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David-acct at 21:54 PM on 10 September 2024How mismanagement, not wind and solar energy, causes blackouts
There is absolutely no question the electric generation from fossil fuels had a catastrophic failure on February 15, 2021 whereby approximately 36% electric generation from fossil fuels was lost for 36 hours and then was down by approximately 20% for another 40 hours.
Unfortunately there is a lot misunderstanding and misrepresentation on both sides.
At the same time, electric generation from wind and solar dropped off significantly in the ERCOT grid, Starting on Feb 8 2021, electric generation from wind dropped nearly 50-70%, reaching nearly zero on the critical Feb 15th for 15 hours. The drought from wind generation lasted through FEb 20th , a total of 10 days vs the 3 ½ days for the fossil fuel loss. Further the percentage drop was much more severe than the loss of fossil fuel generation.
As the EIA grid monitor shows, Unfortunately, the loss of Wind and solar was across the entire United States and north america. Wind droughts are typically continentally wide in north america as they are in Europe.
I have provided a link to the EIA gov website which has the raw data.
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mwalt at 10:04 AM on 6 September 2024Five ingenious ways people could beat the heat without cranking the AC
Energy is neither created nor destroyed; "true heat energy"--( not temperature) causes any material to be "hot" (temperature wise) based on the specific heat capacity of the hot material.
If the "heat energy" can be utilized in any other way then the temperature of the affected material will be reduced. For exampl, it may be thought that the brakes of an automobile slow or stop the automobile; actually the brakes cause the kinetic energy of the vehicle to be converted to heat (The brakes get hot!.) If that kinetic energy is utilized in another way--such as the electro motive force of a generato--then the energy of the vehicle's momentum is converted to electricity rather than heat. This emf will slow or stop the vehicle without the high temperature otherwise converted by traditional braking, e.g, in the case of a hybrid or electric vehicle, the energy is converted by the emf of generators which then charge the batteries.
The point here is that if the heat of, say asphal, can be converted into some productive use, then the asphalt will, necessarily, be cooler! The solar radiation does not need to be reflected back to the atmospher, if somehow the solar energy could be utilized in a creative way--say some version of a solar cell--then the energy could be converted into electricity! Another method to convert and utilize the "heat" of the asphalt would be by imbedding coils or heat pipes within the substrate of the asphal/road, create steam or other heat transfer method To be used to effectivly heat water, Freon or the like.Again, this would, necessarily, reduce the temperature of the asphalt roadway or concrete walkways.
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michael sweet at 02:01 AM on 6 September 2024Five ingenious ways people could beat the heat without cranking the AC
Red Rose Andy:
You have obviously not endured the combination of very high heat and humidity that many people who live in tropical areas have to deal with. Even at night where I live in Florida when it is over 83oF with a dew point of 80 or higher no amount of fans will ever make you feel a cold sting. It is too hot for the human body to cool off. Arizona is worse than Florida. Scientists have documented fatal air temperatures where the heat index is so high that even in a hurricane wind in the shade humans cannot cool off and die from the heat.
I personally have spent many nights near the equator where it was extremely hot at night when we were soaked with sweat and had fans blowing directy on us, and that was in areas that are not the hottest in the world.
I do not need to mention that poor people cannot afford the fans or the electricity to run them you want to use.
Of course your simple ideas cannot be applied to farm animals which will all die from the heat. Over 700,000 livestock died recently in South Korea, a country that is not especially hot and has the money to use fans. Already crop yields have dropped worldwide because of heat and drought caused by climate change. Just look an Wyoming in the USA where drought has caused a drop in arable land. Think of how many cattle can be raised in the Sahara dessert.
Of course we can all put on our Rose Colored glasses and say everything looks fine until the cost of basic foodstuffs becomes too high for billions of people.
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RedRoseAndy at 23:41 PM on 5 September 2024Five ingenious ways people could beat the heat without cranking the AC
While I would suggest to everyone that they should be getting a personal body cooler if they can afford it, there are many in the world who can not; for them I have a cheap solution, namely using the wind chill factor. This is the lowering of the body temperature due to the passing flow of lower temperature air. To use the wind chill factor to keep cool on a hot, and potentially dangerous day, just cover your naked flesh with cold water and stand in front of a fan until chilly. If you have done it too long you will feel a cold sting even in the hottest countries (“Jack Frost”), so adjust the time in front of the fan you are using, which will vary from model to model.
With the death rates mounting due to record temperatures over record days this invention can save lives. Fans are both cheaper than air conditioning, and better for the environment.
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Bob Loblaw at 04:39 AM on 5 September 2024On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2
MA Rodger @ 22:
Although that may seem to answer the direct question that rkcannon asks in comment 16, he finishes that comment by saying "It seems CO2 is not influencing T at all." To come to such a conclusion, it seems that he simply does not see or rejects all the synchronous rises and dips in the CO2 and temperature lines that precede that last spike. The explanation of those synchronous CO2 and T changes involves both T leading to an increase in CO2, followed by CO2 causing further increases in T.
David Kirtley's comment @ 6 is intended to challenge the argument that only T causes all the CO2 increase, all the time. If so, then why do we not see a huge increase in T before the recent large increase in CO2?
rkcannon appears to be ignoring any cause-effect for the previous cycles of T/CO2, and only looks at the last spike.
I saw "appears", because rkcannon has not bothered to return to this discussion to clarify his question or comment. We can speculate about what he really meant until the cows come home, but he is the only one who can really tell us.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:44 AM on 5 September 2024New paper about detecting climate misinformation on Twitter/X
Rapid identification and correction of on-line presentations of misunderstanding is indeed an important pursuit, and not just misunderstanding regarding climate science and climate change. It is a critical part of the leadership actions required to limit the harm done by people who desire more “freedom to believe and do whatever they want”. And it is very important to limit the harm done by undeserving status/influence winners like Elon Musk.
