The Arctic warming is getting a lot of attention this week, but I keep seeing references to the warming being twice as fast as the global mean, and that's not right.
It's more like 3 times the global mean.
"If you are a climate scientist please remember to never back down on your research. This issue is too important. We need people with courage in this fight."
To be clear, the additional warming this century is almost all within the control of human choices related to emissions. No matter what happens, we are always going to be able to make more climate friendly choices. Neither we, nor the ecosystem, are βdoomedβ to > 3Β°C warming.
Since this comes up a lot, a quick run though of the testable, falsifiable, science that supports a human cause of recent trends in global mean temperature.
Holy moly. I don't think I can do this. First words out of Peterson's mouth in the Joe Rogan interview are complete self parody. I can't even dunk on it.
This tweet is just to let normal people know that even climate scientists are having an impossible time trying to work out what is going on at
#COP26
and what of any of it will matter.
The potentially record-shattering extreme heat weather forecasts for the Pacific NW are pretty shocking, but some folks keep getting the climate change connection wrong.
The most impressive things about
@GretaThunberg
are her clarity and authenticity. Precisely why the insincere purveyors of confusion like Lomborg see her as a threat.
"I'm a climate scientist"
- boring
- academic
- are we all doomed?
"I read the entrails of the planet"
- mysterious
- ominous
- maybe you should wash your hands?
"I'm a historian"
- boring
- academic
- is this going to be on the test?
"I am a master of the past"
- mysterious
- ominous
- maybe you can time-travel
Weβll be seeing a lot more βitβs cold where I am, global warming is bogusβ in the coming days and months (and years and decades). Pretty much in line with how much itβs warmingβ¦
I have thoughts about scientists βdebatingβ contrarians, conspiracists and assorted bad faith actors (or authors).
For reference, I speak w/25 years experience of being a βpublicβ climate scientistβ¦
Please, save us from retired physicists who think theyβre smarter and wiser than everyone in climate science because they worked out an energy balance model four decades ago... π
This is complete nonsense. People are called deniers when they continually ignore valid scientific research in favor of hand waving and confirmation bias - nuance and uncertainty have nothing to do with it, regardless of what they tell themselves.
This is what βdebateβ with pathological liars looks like.
There is literally nothing they wonβt claim & people on the side of reality are supposed to defend themselves from increasingly bizarre claims.
Yet some people insist that these folks are acting in good faith π€£
Doing great work on high profile climate reports: Impressive
Stepping up to explain & educate: Vital
Getting personally attacked for no other reason than their public outreach: Appalling (tho not unexpected)
Carrying on with the
#scicomm
regardless: Remarkable
Kudos to
@KHayhoe
A quick 𧡠on Lomborg etc.
I was once asked by someone prominent in the tech/internet area whether there was anything to the his critiques of climate change mitigation. I said no, but I could tell he really wanted me to say yes. Lomborg's shtick is definitely appealing. But why?
One of the ironies of a successful campaign to avoid worst case scenarios is always that the people who fought every effort will claim afterwards that there was never any need for any action.
That is both predictable and false.
But it will be a small price to pay.
I made two graphics to deal with the more foolish claims being made with respect to CO2.
1) Human activities are responsible for at least 1/3rd of atmospheric CO2 (and growing):
I'm not sure what Dawkins thinks he's doing here (I have a pretty good idea), but
a) reductive approaches to climate are bottom-up (not top down),
b) causes & impacts of, & responses to, climate change all have sociological components that intersect w/feminist concernsβ¦
This story is... unconvincing. First off itβs just two scientists (no publication), one of whom has made similar (unsupported) claims before & ignores the context that permafrost & methane have been degrading in this region since it was inundated in the early Holocene.
I can't help myself, climate deniers are too dumb. part 374:
The response to
@billmckibben
's tweet about sea ice anomalies in Antarctica is whatever the opposite of a chef's kiss is. [The waiter's fart?]
These people are so predictable with their nonsense, and yet I can't quite get over how disappointing it is that they can't see science as something deeply interesting and important...
βPeterson has managed to absorb the first part of George Boxβs famous dictum that βall models are wrongβ but appears to have not worked out the second part βbut some are usefulββ
Dreamt that I quit academia to open a paleoclimate-themed bar called βCene.
Cocktails like the: KT impact (youβll only want to have one!), the PETM (hot!), the Last Glacial and Snowball Earth (made with liquid N2). The Anthro would have extra CO2.
Clearly thereβs a market for this stuff, but itβs just exaggerated hyperbole.
Negative effects != global crop failure
Increased risk != most humans dead
6Β°C != uninhabitable
Yes, increasing climate change multiplies risks & dangers, but how is this helpful? Timelines wrong too
Remember:
1. Global crop failures by 2Β°C.
2. Most humans dead by 4Β°C.
3. Earth uninhabitable by 6Β°C.
4. We risk 2Β°C by 2035.
5. We risk 4Β°C by 2065.
6. We risk 6Β°C by 2095.
One tweet is worth a million newspaper front pages.
