Resisting Climate Hysteria

[Smurf1976]

Also wondering why you suggest religion is getting in the way of effective recognition and action on the problem ?

Two reasons:

1. Not all but some religion biases toward population growth which is part of the problem. Every extra person is an added demand on the planet's resources.

2. "God put coal on this earth for man to burn it" type thinking is cited as a defence by quite a few. That one goes back a long way, I recall hearing that one decades ago.

I've no particular agenda against religion per se, though I'll declare my bias in that I'm very firmly in the atheist camp, but if religion opposes birth control or it says God gave us coal so we could burn it then that's adding to the problem.

As for my dislike of governments, well I'll explain it this way:

‘Held hostage’: Residents brace for $1000 monthly bills in gas monopoly

Marong residents fear a cold winter will leave them struggling to pay the bills. Victoria’s energy compare website estimates residents in the town will pay double what their counterparts in suburban Melbourne pay a month.

www.theage.com.au

Now a few things must be pointed out, namely that gas supply to Marong was only installed in 2018 due to a Victorian Government decision, a decision made by politicians, to spend $100 million of taxpayer funds extending natural gas to various towns where its supply was uneconomic.

2018! And it was always uneconomic hence why it hadn't been done sooner.

So 40 years after the alarm was sounded about gas supplies falling short and when field decline had already commenced and more than 30 years after the availability of practical and economic heat pumps for water and space heating and the general public becoming aware of the climate change issue.

There's simply no excuse for this situation. Using taxpayer funds to install a known uneconomic gas supply decades after the alarm was raised that society needed to move in the opposite direction. Then, to make matters even worse, the Victorian government has until recently all but forced anyone building a new home to connect to gas where it's available such that even rational people aware of the problem had little choice other than to go along with it.

That's why politicians ought be kept right away from all this. They ignore the advice they're given if it conflicts with their preconceived ideas then when it goes horribly wrong just shrug their shoulders and leave the people to cop it.

The only rational case to be trucking gas to Marong was if some factory or mine needed it but in practice neither exists.

 

[rederob]

Funny how when the weather is hot or really wet, its climate change, but when the weather is cold, or does not support the climate models its just weather.

I do not confuse the two concepts.
AGW - the climate component - leads to increased atmospheric energy content that can cause extreme weather events at any end of the spectrum.
The undeniable fact is that annual global temperatures continue to rise and nobody is showing how that will change without GHG levels being reduced.

And others have consistently pointed out that the CO2 molecules have no idea where they came from.

Yes we do, and that's why we are able to determine that CO2 levels will continue to increase, let alone work out why they got so high to begin with.

Whether its from a rich country or a poor country it is immaterial.

No it's not. Where do you get your ideas from?
The ability to reduce CO2 is what is at issue. When we see just 1% of the population accounting for 15% of emissions we know where the problem lies. Indeed, that metric has been in place for several centuries.

If CO2 is as climatically existentialist as you and others maintain, it matters little where it is from.

Completely inane comment that defies the statistical evidence that has been expounded by the IPCC for over 3 decades.
If the 10% cohort of higher income earners reduced their CO2 footprint to that of middle income earners we would reduce CO2 emissions by more than one third.

 

[basilio]

I do not confuse the two concepts.
AGW - the climate component - leads to increased atmospheric energy content that can cause extreme weather events at any end of the spectrum.
The undeniable fact is that annual global temperatures continue to rise and nobody is showing how that will change without GHG levels being reduced.

Yes we do, and that's why we are able to determine that CO2 levels will continue to increase, let alone work out why they got so high to begin with.

No it's not. Where do you get your ideas from?
The ability to reduce CO2 is what is at issue. When we see just 1% of the population accounting for 15% of emissions we know where the problem lies. Indeed, that metric has been in place for several centuries.

Completely inane comment that defies the statistical evidence that has been expounded by the IPCC for over 3 decades.
If the 10% cohort of higher income earners reduced their CO2 footprint to that of middle income earners we would reduce CO2 emissions by more than one third.

An excellent succinct analysis Redrob. It factually and logically undermines the tropes being run around about who has been/is responsible for the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Nice one

 

[basilio]

That website on global CO2 emissions is invaluable. An excellent overview of where we are, how we got here and the role of various nations in contributing to the climate change crisis we are facing.

