Support the Arctic Sea Ice Forum and Blog

Author Topic: Human Stupidity (Human Mental Illness)  (Read 167971 times)

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #150 on: September 20, 2016, 08:34:59 PM »
The linked article is entitled: "Global Risk is Spinning Out of Control"; and it addresses some of the "unexpected" (by the consensus; even though individual experts have long warmed of such probabily "knock-on effects) consequences of climate change, such as:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dante-disparte/global-risk-is-spinning-o_b_11794332.html

Extract:
•   "Unusually dry conditions in Canada enabled someone to start a forest fire that decimated a town (Fort McMurray) at the epicenter of the country’s oil sands industry, prompting 25% of Canada’s oil production to be temporarily taken off line, and impacting global oil prices.
•   The widespread use of fungicides has greatly reduced the effectiveness of the world’s few anti-fungal agents, meaning that as many people now die from fungal infections as from malaria.
•   Syrians were migrating en masse from rural areas to cities well before the Syrian Conflict was born because of drought. The Conflict has only exacerbated the reasons for their displacement.
•   Zika’s spread has already impacted tourism and travel patterns globally, with severe knock-on effects for businesses and people who depend on tourists for their livelihood."

Also, with a hat-tip to Sigmetnow, I repost the attached cartoon of the thinking of current consensus risk managers and their approach to addressing climate change consequences.
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #151 on: September 21, 2016, 09:41:15 PM »
The linked World Economic Forum, WEF, article is entitled: "Why climate change adaptation is key to managing global risks".  Just a few years ago climate change the WEF did not rank climate change as a significant risk, and now they rank it as the risk with the greatest potential impact.  Some may see this as a sign that world leaders have a good handle on global risk (including the failure of numerous national governments) and are making well informed decisions; however, I am not of that opinion.  Climate risks were clear several decades ago, and if WEF had recognized this fact at that time, effective (relatively low-cost) measures could have been taken to reduce climate impacts markedly; without the adaptation measures that the WEF now say are key.  It is my opinion that such leaders are calling for adaptation measures such a resiliency so that they can justify reducing safety margins to the point where much of the world's population is subject to receiving Darwin awards between 2050 & 2060.  As harsh as it sounds, this may be the plan for such leaders to reduce the global population down to a more sustainable level:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/climate-adaptation-is-key-to-managing-interconnected-global-risks/

Extract: "The Global Risks Report 2016, published by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Zurich Insurance Group and other leading institutions, found that while geopolitical risk such as uncontrolled immigration and interstate conflicts were seen as the most likely threat, climate issues were the risk factors most likely to influence other risks and thus had the greatest potential impact.

Failure of national governance was seen as the highest risk to doing business by executives in 14 countries, half of them in Latin America, four in sub-Saharan Africa, two in Eastern Europe and one in Asia."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #152 on: September 25, 2016, 03:41:38 PM »
The linked website presents maps indicating the fragility of major cities around the world.  With so many fragile cities in the Philippines, the Indian Sub-continent, the Middle East, Africa and Central America (see the attached image); it is easy to project which countries will become failed states with increasing stress from climate change.  Failed states mean more refugees and more terrorist.


http://fragilecities.igarape.org.br/

It does not take a genius to realize that one penny's worth of effort to fight GHG emissions a few decades ago would have prevented many dollar's worth of damage from occurring over then next few decades.  Unfortunately, our world leaders did not (& still do not) even pass this threshold of intelligence (or more accurately this threshold of mental health).
« Last Edit: September 25, 2016, 03:53:06 PM by AbruptSLR »
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #153 on: September 25, 2016, 04:15:30 PM »
The linked article indicates the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is also disappointed in the behavior world leaders:

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/185429a05838424fbd2c3b0c3925a62d/un-chief-disappointed-leaders-care-about-power-not-people

Extract: "U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says he's disappointed by many world leaders who care more about retaining power than improving the lives of their people "
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #154 on: September 30, 2016, 10:37:59 PM »
The linked 30 September 2016SkS article by Andy Skuce is entitled: "Sensitivity training".  While this article acknowledges many sources of uncertainty in the determination of climate sensitivity, it clings (in my opinion, inappropriately) to the same uncertainty range provide in AR4.  Such estimates that err on the side of least drama (ESLD), leave the residual risk with the general public:

https://www.skepticalscience.com/sensitivity-training.html
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #155 on: October 01, 2016, 11:35:14 PM »
The ESLD-type of thinking presented by Andy Skuce & Gavin Schmidt in the SkS article addressed in Reply #154, over-rely on Popper’s demarcation between science (falsifiable) and non-science (not falsifiable), at any moment in time; and which is (in general terms) used by the IPCC process to present Frequentist probabilities that do not reflect the true risks associated with anthropogenic forcing of chaotic Earth Systems.  In reality, knowledge of such Earth Systems is a lot fuzzier than simply being falsifiable or not falsifiable at any given time due to uncertainty.  Furthermore, such reticent IPCC science tends to underutilize Bayesian logic to address uncertainty as has been made clear to the ACME (Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy) program by risk management experts.  However, while AR6 and ACME-Phase 1 are making efforts to better incorporate Bayesian logic into their projections, in other posts, I have made it clear that we will likely need to wait until AR8 and ACME-Phase 4 are available circa 2032 before we get close to rigorously defensible projections that come close to addressing our true climate change risks.

Reticent science cited by Andy Skuce includes the first attached partial image, where the range of the dashed box (from 2C to about 4.75C) is supposed to represent the findings of paleo investigations of past climate sensitivities, which is supposed to serve as guidance to policy makers.  Then Andy Skuce concludes with the following extract; where he ties the paleo findings to some ECS assessments of modern observed data by Richardson, Marvel and Schmidt to state: "This consilience, which is to say, different approaches pointing to the same general result, explains why climate scientists are so confident …", together with a few last footnotes on "fat-tailed" uncertainties to avoid criticisms of bias.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/sensitivity-training.html

Extract: "Combining the Richardson and the Marvel results brings estimates of climate sensitivity back to, or even a little above Jule Charney’s estimates. To the non-specialist, all of this may seem like a rather pointless process where we end up where we started from, still stuck with a stubbornly wide range of a factor of 3 or so from minimum (1.5 degrees) to maximum (4.5 degrees). But as Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Scientific American last year: “We may be just as unsure as before, but we are unsure on a much more solid footing.”

