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Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformationGlobal warming is real and human-caused. It is leading to large-scale climate change. Under the guise of climate "skepticism", the public is bombarded with misinformation that casts doubt on the reality of human-caused global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming "skepticism". Our mission is simple: debunk climate misinformation by presenting peer-reviewed science and explaining the techniques of science denial, discourses of climate delay, and climate solutions denial. At a glance - Does CO2 always correlate with temperature?Posted on 19 March 2024 by John Mason, BaerbelWOn February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "Does CO2 always correlate with temperature (and if not, why not)?". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there. At a glanceIf you happen to be reading something about climate change in the popular media, be sure to keep an eye out for certain words. The one in this case is 'deceitful'. Why? Because it's an emotive word. It's a good sign that the writer is not a scientist but someone with a political axe to grind. The heat-trapping properties of carbon dioxide, water vapour and other greenhouse gases were identified over 160 years ago. After that, climate research continued unhindered for many decades. However, by the second half of the 20th century the seriousness of the threat of climate change was well-understood. That led in due course to the involvement of bodies such as the United Nations. Treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 followed. In response, the fossil fuels sector and their political and media associates, perceiving threats to profitability, turned climate science into a political football. With climate science thus politicised, the arena within which research and outreach were conducted had changed. This was no longer a quiet backwater. That's the historical context. Now we can get to the meat of the myth. The quote above this piece dates from September 2009. Apart from anything else, it's 14 years out of date now. Globally, the ten warmest years since 1880 have all occurred since the statement was made. According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the average global temperature has increased by 1.4° Celsius (2.5° Fahrenheit) since 1880. However, global temperature does not correlate exactly with CO2 emissions on a year in, year out basis.There are other well-understood factors that can warm or cool the climate over such short-term periods. You may have heard of El Nino and La Nina. These phenomena involve above- or below-average sea surface temperatures respectively, in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. Their effects are global. A strong El Nino can produce a massive global temperature-spike. Such very warm years once led to people making the claim of, "no warming since 1998". Briefly sounding plausible for a few years, it soon became self-evidently incorrect. Instead, the correct way to look at temperature trends is to examine them over multiple decades - 30 years is standard in climate science. So to answer the question, "where are we now?", one would look at the temperature record from 1992-2022. Doing so takes out the noise, the ups and downs due to El Nino, La Nina and other factors. And the trend is most certainly upwards. To the newcomer to climate science, it can be difficult to spot misinformation. However, opinion-pieces that accuse bodies such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of intentions like deceit should instantly ring alarm-bells. It is important to point out that the motive for such political misinformation is to spread confusion and doubt. The organisations behind it simply seek delaying any meaningful action. In kicking the can down the road, they try to deflect the pressure to get their own houses in order, and to hell with the consequences. Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "At a glance" section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above! Click for Further detailsThe U.S. has never produced more energy than it does todayPosted on 18 March 2024 by Guest AuthorThis is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Karin Kirk U.S. energy production is going gangbusters. Despite persistent false claims that the Biden administration is waging an “unprecedented assault” on American energy, the U.S. is producing energy at a pace never seen before and from a broad mix of sources and locations throughout the country. In fact, the data illustrates that we’re experiencing an unprecedented renaissance of American energy production and innovation. The chart below is interactive – hover over the lines to see the details. This graph shows primary energy production data from the Energy Information Administration. For fossil fuels, "primary energy production" is the energy content in the coal, oil, or gas that’s extracted. For nuclear and renewables, it’s the amount of electricity generated. Note that this is not the same as energy consumed; it’s simply the energy produced. The production of oil, methane gas (commonly called “natural” gas), and renewables is growing. Nuclear power is holding fairly steady, and the only source of energy that has declined significantly is coal. The largest sources of energy production in the U.S. are oil and gas. Extraction of these fuels began to surge around 2007 when the development of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, gave rise to the shale oil boom. Oil and gas production continues to set records, even while U.S. consumption of oil is declining and methane gas consumption is not increasing at anywhere near the rate of production. The end result is that the U.S. is exporting more of these fuels than ever. 2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #11Posted on 17 March 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom, John HartzA listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024.
