2018 emissions surged

[begreen]

For certain with the advent of 24 hr cable news we now live in an age of media distortion and hyperbole. Every major storm is not the result of climate change. We need larger longer term datasets to make that judgement. However, it is universally understood that warmer seas are going to contribute more moisture to the atmosphere. The Cato article was written after Harvey's 26 trillion gallon dump but before Florence. As it turned out, Florence delivered an extraordinarily high volume of water over land. Another 18 trillion gallons (the volume of 3.5 Great Salt Lakes). Although it's still a bit premature with two storms, each delivering a record volume of water, the predictions of climate change causing storms carrying higher volumes of water do appear to be playing out. We shall see.

The Cato institute is not where I would look for climate science. The authors' argument has some false equivalencies. And he cherry picks data to make a case instead of presenting the full picture. Here is a retrospect on 2018 storms from C2ES.
https://www.c2es.org/2018/09/hurricane-florence-more-than-just-the-weather-climate-change-too/
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/...ainfall-storm-surge-risk-attribution-forecast

Unfortunately, right along with media hype, we have an 8 trillion dollar energy industry that will stop at nothing to protect their turf. And I mean nothing, including ruling and/or destroying nations. They are spending large sums on disinformation and have the deep pockets to do it. That is the formidable challenge of engaging meaningful global climate policy.

 

[Doug MacIVER]

For certain with the advent of 24 hr cable news we now live in an age of media distortion and hyperbole. Every major storm is not the result of climate change. We need larger longer term datasets to make that judgement. However, it is universally understood that warmer seas are going to contribute more moisture to the atmosphere. The Cato article was written after Harvey's 26 trillion gallon dump but before Florence. As it turned out, Florence delivered an extraordinarily high volume of water over land. Another 18 trillion gallons (the volume of 3.5 Great Salt Lakes). Although it's still a bit premature with two storms, each delivering a record volume of water, the predictions of climate change causing storms carrying higher volumes of water do appear to be playing out. We shall see.

The Cato institute is not where I would look for climate science. The authors' argument has some false equivalencies. Here is a retrospect on 2018 storms from C2ES.
https://www.c2es.org/2018/09/hurricane-florence-more-than-just-the-weather-climate-change-too/
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/...ainfall-storm-surge-risk-attribution-forecast

Unfortunately, right along with media hype, we have an 8 trillion dollar energy industry that will stop at nothing to protect their turf. And I mean nothing, including ruling and/or destroying nations. They are spending large sums on disinformation and have the deep pockets to do it. That is the formidable challenge of engaging meaningful global climate policy.

One of the authors, Dr Maue, above my pay grade to criticize. Evidence shows Florence formed in cooler than normal waters, survived, increased in waters near 30 yr. norm. It made landfall as a weakening cat.1 in very warm water. Opposite of what was predicted. Another site you do not care for but offers some insight. https://dailycaller.com/2018/09/18/florence-abnormally-cool-waters/. It also offers some insight on on an AGW hero. Hint he has some false info as well.

 

[begreen]

One's pay grade has nothing to do with having an agenda, regardless of what side of the debate one chooses. The article is ambiguous and contains some false equivalences. To say that these storms happened in the past is not new information and not really debatable as the intensity or water volume of a storm in the 1600s is just guesswork. As for his cool waters theory, that doesn't seem to be what was observed at the time. Nor was this the case for Harvey.


And this hijack is getting very far off topic. That is emissions are increasing at a dangerous rate when they need to be decreasing.

 

[begreen]

Unfortunately, the more efficient we get, the more some people use this as an excuse for more consumption. This is the trend we are seeing in America. It's like eating a dozen Oreo cookies because they are the "diet-light" variety. Or someone leaving more lights on because they are LED bulbs.This happens all the time and must be addressed if we are to slow down anthropogenic effects on the planet.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/american-consumption-habits/
https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s...tyle-really-compares-to-the-rest-of-the-world

 

[Doug MacIVER]

And this hijack is getting very far off topic. That is emissions are increasing at a dangerous rate when they need to be decreasing.

And increasingly severe weather predicted with those increased emissions. My last food for thought on this.

 

[woodgeek]

...

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocation, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet in holding scientific discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.[1]"

safe for me to think, that's happening on this subject.