Climate sensitivity estimates are not just estimated by climate models using modern data. Scientists also have observations of how the Earth behaved in periods of past climatic change. From the ice-age cycles that occurred over the past 800,000 years there are samples of past atmospheres trapped in gas bubbles in ice cores that reveal the chemical mix of the air and the temperatures at the time.

Scientists can look back much further in time, many millions of years ago, when the Earth was in a hot-house state. In those times there was little ice even at the poles and sea levels were several tens of metres higher than they are today.

These observations of the geological past have their own considerable ranges of uncertainty, but, taken together, they produce estimates of climate sensitivity that are broadly consistent with the range calculated by climate models of the modern era. This consilience, which is to say, different approaches pointing to the same general result, explains why climate scientists are so confident that increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases lead to increased warming, even if nobody can yet be sure how much the human-induced warming will be over this century and beyond.
One thing we do know with great confidence is that if we continue to emit greenhouse gases at the current rate, then sometime in the second half of this century we will have doubled the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The last time concentrations were that high, 30 million years ago, there was no ice on Greenland and little on Antarctica."

To get a better handle of the "fat-tailed" risk discounted by Andy Skuce (& reticent science); the second linked reference discusses paleodata to indicate that climate sensitivity increased from 3.3 - 5.6 (mean of 4.45k) at the beginning of the PETM up to 3.7 - 6.5 K (mean of 5.1K) near the peak of the PETM.  The second attached image compare this to ECS values for the Last Glacial Maximum, LGM, Modern Day, MD, Late Pleistocene, LP, and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, PETM. The caption for the second attached image is: "Paleo climate sensitivity study reconstructs global warming 56 million years ago and suggests future global warming could be even worse than expected. This graphic shows climate sensitivity at different global temperatures in the atmosphere. The figure shows from the right estimates for the past warm period, the PETM 56 million years ago, the period before the PETM and for the present. On the left the figure shows estimates for the Last Glacial Maximum. Courtesy: Gary Shaffer and Roberto Rondanelli"

Gary Shaffer, Matthew Huber, Roberto Rondanelli & Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen (23 June 2016), "Deep-time evidence for climate sensitivity increase with warming", Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1002/2016GL069243


http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL069243/full

Next, the third linked reference presents paleo evidence about the Eocene.  While the authors emphasize that their findings support the IPCC interpretation for climate sensitivity, when looking at the third attached image of Fig 4 panel f, it appears to me that this is only the case if one averages ECS over the entire Eocene; while if one focuses on the Early Eocene Climate Optimum (EECO) which CO₂ levels were higher than in current modern times, it appear that ECS was higher (around 4C) than the IPCC AR5 assumes (considering that we are increasing CO2 concentrations faster now that during the EECO this gives me concern rather than reassurance).

Eleni Anagnostou, Eleanor H. John, Kirsty M. Edgar, Gavin L. Foster, Andy Ridgwell, Gordon N. Inglis, Richard D. Pancost, Daniel J. Lunt & Paul N. Pearson (2016), "Changing atmospheric CO2 concentration was the primary driver of early Cenozoic climate", Nature, doi:10.1038/nature17423


http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature17423.html

Next, the fourth linked reference indicates that corrected recent observations indicate that the most likely value of ECS may be as high as 4.6C (see fourth attached plot of the time dependent curve); which is much higher than Andy Skuce acknowledges for recent observations:

Kyle C. Armour  (27 June 2016), "Projection and prediction: Climate sensitivity on the rise", Nature Climate Change, doi:10.1038/nclimate3079

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3079.html


A pdf of Armour 2016 can be found at the following link:

http://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3079.epdf?author_access_token=LNQKgwEONy5YVJSvlubB29RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PPTNF_sOIeFx9myJ_U10XLsj8_p1lqjx0RRDTJbTTc78eupvudlmNtEiNXnWHNhr4crt8ZuOmLA66TNpMu_PUg

The caption for the fourth image is: "Climate sensitivity estimated from observations1 (black), and its revision following Richardson et al. (blue) then following Marvel et al. (green), and in red the revision for the time dependence (Armour). The grey histogram shows climate model values."

Finally, for this post, I believe that by the time reasonably accurate projections are available circa 2032 we will have passed a tipping point leading to global socio-economic collapse (in the 2045 to 2060 timeframe) driving substantially by non-linear climate change related impacts.  As published projections from a ACME-Phase 4 climate model will not be available for something like 16-years, and as reticent science hides risk in the "tall grass" of uncertainty, I recommend that risk managers use Scenario Based Hazard Assessment, SBHA (guided by both Bayesian methodology & information theory), to get a better handle on the poorly defined risks that are currently heavily discounted by reticent science.  Then the findings of such SBHA efforts could be used in Robust Decision Making, RDM, to better adapt to the coming consequences of the Anthropocene era.

Furthermore, as most of the area of concern is associated with "fat-tailed" risk, I further propose the SBHA be used to identify Maximum Credible Events, MCE, which we many need to adapt to (even if that adaptation includes presenting numerous Darwin Awards).  In my next post, I plan to present a scenario for a MCE illustrating how PETM-like conditions might be reached at early at 2100, rather than several centuries in the future as assumed by reticent science.
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #156 on: October 02, 2016, 07:42:59 AM »
I begin my Scenario Based Hazard Assessment, SBHA, of a Maximum Credible Event, MCE, by focusing on Arctic Amplification, and its implications for a bipolar seesaw feedback mechanism. In this regards, the first linked reference indicates that changes in extratropical clouds associated with a reduction in high latitude albedo can impact atmospheric heat transport via changes in the Hadley cell:

Nicole Feldl, Simona Bordoni & Timothy M. Merlis (September 28 2016), "Coupled high-latitude climate feedbacks and their impact on atmospheric heat transport", Journal of Climate, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0324.1


http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0324.1

Abstract: "The response of atmospheric heat transport to anthropogenic warming is determined by the anomalous meridional energy gradient. Feedback analysis offers a characterization of that gradient and hence reveals how uncertainty in physical processes may translate into uncertainty in the circulation response. However, individual feedbacks do not act in isolation. Anomalies associated with one feedback may be compensated by another, as is the case for the positive water vapor and negative lapse rate feedbacks in the tropics. Here we perform a set of idealized experiments in an aquaplanet model to evaluate the coupling between the surface albedo feedback and other feedbacks, including the impact on atmospheric heat transport. In the tropics, the dynamical response manifests as changes in the intensity and structure of the overturning Hadley circulation. Only half of the range of Hadley cell weakening exhibited in these experiments is found to be attributable to imposed, systematic variations in the surface albedo feedback. Changes in extratropical clouds that accompany the albedo changes explain the remaining spread. The feedback-driven circulation changes are compensated by eddy energy flux changes, which reduce the overall spread among experiments. These findings have implications for the efficiency with which the climate system, including tropical circulation and the hydrological cycle, adjusts to high latitude feedbacks, over climate states that range from perennial or seasonal ice to ice-free conditions in the Arctic."


Furthermore, Hansen et al (2016) indicates that abrupt ice sheet mass loss temporarily (until the ice discharge ends and the ocean returns to equilibrium) creates a planetary energy imbalance due to feedbacks that are not included in the AR5 projections (which do not introduce such abrupt ice meltwater, called hosing).  These feedbacks are somewhat complex, including that the freshened polar ocean surface water freezes more easily which creates more sea ice, which protects the warm ocean deep water from radiating heat to outer space, which decreases the density of the bottom water (e.g.: AABW), which slows the oceanic current conveyor belt (including the AMOC), which means that less warm water is carried away from the tropical ocean, which means that more evaporation occurs, which means that the Hadley Cell receives more energy and expands, which pushes the high altitude tropical clouds (which have a positive feedback) a few degrees poleward and which desiccates the tropical shallow clouds (which have negative feedback); which increases ECS.  Now this does not increase GMST because of the cooling of the polar ocean(s) (e.g. the Southern Ocean); which decreases the SSTA; however, the deep ocean water is warming more rapidly than AR5 projects.  Thus the planetary energy imbalance (including the rapid increase of ocean heat content and the increased energy absorbed by the surface of the tropical oceans due to the net increase in postive cloud cover feedback) increases according to Hansen et al by about 2 W/sq m by 2100 above the AR5 RCP 8.5 value (which I indicated we would follow even if CoP 21 results in 6 W/sq m of anthropogenic radiative forcing, because AR5 left out 400 Gt of natural carbon emissions that have subsequently been identified, resulting in a total anthropogenic and natural radiative forcing of 8.5 W/sq m plus the 2 W/sq m planetary energy imbalance value identified by Hansen et al).  However, Hansen et al's projections (and AR5's projections) include: (a) too much ocean surface mixing which means that they do not slow the oceanic current conveyor belt as much as they physically should so they underestimate the planetary energy imbalance), (b) they ignor the bipolar seesaw interaction between first the WAIS and the GIS and then the GIS and the EAIS; and (c) they ignore the probability that current ECS exceeds 3C.

In a very crude attempt to provide some rough scale to the possible additional bipolar seesaw forcing that I expect by 2100 [beyond that included in the Hansen et al (2016) paper], I provide the following possible values for some different (aggregated) forcing mechanisms:


(a) Due to natural carbon-cycle (including from permafrost degradation not included in AR5) input of about 400 GtC by 2100, assume that we stay on RCP 8.5 which would result in radiative forcing, RF, of 8.5 W/m² by 2100 (assuming ECS = 3C).

(b) The ice meltwater planetary energy imbalance identified by Hansen et al 2016 will add about 2 W/m² to this total RF by 2100.

(c) Anthropogenic aerosol forcing of between 1.5 W/m² and 2.37 W/m²   

(d) For the possible additional forcing due to the anthropogenically driven bipolar seesaw mechanism (beyond Hansen's 2 W/m²) by 2100, say about : 1 W/m²

Also, the attached image from Andrew in the Ringberg workshop 2015 indicates that when the Tropical Pacific heat energy increases [where due to: (i) Arctic Amplification's impact on atmospheric heat transport via changes in the Hadley cell per Feldl (2016); (ii) Hansen's ice-climate feedback slowing the great oceanic conveyor belt; and/or (iii) most positive PDO's], the ECS also increases into the 4.6 +/- 0.4C range cited by Armour (2016), cited in my immediate past post.


From a paleo point of view the following three references related to investigations of Lake El'gygytgyn, NE Arctic Russia; provide support for the importance of both Arctic Amplification and the associated bipolar seesaw:

Gregory A. De Wet, Isla S. Castañeda, Robert M. DeConto & Julie Brigham-Grette  (February 2016), “A high-resolution mid-Pleistocene temperature record from Arctic Lake El'gygytgyn: A 50 kyr super interglacial from MIS 33 to MIS 31?”Earth and Planetary Science Letters 436:56-63 DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2015.12.021 

http://blogs.umass.edu/biogeochem/files/2016/01/de-Wet-et-al.-2016.pdf

Abstract: “Previous periods of extreme warmth in Earth's history are of great interest in light of current and predicted anthropogenic warming. Numerous so called "super interglacial" intervals, with summer temperatures significantly warmer than today, have been identified in the 3.6 million year (Ma) sediment record from Lake El'gygytgyn, northeast Russia. To date, however, a high-resolution paleotemperature reconstruction from any of these super interglacials is lacking. Here we present a paleotemperature reconstruction based on branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGDGTs) from Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 35 to MIS 29, including super interglacial MIS 31. To investigate this period in detail, samples were analyzed with an unprecedented average sample resolution of 500 yrs from MIS 33 to MIS 30. Our results suggest the entire period currently defined as MIS 33-31 (~1114-1062 kyr BP) was characterized by generally warm and highly variable conditions at the lake, at times out of phase with Northern Hemisphere summer insolation, and that cold "glacial" conditions during MIS 32 lasted only a few thousand years. Close similarities are seen with coeval records from high southern latitudes, supporting the suggestion that the interval from MIS 33 to MIS 31 was an exceptionally long interglacial (Teitler et al., 2015). Based on brGDGT temperatures from Lake El'gygytgyn (this study and unpublished results), warming in the western Arctic during MIS 31 was matched only by MIS 11 during the Pleistocene.