This section caught my eye.

Global inequalities by production​

There are two parameters that determine our collective carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions: the number of people, and quantity emitted per person. We either talk about total annual or per capita emissions. They tell very different stories and this often results in confrontation over who can really make an impact: rich countries with high per capita emissions, or those with a large population.

To help us understand the global distribution of per capita emissions and population, we have visualized global CO2 emissions by (1) World Bank income group and (2) by world region.

The world’s total CO2 emissions9 are shown on the basis of two axes: the height of the bar (y-axis) is the average per capita CO2 emissions and the length of the box (x-axis) is the total population. Since total emissions are equal to per capita emissions multiplied by the number of people, the area of each box represents total emissions.10

​

Emissions by country’s income​

When aggregated in terms of income, we see in the visualization that the richest half (high and upper-middle income countries) emit 86 percent of global CO2 emissions. The bottom half (low and lower-middle income) only 14%. The very poorest countries (home to 9 percent of the global population) are responsible for just 0.5 percent. This provides a strong indication of the relative sensitivity of global emissions to income versus population. Even several billion additional people in low-income countries — where fertility rates and population growth is already highest — would leave global emissions almost unchanged. 3 or 4 billion low income individuals would only account for a few percent of global CO2. At the other end of the distribution however, adding only one billion high income individuals would increase global emissions by almost one-third.11

Note here that the summary by income is on the basis of country income groupings, rather than that of individuals. For example, ‘low income’ is the total emissions of all countries defined as low income, rather than the lowest income individuals in the world. These figures therefore don’t take account of inequalities in emissions within countries. It’s estimated that within-country inequalities in emissions can be as large as those between countries.12

COâ emissions

How much COâ does the world emit? Which countries emit the most?

ourworldindata.org

 

[basilio]

Again from World in Data. An excellent source of information (particularly when its not cheery picked to within a micron of its life . )

Putting death rates from energy in perspective​

Looking at deaths per terawatt-hour can seem abstract. Let’s try to put it in perspective.

Let’s consider how many deaths each source would cause for an average town of 150,000 people in the European Union, which – as I’ve said before – consumes one terawatt-hour of electricity per year. Let’s call this town ‘Euroville’.

If Euroville was completely powered by coal we’d expect at least 25 people to die prematurely every year from it. Most of these people would die from air pollution.

This is how a coal-powered Euroville would compare with towns powered entirely by each energy source:

• Coal: 25 people would die prematurely every year;
• Oil: 18 people would die prematurely every year;
• Gas: 3 people would die prematurely every year;
• Hydropower: In an average year 1 person would die;
• ( This rate is almost completely dominated by one event: the Banqiao Dam Failure in China in 1975. It killed approximately 171,000 people.)
• Wind: In an average year nobody would die. A death rate of 0.04 deaths per terawatt-hour means every 25 years a single person would die;
• Nuclear: In an average year nobody would die – only every 33 years would someone die.
• Solar: In an average year nobody would die – only every 50 years would someone die.

Nuclear Energy

Explore global data on nuclear energy production, and the safety of nuclear technologies.

ourworldindata.org

 

[basilio]

Again from that World in Data report

The safest energy sources are also the cleanest​

The good news is that there is no trade-off between the safest sources of energy in the short term, and the least damaging for the climate in the long term. They are one and the same, as the chart below shows.

In the chart, on the left-hand side, we have the same comparison of death rates from accidents and air pollution that we just looked at. On the right, we have the amount of greenhouse gas that are emitted per unit of electricity production.

These are not just the emissions from the burning of fuels, but also from the mining, transportation and maintenance over a power plant’s lifetime.5

Coal, again, is the dirtiest fuel. It emits much more greenhouse gases than other sources – hundreds of times more than nuclear, solar, and wind.

Oil and gas are also much worse than nuclear and renewables, but to a lesser extent than coal.

Unfortunately, the global electricity mix is still dominated by fossil fuels: coal, oil, and gas account for around 60%. If we want to stop climate change we have a great opportunity in front of us: we can transition away from them to nuclear and renewables, and also reduce deaths from accidents and air pollution as a side effect.6

This transition will not only protect future generations, but it will also come with huge health benefits for the current one.

