Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Thursday June 01 2023, @05:55AM   Printer-friendly

https://phys.org/news/2023-05-earth-energy.html

A recent report from the World Meteorological Organization about the state of the climate indicates that the global mean temperature in 2022 was 1.15°C above the 1850-1900 (preindustrial reference period) average. Moreover, the last eight years have been the warmest since the beginning of instrumental temperature records 173 years ago.

In other words, the climate system has been out of balance for several decades.

[...] Earth's energy imbalance -- Solar radiation is virtually Earth's only energy source, the other energy sources—such as Earth's interior heat and tidal energy—being negligible. The Earth reflects around 30 percent of the solar radiation and emits radiation towards space.

The greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane) let solar radiation pass, but not the radiation emitted by the Earth, thus trapping this energy. Earth's near-surface temperature, which is 15°C, would be around -19°C without the greenhouse effect.

If the difference between the incoming energy—solar radiation—and outgoing energy—the sum of the solar radiation reflected by the Earth and the radiation emitted by the Earth—is not equal to zero, as is the case currently, we refer to this as Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI).

It is human activity, through the emission of greenhouse gases (generating an additional greenhouse effect), that has caused the Earth energy imbalance.

But where does the excess energy accumulate? It accumulates under the form of heat in the different components of the climate system (atmosphere, land, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere). And this is what explains why the Earth is warming, or more globally, climate change.

Such an inventory corresponding to the period 1960-2020 has been provided by a recently published study. This study shows that the Earth system has been accumulating heat since 1971. Moreover, the rate of heat accumulation corresponding to the period 2006-2020 is higher than that corresponding to 1971-2020. Most of the excess heat is stored in the ocean (89 percent), mainly in the upper ocean (0-700 metres in depth). The rest of the excess heat is stored in the land (six percent) and the atmosphere (one percent), and has led to the melting of the components of the cryosphere—glaciers, ice sheets and sea ice (four percent).

In addition to storing excess heat, the ocean is also an important CO₂ sink, thus playing an essential role in the regulation of the climate. However, the ocean will become less efficient at capturing CO₂ with the increase in the cumulative emissions of this gas. Why? Because of the positive feedback between the ocean warming and the decrease in the capacity of the oceans to absorb CO₂.

Unfortunately, the current state of the ocean is concerning. In 2022, the ocean heat content reached a record high, and 58 percent of the ocean surface experienced at least one marine heatwave. Since mid-March this year, the mean ocean surface temperature is the highest ever observed since the beginning of the satellite era. Among other negative impacts on the marine ecosystems, marine heatwaves cause coral bleaching events.


Original Submission

This discussion was created by janrinok (52) for logged-in users only, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by dalek on Thursday June 01 2023, @06:08AM (36 children)

    by dalek (15489) on Thursday June 01 2023, @06:08AM (#1309162)

    The Earth receives incoming solar radiation from the sun. It emits outgoing longwave radiation, but the Earth is cooler than the sun, so Planck's law indicates that this occurs within the infrared range of the spectrum. The Earth approximates a black body, so the Stefan-Boltzmann law indicates that if the Earth is warmer, it will emit more outgoing longwave radiation. The incoming solar radiation and outgoing longwave radiation are nearly in balance.

    Using the solar constant, the average temperature of Earth's surface would need to be around 255 K to balance the incoming solar radiation with the outgoing longwave radiation. In fact, the average temperature of Earth's surface is around 288 K. The reason is because greenhouse gases trap some heat, meaning that only a portion of the heat radiated from the surface escapes to space. Because of the greenhouse effect, the surface of the Earth warms above 255 K. The Stefan-Boltzmann law indicates that as the Earth warms, it will also emit more radiation than if it remained at 255 K. Eventually the Earth warms to the point that it's emitting enough heat, and enough of that heat makes it past the greenhouse gases atmosphere, so that the incoming solar radiation and outgoing longwave radiation are balanced again.

    The imbalance simply means that even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases right now the Earth would still have to warm some more and thus emit more outgoing longwave radiation so that the balance is eventually restored. When climatologists say that we're locked in for a certain amount of warming, that's what they're referring to. When we put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it means the Earth will have to warm more to restore the balance in the energy budget.

    This imbalance just means that we're locked in for some more warming even if greenhouse gas concentrations stopped rising right now.

    --
    THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
    • (Score: 5, Funny) by driverless on Thursday June 01 2023, @07:43AM (5 children)

      by driverless (4770) on Thursday June 01 2023, @07:43AM (#1309174)

      This imbalance just means that we're locked in for some more warming even if greenhouse gas concentrations stopped rising right now.

      Can't we just vote to raise the energy budget debt ceiling, same as we always do?

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 01 2023, @12:52PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday June 01 2023, @12:52PM (#1309223)

        >Can't we just vote to raise the energy budget debt ceiling, same as we always do?

        No, it doesn't work that way. What you have to do is invest money in science to get the answers you want out there so you can shout these guys down in Congress with your "superior evidence."

        Oh, wait, rode that horse until it was dead - hmmm... probably back to just buying the Congress critters outright, that's a sure fire method.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by richtopia on Thursday June 01 2023, @03:10PM (2 children)

        by richtopia (3160) on Thursday June 01 2023, @03:10PM (#1309247) Homepage Journal

        Yes, however that means the bill our children is faced with when it finally comes due will be overwhelming.

        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 01 2023, @08:03PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday June 01 2023, @08:03PM (#1309303)

          > the bill our children are faced with when it finally comes due will be overwhelming.

          Sic et semper pro hominibus

          It wasn't until World War II that anybody seemed to care anything at all about the civilians on the losing side of a war. Before crop rotation farmers would just farm the land until it quit producing, usually for their children. The development of London through the ages is a story of one problem building to a completely unacceptable level before being addressed after another. Back on the farm in more prosperous times, the successful farmer would have 10 or more children who then inherited 1/10th or less of the farm...

          It's up to the children (and those precious few parents who care about them) to take the power from their elders and steer the future toward something that benefits them more, and feeds the decadence of septuagenarians less.

          Where is GenZ failing the most? I'd say it's in failing to vote the fossils out of power, both the figureheads, and the "party like the world ends tomorrow until we're 99" crowd that holds so much of the money in this world.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2023, @02:06AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02 2023, @02:06AM (#1309373)

          > however that means the bill our children is faced with when it finally comes due will be overwhelming.

          While climate change wasn't so obvious when I chose to not have children (+/- 1980), it was very clear that the world population was headed up, way up. That in itself sounded like an unpleasant future to me, and was one of several reasons for my decision.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2023, @04:02PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2023, @04:02PM (#1309258)

        Aha, found the American: "if we make a law, everything will bend to adhere to the law"

        Homelessness? Make it illegal and BAM no more homeless people, just criminals.
        Illiteracy? Make it illegal and BAM, no more illiteracy among your citizens, criminals can't vote anyway and are therefore not _really_ citizens.
        Poverty? Make it illegal and BAM, no more poverty because you lock them all up!
        Climate change? Make it illegal and of course nature will adhere to the law!
        Pi keeping going? Make it exactly 3 by law and BAM, no more trouble with it!

        See how easy that was...?

        I should run for congress...

        (I am fully aware that OP was joking, I'm just piling on)

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday June 01 2023, @07:58AM (4 children)

      by anubi (2828) on Thursday June 01 2023, @07:58AM (#1309178) Journal

      You've stepped on something that is a big puzzlement to me.

      I have been assuming temperatures of anything in space have to settle at the balance of insolation received and thermal radiation, with any internal energy providing an offset until expended.

      Being EE, I see this analogous to the operation of a resistive voltage divider, current flow analogous to heat flow, voltage analogous to temperature.

      I note average moon temperature is almost identical to earth temperature. Same as our satellites. The caveat being they are rotating bodies to equalize temperature over the surface. However our moon, which has almost no atmosphere, hotter than Earth?

      https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.html [nasa.gov]

      I would have thought Earth would be hotter given it has an atmosphere (greenhouse).

      Well, greenhouse effect is an explanation as to why Venus is supposedly hotter than Mercury, when the isolation/blackbody radiation ratios seem to indicate the converse should exist.

      https://duckduckgo.com/?q=why+is+venus+hotter+than+mercury%3F [duckduckgo.com]

      Something isn't ringing true with me. Unless Venus is getting energy from somewhere else. Maybe some form of deep nuclear decay is behind it.