With respect, if you think the US govt has been captured by the scientific elite re climate change.....I would have to say that as an elite scientist, it certainly doesn't look like we are doing it right!

The fedl govt is, and has been controlled, by FF industry shills and climate change deniers. I think BHO was not, but he did ZERO during his 2 years with a sympathetic congress on the AGW subject. And since 2010...nothing doing.

I appreciate you making your precise feelings known. I will give you a precise response.

You have set too high a bar for proof and for action.

----------------------

My analogy: a new for-profit school opens up in town. People sign up, attend classes, pay tuition and get certificates. A lot of money is being made, the teachers and students are spending money in town, the town is booming. A required course of study at this place...ARSON. How to burn down houses without leaving any evidence! The class is very popular, with a waiting list for more people to take it.

Of course, many people in town worry about this trend....should we try to stop that class from being taught? First, the school talks about academic freedom, and how ARSON is an essential (and popular) part of the curriculum. It is NOT possible to remove that course. And they say: what a bunch of worry-warts...its just a class after all. Purely theoretical. With a lab course.

And of course, houses in town were burning down before the school opened, and continue to burn down afterwards. In one mysterious case, of a big house burning down, everyone gets upset and claims that it must have been ARSON, no doubt attributable to one of the students at the arson school. And the people at the school point out that there is NO EVIDENCE of arson at all. And other people point out that OF COURSE there is no evidence, bc the course is about how to burn down houses without leaving evidence!

What should the town people do?

One bunch of very sensible/skeptical townspeople argue that perhaps we should WAIT, until we can see a **clear trend** in the number of houses burning down per year, before we shut down the school. Seems reasonable. But of course, that 'experiment' requires that a bunch of houses will burn down first, maybe people will get killed in those fires (if the hypothesis is correct). And of course, the school opened up 10 years ago, and there were in fact more fires in a few of those years than at any time in the town's history. And of course, some other years where their weren't. So one side argues about the fire years, the other about the quiet years. And a statistician does the math, and says that the number of fires DOES have a (statistically) significant uptrend. But most people don't care about stats or listen to her. And one of the school people points out that the fire years were during a time of drought, caused by a natural fluctuation, the weather, that the statistician did not take into account (when actually she did).

--------------------------

So, Doug, arguing that there is no evidence for more hurricanes from AGW is like the above. Hurricanes (and weather) are inarguably RANDOM phenomena and cannot EVER be causally associated with AGW, except on a statistical basis, probably requiring decades of data to pull out a significant signal.

And frankly, I don't care about hurricanes. I live 30 miles from salt water, at 500' above sea level.

And having read the primary literature, I am not convinced that AGW will cause more hurricanes. That is bc the primary literature does not yet agree on that subject. Some papers say more, some say not.

Its a red herring. You have picked a single issue that is untestable and about which there is no scientific consensus, even if ill informed meteorologists and journalists and celebrities will assert otherwise.

Regarding CO2 we know everything we need to know.

If you cherry pick, I can too: A grade schooler can blow bubbles with a straw, put the water on litmus paper, and do a science fair project that CO2 acidifies water. We can raise marine animals in acidified tanks, and see how they develop. And we can compute at current rates of CO2 emission when different outcomes occur. And it is not good.

The greenhouse effect heats the earth by more than 50°F, which was figured out more than a century ago, and is now a calculation that many HS kids do as part of their homework. I did in HS in the 1980s. CO2 is not the most important greenhouse gas, and the effect of adding more is sub-linear: doubling CO2 doesn't heat the earth by another 50°F. How much doubling CO2 will increase the earth temp is more like 2-4°F.

Is this really so implausible?

And 2-4°F is not good.

And doubling CO2 is already baked in. We are actually arguing about how to avoid tripling it or more.

 

[Doug MacIVER]

here is where i began,"Everything from forest fires to wars! Let's look at last fall, Florence. The claims of it's connection to AGW were everywhere.

