Arguments
Explaining climate change science & rebutting global warming misinformation
Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to improve their understanding. Yet this isn't what happens with climate change denial. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that purports to refute global warming. This website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say?
2016 SkS Weekly Digest #36
Posted on 4 September 2016 by John Hartz
SkS Highlights... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Graphic of the Week... SkS in the News... SkS Spotlights... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...
SkS Highlights
Look for an important announcement by SkS founder, John Cook, on Tuesday of this week.
Toon of the Week
2016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #36
Posted on 3 September 2016 by John Hartz
A chronological listing of the news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook page during the past week.
Sun Aug 21, 2016
- US EIA: Natural Gas CO2 Emissions Surpassing Coal Emissions by Aisha Abdelhamid, Clean Technica, Aug 27, 2016
- To combat climate change, these scientists are turning CO2 into rock, PBS News Hour, Aug 23, 2016
- Seals help scientists get to the bottom of Antarctic changes by Robert McSweeney, Carbon Brief, Aug 23, 2016
- Can progress on climate change keep up with its quickening pace?, Op-ed by Tom Styer, Washington Post, Aug 26, 2016
- Climate science debates find their place in the Sun by Robert Matthews, The National (AUE), Aug 28, 2016
- Coordinator of UK Ocean Acidification Research Attacks The Spectator for 'Willfully Misleading' James Delingpole Column by Graham Readfearn, DeSmog, Aug 26, 2016
- Electric airplanes (batteries included) by Bob Silberg, JPL/NASA Global Climate Change, Aug 23, 2016
- Hurricane Gaston Reforms in Atlantic Ocean by Phil Helsel, NBC News, Aug 28, 2016
Americans Now More Politically Polarized On Climate Change Than Ever Before, Analysis Finds
Posted on 1 September 2016 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from DeSmogBlog by Graham Readfearn
American voters and politicians are now more polarized than ever before across all aspects of climate change — from the cause, to the science and the impacts — a major new analysis has found.
Campaigns funded by vested fossil fuel interests and pushed by a network of ideological think tanks, many linked to the oil billionaire Koch brothers, have helped to widen the gap, pushing Republican politicians, elites and voters away from action on greenhouse gas emissions.
Tracking Gallup opinion poll surveys going back to 2001 and congress voting patterns from 1970 onwards, the analysis authors warn that as the November election approaches, Americans are faced with a stark political choice.
The analysis is published in the respected journal Environment and comes from sociologists Associate Professor Aaron McCright of Michigan State University, Professor Riley Dunlap of Oklahoma State University, and PhD researcher Jerrod Yarosh also at Oklahoma.
The researchers found the widest gaps between Democrats and Republicans come when they are asked about the causes of climate change and if the media exaggerates the seriousness of the issue.
While virtually all climate scientists and the world's leading scientific academies have long agreed that the burning of fossil fuels is causing climate change, only about half Republicans accept the science.
A Republican controlled Congress, the article says, would be a “huge step backward in our nation’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” and could also undermine international cooperation, especially if Republican nominee Donald Trump won the Presidency.
“Whether, and how, individual Americans vote this November may well be the most consequential climate-related decision most of them will have ever taken,” the authors conclude.
Stark Choices
Dunlap told DeSmog the choice facing US voters was glaring.
Coordinator of UK Ocean Acidification Research Attacks The Spectator for 'Willfully Misleading' James Delingpole Column
Posted on 31 August 2016 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from DeSmogBlog by Graham Readfearn
The Spectator is one of the oldest English language magazines on the planet, established in London in 1828. Chances are if you’ve never read it, you’ve probably heard of it.
The Marine Biologist magazine, on the other hand, was only launched in 2013. With no disrespect to the good people there, chances are you’ve neither heard of it, read it or are aware of its very existence.
But earlier this week the Marine Biologist’s website published an eviscerating 2,500-word analysis of an April column that had appeared in The Spectator.
The column, written by climate science denier and polemicist James Delingpole, had tried to claim the science linking the burning of fossil fuels to the acidification of our oceans was “fatally flawed”.
Marine life, claimed Delingpole, had “nothing to fear” from ocean acidification.
Published back in April, Delingpole strung together what must, to some, have seemed a compelling narrative.
He had citations, “experts” and more scientific terminology than you could shake a stick at (or a copy of Marine Biologist, if you had one handy).