The following quote from the new paper points out the Musk Twitter/X challenge for collective leadership actions attempting to limit the damage done by misunderstandings caused by the production and promotion of misinformation and disinformation.
These findings have practical implications. Adopting our model could help Twitter/X to augment and enhance ongoing manual fact-checking procedures by offering a computer-assisted procedure for finding the tweets most likely to contain climate misinformation. This adoption could make finding and responding to climate-related misinformation more efficient and help Twitter/X enforce policies to reduce false or misleading claims on the platform. Yet environmental groups have shown that Twitter/X ranks dead last among major social media platforms in its policies and procedures for responding to climate misinformation and there is little evidence that X will improve these procedures in the near term41. Alternatively, our model could provide the basis for an API that Twitter/X users could employ to assess climate-related claims they are seeing in their feeds. Overall, the potential practical applications of our model underscores the need for continued academic work to monitor misinformation on Twitter/X and raises important questions on the data needed to hold social media platforms accountable for the spread of false claims.
The last sentence underscores the challenge of limiting the harm done by undeserving higher status/influence winners like Musk. The following PBS item about X in Brazil highlights the challenge of “hold(ing) social media platforms accountable for the spread of false claims.”
PBS - Brazilian judge suspends Musk’s X platform for refusing to name a legal representative.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:06 AM on 5 September 2024What should you do to prepare for the climate change storm?
Here is some additional information for TWFA, and others who have developed and share misunderstandiings like they have, to thoughtfully consider and respond to.
Today, NPR published the following report: “Coastal flooding is getting more common, even on sunny days”. It is a detailed evidence-based report about the current and future reality regarding the impacts of recent rapid sea level rise due to global warming caused by human activities on this planet. It includes the following quotes:
"The costs of high-tide flooding are enormous. Even a few inches of water can make neighborhoods inaccessible to some residents, including those who use wheelchairs or rely on strollers to transport young children. And standing water can also snarl commutes, block emergency vehicles and cause secondary flooding if sewers back up into buildings or overflow into natural bodies of water."
"Sea levels don’t rise at the same rate everywhere, and the effects of high-tide flooding are even more pronounced in places where sea levels are rising most rapidly, the report notes. In the last 25 years or so, the number of days with high-tide flooding has increased by a whopping 250% or more in many regions, including along the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Mid-Atlantic and the Pacific Islands."
"And there’s no reprieve in sight, as global temperatures continue to increase and sea levels continue to rise. The average number of annual high-tide flood days for the U.S. is expected to top 45 days by mid-century. Local governments in many coastal areas are racing to upgrade infrastructure to withstand salt water, improve sewers and drainage and budget for the costs of damage and disruption from high-tide flooding."
"While high-tide flood forecasts do not consider flooding from storms, the same sea level rise that is driving more sunny day floods also exacerbates coastal storm flooding, as residents of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina experienced following Hurricane Debby. The storm came ashore in Florida as a weak Category 1 hurricane and was quickly downgraded to a Tropical Storm, but storm surge and rain has nonetheless caused catastrophic flooding across the Southeast, in part because rising seas mean the ocean is closer to the built-up coastline."
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MA Rodger at 19:27 PM on 4 September 2024On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2
rkcannon @16.
Assuming Mark Johnson @18 is correct and you do refer to the graphic posted @6 (which seems entirely sensible), your question has still not been properly addressed.
And that presumably is to ask why the CO2 fluctuations through recent ice ages (180ppm to 280ppm) are associated with large temperature fluctuations (10ºC peak-to-peak) but the larger recent anthropogenic CO2 (280ppm to 420ppm) doesn't result in any commensurate temperature increase in the graph.
There are a number of factors to consider.
(1) The forcing from changes in CO2 is logarithmic, so the recent CO2 forcing would be slightly smaller than the ice age forcing (2.2Wm^-2 as opposed to 2.4Wm^-2).
(2) It takes time for the temperature to react to an imposed forcing so only about two-thirds of any CO2-forced increase would have occurred in the decades of man-made warming so far.
(3) The ice age CO2 forcing was not the major forcing through ice ages. The change in albedo due to the shrinking ice sheets and the rising oceans would be double the CO2 forcing. Other factors like methane and dust were also in play. (The orbital forcing that triggers ice ages is very minor.) Increasing CO2 contributed perhaps a third of the ice age forcings.
(4) The temperatures being plotted are from the EPIC ice core data and thus Antarctic temperatures which wobbled tiwce as much as global temperatures through the ice ages. (Note the modern CO2 value has been added, marked with an asterisk. Grafting on the modern EPIC temperature record would be difficult, and would not show much as the instrument record is more wobble than rise.)
So taking (1) to (4) into account, the 10ºC ice age cycle in the graphic @6 would be a little smaller, say 90% (1) then a third off (2) then two-thirds off (3) and finally halved (4). So the global temperature should be very roughly something like [10ºC x 0.9 x 0.67 x 0.33 x 0.5 =] +1ºC which is pretty-much what we see globally today. -
Bob Loblaw at 05:10 AM on 4 September 2024On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2
Mark Johnson:
To understand the fundamental error made by Koutsoyiannis, I suggest you go to the PubPeer discussion of an earlier paper that I referenced in comment 3. In particular, read the second comment on that discussion, where Gavin Cawley (who posts here as Dikran Marsupial - e.g., comment #1) demonstrates how the methodology used by Koutsoyiannis is utterly incapable of telling the difference between three different signals - one with a steady increase, one with a steady decrease, and one with no long-term trend.