Coletti, A. J., DeConto, R. M., Brigham-Grette, J., and Melles, M.: A GCM comparison of Pleistocene super-interglacial periods in relation to Lake El'gygytgyn, NE Arctic Russia, Clim. Past, 11, 979-989, doi:10.5194/cp-11-979-2015, 2015.

http://www.clim-past.net/11/979/2015/cp-11-979-2015.pdf
http://www.clim-past.net/11/979/2015/cp-11-979-2015.html

Abstract: "Until now, the lack of time-continuous, terrestrial paleoenvironmental data from the Pleistocene Arctic has made model simulations of past interglacials difficult to assess. Here, we compare climate simulations of four warm interglacials at Marine Isotope Stages (MISs) 1 (9 ka), 5e (127 ka), 11c (409 ka) and 31 (1072 ka) with new proxy climate data recovered from Lake El'gygytgyn, NE Russia. Climate reconstructions of the mean temperature of the warmest month (MTWM) indicate conditions up to 0.4, 2.1, 0.5 and 3.1 °C warmer than today during MIS 1, 5e, 11c and 31, respectively. While the climate model captures much of the observed warming during each interglacial, largely in response to boreal summer (JJA) orbital forcing, the extraordinary warmth of MIS 11c compared to the other interglacials in the Lake El'gygytgyn temperature proxy reconstructions remains difficult to explain. To deconvolve the contribution of multiple influences on interglacial warming at Lake El'gygytgyn, we isolated the influence of vegetation, sea ice and circum-Arctic land ice feedbacks on the modeled climate of the Beringian interior. Simulations accounting for climate–vegetation–land-surface feedbacks during all four interglacials show expanding boreal forest cover with increasing summer insolation intensity. A deglaciated Greenland is shown to have a minimal effect on northeast Asian temperature during the warmth of stages 11c and 31 (Melles et al., 2012). A prescribed enhancement of oceanic heat transport into the Arctic Ocean does have some effect on Lake El'gygytgyn's regional climate, but the exceptional warmth of MIS 11c remains enigmatic compared to the modest orbital and greenhouse gas forcing during that interglacial."

Extract: "The timing of significant warming in the circum-Arctic can be linked to major deglaciation events in Antarctica, demonstrating possible interhemispheric linkages between the Arctic and Antarctic climate on glacial–interglacial timescales, which have yet to be explained."



Julie Brigham-Grette et. al. (2013), “Pliocene Warmth, Polar Amplification, and Stepped Pleistocene Cooling Recorded in NE Arctic Russia”,  Science, Page 1 / 10.1126/science.1233137

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/75831381/Brigham-Grette.pdf


Abstract: “Understanding the evolution of Arctic polar climate from the protracted warmth of the middle Pliocene into the earliest glacial cycles in the Northern Hemisphere has been hindered by the lack of continuous, highly resolved Arctic time series. Evidence from Lake El’gygytgyn, NE Arctic Russia, shows that 3.6-3.4 million years ago, summer temperatures were ~8°C warmer than today when pCO2 was ~400 ppm. Multiproxy evidence suggests extreme warmth and polar amplification during the middle Pliocene, sudden stepped cooling events during the Pliocene-Pleistocene transition, and warmer than present Arctic summers until ~2.2 Ma, after the onset of Northern Hemispheric glaciation. Our data are consistent with sea-level records and other proxies indicating that Arctic cooling was insufficient to support large-scale ice sheets until the early Pleistocene.”

I will extend this SBHA in my next post.
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #157 on: October 02, 2016, 03:58:51 PM »
In my last post I raised the positive reinforcement of various Earth Systems (Arctic Amplification, Bipolar Seesaw, Permafrost degradation, PDO/ENSO, Ice-Climate Feedback, Hadley Cell expansion, etc.); which is what Chaos Theory calls Strange (or Lorenz) Attractors.  I believe that such strange attractors can progressively/interactively ratchet-up different Earth System States (see the first attached image) so as to increase the effective climate sensitivity so that some "slow-response" feedbacks (see the figure in my last post from Andrew – Ringberg 2015, where the middle panel indicates an effective climate sensitivity of about 5C) occur within decades rather than millennia. This potential acceleration of the rate of activation of "slow-response" feedbacks close to what happened during the PETM, is supported by such considerations as:

(a) We are radiatively forcing the Earth at well over 10 times the rate experienced during the PETM;

(b) The Antarctic anthropogenically induced ozone hole accelerated the westerly winds over the Southern Ocean; which induced the conveyance of warm Circumpolar Deep Water, CDW, over portions of the Antarctic continental shelves where the CDW has been melting glacial ice at the grounding lines of key marine glaciers, thus initiating Hansen's ice-climate feedback.

(c) Anthropogenic aerosols have been temporarily masking the impacts of anthropogenic radiative forcing; much as dust in paleo times resulted in negative forcing that caused cooling.  However, reticent science has discounted the efficiency of both of these mechanisms leaving the modern world subject to unexpectedly high rates of GMST increases due to the GHGs that accumulated in the atmosphere during the recent faux hiatus.

(d) The ENSO cycle appears to be increasing the frequency of large El Ninos.