The problem?
“Almost everything that could be factually wrong, is wrong,” wrote Dr Phillip Williamson, on the website of your new favourite magazine, the Marine Biologist.
Blow-by-Blow Debunking
Williamson, based at the University of East Anglia, is the science director of the UK government-funded Ocean Acidification Research Programme. He responded to Delingpole’s 1,200 words with 2,400-words of his own — a blow-by-blow debunking pulling apart each argument and technique Delingpole had used.
Williamson’s analysis shows how Delingpole had employed many of the tricks and failings of climate science denialists.
He had cherry-picked data. He chose to rely on “experts”, such as fossil fuel advocates and climate science denialists Craig Idso, Patrick Moore and Matt Ridley, who had no genuine expertise in marine science.
The genuine experts Delingpole did cite, wrote Williamson, were misrepresented.
One of those experts was Dr Howard Browman, of the Institute of Marine Research in Norway, who Delingpole claimed had published “a review in the ICES Journal of Marine Science of all the papers published on the subject” and had come to a damning conclusion that many studies were flawed.
Except six weeks before, Browman had told DeSmog that his views on the issue, reported in The Times, had actually been misrepresented.
Williamson told DeSmog that he had tried, and failed, to get The Spectator to publish his views, telling editor Fraser Nelson that Delingpole’s piece had been “willfully misleading”. He told DeSmog:
Delingpole's statement ‘Marine life has nothing whatsoever to fear from ocean acidification’ summarises his view. But that assertion is as incorrect as the opposite, purported claims that he quotes and dismisses: for example, that ocean acidification will “turn our oceans into a barren zone of death”.
The whole article is based on that false dichotomy, between unidentified alarmists and scientifically-naïve optimists who also happen to be climate change deniers and sceptics. It may seem boring to say that the truth lies between the two, but it does.
An update on methane emissions from fracking (in the US)
Posted on 30 August 2016 by gws
A relatively large number of research publications has appeared in the peer-reviewed literature since we last updated our readers on fracking and methane, CH4, emissions. We cannot discuss them all here. However, in summary, it can be concluded from these papers that EPA is very likely underestimating fossil fuel related methane emissions in its greenhouse gas inventory, anywhere between 30% and 100%, possibly even more. Meaning, in order for the US to effectively lower its greenhouse gas emissions, it also needs to get fugitive methane emissions under control.
The EPA inventory
The US administration has reacted to the new data, and EPA issued a number of regulatory actions. In addition, EPA has begun to update its inventory. However, a look at the inventoried totals …
… and the “energy” related emissions …
California has urged President Obama and Congress to tax carbon pollution
Posted on 29 August 2016 by dana1981
Last week, the California state senate passed Assembly Joint Resolution 43, urging the federal government to pass a revenue-neutral carbon tax:
WHEREAS, A national carbon tax would make the United States a leader in mitigating climate change and the advancing clean energy technologies of the 21st Century, and would incentivize other countries to enact similar carbon taxes, thereby reducing global carbon dioxide emissions without the need for complex international agreements; now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Assembly and the Senate of the State of California, jointly, That the Legislature hereby urges the United States Congress to enact, without delay, a tax on carbon-based fossil fuels; and be it further Resolved ... That all tax revenue should be returned to middle- and low-income Americans to protect them from the impact of rising prices due to the tax
Copies of the Resolution were sent to President Obama, Vice President Biden, House Speaker Ryan, Senate Majority Leader McConnell, and to all members of Congress representing California. The document specifically calls for the type of revenue-neutral carbon tax advocated by the grassroots organization Citizens’ Climate Lobby. Studies have shown that a rising carbon tax with all revenue returned to taxpayers would have a modestly beneficial impact on the economy, while cutting carbon pollution at faster rates than current policies.
California exerts its climate leadership
California has become the US leader in tackling global warming. 10 years ago, the state passed the Global Warming Solutions Act, requiring that its greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 be no higher than 1990 levels. California achieved that goal in 2010, 10 years early, and is among the lowest per-capita carbon polluting states.
On the same day last week, the state legislature also passed a bill expanding the Global Warming Solutions Act, requiring a 40% cut in California’s carbon pollution from 1990 levels by 2030. In other words, California isn’t just calling on the federal government to take action on climate change; the state is leading the way.