Hahahahaha⦠climate deniers now throwing the UAH MSU record under the bus in favor of totally made up nonsense.
It was only ever a question of timeβ¦
Great new resource for Earth history folks. Chris Scotese and Nicky Wright's PaleoDEMs (1x1 resolution, 0 to 540 Ma) are now online
Example for the end Cretaceous (w/modern outlines for comparison):
It seems obvious to me that one can discuss, debate, and debunk ideas without it being done on a stage with a time limit and no fact checking?
Do people really think that trial by combat is the best way to ascertain truth?
If you donβt think R.F.K. Jr. should be publicly debated, says
@DouthatNYT
, βyou need some other theory of how the curious can be persuaded away from his ideas.β
@ClimateBen
Might I suggest that you present your conclusions as your conclusions, and refrain from putting words into other people's mouths? The 'quotes' you took were from a blog interview, not a peer reviewed paper.
For
@marcorubio
@jaketapper
and anyone else, itβs a good thing that scientists have indeed already looked at how much recent trends in climate are due to human activity.
[narrator: it was all of it]
Last week, I was quoted in an AP article interviewing scientists who are pushing back on the emerging narrative that there's nothing we can do about climate change -- that we're doomed, no matter what.
Since then, I've gotten phone calls, emails, and actual mail in response.
If someone says they donβt know precisely how much human activity is contributing to climate change, ask them what level of precision they are aiming for and which actual decisions are dependent on that.
While most people have heard of climate change, general understanding of the climate system as a whole is poor. So perhaps a thread for relevant factoids that people might find interesting is worthwhile? I'll start off with a few and add more later...
#ClimateFacts
We see this with all of the anti-science bad faith arguments. Regardless of how often people have pointed out how silly it is, or that it makes no logical sense, or that there would be no motive to doing something like that, the smugs will continue to make it.
NYT in 1986: "Average global temperatures would rise by 1/2 - 1 Β°F from 1990 to 2000 if current trends are unchanged, according to Dr. Hansenβs findings. Dr. Hansen said the global temperature would rise by another 2 to 4 degrees in the following decade."
#Catastrophizing
With Nov GISTEMP anomalies posted, 2019 is
#2
YTD, and this will be 99.9% likely to be the ranking for the full year.
- 5th year clearly > 1Β°C above late 19th C
- closes out warmest decade in record
Please stop doing this. The 1.5ΒΊC/2ΒΊC levels from the Paris Agreements are for the global mean temperature changes - not northern hemisphere land (which warms faster than the ocean or the southern hemisphere).
"In an area including the whole of Europe, most of North America and Asia the average temperature last summer was 2.07C hotter than between 1850 and 1900"
Forget 1.5C or 2C. We are already beyond.
Catastrophic news. No two ways about it.
What it means for the Pacific NW is that there will be a very high attribution to climate change for the upcoming event and the exact numbers will depend on how hot it really gets. And the hotter it gets, the larger the attribution will be.
Regardless of cause though, stay safe!
As I've predicted since Jun, 2018 is going to come in as 4th warmest year in the modern record and 4th year in a row more that 1ΒΊC above late 19th Century in GISTEMP.
A reminder that politicization generally follows what political leaders decide to politicize, not how well or poorly scientists communicate the underlying facts.
π· Only a tiny minority of the British public are very unwilling to wear a mask, and there's little evidence of a partisan divide - unlike in the US, say
@sarahobolt
and
@soccerquant
#LSEThinks
π
In the horse-race for the warmest year, 2020 is ahead of 2016 by a nose, but it's going to be a photo-finish. Either way, the margin is likely to be within the uncertainty of our ability to estimate the true real world anomaly.
Nothing illustrates the vacuity of what passes for climate scepticism in the UK than Matt Ridley retweeting Toby Young who publishes a piece by Chris Morrison based on total bollocks.
We should dedicate February as
#findaclimatescapegoat
month as yet again some political scientists try to find ways to blame climate scientists for the lack of progress in CO2 emission reductions, instead of, say, politics.
I know this seems like itβs exciting news, but really folks, we do not know the precise difference between yesterdayβs global mean temperature and the pre-industrial to 3 sig figs or to the nearest 0.01Β°C.
π‘οΈΒ ERA5 data from
@CopernicusECMWF
indicates that 17 November was the first day that the global temperature exceeded 2Β°C above pre-industrial levels, reaching 2.07Β°C above the 1850-1900 average and the provisional ERA5 value for 18 November is 2.06Β°C.
Carbon and Nitrogen are two main components of
#soil
. Both of them can do wonders for all living microorganisms which automatically increase the quantity of soil.
#SaveSoil
#SaveSoilMovement
People who dismiss these concerns (read the comments), & those of the humanities and sociology more generally, are simply signaling that their version of the culture wars is more important than actually dealing with these problems. We don't really have time for that any more.