      I get the idea that if I launched several "beach balls", spinning, into space into Earth's orbit, same distance to sun as is, they would all stabilize at the same temperature, whether they were white, red, blue, flat black, clear, or filled with any greenhouse gas, or even an orbiting greenhouse, just as long as it is spinning in order to equalize the surface temperature.

      Same average temperature as our earth orbiting satellites or ISS.

      I am having a hard time trying to reconcile these observations with the narrative of the day. I can see localized thermal gradients, but as you were pointing out about net heat in ( insolation) being equal to net heat out ( blackbody radiation), the loop integral has to be zero. If we can heat the Earth, wouldn't that require a release of stored thermal energy - which would only result in an ephemeral change as this would result in increased blackbody radiation while incoming insolation remains constant.

      Or is our Sun increasing thermal output?

      Maybe someone here can straighten me out. My math tells me one thing, while political narratives tell me me that I've got it all wrong.

      --
      "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by shrewdsheep on Thursday June 01 2023, @08:20AM

        by shrewdsheep (5215) on Thursday June 01 2023, @08:20AM (#1309180)

        I believe there are many factors and how they balance out might be hard to predict. There is atmosphere, meaning greenhouse effect but also clouds which reflect sun light. There is the color: blacker bodies absorb more light being hotter (why do you think color does not matter?). There is internal energy, i.e. radioactivity. There is body size, i.e. surface to volume ratio relating to the previous point. There is magnetic activity which influences the sun wind and thereby indirectly the atmosphere. And so on... (actually, this was all I could come up with :).

        To answer your final question: Sun is indeed increasing thermal output as continuously heavier elements enter fusion over time. These effects, however, are negligible in the time frames we are discussing here.

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by dalek on Thursday June 01 2023, @09:37AM

        by dalek (15489) on Thursday June 01 2023, @09:37AM (#1309190)

        One site I looked at reported that temperatures in full sunshine on the moon can get up to 127 degrees Celsius, but in full darkness can get down to -173 degrees Celsius. If you average these two numbers and convert the units, you get around 250 K. Despite this being a very inexact method of estimating the average temperature, it's only 5 K away from the expected 255 K. In other words, the Moon isn't hotter than the Earth. The average temperature is right around where we expect it should be. The temperatures are much more extreme than on Earth, but there also aren't fluids like air or liquid water to transport heat through advection and convection.

        Keep in mind that the insolation and outgoing infrared radiation are at different wavelengths. It's easier for the sunlight to get in than for the infrared radiation to leave. In effect, some heat is sequestered by the atmosphere. The Earth's surface is a higher temperature and therefore radiates more energy, but the atmosphere prevents some of that energy from escaping to space. The system will eventually reach an equilibrium where the same amount of energy enters the atmosphere as escapes to space.

        As a simple example, consider a system that initially has zero units of energy, receives 100 units at each time step, and it radiates out 100% of the units it has at each time step. This is analogous to having no greenhouse effect.

        t_0: At the initial time, the system starts with 0 units of energy, so it radiates 0 units (0), but it receives 100 units (+100). Net change of +100 units.
        t_1 and every subsequent time: The system starts with 100 units of energy, radiates 100 units (-100), and receives 100 units (+100). Net change of 0 units.

        This system rapidly reaches an equilibrium where it has 100 units of energy.

        Let's add a greenhouse effect. To keep the math simple, let's say that the system only radiates out 50% of the units it has because the other 50% is trapped in the system.

        t_0: At the initial time, the system starts with 0 units of energy, so it radiates 0 units (0), but it receives 100 units (+100). Net change of +100 units.
        t_1: The system starts with 100 units of energy, radiates 50 units (-50), and receives 100 units (+100). Net change of +50 units.
        t_2: The system starts with 150 units of energy, radiates 75 units (-75), and receives 100 units (+100). Net change of +25 units.
        t_3: The system starts with 175 units of energy, radiates 87.5 units (-87.5), and receives 100 units (+100). Net change of +12.5 units.
        ...
        t_equilibrium: The system starts with 200 units of energy, radiates 100 units (-100), and receives 100 units (+100). Net change of 0 units.

        The second example is like what we're experiencing now, where there's an imbalance between what is radiated outward and what is being received. If you reduce the amount of energy that's escaping to space, the Earth has to heat up and the surface has to radiate more heat to compensate.

        --
        THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 01 2023, @01:11PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday June 01 2023, @01:11PM (#1309228)

        >Something isn't ringing true with me. Unless Venus is getting energy from somewhere else.

        I'm going to go with: it's the surface temperature that's hotter on Venus, and it works like this with the greenhouse gasses:

        Your solar radiation passes through CO2 and similar layers like an AC signal passes a band-stop filter when it's out of the stop-band.

        Then, something magic (frequency shift) happens on the surface of the planet. This isn't typically possible, or at least easy, in simple LRC circuits, but that incoming solar radiation is absorbed and then re-radiated at a different frequency, and that frequency _does_ match the stop-band frequency of the CO2 layer and so it is impeded from returning to space and remains hanging out on the surface of Venus (and, to a lesser degree, the Earth).

        The top few miles of the lithosphere are apparently a really good thermal insulator, so what happens on the surface thermally pretty much stays on the surface. Earth has a thermal storage battery in the oceans, Venus managed to boil hers up into the atmosphere so they don't work the same as our liquid thermal bank.

        Consider that the oceans average 2 miles deep, 1.3 miles deep if you were to spread them across all the land. Think about the thermal capacity of 1.3 miles of water just in a column over your house. What would it take to shift that water from its average temperature of 4C up to 5C? There's over 15 acres of earth surface area per human, even today with over 8 billion humans, so your personal share of earth's water works out to 20.4 acre-miles, or 107,700 acre feet or 1.33 * 10^11 liters of water, per person. It takes 1000 calories (239 J / 1.16kWh) to heat a liter of water 1C. So, the takeaway of this 1.33 * 10^11 liters of water per person is: temperature change of the oceans takes a LOT of energy, decades of accumulation to make it noticeably warmer, decades of decay to make it noticeably cooler.

        Across centuries of change in one direction or another, the results can be Venusianly dramatic.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by helel on Friday June 02 2023, @04:36AM

        by helel (2949) on Friday June 02 2023, @04:36AM (#1309390)

        The moon is not hotter than earth. Black body temperature is the temperature at which an object would be at equilibrium if it was not heated by its own atmosphere. It's effected by a number of factors but a big one is albedo and the earths albedo is allot higher than the moons, hence it has a lower black body temperature. Think of how a black car in the sun heats up much more than a white one.

        Or to put it simply, your math is wrong because you don't know what the numbers you're plugging in mean.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday June 01 2023, @10:19AM (4 children)

      by bradley13 (3053) on Thursday June 01 2023, @10:19AM (#1309197) Homepage Journal

      That's a good explanation, but there are also other factors which we do not entirely understand. The earth was *already* warming from the Little Ice Age, but there is no solid agreement on why the Little Ice Age happened or why it ended. The Earth is a complex system, and we only understand parts of it.

      That's the one, huge reason we shouldn't mess with the climate directly. Proposals to put reflective particles in the atmosphere, for example. Messing with a system you don't understand can easily have...unfortunate...effects. Of course, that also includes burning fossil fuels, which also change the atmosphere. It also includes mass deforestation, as is happening in Brazil and other places. Generally speaking, we need to tread more lightly on the planet.

      The best way to do that is to reduce the human population. There are too many of us, and if we don't get the human population under control, nature eventually will...

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2023, @12:33PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2023, @12:33PM (#1309222)

        Earth has been warming since the last ice age began it's end 20000 years ago, and 30000 years before that at the start of the last ice age earth was cooling. There have been dozens of warming-then-cooling cycles even in just the past few million years. A few dozen million years ago Antarctica was ice free.

        As for why certain green-energies like wind and solar are being promoted by the goverment but fission is not, look at who in the government stands to get rich off solar and wind: mining companies. Scraping the earth with open pit mines the size of small cities, many located in tropical rainforests, for lithium and other rare earth elements for batteries and other components of 'green' energy is predicted to increase by over 1000% by 2040, so any investment in those mining companies will have a very good return for Democrat shareholders. Then there is the push to dredge for rare-earths in deep-sea thermal vents, a very fragile ecosystem. Residental developments have been stopped over the outrage of the possible impact on a rare bird or salamander, but scraping a mile-wide swath of the sea floor 2000km from shore is 'out of sight & out of mind' so nobody really cares.