Indeed the first linked reference indicates that when analyzing modern day observations: "Severe testing is applied to observed global and regional surface and satellite temperatures and modelled surface temperatures to determine whether these interactions are independent, as in the traditional signal-to-noise model, or whether they interact, resulting in steplike warming."  The reference concludes that indeed steplike warming occurs due to "… a store-and-release mechanism from the ocean to the atmosphere…" like the classical Lorenzian attractor case of ENSO decadal cycles.  Such steplike behavior confirms the mechanism that I call "Ratcheting of Quasi-static Equilibrium States" (see the first attachment).  As the authors point-out reticent science likely missed this behavior because: "This may be due in part to science asking the wrong questions."; and they advise that such reticent AR5/CMIP5 researchers should change how they view the output from their models.  For example, the second attached image (see panel "e" of that Figure 6) from the reference shows global warming increasing much faster for a steplike response if ECS is 4.5 than for a the traditional AR5/CMIP5 interpretation; which means that ESLD researchers are exposing society to far more risk of the consequences of high ECS values than AR5/CMIP5 are leading us to believe:

Jones, R. N. and Ricketts, J. H.: Reconciling the signal and noise of atmospheric warming on decadal timescales, Earth Syst. Dynam. Discuss., doi:10.5194/esd-2016-35, in review, 2016.

http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/esd-2016-35/
&
http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/esd-2016-35/esd-2016-35.pdf


Extract: "This finding does not invalidate the huge literature that assesses long-term (>50 years) climate change as a relatively linear process, and the warming response as being broadly additive with respect to forcing (e.g., Lucarini et al., 2010; Marvel et al., 2015). However, on decadal scales, this is not the case – warming appears to be largely governed by a storage and release process, where heat is stored in the ocean and released in bursts projecting onto modes of climate variability as suggested by Corti et al. (1999). We discuss this further in another paper (Jones and Ricketts, 2016).

This has serious implications for how climate change is understood and applied in a whole range of decision-making contexts.  The characterisation of changing climate risk as a smooth process will leave climate risk as being seriously underdetermined, affecting how adaptation is perceived, planned and undertaken (Jones et al., 2013).

The interaction of change and variability is typical of a complex, rather than mechanistic, system. The possibility of Lorenzian attractors in the ocean-atmosphere acting on decadal time scales was raised by Palmer (1993) and, despite later discussions about the potential for nonlinear responses on those timescales (e.g., Lucarini and Ragone, 2011;Tsonis and Swanson, 2012), very little progress has been made in translating this into applied research that can portray a better understanding of changing climate risk. This may be due in part to science asking the wrong questions.

The signal to noise model of a gradually changing mean surrounded by random climate variability poorly represents warming on decadal timescales. The separation of signal and noise into ‘good’ and ‘bad, likewise, is poor framing for the purposes of understanding and managing risk in fundamentally nonlinear systems (Koutsoyiannis, 2010; Jones, 2015b). However, as we show, the presence of such changes within climate models shows their current potential for investigating nonlinearly changing climate risks. Investigating step changes in temperature and related variables does not indicate a need to fundamentally change how climate modelling is carried out. It does, however, indicate a need to change how the results are analysed."

Furthermore, the second linked (open access) research indicates that the traditional model approach consistently underestimates values of climate sensitivity based on experiments (& paleo data) with dynamic changes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations:

Anna S. von der Heydt, Peter Ashwin (Submitted on 12 Apr 2016), "State-dependence of climate sensitivity: attractor constraints and palaeoclimate regimes",    arXiv:1604.03311


http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.03311
&
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.03311v1.pdf

Abstract: "Equilibrium climate sensitivity is a frequently used measure to predict long-term climate change. However, both climate models and observational data suggest a rather large uncertainty on climate sensitivity (CS). The reasons for this include: the climate has a strong internal variability on many time scales, it is subject to a non-stationary forcing and it is, on many timescales, out of equilibrium with the changes in the radiative forcing. Palaeo records of past climate variations give insight into how the climate system responds to various forcings although care must be taken of the slow feedback processes before comparing palaeo CS estimates with model estimates. In addition, the fast feedback processes can change their relative strength and time scales over time. Consequently, another reason for the large uncertainty on palaeo climate sensitivity may be the fact that it is strongly state-dependent. Using a conceptual climate model, we explore how CS can be estimated from unperturbed and perturbed model time series. Even in this rather simple model we find a wide range of estimates of the distribution of CS, depending on climate state and variability within the unperturbed attractor. For climate states perturbed by instantaneous doubling of CO2, the sensitivity estimates agree with those for the unperturbed model after transient decay back the attractor. In this sense, climate sensitivity can be seen as a distribution that is a local property of the climate attractor. We also follow the classical climate model approach to sensitivity, where CO2 is prescribed and non-dynamic, leading to CS values consistently smaller than those derived from the experiments with dynamic CO2. This suggests that climate sensitivity estimates from climate models may depend significantly on future dynamics, and not just the level of CO2."

Extract: “... the presence of variability on the attractor on a number of timescales means there are clear and non-trivial distributions of sensitivities, even for unperturbed climates. The distribution of sensitivities depends strongly on the background state as well as on the timescale considered. This suggests that it could be useful to think of the unperturbed climate sensitivity as a local property of the “climate attractor”. For a perturbed system (we have considered instantaneously doubled CO2) this is still useful once an initial transient has decayed. This transient will depend in particular on ocean heat uptake, though also on carbon cycle and biosphere processes that act on time scales roughly equivalent with the forcing time scale. If the climate system has more than one attractor, the perturbed system may clearly evolve to a completely different set of states than the original attractor – a situation that did not occur in the climate model used here. In less extreme cases, there may still be very long transients for some perturbations associated parts of the climate system that are associated with slow feedbacks.

Such perturbations (illustrated in Fig. 1b,d) are not normally applied in climate models used for climate predictions [IPCC, 2013], where climate sensitivity is derived from model simulations considering prescribed, non-dynamic atmospheric CO2. In our conceptual model, we have derived climate sensitivities from both types of perturbations and find that the classical climate model approach (section 2.2, Fig. 4f) leads to significantly lower values of the climate sensitivity than the perturbations away from the attractor with dynamic CO2 (section 2.3, Fig. 11a). This emphasises the importance of including dynamic carbon cycle processes into climate prediction models. Moreover, it supports the idea that the real observed climate response may indeed be larger than the model predicted one, because those models never will include all feedback processes in the climate system.“

Thus reticent science is likely missing the bump-up to climate sensitivity of 6C shown in the third attached image from Hansen & Sato (2012); which presents a major societal risk as our increase in radiative forcing up to about 3 to 3.5 W/sq m above Holocene conditions.  This also raises the risk that such transient "Ratcheting of Quasi-static Equilibrium States" could cause the Hadley cell in the NH to expand poleward into an equable pattern as discussed in the third attached reference by Langford (2011); which raises the risk that such a bifurcation may be irreversible (see the fourth attached image, leaving us near PETM conditions (see the third image).

