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PericoDelosPalotes at 18:57 PM on 5 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
Morning,
Saying governments are captured by lobbies it is a really huge implication. We are talking industry, research, universities, education, investors, enterpreneurs, doctors, engineers...are they all captured by the fossil fuel lobby?Saying "weak government polices" it is a bit unnacurate. Since the 90s ( although the bulk came from 2010 onwards), worldwide, we can conservative estimate around 20trillion USD has been invested in green policies. Then on top of that, Industry, in any kind of field, has invested more than that figure in developing technology of any kind..precisely in the opposite direction. That is 40 years of development in the wrong direction, and the cost of opportunity is HUGE. SMOG in many large cities can be traced already to the 80s.
Stating the patient does nothing out of doctor advices, doesnt seems like a good example.Transport:
Cars are getting heavier, while an EU study years ago proved that the CO2 reduction goals in transport set for 2050, could be achieved TODAY, by just reducing each vehicle weight 10%. But vehicles are getting heaver and heavier. This is a trend of more than 30 years.
Hybrid cars should have been of the serial-hybrid architecture since the 90s, rather than:
a) pushing for EVs ( poor decision)
b) developing micro-hybrid useless (absolute trash)
c) developing parallel hybrid (even a prius who is an example of durability has level of complexities never seen, like having 3 electric motors)
A series-hybrid would have allowed for a very small combustion engine, ultra efficient, ultra easy to repair, same engine across many many cars and platforms, with way less moving parts, way easy on emmisions, fine tuned like a race car engine. An Idling engine just sitting there like a power generator. All without the need even for the coming of Lithium batteries. The implications (differences) are HUGE. This is no joke, we are talking a decission that could have changed where we are today massively.
Electricity generation: pushing for Solar, wind etc as if they could ever be just no more than marginal actors in most of the cases. While banning and jeopardizing Nuclear power development. We could have developed for the last 40 years thorium or simialr nuclear plants. Instead we have stick with old submarine technology from the 50s while at the same time promoting an agenda of closing them off. Now we have AI technology so electrical power hungry that they are now requiring mini nuclear plants. Its ridicolous. We just shoot ourselfes in the foot over and over and over.
Logistics: We trade everyithing, produce everything from Low income countries, that they use slave labour, children, concentration camps labour...the list can go on and on and on. Rather than local manufacturing. I watched a documentary about a lorry driver that has to deliver doughnouts from up in Scotland in the UK to Koln in Germany. REALLY?? nobody in Koln can make "doughnouts". We are not talking about 4nanometer microchips... just flour with suggar.
Ukraine war result? rather than cheap gas from Russia, so we can have energy in Europe, to develop new technologies, hopefully greener. Now we have the same gas from Russia but through many more intermediaries, through longer, more expensive and more polluting routes than just receiving them through a pipeline. And more expensive. Or even worse, being broguth cross Atlantic from the USA. That is SUPER GREEN.Recylcing policies? another joke, but a joke that has costed 40 years of effort. Its got its opportunity cost lost.
And I can keep listing for hours wrong decisions, policies and the likes.
None of them points out to any short of sense of urgency. Even worse, is not that the patient doesnt take doctors advice, the patient has done A LOT, A LOT. All in the wrong direction.
You cannot be wrong in all, all the time, in all aspects for that long.
You can measure reality not by words but by actions, and after 40 years of words that doesnt match actions...maybe...just maybe... something is off.Moderator Response:[BL] As is pointed out in the comment that follows yours - most of this is off topic. Your comment violates several aspects of the Comments Policy. Please read that policy before commenting again.
More specifically:
- Your comment is simply a Gish Gallop of unrelated (and unsupported) opinions.
- It is extremely difficult to actually make sense out of what you are saying. You need to make your points succinctly if you want anyone to pay attention to you.
- When you throw out numbers such as "20 trillion USD", you need to provide supporting evidence, such as a link to your sources. Otherwise, people will think you are just making stuff up.
- There are many posts here at Skeptical Science that cover a variety of topics related to misinformation, government action, policies, etc.
- Use the search tool to find appropriate posts.
- Read those posts.
- Then make comments in a clear, on-topic manner.
Again, read the Comments Policy before continuing. There is a link to it above the comment box every time you log on and begin to prepare a comment.
Off-topic comments can and will be subject to moderation - deleting portions of comments, or the entire comment.
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Evan at 06:49 AM on 5 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
As a shoutout to nigelj's comment
"Even losing a few votes can be significant."
Isn't it interesting that political systems are often just as delicately balanced as the biosphere. Whether in politics, personal finance, or the biosphere, success or failure is often determined by seemingly small margins.
Average annual rates of increase of CO2 are 2.5 ppm/year. That is an absolutely massive push on our delicately-balanced biosphere.
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nigelj at 06:21 AM on 5 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
PericoDelosPalotes"I dont think governments, who have access to intel data, really see any urgency:"
I wouldnt use weak governmnet climate policies as a guide to the true severity of the climate problem. Those policies are only weak because governmnets have been captured by the fossil fuels lobby, and governments are scared of losing votes by having strong carbon taxes. Even losing a few votes can be significant. Listen to what the scientists say like Evan says.
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Evan at 05:58 AM on 5 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
PericoDelosPalotes, not sure what your point is.
People have medical issues and their doctors give them advice on what to do to improve their health. Some people follow the doctor's advice, many do not. Just because people don't follow their doctor's advice does not mean the problem does not exist.
It just means there are other factors that determine how we act than the existence of a single problem, even if it is a really serious problem. Human behavior is not always logical.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:57 AM on 5 February 20252025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #05
A supplement to my comment about the misleading Cenovus ad.
When the audio asks “But what if that system suddenly stopped working?” the video makes all the food, reusable bags, and the package disappear. The misleading implication is that other harmful petrochemical developments, like plastics and agrichemical, are essential needs that cannot be obtained by less harmful alternatives.
The ‘collective petrochemical misinformation effort’ is investigated and discussed in items listed in recent SkS Weekly News and Weekly Research.
In the 2025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #03, the second item in the Public Misunderstandings about Climate Science category “New Study Shows How Fossil Fuel Sectors Create a Climate Denial Echo Chamber on Social Media” is about one of the ‘Open access notables’ on the Skeptical Science New Research for Week #3 2025: Networks of climate obstruction: Discourses of denial and delay in US fossil energy, plastic, and agrichemical industries, Kinol et al., PLOS Climate:.
Another New Research ‘notable’ in Week #3, Compartmentalization by industry and government inhibits addressing climate denial, Hendlin & Palazzo, PLOS Climate:, also investigates the way that ‘harmful interests join forces to collectively act for their harmfully obtained collective benefit’.
There is a tragic history of the collective gathering of pursuers of benefit by promoting misunderstandings, not just in business and politics (note how social conservatives and economic conservatives support or excuse each other's misunderstandings). Everybody loses when these (Us against all Others who are not like Us) collectives succeed in their misleading pursuits of perceptions of superiority relative to Others.
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PericoDelosPalotes at 02:44 AM on 5 February 2025January sets an unexpected temperature record
I make you the following question: if C. change is so relevant, how come every single political, industrial and social decision points out in the opposite direction?
I dont think governments, who have access to intel data, really see any urgency:
What is the impact of bringing all from china to europe, who pollutes a lot, rather than producing locally?
We have any short of food available in supermarkets all year anytime, rather than seasonal food.
A new car all the time, a new phone all the time, imposible or difficult to repair appliances, cars, phones, watches, gadgets.
I cannot see a single decision that points me in the direction, WAW THIS IS URGENT!!
All I can say, if the mounts are on fire, and my house is near...i will run. If I am not running..maybe its just a BBQ going on.
Worse, if the ones who shout run, are just selling BBQ supplies... maybe...just maybe something is off.
There are policies for EVs...that doesnt arrive for decades, battery EU legislations that are finally watered donw like the battery directive approved last year..in the end doesnt tackle the battery issue ( to generate a limited ammounts of battery types/packaging, like the standards AA, AAA, C, B).
I could go on for hours numbering wrong decisions being taken since the 90s.
All I can say, if the mounts are on fire, and my house is near...i will run. If I am not running..maybe its just a BBQ going on.Worse, if the ones who shout run, are just selling BBQ supplies... maybe...just maybe something is off.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:43 AM on 4 February 20252025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #05
Living in Alberta I witness more evidence of Cenovus supporting and delivering misinformation marketing than is presentation in the Weekly News item “Cenovus Funded 'Grassroots' Groups That Oppose Climate Laws, Document Reveals” by Geoff Dembicki, DeSmog, Jan 30, 2025.