        Fission is not a darling of the greenies because it is funded by public money-not as many people get rich off that. Sure it provides some jobs, but the Clintons, Obamas, Pelosis, Gates and their cronies dont make a much money.

        Human population will never be voluntarily reduced, especially now that Africa is experiencing a population explosion that will contribute 80% of the population increase by 2100. 5 billion people on one continent-imagine the scale of what that ecological disaster will be! Good bye Lake Victoria, good bye Congo rain forest, good bye Savanna for irrigated cropland. But nothing is being done about it because the of the skin color of the continent's residents.

        • (Score: 2, Informative) by dalek on Thursday June 01 2023, @01:10PM

          by dalek (15489) on Thursday June 01 2023, @01:10PM (#1309226)

          Earth has been warming since the last ice age began it's end 20000 years ago

          The energy imbalance to melt the ice sheets was around 0.2 W/m^2, occasionally peaking around 0.4 W/m^2. The present day energy imbalance is around 0.6 W/m^2.

          and 30000 years before that at the start of the last ice age earth was cooling. There have been dozens of warming-then-cooling cycles even in just the past few million years. A few dozen million years ago Antarctica was ice free.

          Yes, it's true that there have been significant oscillations in temperature during the Cenozoic era, though there has been an overall trend toward cooler temperatures. There have been periods of rapid warming, and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) has been studied as an analogue for present day climate change. However, the rate of warming associated with the PETM was significantly smaller than in the present day. I'll refer you to the PBS Eons video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldLBoErAhz4 [youtube.com] for more information about the PETM. Although the PETM did not cause a mass extinction, it was stressful on life, particularly in the oceans. As in the present day, the oceans acidified during the PETM. One reason a mass extinction did not occur during the PETM was that the warming was still slow enough to allow species to migrate as needed.

          Yes, it's true that during the Quaternary period, there have been periods of rapid warming following glacial maxima. As I noted, the radiative imbalance in the present day is significantly larger than in the few thousand years following the last glacial maximum.

          This is important because life has to adapt as the climate warms, and it's more difficult to adapt to more rapid temperature changes. That's why the rate matters, and why it's concerning that our rate of warming is relatively fast compared to other warming events. Although what you said about past temperature fluctuations is true, it comes across as dismissive of the impact of the current warming. There have been many warming events, but this one is unusual because it's quite rapid.

          I'm not going to get into the politics. I'm just here to provide a more complete discussion of the science.

          --
          THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 01 2023, @02:56PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday June 01 2023, @02:56PM (#1309245)

        >It also includes mass deforestation, as is happening in Brazil and other places.

        And, as happened in the United States 100-200 years ago.

        Yes, we have replaced a lot of that "forest" in recent decades. No, the replacement commercial tree farms aren't a great substitute for what was lost - better than desert, but far from what once was.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2023, @08:43PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2023, @08:43PM (#1309313)

        The best way to do that is to reduce the human population.

        Cool! Who do we kill first? Some cultures, on the other hand, want to dominate through mass reproduction.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2023, @01:08PM (19 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 01 2023, @01:08PM (#1309225) Journal

      The imbalance simply means that even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases right now the Earth would still have to warm some more and thus emit more outgoing longwave radiation so that the balance is eventually restored. When climatologists say that we're locked in for a certain amount of warming, that's what they're referring to.

      It's interesting how new climate concepts are used to scare the marks. Your assertion above that this explains the total "locked in" amount of warming would be incorrect. Here's why.

      Let's ask ourselves how much warming we'll actually get from this imbalance? From this 2021 paper [wiley.com] we get the following information right from the beginning of the abstract:

      Earth's Energy Imbalance (EEI) is a relatively small (presently ∼0.3%) difference between global mean solar radiation absorbed and thermal infrared radiation emitted to space.

      Energy radiated to space is roughly proportional to the fourth power of temperature. Meaning that to increase the energy radiated to space enough to reach equilibrium, temperature needs to increase by roughly 0.075%. At Earth temperatures, such as 288 K, that's roughly 0.2 C (1 K change = 1 C change). Sure, due to those green house gases there's some insulation between Earth's surface and upper atmosphere where a lot of the radiation to space happens, and the Earth deviates a little from a black body. But neither is going to change this fundamental dynamic. A small fractional increase in temperature at Earth's surface will result in a factor four greater fractional increase of energy radiated to space.

      That means right now, we're talking a little over 0.2 C or so of future warming (about 20% more warming that we have received to this point ~1.1 C last I heard). But if one looks at the usual forecasts of long term warming, they are typically around 3 C per doubling of CO2 (which would be roughly 2 C of warming since 1850 just with what we've done so far). That presently means somewhere around double the warming since 1850 that we presently have received. In other words, something else is responsible for the great majority of the alleged "locked in" warming that Earth will receive. Generally, that's attributed to positive feedbacks like retreat of snow cover and ice fields, and release of methane from tundra and underwater formations.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by aafcac on Thursday June 01 2023, @02:11PM (2 children)

        by aafcac (17646) on Thursday June 01 2023, @02:11PM (#1309237)

        It's been getting consistently worse, both in terms of predictions and in terms of what we're seeing. Just because you never go outside, doesn't mean the rest of us don't. Part year we hit 110 for the first time in recorded history and the hottest years in recorded over all are most years these days as the record keeps rising.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2023, @08:49PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2023, @08:49PM (#1309316)

          "recorded history" is an infinitesimal sample size

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2023, @11:40PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 01 2023, @11:40PM (#1309347) Journal

          It's been getting consistently worse, both in terms of predictions and in terms of what we're seeing.

          How fast is it getting worse? I think this is rather a great example of the crap we're getting for environmental articles these days. For a couple more very recent examples in other areas, consider this [soylentnews.org] and this [soylentnews.org].

          The first is a hysterical story about radioactive particles contaminating areas around the Fukushima reactors. The details [soylentnews.org] indicate we're worrying about particle decay rates at the maximum comparable to a banana per square meter (and comparable article energies too).

          The second is a similarly hysterical story about microplastics in our food supply. Once again, we see the adage "dose makes the poison" in effect with the caveat from the story:

          There are currently no definitive studies that demonstrate micro and nanoplastics in the environment cause harm to humans, however more research is needed to fully understand health effects.

          My point here is that this is yet another hysteria-inducing green story with little to it once we scratch the surface. We see almost all warming that we would expect to see from global warming, if radiative effects were the only factor. There seems to be little in the way of positive feedback to the system - that's including the reduction of snow cover!

          Here's how I could tell. The article refused to quantify the size of the effect even as it went into excruciating detail on where the heating was happening. In other words, it would tell all when the narrative wasn't threatened, and go vague when it was.

      • (Score: 1) by dalek on Thursday June 01 2023, @05:36PM (15 children)

        by dalek (15489) on Thursday June 01 2023, @05:36PM (#1309276)

        But if one looks at the usual forecasts of long term warming, they are typically around 3 C per doubling of CO2 (which would be roughly 2 C of warming since 1850 just with what we've done so far). That presently means somewhere around double the warming since 1850 that we presently have received. In other words, something else is responsible for the great majority of the alleged "locked in" warming that Earth will receive.

        Preindustrial levels of CO2 were around 280 ppm. We are just over 420 ppm, meaning that CO2 levels have increased by a factor of 1.5. You are saying that that with current greenhouse gas levels, the additional warming to restore equilibrium to the Earth's energy budget should bring the overall warming to just under 1.5 degrees Celsius warming versus preindustrial levels. Again, that means adding 140 ppm of CO2 equals just under 1.5 degrees of warming. You're saying it should actually be around around 1.3 degrees.

        Now, your comment was about doubling CO2. Versus preindustrial levels, that would be 560 ppm of CO2, or 280 ppm higher than preindustrial levels. Although it's a bad idea to assume the climate system behaves linearly, let's do that anyway for the sake of simplicity. In the previous calculation, a 140 ppm increase of CO2 results in 1.3 degrees of warming. Since we're now looking at a 280 ppm increase, let's multiply that by 2, so we get 2.6 degrees of warming. While not exact, that's not too far off the 3 degrees Celsius warming you quoted for a doubling of CO2. If we accept your inexact 3 degrees C number, that means around 0.4 degrees of warming would be due to the nonlinear processes you describe. That's pretty far off the 2 degrees that you claim is due to these other nonlinear processes.

