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2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #8
Posted on 25 February 2018 by John Hartz
Story of the Week... Editorial of the Week... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... SkS in the News... SkS Spotlights... Video of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... Climate Feedback Reviews... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...
Story of the Week...
Dirty industry undermines push to curb global warming - ex-UN climate chief
"The United States is in a whopping collection of one country"
Industry's dependence on polluting fossil fuels is at odds with a "revolution" in transport and renewable energy, and could stop the world doing a crucial U-turn on rising emissions of climate-changing gases by 2020, a former U.N. climate chief warned.
Christiana Figueres, who oversaw work on the 2015 Paris Agreement to tackle global warming, now leads "Mission 2020", an international initiative that seeks to put greenhouse gas emissions on a downward path by 2020.
"We're definitely not on track with everything to do with heavy industry that continues to depend on intense, high-carbon electricity, and we're not on track with land use," said Figueres, former executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
"So what happens if we don't get there is we increase our risk and increase the exposure to extreme weather events," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.
Dirty industry undermines push to curb global warming - ex-UN climate chief by Sophie Hares, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Feb 23, 2018
Editorial of the Week...
We Can’t Engineer Our Way Out of Climate Change
Nope, that won't do it. Photographer: Carlos Becerra/Bloomberg
Could the problem of global warming become so desperate that humans would be willing to take the vast risk of re-engineering our environment? It’s far from a desirable or lasting solution. Yet some scientists have thought deeply about it and concluded that’s what we’ll probably do.
The human response to global warming has been so slow that it may be too late to avoid serious consequences just by reducing future emissions. This means tough decisions. Rapidly rising temperatures could so damage supporting ecosystems that we’ll be forced to cool the planet with technological tricks – for example, injecting sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere to block the sun’s rays.
Such “geoengineering” is risky. For one, a single nation might be able to do it on its own, changing global patterns of weather that harm people elsewhere, and inciting conflict. Also, aerosols stay suspended in the atmosphere only for a year or so. If carbon emissions keep rising, we’ll be locked into continuing the treatment forever, lest we face much faster warming – and biological disaster.
We Can’t Engineer Our Way Out of Climate Change, Opinion by Mark Buchanan, Climate Change, Bllomberg News, Feb 22, 2018
Toon of the Week...
Hat tip to Stop Climate Science Denial.
Quote of the Week...
“The Holocene climate system is unraveling,” Jason Box, an ice researcher at the Danish Meteorological Institute, told Earther in an email. “We should not be surprised if/when ongoing de-glaciation of the Arctic combined with global (and Arctic) atmospheric heating and humidification causes climate shifts that appear to be step changes.”
Has the Arctic Finally Reached a Tipping Point? by Brian Kahn, Science, Earther, Feb 23, 2018
SkS in the News...
In his article, How to Inoculate the Public Against Fake News (Defense One), Patrick Tucker wrote:
“Inoculation is the key to countering disinformation,” said George Mason University researcher John Cook, whose work on inoculation theory was cited by the Cambridge paper. “There are a number of ways to approach inoculating people against disinformation. For example, general inoculation warns people against the general threat that they might be misinformed. However, this can potentially backfire by making people cynical about all forms of information, eroding belief in facts as well as falsehoods.” When examining misinformation used in the climate change debate, Cook found “that more targeted inoculations don’t reduce trust in scientists, indicating that we need to be more strategic in how we counter disinformation.”
The link embedded in the above are to: Neutralizing misinformation through inoculation: Exposing misleading argumentation techniques reduces their influence, Cook et al, Plos One, May 5, 2017
An excerpt from the book Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival, by Dr. Peter Carter and Elizabeth Woodworth (Clarity Press, 2018) posted on Alternet includes the following:
The real failure here is not that CNN and CBS chose to air falsely “balanced” opinions. Or that they aired sensational, outrageous views to attract viewers. As Bill Nye said to his CNN host – reflecting the overwhelming percentage of scientists who believe that climate change is real – “you’re doing a disservice by having one climate change skeptic and not 97 or 98 scientists or engineers concerned about climate change.”[29]
Reference [29] is an article by Bill Nye about:
Consensus on consensus: A synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming., Cook et al, Environmental Research Letters, April 13, 2016
The Gizmodo AU article, How To Debunk A Climate Change Skeptic, by Rae Johnson explains the findings contained in Deconstructing climate misinformation to identify reasoning errors, Cook et al, Environmental Research Letters, Feb 6, 2018 and extensively quotes John Cook.
