China's CO2 emissions

Well if it is helping you understand climate science that is a good thing.

Referring to it though makes your points in this thread seem a little confused. IMHO anything our government can do to halp china reduce the unhealthy coal pollution there is a good thing. At the same time the US burns more coal per capita, and still has some grandfathering laws encouraging some utilities to keep using unscrubbed coal.

I am not quite sure of that, the course title seems to make sure that those on the other politicial side won't listen. Therefore it is probably intented to beat skeptics over the head to not voice any skepticism, and is preaching to the choir of activists. Well that is from the name, but anyway lets see if you have brought us a tasty paper.

This one we have seen before. As far as temperature predictions and model imput this is what is included

So yes I agree with them that the IPCC put real ghg emission at the high end scenario. This falls right into the china discussion, because the growth in chinese emissions is the reason for the levels. I would not underestimate future ghg emissions from china or india This is precisely the scenario that the US congress warned about when al gore negotiated kyoto, and the reason the us would never sign. China was not included, and needs to be in any real ghg reduction. OK what else

When we put in the actual ghg levels (and SO2, NOx, particulates) these models say it should be hotter than it is. That may not be because ghg sensitivity is too high, it may be because of natural variation that they model poorly. But no the high end of the IPCC range 4.5 degrees C if anything looks like its too high not too low. Here is a recent article.
No, climate models aren’t exaggerating global warming - The Washington Post

I guess a lot of the rest of that sociology paper is criticism of alley's chaper, where he clearly spelled out uncertainties in melt rates and sea level rise, saying not enough was known. I guess he could have been like trenberth and used grey literature to overestimate his chapter, but I find he was being a good scientist. Most of the glaciologists agree with his range, athough melt rates have been nailed down by more recent papers. Hanson, one of the leading critics, still is predicting more than 2 meters by 2100, but recent data makes this less and less likely.

I don't really want to see it. Pointing to the papers you are looking at is better than a video lecture to me.

skeptics often want more research to get data to confirm or deny hypothesis.

Politicians both the catastrophic and the it doesn't exist type, don't really want science to get in the way of their advocacy.

 

I find a lot of skepticl science's "science" misleading.,some of its right but alot wrong. No wonder its not a very popular blog. That is why I asked for your source material.

great agreement.

Nice no worry's then. It just is important to recognize the
IPCC underestimates - from your source is actually the amount of ghg china would produce (they actually had it on the high end of estimates). It was not that they underestimated sensitivity to ghg.

 

Austin & Bob, I don't know who we should declare as 'centrist' interpreter of climate change science, other than IPCC. and y'know they have their detractors.

RealClimate top posts appear neutral (to the extent that selected manuscript authors might be), but the subsequent discussions can tend towards 'Hellinahandbasket'.

Skeptical Science takes delight in skewering deniers (a more neutral category description would be better), but does not take equal delight in skewering extreme claims toward apocalypse. Both extremes, in my view, could benefit from rigorous sanding-off.

Judith Curry might have provided it, but instead touts uncertainty above all else, and occasionally features oddities (skydragon and Salby for examples). Subsequent discussions there - oh man, just read them yourselves. Presuming a centrist goal is identifying what (if anything) we need to act on first, I don't see much help there.

Spectrum continues to WUWT and CO2science and other similar already well known. As with all the above, they do best in identifying new literature. I find their interpretations highly skewed, but everyone ought to make such decisions on their own.

It is possible that a centrist internet site does not actually exist. Hope I'm wrong about that because it seems weird.

Both extremes bear responsibility for 'a hole in the middle'. 'Pro' says the science is settled, without considering that while some science is settled, important parts (like where and when and how much) are not.. 'Anti' says it can't happen, not happening, and even if it is, it is beyond our ability to undo.

This hole in the middle seems to directly lead to an absence of coherent policies. Instead we have war between evils: Evil scientists enriching themselves and world-order wonks Destroying The Human Enterprise As We Know It. On the other side, evil fossil-C-burning profiteers who don't give a fillip if things 'go south' after they die.

Such extreme contests work well in TV wrestling, but perhaps much less so when the goal is to manage the human enterprise over the next few decades.

What are the things we need to do now? Reduce the burn, build seawalls, improve efficiency of buildings and transport, engineer more robust food plants? Something else? Who pays? I can only imagine that solutions will come from the middle, not the edges.