It remains to be seen whether any climate legislation can survive in the current toxic partisan political climate of Washington DC. However, a revenue-neutral carbon tax has the best chance due to its bipartisan appeal. Its requirement that carbon polluters pay for the costs of their pollution appeals to the political left, while its free market, small government approach appeals to the political right.
Revenue-neutral carbon tax is hard to dislike
By returning 100% of the taxed revenue to American households, the policy blunts the rising costs of energy produced by burning fossil fuels. In fact, studies project that a majority of Americans would receive a rebate larger than their increase in energy bills; only those who use the most fossil fuel energy would see costs rise more than the rebate.
2016 SkS Weekly Digest #35
Posted on 28 August 2016 by John Hartz
SkS Highlights... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Graphic of the Week... Rebuttal Article Update... He Said What?... SkS in the News... SkS Spotlights... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...
SkS Highlights
Using the metric of comments garnered, Naïve empiricism and what theory suggests about errors in observed global warming by Victor Venema was the most popular of the articles posted on SkS during the past week. (Click here to access the profile of Victor posted on his website, Variable Variability.)
Toon of the Week
2016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #35
Posted on 27 August 2016 by John Hartz
A chronological listing of the news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook page during the past week.
Sun Aug 21, 2016
- 91,000 Electric Cars Sold In Europe In 1st Half Of 2016 by James Ayre, Clean Technica, Aug 20, 2016
- No-name storm dumped three times as much rain in Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina by Jason Samenow, Capital Weather Gang, Washington Post, Aug 19, 2016
- As Louisiana floods rage, Republicans are blocking modest climate action, Op-ed by Raúl M Grijalva, Guardian, Aug 19, 2016
- Inuit fear they will be overwhelmed as ‘extinction tourism’ descends on Arctic by Robin McKie, Observer/Guardian, Aug 20, 2016
- Britain is only just beginning to exploit its vast resources of offshore wind by Simon Watson, The Conversation UK, Aug 18, 2016
- English Village Becomes Climate Leader by Quietly Cleaning Up Its Own Patch by Tatiana Schlossberg, New York Times, Aug 21, 2016
- Naive empiricism and what theory suggests about errors in observed global warming by Victor Venema, Variable Variability, Aug 21, 2016
- Arctic sea ice is vanishing far faster than anyone thought possible by Robert Ferris, CNBC, Aug 19, 2016
Report Shows Whopping $8.8 Trillion Climate Tab Being Left for Next Generation
Posted on 26 August 2016 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Common Dreams by Lauren McCauley
"We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children," is an oft-quoted proverb, frequently used to explain the importance of environmental preservation. Unsaid, however, is how much it will impact the next generation if the Earth is bequeathed in a lesser state.
Environmental campaigners NextGen Climate and public policy group Demos published a new study that attempts to quantify the true cost of not addressing climate change to the millennial generation and their children.
The Price Tag of Being Young: Climate Change and Millennials' Economic Future (pdf) compares some of the high costs millennials will face in the "new inequality economy"—such as student debt, child care costs, stagnant wages, as well as financial and job insecurity—against the fiscal impacts of unmitigated global warming.
"The fact is," the report states, "unchecked climate change will impose heavy costs on millennials and subsequent generations, both directly in the form of reduced incomes and wealth, and indirectly through likely higher tax bills as extreme weather, rising sea levels, drought, heat-related health problems, and many other climate change-related problems take their toll on our society."
The impacts from climate costs alone, the report finds, are "comparable to Great Depression-era losses." The study employs a model developed by researchers from Stanford University and University of California at Berkeley that measures the effects of rising temperatures on long-term economic growth and national productivity drawing on 50 years of data from 166 countries.
The "no climate action" scenario found that by 2100 global per capita GDP will shrink by 23 percent relative to a scenario without climate change. The U.S. is estimated to take a 5 percent hit by 2050 that jumps to 36 percent by 2100 should no climate action occur.
This adds up to a loss of nearly $8.8 trillion in lifetime income for millennials and tens of trillions for their children.
Global warming is melting the Greenland Ice Sheet, fast
Posted on 25 August 2016 by John Abraham
A new study measures the loss of ice from one of world’s largest ice sheets. They find an ice loss that has accelerated in the past few years, and their measurements confirm prior estimates.
