JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
Jo appreciates your support to help her keep doing what she does. This blog is funded by donations. Thanks!
Follow Jo's Tweets To report "lost" comments or defamatory and offensive remarks, email the moderators at: support.jonova AT proton.me
Statistics
Crisis looms in alarmist climate science
By David Wojick
Climate science is dominated by alarmists addicted to the idea that increasing carbon dioxide will cause dangerous global warming. How much warming is thus the central scientific question.
This question has been surprisingly difficult to answer despite 40 years of research, costing tens of billions of dollars. Now the issue is exploding because two different answers are emerging, one harmlessly low and the other dangerously high. This divergence is a crisis for the alarmist community. How they handle it remains to be seen.
What follows is a slightly technical explanation of the situation.
The issue centers on a benchmark estimate of the impact of increasing CO2 on global temperature. This is called the “equilibrium climate sensitivity” or ECS. The basic question is what will the global average temperature be when the CO2 level is double the supposedly original level of 280 ppm? That is, what will it be when we hit 560 ppm.
However, since it may take the climate system some time to adjust to this new high level, the question is what the temperature will be when the system equilibrates to this doubling, which may be some time after we hit 560. Also, this is about sensitivity, so ECS is not the new high temperature. It is the number of degrees C higher than the original temperature that this new high temperature will be.
So if the new high temperature is, say, 2.2 degrees C higher then ECS = 2.2 degrees.
Technically ECS is often an abstraction, something that only happens in climate models, but model ECS is taken as an important estimate of real ECS. In the models ECS is often estimated by simply doubling the CO2 instantaneously, whereas in reality this takes centuries.
All this said, I can now explain the emerging crisis.
For many decades the accepted model estimates of ECS have ranged from 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C. Different models give different values, but the acceptable range has not changed. That the range is so big has been a policy problem. Warming as little as 1.5 degrees might be harmless, while 4.5 might be dangerous. But the ECS range has been stubbornly persistent, refusing to narrow to a specific value.
Now, suddenly, there is a huge new problem. ECS has exploded! It is not that it is higher, or lower — it is both. Two new lines of research have diverged sharply on the estimated value of ECS.
The first line of research takes a new approach called observational ECS. The idea is that since the CO2 level is almost half way to doubling we should be able to derive ECS empirically from the observed relationship between CO2 increase and temperature increase.
There have been a number of observational studies and many are getting ECS values well below 1.5, which are harmless indeed. Values of 1.2 and 1.3 are common.
But at the same time there has been a new wave of modeling studies and these are getting ECS values way above 4.5, which would be truly dangerous. Here values of 5.2 and 5.3 are to be found.
Note that the modeling community is divided over accepting these new hot model numbers. After all, they imply that the modeling done over the last forty years or so has been wrong, including a lot of the recent modeling which is still within the old range.
The upshot of all this is that the science of ECS is in a shambles. Given that ECS addresses the core science of climate alarmism, this is truly a crisis. Has the modeling been wrong for 40 years? Is it wrong now? What about observation, which is supposed to rule in science? The scientific method says observation trumps theoretical modeling.
This is also a policy crisis. If we have no idea how sensitive the climate system will be to increasing CO2 levels then we have no basis for making climate change policy. If the observation values are right then there simply is no climate emergency.
How will this huge new uncertainty play out? Fortunately we will get at least a glimpse fairly soon. The latest IPCC assessment report (AR6) is presently under review and should be out in the next year or so. This report is supposed to review the state of climate change science, albeit from an alarmist point of view.
How the IPCC handles the exploding ECS range will be interesting to see, at the very least. They may choose to ignore it because it has to hurt alarmism. They may simply drop mention of the ECS altogether, it now being very inconvenient. But this glaring omission will be easy to call out.
Or they may only acknowledge the hot higher values, which favor alarmism. Here they risk making modeling look stupid (which it is). Plus this omission of critical evidence will also be easy to call out.
With the ECS range exploding the IPCC is caught between a hot rock and a cold hard place. So is alarmism. Stay tuned.
https://www.cfact.org/2020/10/20/crisis-looms-in-alarmist-climate-science/
131
Well said, David.
I regularly bring the failure of climate science to improve the range and mean value of ECS to the attention of warmists. But I usually do that after first pointing out that all physical evidence, across any time period, always shows temperature changes lead CO2 changes, meaning the direction of causality operates completely opposite to what AGW theory proposes.