So, if I an correct to suppose that we now have a hole in the middle, that is the first thing that needs to be corrected. News media feeds on conflicts but it will only slow us down.

DO SOMETHING!

OR, CHANGE NOTHING!

Either way, proceed according to science, because we know of no better tool.

 

I'm going to disagree with what you are saying. We cannot "proceed according to science" because science does not provide any direction of exactly how to succeed. Science can provide lots of directions that can be morally right but are assured of failing spectacularly. Science provides some (not perfect) understanding of what is taking place and certain probabilities of what could take place...but science does not generate the balancing of 6 billion folks value systems to make all agree of what to do just because any majority of scientists agree between themselves that dramatic action is required.

ANY course of action will have supporters and opponents, so if something more positive than negative can be worked out, the thinking needs to be ECONOMIC and not SCIENTIFIC. This was one of the secrets of making the Montreal Protocols so successful in reducing CFC and mitigating ozone destruction. The architects approached CFC reductions from a regulation/economic approach that was carefully crafted and worked out independent of trying to educate all that many folks and the science of CFCs. It worked out how to ensure the affected industries could survive economically, not how to scare the larger population into reacting.

If CO2 pollution is to be curtailed worldwide, it must be through an economically viable and sustainable transition based on the tangible economic rewards of both reduced pollution and the cost returns of sustainable power. If even a million more scientific papers come out detailing what happens on the present course and all scientist agree, until an economically viable path (and there is one) is hammered out, then nothing much will actually happen.

 

I agree that science alone will not work, because disagreement can always be found there. I agree that major changes are going to need to make economic sense. Unless they are delayed to the extreme, and we are grasping at straws.

I suppose that the ultimate (heeded) call to action will follow a larger event than we have yet seen, and as such will not come from science or economics. More like "oh s%^$ we cant allow something like that to happen again".

This would have been a buzzkill for be, but I was already watching the Yangtze river cruise ship capsize aftermath. Jeez.

 

With pachuri gone, and post climategate, I hope that they will become more centrist. Still it has always been better than the advocacy sites, and includes links to the research or grey literature that it uses. I think some of the climategate shame made them do better on ar5 than on ar3. We at least can look at individual research and criticism. To me NOAA is much more a fair arbitrer of the science, but they don't cover the scope and depth of IPCC.

IMHO there probably were some moderate reporter voices, like rivkin at NYT, but the affinity sites get a lot more eyeballs. A lot more people get their pop science from fox or msnbc, that don't even use science reporters. Rivkin now is an opinion piece writer in dot earth, and stopped being an objective science reporter.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/?_r=0
There is an interesting video there on Paul Erlich, who stopped being a biologist, and started advocacy for zero population growth. Interesting that Erlich got extremely popular with this neo malthusian story. That is why we have affinity sites. In the case of Erlich, we now have lots of data about why he was wrong, but he still doesn't listen to it. It is tragic that the Indian government listened and had policies of forced sterilization. Cost to ehrlich though for getting it wrong didn't exist, it was other people that suffered. Perhaps Heartland should listen, but like Erlich its about belief and not about getting the science right.

We can use science to answer questions like How much less warming will there be if developed nations reduce ghg to 80% of 1990 levels but developing countries aren't constrained.
+1

I am pretty sure the science would say the european style CAP and TAX plan was very inexpensive, and didn't do anything to combat global warming. It may actually be harmful for the environment as it is encouraging coal plant growth. California's AB32 may not be as harmful as the EU's ETS, but basically is designed to do nothing for utility ghg (the PUC and green energy plans do this) but is really a variable gas tax that pays for high speed rail (questionable environmental benefit, but unquestionably drew federal money away from the northeast's rail system that may have prevented some accidents with the money). The gas tax appears to be too low to reduce ghg from cars, but the threat is enough to oil companies in the state that they have cut down on maintenance, not really a good as simply passing a fixed higher gas tax.

While I agree economics are important, but if you get the science wrong how do you expect the economics to work? The first questions have to be the scientific ones.

 

China's CO2 emissions, and specifically the growth in emissions, is in large part due to industry for export. Had the importers (read for simplicity: United States) the motivation to cut CO2 emissions, China would not have had a choice but to comply in order to remain an exporting country, or e.g. face a carbon surcharge.