SkS Spotlights...
The Polar Portal is an arctic monitoring web-site created and maintained by three Danish Arctic research institutions to present updated knowledge on the condition of two major components of the Arctic: The Greenland Ice Sheet and the sea ice.
Video of the Week...
New study finds sea level rise accelerating
The rate of global sea level rise has been accelerating in recent decades, rather than increasing steadily, according to a new study based on 25 years of NASA and European satellite data.
This acceleration, driven mainly by increased melting in Greenland and Antarctica, has the potential to double the total sea level rise projected by 2100 when compared to projections that assume a constant rate of sea level rise, according to lead author Steve Nerem. Nerem is a professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, a fellow at Colorado's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), and a member of NASA's Sea Level Change team.
Global sea level rise is accelerating incrementally over time rather than increasing at a steady rate, as previously thought, according to a new study based on 25 years of NASA and European satellite data.
New study finds sea level rise accelerating by By Katie Weeman, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, and Patrick Lynch, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Feb 13, 2018
Coming Soon on SkS...
- Impact of climate change on health is ‘the major threat of 21st century’ (Daisy Dunne)
- Cutting carbon pollution is urgent to limit Antarctic ice sheet loss and sea level rise (Dana)
- There will be consequences (Riduna)
- Sea level rise is accelerating (John Abraham)
- New research this week (Ari)
- 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #9 (John Hartz)
- 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #9 (John Hartz)
Poster of the Week...
Climate Feedback Reviews...
Breitbart repeats blogger’s unsupported claim that NOAA manipulates data to exaggerate warming
CLAIM
"NOAA has adjusted past temperatures to look colder than they were and recent temperatures to look warmer than they were."
VERDICT
SOURCE
Delingpole: NOAA Caught Adjusting Big Freeze out of Existence by James Delingple, Breitbart News, Feb 20, 2018
DETAILS
Misleading:Some scientifically necessary data adjustments in some places do have the effect of producing a stronger warming trend than would be seen without adjustments, but others do the opposite. Together, these adjustment actually reduce the overall global warming trend.
Inadequate support: The article is based on a blog post, but does not explain how well-researched issues with past temperature data should be corrected, if not by the methods scientists currently employ.
KEY TAKE AWAY
Temperature measurements made with different instruments and methods over time must necessarily be adjusted to ensure high-quality records of temperature that reliably represent changes. The adjustments needed for land stations in the United States often increase the apparent long-term warming, but overall, adjustments actually reduce the global warming trend.
Breitbart repeats blogger’s unsupported claim that NOAA manipulates data to exaggerate warming, Climate Feedback, Feb 23, 2018
SkS Week in Review...
- 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #8 by John Hartz
- New research, February 12-18, 2018 by Ari Jokimäki
- Standing Rock is everywhere: one year later by Chief Arvol Looking Horse (Climate Consensus - the 97%, Guardian)
- “How is That Conservative?” Former Climate Denier now Backs Action by greenman3610 (Yale Climate Connections)
- Why remote Antarctica is so important in a warming world by Chris Fogwill & Zoe Robinson, The Conversation)
- Pollen data shows humans reversed natural global cooling by John Abraham (Climate Consensus - the 97%, Guardian)
- 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #7 by John Hartz
97 Hours of Consensus...
"Breitbart repeats blogger’s unsupported claim that NOAA manipulates data to exaggerate warming."
Is this political tribalism at work, or just gross ignorance?