Nuclear Energy

Explore global data on nuclear energy production, and the safety of nuclear technologies.

ourworldindata.org

 

[wayneL]

Nuclear, and hydro etc if doable, would seem to be a no brainer then.

If Sweden with their small population can do it, why not us?

 

[Smurf1976]

On the question of safety and emissions of different energy sources, I'll add:

Oil & Gas - any assessment of the death toll should, if the intent is to be accurate, include the assorted wars and human rights violations it causes and funds. The Ukraine war, for example, almost certainly wouldn't be occurring if not for oil and gas sending an outright fortune to Russia's government. Plenty more examples like that globally - oil's probably worse than coal if we add them all up and gas would increase greatly compared to the figure on the chart too.

Hydro - emissions are hugely variable depending on what's under the reservoir. The details aren't public so I won't name them but suffice to say studies of existing hydro and other reservoirs in Australia found truly massive variation in between them after adjusting for scale. On the safety side, as noted pretty much the entire global death toll relates to a single dam failing on account of inferior design - take that out and its record improves dramatically.

 

[Smurf1976]

Nuclear, and hydro etc if doable, would seem to be a no brainer then.

At the global level fully agree.

In the Australian context if we want it to work then it's doable with one or the other, we don't need both, and given existing expertise and lower cost hydro has the advantage. Use it to firm VRE and it all works.

Nuclear works, it's just expensive and in the Australian context there are cheaper alternatives so why waste money?

 

[mullokintyre]

The following Extract ( from Science for climate should anyomne care to read the whole thing has some interesting observations as to why it might be prudent to be a tad wary of climate scientists and their models.

The big problem is , is this analysis any better that the squillions of others that hav come before him?

 

[rederob]

The following Extract ( from Science for climate should anyomne care to read the whole thing has some interesting observations as to why it might be prudent to be a tad wary of climate scientists and their models.

There is a reason why papers like this don't get traction and that's because they fail to explain the centuries continuing cause of increased atmospheric energy.

The big problem is , is this analysis any better that the squillions of others that hav come before him?

The big problem is why this paper cannot get peer review.
That's because it's pseudoscience.

 

[basilio]

The following Extract ( from Science for climate should anyomne care to read the whole thing has some interesting observations as to why it might be prudent to be a tad wary of climate scientists and their models.
View attachment 159094The big problem is , is this analysis any better that the squillions of others that hav come before him?

That was some complex piece of "science" .

Was it somehow meant to explain that the unprecedented levels of global warming were due to anything else except the huge increase in GG ? I gathered that from the first sentence which ignored increasing GG as major impacts on climate in favour of a range of our more esoteric items.

As RedRob said its pseudo science. There are well known and agreed long term effects on Earths Climate. Richard mentions some. These are incorporated into Climate scientists work. But long story short Mick, the biggest current impact on our climate, massive human produced CO2, is the one issue Mr Mackey studiously refuses to acknowledge. That is why it is not a credible piece of work. Perhaps most significantly nothing he says explains the rapid increase in temperatures in terms of the models he wants to use.

 

[mullokintyre]

Ah, the climate alarmists twins.
Can't put up an argument

There is a reason why papers like this don't get traction and that's because they fail to explain the centuries continuing cause of increased atmospheric energy.

As usual, no evidence put forward about the level of traction or otherwise.
The paper was only accepted on May 15th, but you have already been able to determine it has gained no traction.
And why did it it have to explain the the centuries of continuing increased atmospheric energy, its just another of your red herrings to make it look like you know what you are talking about.

The big problem is why this paper cannot get peer review.
That's because it's pseudoscience.

And again, how do you know whether this paper cannot get peer review or not?
Any shred of evidence, or just another bit of pompous BS?
You are just as bad as the RWNJ who say climate change does not exist, just an extremist on the other end of the spectrum.
Mick

 

[mullokintyre]

That was some complex piece of "science" .

Was it somehow meant to explain that the unprecedented levels of global warming were due to anything else except the huge increase in GG ? I gathered that from the first sentence which ignored increasing GG as major impacts on climate in favour of a range of our more esoteric items.

