Global Climate Change Science News

[Animavore]

Excellent take down of John Christy's and other denialists' "satellite temperature argument", mostly used to try obscure the results from other data sets which show a clear rise in global temperature.

How should one make graphics that appropriately compare models and observations? There are basically two key points (explored in more depth here) – comparisons should be ‘like with like’, and different sources of uncertainty should be clear, whether uncertainties are related to ‘weather’ and/or structural uncertainty in either the observations or the models. There are unfortunately many graphics going around that fail to do this properly, and some prominent ones are associated with satellite temperatures made by John Christy. This post explains exactly why these graphs are misleading and how more honest presentations of the comparison allow for more informed discussions of why and how these records are changing and differ from models.

The dominant contrarian talking point of the last few years has concerned the ‘satellite’ temperatures. The almost exclusive use of this topic, for instance, in recent congressional hearings, coincides (by total coincidence I’m sure) with the stubborn insistence of the surface temperature data sets, ocean heat content, sea ice trends, sea levels, etc. to show continued effects of warming and break historical records. To hear some tell it, one might get the impression that there are no other relevant data sets, and that the satellites are a uniquely perfect measure of the earth’s climate state. Neither of these things are, however, true.

cont; http://www.skepticalscience.com/compari ... lites.html

[Animavore]

Global temperatures for 2016 kinda off the charts.



Another chart with the same data set.

[Animavore]

Coal made its best case against climate change, and lost.

Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private sector coal company (now bankrupt), recently faced off against environmental groups in a Minnesota court case. The case was to determine whether the State of Minnesota should continue using its exceptionally low established estimates of the ‘social cost of carbon’, or whether it should adopt higher federal estimates.

The social cost of carbon is an estimate of how much the damages from carbon pollution cost society via climate change damages. In theory, it represents how much the price of fossil fuels should increase to reflect their true costs.

The coal company called forth witnesses that represented the fringe 2–3% of experts who reject the consensus that humans are the primary cause of global warming, including Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen, while their opposition invited witnesses like Andrew Dessler and John Abraham who represent the 97% expert consensus.

John Abraham previously summarized the proceedings and ruling in favor of the higher carbon cost estimates, but it’s worth delving into some of the details of the climate science and economics arguments to see why the judge ruled against the coal company and its contrarian witnesses. The losing case from the coal company witnesses (rebutted by John Abraham here and here) can be summarized as follows:

Good.

Read in full: http://www.skepticalscience.com/coal-ma ... -lost.html

[Animavore]

Really good article on ocean anoxia.

How warming temperatures and ocean acidification are recreating an ancient killer
Ocean anoxia – widespread oxygen-starved dead zones in oceans - did the killing of ocean life in several mass extinctions of Earth’s past. Anoxia went hand-in-hand with CO2 emissions, rising global temperatures, and (often) ocean acidification, a situation which today’s climate change is recreating with uncanny likeness.

Even in normal, healthy oceans, dissolved oxygen levels in middle-depth waters (between about 500 to 1,500 meters) are low enough to discourage most higher animals. This makes those depths an important refuge for krill and other prey species to hang out during the day, safe from visual predators. In the dark of night, these creatures venture nearer the surface to graze on plankton, an impressive commute given their small size.

There are places around the world where these oxygen minimum zones are much shallower than elsewhere, and there are also coasts where polluted river water delivers excess nutrients into the sea, causing coastal dead zones, for example in the Gulf of Mexico. But these pale in comparison to times in Earth’s past when ocean anoxia became so intense and widespread that it contributed to the permanent annihilation of many marine species. But if we look at the conditions that led to past “Ocean Anoxic Events” (OAEs), and compare them to our altered climate in the coming decades, the parallels are sobering.

Read in full: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Ocean_O ... pping.html

[Animavore]

Interesting article which show contrarian statements about climate fail a blind test.

In a new study published in Global Environmental Change, a team led by Stephen Lewandowsky tested the accuracy of some popular myths and contrarian talking points sampled from climate denial blogs and other media outlets. The scientists searched the blogs for key words related to Arctic sea ice, glaciers, sea level rise, and temperature to identify the most popular arguments. Not surprisingly, they found some common myths:

"nearly two-thirds of all mentions of temperature on the three top contrarian blogs included a claim of “cooling”; and likewise more than a quarter of all mentions of arctic ice alluded to its “recovery”, and so on."