HADLEY CELL EXPANSION IN TODAY’S CLIMATE AND PALEOCLIMATES Bill Langford; University Professor Emeritus Department of Mathematics and Statistics; University of Guelph, Canada; Presented to the BioM&S Symposium on Climate Change and Ecology; University of Guelph; April 28, 2011

http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/programs/scientific/10-11/biomathstat/Langford_W.pdf

In my next post, I plan to present some key evidence that increases the credibility of such a MCE occurring circa 2100.
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #158 on: October 02, 2016, 04:24:03 PM »
I begin my substantiation of the credibility of an equable climate being initiate by about 2100 as a MCE by noting that things are already much worse than most authorities are prepared to state publically.  In this regards, the first attached image(from the NOAA ESRL Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI) website) indicates that: (a) the 2015 radiative forcing was 2.974 watts/sq m; (b) AGGI (2015) was 1.374; and (c) CO₂-e was 485ppm.However, per Reply #15 NOAA's conversion of methane into CO₂-equiv they use the old formula (see the IPCC 2007 curve in the image in Reply #14) for methane's GWP. If one assumes that the GWP100 for methane is 35 instead of 25 (per the plot in Reply #14), then NOAA's calculated value for the CO2-eq for 2015 would be 518ppm instead of 485ppm; which is a big difference.  Furthermore, GMSTA is currently 1.3C, and many not fluctuate below 1.25C without the unlikely occurrence of a La Nina this year, or next.

Next I provide a links to Jagniecki et al. (2015) (and an associated article); indicating that early Eocene climatic optimum (EECO) conditions (with an equable climate) may have occurred with atmospheric CO₂ concentrations between 680ppm (which is close to our current CO₂-equiv value) and 1260ppm (see the second attached image); and that under such conditions the effective climate sensitivity (ESS) may have been twice that previously assumed by Royer et al (2012) (see link to reference below) as indicates in the third attached image.

Jagniecki,Elliot A. et al. (2015), "Eocene atmospheric CO2from the nahcolite proxy", Geology, http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G36886.1


http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/early/2015/10/23/G36886.1

ftp://rock.geosociety.org/pub/reposit/2015/2015357.pdf

Abstract: "Estimates of the atmospheric concentration of CO2, [CO2]atm, for the "hothouse" climate of the early Eocene climatic optimum (EECO) vary for different proxies. Extensive beds of the mineral nahcolite (NaHCO3) in evaporite deposits of the Green River Formation, Piceance Creek Basin, Colorado, USA, previously established [CO2]atm for the EECO to be >1125 ppm by volume (ppm). Here, we present experimental data that revise the sodium carbonate mineral equilibria as a function of [CO2] and temperature. Co-precipitation of nahcolite and halite (NaCl) now establishes a well-constrained lower [CO2]atm limit of 680 ppm for the EECO. Paleotemperature estimates from leaf fossils and fluid inclusions in halite suggest an upper limit for [CO2]atm in the EECO from the nahcolite proxy of ∼1260 ppm. These data support a causal connection between elevated [CO2]atm and early Eocene global warmth, but at significantly lower [CO2]atm than previously thought, which suggests that ancient climates on Earth may have been more sensitive to a doubling of [CO2]atm than is currently assumed."

Extract: "These results show that [CO₂]atm may not have been as high as previously thought during the warmest interval of the Cenozoic, implying a climate sensitivity for CO₂ that is roughly twice as high as is currently assumed (Royer et al., 2012)."

See also:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/eocene-temperature-spike-caused-half-much-co2-once-thought

Extract: "During the Eocene around 50 million years ago, climbing CO2 levels heated the planet by more than 5 degrees Celsius. By examining crystals grown in this “hothouse” climate, researchers discovered that Eocene CO2 levels were as low as 680 parts per million. That’s nearly half the 1,125 ppm predicted by previous, less accurate crystal experiments, the researchers report online October 23 in Geology."

Royer, D. L., M. Pagani, and D. J. Beerling (2012), Geobiological constraints on Earth system sensitivity to CO2 during the Cretaceous and Cenozoic, Geobiology, 10, 298–310; DOI: 10.1111/j.1472-4669.2012.00320.x

http://people.earth.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Pagani/5_2012Royer_Geobiology.pdf


Next, while I have not proven that we are currently following the most likely modern day ECS value of 4.6C cited by Armour in my last posts (see also Replies #13 and 120); nevertheless, if this is correct then we may well be roughly following the curve marked RCP 8.5 (with ECS = 4.5C) in the fourth attached image.  This fourth image indicates a GMSTA of about 2C by about 2030 [due to heat coming out of the ocean during the 20 to 30-year duration of a typical positive PDO phase, the rapid reduction of aerosols (both anthropogenic & natural) and our current natural and anthropogenic methane emissions].  This would be sufficient to trigger Hansen et al (2016)'s ice-climate feedback per DeConto & Pollard (2016) projection of WAIS ice mass loss (which becomes unavoidable well before GMSTA reaches 2.7C, see Reply #49).  If so, this would increase the effective ECS to at least 6C through 2100 (see the image in my last post from Hansen, J.E., and Sato, M., 2012, "Climate Sensitivity Estimated From Earth's Climate History" & see Replay #99), and which would effective ensure that we follow the radiative forcing of RCP 8.5 through 2100 even if CoP21 pledges are strictly enforced. 

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." 
Marcel Proust
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #159 on: October 13, 2016, 06:31:50 PM »
My last several posts provide evidence supporting the credibility of an equable climate being initiated by 2100 as a Maximum Credible Event, MCE, and that such scenarios should be taken seriously by policy makers.  However, in this thread I have largely omitted the implications of such scenarios on the risk of significant methane emissions in this timeframe.  Therefore here, I summarize a recent series of posts that I made in the "Dialing back on the methane scare" thread in the "Permafrost" folder; that addressed such methane emission mechanisms as:

(1) That a collapse of the WAIS this century might not only cause methane hydrate gas emissions from submarine landsides (via the Clathrate Gun Hypothesis) but also from methane hydrate decomposition from beneath the collapsed marine portions of the WAIS. 