        You've made an error in your math. CO2 concentrations most certainly haven't doubled from preindustrial levels. They've increased by a factor of about 1.5. When you correct the math error, the estimated warming due to nonlinear processes is far less extreme than what you're saying.

        Being locked in for an additional 0.2 degrees of warming means that it's going to be very difficult to limit warming to 1.5 degrees over preindustrial conditions. However, we most certainly can limit warming to under 3 degrees, and that's much easier to do.

        --
        THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 01 2023, @08:08PM (1 child)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday June 01 2023, @08:08PM (#1309304)

          How can you tell there's an error in khallow's math? (Rhetorical question) Anytime he's proving his fallacious points there's an error in his math, his unstated assumptions, or his interpretation of source materials. Usually all three.

          I think he takes his talking points from sophomore high school debate teams' arguments.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Friday June 02 2023, @12:10AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 02 2023, @12:10AM (#1309352) Journal

            How can you tell there's an error in khallow's math?

            You use math to fight math not zero-content quips. I notice you didn't do that.

            For people who do use math, there's several take-away points to my posting here. First, most of the difference between short term and long term warming hasn't been observed yet, even as an increase in green house gases. Second, present day warming is pretty close to what we'd expect from total radiative only warming - it tracks present day concentrations of green house gases well. There's no huge hidden gotcha in this phenomenon of mildly delayed heating effect.

            Combined the two are another sign that there's something wrong with the usual catastrophic climate change argument. Finally, notice how the story dodges the important parts - it goes into excruciating detail about the percentages of what heat goes where, but won't let you know how much heating will come of this. I had to calculate that myself. That's typical propaganda.

            My take is that long term warming won't be far from short term warming. That means we have a lot of play in our strategies for dealing with global warming, especially when we're juggling other priorities, particularly poverty, overpopulation, and elevation of the world to a developed world state.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2023, @11:47PM (12 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 01 2023, @11:47PM (#1309348) Journal

          Preindustrial levels of CO2 were around 280 ppm. We are just over 420 ppm, meaning that CO2 levels have increased by a factor of 1.5. You are saying that that with current greenhouse gas levels, the additional warming to restore equilibrium to the Earth's energy budget should bring the overall warming to just under 1.5 degrees Celsius warming versus preindustrial levels. Again, that means adding 140 ppm of CO2 equals just under 1.5 degrees of warming. You're saying it should actually be around around 1.3 degrees.

          A factor of 1.5 at a climate sensitivity of 3 C per doubling corresponds to heating of roughly 1.8 C. Meanwhile 1.3 C degrees corresponds to climate sensitivity of around 2.2 C. As to the rest of your post, check your math. I'd start with "Although it's a bad idea to assume the climate system behaves linearly, let's do that anyway for the sake of simplicity."

          • (Score: 1) by dalek on Friday June 02 2023, @03:06AM (11 children)

            by dalek (15489) on Friday June 02 2023, @03:06AM (#1309380)

            False. In other comments you write:

            We see almost all warming that we would expect to see from global warming, if radiative effects were the only factor.

            First, most of the difference between short term and long term warming hasn't been observed yet, even as an increase in green house gases. Second, present day warming is pretty close to what we'd expect from total radiative only warming - it tracks present day concentrations of green house gases well.

            Those statements are also wrong. Resolving the imbalance in Earth's energy budget is absolutely about radiative processes. There aren't radiative and non-radiative components at work here. This is all radiative. Here is a diagram of the Earth's energy budget: https://mynasadata.larc.nasa.gov/basic-page/earths-energy-budget [nasa.gov]. The incoming radiation is 340.4 W/m^2. The outgoing radiation is 339.8 W/m^2. There is an imbalance of 0.6 W/m^2, which is absorbed instead of radiated back out to space. The imbalance is 100% about radiative processes. The issue is that the Earth hasn't warmed enough to radiate enough heat to balance the incoming radiation. In fact, the only parts of the diagram I linked to that aren't radiative are the purple arrows, which involve the transfer of heat from the surface to the atmosphere through sensible and latent heating fluxes. But from the perspective of incoming and outgoing radiation, this only really changes whether the outgoing radiation is emitted by the surface, the atmosphere, or clouds.

            While I'm not claiming that it's a good idea to assume the climate system behaves linearly, I'm doing so because this is back-of-the-napkin math and not something that's being presented at a conference or published. It's just a basic discussion.

            You've stated that a doubling of CO2 should get us to about 3 degrees Celsius of warming. In reality, CO2 has increased by a factor of 1.5. If we treat the climate system linearly, this gets us to an expected 1.5 degrees of warming. Again, it's imperfect, but it's good enough for a basic assumption.

            The article cites that the Earth has warmed about 1.15 degrees over preindustrial levels. I'll use their number over the 1.1 degree number you cited, but they're close. You say that the Earth has to warm about another 0.2 degrees to balance incoming and outgoing radiation. That gets us to 1.35 degrees. If we should warm by 1.5 degrees and we're at 1.35 degrees, it suggests that the other 0.15 degrees are from other positive feedbacks in the climate system like methane trapping additional heat. Even so, this is just the release of another greenhouse gas that also traps some heat that would otherwise be radiated out to space.

            Your statement was that the additional warming to bring the Earth's energy budget into equilibrium is small compared to the positive feedbacks. From the back-of-the-napkin math, that just doesn't seem to be the case. If we estimate a total warming of 1.5 degrees, we have 0.2 degrees of warming due to balancing the energy budget and another 0.15 degrees from positive feedbacks.

            The 0.6 W/m^2 imbalance is effectively the rate that heat is being absorbed, so it's a rate of warming. As I stated in another comment, the radiative imbalance after the last glacial maximum was 0.2 W/m^2 on average but reached 0.4 W/m^2 occasionally. This means that the warming is rapid compared to the warming after the last glacial maximum. We also know that the current warming is also rapid compared to other warming events during the Cenozoic era.

            --
            THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 02 2023, @03:30AM (10 children)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 02 2023, @03:30AM (#1309382) Journal

              There aren't radiative and non-radiative components at work here.

              The article say otherwise:

              But where does the excess energy accumulate? It accumulates under the form of heat in the different components of the climate system (atmosphere, land, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere). And this is what explains why the Earth is warming, or more globally, climate change.

              Such an inventory corresponding to the period 1960-2020 has been provided by a recently published study. This study shows that the Earth system has been accumulating heat since 1971. Moreover, the rate of heat accumulation corresponding to the period 2006-2020 is higher than that corresponding to 1971-2020. Most of the excess heat is stored in the ocean (89 percent), mainly in the upper ocean (0-700 metres in depth). The rest of the excess heat is stored in the land (six percent) and the atmosphere (one percent), and has led to the melting of the components of the cryosphere—glaciers, ice sheets and sea ice (four percent).

              Moving on

              You've stated that a doubling of CO2 should get us to about 3 degrees Celsius of warming. In reality, CO2 has increased by a factor of 1.5. If we treat the climate system linearly, this gets us to an expected 1.5 degrees of warming. Again, it's imperfect, but it's good enough for a basic assumption.

              We don't treat the climate system linearly by that model, but log linearly. As a result, one gets the expected 1.8 degrees of warming. Similarly, at 2.2 C per doubling, one gets the 1.3 C of warming (1.1 plus 0.2 of additional warming) that we actually see.

              If we should warm by 1.5 degrees and we're at 1.35 degrees, it suggests that the other 0.15 degrees are from other positive feedbacks in the climate system like methane trapping additional heat.

              What's the point of that conditional? You have yet to show those positive feedbacks exist. My take is that we're more likely to warm that much by continued human activity than hypothetical positive feedbacks that have yet to be observed.

              Your statement was that the additional warming to bring the Earth's energy budget into equilibrium is small compared to the positive feedbacks. From the back-of-the-napkin math, that just doesn't seem to be the case. If we estimate a total warming of 1.5 degrees, we have 0.2 degrees of warming due to balancing the energy budget and another 0.15 degrees from positive feedbacks.

              Total warming of 1.8 C not 1.5 C. And if we use higher estimates like 4.5 C or 6 C per doubling (which are a thing), then it goes up to 2.7 C and 3.6 C respectively. And I don't use 1.15 C for current warming.