Cenovus has been running a very misleading video and radio ad that it calls “Helping Canada run smoothly” (you can watch it on YouTube).
The Cenovus ad simply asks the question: What would life be like if fossil fuel production stopped? But it makes an ‘irrational step, twist, leap of faith’ to imply that anything that is imagined to be done using fossil fuels cannot be done any other way. And it implies that actions to reduce the harm done by fossil fuel use, including plastic production, will immediately shut it all down.
The video opens with images of a happy family driving home and taking in a parcel left on their sidewalk then heating a tea kettle with natural gas. And the audio begins with “You might not think much about how a strong oil and gas industry affects your daily life.” It then misleadingly calls it all ‘needs’ and uses the terms ‘essential’ and ‘relied on’ for stuff that is understandably not ‘essential to a decent life’ – if you think about it.
The ad is comically misleading by trying to imply that:
- Transportation must be fossil fuelled. Undeniably the family car could have been an EV. But also note that Cenovus is a Calgary-based company. Calgary Public Transit CTrains have been wind powered for decades – CBC 2001 article “City's LRT first in North America to be wind-driven”.
- Parcel delivery can only happen via fossil fuels. There already are EV delivery vehicles.
- Cooking ‘needs’ to be done with natural gas, likely the deadliest and most harmful modern way of cooking.
A particularly comical bit is that the delivered package has the old-style harmful and wasteful Styrofoam peanut packing that very few parcel packers use today.
An obvious misleading implication is that actions like carbon pricing and emissions caps would immediately end fossil fuel use with no possible alternative ways to do the fossil fuelled stuff.
A more important question, unasked in the Cenovus ad, is: What would life be like without governing actions that effectively limit the harm done by pursuers of profit?
Thoughtful consideration of that question would include: How horrible would life be for the less fortunate, and many of the more fortunate, if pursuers of profit were freer to be as harmful as they could be in their pursuit of maximum profit, including being more secretive, deceptive, and misleading?
- Smog and other poisons in the air, but cleaner safer air where the ‘most fortunate’ live.
- Contaminated water, but purer and safer for the ‘most fortunate’.
- Nutrition deficient and deadlier food, but safe and nutritious for the ‘most fortunate’.
- More harmful climate change, but the ‘most fortunate’ living ‘more exclusively’ where it is ‘Better and Safer’ for them.
All of that is understandably the developed reality today. The important question is: Does the future get worse or better for the less fortunate? How does the entire future of humanity become sustainably more fortunate?
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BaerbelW at 16:16 PM on 3 February 2025Fact brief - Is global warming promoting biodiversity?
nigelj & OPOF
Thanks for your feedback - I updated the link accordingly both for the fact brief and the rebuttal. Given that the fact briefs are per definition "brief", I didn't include the quote with the link, though.
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akb at 06:45 AM on 3 February 2025How could global warming accelerate if CO2 is 'logarithmic'?
We can learn a lot from geological history. Supplementing info from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record), we see that the earth today is relatively cool compared the past 500 million years even though recent ice ages were cooler. From plot of temperatures and CO2 levels over history determined by a variety of means, one sees that the temperaure rise is not linear with CO2 concentrations due Beer's law (it gradually flattens but does not turnover and drop). If we have reached peak fossil-fuel use and phase it out over the same time frame (about a century) we used to reach the peak, we will reach about 550 ppm CO2, which the geologic record says corresponds to about a 3 deg C temperature increase. For comparison, dinosaurs lived at about 1500 ppm CO2 and at temperatures 5-9 deg C higher. Creation of the Devonian black shales and Carboniferous coals dropped CO2 from 4000 ppm to something close to present, with a corresponding drop of about 10-12 deg C. One does not need a supercomputer to know approximately where we are headed.
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nigelj at 04:53 AM on 3 February 2025Fact brief - Is global warming promoting biodiversity?
BaerbelW at 5
Yes the screenshot is a good stop gap measure. And thanks for listening to my point.
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:04 AM on 3 February 2025Fact brief - Is global warming promoting biodiversity?
BaerbelW @4,
Thank you for the clarification. That makes sense.
Also, in addition to linking to a 'highlighted' version of the current linked document, it could be helpful for the write-up of the Fact Brief could be revised as follows to present the specific part of the document like the SkS Rebuttal does:
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as the following quote from this one.
[C]orals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate." (source: Hudson Institute)
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BaerbelW at 18:56 PM on 2 February 2025Fact brief - Is global warming promoting biodiversity?
nigelj - @1
To address your comment, that the myth statement is admittedly buried in the long text linked to, I created a screenshot version archived via Perma.cc in which the relevant text is highlighted:
Would that do as a stop-gap measure while trying to find another quote?
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BaerbelW at 18:22 PM on 2 February 2025Fact brief - Is global warming promoting biodiversity?
OPOF @3
Yes, it's not quite the same and the reason for posing a slightly different question is the requirement that a fact brief needs a clear "Yes" or "No" answer, there's no option for "It depends". The latter would have been necessary if we had stuck with the same question as there obviously are winners (few species, often the ones we don't really want to do well) and losers (many species). In addition, a fact brief can only be 150 words long, so that limits the scope of what we can explain within the text.
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One Planet Only Forever at 13:33 PM on 2 February 2025Fact brief - Is global warming promoting biodiversity?
BaerbelW,
The SkS Rebuttal that this Fact Brief relates to presents the Myth it responds to as follows (which is aligned with nigelj’s suggestion):
Animals and plants can adapt
[C]orals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate." (source: Hudson Institute)
That could be presented in the Fact Brief.
However, I have noticed that the SkS Rebuttal that this Fact Brief refers to is called “Can animals and plants adapt to global warming?”, which is not quite the same as “Is global warming promoting biodiversity?”
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One Planet Only Forever at 12:41 PM on 2 February 2025Fact brief - Can CO2 be ignored because it’s just a trace gas?
nigelj @10,
I have reasons to disagree regarding greed and self-interest being ‘ human nature that is unlikely to change’.
I will start by presenting an important perspective on economic development (aligned with the understanding presented in the 2012 book “Why Nations Fail”).
A competitive marketplace (of products, services, ideas, science, politics...) can develop amazing improvements. That is the positive-sum game (vs. zero-sum game) potential of marketplace competition. And the ways it happens include creative disruption or creative destruction of the developed status-quo (links are to Wikipedia. Note that “Why Nations Fail” is mentioened in the creative destruction Wikipedia item). However, competition for personal benefit and perceptions of superiority relative to others can produce negative-sum disruptive-destructive results.
When creative disruption-destruction is not responsibly governed by learning to be less harmful and more helpful to others the collective result can be worse than it needed to be. If people in the competition can get away with winning by being more harmful and less helpful to others then ‘greed and selfishness are encouraged to develop’ rather than being ‘human nature’.
The winners in the negative-sum game may be worse off than they would have been in the positive-sum alternative. But they pursue ‘their interest’ which is ‘increasing their perceived status relative to others’. They would think that others benefiting reduces ‘their’ potential ‘relative’ superiority.
The sensitivity of the climate on this amazing planet to human impacts on seemingly minor aspects of what is going on, like the trace amount of CO2, is tragically affected by the sensitivity of people to temptations to misunderstand matters in ways that make them like being greedier and more selfish.
Today’s situation is worse than it needed to be. The fossil fuel collective has successfully misled resistance to the creative disruption of developed energy systems. As a result there is more damage done and increasing need for creative disruption-destruction. The feedback response to increased need for rapid creative disruption-destruction is ‘increased resistance to change’.
What is required is getting people to change their mind about understandably unsustainable and harmful actions they have developed a liking for and related misunderstandings that promote and excuse those actions. And the manitude and speed of the required changes is continuing to increase.
Misinformation is a serious problem, especially, but not only, regarding climate change. This NPR article “The Doomsday Clock has never been closer to metaphorical midnight. What does it mean?” includes the following:
This year, it cited continuing trends in multiple "global existential threats" including nuclear weapons, climate change, AI, infectious diseases and conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. It also pointed to the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories as a "potent threat multiplier" that undermines public discourse in general and about these very issues.
While these threats are not new, the scientists said that "despite unmistakable signs of danger, national leaders and their societies have failed to do what is needed to change course."
They are particularly concerned about the U.S., China and Russia, countries they say have the "collective power to destroy civilization" and the "prime responsibility to pull the world back from the brink."