The linked Wikipedia article discusses the Clathrate Gun Hypothesis and references Obata & Shibata (2012), that indicates the consequences of such a "fat-tailed" risk (that is speculated to have occurred during the PETM):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis


Atsushi Obata; Kiyotaka Shibata (June 20, 2012), "Damage of Land Biosphere due to Intense Warming by 1000-Fold Rapid Increase in Atmospheric Methane: Estimation with a Climate–Carbon Cycle Model", J Climate. 25: 8524–8541, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00533.1.

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00533.1

The linked Wu et al (2015) article indicates how the weak shear strength of small methane hydrate crystals in the seafloor could facilitate submarine landslides that increases the credibility of the Clathrate Gun Hypothesis.

Jianyang Wu, Fulong Ning, Thuat T. Trinh, Signe Kjelstrup, Thijs J.H. Vlugt, Jianying He, Bjørn H. Skallerud and Zhiliang Zhang (2015), "Mechanical instability of monocrystalline and polycrystalline methane hydrates", Nature Communications; DOI: 10.1038/NCOMMS9743

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/151102/ncomms9743/full/ncomms9743.html

See also:
http://phys.org/news/2015-11-key-properties-methane-hydrates-permafrost.html

Extract: "The researchers reported that the dissociation of methane hydrates can be triggered by the ground deformation caused by "earthquakes, storms, sea-level fluctuations or man-made disturbances (including well drilling and gas production from hydrate reservoirs).""

Next, the following Wadham et al (2012) article quantifies the amount of methane that might be released from directly beneath the WAIS due to a collapse of marine glaciers in this area (see the first attached image).

J. L. Wadham, S. Arndt, S. Tulaczyk, M. Stibal, M. Tranter, J. Telling, G. P. Lis, E. Lawson, A. Ridgwell, A. Dubnick, M. J. Sharp, A. M. Anesio & C. E. H. Butler (30 August 2012), "Potential methane reservoirs beneath Antarctica", Nature, Volume: 488, Pages: 633–637, doi:10.1038/nature11374

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v488/n7413/full/nature11374.html

(2) The linked articles & references indicate that large amounts of methane were released during the PETM; however, the timing, triggers, sources and rates of emission are all uncertain, but that ocean warming could lead to global methane emissions from seafloor hydrate degradation for millennia to come:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11713254

Extract: "There are strong reasons to believe that what we are doing to the climate today could trigger a re-run of a climate catastrophe that occurred not many millions of years after the demise of the dinosaurs.

Fifty-six million years ago global temperatures rose several degrees over about 20,000 years (a geological instant).

The beginning of the PETM was marked by a massive injection of methane into the atmosphere."

Furthermore, the linked reference indicates that seafloor hydrates dissociated during the PETM, but the rate of dissociation is open to discussion:
 
T. A. Minshull, H. Marín-Moreno, D. I. Armstrong McKay, P. A. Wilson. Mechanistic insights into a hydrate contribution to the Paleocene-Eocene carbon cycle perturbation from coupled thermohydraulic simulations. Geophysical Research Letters, 2016; DOI: 10.1002/2016GL069676

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL069676/abstract

(3) Furthermore, per the following reference circa 2050 methane emissions from thermokarst activity could become important (assuming continued aggressive warming), see the second attached image:

Schneider von Deimling, T., Grosse, G., Strauss, J., Schirrmeister, L., Morgenstern, A., Schaphoff, S., Meinshausen, M., and Boike, J.: Observation-based modelling of permafrost carbon fluxes with accounting for deep carbon deposits and thermokarst activity, Biogeosciences, 12, 3469-3488, doi:10.5194/bg-12-3469-2015, 2015.

http://www.biogeosciences.net/12/3469/2015/bg-12-3469-2015.html

(4) Lastly, I note that the projected intensification of the ENSO cycle with continued aggressive warming could lead to tropical rainforests dying-back during periods of drought associated with strong El Ninos followed by flooding during subsequent strong La Ninas; which would form temporarily lakes over the dead tropic vegetation, leading to a pulse of strong methane emissions from such temporarily tropic lakes.
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #160 on: October 21, 2016, 09:58:54 PM »
I previously post the following in the "Anthropogenic Existential Risk" thread, but the topic seems like such a good example of human stupidity that I am cross-posting it here:

The linked article is entitled: “Ecological recession”: Researchers say biodiversity loss has hit critical threshold across the globe".  The article references both Newbold et. al. 2016 and Steffen et. al. (2015); both of which indicate that we are already exceeding some planetary boundaries, and will soon exceed others.  Thus we are living on borrowed time (see images):

https://news.mongabay.com/2016/07/ecological-recession-researchers-ring-the-alarm-as-biodiversity-loss-hits-critical-threshold-across-the-globe/

Extract: "An international team of researchers has concluded that biodiversity loss has become so severe and widespread that it could affect Earth’s ability to sustain human life.

- The researchers examined 2.38 million records of 39,123 terrestrial species collected at 18,659 sites around the world to model the impacts on biodiversity of land use and other pressures from human activities that cause habitat loss.

- They then estimated down to about the one-square-kilometer level the extent to which those pressures have caused changes in local biodiversity, as well as the spatial patterns of those changes.

- They found that, across nearly 60 percent of Earth’s land surface, biodiversity has declined beyond “safe” levels as defined by the planetary boundaries concept, which seeks to quantify the environmental limits within which human society can be considered sustainable.