No Bas, did you read any of it?
It highlighted how none of the IPCC models take this cycle into account.
As for the unprecedented part, that is plain BS.
I presume you meant unprecedented in modern times, aka last 250 years, because we mostly only have proxies to work out what the global warming nay have been beyond that era.
You can gather what you like, I can't stop you gathering, but don't put words into my mouth.

As RedRob said its pseudo science. There are well known and agreed long term effects on Earths Climate. Richard mentions some. These are incorporated into Climate scientists work. But long story short Mick, the biggest current impact on our climate, massive human produced CO2, is the one issue Mr Mackey studiously refuses to acknowledge. That is why it is not a credible piece of work. Perhaps most significantly nothing he says explains the rapid increase in temperatures in terms of the models he wants to use.

If you want to pal up with Rederob, thats fine,.
Problem is , like him, you criticise the paper because of what you reckon it does not say, not because of what it does say.
It highlights a problem that many see with the IPCC and modelling, they cannot possibly put in all the variables that go into climate.
And your statement about the importance level of the impact of massive amounts of CO2 cannot be supported as "science".
Models are not proof, never have been , never will be.
They may turn out to be correct, plenty of people like yourself believe they do, but just as the people who believe they do not cannot back it up as scientific proof, neither can you.
I am skeptical of everything, but even more so of evangelists who cannot see anything other than supporting arguments.
Mick

 

[mullokintyre]

Perhaps most significantly nothing he says explains the rapid increase in temperatures in terms of the models he wants to use.

Just a bit further on the rapid increases in temperature.
If you keep fiddling with past temperature records, is quite easy to make the past and present climate whatever you want it to be.
Locally, the BOM has never been able to justify why it altered past records that cooled OZ historically ( see Evil Murdoch press ).
They have adjusted the ACORN-SAT temperature records three times in the past nine years, each time saying that recent thermometers were "undereading" the temps, but the much aerlier thermometers were "over reading".

Researcher and journalist, Chris Gillham, said the impact of adjustments to ACORN versions 1, 2, 2.1 and 2.2 was to cool the past and warm the present. He said the latest changes were “not overall large changes, but changes nevertheless”.

The bureau declined to comment on independent analysis of data it had published. But in an addition to its ACORN website page, it said adjustments had been made to temperature records at 25 sites.

And it is not just the BOM.
The UK met office have adjusted the CET temps (again), and surprise surprise, the adjustments go up for most recent history, and down for the earlier history.
From WUWT

Last year the Met Office made some changes to the CET record. I did not pay too much attention at the time, as the changes appeared to be minor.

However, when I was writing my review of 2022, I noticed that whereas the summer of 1995 had been 0.1C warmer than 2018’s in the original Version 1, they had changed places in Version 2. To be precise, the summer of 1995 had been cooled by 0.07C, whilst 2018’s had been warmed by 0.13C.

I have now got around to analysing the full dataset, and the chart below shows the annual adjustments made:

Positive numbers are where V2 temperatures are higher than V1.

As you can see, for most of the record up to 1970, the adjustments are small and with no obvious pattern, ups and downs offsetting each other.

Then quite suddenly the years from 1970 to 2003 have been cooled quite markedly. Then just as abruptly the temperatures have been consistently adjusted up again.

No doubt the Met Office will gloss over this with some excuse, but unfortunately it is part of a much wider tampering with temperatures globally – and the tampering is always one way,cooling the past and heating the present.

Apart from the subtle changes to overall trends, this tampering changes the comparison with recent temperatures and those in the 1970s, 80s and 90’s. The summers of 1995 and 2018 are a classic example. With 1995’s summer cooled by 0.07C, it now only ties with last summer, instead of being hotter.

And although we don’t have a V1 for last summer, it is safe to assume that V2 temperatures were inflated in a similar way to 2018, which was adjusted upwards by 0.13C.

This all rather puts the Met Office in a bad light.

And NASA have also been in on the data altering act.
From Real Climate Science

The adjustments are being made by cooling the past nearly 1.5F and warming the present more than 0.5F.