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BaerbelW at 07:18 AM on 2 February 2025Fact brief - Is global warming promoting biodiversity?
nigelj @1 - fair point. For the fact briefs we use the existing rebuttals as a starting point, including the link from the myth statement. If anybody finds a better and more current statement, we can update the statement and link easily enough in both the rebuttal and fact brief.
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nigelj at 05:25 AM on 2 February 2025Fact brief - Is global warming promoting biodiversity?
Thanks for the informative and convincing commentary, however I came to this statement: "This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one." Now interested member of the public including and warmists and sceptics and fence sitters will click on this, and what they read is a lengthy denialist rant on the causes of global warming, with superficially convincing sounding claims and superfically sounding good evidence (although its all nonsense). Buried in the middle of this was one sentence on biodiversity.
So guess whats going to happen? A lot of people reading that page will forget the topic of your article (biodiversity) and will be absorbed by all the denialism, and some will find it very convincing. I just find the publishing of that denialist page astonishingly naieve. You are literally giving the denialists free publicity, and not even with a counter balancing rebuttal. It mae have been better to just extract the key parts of it relevant to biodiversity.
I dont have the time to go through all of their claims, but the key claim is that the global waming we are experiencing is just part of a 1500 year climate cycle. This is wrong because its not a true warming cycle. It is an oscillation where the arctic warms and the antarctic cools so the planet as a whole isnt warming. Its a bit like el nino - la nina cycle. Refer:
ossfoundation.org/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/1500-year-climate-cycle/
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Bob Loblaw at 03:05 AM on 1 February 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
sychodefender @ 34:
For feedbacks, they start as soon as any system change occurs. When CO2 rises, it take a bit of time for temperature to rise, and then once temperature rises, atmospheric water vapour will rise, which will have a greenhouse gas heating effect (after a bit of time...), etc.
...but I have left "a bit of time" undefined for the moment. There are many different factors that take varying amounts of time to respond to changes. MA Rodger's response @ 35 touches on several of these factors.
Obviously, day-to-day weather causes changes in temperature, which will cause day-to-day feedback effects, etc. When we talk in terms of climate, though, we are more interested in the persistent changes, and how factors relate over longer periods of time. We also often talk about averages over large areas, not local effects such as your back yard.
Taking MA Rodgers statement about "increased evaporation adds 7% H2O capacity for every +1ºC", we are talking about longer term effects - e.g. decades. You won't see this simple a relationship when discussing day-to-day local weather. This relationship is looking at global trends over decades.
We can't instantaneously double atmospheric CO2 in the real world (thankfully!), but we can in a climate model. Back in 1981, Hansen et al published a well-known paper on CO2 and climate that included an interesting diagram.
Hansen, J., Johnson, D., Lacis, A., Lebedeff, S., Lee, P., Rind, D., & Russell, G. (1981). Climate impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Science, 213(4511), 957-966
They ran a computer model where they instantaneously doubled atmospheric CO2, and their figure 4 shows how energy fluxes changed over time.
This is a somewhat complex diagram, so bear with me a bit.
- The first panel shows the immediate response. We see a very slight increase in atmospheric absorption of solar radiation, a larger reduction of IR loss to space, and some changes in the radiation, thermal, and evaporation fluxes between the surface and atmosphere.
- A lot of things are now "out of balance", so changes will occur.
- Notice that the change in IR loss to space (ΔF) is -2.4 W/m2. Combined with the change in solar (ΔS = 0.1), we get a net change of +2.5. This is the "climate forcing" that MA Rodger refers to. This is what drives the overall warming of the earth-atmosphere system.
- The atmosphere is the fastest to respond to these energy changes, because it does not require a lot of heat to warm up air. Land will heat up more slowly, and oceans even slower than land.
- In the middle panel, we see what is happening "a few months later". The atmosphere has restored its local balance, but the surface has not - so the whole system is still out of balance. Surface temperature (Ts) is still the same as it was at the start.
- The net climate forcing is now +3.9 (similar to the 3.7 number MA Rodger states in comment 35. Different models will vary slightly on what this number should be.)
- The atmosphere has now had a chance to warm - and get more humid. So now, we see the effects that include the feedback.
- With water vapour feedback now active, the net global imbalance has increased from +2.5 to +3.9. Roughly 50% larger than if there was no feedback.
- The last panel is "many years later". The entire system has balanced again.
- The atmosphere has a net balance of zero.
- The surface has a net balance of zero.
- The whole system has a net balance of zero.
- ...but note that many of the internal energy fluxes are different from what they were before CO2 was doubled.
- Absorbed solar has change for both the atmosphere and surface. Total net solar (ΔS) has only increased by 0.1, but where it is absorbed is different - more in the atmosphere and less at the surface.
- IR loss rates to space have changed. Net change (ΔF) is only 0.1 (to balance the change in ΔS), but again we see that contributions from the surface and atmosphere have changed.
- IR exchanges between the surface and atmosphere have changed. The climate is warmer, so IR fluxes have increased in both directions.
- Convective fluxes (thermal and evaporation) between the surface and atmosphere have changed slightly.
- ...and surface temperature is now 2.8C warmer... (Global warming!)
- ...so we are living in a different climate, with many changes. A new equilibrium, but one that looks quite different from what we are used to.
Hopefully this is not too hard to follow. As stated before, climate is a complex system. It gets quite difficult to to isolate changes in one part from another. Looking at one part can help understanding - but you do need to be careful about over-emphasizing what you see in that one part (and missing another important part). Much of what you can call "contrarian" positions involves over-simplifying the system, to the peril of leaving out parts that do matter. You're doing the right thing by asking questions.
Moderator Response:[BL] Adding a note to my own post. I have given the reference to Hansen et al (1981) more or less in full, but you can get more information about the paper using Skeptical Science's Glossary (in the resources menu). The paper is listed there - but you can get instant access to the details by hovering your mouse over the title in my reference. Unless you have turned the Glossary feature off, you'll see a pop-up with the full listing - plus a link to a PDF of the paper and the DOI leading to the journal/paper.
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MA Rodger at 19:47 PM on 31 January 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
sychodefender @34,
So if there were a doubling of CO2, this would imposed a climate forcing of +3.7Wm^-2 on the planet. And this would begin to warm the planet with some +1.25ºC warming arriving in a decade (and the remainder taking far longer having to warm up deep oceans and melt ice caps).
This warming will act to restore the planet's temperature equilibrium but the warming is being amplified due to the water content of the atmosphere. Physics tells us that increased evaporation adds 7% H2O capacity for every +1ºC and measurement shows this is happening.
Being itself a greenhouse gas and with the altitude of cloud formation in a warmer atmosphere, this extra H2O adds to the required warming to reach equilibrium. It's roughly three steps forward, two steps back.
So after that decade, assuming constant CO2 since the doubling, the remaining imbalance would be about +2.3Wm^-2. The warming so far will have seen the imbalance drop, +1.4Wm-2 due to CO2 and +2.8Wm^-2 from the H2O.
Note that the H2O feedback works very quickly. As soon as there is a temperature rise, the water will be evapourating from the oceans with the march towards equilibrium being thus that three steps forward, two back.
Thats the basic version. It gets much more complicated in the detail. -
sychodefender at 11:50 AM on 31 January 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
Hi MA Rodger, thanks for your reply.
Please can you just clarify one thing from your paragraph below, are you saying that the temperature rise attributable to anthropological co2 at 800ppm would be insufficient to trigger a significant H2O feedback, or am I misinterpreting?
"As you say, the climate forcing from mankind's CO2 emissions does cause feedbacks, these most evident in the water cycle, humidity, cloud cover, cloud height (this last the least understood). But there is no "self-sustaining loop" or even any significant CO2 emissions consequent from mankind's emissions as a feedback. There is thus no need for a natural mechanism to prevent run-away global warming"
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Lawrie at 15:33 PM on 30 January 2025Fact brief - Can CO2 be ignored because it’s just a trace gas?
Trace is a flexile concept. For climate change deniers 400 parts per million is a trace. What then is 200 parts in 100 million million? 200 nanograms is the weight of purified botulinus toxin required to kill a 100 kilogram or 100 million million nanogram human. That is 400 parts per 200 million million. In the natural world of climate change science and biology unimaginably tiny amounts of substances have profound effects that are readily observed by the intelligent. Climate change denial, though, relies on widespread ignorance. Unfortunately, in my country, Australia, and Trump’s America it’s been an incredibly successful strategy.