Story of the weekThis week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and eventually wrap them up into this weekly compilation. This all started as a manual process where members from our team - especially John Hartz - scoured the internet looking for worthwhile articles to share on our Facebook page. To share that load, we also created a Google form via which articles could be submitted for the publication queue. As the submissions end up in a Google sheet, it is easy enough to use some sheet functions to build the post content for Facebook and elsewhere. It is also possible to build the underlying HTML-code needed for bullet lists items. Scouring the internet for articles and building this blog post was however still a more or less manual and somewhat time-consuming process. This is when Doug Bostrom had a few very good ideas:
Each of these steps leverages some aspect of the Google sheet, making everything fall into place nicely so that we can more efficiently identify and share articles we deem interesting. Obviously, there's also still the option to manually add items missed by the already wide-ranging RSS feeds! Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:Before March 10
March 10
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #11 2024Posted on 14 March 2024 by Doug Bostrom, Marc KodackOpen access notablesA Glimpse into the Future: The 2023 Ocean Temperature and Sea Ice Extremes in the Context of Longer-Term Climate Change, Kuhlbrodt et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society:
Mapping of sea ice concentration using the NASA NIMBUS 5 Electrically Scanning Microwave Radiometer data from 1972–1977, Kolbe et al., Earth System Science Data:
How far can low emission retrofit of terraced housing in Northern Ireland go?, James et al., Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability:
Living in the ‘Blue Zone’ of a sea-level rise inundation map: Community perceptions of coastal flooding in King Salmon, California, Richmond & Kunkel Kunkel, Climate Risk Management:
From this week's government/NGO section: Climate change opinion and recent presidential elections, Burgess et al., Center for Social and Environmental Futures, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder: The authors review patterns of climate change opinion and polarization and estimate the effect of climate change opinion on recent U.S. presidential elections. They found that climate change opinion has had a significant and growing effect on voting that favors the Democrats and is large enough to be pivotal to the outcomes of close elections. They project that climate change opinion probably cost Republicans the 2020 presidential election, all else being equal. The AI Threats to Climate Change, Climate Action Against Disinformation, Check My Adds, Friends of the Earth, Global Action Plan, Greenpeace, and Kairos: Silicon Valley and Wall Street love to hype artificial intelligence (AI). The more it’s used, they say, the more diseases we’ll cure, the fewer errors we’ll make—and the lower emissions will go. But there are two significant and immediate dangers posed by AI that are much less discussed: 1) the vast increase in energy and water consumption required by AI systems like ChatGPT; and 2) the threat of AI turbocharging disinformation—on a topic already rife with anti-science lies and funded by fossil fuel companies and their networks. 128 articles in 62 journals by 767 contributing authorsPhysical science of climate change, effects Albedo-Induced Global Warming Potential Following Disturbances in Global Temperate and Boreal Forests, Zhu et al., 10.2139/ssrn.4435283 The role of interdecadal climate oscillations in driving Arctic atmospheric river trends, Ma et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-024-45159-5 Cartoons: ‘At least I didn’t make things awkward’Posted on 13 March 2024 by Guest AuthorThis is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers from around the world say about their cars
Related: How to speak with your family and friends about environmental issues
At a glance - The albedo effect and global warmingPosted on 12 March 2024 by John Mason, BaerbelWOn February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "The albedo effect and global warming". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there. At a glanceWhat is albedo? It is an expression of how much sunshine is reflected by a surface. The word stems from the Latin for 'whiteness'. Albedo is expressed on a scale from 0 to 1, zero being a surface that absorbs everything and 1 being a surface that reflects everything. Most everyday surfaces lie somewhere in between. An easy way to think about albedo is the difference between wearing a white or a black shirt on a cloudless summer's day. The white shirt makes you feel more comfortable, whereas in the black one you'll cook. That difference is because paler surfaces reflect more sunshine whereas darker ones absorb a lot of it, heating you up. Solar energy reaching the top of our atmosphere hardly varies at all. How that energy interacts with the