Since Koutsoyiannis' methodology is incapable of telling the difference in trend between those three signals, it is by definition incapable of helping decide whether the past century of generally increasing CO2 and generally increasing temperature are related in any way.
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Mal Adapted at 04:22 AM on 4 September 2024On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2
Mark Johnson, this is an example of why it's wise to lurk awhile before before commenting here. Your comment may seem reasonable to newcomers, but amounts to tone trolling when one considers rkcannon's history of gratuitous denialism. Believe it or not, there are professional disinformers out there taking advantage of naive expectations like yours.
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TWFA at 03:09 AM on 4 September 2024New paper about detecting climate misinformation on Twitter/X
It appears [Snipped] the authors would be exellent candidates to be the founding and governing directors of the Ministry Of Truth.
Moderator Response:[BL} It appears that you have unfinished business on a thread where you commented two weeks ago.
Participation in the comments threads at SkS requires that you engage in legitimate, constructive dialog with other participants. You are violating the sloganeering section of the Comments Policy, which states:
No sloganeering. Comments consisting of simple assertion of a myth already debunked by one of the main articles, and which contain no relevant counter argument or evidence from the peer reviewed literature constitutes trolling rather than genuine discussion. As such they will be deleted.
On the previous thread, you made unsupported assertions that have been refuted by other comments. You have provided no response to any of that material. You will not be allowed to start a new thread of unsupported assertions until you go back to that thread and respond to your critics. Suitable responses could include:
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Bob Loblaw at 02:28 AM on 4 September 2024On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2
Mark Johnson @ comment 18:
No, rkcannon @ 16 is not clearly referring to anything specific. For his first comment on this thread, he just comes up with one statement (in two sentences), and can't be bothered to tells us whether he's looking at the original post, or one of the comments? Did he put more than 20 seconds of thought into his question?
Even if we look at the graph in comment 6, which spike is he referring to? Possibly the last one, but he has not take the time to write a clear comment explaining exactly what he is looking at or explain his reasoning. And he has not returned to clarify what he means - which I asked him to do.
rkcannon has a history here. which includes several occasions of throwing out one-liner "gotcha" kinds of questions, and then not bothering top engage in any constructive discussion when his errors are pointed out. That behaviour is "hardly conducive to constructive debate".
And yes, I have read the Koutsoyiannis paper referred to in this post. I have also read the comments on that paper and an earlier one on PubPeer, as I indicated in comment 3. The comment from rkcannon @ 16 comes on the heels of one he made on another thread. In that thread, rkcannon quoted the abstract of another Koutsoyiannis paper (emphasis added):
Recent studies have provided evidence, based on analyses of instrumental measurements of the last seven decades, for a unidirectional, potentially causal link between temperature as the cause and carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]) as the effect.
Similar statements appear in several Koutsoyiannis papers. The statistical technique used by Koutsoyiannis is incapable of detecting multi-directional processes, and it is incapable of detecting correlations at multiple time scales. Even though Koutsoyiannis et al do not state it or imply it, it is an essential characteristic of their method. The fact that they do not even realize this is why Koutsoyiannis keeps producing papers that contain the same basic error. In essence, they have assumed their conclusion as a result of their methodology.
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Mal Adapted at 01:20 AM on 4 September 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
Aw, hell! Beware of hasty editing. Replace only the first occurrence of "collective" with "individual", not the second. That's my whole point!
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Mal Adapted at 01:15 AM on 4 September 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
Er - y'all can replace "collective" with "individually" in my previous comment, please
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Mal Adapted at 01:08 AM on 4 September 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
Except for the accent, that Australian Senator could have been the late Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), or Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) of the US upper house, i.e. "the world's most exclusive club". Sadly, Rennick's arguments are transparently motivated by his self-interest, like most politicians: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!". Upton Sinclair's epigram is an English-language commonplace, understood implicitly by all mature climate realists. We know very well that no reality-based case for anthropogenic climate change will ever persuade these guys. We can all enjoy a snicker amongst ourselves at Potholer 54's otherwise-infuriating documentation of political craft, but the only collective individual action most of us can realistically take is to try to ensure he's not re-elected.
You Australians will have to handle that problem yourselves, I'm afraid. Here in the US, I'm taking heart from the latest Six Americas report from Yale's Climate Change Communications program. Americans who were "alarmed" or "concerned" about climate change have gone from minority to majority since 2013, while those who were "disengaged", "doubful" and "dismissive" fell from 33% to 28%. The number of us who were "cautious" ten years ago has fallen from 26% to 15%. Heh. "Cautious", hell! Any of us who lived through the PNW heat dome of 2021, for example, have seen the wiser side of caution: namely collective action to cap global warming. I can't otherwise account for the changes over time, but they surely must be in Kamala Harris's favor, no?
Moderator Response:[BL] Edited as requested (I think) - although individually we can only vote once, and election results represent collective action.
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Mark Johnson at 01:01 AM on 4 September 2024On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2
Bob Loblaw @ 17:
He's clearly referring to the graph in post 6, not figure 6. It took me 20 seconds to realize this - perhaps you could have taken 20 seconds of your own time before jumping down his throat?
And by the way, his question is a reasonable one and deserves a civil reponse. Using language like 'what on earth...?', 'are you seriously thinking..?', '..some tiny feature that you think..' are hardly conducive to constructive debate.
And if you'd actually read Koutsoyiannis et al, you would know that they absolutely do not say or even imply 'that there is only one cause in one direction at all time scales'.
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nigelj at 07:21 AM on 3 September 20242024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #35
The mantra is dont worry about climate change because when it gets bad we will find great technical solutions. To me its like saying don't worry about smoking tobacco because by the time you get sick, there will be excellent treatments. Yeah sure there will be. Its 100% guaranteed.