              • (Score: 1) by dalek on Friday June 02 2023, @04:04AM (9 children)

                by dalek (15489) on Friday June 02 2023, @04:04AM (#1309386)

                Let's get rid of the simplifying assumptions. We don't have direct observations of the climate with CO2 concentrations above present day levels. We'll have to use the models.

                The IPCC AR6 emissions scenarios are described in figure TS.4 on page 53 of https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_TS.pdf [www.ipcc.ch].

                A graph of the warming is shown in figure 4.2 on page 571 (PDF page 19 of 120) of https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Chapter04.pdf [www.ipcc.ch].

                Doubling the CO2 versus preindustrial levels is approximately scenario SSP2-4.5. Although there are a range of possibilities, the most likely warming is around 3 degrees Celsius. If you want a scenario where the high end is around 6 degrees, that's the SSP3-7.0 scenario, which is much closer to tripling CO2 concentrations versus preindustrial levels. Even so, the warming is more likely to be around 4.5 degrees by 2100.

                Like I said, the Earth is absorbing heat quite rapidly compared to other warming events during the Cenozoic era, meaning that the Earth is warming faster.

                --
                THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 02 2023, @04:52AM (8 children)

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 02 2023, @04:52AM (#1309393) Journal

                  Let's get rid of the simplifying assumptions. We don't have direct observations of the climate with CO2 concentrations above present day levels. We'll have to use the models.

                  "Using the models" is such a simplifying assumption. My take is that we can just run the clock out and see what happens. Then we're back to the much more reliable direct observation.

                  Although there are a range of possibilities, the most likely warming is around 3 degrees Celsius.

                  Even though we're well below that level of warming? I think that makes it less than most likely.

                  Like I said, the Earth is absorbing heat quite rapidly compared to other warming events during the Cenozoic era, meaning that the Earth is warming faster.

                  Pretty confident for having no measurements of the necessary time scale to make that determination.

                  • (Score: 1) by dalek on Friday June 02 2023, @05:43AM (7 children)

                    by dalek (15489) on Friday June 02 2023, @05:43AM (#1309398)

                    You can have whatever take you like on a situation, but that doesn't mean it's a reasonable take.

                    Now, you have correctly said that we are, indeed, locked in for some additional warming because of the radiative imbalance. You have also correctly said that there is going to be additional warming beyond that because of additional greenhouse gas emissions and other human activities, and this is larger than the additional warming due to the radiative imbalance. To summarize, the radiative imbalance does mean that we are locked in for additional warming, and human activities will probably push the warming significantly beyond what we're locked in for due to the radiative imbalance. These are all things you have said, and they're true.

                    Your primary criticism of models has been that they underestimate carbon sinks. Practically, you're saying that the models overestimate CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere given a particular rate of emissions. Except that your typical criticism isn't relevant to this discussion. I'm not focused on the rate of emissions. In the SSP2-4.5 scenario, the atmospheric CO2 concentration is roughly twice preindustrial levels. Given that concentration, the model predicts roughly 3 degrees Celsius of warming. The models parameterize radiative transfer, with one scheme for incoming solar radiation and another for outgoing longwave radiation. The parameterization for outgoing longwave radiation takes greenhouse gas concentrations as an input, then calculate their effects on radiative transfer. This isn't just important for climate. We need to represent this process properly to accurately forecast the weather, and weather models also have such parameterizations. If these parameterizations were wrong, we would have issues forecasting temperatures. The radiative transfer schemes really aren't concerned with sources and sinks of greenhouse gases, just their concentrations at a particular time. Your standard criticism of models just doesn't apply here.

                    Given the CO2 concentrations in the SSP2-4.5 scenario, it corresponds to a warming of around 3 degrees. This is based on many model simulations, and the yellowish line in the graph is in the middle of the range of possibilities from modeling that scenario. It is reasonable to say that this is probably the most likely outcome for warming given CO2 concentrations that are approximately double the preindustrial level of 280 ppm.

                    We actually do have a pretty good record of warming events during much of the Quaternary period from data derived from sources like ice cores. The resolution isn't as good and the errors are larger going farther back in time, but we do have a pretty good idea how much warming occurred during events like the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum and how long it took to happen. From there, we can infer what CO2 concentrations would have been needed to achieve that warming and what the radiative forcing was. It involves prescribing CO2 concentrations and simulating the impact on climate to try to match what we know conditions were like during that period. Again, your standard criticism of models just doesn't apply here. In this case, they don't simulate sources and sinks of greenhouse gases. That step is skipped, the CO2 concentrations are prescribed, and then the impact on climate is tested.

                    --
                    THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
                    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 02 2023, @12:49PM (6 children)

                      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 02 2023, @12:49PM (#1309425) Journal

                      You can have whatever take you like on a situation, but that doesn't mean it's a reasonable take.

                      Now, you have correctly said that we are, indeed, locked in for some additional warming because of the radiative imbalance. You have also correctly said that there is going to be additional warming beyond that because of additional greenhouse gas emissions and other human activities, and this is larger than the additional warming due to the radiative imbalance. To summarize, the radiative imbalance does mean that we are locked in for additional warming, and human activities will probably push the warming significantly beyond what we're locked in for due to the radiative imbalance. These are all things you have said, and they're true.

                      So it could be an unreasonable take? We have any reason to suppose that could be the case?

                      I quite agree that we're on track for warming beyond what merely hasn't happened yet. But here you already gloss over a problem that I've repeatedly noted - the 3 C per doubling assumes a degree of positive feedback that hasn't been observed yet. You can't get there from short term warming plus radiative imbalance. Human activity isn't considered a feedback either. A modest decline in the climate sensitivity number significantly improves our options. That combined with a greater tolerance for warming (beyond the hard 1.5 C cut off) means we have much greater flexibility in the near future than the official narrative that we have to hard stop greenhouse gases emissions now.

                      Your primary criticism of models has been that they underestimate carbon sinks. Practically, you're saying that the models overestimate CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere given a particular rate of emissions. Except that your typical criticism isn't relevant to this discussion. I'm not focused on the rate of emissions.

                      Indirectly, that "primary criticism" still has some relevance since the climate sensitivity of 3 C per doubling of CO2 is partially dependent on an unsupported assumption of very low long term sinking of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. But where did I rely on that argument in this thread? Should I be dredging up irrelevant arguments from your past which you aren't using in this thread either?

                      Instead, I did the obvious thing which hadn't been done to this point - come up with a reasonable estimate as to the amount of future warming due from the effect of radiative imbalance. Why wasn't this discussed before? My take is because it was an attempt to bamboozle the audience, not discuss an interesting feature of global warming.

                      • (Score: 1) by dalek on Friday June 02 2023, @07:17PM (5 children)

                        by dalek (15489) on Friday June 02 2023, @07:17PM (#1309458)

                        We have good records of the Quaternary period from data sources like ice cores. We know that CO2 levels during the last glacial maximum were around 200 ppm instead of the 280 ppm preindustrial levels. We also know that the last glacial maximum was about 6 degrees Celsius colder than the present day. Following the last glacial maximum, the Earth warmed at a rate of around 1 degree per thousand years over the span of a few thousand years. This brings us to the Holocene epoch, which should be a relatively brief warm interlude before temperatures start declining and CO2 levels decrease.

                        CO2 increased by a factor of around 1.4 from the last glacial maximum to the Holocene period, corresponding with a warming of several degrees. The temperature change with respect to CO2 concentrations is significantly larger than the numbers you're discussing. Some of this might be due to melting the ice cover at mid-latitudes instead of high latitudes, where more surface area is involved and the sunlight tends to be more direct. Still, the quality of data from the Quaternary period is superior compared with our understanding of climate farther back in time. And the sensitivity is much larger than what you're describing.

                        You're correct that climate models do not represent the full complexity of the climate system, but they are still useful tools for understanding the behavior of the system. For the doubling of CO2 you're describing, they do project around a 3 degree increase in global temperatures. You're quick to point out the uncertainty of the models, and this is true. We have a better understanding of the climate system during the present day and the colder conditions that are typical of the Quaternary period than we do of the warmer climates that occurred earlier in the Cenozoic era. We're using climate models as a sophisticated way to extrapolate what the climate will be with greenhouse gas concentrations that are greater than at any point in human history. As a general rule, the uncertainty is always larger when you're extrapolating data, even with a very complex extrapolation scheme.

                        Then you say things like this:

                        "Using the models" is such a simplifying assumption. My take is that we can just run the clock out and see what happens. Then we're back to the much more reliable direct observation.