Here is an example with a simple search." cherry picked because I'm lazy, Florence was everywhere. the claims on co2 are like the volume dial on our radio.here is a comment from Mike Mann on last week's storm?"The monster low-pressure system was fueled by warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico colliding with cold air from the north. Michael Mann, climate scientist at Penn State University, told HuffPost there is evidence that climate change is increasing the conditions that support development of more intense bomb cyclones." at the risk of a false equivalence how did the blizzards of 1888 or 1978 happen.
Last years forest fires in Ca. were predicted by some due to the increase in fuel from the now past drought. first up on a ca. fire search.https://thenewhealthcycle.com/2018/11/11/california-fires-caused-by-climate-change/. here is the last paragraph. "
Climate change may or may not be to blame but we do need to understand that natural forces are in motion that has occurred in the past to help us prepare for the future but these natural forces are not completely understood in the mass community." is it agw or "natural forces?

to get to a neutral co2 we alone cannot get it done and we all know where the major problem lies. if we include china and india , our answer is in the developing world.

 

[woodgeek]

And in the last 10 years we have done LESS than those two countries to reduce our carbon emissions. Both of those two countries have far smaller per capita emissions (from your graph, and the fact they have 4X the population, each), far less wealth to pay for solutions, and both countries HAVE signed onto Paris, which is just a good first step.

We, with our 5-10X higher per capita emissions, and only 4% of the global population (and 40% of the 2018 emissions), have agreed politically at the federal level to DO NOTHING, and have pulled out of Paris.

And we are NOT part of the problem, because you judge the slope on these lines are different? We don't have to do anything different?

 

[SpaceBus]

With respect, if you think the US govt has been captured by the scientific elite re climate change.....I would have to say that as an elite scientist, it certainly doesn't look like we are doing it right!

The fedl govt is, and has been controlled, by FF industry shills and climate change deniers. I think BHO was not, but he did ZERO during his 2 years with a sympathetic congress on the AGW subject. And since 2010...nothing doing.

I appreciate you making your precise feelings known. I will give you a precise response.

You have set too high a bar for proof and for action.

----------------------

My analogy: a new for-profit school opens up in town. People sign up, attend classes, pay tuition and get certificates. A lot of money is being made, the teachers and students are spending money in town, the town is booming. A required course of study at this place...ARSON. How to burn down houses without leaving any evidence! The class is very popular, with a waiting list for more people to take it.

Of course, many people in town worry about this trend....should we try to stop that class from being taught? First, the school talks about academic freedom, and how ARSON is an essential (and popular) part of the curriculum. It is NOT possible to remove that course. And they say: what a bunch of worry-warts...its just a class after all. Purely theoretical. With a lab course.

And of course, houses in town were burning down before the school opened, and continue to burn down afterwards. In one mysterious case, of a big house burning down, everyone gets upset and claims that it must have been ARSON, no doubt attributable to one of the students at the arson school. And the people at the school point out that there is NO EVIDENCE of arson at all. And other people point out that OF COURSE there is no evidence, bc the course is about how to burn down houses without leaving evidence!

What should the town people do?

One bunch of very sensible/skeptical townspeople argue that perhaps we should WAIT, until we can see a **clear trend** in the number of houses burning down per year, before we shut down the school. Seems reasonable. But of course, that 'experiment' requires that a bunch of houses will burn down first, maybe people will get killed in those fires (if the hypothesis is correct). And of course, the school opened up 10 years ago, and there were in fact more fires in a few of those years than at any time in the town's history. And of course, some other years where their weren't. So one side argues about the fire years, the other about the quiet years. And a statistician does the math, and says that the number of fires DOES have a (statistically) significant uptrend. But most people don't care about stats or listen to her. And one of the school people points out that the fire years were during a time of drought, caused by a natural fluctuation, the weather, that the statistician did not take into account (when actually she did).

--------------------------

So, Doug, arguing that there is no evidence for more hurricanes from AGW is like the above. Hurricanes (and weather) are inarguably RANDOM phenomena and cannot EVER be causally associated with AGW, except on a statistical basis, probably requiring decades of data to pull out a significant signal.

And frankly, I don't care about hurricanes. I live 30 miles from salt water, at 500' above sea level.

And having read the primary literature, I am not convinced that AGW will cause more hurricanes. That is bc the primary literature does not yet agree on that subject. Some papers say more, some say not.

Its a red herring. You have picked a single issue that is untestable and about which there is no scientific consensus, even if ill informed meteorologists and journalists and celebrities will assert otherwise.

Regarding CO2 we know everything we need to know.

If you cherry pick, I can too: A grade schooler can blow bubbles with a straw, put the water on litmus paper, and do a science fair project that CO2 acidifies water. We can raise marine animals in acidified tanks, and see how they develop. And we can compute at current rates of CO2 emission when different outcomes occur. And it is not good.