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nigelj at 06:03 AM on 29 January 2025Fact brief - Can CO2 be ignored because it’s just a trace gas?
Evan @8, and OPOF @9
Interesting. I agree with OPOFs views on the climate issue, in a theoretical sense. For example, it is obvious to me high income people can mostly cut their consumption significantly and still have a decent enough life, and that leaders of society should set an example. However I share Evans concern that greed and self interest get in the way, and human nature is unlikely to change.
But the situation is quite nuanced because most people are not hugely greedy. They clearly make personal sacrifices for a good cause, up to a limit, on average over the population. For example they donate to charity and help others. The majority of people have accepted things like carbon taxes or emissions trading schemes up to a certain extent, knowing this is ultimately a personal sacrifice. This has helped build renewable energy.
I think our job is to persuade people to make as much sacrifice as possible in terms of things like accepting carbon taxes or government subsidy schemes. But it seems unlikely we would get people to make huge personal sacrifices of the type where they stop flying, or turn thermostats down low in the middle of winter and cycle everywhere. These things can become very uncomfortable and have various downsides. This is all why I tend to promote the renewables and electric cars side of the equation. I dont fly much myself , but for many people travel is viewed almost as an essential of life.
The energy consumption issue has another dimension as well. If we cut our levels of energy use too much and too fast it could cause a severe recession and unemployment, as demand is sucked out of the economy. And this means its unlikely such a policy would gain traction. This is why I tend to think we are mostly or almost completely reliant on an energy substitiution process of building renewables and EV's. Im not saying this is the ideal perfect solution - just that is likely the only workable solution in the real world.
I think the misinformation thing is a different issue, although it is used to make greed sound acceptable.
OPOF: "My more global concern is that we could be witnessing the early days of a powerful resurgence leading to many decades, possibly centuries, of global humanity being dominated by extremely harmful misunderstandings."
It has shocked me how 50% of people could support a leader who spreads huge volumes of misinformation. Its really a bit depressing and shows how thin the veneer of civilisation is. However its hard to say how long harmful misunderstandings would last. If a harmful misunderstanding causes a global trajedy like a nuclear war the pendulum might quickly swing back to the need to truth and accuracy. Or maybe people will just tire of all the misinformation and normality will be restored quite quickly. But in the medieval period of human history, the middle ages, people believed in complete nonsense and it was a dark time that lasted over 1000 years. It kind of self corrected as people slowly realised their lack of accurate information was holding them back and science emerged to promote accurate information. But that was a slow process. Maybe a centuries long period of misinformation could happen again especially if there is a huge drop in trust in science. We must do all we can to counter that.
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michael sweet at 04:19 AM on 29 January 2025Sabin 33 #13 - Is solar energy unreliable?
Dr. Andrew Dressler posted today on how any amount of renewable energy in your utility bill saves you money. His post is easy to read. It would be a good OP here at Skeptical Science.
At the end of the post he discusses why you hear all the time that renewable energy is expensive. He claims the fossil fuel industry is lying to try to protect their market share.
Moderator Response: -
michael sweet at 03:42 AM on 29 January 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
Sychodefender:
It would be helpful if we know how old your daughter is. The answers appropriate for a 10 year old are different from an 18 year old.
The Earth currently cannot reach equilibrium because humans continue to release CO2. When we stop polluting most effects will reach equilibrium in 50 years or so. Some slow effects like melting Greenland and Antarctia might take several thousand years to reach equilibrium. Actions we take today will affect peoples lives in 5,000 years!
It is not clear when the sea and land sinks will reach saturation. Each has multiple components which will react differently to CO2 pollution. For example increased atmospheric CO2 increases the concentration of CO2 in cold water but increased temperature decreases the concentration in warm water. Pray that the sinks keep working in the future.
I don't think diminishing CO2 absorbtion of IR will help us much but another negative feedback might.
The most important thing is to reduce CO2 pollution as much as possible as fast as possible to limit the damage done. Hopng for good luck is not as good a strategy as reducing the damage done.
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MA Rodger at 02:42 AM on 29 January 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
sychodefender @30,
Another take on answering you questioning....
As you say, the climate forcing from mankind's CO2 emissions does cause feedbacks, these most evident in the water cycle, humidity, cloud cover, cloud height (this last the least understood). But there is no "self-sustaining loop" or even any significant CO2 emissions consequent from mankind's emissions as a feedback. There is thus no need for a natural mechanism to prevent run-away global warming.
You mention CO2 in this "natural mechanism" and CO2 has operated naturally as the major control knob for the climate through the eons. (Calling CO2 the 'control knob' should not be in any way controiversial.) The ancient Earth's climate is a bit of a mystery as the sun was less energetic in the early solar system (and from its weak beginning will continue to strengthen) and with no means of knowing the ancient atmospheric composition the 'faint sun paradox' remains unexplained. More recently, over the last 500 million years the temperature record is reasonably well known. (Through that time the sun has brightened by about 5% which is a climate forcing equivalent to roughly a quadrupling of CO2.)
There are a few very-long-term mechanisms at work altering the carbon available for the carbon cycle (in the atmosphere, bliosphere and ocean waters, these being in equilibrium for multi-millenial periods).
Taking CO2 from the atmosphere into rocks as coal was a major process in warm climates for early parts of this 500My period as back then fungi were not well developed enough to decompose plants which could thus be buried and turned to coal. Modern fungi prevents such significant coal formation.
A second mechanism is the water-weathering of mountain rocks which allows the formation of carboniferous rock in sea water. When the 700Gt(C) humanity has emitted so far has reachen equilibrium between biosphere, ocean and atmosphere (which takes abut a millenium), the remaining 25% of our emissions in the atmosphere (assuming only natural processes) will require rock-weathering to be extracted, this taking tens of millenia to complete. At a similar rate of action, the formation of the Himalayas and associated increase in rock-weathering has seen the atmospheric CO2 content drop over the last 50 million years and with it the cooling of the planet.
Once this deposit of carbon into the geology occurs, it is volcanism that works to return it to the carbon cycle. Thus when the planet is so cold that there is no rain to weather rocks and no significant biosphere at work, the volcanic activity will slowly pump CO2 back into the atmosphere restoring the level of greenhouse effect. The emissions are very small relative to mankind's emissions (perhaps about 1%).You mention Milankovitch cycles which have been waggling the planet's temperature for the past 3 million years (initially as a 40ky cycle, then 100ky).
The Milankovitch cycles are not so strong in themselves but are amplified by positive feedbacks. Within these cycles, CO2 is part of that positive feedback (increasing the size of the wobbles) with carbon being locked away under frozen land and in cooling oceans under increased sea ice. However the big driver of recent ice ages is albedo not CO2.You mention the logarithmic relationship between CO2 levels and climate forcing. This is an empirical relationship for concentrations in the range 150ppm to 1300ppm. As Zhong & Haig (2013) fig 6 shows, beyond 1300ppm the forcings increase faster than logarithmic. By then, of course, an increase in the CO2 consentrations would need to be four-times an increase to add the same extra forcing. But we don't want to be creating a world with 1300ppm. It would have already been under a forcing of 8.4Wm^-2 from the extra CO2, perhaps global warming of +7ºC.
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Bob Loblaw at 01:39 AM on 29 January 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
sychodefender @ 30:
The ultimate limiting factor for warming induced by greenhouse gas increases is the infrared radiation emitted to space from the upper part of the atmosphere. As the earth-atmosphere system heats up (primary a surface effect in the case of greenhouse gases) more IR is emitted to space, and (hopefully) eventually balances again. Think of it in stages:
- Earth is in a stable climate, with a stable (over years or decades) temperature. Energy absorbed from the sun is balanced by IR losses to space.
- Something causes that equilibrium to go out of balance. In the case of greenhouse gases, the direct factor is a reduction in the IR loss to space.
- Now, absorbed solar exceeds IR losses, so we are adding energy to the earth-atmosphere system.
- The net energy increases causes some part of the system to warm up. That energy cascades through the system in a variety of forms (radiation, thermal energy, evaporation/condensation).
- After a while (many years), the system evolves to a point where IR losses to space increase enough so that we reach a new balance with absorbed solar.
- Once a new balance is achieved, we have a (new) stable climate again. In the case of doubling CO2, this new stable climate will be a surface temperature that is a few degrees warmer than it was before.