planet, though, does vary. This is because the reflectivity of surfaces can change. Arctic sea-ice provides an example of albedo-change. A late spring snowstorm covers the ice with a sparkly carpet of new snow. That pristine snow can reflect up to 90% of inbound sunshine. But during the summer it warms up and the new snow melts away. The remaining sea-ice has a tired, mucky look to it and can only reflect some 50% of incoming sunshine. It absorbs the rest and that absorbed energy helps the sea-ice to melt even more. If it melts totally, you are left with the dark surface of the ocean. That can only reflect around 6% of the incoming sunshine. That example shows that albedo-change is not a forcing. That's the first big mistake in this myth. Instead it is a very good example of a climate feedback process. It is occurring in response to an external climate forcing - the increased greenhouse effect caused by our carbon emissions. Due to that forcing, the Arctic is warming quickly and snow/ice coverage shows a long-term decrease. Less reflective surfaces become uncovered, leading to more absorption of sunshine and more energy goes into the system. It's a self-reinforcing process. If you look at satellite images of the planet, you will notice the clouds in weather-systems appear bright. Cloud-tops have a high albedo but it varies depending on the type of cloud. Wispy high clouds do not reflect as much incoming sunshine as do dense low-level cloud-decks. Since the early 2000s we have been able to measure the amount of energy reflected back to space through sophisticated instruments aboard satellites. Recently published data (2021) indicate planetary albedo, although highly variable, is showing an overall slow decrease. The main cause is thought to be warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean leading to less coverage of those reflective low-level cloud-decks, but it's early days yet. Albedo is an important cog in the climate gearbox. It appears to be in a long-term slow decline but varies a lot over shorter periods. That 'noise' makes it unscientific to cite shorter observation-periods. Conclusive climatological trend-statements are generally based on at least 30 years of observations, not the last half-decade. Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "At a glance" section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above! Click for Further detailsTrump election win could add 4bn tonnes to US emissions by 2030Posted on 11 March 2024 by Guest AuthorThis is a re-post from Carbon Brief A victory for Donald Trump in November’s presidential election could lead to an additional 4bn tonnes of US emissions by 2030 compared with Joe Biden’s plans, Carbon Brief analysis reveals. This extra 4bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) by 2030 would cause global climate damages worth more than $900bn, based on the latest US government valuations. For context, 4GtCO2e is equivalent to the combined annual emissions of the EU and Japan, or the combined annual total of the world’s 140 lowest-emitting countries. Put another way, the extra 4GtCO2e from a second Trump term would negate – twice over – all of the savings from deploying wind, solar and other clean technologies around the world over the past five years. If Trump secures a second term, the US would also very likely miss its global climate pledge by a wide margin, with emissions only falling to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030. The US’s current target under the Paris Agreement is to achieve a 50-52% reduction by 2030. Carbon Brief’s analysis is based on an aggregation of modelling by various US research groups. It highlights the significant impact of the Biden administration’s climate policies. This includes the Inflation Reduction Act – which Trump has pledged to reverse – along with several other policies. The findings are subject to uncertainty around economic growth, fuel and technology prices, the market response to incentives and the extent to which Trump is able to roll back Biden’s policies. The analysis might overstate the impact Trump could have on US emissions, if some of Biden’s policies prove hard to unpick – or if subnational climate action accelerates. Equally, it might understate Trump’s impact. For example, his pledge to “drill, baby, drill” is not included within the analysis and would likely raise US and global emissions further through the increased extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal. Also not included are the potential for Biden to add new climate policies if he wins a second term, nor the risk that some of his policies will be weakened, delayed or hit by legal challenges. Regardless of the precise impact, a second Trump term that successfully dismantles Biden’s climate legacy would likely end any global hopes of keeping global warming below 1.5C.
2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #10Posted on 10 March 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug BostromA listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 3, 2024 thru Sat, March 9, 2024.