China was the excuse for the US avoidance of Kyoto.

 

I certainly did not relegate science to secondary importance but exactly the opposite. No matter how correct the science, fundamentally changing the culture of the world is not going to happen based on what is written in science journals and websites (no matter how powerful, correct, or proven). The question was what to do since we already know enough to justify changing the present course of depending on fossil fuel forever. Even vastly more correct science will just cause argument juggling instead of changing worldwide culture. Unless actions that harness economics positively (!) are put in action, nothing will happen until unstoppable negative economics take over completely.

 

To this I have to ask "Why not?" If what you say is true then the about face on Ozone protection would not have taken place. Likewise, acid rain would always be more profitable (in the short term) for the affected utilities. They were forced and it was proven their claims of economic utility doom was nonsense. Remember the US auto industry claiming pollution controls in the 60s and 70s would destroy the industry. Now we are talking on PriusChat based on a vehicle far cleaner (sans CO2) than anything conceivable in those decades. Worldwide fishing of all fishing stocks would have destroyed everything but the knowledge of how to prevent this oceanwide tragedy of the commons is present and growing in many places.

But what makes them success stories is how economic strategies were, are, and will be the key to making the industry and culture changes laying at the nexus of changing the direction of this ship. My comment about economics is not opinion. My opinion would be as fatalistic as anyones since what flashy idiots do gets far wider coverage than the continous slow improvements always taking place in the background. But once I replaced opinion with examining the history of addressing big pollution and sustainability problems, a different picture emerged. If you want to know what can be done, then do some economic investigating of how previous pollution issues were addressed. There are answers that work.

 

I would not characterize it like that, and was using it as the general term of revelations about IPCC conduct, conduct that I hope has improved, and I saw signs of improvement in AR5.

For a reminder of what it was about
IPCC/Climategate Criticism Roundup | Science/AAAS | News

Climate-Science Officials Seek Better Reports - WSJ

To me the problems were crystallized in a youtube Chairman Pachauri on TV telling us that the IPCC work on himalayan glaciers was beyond reproach, and that scientist that disagreed had to get peer reviewed research published to object. A policy that seemed to say screw you, we pick who can review our work. Pachauri had a conflict of interest in the matter, and scary scenarios helped one of his organizations raise money. He was defiant and climate gate emails showed this was the attitude in many of the authors - pretend there is certainty when there are questions, and control of peer review process to not allow outsiders to participate.

Even those affinity sites should acknowledge that such hubris has led to less credibility to the organization. This is the result of the internal review.
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/IAC_report/IAC_recommendation_summary.pdf
Note Pachauri did not go along with the recomendation that he leave. He left because of sexual harassment allegations which he recently was convicted of. I hope the next chairman does a better job.

 

I take it to mean that he ignores idiots.

 

I feel like you are trying to whack me over the head with a "clue by 4". The effect is that I am even more distrustful of anyone using the word denier. Maybe not the effect that you intended, but hey that is just me.

You firmly convinced me that advocates of catastrophic global warming have a hot button issue with the term climate gate, and can not see past the way I used it. I won't use that term again when referring to how Some authors and the past chairman attempted to build false certainty, and ignore other points of view. I don't think the mistakes in the glacier repoort would have been as damaging to the IPCCs credibility if the leaked emails did not suggest that members of the IPCC were doing this.

Of course you can read the internal reports and recommendations that I hope are being used to correct these abuses. I linked these and newspaper articles from the time. Again I don't think these things are controversial, that lead authors should actually look at comments, instead of ignoring them. That those recieving funding should make their data available, to others trying to replicate not just their friends. That other points of view from these comments should be included. That chairmen with conflicts of interest should be replaced, and perhaps should only serve one term instead of getting positions for life. I really was not trying to push your hot buttons. Remember it is you that seemed to think in the context of this (models) was not bold enough in giving voice to alternative opinions. in the case of glacier melt they seemed to give voice to idle speculation on the part of a scientist that was at the time in the employ of the chairman, while ignoring experts in the field.

 

Oh god no. That is the opposite of confidence.

If you predict A and get B based on a theory, you need to either revise the hypothesis for the new data or reject it. These predictions have to be specific. You can't just say oh I predict bad and I see bad. We can do attribution afterward, but that is not as convincing, but can lead to more accurate hypotheses.