So, ultimately, the ability to regain equilibrium requires that the system respond to a point where IR loss to space - from the upper part of the atmosphere (you'll often see "TOA" to indicate "Top of Atmosphere") can rebalance the energy absorbed from the sun. In a stable climate, you can have short-term shifts away from equilibrium, but this "energy balance with space" will keep pulling the climate back to its stable position - kind of like a marble rolling around in the bottom of a round bowl.
So, next let's think about feedbacks, such as the "CO2 warming increases water vapour, increases warming, increases water vapour" go-on-forever loop. SkS does have a lengthy discussion of that topic, on this thread here, but let's take a quick look at it now.
- In climate science terms, the water vapour effect you describe is called a positive feedback. A system change in one factor causes a change in another factor that adds to the initial change.
- If the initial change is an increase, a positive feedback will cause more increase.
- ...but if the initial change is a decrease, a positive feeback will cause more decrease.
- Positive feedbacks do not necessarily lead to values that increase forever. As long as the feedback multiplier is small enough, a new equilibrium will still be reached.
- "Small enough" is anything less than 1.
- If the initial change is 1, and the feedback adds another 0.5, then the next time through the sycle we'll only add 0.5*0.5 = 0.25, and the next time will only add 0.25*0.5 = 0.125, etc.
- This will stop increasing once it reaches a total change of 2.
Let's look at this graphically. The following image shows 10 time steps with eight different feedback multipliers.
- For all curves the initial change from time 0 to time 1 is a system change of 1 (you can think of it as temperature, but the math doesn't care what it represents.)
- For time 1 to time 2, we add another change of 1*feedback multiplier.
- an increase of 0.1 for a multiplier of 0.1.
- an increase of 0.2 for a multiplier of 0.2.
- etc.
- The figure shows feedback multipliers ranging from -0.5 to 2.
Note some key features in the figure:
- For a multiplier of 0, there are no further changes after time step 1. The system change has already reached a new equilibrium and remains constant forever.
- For a multiplier of 1, we see a continuous linear increase. We add another 1 at each time step.
- For a multiplier of 2, we see an accelerating, exponential increase over time. Not a good place to live.
- For all multipliers between 0 and 1, we can see that the rate of increase tapers off and a new equilibrium is reached after 10 time steps.
- ...but that new equilibrium is higher for higher feedback multipliers.
- For multiplier 0.5, note that the final result is an increase of 2.
- This one is closest to our known climate system feedbacks - the direct effect of CO2 is roughly doubled by feedbacks such as water vapour and snow/ice.
Note that I threw in a multiplier of -0.5, too. This is a negative feedback, opposing the initial change. The final change is 0.67, not 1.0.
- In a real world, the negative feedback would not wait until the initial change of 1.0 happens - all feedbacks kick in as soon as any change occurs. You'd see smooth curves, not the jumps we see in the figure. The -0.5 curve would just gradually increase from 0 to 0.67 in the first few time steps.
Also, note that you can find out more about these issues by using the search box on the SkS web page (upper left), or by looking at the Most Used Myths list (linked below the search box and social media emblems).
Moderator Response:[BL] To add a note to this: if you follow the link I gave to the SkS runaway feedback rebuttal, you'll note that the discussion of feedback "gain" in that post (Intermediate tab) used a gain of 1 to indicate "no feedback", whereas I use "multiplier of 0" to indicate "no feedback". Either one works, as long as you do the math appropriately within each system of equations.
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sychodefender at 15:16 PM on 28 January 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
Thanks Bob I'm learning a lot, here's one more question.
We know that increased temperature evaporates more H2O from seas and lakes, this water vapour is a strong greenhouse gas being responsible for over 50% of warming. Co2 is also emitted, both impede rising infrared and the surface gets warmer, causing even more evaporation in a self sustaining loop.
Thankfully the earth possesses a natural mechanism to stop this run away heating so we don't burn up.
This process has been in operation for millennia, keeping the planets energy equilibrium whenever temperature began to rise. The reasons for it rising might be volcanic emissions including co2, tectonic, milankovitch cycles, higher sun radiance etc all raising temperature in a completely natural way and as a consequence more co2 was emitted, loop begins.
My question is if the planet could adjust and regain it equilibrium in the past, why can't it do it now?
The seas and land sinks will not reach co2 saturation for another century.
Is it possible that the limited remaining and slowly diminishing ability of co2 to absorb infrared acts as a natural safety valve preventing excessive warming?
All these enquiries originate from my daughter who is working on a project for school.
Thanks again for your patience.????
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One Planet Only Forever at 04:21 AM on 28 January 2025Fact brief - Can CO2 be ignored because it’s just a trace gas?
Evan @8,
I understand that I am ‘not the norm’. I am a retired professional engineer with an MBA who, decades ago, ‘took to heart’ the ethical obligation to learn to ‘protect the public interests from the potential harms of interests that are opposed to learning to be less harmful and more helpful to others’.There is a reason I concluded my comment @7 the way I did.
I agree that the future is likely to continue to get worse while ‘potentially appearing to be getting better’. Global interests can indeed be harmfully influenced by ‘Us (me) vs Others’-ism (not just nationalism). There needs to be a systemic change of the ‘developed dominance of misleading marketing in the competitions for perceptions of superiority’.
The ‘popularity of beliefs’ needs to be governed by learning to be less harmful and more helpful to others. Developed socioeconomic systems have been significantly influenced by misunderstandings that keep people from learning how to be less harmful and more helpful to others.
The problem has always been the many ways that popularity of instinctive, first-impression, emotion-triggered, gut-reaction misunderstandings can ‘be more popular’ than rational unemotional thoughtful considerate (critical thinking) pursuits of learning to be less harmful and more helpful to others. Note that changing this fundamental dynamic is an uphill battle. The science (knowledge) of how to win by being misleading is very advanced and continues to quickly advance.
It is important for people to learn where the blame lies (intentionally chosen term):
- People who struggle to obtain the basic needs of a decent life can be excused for not trying to learn to be less harmful and more helpful to others (however, many such people still try to be less harmful and help others).
- Many more fortunate people have little excuse – other than how easy it is to be impressed by misinformation marketing that triggers passionate belief of harmful misunderstandings.
- Leaders and other big winners have no excuse for failing to learn to be less harmful and more helpful to others and failing to help others free themselves from the vicious grip of harmful misunderstandings.
I also hope that the future of humanity will be sustainably improved. However, I share your concern that climate change impact mitigation is not happening as rapidly as is need to responsibly limit the harm done. Responsible considerate leadership could have accomplished significantly more mitigation by now.
My more global concern is that we could be witnessing the early days of a powerful resurgence leading to many decades, possibly centuries, of global humanity being dominated by extremely harmful misunderstandings.
The success of misleaders can be sensitive to small changes of awareness and understanding. Every vote and consumer choice matters.
The more 'common sense, or normal, understanding' needs to be that anyone aware of misleading messages regarding climate science has no excuse for supporting the misleaders (as customers or voters) regardless of other interests. ‘Pursuers of popularity’ who are misleading about climate science are likely harmfully misleading about many other things.
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Evan at 01:12 AM on 28 January 2025Fact brief - Can CO2 be ignored because it’s just a trace gas?
OPOF@7, whereas you make good points that I think most of agree with, they represent a global perspective with the benefit of a broad scientific overview, shared by a relatively small percentage of our planet. The bulk of humans operate within a very narrow sphere of understanding, more concerned about meeting their daily needs than planning for long-term effects.
And then, of course, there are the complications of greed and self interest. I don't see any of these conditions changing. So whereas I agree conceptually with your analysis, I don't see enough of the world adopting viewpoints such as you present to really slow down the steady buildup of GHGs in the atmosphere.
As always, I hope I'm wrong, and I hope more people adopt your well-stated viewpoints.
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Bob Loblaw at 10:29 AM on 27 January 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
sychodefender:
It's an MDPI journal - strike 1
The author is Koutsoyiannis - strike 2.
It looks like the same crap he's previously published, which has been previously debunked - strike 3.
Also read the comments to that SkS post, and the comments include links to a post at AndTheTheresPhysics, and a discussion at PubPeer). In fact, there are several links in my comment #3 on the SkS post that are worth reading.
Shorter version, it's a waste of time.
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sychodefender at 09:56 AM on 27 January 2025At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?
Hi Bob, interested to hear your comments on this paper regarding co2. Isotopes.
Moderator Response:[PS] Link fixed. Please learn how to do this yourself using the link tool in the comment editor (looks like a chain).
BTW, the argument is nonsense, (from long term denier). See the published response in same journal. https://www.mdpi.com/2413-4155/6/4/62
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One Planet Only Forever at 05:00 AM on 27 January 2025Fact brief - Can CO2 be ignored because it’s just a trace gas?