Story(s) of the weekTwo stories on one topic inexorably lead to a third story. Fury after Exxon chief says public to blame for climate failures in The Guardian provides straight journalistic coverage of Exxon CEO Darren Woods' remarkable implication that consumers are too stupid to understand or want sustainable energy supplies, and that anyway permanent, modernized energy is not profitable enough for Exxon or its shareholders. Backlash ensued. Bill McKibben's The most epic (and literal) gaslighting of all time is exemplary of critical analysis catalyzed by the Exxon top dog's clumsy speech, a surgical dissection of Woods' anachronistic and strikingly antisocial thinking and expression. Where's this fracas going to end? Ultimately the whole travesty of industry procrastination, deceit and naked unheeding self-interest is headed to courts of law, of course— as always happens in cases of reckless endangerment. A tidal wave of accountability for fossil fuel industry intransigence is beginning to pile up in the shoaling waters of our and the fossil fuel industry's immediate future, as described in Grist and Big Oil faces a flood of climate lawsuits - and they`re moving closer to trial. Meanwhile, Darren Woods seems to be helping set the mood in the room when it comes to judgment of a track record of industry alienation from broader human society and its interests. It's a puzzling posture. Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:Before March 3
March 3
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #10 2024Posted on 7 March 2024 by Doug Bostrom, Marc KodackOpen acccess notablesProjections of an ice-free Arctic Ocean, Jahn et al., Nature Reviews Earth & Environment:
Sustained growth of sulfur hexafluoride emissions in China inferred from atmospheric observations, An et al., Nature Communications:
The rise, fall and rebirth of ocean carbon sequestration as a climate 'solution', De Pryck & Boettcher, Global Environmental Change:
“In the end, the story of climate change was one of hope and redemption”: ChatGPT’s narrative on global warming, Sommer & von Querfurth, Ambio:
Increasing Flood Hazard Posed by Tropical Cyclone Rapid Intensification in a Changing Climate, Lockwood et al., Geophysical Research Letters:
Past and Projected Future Droughts in the Upper Colorado River Basin, McCabe et al., Geophysical Research Letters:
From this week's government/NGO section: Many newly labeled USDA climate-smart conservation practices lack climate benefits, Anne Schechinger, Environmental Working Group:
Rooftop solar on the rise. Small solar projects are delivering 10 times as much power as a decade ago, Dutzik et al, Environment America Research & Policy Center and Frontier Group:
150 articles in 74 journals by 907 contributing authorsPhysical science of climate change, effects Decoding low-frequency climate variations: A case study on ENSO and ocean surface warming, Kallummal, Dynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans 10.1016/j.dynatmoce.2024.101453 Robust Polar Amplification in Ice-Free Climates Relies on Ocean Heat Transport and Cloud Radiative Effects, England & Feldl, Journal of Climate Open Access pdf 10.1175/jcli-d-23-0151.1 Spatiotemporal heterogeneity in global urban surface warming, Ge et al., Remote Sensing of Environment 10.1016/j.rse.2024.114081 All this climate data is wildPosted on 6 March 2024 by Guest AuthorThis is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Kristen Pope An elephant seal dives deeper than 1,000 meters below Antarctic waters with a tiny tag affixed to its fur, helping scientists collect valuable data about climate change. In Mongolia, pigeons fly around the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, with sensors on their bodies that help gauge air pollution. A recent Nature Climate Change article notes that more than 1,000 animal species have worn sensors to gather data in places where measurement has always been difficult. In this way, elephants, wildebeests, caribou, pigeons, seals, and other animals have helped fill gaps in knowledge of our changing climate. Millions of observations have been collected using these methods, according to the paper by Diego Ellis-Soto, Ph.D. candidate at Yale University, and his co-authors. It’s a much-needed supplement to data collected from sensors connected to objects such as ocean buoys, Earth-orbiting satellites, and terrestrial weather stations. These sensors provide valuable data but there are too few of them to gather sufficient data points to reflect microclimates and short-term patterns associated with climate change. Meanwhile, satellites have limited resolution and can be thwarted by clouds. “Animals overall can go to places that are very hard to reach, such as polar regions on the ocean, tropical rainforests, tops of mountains, remote Pacific islands,” Ellis-Soto says. “So they can fill important gaps in our meteorological weather forecasting system. For example, there are few weather stations at elevations above 2,000 meters, but mountains are some of the most complex regions for predicting weather and are experiencing rapid changes under climate change.” Animals have collected millions of observations about everything from air and water temperature to wind speed and direction to sea salinity. They have helped scientists learn about turbulence, air pollution, species movement and locations, and more. Animals can also be present for extreme events like heat waves, which Ellis-Soto notes are difficult to design experiments around. A white stork (Ciconia ciconia) fitted with a transmitter carrying piece of plastic. (Photo credit: Charles J. Sharp / CC BY-NC 4.0) Credit: Charles J Sharp.