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Bob Loblaw at 05:05 AM on 3 September 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
Yes, another good video from Potholer54. I think I share his sarcastic sense of humour - and at some point as you look at this level of denial from a politician you have to make a choice between crying and laughing at it.
I am currently reading Authoritarian Nightmare - Trump and his Followers, by John Dean and Bob Altemeyer. (Yes, John Dean of Watergate fame). Much of the social psychology it discusses is from Bob Altemeyer's career studying what he termed authoritarian follower psychology. You can access much of Altemeyer's material (including an ebook The Authoritarians), at https://theauthoritarians.org/.
Dean and Altemeyer discuss two psychological aspects of the extreme devotion to the sort of politicians' messages exposed by Potholer: they refer to "social dominators", who treat every interaction as a situation where they need to dominate others (or other groups), and authoritarian followers, who are highly susceptible to being led down the garden path by authority figures. When someone comes along that tells them what they want to hear, they lose any ability to critically evaluate what they are being told. Being lied to isn't a problem as long as the message confirms what they deeply want to believe.
Large numbers of authoritarian follower voters and lying power-hungry demagogue politicians is not a good mix.
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Bob Loblaw at 04:42 AM on 3 September 2024On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2
rkcannon @ 16:
What on earth are you talking about? Figure 6 does not have temperature in it, so what temperature graph are you referring to? And figure 6 is showing short-term variation that includes annual or shorter times. It is a rate of change graph, not a cumulative storage graph. And which "very high spike" are you referring to? What year?
...and are you seriously thinking that every temporary spike in CO2 (really, rate of CO2 change, if you are using figure 6) will lead to a temperature spike? It takes time for global temperatures to change. The atmosphere alone has a sufficiently large heat capacity that it takes months for an energy imbalance of a few W/m2 to reach a new equilibrium. If you take the shallow ocean mixed layer (<100m depth), the heat capacity means it take a decade or two for it to adjust. When you take the deeper ocean into account, the time lag increases proportionally.
...and CO2 is not the only factor affecting temperature. especially on the shorter time scales.
By thinking that every little short-term spike in CO2 has to correlate with a spike in temperature, you are making exactly the sort of basic error that Koutsoyiannis et al have made (several times). Koutsoyiannis has assumed that there is only one cause in one direction at all times scales, and has completely ignored the multi-factor and multi-time-scale nature of the carbon cycle and global temperature - and done it using a technique that removes the multi-decade slow rise in CO2 and how it correlates with global temperature.
It seems that you are not looking at the whole system, and focusing narrowly on some tiny feature that you think disproves the big picture.
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rkcannon at 03:29 AM on 3 September 2024On Hens, Eggs, Temperature and CO2
Why don't we see a higher temp spike along with the very high CO2 spike in the graph in 6? It seems CO2 is not influencing T at all.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:21 AM on 3 September 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
Eclectic (and John Mason),
Thanks for pointing to the entertaining and informative Potholer54 video.
I have an opinion to share regarding the claims that Rennick makes on his official web-based communications” (that I consider to quite likely be a correct understanding)
- On the header band of his official web page (shown at 4:50, and many other times, in the video) he claims to be “Working for all Australians”
- On his self-promotion image at 15:15 (Just before the shift into ‘The opinion room’) Rennick claims “What binds us together is much more than what drives us apart”.
Those two claims make sense if:
- the 'us' in the second claim is the diverse collective of anti-intellectual resisters of learning who appreciate that they have power if they vote together for their extensive diversity of deliberately conserved misunderstanding and associated deliberate limited awareness.
- 'Australians' in the first claim is restricted to the sub-set of anti-intellectuals in Australia.
A significant portion of the population in many nations undeniably collectively vote for leadership that aligns with their interest in prolonging, and attempting to increase the popularity of, misunderstanding and the related required limited awareness.
It seems that Senator Rennick is one of the many anti-intellectual leadership candidates who consciously chooses to ‘work’ on ways to continue to get as many of the diversity of anti-intellectual resisters of learning to vote for him rather than driving away voters who choose to passionately ‘resist learning’.
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Bob Loblaw at 02:26 AM on 3 September 2024CO2 emissions do not correlate with CO2 concentration
rkcannon:
An earlier paper by Koutsoyiannis was debunked on this post here at SkS. He has been repeating the same basic bogus analysis in a series of papers, all of which are basically junk.
In the snippet you copy (which appears to be the start of the abstract), he again repeats his assertion of "evidence ... for a unidirectional, potentially causal link between temperature as the cause and carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]) as the effect." This claim appears in most (all?) his previous works, and it is still "not even wrong".
I notice that Koutsoyiannis has again chosen an MDPI journal for his assertions. MDPI does not have a particularly good reputation, having been a go-to location for a lot of bad papers that do not get proper review.
Is there any reason to think that Koutsoyiannis has actually gotten something right this time? For the most part, papers by Koutsoyiannis are simply not worth reading.
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rkcannon at 01:35 AM on 3 September 2024CO2 emissions do not correlate with CO2 concentration
Link to previous comment
https://www.mdpi.com/2413-4155/6/1/17
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rkcannon at 01:34 AM on 3 September 2024CO2 emissions do not correlate with CO2 concentration
Regarding C14, the gradual decline may be due to the nuclear tests that created C14 that is decaying or disappearing naturally. Ref this paper. Also this paper also looks at 13C/12C ratio, saying the following. Is there discussion on this somewhere?