Then, I point out the complete absence of physical or experimental evidence to support the existence of positive feedback atmospheric effects that can somehow triple the amount of additional warming provided by increased CO2. This effect includes the missing tropical hot spot and all climate models showing cloud feedback is net positive, whereas all observations show cloud feedback is net negative.
That then leads into the discussion on ECS. Warmists hate it when I point out that very low values of ECS have been acknowledged in the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report as shown in Figure 10.20b:
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter10_FINAL.pdf
The three key legs upon which AGW theory is based, cut off one at a time. After 30 years of research, climate science appears to be further from truly understanding the atmosphere. Perhaps because their underlying theory, which is the only place that ECS exists, may be wrong?
Can’t wait to read next year’s Working Group 1 report!
80
“Perhaps because their underlying theory, which is the only place that ECS exists, may be wrong?”
Well said Pauly.
20
“Climate science is dominated by alarmists addicted to the idea that increasing carbon dioxide will cause dangerous global warming. How much warming is thus the central scientific question.”
There are multiple statements here.
The first question is whether the increase in carbon dioxide is man made at all. This is not something which is proven by anyone. It is easily disproven, as I have demonstrated many times. Increased CO2 is easily explained from increased ocean temperature as 98% of all CO2 is in the oceans and simple science says so.
Pauly’s further comment is that temperature changes lead CO2 changes. Which should make any one expect that the CO2 changes are caused by temperature, not the other way around and further confirms that CO2 levels are not man made. In fact man’s influence on CO2 levels is tiny and major changes like suddenly stopping most of the world’s aircraft and cars has not had an observable effect.
Still, as you say, alarmists love to make it entirely about whether CO2 causes global warming, with the implicit assumption that man is entirely responsible.
A quite independent proposition is then that such warming is ‘dangerous’ when there is no evidence of that at all.
And another is that a CO2 increase is unwanted, even ‘carbon pollution’, which is odd as all life on earth is made from Carbon Dioxide and produces Carbon dioxide and would vanish if CO2 levels went under 0.02%. Rather, the evidence is that increased CO2 is entirely beneficial. And most of our energy today which almost entirely powers our modern societies comes from a period in which CO2 levels were very high and the world covered in lush jungles which resulted in massive oil, gas, coal deposits. Life booms when CO2 goes up, if only because CO2 is the essential ingredient in photosynthesis and more CO2 means more life, more plants, more food as has been observed by everyone.
So none of these many conjectures are right. Even this proposition that increased CO2 causes warming, let alone that such warming is substantial, dangerous or unwelcome. The real fear we should have is another ice age, something which was confidently predicted by many at the start of this scam. And Europe was uninhabitable only 10,000 years ago. Not that we can do anything about that either. More windmills perhaps? They seem to be the answer to everything.
120
And you would think that after building perhaps 500,000 giant windmills, the world would start to ask a single question, is it working? What measureable effect has spending trillions of dollars on windmills had on CO2 levels? And if the answer is none, why are they still being built at our great expense? Why are we Victorians paying the world’s highest electricity prices to subsidize private owners of state purchased windmills? And why aren’t we building coal power stations.
This is even more urgent as the UK is being blackmailed to surrender their fishing rights if they want access to French nuclear power? This is Green extortion in play.
150
Yes, and to illustrate how foolish wind turbines are as a “solution” to electric power generation…
After 500,000 turbines built worldwide, the 2009 Coal, Wind and Biomass contributions to world power needs is represented by the thin, almost invisible line at the top of the graph.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BXROpTZqsnI/TsHTFTEnWiI/AAAAAAAAAhE/ropV6D_bbi4/s640/Total+Primary+Energy+Supply+-+World.jpg
Those energy sources will NEVER replace anything, and certainly not reliably.
40
Careful TdeF; CO2 release from the ocean may be turned into proof that the oceans are getting warmer because the solubility of CO2 then decreases. It is a pity that the rate of ocean turnover is put at something between 600 and 1900 years. The first at the start of the Little Ice Age (so extra CO2 must have dissolved then and released now). The second was during the peak of the Roman warm period so less CO2 would have dissolved then to release now.
Complicating the process is that the level of CO2 was (we are told) quite stable for 10,000 years of mostly warmth until 1850.
I am not sure what this means but it is time for bed.
40
” the rate of ocean turnover is put at something between 600 and 1900 years. ”
This is convenient rationalization, not science. It is the rate for deep water currents to surface. The convenient assumption here is that while CO2 is a liquid at the temperature and pressure of the deep ocean, it behaves just like water. CO2 bubbles in your average beverage come from the bottom.