+44 7917562756.+ At a glance - Human activity is driving retreat of arctic sea icePosted on 5 March 2024 by John Mason, BaerbelWOn February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "Human activity is driving retreat of Arctic sea ice". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there. At a glanceThe Northwest Passage is the sea route around the waters off northern Canada and Alaska. Its discovery and eventual navigation involves a fascinating tale of endeavour, adventure and tragedy, too, for some expeditions ended in disaster. Of the many mishaps, by far the worst was that which befell Sir John Franklin and the 128-strong crews of his two ships: they were last heard of in 1845. It took many expeditions and almost ten years before their fate was finally pieced together. One thing became clear by then: the Northwest Passage does not take prisoners. Yet at the same time, those searches for Franklin and his crew generated lots of new chart cover of the waters between the islands making up the Canadian Archipelago. Complete navigation of the Northwest Passage was finally accomplished by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen between 1903 and 1906. Amundsen's boat was relatively small at 47 tons and 70 feet long but usefully it had a very shallow draft. That meant it was able to pass through areas where a bigger boat would have fouled the bottom, thus offering a wider choice of courses to take. Amundsen's route was criticised in some circles because of that factor - what was the point of making the crossing if bigger freight ships could not? But Amundsen was motivated not by money but by science. With his experienced crew of six, they spent two winters off the eastern side of King William Island, about halfway through the archipelago, collecting data on Earth's magnetic pole and local meteorology, traded with the Inuit and developed hunting and fishing skills. Leaving there in August 1905, they reached Nome, Alaska twelve months later. The ice had pinned them in for a third winter. There was not to be a single-season crossing for another 38 years, when Sergeant Henry Larsen of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police managed it in a schooner. So yes, while the Northwest Passage was successfully navigated before 2007, the current state of the sea ice means that the picture is now quite different. Part of the reason for that is down to the age of much of the Arctic sea ice today. Sea ice that has yet to experience a summer melting season is known as first-year ice. It's relatively thin, fragile and more vulnerable to melting compared to the ice that has withstood one or more melting-seasons, known as multiyear ice. Multiyear ice can even give a good ice-breaker a run for its money. But now there's a lot less of it. During many recent summers the Northwest Passage has become open: freight ships and even cruise liners have steamed through. That doesn't mean it's risk-free of course - there are still icebergs to watch out for. Nevertheless, it's getting to the point where there are various concerns being voiced about the number of ships passing through the area, on both ecological and political grounds. For the Northwest Passage, global warming really is a mixed blessing. Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "At a glance" section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above! Click for Further detailsGreat Lakes ice coverage hits a record lowPosted on 4 March 2024 by Guest AuthorThis is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters Ice extent on the Great Lakes hit a record low February 8 and has remained at record low levels as of February 16 as a result of the warmest winter on record over much of the region. For the U.S. portion of the Great Lakes region, the November 30-February 14 period was mostly between the first- and third-warmest on record (Figure 1). The Canadian portion of the Great Lakes was also record-warm to near record-warm. In Chicago, 87% of the days from December 1-February 14 had average- to above-average temperatures. Figure 1. Ranking of Midwest U.S. average temperatures for November 30, 2023-February 14, 2024, for the period beginning in 1893. The region surrounding the Great Lakes was mostly between the first- and third-warmest on record. (Image credit: Iowa Environmental Mesonet) A 10-day cold snap in mid-January in the region was not intense enough to allow much ice to grow on the Great Lakes, and January ice extent was just 6% of the lake surface, compared to the 50-year average of 18%. This was the ninth-lowest January ice level on record. If the peak ice coverage of 18% on January 22 winds up being the winter maximum, 2024 will end up with the fourth-lowest maximum extent on record, behind 2002 (12%), 2012 (13%), and 1998 (14%). As of February 15, the Great Lakes Ice Tracker reported that ice coverage on the lakes was just 4% — about 10 times lower than average. The barest ice cupboard was being kept in Lake Erie, which had zero ice cover, compared to the average of over 65% expected for the date. With the forecast for the remainder of February calling for mostly above-average temperatures, ice cover on the Great Lakes is likely to be at record- to near-record low levels for the rest of the ice season. 2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #09Posted on 3 March 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug BostromA listing of 34 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, Feb 25, 2024 thru Sat, March 2, 2024.