The adjustments from NOAA are done in two steps. The first adjustment is called the Time Of Observation Bias (TOB) adjustment, and the second is called the Final adjustment. You can see the magnitude of the adjustments in the graph below. The TOB adjustment accounts for about 0.6F, and the Final adjustment changes the data nearly 2.0F. The TOB adjustment has a fair amount of documentation, but the final adjustment is larger and not well documented.
These are the adjustments being made to the monthly maximum temperature record. The measured temperature data shows 2019 as the coolest on record, but the adjusted data shows 2019 as one of the warmest.

it is easy to create climate alarmism if you keep fiddling with the records.
I am not denying that the earth is going through climate change, I am not denying that the earth is warming.
What i have problems with is the extremism exhibited by many.
Which is what this thread is titled.
Mick

 

[rederob]

Ah, the climate alarmists twins.
Can't put up an argument

As usual, no evidence put forward about the level of traction or otherwise.
The paper was only accepted on May 15th, but you have already been able to determine it has gained no traction.

If there was any scientific interest it would have been noted by now.
But that's not really the point. It was not published in a recognised scientific journal because it would not pass any test of scientific scrutiny.

And why did it it have to explain the the centuries of continuing increased atmospheric energy, its just another of your red herrings to make it look like you know what you are talking about.

Because that's what climate change is about.

And again, how do you know whether this paper cannot get peer review or not?

Because I read climate science and know there is nothing in the paper that warrants any interest.
From the get go readers are being asked to believe that a few milliseconds of changed rotational speed can effect a measurable change in global atmospheric temperature, and that this change is cyclically regular. For a start, the last century's temperature record does not support the paper.
Furthermore, according to the hypothesis, why have temperatures steadily risen over the past century? Surely there should have been relative stasis, and you could have worked this out from figure 7. Then there is the maths needed to show how and where energy transfers have led to the climate we are experiencing, and there is none.
The other significant failure of the paper is that it cherrypicks time intervals. To be credible the paper needed to use all available data all the time given its hypothesis is premised on decadal variations. And there's further cherrypicks such as from 2013 where at p.139 we get this quote:

"The rate of global mean warming has been lower over the past decade than previously." ​

Given it's 2023 and ten years later, why has he omitted the fact that the rate of change has since then been considerably faster?

The bottom line is that without an explanatory mechanism that is readily apparent and quantifiable Mackey's paper is only good for entertainment.

 

[rederob]

Just a bit further on the rapid increases in temperature.
If you keep fiddling with past temperature records, is quite easy to make the past and present climate whatever you want it to be.

No you can't as you have to deny the many recognised series of temperature that are used. They differ marginally over time because they use different methodologies to derive global temperatures from real world data. These methodologies are all explained in great detail, and can be improved over time as a better understanding of the range of data and how and where it was derived comes to hand.

it is easy to create climate alarmism if you keep fiddling with the records.

Except the real world temperature data does not change and the trend is undeniable irrespective of which methodology you choose.

I am not denying that the earth is going through climate change, I am not denying that the earth is warming.
What i have problems with is the extremism exhibited by many.

I don't know what your definition of extremism is, but smarter people than most of us have spent their entire careers coming to grips with the effects of climate on the planet, and laid that out in writing, based on a range of settings.
You need to read the IPCC Reports that show the likely effects of continuing temperature increases. They are dire if GHG emissions are not just curbed, but turned around.

 

[rederob]

It highlighted how none of the IPCC models take this cycle into account.

You cannot account for something that is neither apparent nor quantified!

As for the unprecedented part, that is plain BS.
I presume you meant unprecedented in modern times, aka last 250 years, because we mostly only have proxies to work out what the global warming nay have been beyond that era.

Proxies are not perfect, but all credible ones show that within the past 1000 years the present rate of change is unprecedented for the northern hemisphere:

Problem is , like him, you criticise the paper because of what you reckon it does not say, not because of what it does say.

Given science is supposed to be explanatory, and this paper offers none, what makes it credible

It highlights a problem that many see with the IPCC and modelling, they cannot possibly put in all the variables that go into climate.

But the models actually do put in all the variables that are known to have a quantifiable effect on climate. However, climate change is not linear so temperature trajectories can skew higher or lower, but maintain an overall trend based on the chosen settings.

And your statement about the importance level of the impact of massive amounts of CO2 cannot be supported as "science".

That's a false claim, and every credible climate scientist can prove how CO2 affects temperature. Where is your evidence that the the well understood physics of additional CO2 in our atmosphere is different?