No one knows how the vast amounts of CO2 behave as we cannot simulate a column of water 3.5km deep with pressures up to 350 atmospheres. In fact CO2 does rise from the ocean depths, as any geologist will say. They look for carbon gases rising from the floor in the hunt for hydrocarbons and often find CO2 instead.
I am skeptical of historic CO2 level projections based on ice cores for example. Ice is not perfect in formation or over long times and even tiny leaching between layers would tend to eliminate short term peaks and make the 20th century seem special.
And we are told the oceans are warming because of the CO2 increase, without explanation or air temperature increase. Isn’t it more likely that CO2 is increasing because the ocean surface is warming. It is the ocean which hold all the heat and control all the weather and control the air temperature, as you will hear in every long term weather report. If we want to understand the weather, we should have a complete understanding of the oceans which contain almost all the CO2.
70
And climate modellers always use the ocean currents which they cannot predict as an excuse for why their predictions are so wrong. How can anyone claim to know the weather if they cannot predict the major events? Ocean behaviour is treated as a nuisance in their calculations, not the real controller of the weather. And slight variations in these currents would devastate continents. When was a climate change prediction actually right? And how are bushfires or bleaching in the Barrier Reef caused by Climate Change? No one even tries to explain such ridiculous assertions.
40
I read recently that the magnetic north has shifted some 1100km during the 20th Century. I have always wondered if this has an effect on ocean currents?
10
All good skeptical points, TdeF. My article is just a report within AGW. It is their crisis.
I think ECS is zero. Well technically since the climate is a far from equilibrium system, ECS does not exist so it has no magnitude. That the models come to equilibrium just shows how unrealistic they are.
Actually, in CMIP6 it looks like they are faking ECS. They do not double the CO2, rather they quadruple it (!) and take the temp at 150 years out as ECS. But I am just getting into this.
00
1) How Alarmists view average temperatures
(using temperature anomalies – degrees Celsius)
+0.0 = pre-industrial paradise
+0.5 = paradise lost
+1.0 = now
+1.5 = terrible
+2.0 = catastrophic
+2.5 = extinction
==========
2) How Skeptics view average temperatures
(using actual real temperatures – degrees Celsius)
+4 = Moscow
+5 = Helsinki
+6 = Oslo
+7.3 = Berlin
+8 = Warsaw
+10.3 = London
+12 = Beijing
+12.4 = Paris
+14.1 = Madrid
+15.5 = Rome
+16.3 = Tokyo
+17 = Sydney
+18.5 = Athens
+19 = Nairobi
+20 = Lima
+21 = Cairo
+22 = Baghdad
+23 = Hong Kong
+25.2 = Delhi
+27 = Jakarta
+27 = Manila
+27 = Singapore
+28 = Bangkok
Some like it hot!!!
50
We need more of that type of clear thinking.
10
Hi Kalm Keith
I have been thinking clearly for over 10 years
But Alarmists have had their fingers in their ears for over 10 years
I have done a lot of work on actual real temperatures, and have created temperature maps showing
– Actual Real Average Temperatures
https://agree-to-disagree.com/rats-average-temperatures
– Northern Hemisphere Winter / Southern Hemisphere Summer
https://agree-to-disagree.com/rats-north-winter-south-summer
– Northern Hemisphere Summer / Southern Hemisphere Winter
https://agree-to-disagree.com/rats-north-summer-south-winter
– Winter-Summer Temperature Difference
https://agree-to-disagree.com/rats-winter-summer-temperature-difference
YOU CAN SHOW AN ALARMIST DATA – BUT YOU CAN’T MAKE THEM THINK
00
Another aspect of ECS, is that it is MANDATORY, eg hard-wired into all the “models” except, perhaps, one.
“Criteria for Selecting Climate Scenarios” as stated by IPCC 16 May 2011, Sourced from:
http://www.ipcc-data.org/ddc_scen_selection.html [that link no longer works, but it may be discoverable on the Wayback machine.]
“Criterion 1: Consistency with global projections. They should be consistent with a broad range of global warming projections based on increased concentrations of greenhouse gases. This range is variously cited as 1.4°C to 5.8°C by 2100, or 1.5°C to 4.5°C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration (otherwise known as the “equilibrium climate sensitivity”).”
If the Russian model, INM-CM4, has ECS at all, it is set to a very low level, outside the range demanded by the IPCC. If anyone else had a model that did this, it would be excluded from the list of 95 models supported by the IPCC, but Russia is a bit too big for the alarmists to push around.