Story of the weekThis week's big news is close to home for Skeptical Science and comes via UNICEF: Seriously Cranky: the uncle we all have helps build the skills we all need to resist misinformation (pdf). It's a story spanning an arc of progress beginning with fundamental research by Skeptical Science founder John Cook and ending with operational application of findings from that investigation-- now in multiple arenas including and beyond Skeptical Science's core mission of promoting accurate understanding of the science of climate change. We're speaking of Cranky Uncle, a game built on scientifically tested and verified methods of improving critical thinking skills, first deployed to help people avoid being mentally infected with climate bunk transmitted by a veritable zoo of grifters attached to the fossil fuel industry. The same techniques and delivery framework for boosting cognitive competency have now successfully been adopted and adapted for combating vaccination hesitancy and reluctance, by UNICEF and with the assistance of John Cook and Skeptical Science. Conceptualization, exploration and funding for creating Cranky Uncle came thanks to and via Skeptical Science's own internal and external contributors. Without Skeptical Science in the picture UNICEF's successful project to help save lives wouldn't have been possible. All who assisted may share pleasure plus at least a little pride in this outcome. Our ripples of progress travel far. It's a great true story! Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:Before February 25
February 25
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #9 2024Posted on 29 February 2024 by Doug Bostrom, Marc KodackOpen access notables Rockfall from an increasingly unstable mountain slope driven by climate warming, Stoffel et al., Nature Geoscience:
Side Effects of Sulfur-Based Geoengineering Due To Absorptivity of Sulfate Aerosols, Wunderlin et al., Geophysical Research Letters:
Academic capture in the Anthropocene: a framework to assess climate action in higher education, Lachapelle et al., Climatic Change:
The animal agriculture industry, US universities, and the obstruction of climate understanding and policy, Morris & Jacquet, Climatic Change:
Biochar carbon markets:A mitigation deterrence threat, Price et al., Environmental Science & Policy:
Insurance retreat in residential properties from future sea level rise in Aotearoa New Zealand, Storey et al., Climatic Change:
A bibliometric and topic analysis of climate justice: Mapping trends, voices, and the way forward, Parsons et al., Climate Risk Management:
From this week's government/NGO section: The next frontier for climate change science. Insights from the authors of the IPCC 6th assessment report on knowledge gaps and priorities for research, Bednar-Friedl et al., Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (European Commission) (pdf) As climate change impacts intensify globally in both frequency and magnitude and with scientific consensus on what is yet to come if the world fails to act, the imperative to step up our collective response has never been more pressing. By providing the knowledge necessary to formulate effective mitigation and adaptation strategies, climate science serves as a critical enabler of climate action and a vital input to evidence-based policymaking. Bridging the knowledge gaps in climate change research is crucial for guiding the transition toward a low-carbon climate-resilient future, fostering consensus and alliances, empowering global cooperation, and mobilizing stakeholders across society. The authors draw attention to where additional research is required to effectively and adequately address climate change, aiming to inform future calls under the EU Horizon Europe R&I Programme and beyond. Climate Transition Mismatch. Thought Leadership, Greenwashing, Transparency & Traceability, Ion Visinovschi and John Willis, Planet Tracker (pdf) Company membership in trade associations has emerged as a critical area of concern, particularly when corporate management teams claim to be supportive of lowering their carbon footprint but are members of associations that appear to be at odds with the goals set out in the Paris Agreement. The authors urge corporations to reassess their affiliations with industry associations that diverge from their stated environmental objectives. 153 articles in 72 journals by 955 contributing authorsPhysical science of climate change, effects Contrasting Responses of Land Surface Temperature and Soil Temperature to Forest Expansion During the Dormant Season on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Qu et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 10.1029/2023jd039595 European Summer Wet-Bulb Temperature: Spatiotemporal Variations and Potential Drivers, Ma et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-23-0420.1 Why Biden’s pause on new LNG export terminals is a BFDPosted on 28 February 2024 by Guest AuthorThis is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Osha Davidson Natural gas has long been touted as a “bridge fuel” to a clean energy future that gets all its power from renewable sources like wind, solar, and geothermal power. That’s because natural gas produces about half as much carbon dioxide as coal when burned to generate electricity. But researchers have warned for years that natural gas — whose main ingredient is climate-warming methane — is not the trouble-free substitute for coal that the oil and gas industry claims. The long-simmering issue became a top news story in January when President Joe Biden announced he was hitting the pause button on permitting new liquid