As humans emit heat-trapping gases, we expect to see changes to the Earth. One obvious change to be on the lookout for is melting ice. This includes ice atop mountains, ice floating in cold ocean waters, and the ice within large ice sheets or glaciers. It is this last type of ice loss that most affects ocean levels because as the water runs into the oceans, it raises sea levels. This is in contrast to melting sea ice – since it is already floating in ocean waters, its potential to raise ocean levels is very small.
So measuring ice sheet melting is important, not only as a signal of global warming but also because of the sea level impacts. But how is this melting measured? The ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica are huge and scientists need enough measurements in space and time to really understand what’s going on. That is, we need high-resolution and long duration measurements to fully understand trends.
Greenland Ice Sheet. Photograph: Briggs/CPOM
In a very recent publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, an international team reported on a new high-resolution measurement of Greenland. The lead author, Malcolm McMillan from the Centre for Polar Observation and Modeling, and his colleagues mapped Greenland with incredibly high resolution (5 km distances).
Katharine Hayhoe on Climate and our Choices
Posted on 24 August 2016 by greenman3610
This is a re-post from Climate Denial Crock of the Week
I was fortunate to catch up with Katharine Hayhoe in June, while I was interviewing TV meteorologists at a conference in Austin, TX. She was there to present and answer questions on the finer points of climate science for the assembled media mets.
Dr Hayhoe has been named one of Time Magazine’s most Influential People. She is a climate scientist working and teaching at Texas Tech University.
Naïve empiricism and what theory suggests about errors in observed global warming
Posted on 23 August 2016 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Variable Variability
In its time it was huge progress that Francis Bacon stressed the importance of observations. Even if he did not do that much science himself, his advocacy for the Baconian (scientific) method, gave him a place as one of the fathers of modern science together with Nicolaus Copernicus and Isaac Newton.
However, you can also become too fundamentalist about empiricism. Modern science is characterized by an intricate interplay of observations and theory. An observation is never free of theory. You may not be aware of it, but you make theoretical assumptions about what you see in any observation. Theory also guides what to observe, what kind of experiments to make.
Charles Darwin often claimed to adhere to Bacon's ideals, but he had another side. University of California professor of biology and philosophy Francisco Ayala writes in Darwin and the scientific method:
“Let theory guide your observations.” Indeed, Darwin had no use for the empiricist claim that a scientist should not have a preconception or hypothesis that would guide his work. Otherwise, as he wrote, one “might as well go into a gravel pit and count the pebbles and describe the colors. How odd it is that anyone should not see that observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service”
But his ambivalence is seen in Darwin's advice to a young scientist:
Let theory guide your observations, but till your reputation is well established be sparing in publishing theory. It makes persons doubt your observations.
The same ambivalence is seen in Einstein. Mitigation skeptics like this quote:
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
The quote this when the observations show less changes than the model. If the observations show more changes than the model/theory the observations, they quickly forget Einstein and the observations are suddenly wrong.
In practice Einstein was more realistic. Prof in molecular physics [[John Rigden]] wrote in his book about Einstein's wonder year 1905: "Einstein saw beyond common sense and, while he respected experimental data, he was not its slave."
That is perfectly reasonable. When theory and observations do not match, the theory can be wrong, the observations can be wrong and the comparison can be wrong. What is called observations is nearly always something that was computed from observations and also that computation can be imperfect. Only when we understand the reason, can we say what it was.
The main blog of the mitigation skeptical movement, WUWT, on the other hand is famous for calling trying to understand the reasons for discrepancies: "excuses".
Historical documents reveal Arctic sea ice is disappearing at record speed
Posted on 22 August 2016 by dana1981
Scientists have pieced together historical records to reconstruct Arctic sea ice extent over the past 125 years. The results are shown in the figure below. The red line, showing the extent at the end of the summer melt season, is the most critical:
Time series of Arctic sea ice extent, 1850-2013, for March (blue line) and September (red line). Illustration: Walsh et al. (2016)
Arctic sea ice extent in recent years is by far the lowest it’s been, with about half of the historical coverage gone, and the decline the fastest it’s been in recorded history. Florence Fetterer, principal investigator at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, described the data reconstruction process in a guest post at Carbon Brief:
2016 SkS Weekly Digest #34
Posted on 21 August 2016 by John Hartz
SkS Highlights... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Graphic of the Week... He Said What?... SkS in the News... SkS Spotlights... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...