Net Isotopic Signature of Atmospheric CO2 Sources and Sinks: No Change since the Little Ice Age
by Demetris Koutsoyiannis
[ORCID]
Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Heroon Polytechneiou 5, 157 72 Zographou, Greece
Sci 2024, 6(1), 17; https://doi.org/10.3390/sci6010017
Submission received: 19 December 2023 / Revised: 23 February 2024 / Accepted: 29 February 2024 / Published: 14 March 2024
Abstract
Recent studies have provided evidence, based on analyses of instrumental measurements of the last seven decades, for a unidirectional, potentially causal link between temperature as the cause and carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]) as the effect. In the most recent study, this finding was supported by analysing the carbon cycle and showing that the natural [CO2] changes due to temperature rise are far larger (by a factor > 3) than human emissions, while the latter are no larger than 4% of the total. Here, we provide additional support for these findings by examining the signatures of the stable carbon isotopes, 12 and 13. Examining isotopic data in four important observation sites, we show that the standard metric δ13C is consistent with an input isotopic signature that is stable over the entire period of observations (>40 years), i.e., not affected by increases in human CO2 emissions. In addition, proxy data covering the period after 1500 AD also show stable behaviour. These findings confirm the major role of the biosphere in the carbon cycle and a non-discernible signature of humans. -
pattimer at 22:27 PM on 2 September 20242024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #35
It's undoubtedly true that we need to both face denial and how to create solutions ( both at government/ national level and at the individual level). Sceptical science does a superb job at rebutting denial. I also think denial is part of the continual procrastination process and many of those such as the GWFP that have played a huge role in denial of climate change have changed their procrastination strategies. It seems that they will make political gain by accepting long term strategies for climate action giving us "world leading targets"which they will then make further political gain by reneging on them when the time comes to implement them. Another strategy is raising false hopes that are completely unrealistic to delay implementing existing strategies such as implying that our boilers and cars in the future will have hydrogen delivered along pipes. This they know will make people delay personal changes that would otherwise reduce their fossil fuel consumption. So we not only need to face denial of the climate science but also the denial of solutions that could be presently implemented. I personally arrange regularly visits to my home by small groups of individuals to address the myths about heat pumps for example that the procrastinators have been successful in flooding social media with in the same way they spread climate denial.
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John Mason at 17:31 PM on 2 September 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
@121:
Link to Potholer 54's video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBV5fw6e0RM -
Eclectic at 04:16 AM on 2 September 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
For your general amusement :-
Another Potholer54 climate video, posted 31st August 2024, and so far getting 40,000 views and 2,000 comments (many quite witty).
Title :
"Could this be the stupidest politician in Australia?"
Yes, the USA does not have a monopoly.
Video 18 minutes long.
"Read 'em and weep."
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Eclectic at 21:13 PM on 30 August 2024Climate Adam: Can Coral Reefs survive Climate Change?
Er .... the GBR [Great Barrier Reef] has never been better than now?
Rose-tinted glasses & cherry-picking are probably not the responsible and sensible approach to assessing and managing the GBR.
Heat (and pollution?) will certainly increase over coming decades, for reasons which you already know. So the GBR corals are facing a long uphill battle.
Perhaps the evolution of greater heat-resistance in many coral types (and their symbiotic algae) will occur ~ but will it be fast enough to preserve the majority of the GBR in a diverse form, or will the GBR deteriorate into something approaching a sad "monoculture"?
Maybe that sort of "recovery" of the GBR will occur in the matter of a decade ~ or perhaps there may be a large "valley of death" until evolution catches up. A lot is uncertain . . . but the corals are definitely facing a long uphill battle against the increasing heat.
MadMackz, your views may have been influenced by your innate cheerful & optimistic nature ~ reinforced by the outlier views of Dr Peter Ridd-Micawber and the false smiles of the GBR tourist boat operators.
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MadMackz at 11:08 AM on 30 August 2024Climate Adam: Can Coral Reefs survive Climate Change?
The only issue I have with this is that it doesnt really promote the things that people really should also know about coral reef namely the Great Barrier Reef. It is strange how although through the mass events that have killed off so much precious reef, that since 2022 we have observed Record Highs regarding size, growth and overall health of the GBR in all recordable history in its entirety. 3 years in a row! Which is great! Something else that many people dont know is that although record levels of the reef have been observed there has been a detrimental outbreak of starfish which are one of the largest offending predators of the reef, them along with Fish, marine worms, barnacles, crabs, snails and those pesky sea stars all prey on the soft inner tissues of coral polyps. But that still is not the largest Killer of these beautiful reefs. That...would be waves, from cyclones and storms.. Breaking off large pieces of coral at a time and literally shredding it as the waves flatten it to litteral sand. Its a good thing that those cyclones have been showing a decline in frequency and intensity for the last half a decade. One plus of the warm waters though is the spawn of new reef is increased, Once a year, on cues from the lunar cycle and the water temperature, entire colonies of coral reefs simultaneously release their tiny eggs and sperm, called gametes, into the ocean. The phenomenon brings to mind an underwater blizzard with billions of colorful flakes cascading in white, yellow, red, and orange.
In ways that scientists still do not fully understand, mature corals release their gametes all at the same time. This increases their chance at diversity and has shown the mixing of genes to increase their tolerance to the changing climate and temperatures. And finally while individual coral colonies suffer from a degree of bleaching in any given summer. This is a natural process and not of particular concern, what we do know is the reef has never been better than now and heres to another 3 years of Great Barrier Growth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnQPSYC3IdI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znOidiyUnq8
I want to note that there are sources out there claiming widespread bleaching events are killing off the reef . Namely ABC New3s Australia, I will note that Comments are all turned off, and I suggest seekingout the words of those that work with the reef everyday, Give them a call, go take a tour. Get out and Get the Facts for yourselves, If it matters , Its worth it, and you deserve it. -
Jeff Cope at 13:11 PM on 28 August 2024CO2 is just a trace gas
Put some table salt in your hand and dump out all but 2 grains. Keep hold of them while you read this:
Cyanide’s LD50, the dose that kills half those exposed to it, is 13 parts per million. Arsenic’s is 6. Some snake venoms, algal bloom toxin, & ricin, can kill at 1 part per million (0.0001%).
