Paper; Global Warming "The Biggest Science Scandal Ever"

CharminTide said:

Surely you don't actually believe it requires an authoritarian government to phase a product from the marketplace.

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CajunCrimson said:

I thought the blue was not necessary

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CajunCrimson said:

Well, I'd tell the young people of today, don't save money -- because we only have about 30 or 40 years max --- according to this chart. Hell, even the Optimistic Scenario has us all dying in 83 years.....2 degrees warming since 1980 or so -- would be enough to tip over Guam, put Miami under water, AND kill the Polar Bears.

I'd say -- don't save a dime -- blow it all.....have a party..... We are all doomed.

We control less than 5% of the World's Population -- the other 95% pretty much do what they want.

If we want to save the planet -- we must let Donald take over the world.....it's the only way.

Side note -- the chart says the data was from 2013 -- yet it says "Present Day" is 2016....what gives?

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CajunCrimson said:

-- that, as China, India, et al continue to expand globally, that we have less and less control over their carbon footprint.....

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2003TIDE said:

Maybe that is a good thing at least in regards to China. They are actually investing in the future unlike our obsession with coal and oil. In 20 years, they will be the leaders in green tech and we will have to buy it from them.

China looks to ban petrol cars

China to invest $360 billon in renewable energy by 2020

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AUDub said:

That's part of why backing out if Paris is so frustrating. We've ceded control of a very lucrative industry.

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CharminTide said:

Wasn't sure if you were entirely joking, tbh, but that response wasn't directed towards you.

A common sentiment I've seen here and elsewhere is that the projection looks bad no matter what actions we take to mitigate the damage, so why even try? Or, China won't do anything to mitigate their own emissions (obviously incorrect), so why should we? It's a craven, defeatist, and illogical attitude, typically rooted in selfish concerns.

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AUDub said:

That's part of why backing out if Paris is so frustrating. We've ceded control of a very lucrative industry.

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Illustrating the enormity of the challenge, the NEA repeated on Thursday that renewables will still only account for just 15 percent of overall energy consumption by 2020, equivalent to 580 million tonnes of coal.

More than half of the nation’s installed power capacity will still be fueled by coal over the same period.

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2003TIDE said:

Maybe that is a good thing at least in regards to China. They are actually investing in the future unlike our obsession with coal and oil. In 20 years, they will be the leaders in green tech and we will have to buy it from them.

China looks to ban petrol cars

China to invest $360 billon in renewable energy by 2020

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crimsonaudio said:

Climate change not as threatening to planet as previously thought, new research suggests

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Earth just sweated through the third hottest August and summer on record.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday the globe last month averaged 61.5 degrees (16.43 Celsius), which was a degree-and-a-half higher than the 20th century average, but behind 2016 and 2015.

The average temperature for June through August was 61.47 degrees (16.41 Celsius).

So far the year to date has edged out 2015 and is the second hottest January through August, averaging 58.88 degrees (14.88 Celsius), behind 2016.

Records go back to 1880.

NOAA climate scientist Jake Crouch says even though records weren't broken, it's been warmer than 99 percent of the other months and a sign of long-term climate change.

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crimsonaudio said:

Climate change not as threatening to planet as previously thought, new research suggests

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A recent paper about [e]mission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C essentially argues that it is still possible to follow an emission pathway that will give us a good chance of keeping warming below 1.5oC. More specifically, if we can keep total emissions from 2015 to below 200 – 250GtC (depending on what we do with regards to non-CO2 emissions) then we will have about a 66% chance of keeping warming to below 1.5oC.

Unfortunately, this has been interpreted in some circles as suggesting that we can relax a bit because we have more time than we had previously thought. This was mainly based on previous analyses suggesting that the carbon budget that would keep warming below 1.5oC was only about 50GtC (from 2015). Let’s be clear about something; we’re currently emitting 10GtC per year. Whether the budget is 50GtC, or 250GtC, we pretty much have to start reducing emissions now, and get them to zero as soon as we realistically can. Of course, if it is 250GtC, then that will be easier to achieve than if it is 50GtC, but it doesn’t really change what we should do, assuming that we do want to achieve this target. Personally, I think the correct framing is: if this study is correct, and if we keep total emissions from 2015 to below 200-250GtC, we might keep warming to below 1.5C.

However, I think there are some potential issues with this paper. One is that they’re assuming an 1861-1880 baseline from which they’re estimating the observed temperature change. There are arguments (here, for example) suggesting that to properly capture the warming we should use an earlier baseline, which would lead to us having warmed more than if we use a late 1800s baseline. Hence, we may already be closer to 1.5oC than this paper suggests.

Another potential issue is that a key factor in their analysis is a potential mismatch between the model warming and the observed warming (see figure on right). Their argument is that after emitting as much as we have to date, the models predict more warming than has been observed. Hence, the models are predicting a smaller carbon budget than may actually be the case.

One problem is that there have been a number of recent studies reconciling the supposed model/observation discrepancy. These include updating the forcings and doing a proper apples-to-apples comparison by using blended temperatures (i.e., climate model output is typically air temperatures, while observations are a combination of air and sea-surface). So, there may not even be as big a discrepancy as suggested in this paper.

However, even if there is a discrepancy between the models and the observations, we still don’t know if this is because the models are really running too hot, or because some internal process (the pattern of sea surface warming, for example) has suppressed some of the forced warming. If the latter, then we’d expect the observations to catch up to the models at some point in the future and, hence, the initial model estimates for the carbon budget may not be too low.

So, I would certainly be cautious about assuming that the carbon budget is indeed as high as suggested by this new paper. However, in some sense it doesn’t make a great deal of difference. Even if the carbon budget that would give us a 66% chance of staying below 1.5C is 250GtC (or ~400GtC for 2oC) achieving this is going to require pretty drastic emission cuts starting as soon as we possibly can. It certainly doesn’t, in my view, imply that we can now sit back, relax, and wait a few more years before seriously thinking about how to reduce our emissions.

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Bamaro said:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday the globe last month averaged 61.5 degrees (16.43 Celsius), which was a degree-and-a-half higher than the 20th century average, but behind 2016 and 2015.

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