The greenhouse effect heats the earth by more than 50°F, which was figured out more than a century ago, and is now a calculation that many HS kids do as part of their homework. I did in HS in the 1980s. CO2 is not the most important greenhouse gas, and the effect of adding more is sub-linear: doubling CO2 doesn't heat the earth by another 50°F. How much doubling CO2 will increase the earth temp is more like 2-4°F.

Is this really so implausible?

And 2-4°F is not good.

And doubling CO2 is already baked in. We are actually arguing about how to avoid tripling it or more.

While I certainly appreciated the read, I doubt your target audience will act any differently. You would need to use his target sources of information and disseminate from those sources to cause any meaningful change. I'm sure you don't have the time for that, but unfortunately, like you said, the FF industry does.

Our previous president did squat for AGW, but few, none since I've been born, really have. We also have two liberal parties with varying levels of extremism. If we truly had a conservative party don't you think they would have done something about conserving resources? I could spend a lot of time discussing the inherent deception of naming the parties the way they have been, but that's not what this is about.

 

[woodgeek]

As an insufferable know-it-all, my target audience is ME. I am trying to spur myself to action. Doug can take care of himself, and has his own agency.

 

[SpaceBus]

As an insufferable know-it-all, my target audience is ME. I am trying to spur myself to action. Doug can take care of himself, and has his own agency.

I'm guilty of not doing enough as well. Part of the reason we moved up to Maine was to live a more environmentally responsible life. It's happening, just very slowly.

 

[Doug MacIVER]

And in the last 10 years we have done LESS than those two countries to reduce our carbon emissions. Both of those two countries have far smaller per capita emissions (from your graph, and the fact they have 4X the population, each), far less wealth to pay for solutions, and both countries HAVE signed onto Paris, which is just a good first step.

We, with our 5-10X higher per capita emissions, and only 4% of the global population (and 40% of the 2018 emissions), have agreed politically at the federal level to DO NOTHING, and have pulled out of Paris.

And we are NOT part of the problem, because you judge the slope on these lines are different? We don't have to do anything different?

And we are NOT part of the problem

I said we alone cannot get it done. That doesn't mean that the USA is watching this from the moon. Luckily we are not a nation of 2.75 billion!

 

[woodgeek]

I agree we alone cannot get it done. But it is unclear what you meant by 'we all know where the major problem lies'. I think we are a major part of the problem. Do we all know that?

 

[Doug MacIVER]

I agree we alone cannot get it done. But it is unclear what you meant by 'we all know where the major problem lies'. I think we are a major part of the problem. Do we all know that?

let's begin with coal as an example. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07...new-coal-power-plants-built-around-the-world/ article is from NYT. sorry 2 yrs old.

Indonesia 2014-2019 domestic coal use. They have somewhere near 80 yr reserve. They're gonna use it.
Domestic
(in million tons) 76 86 91 97 114¹ 240.

guess this was agreed to in Paris.

 

[woodgeek]

Before Paris most countries did not report their FF usage, or did so inconsistently, and did not project their future CO2 emissions. And Climate meetings were pointless argument-fests every 10 years that achieved little of substance.

Paris is not what 'Wattsup' tells you it is. It is a process in which signatories report what they are doing, and what **their** plans for energy and emission reduction are, and share what has worked with others, and learn from others. Annually.

Forget Indonesia....GERMANY has a higher coal fraction of the electricity that the US. Those greenie germans.

We are not going to get Indonesia to not burn coal if they think that is the only affordable solution they have. We will not have an intl agreement that BANS them from doing that. They will learn what their other energy options are (and that they are becoming cheaper) from Paris, and eventually make a better choice. Sooner bc of Paris than if it didn't exist.

Conversely, we in the US could do a lot more to reduce emissions now, affordable (to us) upfront, and cheaper in the not so long run, and we are not doing that today bc politics.

 

[Doug MacIVER]

the article I presented is word for word NYT, would not have posted if it were a wuwt. Indonesia only to point to the growth.
soon enough the political atmosphere(that fits ,uh) will cycle left and 12yrs from now they'll be more of the same.
as always, enjoy a good discussion, have a day

 

[begreen]

I said we alone cannot get it done. That doesn't mean that the USA is watching this from the moon. Luckily we are not a nation of 2.75 billion!