They may turn out to be correct, plenty of people like yourself believe they do, but just as the people who believe they do not cannot back it up as scientific proof, neither can you.

They have accurately predicted the trend for over 35 years:

Hansen produced the above chart - based on his modelling - in 1988. How much more evidence do you need to prove the ability of models to show what outcomes are likely?

 

[Sean K]

That website on global CO2 emissions is invaluable. An excellent overview of where we are, how we got here and the role of various nations in contributing to the climate change crisis we are facing.

This section caught my eye.

Global inequalities by production​

There are two parameters that determine our collective carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions: the number of people, and quantity emitted per person. We either talk about total annual or per capita emissions. They tell very different stories and this often results in confrontation over who can really make an impact: rich countries with high per capita emissions, or those with a large population.

To help us understand the global distribution of per capita emissions and population, we have visualized global CO2 emissions by (1) World Bank income group and (2) by world region.

The world’s total CO2 emissions9 are shown on the basis of two axes: the height of the bar (y-axis) is the average per capita CO2 emissions and the length of the box (x-axis) is the total population. Since total emissions are equal to per capita emissions multiplied by the number of people, the area of each box represents total emissions.10

​

Emissions by country’s income​

When aggregated in terms of income, we see in the visualization that the richest half (high and upper-middle income countries) emit 86 percent of global CO2 emissions. The bottom half (low and lower-middle income) only 14%. The very poorest countries (home to 9 percent of the global population) are responsible for just 0.5 percent. This provides a strong indication of the relative sensitivity of global emissions to income versus population. Even several billion additional people in low-income countries — where fertility rates and population growth is already highest — would leave global emissions almost unchanged. 3 or 4 billion low income individuals would only account for a few percent of global CO2. At the other end of the distribution however, adding only one billion high income individuals would increase global emissions by almost one-third.11

Note here that the summary by income is on the basis of country income groupings, rather than that of individuals. For example, ‘low income’ is the total emissions of all countries defined as low income, rather than the lowest income individuals in the world. These figures therefore don’t take account of inequalities in emissions within countries. It’s estimated that within-country inequalities in emissions can be as large as those between countries.12

COâ emissions

How much COâ does the world emit? Which countries emit the most?

ourworldindata.org

The per capita argument and any similar doesn't wash, particularly for Australia and our contributions to global warming. The hypothesis is CO2 up, temp up. Not CO2 per capita up, temp up. The atmosphere doesn't care where the CO2 comes from, how much soot is in the air, what fertility rates are or how poor a country is, it's supposed to be just the global mix of GHGs in the troposphere. People arguing the per capita case clearly have an agenda that's not related to preventing the oceans from boiling.

 

[basilio]

The per capita argument and any similar doesn't wash, particularly for Australia and our contributions to global warming. The hypothesis is CO2 up, temp up. Not CO2 per capita up, temp up. The atmosphere doesn't care where the CO2 comes from, how much soot is in the air, what fertility rates are or how poor a country is, it's supposed to be just the global mix of GHGs in the troposphere. People arguing the per capita case clearly have an agenda that's not related to preventing the oceans from boiling.

The argument is to do with identifying where the most CO2 is being generated and in that case trying to identify how to reduce the carbon footprint of those major emitters.

So take Australia for example. If we were able to move to a totally renewable energy base for our industrial, commercial and domestic energy needs our CO2 emissions would drastically reduce. No coal, little gas, little petrol or diesel. Our per capita CO2 emissions would be a fraction of their current amount.

If we were able to produce green steel another big cut. Same with Cement production.

On top of that a massive program to sequester carbon in soils via , say biochar, re vegetation, regenerative agriculture would enable a reversal of CO2 production.

What are the sources of Australia’s greenhouse gases?

About 90 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions comes from the burning of fossil fuels, and most of Australia’s emissions also comes from energy production, followed by transport, agriculture, and industrial processes.

www.csiro.au

Australia can stop greenhouse gas emissions by 2050: here's how

To avoid dangerous climate change there is a finite amount of greenhouse gas emissions, in particular CO2, that we can add to the atmosphere - our global carbon budget. If we use our budget wisely, we have until about 2050 to transition to zero net emissions. But how do we get there?

theconversation.com