40
A skeptic who is reviewing the draft AR6 report says the IPCC is ignoring the low ECS observational studies and accepting the new hot CMIP6 stuff, possibly even raising their ECS estimate accordingly. Stands to reason they would go along with CMIP6. Supports alarmism.
We need to make the most of this. If the models have been wrong for 40 years why believe them now? Politically motivated, etc. Maybe we can find some modelers in the cooler camp to criticize the new hot.
10
You know how I’m always saying that you cannot compare power generation by Nameplate, and the ONLY comparison is by generated power which can actually be used.
Okay then look at this.
Wind Plant Nameplate – 7800MW
Solar Plant Nameplate – 4700MW
Rooftop Solar Nameplate – 12000MW
So, here we have those three Renewables of choice, these weather dependent power generation sources, now with a Nameplate of 24500MW.
Now, Coal Fired Nameplate – 23000MW
So, those three power generation sources which are supposedly the future now have the same Nameplate (well, a little higher now) as coal fired power.
However, when it comes to actual generated power that be used, here’s the story.
The Three Renewables generated 37800GWH in the last calendar year.
Coal Fired Power generated 135,500GWH in the last calendar year.
To me, there is just NO CONTEST really.
Tony.
180
So all they have to do is JUST build 3.6 as much iron PLUS solve the economically unsolvable storage problem. Instead we get fed LCOE data saying renewables are cheaper. A sad joke indeed.
80
The other essential test of power is reliability, commandability. You must have power when you need it. Transport, manufacturing, trading, lighting absolutely require predictable, reliable, uninterrupted power. Who cares about nameplate?
Consider nighttime, half our lives. Solar is guaranteed to be absolutely zero. And wind is unpredictable and often zero. If you had a car, truck, aircraft, machine like that, it would be useless, worse than dangerous. Modern society was not built and cannot be built on unreliables.
And if the only measure and objective of unreliables is to reduce man made CO2, why hasn’t CO2 gone down, especially in 2020?
And when will electricity be far cheaper, as promised?
70
It was written that wind and solar could be compared to a passenger vehicle guaranteed to be drivable 2.1 days a week most weeks of a year, but no way to predict what the days will be.
50
Nameplate values are only a part of the story – to get some idea of how much electricity is going to be generated you need the capacity factors which is a measure of the actual generation compared to nameplate. In Australia the published values for these are:
Solar – 0.15
Wind – 0.2 – 0.3
Coal – 0.65
We don’t have nuclear in Oz but nuclear plants run with capacity factors in excess of 0.9
So to achieve a given number of GWhrs we would need to install 4.3 solar plants and 2.6 wind plants to be equivalent to a coal plant.
Without even considering the unreliability of supply of renewables the capacity factors alone let you estimate how high the hill of bullshit is that the Greens and the renewables lobby have constructed.
20
Since the IPCCCCC “modelling” has once again been raised it might be time, once again, for some basic modelling.
Every model must have a well understood and measurable core mechanism.
In the case of the model for CO2 induced global warming the actual core mechanism is ignored and replaced by junk science.
From the publicity around the CO2 issue a basic mechanism can be easily laid out.
First, every day the Sun shines.
High energy radiation from the sun, UV, passes through the atmosphere and is absorbed at the surface: plants, oceans, solid surface.
What energy is left after photosynthesis, stimulating ocean movement and activating solar panels is now looking for a new home.
The now degraded energy remnants are turned around at the surface and head for deep space as IR.
In the first 30 metres above the surface, this escaping IR can be used by atmospheric CO2 and H2O so they absorb it.
The IPCCCCC ignores the fact that there is a limited, finite amount of this very unvirile IR and seems to be saying that CO2 is the controller.
Adding more CO2 simply reduces the height at which all the energy is absorbed from 30 metres to say 29.
There’s a famous graph of this which shows that adding more and more CO2 does less and less to grab this escaping energy.
And then night falls and it gets cold. Again.
How does humanity survive when in this CO2 nonsense it simply refuses to break free of the huge burden dumped on it by the Elites. We Must learn to ignore fairy tales and act on reality.
And then there was COVID19 and social destruction and collapse.
?
50
A great scientist departs.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2020/10/19/niklas-morner-1938-2020/
50
Certainly one to remember.
30
Sad news.
Thank you for that link.
00
Newcastle Waters to become largest solar farm in the world.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2020-10-20/newcastle-waters-station-nt-set-for-worlds-biggest-solar-farm/12785256
10
Hmm?
I wonder how this sits with tthe 26 GW “ Asean Energy Hub”… proposal over near Broome WA, who also plan to feed power across to Singapore ?
My guess is there is a lot of development grants up for grabs ?