The US just refused to support a global reduction of plastics getting into the environment at the UN Summit in Nairobi.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47592111
We are not environmental leaders or even followers any more. Fossil fuel is dictating our national policies and engagements. And the effects of fossil fuel based energy, agriculture, packaging are clearly evident.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-multiple-disasters-at-once-study-warns/

At our current pace, the net effect of increased emissions makes it pretty clear where we are heading.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/natu...world-biodiversity_n_5c49e78ce4b06ba6d3bb2d44

 

[Doug MacIVER]

This from a Jan. Forbes article>
"The only way to lower emissions sufficiently by mid-century is with a mix of technologies including nuclear and renewables. And replacing internal combustion engines with mostly electric vehicles charged with non-fossil fuel-generated electricity like nuclear and renewables."

Focus on the premature closing of nuclear plants. Reminds me of the rush to close coal plants before adequate cost effective replacements were available here in New England.React to the pressure of the day and fix it later. Link, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesc...e-as-nuclear-power-plants-close/#7cb27a1a7034

 

[begreen]

“I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”
- Gus Speth
(broken link removed)

 

[Doug MacIVER]

Let's see if Environmental Progress is ok to post and not be belittled for doing so.. Found this one of those reads that has an even balance to the approach of solving emission problems and cuts through a lot of BS. https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-the-planet/

 

[begreen]

Certainly, renewables alone are not going to solve the climate crisis. And yes, I think we are going to have to fast track some advanced, modern nuclear solutions as a buffer. Agriculture has a surprisingly large role as a contributor to greenhouse gases. Unfortunately, it's full speed ahead with some of the major sources of emissions. This is like someone switching to diet soda so that they can drink it all day.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/farm-climate-change-animals-drone-footage-video-a8804661.html
Meanwhile, up north the results playout:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/permafrost-melting-1.5119767
I agree with the concern that scientists may have been much too conservative in estimating the amount of methane that will be released by thawing permafrost.

 

[Doug MacIVER]

Add farming to your list, i'm sticking with reduction of FF and balanced thought out solutions over a reasonable time.. To that, Sunday dinner, commercially farmed potatoes, broccoli, and non fart collected beef. Until the Impossible Foods product reproduces the unique tastes of the different cuts, it's good old fart producing beef for us.
On the methane side, I find the continental shelf hydrate pretty scary. You don't see it coming.

 

[begreen]

Farming definitely is included with agriculture. Microbes in soil do the lion's share of carbon sequestration. Our agri-biz practices not only disrupt this natural cycle they exacerbate the problem greatly. Regenerative soil farming practices are necessary to reverse this trend. No beef here, I haven't eaten any in almost 50 yrs.. We'll be having a nice Cinquo de Mayo dinner without it.

 

[semipro]

I had an Impossible Burger last week and thought it was pretty darned good.

Its been interesting to watch the measles outbreaks occur. I see a lot of parallels with climate change:

• Overwhelming consensus in the scientific community
• Available solutions for prevention
• Massive misinformation by a very vocal minority given equal credence (by some)
• Extreme selfishness by those unwilling to act
• Increased risk to the innocent, others, and the future resulting from that selfishness
• Governments unwilling to stand up and act responsibly

We're doomed unless we can work together and start trusting science (the whole) rather than hanging our hopes on the optimism of a few scientists (the individuals).

Of course a major asteroid headed our way might changes things. I wonder how long we would debate the "science" of an impeding impact before deciding to act. I'm sure there's some jackass out there that will reassure the non-believers with fallacy.

In other news, my heating bills are down and I've been able to plant my vegetable garden earlier every year - 40 days earlier this year. Why should I worry about the 800 million suffering elsewhere? https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/28723

 

[Doug MacIVER]

shame on me. another sin, forgive me father! you have made your choices> so have I ? Mine(in general) are for greed in your mind, you've said so in your posts.Your position is that folks such us,(my familly and like thinkers) ,care less !

your turn and a no to all makes you pure, no comm. fish, shellfish, chicken, goat, lamb, mutton, deer, elk,whale?

I now understand your attitude, my way, thinking , knowledge the only way, some out there do call agw, the new religion?
thanks for being honest, and gabgl (look up met. Dick Albert for defin)