SkS Highlights
Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize by Dana Nuccitelli (Climate Consensus-the 97%, Guardian) garnered, by far and away, the most comments among the articles posted on SkS during the past week. The comment thread discussion is lively and wide-ranging. If you have not done so already, check out the article and participate in the discourse.
Toon of the Week
Hat tip to I Heart Climate Scientists
2016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #34
Posted on 20 August 2016 by John Hartz
A chronological listing of the news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook page during the past week.
Sun Aug 14, 2016
- A closer look at Trump’s sentence-like word strings on coal, China, and the size of the Earth by David Roberts, Energy & Environment, Vox, Aug 12, 2016
- Record Flooding in Southeast Louisiana May Get Worse by Bob Henson, WunderBlog, Weather Underground, Aug 12, 2016
- Thousands Rescued, Motorists Still Stranded on Interstate in Flood-Soaked Louisiana by Ada Carr and Ryan Phillip, The Weather Channel, Aug 14, 2016
- Hitting the plastic slopes: Climate change pushes ski resorts to 'weatherproof' by Nicole Ireland, CBC News, Aug 13, 2016
- California wildfire forces 1,000 evacuations and destroys homes, AP/Guardian, Aug 14, 2016
- The blob': how marine heatwaves are causing unprecedented climate chaos by Michael Slezak, Guardian, Aug 14, 2016
- Who owns the wind? We do, Wyoming says, and it's taxing those who use it by William Yardley, Los Angeles Times, Aug 14, 2016
Climate-related disasters raise conflict risk, study says
Posted on 19 August 2016 by dana1981
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Robert McSweeney
Extreme weather increases the risk of armed conflict in ethnically-diverse countries, a new study suggests.
Around 23% of conflict outbreaks in these countries over the last three decades have occurred during climate-related disasters, such as droughts and heatwaves, the paper says.
The results don’t suggest that weather extremes directly trigger conflict, the researchers say, but that they can be one of many contributing factors.
Carbon Brief speaks to a number of experts to dig a bit deeper into what has become quite a controversial field of climate research.
Climate-related disasters
A host of different factors can increase the risk of armed conflict breaking out in a country. Some examples picked out by previous research include poverty, weak governance, a history of conflict, income gaps between rich and poor, and disputes over natural resources.
The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that climate-related disasters should be added to this list.
This conclusion stems from a statistical analysis of armed conflicts and the economic damage caused by extreme weather events over the period 1980-2010.
The researchers looked at three categories of climate-related disasters. These include meteorological events (blizzard/snowstorm, hailstorm, tornado, tropical cyclone, winter storm), hydrological events (avalanche, flash flood, general flood, landslide, storm surge), and climatological events (cold wave/frost, drought, heatwave, wildfire).
The results suggest that around 9% of all armed conflicts over the past 30 years have occurred during – i.e. in the same month as – an extreme climatological event.
State of the Climate 2015: global warming and El Niño sent records tumbling
Posted on 18 August 2016 by Guest Author
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Andrew King, Climate Extremes Research Fellow, University of Melbourne and Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, Research Fellow, UNSW Australia
The State of the Climate in 2015 report, led by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was released yesterday. Unfortunately, it paints a grim picture of the world’s climate last year.
For a second consecutive year the globe experienced its hottest year on record, beating the 2014 record by more than 0.1℃. From May 2015 onwards, each month set a temperature record for that particular month, a pattern that has yet to end.
In all three global temperature series, 2015 stands out as the hottest year. UK Met Office, Author provided
The record-breaking temperature anomaly in 2015 (around 1℃ higher, on average, than what would be expected in a world without humans) was in large part due to human-caused climate change. A small fraction of the heat was because of a major El Niño event, which developed midway through 2015 and ran into this year.
During El Niño events we see warmer sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. A resulting transfer of heat from the ocean into the lower atmosphere causes a temporary warming effect. In La Niña seasons, the opposite happens.
Overall, about 0.05-0.1℃ of the global temperature anomaly for 2015 was due to El Niño. The bulk of the remainder was due to climate change. So even if we hadn’t had an El Niño last year, 2015 would still have been one of the hottest years on record.
Of the 16 hottest years ever recorded, 15 have happened this century.
Extreme events around the world…
At regional scales we also saw many extreme events last year. The downward trend in Arctic sea ice continued, with the lowest annual maximum extent on record. Alaska’s winter was almost non-existent, with many Arctic mammals and fish being forced to change their behaviour and shift their habitats.