                        You're saying that we should throw out the models altogether because the uncertainty is too large. This is a remarkably arrogant statement, more or less dismissing that climate change is going to be a serious problem in the near future, and that carry on with our greenhouse gas emissions for the foreseeable future. Based on other comments you've made in other discussions, this is not misrepresenting your "take" on the situation.

                        There is a significant amount of uncertainty in projecting future climates. But you're effectively saying that despite all the uncertainty, you're confident that the models are overestimating the warming that will occur. That's a ridiculous statement. For all the uncertainty that you say exists in climate change projections, you are remarkably confident in the sign of the error. Your confidence is absolutely unwarranted. Yes, it's possible the Earth might warm less than what the models are predicting. It's just as possible that the warming could be larger than the models are projecting.

                        You're entitled to your own opinion. But it doesn't mean that everyone else has to accept your opinion as reasonable. A much more rational approach is that we ought to be cautious and do our best to mitigate climate change.

                        --
                        THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
                        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 03 2023, @12:00AM (4 children)

                          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 03 2023, @12:00AM (#1309488) Journal

                          You're saying that we should throw out the models altogether because the uncertainty is too large.

                          Rather because they are already failing. We have a nasty combination of large conflict of interest and models veering off the rails from the get-go. The extreme false confidence in these models is just another warning sign.

                          There is a significant amount of uncertainty in projecting future climates. But you're effectively saying that despite all the uncertainty, you're confident that the models are overestimating the warming that will occur.

                          Note the narrative presented here. We must follow "the models" because that allegedly is the best we have, but whenever one points out the pitfalls in doing so, only then is it noted that the future is uncertain. I'll note that I've been following models as well. They lead to less aggressive results, but accurately model the present quite well.

                          My take is that the primary role of most models is to propagate a particular message not to accurate model the climate. They wouldn't be significantly funded otherwise.

                          When you spoke of IPCC scenarios earlier in this thread, did any of those scenarios consider human adaptation strategies - particularly making trade offs between better human prosperity and somewhat more pronounced climate change? Or what could happen with partial rather than full mitigation? I can already tell you that there's a lot of willful blindness when it comes to consideration of alternate strategies. That's reflected in the model construction as well.

                          • (Score: 1) by dalek on Saturday June 03 2023, @02:23AM (3 children)

                            by dalek (15489) on Saturday June 03 2023, @02:23AM (#1309508)

                            My take is that the primary role of most models is to propagate a particular message not to accurate model the climate. They wouldn't be significantly funded otherwise.

                            Ah yes, when the discussion isn't going your way, appeal to a conspiracy theory and of course provide no actual evidence to support this alleged conspiracy. That's a really strong indication that you're not here to discuss the matter in good faith, and that there's no point in continuing this conversation.

                            For the benefit of others who are reading this conversation in good faith, I'll address the false statements you wrote about emission scenarios:

                            When you spoke of IPCC scenarios earlier in this thread, did any of those scenarios consider human adaptation strategies - particularly making trade offs between better human prosperity and somewhat more pronounced climate change? Or what could happen with partial rather than full mitigation? I can already tell you that there's a lot of willful blindness when it comes to consideration of alternate strategies. That's reflected in the model construction as well.

                            Whether we're talking about a weather model or a climate model, they need to predict the transfer of radiation. There aren't nice partial differential equations that we can integrate to determine this, so these effects are parameterized. There are typically two radiative transfer paramaterization schemes, one for incoming shortwave radiation and a second for outgoing longwave radiation. These schemes have to take into account several things including clouds, aerosols, and greenhouse gas concentrations. These are needed to accurately forecast temperatures both on weather and climate time scales. In fact, the same parameterization schemes are often used in both weather and climate models.

                            WRF is a model that's primarily used for weather forecasting, hence the name Weather Research & Forecasting Model. It's widely used for forecasting the weather, and a lot of our regional models use WRF with various settings. Here's a link to the radiation parameterization schemes available: https://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/physics/phys_references.html#RAD [ucar.edu]. Many of these schemes like the CAM and Goddard schemes were developed for use in climate models, and the code has been adapted to also work with weather models like WRF. If these parameterizations didn't work well, we would have serious issues with forecasting the weather accurately.

                            For these parameterizations to work properly, they need to be informed about greenhouse gas and aerosol concentrations. The radiative transfer parameterizations don't directly calculate either of these, so they need to be calculated elsewhere in the model or prescribed. Aerosol concentrations can be calculated from atmospheric chemistry models. The emission scenarios, are prescribed by the person running the model, either directly specifying greenhouse gas concentrations or having a more sophisticated way to calculate the concentrations. The results of those emissions scenarios are the inputs to the radiative transfer parameterizations. The radiation parameterizations don't need to know about adaptation. They just need to know the greenhouse gas concentrations so they can accurately predict the outgoing longwave radiation.

                            Adaptation is not explicitly considered in the scenarios because it's irrelevant to running the models. The emissions are relevant because they determine the greenhouse gas concentrations, and those are needed for the radiation paramterization schemes. However, it's implicit that the higher end emissions scenarios would almost certainly require substantial degrees of adaptation. Moreover, partial mitigation is exactly what happens in the SSP2-4.5 scenario that I've been discussing.

                            That said, since Mr. Khallow has decided to post unsubstantiated and unfounded conspiracy theories about climate models, there's exactly zero chance of anything productive coming from this discussion. I have direct experience with WRF, which is used as both a weather and a climate model. I've run it on supercomputers to produce weather simulations, which is why I'm familiar with the parameterization schemes. WRF is a huge code base, with two separate dynamical cores (the Advanced Research WRF core and the Nonhydrostatic Mesoscale Model core) and a very large amount of parameterizations. The code is completely open source, including all of the paramterization schemes. In principle, anyone can download and compile the code, even with GNU compilers. As with any large and complex code base, it's entirely possible that there are inadvertent coding errors that can lead to incorrect results under some circumstances, but the results are close enough to not be obvious. In fact, I'm aware of instances of exactly this happening, where there were coding errors, but the results were close enough that it took a long time for someone to catch the error.. When the models are wrong, that's a much more likely explanation than Mr. Khallow's conspiracy.

                            I'm done with this discussion. Perhaps I'll speak up next time there's a climate discussion, but I see no point in continuing to engage with someone who posts unfounded conspiracy theories. We're done here.

                            --
                            THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
                            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 03 2023, @04:48AM (2 children)

                              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 03 2023, @04:48AM (#1309518) Journal

                              My take is that the primary role of most models is to propagate a particular message not to accurate model the climate. They wouldn't be significantly funded otherwise.

                              Ah yes, when the discussion isn't going your way, appeal to a conspiracy theory and of course provide no actual evidence to support this alleged conspiracy. That's a really strong indication that you're not here to discuss the matter in good faith, and that there's no point in continuing this conversation.

                              Is the discussion not going my way somehow? As to the conspiracy, it's pretty damn blatant. For a glaring example [yale.edu], this story complains about the propensity of a large number of people to automatically blame the climate when bad things happen.

                              Politicians rushed to blame climate change for the intense rains that flooded the rivers that night. The world had to be “faster in the battle against climate change,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as she toured devastated communities. Climate scientists later concluded that a warmer atmosphere had made such downpours up to nine times more likely.

                              But there was another factor behind the floods that few politicians or media have mentioned, then or since. Hydrologists monitoring the river flows say that the spread of farms in the once-boggy hills where the rainfall was most intense had destroyed the sponge-like ability of the land to absorb heavy rains. Field drains, roadways, and the removal of natural vegetation channeled the water into the rivers within seconds, rather than days.

                              That suggested a way to prevent future floods here and elsewhere that would be much faster than fixing climate change. Unpublished analysis of the Kyll by Els Otterman and colleagues at Dutch consultantcy Stroming, reviewed by Yale Environment 360, had found that blocking drains and removing dykes to restore half of the former sponges could reduce peak river flows during floods by more than a third.

                              A strange obsession to blame extreme flooding on climate change when the real problem is drainage. I'll note that the story then quotes several scientists who confirm that there is indeed a conspiracy of sorts.

                              “Stop blaming the climate for disasters,” says Friederike Otto of Imperial College London, a climatologist who is co-founder of World Weather Attribution, an international collaboration of scientists dedicated to identifying the underlying causes of weather-related disasters. She is determined to call out climate change where it contributes to disaster but cautions that “disasters occur when hazards [such as climate change] meet vulnerability.” And vulnerability has many causes, including bad water or forest management, unplanned urbanization, and social injustices that leave the poor and marginalized at risk.