Evan @6,
Your make a good point about the sensitivity of our amazing planet’s global climate conditions. It has prompted the following thoughts regarding attempts to ignore or dismiss CO2 impacts ...
The warming impact of increased levels of CO2 have been understood for more than 125 years. And the natural causes of glaciation and inter-glacial periods, like the Milankovitch cycles, have been reasonably understood for more than 80 years.
A challenging understanding, an inconvenient truth, is that human CO2 impacts causing global warming may be helpful in the future but are not helpful now. Those distant future actions could make the next natural glaciation event more ‘livable’.
The next glaciation is expected to naturally happen about 50,000 years from now. But studies, like the one reported in the Carbon Brief in 2016: Human emissions will delay next ice age by 50,000 years, indicate that the human caused increased CO2 levels have likely delayed the next glaciation by 50,000 years. That is nothing to be proud of. It was Too Much Too Soon.
It would be ‘great’ if lots of easy to access fossil fuels were still available for future humans to use to limit the negative impacts of future glaciations.
Fossil fuels are undeniably non-renewable. Future generations cannot benefit from burning them as much as current generations do. Rapidly ending fossil fuel use would leave more ‘limited resources’ for the benefit of future generations and reduce the climate change harm done to people today and to future generations. However, the ‘competitive marketplace’ fails to ‘naturally’ develop towards those understandably ‘great’ objectives. In fact, there is ample evidence that the marketplace developed, and continues to develop, misinformation efforts against the development of such ’helpful external influences on the marketplace’.
The undeniable marketplace efforts against learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others clarifies what competitive free market activity can be expected to accomplish. The fundamental market function is managing the distribution and benefits from the use of scarce resources. It develops replacement alternatives as resources become scarcer. However, the marketplace will only seriously develop replacements that are less expensive than the increased cost of the activities that rely on scarcer resources (note political efforts to reduce the costs of fossil fuels).
More importantly, the market is unlikely to care to reduce harm or ensure that harm done is repaired. Limiting harm done, and avoiding the challenge of getting the beneficiaries of harm done to repair the damage done, requires external influence to make the more harmful ways less popular, more difficult, and more expensive.
Hopefully efforts to limit the success of misinformation, not just regarding climate science, will result in more helpful and less harmful political action. It is common sense that political actions need to be less likely to cycle in ways that are significantly negative for the future of humanity. However, limiting the sensitivity of political actions to harmful misunderstandings is likely less certain than improving the understanding of the sensitivity of the climate on this amazing planet to the impacts of human activity.
Scientific understanding is certain to be constantly improving the ability to develop sustainable improvements and limit harm done - The politics of popularity of beliefs is not certain to develop sustainable improvements or limit harm done.
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Evan at 00:40 AM on 26 January 2025Fact brief - Can CO2 be ignored because it’s just a trace gas?
One of the fundamental problems for understanding how a "trace" gas can have such a large impact is that most people don't understand how delicately balanced our ecosystem is. Consider that the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, over 100,000-yr cycles (i.e., Milankovitch cycles), cause sealevel to go up and down 400 ft! That is a delicately-balanced system!
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Doug Bostrom at 05:21 AM on 25 January 2025Sabin 33 #12 - Do solar panels work in cold or cloudy climates?
There will be some complications and expense entailed in engineering and producing a remedy for the limitation Eric focuses on, but they're not showstoppers. We have everything in hand, technically speaking.
Related example: A few years ago I put together some PV-powered WiFi repeaters for a harbor up here in the NW. These use LiFePO4 batteries for overnight operation and these batteries cannot be charged successfully below about 0C, precluding reliable operation during winter. The problem was solved by equipping batteries with heater film, with a thermal snap switch in the battery housing attaching pre-controller power output from panels to the heaters and thereby diverting up to ~20W of PV output to warm batteries, until the snap switch disconnects after temperature rise. This has worked perfectly to maintain operations.
In the case of PV panels, a high-latitude/extreme conditions variant (as with DHW thermal collectors) could be equipped with inexpensive electronics (flea-power minimal microcontroller, monitoring optical and other inputs as required) and control warming of the panels when necesssary. The chief and only hard technical optimization problem to solve here is that of how to convert a bit of juice to heat where it's needed while keeping engineering trades low. This would likely entail a slight performance drop for ultimate panel power output, if an off-the-shelf technology was used for that (microgrid or resistive film coating) so as to minimize effects on mechanical packaging of the PV panels.
The magic of the market will address this, to the extent Eric's situation is a problem sufficient to provide motivaton. That magic is the only mystery in this scenario.
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MA Rodger at 00:02 AM on 25 January 2025Moving away from high-end emissions scenarios
To put some other numbers into this interchange.
Regarding rates of emissions:-
The Global Carbon Project give data for the various fossil fuel types going way back. Their budgets back to1959 also show numbers for Land Use Change emissions (as well as the ocean absorption and the land absorption).
The 1980 wobble in emissions resulted from the 1970s oil crisis driving efficiency measures but the high 1970s oil price led to over-production and what was called the "1980s oil glut" thus ending the wobble. I'm not so sure about talk in that link of a slow-down in economic growth also being a factor as use of gas and coal doesn't seem to have shown any signs of this oil-use wobble and continued apace (as this OurWorldInData graph shows).
Regarding atmospheric levels:-
The Land Use Change emissions are a significant part of global emissions and when added to FF emissions allow the calculation of the Atmospheric Fraction (Af) which is the annual ration (Atmospheric increase)/(Man-made emissions). This has remained pretty constant since the 1960s altough there is no underlying reason for it**.
The land-based absorption provides the lion's share of the wobbles in the Af with El Niño the primary wobble-driver.(**If an emissions-free world had a single emissions event, the annual absorption in Year 1 would be about 3% and through following non-emissions years the annual absorption would slowly decrease to zero over a millenium. How much atmospheric CO2 then remained would depend on the size of the emission - so roughly 25% remaining if the emission event was 600Gt(C), this the very rough size of our cumulative emissions to date.)
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Eclectic at 13:24 PM on 24 January 2025Sabin 33 #12 - Do solar panels work in cold or cloudy climates?
David-acct @14 ,
Yes, a perfectly good point. Costs must be viewed from several angles.
It is too broad to speak of electricity generation costs at simply peak demand times or at average annual GWh produced. "Minimum demands" must be considered, as well as back-up costs. And of course the longer term environmental and health costs.
Temporary reserves and redundancy costs also apply to gas/coal fuelled generation. LCOE has its official definition ~ but really should be looked at in the Big Picture. If only Life were simpler !
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David-acct at 10:21 AM on 24 January 2025Sabin 33 #12 - Do solar panels work in cold or cloudy climates?
Nigelj
Thanks for the comment - you actually hit the nail on the head with the best observation with the core issue.Your comment " The capacity factor drops by about half. Could you not compensate by installing twice the number of panels? "
Yes you can compensate by installing twice the number of panels. That is exactly what has to be done to make a renewable system work.
The more important is the impact with utility solar.
First EIA website is a great source to cross check the data and provides a wealth of information.The combined decrease in electric generation from wind and solar during the winter months is approx 30%-40% lower during the winter months vs the spring and fall (even before taking into account the frequent 2-5 day wind doldrums that occur during the winter).
Electric demand during the winter is approximately 30%-40 higher than during the spring and fall. As heating is converted to electric, the demand from the spring/fall vs winter demand will continue to widen. As such, gross capacity of renewables for the winter needs to be approx 2x of the needed capacity during spring and fall to cover the winter demand.
Further the idled capacity during 6 or so months of the spring and fall due to the redundancy needed for the winter months wrecks havoc on the math used in the LCOE computations. Guess what happens to the LCOE computation when significant amounts of redundancy is needed to generate sufficient electricity during the winter.
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One Planet Only Forever at 09:28 AM on 24 January 2025Sabin 33 #12 - Do solar panels work in cold or cloudy climates?
Evan,
To try to stay ‘close to topic’, but respond to your interest in the most beneficial ways to install home solar panels, I will start by saying that incorrect claims like the Myth that this Rebuttal addresses are attempts to unjustifiably discourage people from:
- supporting solar panel systems as part of the required correction of developed Grid generation systems
- considering the helpful installation of home solar systems.
A very important consideration is that the governing objective is to minimize CO2, or other lasting or significant global warming impacts, produced by electricity generation.