The main source of methyl mercury in the world is coal burning. It can kill in quantities smaller than 1ppm; at even smaller doses it doesn’t kill, it just has scores of profound lifelong physical and mental effects. Are there Alice in Wonderland fans here? Alice’s Hatter spoke in the bizarre tangles called word salad as a result of what’s Put some table salt in your hand and dump out all but 2 grains. Keep hold of them while you read the next 2 paragraphs.
Cyanide’s LD50, the dose that kills half those exposed to it, is 13 parts per million. Arsenic’s is 6. Some snake venoms, algal bloom toxin, & ricin, can kill at 1 part per million (0.0001%).
The main source of methyl mercury in the world is coal burning. It can kill in quantities smaller than 1ppm; at even smaller doses it doesn’t kill, it just has scores of profound lifelong physical and mental effects. Are there Alice in Wonderland fans here? Alice’s Hatter spoke in the bizarre tangles called word salad as a result of what’s still called Mad Hatter syndrome. It takes even less than that 1ppm in the chronic doses hat makers breathed in from the mercury nitrate (Hg(NO₃)₂xH₂O) they used for about a century to toughen fur fibers, allowing them to matt together better for a firmer hat. The process was called carroting because Hg(NO₃)₂xH₂O is orange.Phyllobates terribilis, Golden Dart Poison Frog, ‘Orange’ (Imagine a picture here)
Dart poison frogs' batrachotoxin's LD50 is 1/1000th of that (1mcg/kg or 1 part per billion), so if those 2 grains of salt in your hand were batrachotoxin, it's a coin flip whether it would be enough to kill you just by holding it, if you had even a tiny cut on your palm. Sorry, there’s no antidote, and you have about 9 minutes left. It would take 6 salt grains worth of VX, while Botulinum toxin kills at 1 thousandth that amount—1 nanogram, or 1 billionth of a gram/kg body weight. One part per trillion of it can kill.
9 ppm is the maximum indoor safe carbon monoxide level over 8 hours. 200 ppm or greater will cause physical symptoms and is fatal in hours. 800 ppm of CO or greater in the air is fatal within minutes.
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Christian Moe at 21:33 PM on 26 August 2024It's cosmic rays
PS to comment 123: Apart from the ion/muon confusion, I'd suggest that human radiation doses are a digression that is apt to confuse the reader as to what the issue is here, especially in a short at-a-glance section.
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Christian Moe at 20:59 PM on 26 August 2024It's cosmic rays
The current "at a glance" section, second paragraph, appears to confuse ions with pions and muons:
"When cosmic rays hit the top of our atmosphere [...] they interact with the atoms up there producing showers of charged particles known as ions. The ions then head on down towards the surface, where they make up just over ten percent of our typical yearly radiation dose. That's approximately equivalent to three chest x-rays."
In my understanding, cosmic rays hitting atoms at the top of the atmosphere produce pions, charged pions decay into muons, which continue down the atmosphere, creating ions as they pass. Ions are charged atoms or molecules. Ions do not (as such) contribute to your radiation dose. Ionizing radiation does (like muons and the rest of the cosmic-ray cascade products).
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scaddenp at 09:36 AM on 23 August 2024What should you do to prepare for the climate change storm?
Oceanfront is fine - if you are on hard rock a few metres above max high tide level. Beachfront - not so much. Soft sediment erodes easily in storm surges and of course, rising tide. TWFA - what data about sealevel rise happening right now are you disputing is true? What data is the basis for your predictions?
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One Planet Only Forever at 09:29 AM on 23 August 2024What should you do to prepare for the climate change storm?
A point regarding TWFA's opinion about people abandoning Manhattan:
Bloomberg reports on "New York City’s Basement Residents Face Financial Risk of Floods"
Parts of Manhattan may be 'abandoned'.
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:40 AM on 23 August 2024What should you do to prepare for the climate change storm?
Nigelj @2 and Michael Sweet@3,
Thank you for researching and sharing the evidence that clearly contradicts TWFA’s poorly justified opinion that “in our lifetimes ... nobody will have abandoned ... their beachfront homes or estates due to climate”.
Based on a short time doing unbiased investigation and thoughtful consideration I offer the following additional evidence contradicting or weakening TWFA’s poorly justified opinions expressed @1:
- many island nations, like the Maldives, are already suffering destruction and forced escape/migration due to climate change impact induced sea level rise.
- The feet of the Statue of Liberty are more than 150 feet above current sea level ... so ... weird statement.
- The Battery Park City Authority is planning major costly mitigation actions (BPC NEW LOOK: STORM SURGE BLUES link here) to try to ensure that “Battery Park will still be there”. Those mitigation/adaptation actions are a costly distraction that would not have been needed if climate change impacts had been reduced sooner with a lower level of peak total impact like 1.0 C achieved. If those mitigation were not required then all that money/effort could have been expended to genuinely improve the future of Battery Park.
- The Obama homes at the Vineyard and Hawaii both appear to be situated high enough to not be at risk of storm surge damage “during our lifetimes” even if ‘our lifetime’ is the 100 year lifetime of a new born today, as long as global warming impacts are limited to 2.0 C. Of course, if ‘our’ is regarding humanity’s lifetime of potentially many millions of years then those homes are likely not high enough.
