More Thoughts on Otto

More thoughts on the Otto et al paper that finds a lower transient climate response:

• they find a lower transient climate response -- the warming expected at the point where atmospheric CO2 has doubled -- but not a statistically signifcantly lower equilibrium climate response -- the ultimate amount of warming that will happen over a few centuries time.
• The target of 2°C is still a lot of warming. That's the average global change for the surface. It will be more over land, more over the northern hemisphere, and more in the interior of continents.... Based on the observed ratios in the UAH lower troposphere data for the last 34 years, and converting to the unit that is more recognizable for U.S. readers, it means a total warming of (from pre-industrial temperatures):

  globe: 3.6°F
  global land: 4.5°F
  northern hemisphere land: 5.9°F
  continental US: 6.0°F
  north pole: 12.1°F

• These are obviously nothing to dismiss lightly.
• A lower transient climate response doesn't change anything about the level of ocean acidification, the other global warming problem.
• if aerosols -- air pollution -- are holding down temperatures (I'm dubious), then we will see higher temperatures if the Chinese clean up their skies (and the rest of us keep doing so). On the other hand, changes in the Sun may help a little.
• The Otto et al analysis ends in 2010, but that year's La Nina didn't influence tempertures until months later, so that factor shouldn't matter as much of an end point effect. (Globally, HadCRUT4 found 2011 to be 0.14 C cooler than 2010.)
• Atmospheric methane levels didn't increase from about 1998 to 2008, but have begun trending back up. In the last few years the annual change in CH4 forcing has been about 10% of the annual change in CO2 forcing.
• The IPCC 5th Assessment Report is going to be awkward, and maybe immediately dismissed by some, which would be very unfortunate. It doesn't include this work, but some of its authors are authors (and lead authors) on the AR5, so this work might influence their writings.
• Why didn't the "team" suppress this paper via pal review? Hmm....? Why didn't the communists at Nature keep it out of their journal? The worldwide consipracy to enslave you must have slipped up on this one....

So How Much More Time Does Otto Give Us?

Given the lower estimates of climate sensitivity in the Otto et al paper in Nature Geosciences, how much more time does the world have to dilly-dally about cutting emissions?

Well, none really. The 2°C limit which has become the fallback position isn't something to take lightly -- after all it's about 1/4th-1/3th of an inverse ice age, which is hardly something to scoff at, and with the warming and melting it will ultimately raise sea level by 25-50 feet (over hundreds of years).

But let's play along. Let's assume atmospheric carbon levels are increasing exponentially (which they are, once you look beyond a 10-15 year window), with a doubling time of D.

And let's assume the radiative forcing (and hence temperature change) is proportional to the logarithm of the atmosphere's carbon-equivalent level.

Then just a little algebra shows that the time t to reach a certain temperature T is

t = DT/S

where S is climate sensitivity.

Using greenhouse gas forcings since 1979 from NOAA, I find that CO2 is increasing at an annual rate of 0.46%, but CO2-equivalent is increasing at 0.66%, which gives a doubling time of D = 105 years.

The Otto paper reduces transient climate sensitivity (TCR) from a value of 1.6°C (based on data through the 1990s) to 1.3°C (based on data up through 2009).

So if we want to limit T to 2°C, the difference between these two TCRs gives us an additional 30 years.

3 decades. That's a fair bit of time.

Will we use those 30 years wisely and take climate change seriously, to finally do something about carbon dioxide, to build a clean, sustainable, noncarbon world for the many future generations who will live after us?

Sure.

N.b. a lower climate sensitivity doesn't change the ocean acidification problem.

Australia: Power from Coal Down Sharply

News from Australia:

A government analysis on Thursday showed that electricity generated by highly polluting coal-fired power plants had fallen 14 per cent since the introduction of the tax, while renewable power had soared.

Here's a graph from the Australian government's latest quarterly report (issued April 15th); the year-over-year reductions are 4.7%:

and by sector:

The report says, "Generation  from other renewables continues to grow, increasing by 10.1%, from a proportionately small base."

Of course the Australian carbon tax is still very contentious, with the opposition committed to doing away with it. In it place they are apparently proposing magic:

The most contentious feature of the Coalition's climate policy is its reliance on using soils to store carbon for about 60 per cent of emissions reductions. It is mocked as ''soil magic'' by some. Members of the independent Climate Commission have warned that soil sequestration will not solve the climate change problem.

Climate Candy: The Proof

Here's a good indication of how much the SkS study means: just a day after being at the top of HuffPo's front page, it no longer appears anywhere that page or anywhere on their "Science" page.

Easy come, easy go.

Just another result that doesn't change anything.

Obama's Bull Market

And by the way, why hasn't Obama gotten any credit at all for the amazing bull market in stocks that has occurred during his administrations?

I mean, the value of all stocks, as measured by the Wilshire 5000, is up $9.2 trillion since Obama's first inaugural.

And up an amazing $2.7 trillion (18%) just since his reelection.

Many people are making huge amounts of money. If this happened under a Republican president we'd hear no end of it. So what's going on?

(By the way, stock market capitalization minus US debt has increased by $2.9 trillion since Obama first took office.)

So What Will Change Their Minds?

A long-time commenter here writes:

"David, you should explain for everyone how it should be done. It is easy to criticize, but what's the solution for the communication?"

I don't think it's really a problem of communication....

100 years of consensus on evolution hasn't changed half of Americans' minds.

So why will a decade or two of climate data?

I don't like this, but it's a fact. I really wish everyone was amenable to data and scientific papers, but in America many people are not. They aren't.

Perhaps it's because our education system is mediocre. I also suspect there is some failing in our national character, something about being independent and revolutionary and adventurous and skeptical of institutions.