natural gas, or LNG, export terminals, controversial megaprojects costing billions of dollars along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. “We will take a hard look at the impacts of LNG exports on energy costs, America’s energy security, and our environment,” Biden said in a statement. “This pause on new LNG approvals sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time.” Why do we care about methane, the main ingredient in natural gas?The footprint of LNG export terminals on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Purple pins mark operational LNG export terminals, red pins mark terminals that are under construction, yellow pins mark terminals that have been approved but are not yet under construction, and blue pins mark proposed locations for new terminals. (Source: FERC. Interactive map: Samantha Harrington) While natural gas produces less carbon dioxide than other fossil fuels when burned, methane is a hundred times more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. So why is carbon dioxide the evil poster child of climate change? As MIT’s Jessika Trancik documented in a landmark 2014 paper published in Nature Climate Change, the answer is time. Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere trapping heat for up to 1,000 years, whereas methane lasts for about a decade. When both time and heat-trapping capacity are factored in, Trancik documented that methane is 80 times worse than carbon dioxide over 20 years and nearly 30 times worse over the course of a century. At a glance - Is Greenland gaining or losing ice?Posted on 27 February 2024 by John Mason, BaerbelWOn February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "Is Greenland gaining or losing ice". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there. At a glanceThe interior of Greenland features a huge ice sheet that covers some 80% of that large island. Up to three kilometres thick, the sheet contains a whopping 2.9 million cubic kilometres of ice. If that all melted, global sea level would go up by around seven and a half metres. So it would obviously be good if that didn't happen. Read any science about ice-sheets and you will soon run into a term that will become familiar: 'mass balance'. Mass balance is an expression of the health of any ice-sheet. Ice-sheets gain mass by snowfall and lose mass by 'ablation', a term covering sublimation, evaporation melt, and meltwater runoff, plus solid ice discharge by the glaciers that drain them. If the value for mass balance of an ice sheet is a positive number, the sheet is growing. But a negative value means the sheet is dwindling. Since 1991, satellites have obtained continuous data on the Greenland ice-sheet, using radar, lasers and sensitive instruments that can detect changes in local gravity. Such methods allow mass balance to be calculated. With over 30 years of satellite data now at our disposal, we can step back and look at the big picture. The Greenland ice sheet was close to a neutral state of balance in the 1990s. Since then however, annual losses have risen. One recent paper calculates that Greenland lost almost 4,000 billion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2018, adding almost eleven millimetres to global sea levels. Reduction of ice mass balance has occurred for two key reasons. Firstly there is increased meltwater run-off. Have you seen imagery of bright blue pools connected to rivers, flowing across the surface of the ice-sheet, to disappear down into it in spectacular cascades? That's the run-off. Secondly, there is glacier instability - whereby glaciers speed up in their discharge of ice, ultimately to the ocean, with those videos of spectacular calving events many of you will have seen. In Greenland, it's thought that these two processes account for about half of ice-sheet loss each. Of course, the rate of ice loss varies from year to year. It depends on weather patterns. A cooler year with a lot of snowfall will provide a considerable counter-weight to the loss processes. Then again, in June 2023 the temperature rose to 0.4oC at the Summit Station, a research facility situated 3,216 metres above sea level and near the high-point of the ice-sheet. That has only happened five times in the 34 years since the station was established. Like anywhere else, the year to year pattern is pretty varied: however it's the multidecadal trend that matters and that is very definitely downwards. It never pays to pick short time-spans when discussing matters of long-term climate trends. Statements like the one by Christopher Monckton in the myth-box above, made in 2009, have simply been made invalid by the march of time. Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "At a glance" section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above! Click for Further detailsClimate Adam: Are food influencers wrong about climate change?Posted on 26 February 2024 by Guest AuthorThis video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). The food industry is one of the biggest drivers of climate change. So how are our diets causing disaster? Some people argue that protecting the planet means we have to go vegan and zero waste and only eat local and organic. But is this really what's key to halting climate change? And what should you prioritise if you want to make what you munch kinder to the climate?! Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam 2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #08Posted on 25 February 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug BostromA listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, Feb 18, 2024 thru Sat, Feb 24, 2024.
