 1.5 kW PV panels on our roof, which halved my electricity bill.  If I were to install 5 kW, now, it would cost at A$5000, just twice as much as 1.5 kW then, a compound rate of decline of about 16% per annum.  At the wholesale/feed in tariff of 8c per kWh, at this latitude, $5000  solar panels would be cover their cost in 9 years, after which I would get electricity for free for the next 16 years (panels last 25 years)  At the retail cost (28c per kWh) costs would be covered within 3 years.  But if costs keep on falling like this, should I wait another year?  Another two? Until the  $5000 is down to $4000?  Or $3000?   But the lure of negligible electricity bills as well as doing my bit to save the world .....  

Of course, I also need to put in storage.  The sun doesn't shine at night.  Can't get costings for that yet (there's this and this, though) but for a total system of 6.5 kW, my guess for storage costs for a couple of hours of power is A$1500-A$2000.  Without even getting started on Wind power, with a new Ozzie turbine design

I saw a Nissan Leaf yesterday for the first time, in the lane next to us at the robot while we were waiting to get onto the freeway.  They're still expensive in Oz (A$40,000, but down from $55,000 two years ago) because there are no subsidies, but with battery costs falling as they are, it will be no more expensive than petrol driven cars within just a few years.  And as my lady said  "Imagine never having to buy petrol again!"  But electric cars also require far less maintenance than petrol-driven cars(though batteries must be replaced eventually) and are cheaper to run.  "Imagine never paying for electricity again".  These are as potent motivators for change as saving the planet.

It's all happening. 

The global warming time line

 From a tweet by Save The Planet Group

1824, Joseph Fourier (physicist) studied the CO2  greenhouse effect. 1860, John Tyndall quantified the effect of greenhouse gas. Svante Arrhenius 1896 showed that coal burning made global warming. Charney Report 1979, scientific text reinforced earlier conclusions.

Did a 1912 article predict global warming?

Yes, it did.

From Snopes:

A newspaper clipping from 1912 that anticipates the global warming potential of burning coal is authentic and consistent with the history of climate science.

A 14 August 1912 article from a New Zealand newspaper contained a brief story about how burning coal might produce future warming by adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.

This article’s authenticity is supported by the fact it can be found in the digital archives of the National Library of New Zealand.

Further attesting to its authenticity (and perhaps its role as a bit of stock news used to fill space) is that an identical story had appeared in an Australian newspaper a month prior, in the 17 July 1912, issue of The Braidwood Dispatch and Mining Journal, as found in the digital archives of the National Library of Australia.

An even deeper dive reveals that the text of this news item has its origins in the March 1912 issue of Popular Mechanics, where it appeared as a caption in an article titled “Remarkable Weather of 1911: The Effect of the Combustion of Coal on the Climate — What Scientists Predict for the Future”

Some online commenters expressed skepticism over the notion that such a clear understanding of the mechanisms relating to greenhouse gases existed in 1912, or that anyone back then would have suggested humans could play a role in altering their concentration. In fact, the timing of these news clips is consistent with the historical record.

The first person to use the term “greenhouse gases” was a Swedish scientist named Svante Arrhenius in 1896. In a paper published that year, he made an early calculation of how much warmer the Earth was thanks to the energy-trapping nature of some of the gases in the atmosphere. Even at this early stage, he understood that humans had the potential to play a significant role in changing the concentration of at least one of those gases, carbon dioxide (carbonic acid back then)

[Read more here]

We've known about global warming for over 120 years.  You can excuse inaction then: global temperatures weren't rising fast and the alternative technologies to burning fossil fuels didn't exist.  But what is our excuse now?  Renewables are cheaper than coal and gas, and they get even cheaper each year.  The evidence of global warming is irrefutable.  Inaction is no longer an option.