Grid electricity generation needs to be transitioned to be truly net-zero ghg. And grid, as well as home, solar panels can be part of that transition. Even a rapid correction of a grid system to responsibly limit the harm done can take many years. And ‘natural gas peaker plants’ are likely to be the last parts removed from regular operations (natural gas peaker plants may exist long-term as an ‘emergency-emergency back-up’ that is very rarely needed).
Based on that understanding, people can help more rapidly reduce the harm of electricity generation by installing home solar systems. And they should design home solar installation to maximize the total annual generated electricity, appreciating what affects the amount of electricity generated. They should not be discouraged by the reality that many factors affect the amount and timing of electricity generated. And they certainly should ignore misleading claims like “Solar panels don’t work in cold or cloudy climate.”, or when covered by snow.
Bob Loblaw, and others, have provided plenty of very helpful information, including information about how cold and cloud affect solar panel performance.
Moving a little further from the topic to add some more considerations for home solar installations...
Variation of pricing should guide the use of electricity. However, a focus on the ‘variation of grid pricing’ may result in choices that do not minimize the overall amount of CO2 emissions.
If CO2 per Grid-generated MW-hr does not vary with time of day then minimizing the ‘net demand for grid energy’ should minimize CO2 from grid energy production. That means maximizing the total annual home solar generation with unused home generated electricity stored for later use or delivered to the grid to reduce grid generation. Building home solar for maximum generation during ‘peak price times’ would likely reduce the total annual home generated electricity and result in more CO2 generation than building to maximize total annual generation.
However, if CO2 per MW-hr is significantly higher during peak price times, because of things like the use of natural gas peaker plants to meet peak demands, then designing the home system to reduce the ‘home grid demand’ during the peak ‘CO2 per MW-hr’ times may be more helpful. However, as the grid system is improved to reduce CO2 generation the home system built to maximize generation during those current peak CO2 times becomes less helpful than a home system designed to maximize total annual generation.
The story changes if home generated electricity cannot be delivered to the grid or will not be stored for later use. Minimizing the grid energy needed would still be the objective. But maximizing the home solar generation during times of peak home electricity use becomes a significant, but complex, consideration. This could lead to potential benefits from maximizing generation during peak use times. However, that would also lead to understanding the benefits of charging the EV during peak home solar generation times.
All of the above considered may result in the conclusion that the best thing to do is build the home solar system to maximize the annual total generation and then adjust the home electricity use to minimize CO2 emissions impact of grid energy needed.
Final points regarding panel orientation:
- Being able to manually adjust the angle from horizontal could allow seasonal adjustment that increases the total annual electricity generation.
- The extra cost of an automated tracking system that seeks the orientation that maximizes generation may be more beneficial than a system that tracks the sun. But automation does not always work as well in reality as it does in conceptual planning.
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Evan at 06:09 AM on 24 January 2025Moving away from high-end emissions scenarios
Nigelj@11
I also recall that during the 1990's the UK was making a large-scale shift from using coal to using natural gas in their "Dash for Gas". Also, France made a large-scale shift towards nuclear power in the 1980's and 1990's. Then Mt. Pinatubo blew in 1991, and from what I understand, the temporary cooling caused a drop in atmospheric CO2 concentrations due a variety of factors, such as increased uptake by cooler oceans. All of this was a temporary bump, and there were likely other factors that you pointed out, which together caused a temporary slowdown in the buildup of atmospheric CO2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_for_Gas
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nigelj at 05:41 AM on 24 January 2025Moving away from high-end emissions scenarios
Evan @10
Your explanation for the apparent acceleration in the acceleration of CO2 levels recently looks right. Looks like its not a real acceleration.
I was curious why there was a flattening in the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 growth around 1980 - 2000. This coincides with a slowing in the rate of CO2 emissions growth over the same period, and a global flattening off in oil production from 1980 - 2000 approx. ( See links below). I recall this was the time period when smaller cars became popular so presumably the net result from flattening oil production was a slower rate of emissions growth.
Im not sure why oil production slowed over that 1980 - 2000 period, but it followed the OPEC oil crisis of the late 1970s which caused a temporary drop in oil production, and one source talked about a decline in output from the big existing oil fields in Saudi Arabia. But after the 2000s global oil production was back to business as usual, presumably as the OPEC oil embargo had ended, and new oil field discoveries were made, and there was Americas oil fracking boom.
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michael sweet at 04:45 AM on 24 January 2025Sabin 33 #12 - Do solar panels work in cold or cloudy climates?
Evan at 6,
Where I live in Florida most of the utility solar farms are on two dimensional tracking. They face East in the morning, horizontal at noon and West in the evening. I think that is standard for utility farms in the USA. I think they get more expensive evening power and more power the entire day. I have not seen two dimensional tracking for home use.
I get ads all the time for three dimensional tracking setups ground mount at home. They claim up to 40% more power than latitude mount. I have a big yard so more panels seem more cost effective than more expensive mounts. In a small yard they might work well.
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Bob Loblaw at 02:24 AM on 24 January 2025Moving away from high-end emissions scenarios
RickyO:
El Nino/La Nina cycles are well-known to cause variations in both temperatures and natural CO2 uptake/emission.
So, yes, this needs to be considered in looking at trends (especially short-term).
It is worth noting that El Nino/La Nina cycles and their effect on atmospheric CO2 cycles is a "feature" of one of the common contrarian arguments that the overall rise in CO2 is natural (ie., not due to burning fossil fuels). Unfortunately, it is a "feature" that the people making that argument do not realize. Their method of analysis mistakes those short-term cyclical effects for a long-term trend, and they mistakenly think that the long-term upward trend in temperature is caused by the CO2 trend (rather than the correct interpretation that the CO2 trend is causing the temperature trend).
You can read more about that myth on this SkS page.
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Bob Loblaw at 02:09 AM on 24 January 2025Sabin 33 #12 - Do solar panels work in cold or cloudy climates?
Upstream, in comment 4, I talked about some of the aspects of solar panel installation and orientation. Words are nice, but pictures are often better, so I've graphed out some data to show some difference between clear/cloudy, winter/summer, and horizontal/tilted measurements of solar radiation.
The following graphs are a continental location, at about 50°N latitude.
All radiation graphs show five different measurements:
- The "Direct" measurement is "direct normal" - an instrument pointed directly at the sun, with a narrow field of view.
- "Diffuse" is the radiation on a horizontal surface of just the sky - direct sun blocked.
- "Global" is a full sky view (direct plus diffuse) on a horizontal surface.
- "Titled" is also direct plus diffuse, but at a 50° tilt to the south, so it sees some sky and some ground.
- "Reflected" is the same type of instrument as "Global", but upside-down so it sees all the solar radiation being reflected off the ground surface.
The first graph is a clear day at the beginning of January. Direct radiation peaks at over 900W/m2, and diffuse radiation is less than 100W/m2. Because the sun is low in the sky, the global reading is much less than the direct - peaking slightly over 300 W/m2. The tilted sensor, though, peaks at over 800 W/m2 - not only is it pointing much closer to the sun, but it also sees a lot of ground that is very bright. The reflected reading peaks at over 200W/m2 - the ground is snow covered, reflecting about 75% of the global signal, so much brighter than the deep blue sky of the diffuse signal.
Clearly, a tilted solar panel would produce much more power than a horizontal one. We can see why when we look at the solar elevation angle (how high about the plane of the panel the sun is located). This graph shows the elevation above a horizontal surface (global instrument) and tilted surface. The sun is barely 20° above the horizon of the horizontal sensor, but is over 60° above the tilted sensor's "horizon". Note that the daylight period is only about 8 hours - elevation>0° for the horizontal view. Even though the titled sensor has an elevation >0° for much longer, those "extra" hours mean nothing, as the view of the sun is blocked by the earth!
The next day, cloud moved in. Direct radiation is zero, except for a brief period in early afternoon when the clouds thinned enough to let a bit of direct sun through. The four other lines are, from highest to lowest, tilted, Global and Diffuse (virtually tied), and Reflected. With no direct sun, and a snow-covered surface that reflects most of the solar radiation, there isn't much difference between the horizontal and tilted readings.
Note that for the horizontal sensor (global) the cloudy day is not much lower than the clear day. It peaks around 250W/m2, compared to a little over 300W/m2 on the clear day.
What about summer? Here is a "mostly" clear day in early July. Direct beam peaks only slightly higher than in January, but global radiation is much higher because of the higher solar elevation. The titled sensor peaks a little higher than global - it's tilt is no longer much of an advantage over the global sensor, and the portion of ground it sees is now dark (reflecting only about 20% of the global). Diffuse is again <100W/m2.