Story of the week
Scientists are misunderstood and criticized for speaking in jealously measured tones. So when a scientist says "really strange," that's shouting. Lots of people were captivated by this latest update on a phenomenon as unexpected as it is sudden, and so our story of the week is Peter Sinclair's review and synthesis of articles titled Scientists: Ocean Heat Waves Stunning, Persistent, and Worrying. The unprecedented bulge of observable ocean heat beginning in 2023 has been in the news for a while now. Familiarity may breed complacency if not contempt, but this pattern persists and continues to baffle our experts. Sinclair's collection of articles from different outlets commemorates that observations of this kind are of serious concern; at the scale of our own lives it's akin to our family physician being unable to explain a fever. In this case it's not an unexpected pathogen causing the problem but expected, predictable physical outcomes. Even so, it seems we're unprepared for how this may emerge as details, as made explicit in the articles highilighted in Sinclair's compilation. Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:Before February 18
February 19
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #8 2024Posted on 22 February 2024 by Doug Bostrom, Marc KodackOpen access notablesTransition from positive to negative indirect CO2 effects on the vegetation carbon uptake, Chen et al., Nature Communications:
Real-world time-travel experiment shows ecosystem collapse due to anthropogenic climate change, Li et al., Nature Communications
The importance of crowdsourced observations for urban climate services, Mitchell & Fry, International Journal of Climatology:
Widespread and increasing near-bottom hypoxia in the coastal ocean off the United States Pacific Northwest, Barth et al., Scientific Reports:
Offshoring emissions through used vehicle exports, Newman et al., Nature Climate Change:
Translating climate risk assessments into more effective adaptation decision-making: The importance of social and political aspects of place-based climate risk, Kythreotis et al., Environmental Science & Policy:
From this week's government/NGO section: Carbon Clean 200®: Investing In a Clean Energy Future 2024 Performance Update, Heaps et al., As You Sow: The Clean200 lists the 200 major corporate players from 35 countries around the world that are at the forefront of this [energy] transition. These are the companies that are leading the way by putting sustainability at the heart of their products, services, business models, and investments, helping to move the world onto a more sustainable trajectory. Agenda for a Progressive Political Economy of Carbon Removal, Nawaz et al., Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal, American University: Large amounts of carbon dioxide will need to be removed and durably stored to meet climate targets. Even the lowest estimates suggest that large new industries will need to be created to produce these removals. As both private and public investments begin to fill this gap, the foundations of an emerging carbon removal industry are now being laid via policy decisions that will shape the field to come. The authors examine the possible versions of a future with carbon removal, imagining its best forms, its worst forms, and its most likely forms. 135 articles in 66 journals by 766 contributing authorsPhysical science of climate change, effects Underlying physical mechanisms of winter precipitation extremes over India's high mountain region, Nischal et al., Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 10.1002/qj.4661 Observations of climate change, effects Unprecedented wildfires in Korea: Historical evidence of increasing wildfire activity due to climate change, Chang et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2024.109920 How oil sands undermine Canada’s climate goalsPosted on 21 February 2024 by dana1981This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Now in his ninth year as prime minister, Justin Trudeau has sought to position Canada as a global climate leader, touting one of the world’s highest taxes on carbon pollution, clean fuel regulations, and clean technology tax credits. Yet Canada’s per-person climate pollution remains stubbornly near the top of the list of developed countries — alongside the United States and Australia, whose governments have been less consistently supportive of climate solutions over the past decade. Climate Action Tracker, an independent project that monitors whether governments’ actions measure up to the goals outlined in the Paris climate agreement, rates Canada’s climate policies as “highly insufficient.” The project noted, “If all countries were to follow Canada’s approach, warming could reach over 3°C and up to 4°C” — a potentially catastrophic level of global warming. The Trudeau government has pledged to cut emissions by at least 40-45% below 2005 levels by 2030 but is not on track to meet that goal. This raises the question: What’s holding back Canada’s climate ambitions? Although there are numerous contributing factors, Climate Action Tracker points to one primary culprit, arguing that “Canada seems incapable of kicking its oil and gas addiction.” Canada is the fourth-largest producer of oil and the fifth-largest producer of methane gas, commonly called natural gas, in the world. Nearly 80% of Canadian oil is exported to the United States, and fossil fuels account for over one-fifth of the country’s exports, worth over $100 billion per year. So the country exemplifies the challenge of solving the climate crisis even when relatively climate-aware governments are in power. |
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