The Himalayas and nearby peaks have lost no ice in past 10 years, study shows | Environment | The Guardian
Nice data from GRACE on himalayan glaciers.

Please read.
Pachauri: the real story behind the Glaciergate scandal - Telegraph
I didn't cherry pick the report. It was quite bold. It was one that the chairman took out personally to defend.
Raina demands apology for Pachauri’s ‘voodoo science’ comment - The Hindu

Afterward the review committee itself said the chairman should not be in charge. I don't think I was on the committee. I don't think I chose for the chairman to highlight this glacier melt prediction. All I said was I was happy that the chairman is gone, although I would have prefered he be forced to resign earlier. Certainly reading reports from the review of the IPCC and talking about them here is not cherry picking. The 8 different comittees all agreed that the IPCC had not followed its own rules. I certainly hope that the IPCC in the future does the reforms asked of it, so this sort of stuff doesn't happen again. I said I was hopeful after AR5 and the removal of Paruchuri. How is that an attack?

Was the scare of losing all the glaciers a simple mistake? I don't think so, but better processes can help the IPCC not do these things again. I have heard from .... "climate scientists" that they were upset by the way this was all handled". You certainly don't want the chairman out front and center defending grey liturature, created by a man that became his employee, and name calling experts in the field when they don't respect his authority.

That seems like a pop science prediction after the fact. Did you know about the decade without rain? The memorial day flood of 1981? Texas certainly has always had extreme weather. NOAA did an attribution after the fact on the drought in 2011 saying ghg made it more likely. I will await an attribution study on these floods. Oh and our lake is still not full from the drought ;-). Here is a local websight that helps you check it out. Oh and if you don't like extreme weather don't move to texas
Is The Lake Full Yet?
Oh an oldie but a goody with two giants that are no longer with us. Song written in 1955, yep floods have happened here for a long time.

But I am missing some reasoning here? If the ghg caused the texas floods, why weren't they the worst as we have the most ghg. If that is what ghg does, will california flood? Just simple questions. Lots of theories, lots of research to be done. An interesting article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/science/californias-history-of-drought-repeats.html
Its doubtful that it will be as bad as the megadroughts, but dry may be the new normal. California is much wtter than 1200 years ago.

I don't remember an antarctic controversy. Ice extent is large, ice mass is shrinking. The shrinking mass appears to be caused by warmer currents. The warmer currents may or may not have to do with ghg. Thermal expansion of the oceans, and melt in the arctic do have to do with ghg. None of this should be controversial.

 

There are important differences being presented in this 'A vs. B' conversation.

However both may be guilty to some extent of gratuitously dumping on each other a well. For that I'd simply like to point out that anyone who really wants to slow the pace of scientific understanding of (and possible actions against) climate change have got to be rubbing their hands together and grinning.

I'd don't believe either conversant actually wants that to happen.

 

The california drought probably requires its own thread, but we can ask some questions and use science to help out.

Is the drought caused by melted glaciers caused by ghg? No it is because of rainfall patterns.

Is this drought worse than historical droughts in california? No in the last 1200 years (link to source in previous comment) california was much dryer. This is the worst drought in california since the modern instrument record.

We do have a new stanford study that points to ghg not causing the drought, but making it 3x more likely (cause and effect are much harder scientifically to establish.

Stanford scientists say drought linked to climate change

California's drought linked to greenhouse gases, climate change in Stanford study - San Jose Mercury News

We have 3 teams of scientists, all agreeing on the cause of the drought - the blob or triple R in the pacific. They each use different methods for attribution, and there is uncertainty. 2/3 of the studies show no attribution, but that just means we need to work harder on the science.

I find fault with anyone saying man, ghg, bad, this is bad, so ghg must of caused it. If we only signed kyoto this wouldn't be happening. Its a lot more complicated than that, and the stanford team would have had the same attribution with or without kyoto signing or more ghg reduction in the US.

I certainly would have no fault with anyone reading the stanford study and saying human emissions of ghg made this drought more likely to happen. The conclusion would be that california needs to mitigate for this new normal. That probably means different water rules, and agriculture policies, which make sense whether ghg is partially responsible or not.

Long term transition to less fossil fuels is also probably a wise policy with or without attribution in this case. If ghg are responsible for california's droughts now, dropping to 80% probably won't bring back the rains and snow.