                              [...]

                              Jesse Ribot, of American University, and Myanna Lahsen, of Linkoping University in Sweden, agree. “While politicians may want to blame crises on climate change, members of the public may prefer to hold government accountable for inadequate investments in flood or drought prevention and precarious living conditions,” they write in a paper published in December.

                              “A really striking example is the current food crisis in Madagascar, which has been blamed on climate change quite prominently,” Otto told e360. Last October, the UN’s World Food Programme said more than a million people in the south of the African country were starving after successive years of drought. Its warning that the disaster “could become the first famine caused by climate change” was widely reported. Madagascar’s President Andry Rajoelina said: “My countrymen are paying the price for a climate crisis that they did not create.”

                              [...]

                              A 2019 analysis headed by Wenbin Zhu, a hydrologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, found that water diversions for irrigation explained 73 percent of the reduction in flow into Lake Chad from the largest river, the Chari, since the 1960s — a proportion that rose to 80 percent after 2000. Variability in rainfall explained just 20 percent.

                              Robert Oakes of the United Nations University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security in Bonn says that “the climate-change framing has prevented the identification and implementation of appropriate measures to address the challenges.” Those measures include restoring flow to the rivers that once fed the lake.

                              [...]

                              “Threats to biodiversity are increasingly seen through the single myopic lens of climate change,” complains Tim Caro, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of California Davis. That is hard to justify when his analysis of Red List extinction data shows that habitat loss is still three times more important than climate change in vertebrate extinctions. Ignoring this fact, he says, is undermining strategies needed to prevent deforestation and other threats to habitat.

                              [...]

                              But there are other causes for the infernos, notably misguided fire suppression that over many decades has dramatically increased the amount of fuel on the forest floor. Of course, we should halt climate change, says fire researcher Crystal Kolden of the University of California, Merced. But without a radical increase in deliberate controlled fires to reduce the fuel available during the lengthening fire season, “more catastrophic wildfire disasters are inevitable.” Forestry practice is changing, but she reckons California should be doing five times more prescribed burning.

                              [...]

                              The climatic conditions in 2020 were exceptional, but Brazil’s government “is ignoring the causes of the fires: a combination of inadequate fire management, climate extremes, human behavior and weak environmental regulations,” says Renata Libonati, a forest ecologist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

                              [...]

                              Jane Madgwick, CEO of Wetlands International, estimates that sponges across 50,000 square miles of upland river catchments across Germany, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg could be restored to reduce flood peaks downstream. “Yes, of course we need to fight climate change,” she says. But in the meanwhile, “extreme meteorological events don’t have to turn into extreme flooding events. As we work to fix the climate, we must fix the landscape too.”

                              Numerous cases where researchers complain about various parties eagerly blaming climate change for mostly unrelated problems. There's plenty of evidence for the "conspiracy" if you choose to look.

                              As I noted in my previous post, another example of this "conspiracy" is the IPCC's inability to consider either effective climate change adaptation or strategies to deal with warming above above 2 C. Basically, when it comes to considering humanity's response to climate change, all they can do is portray climate change as a huge, near future threat and advocate for radical decarbonization. Well, the world isn't heading that way so why won't they think about more likely scenarios/strategies of coping and recovery?

                              Finally, there's the watershed event Climategate [wikipedia.org] which among other things shows several examples of deception (for example, the "hiding the decline" [climateaudit.org] thing where tree ring data was cut off in 1960 and some tricks used to hide that it had been ended there) and hypocrisy (saying different things in private than public, several examples cited in the second link of this paragraph), including a bit of genuine conspiracy - Dr. Phil Jones illegally blocking a UK FOIA request. A lot of the present day resistance to climate change action comes from back then - a display of good reasons not to trust climate research.

                              I think a tell is the widespread need to blame outside forces for the failure of advocacy of climate change advocacy. On SN, it is common to allege that climate change skepticism is solely due to Big Oil/fossil fuel propaganda or the like. They have yet to find propaganda worthy of a industry with trillions of dollars in revenue.

                              My take is that we're past peak climate change. So much of what goes on now is just ridiculous showboating like the Greta Thunberg phenomenon of a few years back (the Joan of Arc fallacy) or the recent pretense to ban internal combustion engines - we'll see if anyone actually follows through on that and how well they fare compared to those who don't attempt economic suicide.

                              • (Score: 1) by dalek on Saturday June 03 2023, @10:23AM (1 child)

                                by dalek (15489) on Saturday June 03 2023, @10:23AM (#1309570)

                                Since you wrote a long post, I figured I'd take a look and see what it's about.

                                Nothing you've said is actually about the climate models. You criticized climate models, then didn't discuss them in any of the examples you presented. I just want to point that out. Also, Climategate has been pretty much debunked.

                                The bulk of what you've said is that modifying the environment in other ways and building in disaster-prone areas contributes a lot to really expensive disasters. But there's no conspiracy to suppress this. Hurricane experts attribute most of the rise in really expensive disasters to building along the coasts in areas that are prone to storm surge. Wildfire experts readily criticize fire suppression policies like the 10 AM policy that the USFS once had as being a factor in the recent major wildfires. Engineers readily state that river engineering practices like building artificial levees have contributed to flooding disasters.

                                Take levees for example: https://www.npr.org/2018/05/21/610945127/levees-make-mississippi-river-floods-worse-but-we-keep-building-them [npr.org]

                                Or hurricanes: https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/hurricanes-gotten-destructive-rcna100 [nbcnews.com]

                                Or fire suppression: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/good-fire-bad-fire-indigenous-practice-may-key-preventing-wildfires [nationalgeographic.com]

                                Since the experts readily implicate these other factors that you're talking about, we can safely conclude that there is no conspiracy at all, and there isn't large scale misrepresentation of climate change hazards.

                                Because there's no evidence of this conspiracy, there really is no reason to continue this discussion.

                                --
                                THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
                                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 03 2023, @11:56AM

                                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 03 2023, @11:56AM (#1309581) Journal

                                  Nothing you've said is actually about the climate models.

                                  I already addressed said climate models earlier. You mentioned conspiracies, so I mentioned conspiracies, including a fair number of researchers who believe in them with good reason as well as a host of other longstanding problems associated with that. And when there's such widespread and consistent problems with areas that are much less complex than climate models, including data collection and interpretation BTW, then that indicates similar problems with the stuff that is too complex.

                                  Also, Climategate has been pretty much debunked.

                                  When you "debunk" problems rather than address them, you end up with more problems - like losing a lot of credibility. All the stuff I mentioned is still there, no matter how debunked people think it is. And it shows a bad faith process that is much more willing to "debunk" criticism than to fix problems that criticism showed.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2023, @07:52AM (16 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2023, @07:52AM (#1309176)

    We're going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, get fusion working, increase energy consumption exponentially, and burn to a crisp. So I've heard.

    • (Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Thursday June 01 2023, @12:16PM

      by pdfernhout (5984) on Thursday June 01 2023, @12:16PM (#1309217) Homepage

      That's a subplot in the "Midas World" novel.

      --
      The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 01 2023, @01:23PM (13 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday June 01 2023, @01:23PM (#1309230)

      With unlimited free energy, we can run heat-pumps to space, or better, into the interior of the planet to keep it thermally stable. If you think greenhouse gas runaway is a bad time, wait until the core starts solidifying...

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 01 2023, @11:48PM (12 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 01 2023, @11:48PM (#1309350) Journal

        With unlimited free energy, we can run heat-pumps to space, or better, into the interior of the planet to keep it thermally stable. If you think greenhouse gas runaway is a bad time, wait until the core starts solidifying...

        Or go into space and render this entire thread irrelevant.

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 01 2023, @11:55PM (11 children)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday June 01 2023, @11:55PM (#1309351)

          You first.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 02 2023, @12:26AM (10 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 02 2023, @12:26AM (#1309357) Journal

            You first.

            I'm fine with that. Just remember in your brave, new bug paste utopia, that you might want to leave at some point prior to melt down.

            • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 02 2023, @01:48AM (9 children)

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday June 02 2023, @01:48AM (#1309364)

              Or just reduce the population to something resembling where it would have been on a pre-fossil fuel growth curve, say 1-2B.