30
Forgot the link…
https://asianrehub.com/about/
20
The game changer is the interconnector.
‘ANU professor Andrew Blakers said high voltage DC transmission technology was “moving ahead in leaps and bounds,” while costs were coming “down and down.”
‘This was a trend, he said, that was largely being driven by China, where wind, PV and hydro were in the west, while most of the people were in the east: “there’s 3,000km in-between, and the span is being bridged with high voltage DC.”
“The really big systems now have voltages of around 1.1 megavolts, they’re traversing 3,000km, (with a capacity of) 12GW – which is a third of the Australian peak demand – for a single (cable)… with a loss of 10 per cent,” he said.
Reneweconomy 2017
00
The last time i saw actual figures for HVDC installations (2019) it was “over “ $1.0 mill per km. !
I will see if there are any newer figures.
20
Currently the longest undersea HVDC cable is under construction between the UK and Denmark. It’s expected to carry 1.4 GW at 450V DC over 760km. I think the academic was talking about terrestrial power lines not undersea. The UK-Denmark project is costing about $A2 Billion.
So this project is going to require a scale up of the largest current undersea cable by a factor of about 7 in capacity and 6 in length. In the words of Darryl Kerrigan of the “The Castle” – “tell them they’re dreaming”.
30
I presume that a HVDC cable to Singapore would have to go via the sea all the way, up through Indonesia. If this is correct, then surely the cable would need to run through one of those narrow inter-island straits that have heavy shipping usage.
20
I think plate tectonics is more of an issue than shipping. Plus that wonderful political and social stability in Indon.
20
The Pilbara region has sufficient supplies of cheap and reliable gas energy. Why the heck would they want unreliable energy?
10
It’s the same ensemble of perverse incentives which sees a gas pipeline built to a coal mine which is no longer allowed to be used for power generation.
20
“Sun Cable has told ABC Rural that it requires 12,000 hectares of the station to build a 10-gigawatt solar farm that would supply energy to Singapore via a 4,500-kilometre undersea cable.”
Nameplate/Installed Capacity or actual average Capacity Factor?
30
Tony could answer that question, I’m out of my depth.
00
Sun Cable is out of their depth to make a comment like that
20
The RE mob always quote the biggest figure they can use.
I will bet that is the “nameplate” maximum (theoretical midday peak in January ?)
They cannot quote actual/average output because they do not know…iy is weather dependent
As a comparason, real life example.. the TOPAZ. Solar farm in Califirnia desert is 0.55. GW nameplate, covers 15 sqr kms ( 1500 Ha) and gives an average output pf 1.3 TWh/yr ( …thats 150 Mwoverall avarage output , or a CF of. 0.27
So this 10 GW proposal is 20 times the MW size of Topaz, but on less than 3 times the land area. ??
The best tey can hope for is an output of less than 3 GW overall average.. but obviously very variable between 0 and 10 GW during any one day.
50
Tut..tut …forgot the link again !
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm
10
Since the plan entails covering the Pilbara with solar panels and wind turbines, I wonder how the Nyangumarta People who “have exclusive Native Title over the land on which the Asian Renewable Energy Hub project is being developed” will react to the effect on “their” land?
30
They talk about it as a badge of honour or climate cred rather than a badge of mind numbing stupity and subsidy harvesting.
10
Oh boy … heaps of stories flying out of the U.S. Get your popcorn ready!
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/
20
…And the 14 year old teen in question appears to be his niece. (That is, the daughter of his late brother Beau and Hunter’s sister in law.) Nothing like graft, international political corruption, spiced up with illicit drug use with a sex chaser to keep the public mind…Er, ah, probing for the truth.
30
Snowy 2 pumped hydro, read all about it …
https://stopthesethings.com/2020/09/30/all-uphill-australia-squanders-10billion-on-giant-pumped-hydro-power-white-elephant/comment-page-1/
10
Another “gift” to the Australian people from MalEx444.
00
Jo and/or mods. Have a comment in moderation (#7). If over the top, totally understand.
00
Sorry, comment #6
00
Thank you
00
Just a little bit of humour;
00
It’s pretty clear now that Andrews has blood on his hands, babies’ blood, after hearing of the babies that died who desperately needed to go to Melbourne for assistance but were refused. This has gone too far. He needs to be called to account.
50
Niklas Morner RIP. He was pushing against the tide of ignorance over CAGW. In time, like many others, he will be proven right. As to myself, I’m hoping I am still alive in 2030, when I can see that trash like the Greens and Matt (not) Kean have not met their 100% RET
20