Why will global warming be any different? For whatever reason, a lot of Americans simply don't care what scientists think, and this problem is getting worse, not better.

And if not worse, not clearly better.

So what will change their minds?

More warming, more heat waves, more droughts, more storms.

When grandfathers say to their grandchildren, when I was a kid it was a lot colder and snowier, and it seems like all that is gone now.... When midwestern farmers accept the seriousness of the drought they are in, and when they leave the business because of it. When snowpacks diminish enough that people actually leave the American southwest because its water can't support them any longer.

Like I said, I don't like this. But I think it's the case.

Fallout from the SkS Study

As is often the case, the hullabaloo following a paper about climate is more enlightening than the paper itself.

I've noticed two things since Cook et al Environ Res Lett.:

1. Everyone is expected to be on one side of the other.
2. People are very confused about embargoes.

Let's take the second point first: Unless you agree to accept and respect embargoed materials, you are not held to an embargo.

An arbitrary sender can't just send out material willy nilly, stamp an embargo time atop it, and expect anyone to be bound by that embargo time. So Steve Milloy and Anthony Watts did nothing unethical by publishing on the material early.

Some people are confused about this, but it's not that difficult. Journalists and writers who receive embargoed material from journals and institutions have already agreed beforehand to receive such materials before the embargo date in exchange for respecting the embargo. It's an ethical obligation, and if you violate it you will get cut off from further material. (Whether there should be an embargo system for science news is an entirely different matter.)

But if someone sends you something you didn't solicit, it's fair game, and it doesn't matter if it says it's embargoed or not. It's naive to think otherwise.

Moral: if you don't want something published before a certain time, don't send it until that time unless you have a prior agreement with the recipient.

The first issue is more troubling. I get the distinct impression that certain people are expected to accept this study without question, and accept it as important and newsworthy, just because, well, because they're seen as on a certain team, because they think carbon emissions and climate change are big problems.

Like you're part of some team and can't think for yourself.

One blogger wrote -- well, he/she is anonymous, so it doesn't count for much, but anyway, they wrote

It's hard to say which is the more fundamental fail here: that Kloor doesn't understand that replicating results is critical to science, or that he thinks that he has somehow become a scientist, whose responsibility it is to follow and critique the bleeding edge of climate science, rather than his actual role as a science journalist helping the public grasp the critical core of the field, a job that evidently has to be done by scientists, who have pulled off a massive coup of science communication, only to be sneered at by the people who are paid to perform that function themselves.

Let's be clear: journalists and writers aren't stenographers who are bound to pass on information without questioning it, without analyzing it, and without providing context. 

Nor am I "sneering." I just don't think a number like "97%" is important to the debate. It's made for cupcake sites who do cupcake journalism, and to no one's surprise the Huffington Post immediately made it their top headline. 

It's a cudgel meant to end debate, not aid it. 

And it doesn't convince anyone. Answer me this: if Oreskes' 97% number still left some unconvinced, why will another 97% number?

It's nothing personal. As far as I can tell the authors did a fine job. I just don't think it's an important result.

 

Finally, a commenter here asked

"Do you think that your opinion of this paper is supported by experts on communication science who work on the issue of climate?" 

Frankly, I don't care what experts on communication science think. To be honest I don't even think what they do is a "science," let alone that they have valuable insights into the process of communicating science. I'm the one communicating science, not them.

Running *Into* Fossil Fuels

“The world has been running into fossil fuels, not away from them.”

-- Vaclav Smil, University of Manitoba environmental scientist, quoted in a Time article about the death of Peak Oil

Not Surprisingly, HuffPo Eats Up SkS Study

Like I said, the Skeptical Science study is made for people who want their science dished out plain and simple:

No thinking allowed, just get in the damn line.

The Big Stumbling Block

Keith Kloor has some pertinent and insightful thoughts on the Skeptical Science survey published in Environmental Research Letters. He links to a report showing that many Americans view global warming as a problem of the future, or for other places or species, and writes

"That. Is. The. Stumbling. Block.

"Getting past that is going to require a frank debate about future uncertainties, risks, and scenarios, and the reconciliation of competing values."

None of the latter come from putting forward a single number like "97%."

About the SkS Study That Finds a 97% Consensus

Skeptical Science has a study that greatly extends Oreskes 2004 study on consensus in the scientific literature, and find

A new survey of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers by our citizen science team at Skeptical Science has found a 97% consensus in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are causing global warming.

That's all well and good (and not surprising), and you can examine their methodology if you want to.

I'm not very keen on these kinds of numbers -- they are made for lazy journalists who don't want to examine the complexity of the science, reporters who just want a number that quickly and easily supports their position.

You'd never hear a scientist use such a number, because they know there is a wide spectrum of opinions about the statement "humans are causing global warming." Some find some parts of the science more convincing than other parts. They may see parts that aren't known well at all, and parts that are very well known. They know that some papers are good and some not so good and they aren't all weighted equally, nor are authors. (About physics, Luis Alvarez said, "There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi.")

The simple statement doesn't address questions like how much warming? What kind of warming (where)? How much are humans causing? How are they causing it? How well is this knowledge known? How good is the data? What are the consequences?

People using these kinds of numbers aren't so much interested in these kinds of questions or these kinds of debates as they are in avoiding questions and ending debates. They're for activists, not for those who want to really understand what's going on.

Pity the Poor Marina Owner on Lake Powell

This does not look to be a good time to own a marina on Lake Powell:

And this chart of the Lake's inflows and storage isn't encouraging:

If you look carefully you can see a tiny blip for 2012.

Here's one more view, no less astonishing:

Here's a local view of impacts from someone who regularly uses the Lake.