              Unconstrained human population growth will always be a problem, even if we can expand to all habitable space at the speed of light, our growth rate of the last 80 years will ensure a big paste existence for the last generation or two before total resource wars step up to do the population control for us.

              --
              🌻🌻 [google.com]
              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 02 2023, @01:52AM (8 children)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 02 2023, @01:52AM (#1309367) Journal

                Or just reduce the population to something resembling where it would have been on a pre-fossil fuel growth curve, say 1-2B.

                You first.

                • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 02 2023, @02:02AM (7 children)

                  by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday June 02 2023, @02:02AM (#1309369)

                  Already done, 2 parents 2 children, below replacement rate.

                  --
                  🌻🌻 [google.com]
                  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 02 2023, @03:30AM (6 children)

                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 02 2023, @03:30AM (#1309383) Journal
                    For now. What are you doing to make sure your descendants are below replacement as well? And how soon are we planning to get to 1-2 billion?
                    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 02 2023, @11:16AM (5 children)

                      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday June 02 2023, @11:16AM (#1309418)

                      Some things take care of themselves: severe Autism.

                      >how soon are we planning to get to 1-2 billion?

                      Just as soon as the "me generation" dies out of power. Hard to say if that will come before or after the resource wars, but a lot of bug paste seems inevitable.

                      --
                      🌻🌻 [google.com]
                      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 02 2023, @10:52PM (4 children)

                        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 02 2023, @10:52PM (#1309484) Journal

                        Just as soon as the "me generation" dies out of power.

                        Which of the many me generations is supposed to be the me generation?

                        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 03 2023, @01:41AM (3 children)

                          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday June 03 2023, @01:41AM (#1309506)

                          Lately, boomers take the cake, though their children didn't fall too far from the tree... After that the kids got a raw enough deal in young adulthood that they really do think differently, on average.

                          Boomers parents were the last previous selfless generation.

                          --
                          🌻🌻 [google.com]
                          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 03 2023, @05:00AM (2 children)

                            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 03 2023, @05:00AM (#1309520) Journal

                            Boomers parents were the last previous selfless generation.

                            A "selfless" generation responsible for Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. For those keeping score, those two programs are responsible for more than half [soylentnews.org] of the US's total liabilities. The me generation of the Boomer parents created monsters that threaten our future now. Of course, nobody else fixed those problems either. There's a lot of me generations out there.

                            My take on the whole thing is that there isn't some magic quantity that separates boomers from any other generation, and makes them allegedly more selfish. It's just mildly different life experiences. I'd look at the systems not the people. That's what creates the conflicts of interest and opportunities for generational greed.

                            • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 03 2023, @10:48AM (1 child)

                              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday June 03 2023, @10:48AM (#1309574)

                              >A "selfless" generation responsible for Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. For those keeping score, those two programs are responsible for more than half [soylentnews.org] of the US's total liabilities.

                              What is your major mental malfunction? That's the generation that gave back to their children0, set up the boomers to be able to give most of their children University educations, nearly all of their children good jobs, the generation that put the US on top of the world.

                              >created monsters that threaten our future now.

                              Oh, nevermind, you watch Fox News, don't you? Probably listen to conservative talk radio when you're in the car, too.

                              >I'd look at the systems not the people.

                              If you want to look at it that way, the systems do make the people, the circle goes round and round, the pendulum swings, etc.

                              If you rate "better" by who has the richest 0.5% of their population, then we keep very different score cards.

                              --
                              🌻🌻 [google.com]
                              • (Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Saturday June 03 2023, @12:14PM

                                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 03 2023, @12:14PM (#1309587) Journal

                                What is your major mental malfunction? That's the generation that gave back to their children0, set up the boomers to be able to give most of their children University educations, nearly all of their children good jobs, the generation that put the US on top of the world.

                                In other words, that's the generation that you allege created the me generation and of course, we still have that they're responsible for creating the greatest financial liabilities of the present US today. There is no mental malfunction on my side. Yours is a different matter. I'm pointing out the obvious that there is no generation that is notably selfless or selfish. They just were born at different times.

                                Oh, nevermind, you watch Fox News, don't you? Probably listen to conservative talk radio when you're in the car, too.

                                I don't do either. I haven't watched TV news in two decades and never listened to conservative talk radio. And if that were somehow true that the only people in the US interested in dealing with the greatest threats to the US's future listened to these things, then it would merely indicate that you probably should as well.

                                >I'd look at the systems not the people.

                                If you want to look at it that way, the systems do make the people, the circle goes round and round, the pendulum swings, etc.

                                Or we could do the headless chicken thing you have going on. I'm sure that would be productive.

                                If you rate "better" by who has the richest 0.5% of their population, then we keep very different score cards.

                                Everyone with a population over 200 has the richest 0.5% of their population. You're not even wrong.

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday June 01 2023, @01:53PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 01 2023, @01:53PM (#1309235) Journal

      Fusion's going to take too long to come on-line to be a serious answer. Perhaps if we'd seriously researched it starting a few decades ago rather than just treating it as a side project, but I don't know. A lot of the recent improvements are due to things like AI controlling the instability of the plasma and such, and that wouldn't have been possible earlier. (And it still may not pay out. It's a gamble.)

      We know we can do solar, wind, and fission (and a few others in special places). Those are what we should be building out right NOW. Also various forms of storing energy for reuse (I include potential energy methods in "storing energy for reuse"). For sources with large variation in production we should considerably overbuild, because storing the energy always has frictional losses. For methods that can't rapidly adjust to follow the load, we should invest in methods of storing excess energy.

      EVERY method of extracting energy is going to impact the system in some way. Prefer the ones that have smaller impact and less injurious impact, but don't consider an impact small just because it's widely distributed. (That was the mistake with CO2.)

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday June 01 2023, @08:37AM (7 children)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Thursday June 01 2023, @08:37AM (#1309183)

    Because I think that's been pretty fucking obvious to everybody for many years now, if not decades: if a system loses heat slower than it gets heats, it warms up. Duh...

    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday June 01 2023, @11:13AM (6 children)

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 01 2023, @11:13AM (#1309204) Journal

      So are you suggesting that the science behind it and what we might do to make things marginally better are not worth discussing? There is still much that we do not know, and much that we have learned since the 1970s.

      It is still a problem that we have to solve - even if we have put it off for 50 years or more. Refusing to acknowledge that it is a problem though isn't going to help us very much, IMO.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday June 01 2023, @11:16AM (5 children)

        by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Thursday June 01 2023, @11:16AM (#1309205)

        I fully acknowledge the problem. I'm just saying... "Earth's budget not in balance"? Why, thanks Captain Obvious.

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 01 2023, @02:59PM (3 children)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday June 01 2023, @02:59PM (#1309246)

          Captain Obvious doesn't seem to get enough air-play in many of our major media channels, judging by how slightly less than half of US voters vote.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2023, @04:10PM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2023, @04:10PM (#1309259)

            Careful what you wish for. More than half of the US population eligible to vote are idiots, probably clinically so. I don't want them anywhere near a voting booth.
            I know we have a prohibition on poll taxes and all, but maybe a "you have to pass this exam before you get a ballot" wouldn't be too bad, if only it could be implemented properly. Unfortunately, the questions you have to answer "correctly" would probably be hijacked to exclude those who actually are smart enough, in favor of those who are not...

            Probable questions:

            - Which one is your favorite kardashian and where do they prefer to shop?
            - How many gallons of cheap red wine does an average "Real American Housewife" drink per month? 1 / 2 / 10?
            - Complete the sentence: BASEBAL_ is the only True American's favorite pass-time.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2023, @08:58PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2023, @08:58PM (#1309321)

              - How many years was Margaret Thatcher Prime Minister?

              A) 900 years

              B) 3,000 years

              C) 11 years.

            • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday June 02 2023, @09:46AM

              by isostatic (365) on Friday June 02 2023, @09:46AM (#1309409) Journal

              > Which one is your favorite kardashian and where do they prefer to shop?

              Garak, and Quarks I'd guess

              > Complete the sentence: BASEBAL_ is the only True American's favorite pass-time.

              Well that's a given, Baseball, its not linear, you can bunt and do a fancy dan. You might hit the ball, you might swing and miss, and with each new consequence, the game begins to take shape.

        • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Thursday June 01 2023, @03:16PM

          by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 01 2023, @03:16PM (#1309249)

          Someone will be along soon, to suggest raising the Earth's debt ceiling.

(1)