Many extreme heatwaves occurred in 2015. These included a deadly hot spell in India and Pakistan and severe heat events in Europe and North America. Combined, these events killed thousands of people.
In Europe, various summer heat records were set in Spain, the Netherlands, France and Britain, while Germany posted an all-time record temperature.
Piecing together the Arctic’s sea ice history back to 1850
Posted on 17 August 2016 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Florence Fetterer, principal investigator at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in the US.
Sea ice cover in the Arctic has undergone a widely reported decline in recent decades. The decrease has been greatest during summer, with sea ice extent reducing by around 12% per decade since the satellite record began in 1979.
The main cause of this rapid decline is rising air temperatures. The Arctic is warming twice as quickly as the global average, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. Other factors, such as wind patterns and ocean warming, also play a role in the diminishing sea ice.
Average monthly Arctic sea ice extent in September between 1979 and 2015 (at a rate of 13.4% per decade). Credit: NSIDC
Satellites provide a near-continuous record of Arctic sea ice cover, allowing scientists to monitor changes from one day to the next. But because this data spans only the most recent three and a half decades, we need to look elsewhere to gather information on variations over longer periods.
This data is necessary as there are some research questions that can’t be answered with only short-term records, such as:
- Has Arctic sea ice cover been this small since the start of the industrial revolution?
- Has sea ice ever declined this rapidly in the historical record?
- How is sea ice affected by natural fluctuations over multiple decades?
To tackle this problem we set about constructing a record of sea ice going back to 1850. And this meant gathering data from some rather unusual sources.
TV Meteorologists Warm to Climate Science
Posted on 16 August 2016 by greenman3610
This is a re-post from Climate Denial Crock of the Week
In June, I flew to Austin TX, for a conference that brought together prominent regional television weathercasters and scientists, for a concentrated update on climate science and communication.
For years, it seems, there has been a disconnect between those who are the most familiar and trusted sources of weather information, and the climate transformation that is affecting the stories they seek to report and interpret. In a summer like this, more and more weathercasters are being beseiged with questions about climate, and how it is impacting the seemingly endless parade of extreme events that are hitting all around the country, and the world.
The TV Mets I interviewed were smart, thoughtful, had science training, though not at the PhD level, enough to have begun digging into the data on their own to draw conclucions. Some, like Amber Sullins of ABC 15 in Phoenix, had initially been skeptical, “10 or 20 years ago”, she told me. But after doing what a scientist does “..take in the information, question, and research it yourself” – she came to understand the problem was real. Likewise Greg Fishel of WRAL in Raleigh, formerly a self described “hard core skeptic”, who finally realized that he was only seeking “information to support what I already thought..” – and began searching independently for answers.
Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize
Posted on 15 August 2016 by dana1981
While most people accept the reality of human-caused global warming, we tend not to view it as an urgent issue or high priority. That lack of immediate concern may in part stem from a lack of understanding that today’s pollution will heat the planet for centuries to come, as explained in this Denial101x lecture:
So far humans have caused about 1°C warming of global surface temperatures, but if we were to freeze the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide at today’s levels, the planet would continue warming. Over the coming decades, we’d see about another 0.5°C warming, largely due to what’s called the “thermal inertia” of the oceans (think of the long amount of time it takes to boil a kettle of water). The Earth’s surface would keep warming about another 1.5°C over the ensuing centuries as ice continued to melt, decreasing the planet’s reflectivity.
To put this in context, the international community agreed in last year’s Paris climate accords that we should limit climate change risks by keeping global warming below 2°C, and preferably closer to 1.5°C. Yet from the carbon pollution we’ve already put into the atmosphere, we’re committed to 1.5–3°C warming over the coming decades and centuries, and we continue to pump out over 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year.
The importance of reaching zero or negative emissions
We can solve this problem if, rather than holding the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide steady, it falls over time. As discussed in the above video, Earth naturally absorbs more carbon than it releases, so if we reduce human emissions to zero, the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide will slowly decline. Humans can also help the process by finding ways to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and sequester it.
Scientists are researching various technologies to accomplish this, but we’ve already put over 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Pulling a significant amount of that carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it safely will be a tremendous challenge, and we won’t be able to reduce the amount in the atmosphere until we first get our emissions close to zero.