Using their search results, the authors put together language that was representative of the most common arguments made on the climate denial blogs about these subjects. To ensure that their example arguments accurately depicted contrarian claims and rhetorical techniques, they also consulted climate experts, who confirmed their representativeness. Interestingly, the climate experts identified many of the same mistakes that my colleagues and I found in our 2015 study attempting to replicate climate contrarian research (cherry picking data, for example).

The authors then used the same data and arguments as the contrarian blogs, but changed the climate variables to something related to economics, and presented them to economists and statisticians:

"For example, the [glaciers] scenario pairs the claim that “our country’s rural population is growing, not shrinking” with a figure that showed the change in population for numerous individual villages, akin to a figure depicting the mass balance of individual glaciers.

In addition, an alternative statement was constructed for each scenario that summarized the mainstream scientific interpretation of the climate data, again translated into economic or demographic terms (e.g., “almost all of the rural regions of the country are losing population”)."

http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate ... -test.html

So basically what they did was get common climate scenarios and then use that data to create scenarios more related to economics and statistics, like demographics. Using the data the economists and statisticians, who didn't know they were secretly looking at climate related data, overwhelmingly found that the data from climate scientists were more accurate than those from contrarians.

[cronus]

[cronus]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36765925

Climate change: Advisers warn of climate change domino effect

Climate change could have a domino effect on key infrastructure in the UK, government advisers have warned.
In a 2,000-page report, the Climate Change Committee says flooding will destroy bridges - wrecking electricity, gas and IT connections carried on them.
The committee also warns that poor farming means the most fertile soils will be badly degraded by mid-century.
And it says heat-related deaths among the elderly will triple by the 2050s as summer temperatures spiral.

The projections are based on the supposition that governments keep promises made at the Paris climate conference to cut emissions - a pledge that is in doubt.
The committee says if emissions are allowed to spiral, London summer temperatures could hit 48C (118F) in an extreme scenario, although the advisers say they don't expect that to happen.
The report from 80 authors is the most comprehensive yet on the potential impact of climate change on the UK.

(continued)

[pErvinalia]

This is all been known for years. No one gives a shit.

[Animavore]

Greenland Ice Melt Could Expose Hazardous Cold War Waste.


When the U.S. military abandoned Camp Century, a complex of tunnels dug into the ice of northwest Greenland, in the mid-1960s, they left behind thousands of tons of waste, including hazardous radioactive and chemical materials. They expected the detritus would be safely entombed in the ice sheet for tens of thousands of years, buried ever deeper under accumulating layers of snow and ice.
But a new study suggests that because of warming temperatures that are driving substantial melting of the ice, that material could be exposed much, much sooner—possibly even by the end of this century—posing a threat to vulnerable local ecosystems.
These remnants of the Cold War are also an example of an unanticipated political issue that could arise because of the effects of climate change, particularly as countries seek to establish a presence in the Arctic as warming makes it increasingly accessible.

The answer to that question (of climate change) comes down to the winner of the competition between accumulating snow (which is eventually packed down to become ice) and melt: In the decades since Camp Century was abandoned, falling snows have buried the site ever deeper. But because of rising temperatures, eventually that process is “going to stop and then reverse direction,” Colgan said. “You’re inevitably going to expose the site.”
Between 2007 and 2011, the Greenland Ice Sheet lost about 260 billion tons of ice per year, mostly due to melt. Even more ice loss is predicted as temperatures continue to rise due to the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
To gauge the threat of future melt at the Camp Century site, Colgan and his colleagues turned to climate models. They found that if greenhouse gases continue to be emitted at the pace they’re currently on, melt could outpace the accumulation of snow there as early as 2090. Their findings were published Aug. 4 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Meltwater, which percolates down through the top layers of compressed snow, could reach the site and its hazardous material even sooner.
Of particular worry are the PCBs thought to be buried there. These chemicals naturally accumulate in colder conditions, and can work their way up the food chain. There has already been clear bioaccumulation in the Arctic, with elevated levels found in native populations that eat seal and whale meat.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... war-waste/

[Brian Peacock]

Nuke it!



Oh, hang on...

[laklak]

From orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

[pErvinalia]

No one cares.

[DRSB]

The point of no return is there. Not the most reputable source but making references to reasonable ones:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne ... e-20150805

[Animavore]

A perfect example of how intellectually bankrupt deniers are.

[pErvinalia]

Damn, I was hoping the rest of the world didn't see that...