A final note: Warren Buffet’s actual statement and the context of it are well presented by Investopedia here. Not quite what TWFA opined.
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michael sweet at 08:16 AM on 23 August 2024What should you do to prepare for the climate change storm?
I visited the outer banks in North Carolina 18 months ago. We stayed in a house on third Street. It was one and a half blocks to the beach. First Street and half of second street were gone.
This week this video was widely on mainstream news of another house there falling in the ocean. I saw a community on the Chesapeake Bay where the houses were uninsurable and a fishing island there is trying to get the feds to spend millions to prevent their island from washing away (a hopeless task).
I saw a video on YouTube of farmers in Vietnam who used to raise rice and now grow salt water fish and crabs. Another foot of sea level rise will overtop their levies and they will become refugees.
The lowest houses are beginning to be washed away world-wide. Insurance rates in Florida and other USA beach front are artificially held down by the government.
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nigelj at 07:02 AM on 23 August 2024What should you do to prepare for the climate change storm?
Climate change could indeed make properties uninsurable and hard to sell. From stuff.co.nz:
"Homes on parts of New Zealand’s coast will begin losing access to affordable insurance within 15 years, according to a stark new report. Wellington will be hit first, and Christchurch hardest, but all four major cities will be affected, according to new research led by climate and insurance specialist Belinda Storey for the Deep South National Science Challenge.By 2050, at least 10,000 homes in our biggest cities will be effectively uninsurable, however spiking premiums and policy exclusions could start being felt as soon as a decade from now, it concluded."
"In Wellington, just 12cm of sea level rise could see average premiums more than quadruple for about 1700 homes, the report estimates – if insurers fully priced the increased risk into policies. At those levels, people may effectively find they have no insurance cover, said Storey."
Ten to fifteen years is not far away. So it may pay to research the risks in your area now, and sell well before you suddenly find insurance is unavailable. I would say that when insurance companies start increasing premiums to high levels, or refusing cover at any price it could also happen suddenly without much warning. Decision making ruminates away for a long period then reaches sudden tipping points like other things in life..
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TWFA at 23:26 PM on 22 August 2024What should you do to prepare for the climate change storm?
Head for the hills! Warren Buffet said the time to be scared is when people are greedy, and the time to be greedy is when people are scared, so it sounds like oceanfront property should become a bargain once the scared migrate to Michigan. My own prediction is that in our lifetimes the Statue Of Liberty will not have wet feet, Battery Park will still be there and nobody will have abandoned Manhattan or their beachfront homes or estates due to climate, it will just be wealthier folks living there, like the Obamas with their oceanfront estates in the Vineyard and Hawaii, with an additional two climate escape pods in D.C and Chicago.
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Bob Loblaw at 00:57 AM on 21 August 2024Are climate models overestimating warming?
ubrew12:
As MA Rodger says, climate models do include soil moisture and surface albedo. The surface component of these models will also include vegetation cover, as this strongly influences the evapotranspiration rates. This is an essential part of the climate modelling process, as the surface energy balance has major implications in partitioning energy within the climate system.
The surface energy balance involves:
- solar radiation reaching the surface,
- IR radiation emitted from the atmosphere to the surface,
- IR radiation emitted from the surface to the atmosphere,
- energy transported as "sensible" heat (temperature) between the surface and the atmosphere (on average, upward)
- energy transported as "latent" heat (evapotranspiration, condensation) between the surface and the atmosphere (on average, upward, representing water movement from the surface to the atmosphere)
- energy transported via the conduction of heat between the surface and the subsurface (soil or water).
The concept of a "surface energy balance" is based on the idea that the surface is an infinitely thin plane that separates the atmosphere and the earth (land/sea). With no thickness, it has no mass, so it cannot store energy. There must be an energy balance that sums to zero for all energy flows to or from the surface. In this concept, the land itself is the sub-surface (which can store energy).
NCAR has a good web page describing their models. The overall climate model is built from several components: atmosphere, land, ice, etc. For the land component, the docuimentation table of contents lists (under "special cases") things like "Running the prognostic crop model" and "Running with irrigation".
So yes, it is possible to run these models with various aspects of surface conditions. Whether anyone has is another question - and getting appropriate historical surface data to do so accurately is an even bigger question.
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MA Rodger at 02:08 AM on 20 August 2024Are climate models overestimating warming?
ubrew12 @3,
The models do certainly calculate soil moisture and account for surface albedo. I don't know how accurately this is done. Presumably, if it were done badly enough to affect the modelling generally, such a failing would be quickly corrected.
You ask this because you wonder whether the 'Dust Bowl' could be the reason for these Corn Belt states having seen such low warming rates 1973-2022. Perhaps they began the period with warming already in place.
The GISTEMP web site easily allows such ideas to be tested. Over the full 1880-2022 period of data, the same low warming trend is still seen across the eastern USA thro' summer months on a global map. It is actually there all year and strongest in Autumn,weakest in Winter & Spring. So using this region to be representative of AGW, it is simply a dishonest cherry-pick (which is what 'Derwood Turnip' is doing). And as a region testing the climate models, as shown in the global map above in the OP, it is again a dishonest cherry-pick (which is what Roy Spencer is doing), although Montana/North Dakota would give a more dramatic result, indeed the most dramatic result.
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ubrew12 at 21:58 PM on 19 August 2024Are climate models overestimating warming?