Daylight is now more like 16 hours, though, so daily totals will be quite different from January. We also see something odd in the tilted sensor - it peaks higher than the global (horizontal) sensor, but in early morning and late afternoon, it sees less than the global sensor. In fact, at the extremes it looks like it is only seeing the diffuse radiation - no direct.
We can understand this by looking at the solar elevation again. Note that for the titled sensor, the sun "rises" much later and "sets" much earlier (elevation <0°) than for the global sensor. What is happening is that the sun rises in the NE and sets in the NW, so it is actually behind the tilted sensor, not in front of it.
And lastly, we'll look at a cloudy summer day, right on the summer solstice. We do see some direct sun getting through in the afternoon, but we can see the cloudy period that covers most of the day. We see a substantial reduction in global before noon local time (compared to the clear day). After 12pm, we see a higher value for global as the cloud thins and a bit of direct radiation makes it through the clouds. During the cloudy period, the tilted sensor is not much different than the global one - both are seeing the same diffuse radiation.
So, hopefully this helps illustrate some of the complexities related to solar panel installation and orientation. To refer back to the OP - no, cloudy skies does not mean "no solar energy". The OP is correct - the myth is busted.
This is only one location, and a few days of data. And this level of data is not readily available for most locations. But it does illustrate that installation may be dependent on local factors such as amount of cloud, type of cloud, timing during the day, etc.
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Evan at 22:32 PM on 23 January 2025Moving away from high-end emissions scenarios
RickyO@9,
The CO2 graphs at the link you provide provide a possible explanation to the apparent acceleration of atmospheric CO2 concentration suggested by my plot of the data. The NOAA graph of global increase by decade (see below) shows that in the 1990's, the rate of increase decreased a small amount from that in the 1980's. Further, the increase from the 1960's to the 1970's was about 0.5 ppm, almost the same as what it was from the 2000's to the 2010's. Therefore, perhaps it is the decrease in the 1990's that affects my plot and suggests an apparent increase in the rate thereafter. Although I've seen this NOAA data before, thanks for bringing it to our attention again.
Lan, X., Tans, P. and K.W. Thoning: Trends in globally-averaged CO2 determined from NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory measurements. Version Monday, 06-Jan-2025 10:06:16 MST https://doi.org/10.15138/9N0H-ZH07
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RickyO at 17:46 PM on 23 January 2025Moving away from high-end emissions scenarios
Bob,
I tend to keep an eye on the Global Trend in CO2, rather than stories of emissions cuts:
gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gl_trend.html
The el nino boost in the trend is clear to see in 2016 and 2024. Doesn't seem to be fading as quickly in this time around, though. Worth watching?
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Evan at 06:47 AM on 23 January 2025Sabin 33 #12 - Do solar panels work in cold or cloudy climates?
Thanks Bob for your comments. I always learn a lot from your posts, including the interesting rate structure. Where we live in Minnesota our current rates are 6.4 cents/kwh from 8 pm to 8 am (when we charge our car), 12 cents/kwh from 8 am to 4 pm, and 22 cents/kwh from 4 to 8 pm. The 35 cents I quoted was from a different pricing structure not appropriate for our time-of-day rates optimized for car charging.
Even though we live in the country, our roof is far from optimal. We also don't like the idea of ground-based solar. Not worth going into the details here of why.
So we are planning to hang panels off our deck. We designed our deck to hold 120 psf, because we want to use it as a large, raised-bed garden. The edge where we will hang the panels is supported by an I-Beam. Hence, we have plenty of strength to hang panels off the edge.
We are planning to have a few panels facing due east for morning generation, the bulk of the panels facing south, and a few panels facing west, or southwest, to catch the afternoon sun. The idea is to have some power from sunup to sundown, and the main power during the day.
I like the idea of hanging the panels off the deck, because the panels effectively extend the reach of the deck, providing lots of covered areas to park vehicles. And the panels will be readily accessible from the deck for snow removal and periodic cleaning.
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Bob Loblaw at 06:19 AM on 23 January 2025Sabin 33 #12 - Do solar panels work in cold or cloudy climates?
Evan @ 6:
On a rooftop installation, you probably end up putting panels on more than one roof section, which would be oriented in different directions. That would even out the power production through the day. But if you have lots of roof surfaces to choose from (more than you want covered in panels), then choosing which ones to use gets challenging.
The time of day question is an interesting one. Where I live, the electricity rates are broken into peak, mid-peak, and off-peak hours, and the time periods are 7pm-7am, 7am-11am, 11am-5pm, and 5pm-7pm.
- If you're reading carefully, you'll notice that there are four time periods, but only three rate levels.
- 7pm-7am is always off-peak. Time to charge the electric car.
- 11am-5pm is mid-peak in winter, but peak in summer (A/C season here).
- 7am-11am and 5pm-7pm are peak in winter (go-to-work, return-from-work times), but they are mid-peak in summer.
- Current costs are $0.076 off-peak, $0.122 mid-peak, and $0.158 peak, so we're looking at differences of about a factor of 2.
...so I'd agree there are real possibilities to optimize the solar panel installation to get maximum cost savings. And hopefully the utility company has set rates so that peak rates are when the grid can most benefit from extra power. Maximizing local production during the hot part of the day in summer also means that there is less need for transmission infrastructure, as the power is produced where it is needed for A/C.
The common single-orientation leave-it-alone setup is pointing south, set at "latitude tilt". (Zero is flat. 45° works for 45° latitude. 60° is a lot of tilt, and starts to run into the fact that at 60° latitude the sun is well above the horizon for a lot of the day (and rises in the NE and sets in the NW, so something pointing due south is shaded part of the day!) In high latitudes, a flat panel works best.
Optimizing runs into more detailed calculations that simple rules-of-thumb don't do well at. I've done such calculations at a research site where we ran some instrumentation off solar-powered battery setups. It happened to be a research station where we collected the direct and diffuse radiation measurements needed to do the local optimization. (By coincidence, NW of where you are in Minnesota.)
Where I am now, we considered doing a rooftop solar installation, but in winter our south-facing roof area is partly shaded by the house next to us. Roof geometry is not good (and small yards make ground-based solar impractical).
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scaddenp at 06:19 AM on 23 January 2025Sabin 33 #12 - Do solar panels work in cold or cloudy climates?
Yes, on a friends solar installation with thoroughly non-optimal roof, they just put up more panels. The panel cost is now so cheap, (inverters not so much), that just piling on panels makes sense.
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nigelj at 06:10 AM on 23 January 2025Sabin 33 #12 - Do solar panels work in cold or cloudy climates?
"The drop in electric genration from solar is well documented from numerous sources and as detailed in the monthly data from EIA, the Dec/January capacity factor for utility solar pv averages around 13.5% vs 30%-31% during June july and august.. "
The capacity factor drops by about half. Could you not compensate by installing twice the number of panels? This would increase costs, but for new homes it looks affordable. Costs in New Zealand for residential solar are as follows. "The Electricity Authority estimates the average set up for a 4.4kW installed system with around 10-11 panels to be around $12,000-$13,000". If you doubled the number of panels the cost is $24,000 - $26,000.
In New Zealand average home size is about 150M2, and cost around $4000 M2 to build so around $600,000 to build. Trim just 6M2 squared off the floor area, and you have paid for a solar power instillation capable of dealing with seasonal swings rather than relying on grid backup. I suppose its a question of what people value - the large homes we build now well beyond what is really needed, or a sustainable energy system that also ultimately saves them money.
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Evan at 05:22 AM on 23 January 2025Sabin 33 #12 - Do solar panels work in cold or cloudy climates?
I have a question for you Bob that is a little off topic, but which the readers may find interesting. It has to do with tradeoffs and generating power when it is most needed.
Specifically, wouldn't it be good to point some panels either West, or Southwest? The point being to maximize power generation in the late afternoon, when power companies are struggling to meet demand. In Minnesota, Time of Day electric rates are about 35 cents/kwh between 4-8 pm, whereas standard rates are 12 cents/kwh during the rest of the day, The 35 cents/kwh varies by the time of year and I'm sure other factors, but the point is that there are times when power is most valuable and most needed.
Do you agree that it makes sense to point some panels either West or Southwest to generate power during the heavy-use times, or do you think it still best to always point them due south and at the optimum lattitude-based angle? My assumption here is that a solar array is only generating a portion of the power needed, and that there is therefore continued reliance on some amount of grid power.