This article includes a graph of the worlds 1970-2023 prediction anomaly. This is pure speculation, but the anomaly in question may not be simply 'unforced variability'. We know that in the 30 years before 1970, the Corn Belt was recovering from the 'Dust Bowl': non-evaporative fallow land was being replaced by irrigated crops. Post 1970 this trend would have continued, as better agricultural practices filled the summer Corn Belt with evapotranspirating crops: a form of human agency the climate models may not include as a boundary condition. If so, then such a overprediction anomaly may also be found in other cropland areas, like in Ukraine.
An opposite effect might be expected in places where evapotranspirating jungle was, post 1970, being cut down and replaced with relatively inefficient ranchlands, soybeans, and palm oil plantations: Brazil and Borneo. Hence, they show up colored blue in that graph.
I'm just speculating. Do the climate models account for this kind of human agency, land-use change, as a boundary condition?
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MA Rodger at 20:40 PM on 19 August 2024Are climate models overestimating warming?
ubrew12 @1,
Your friend should rest assured that his crystal ball, ouija board and morning cuppa are all safe. Even Foghorn Leghorn can sleep easy in his bed. The fake human 'Derwood Turnip' obtains the best divinations ever in history and he uses other means.
In the case of the corn state summer tmperatures, there is a bit of a disconnect between 'Derwood Turnip' and the information he presents. The actual author is the blunderful denialist Roy Spencer who posted an analysis on his blog in June 2023 and then included it in a pack of nonsense he had published in January 2024 by a bunch called The Heritage Foundation. It took 'Derwood Turnip' eight months to re-post the published graphic.
Such delay is something 'Derwood Turnip' has a history of creating. An example of a shorter 82-hour delay 'Derwood Turnip' created back in 2019 involved Hurricane Dorian, initially a Cat-5 hurricane but soon to be dropping to Cat-2. 'Derwood Turnip' used his position as POTUS and his very own exceptional analytical skills to give warning to the good citizens of Alabama (and others) that they "will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated" by Hurricane Dorian which was "looking like one of the largest hurricanes ever."
Yet during this 82-hour delay, the situation with Hurricane Dorian had changed dramatically. Advisory #021 had been updated multiple times (as is normal, with updates 4-times-a-day), having been superceded by Advisory #032A three hours prior to the warning of 'Derwood Turnip'.
The enormity of the wisdom of 'Derwood Turnip' can be seen in his detailed explanation for the remarkable variance between his wondrous analysis and the reality he so often wrestles with.
Trump, Sept. 4: I know that Alabama was in the original forecast. They thought it was get it — as a piece of it. It was supposed to go — actually, we have a better map than that, which is going to be presented, where we had many lines going directly — many models — each line being a model. And they were going directly through. And, in all cases, Alabama was hit — if not lightly, in some cases pretty hard. Georgia, Alabama — it was a different route. They actually gave that a 95 percent chance probability.
It turned out that that was not what happened; it made the right turn up the coast. But Alabama was hit very hard, and was going to be hit very hard, along with Georgia. But under the current, they won’t be.
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ubrew12 at 15:52 PM on 19 August 2024Are climate models overestimating warming?
Derwood may be put into a position to make climate policy. If not computer models, what predictive tool was he planning to use to evaluate that policy before implementing it? Crystal Ball? Ouija Board? Tea leaves? Chicken bones? Asking for a friend.
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prove we are smart at 00:05 AM on 15 August 2024Climate Adam: Kamala Harris and Climate Change - Hope or Hype?
Well, it certainly needs all that because to be the worlds "good" policeman, you need at least 100million barrels of oil a year. It's a bit of an estimate since to disclose your militaries emissions is an optional answer at the COPs. The worlds militaries account for maybe 5.5% of the worlds CO2 in a year. www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/12/elephant-in-the-room-the-us-militarys-devastating-carbon-footprint
I certainly agree the classic ugly american Trump is unbelievably bad for most and the planet but as in my Australia and many countries, for many reasons,trust in our chosen public officials has declined and seems the sad new norm. commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Public_trust_in_government.webp
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RedRoseAndy at 22:18 PM on 14 August 2024Can we air condition our way out of extreme heat?
Heat pumps can be reversed on hot days to cool houses.
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RedRoseAndy at 22:14 PM on 14 August 2024Climate Adam: Kamala Harris and Climate Change - Hope or Hype?
The US is now the leading producer of fossil fuel in the world. This needs addressing.
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nigelj at 08:36 AM on 14 August 2024Climate Adam: Kamala Harris and Climate Change - Hope or Hype?
I thought that was an exceptionally well presented video. Its useful to look look at the priorities Trump and Biden place on using tax payers money, spending and borrowing. Trump prioritised tax cuts mostly for already profitable corporates and for millionaires, creating a big deficit, while Harris supported the inflation reduction act that helps solve environmental problems, creates jobs with all skills levels, so benefits a wide group of people, and builds important infrastructure. You choose.
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RedRoseAndy at 20:33 PM on 13 August 2024Climate change is making us sick, literally
As this is your first post, Skeptical Science respectfully reminds you to please follow our comments policy. Thank You!
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RedRoseAndy at 20:33 PM on 13 August 2024Climate change is making us sick, literally
We should be biocharing all organic waste to store it as a soil improver in the ground for thousands of years. This would help clean up our rivers and seas.
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Eclectic at 19:59 PM on 11 August 2024Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!
BaerbelW @119 :
Many thanks for the link.
Potholer54's science videos are outstandingly excellent in debunking of climate myths (and evolution myths).
Also with some dry humor. And it is a pleasure to see his engagement with the trolls & cranks in the comments sections under his videos. (He despatches them with admirable skill and suavity ~ I have never yet seen him bested in these little contests. It is worth occasionally re-visiting his videos' comments sections, for the entertainment and the instructive value of seeing a master at work.)
This, his latest video, has over 40,000 views in less than 2 days.