See also:
Newbold, T., Hudson, L. N., Arnell, A. P., Contu, S., De Palma, A., Ferrier, S., … & Burton, V. J. (2016). Has land use pushed terrestrial biodiversity beyond the planetary boundary? A global assessment. Science, 353(6296), 288-291. doi:10.1126/science.aaf2201

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6296/288

Abstract
Land use and related pressures have reduced local terrestrial biodiversity, but it is unclear how the magnitude of change relates to the recently proposed planetary boundary (“safe limit”). We estimate that land use and related pressures have already reduced local biodiversity intactness—the average proportion of natural biodiversity remaining in local ecosystems—beyond its recently proposed planetary boundary across 58.1% of the world’s land surface, where 71.4% of the human population live. Biodiversity intactness within most biomes (especially grassland biomes), most biodiversity hotspots, and even some wilderness areas is inferred to be beyond the boundary. Such widespread transgression of safe limits suggests that biodiversity loss, if unchecked, will undermine efforts toward long-term sustainable development.

&

Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J., Cornell, S. E., Fetzer, I., Bennett, E. M., … & Folke, C. (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science, 347(6223). doi:10.1126/science.1259855

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/1259855

Structured Abstract
INTRODUCTION
There is an urgent need for a new paradigm that integrates the continued development of human societies and the maintenance of the Earth system (ES) in a resilient and accommodating state. The planetary boundary (PB) framework contributes to such a paradigm by providing a science-based analysis of the risk that human perturbations will destabilize the ES at the planetary scale. Here, the scientific underpinnings of the PB framework are updated and strengthened.

RATIONALE
The relatively stable, 11,700-year-long Holocene epoch is the only state of the ES that we know for certain can support contemporary human societies. There is increasing evidence that human activities are affecting ES functioning to a degree that threatens the resilience of the ES—its ability to persist in a Holocene-like state in the face of increasing human pressures and shocks. The PB framework is based on critical processes that regulate ES functioning. By combining improved scientific understanding of ES functioning with the precautionary principle, the PB framework identifies levels of anthropogenic perturbations below which the risk of destabilization of the ES is likely to remain low—a “safe operating space” for global societal development. A zone of uncertainty for each PB highlights the area of increasing risk. The current level of anthropogenic impact on the ES, and thus the risk to the stability of the ES, is assessed by comparison with the proposed PB (see the figure).

RESULTS
Three of the PBs (climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, and ocean acidification) remain essentially unchanged from the earlier analysis. Regional-level boundaries as well as globally aggregated PBs have now been developed for biosphere integrity (earlier “biodiversity loss”), biogeochemical flows, land-system change, and freshwater use. At present, only one regional boundary (south Asian monsoon) can be established for atmospheric aerosol loading. Although we cannot identify a single PB for novel entities (here defined as new substances, new forms of existing substances, and modified life forms that have the potential for unwanted geophysical and/or biological effects), they are included in the PB framework, given their potential to change the state of the ES. Two of the PBs—climate change and biosphere integrity—are recognized as “core” PBs based on their fundamental importance for the ES. The climate system is a manifestation of the amount, distribution, and net balance of energy at Earth’s surface; the biosphere regulates material and energy flows in the ES and increases its resilience to abrupt and gradual change. Anthropogenic perturbation levels of four of the ES processes/features (climate change, biosphere integrity, biogeochemical flows, and land-system change) exceed the proposed PB (see the figure).

CONCLUSIONS
PBs are scientifically based levels of human perturbation of the ES beyond which ES functioning may be substantially altered. Transgression of the PBs thus creates substantial risk of destabilizing the Holocene state of the ES in which modern societies have evolved. The PB framework does not dictate how societies should develop. These are political decisions that must include consideration of the human dimensions, including equity, not incorporated in the PB framework. Nevertheless, by identifying a safe operating space for humanity on Earth, the PB framework can make a valuable contribution to decision-makers in charting desirable courses for societal development.
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #161 on: October 21, 2016, 11:58:04 PM »
The linked articles about the rapid increase in the amount of trash in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, makes me wonder how much garage will float into the ocean if abrupt sea level rise were to begin to inundate coastal facilities within the few decades:

The first linked article is entitled: "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch contains even more trash than we thought".

http://www.sciencealert.com/the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-contains-more-trash-than-we-thought

Extract: "Researchers say there's more plastic waste in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch than was previously estimated, meaning it's more urgent than ever that we do something about this massive trash flotilla.

The good news is that there's a clean-up operation scheduled for 2020. The bad news is that the cleaners have just flown a reconnaissance mission – and what they found isn't pretty.



As Annalee Newitz reports at io9, it's difficult to assess the extent to which the plastic is killing off birds and fish, but it's definitely adding extra toxins to their diet, and possibly passing those on to humans further up the food chain. Whichever way you look at it, it's bad news for everybody.

What's also certain is that the problem is getting worse. Recent research showed that the number of plastic particles and their levels of concentration have risen sharply in the North Pacific over the past 40 years.

And a report released by the World Economic Forum earlier in the year found that, the way things are headed, there'll be more plastic than fish in our oceans by 2050."


See also:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2016/1005/Great-Pacific-Garbage-Patch-is-denser-than-previously-thought
« Last Edit: October 22, 2016, 12:30:17 AM by AbruptSLR »
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #162 on: October 23, 2016, 06:05:35 PM »
The linked article is entitled: "Two billion more people will live in cities by 2035. This could be good – or very bad".  Decision makers like to focus on the potential "good" in this situation; however, as these are the same decision makers that got us all into our current mess, it seems to me that ignoring the potentially "very bad" scenarios in our modeling efforts is actually counter productive:

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/oct/19/two-billion-more-people-live-cities-alejandro-aravena-habitat-3

Extract: "… cities are like magnets, with the potential to take care of everything from the most basic needs to the most intangible desires.

Now for the bad news, which we could call the “3S menace”. The scale and speed of this global urbanisation, and the scarcity of means with which we must respond to it, has no precedents in human history.

Of the three billion urban dwellers today, one billion live below the poverty line. In two decades’ time, five billion people will be in cities, with two billion of them below the poverty line.
To accommodate such growth humanely, we would need to build a city of one million people every week, spending no more than $10,000 per family. If we don’t solve this equation, it’s not that people will stop coming to cities; they will still come, but they will live in awful conditions.

To add one more level of complexity to the phenomenon of urbanisation, even if we do eventually find a way to build for that extra million people each week, we will go into environmental crisis, such is the carbon footprint of today’s construction process.
This would not only be a “green” problem, but a major security threat too. According to a report by the US defence department, the next conflicts, wars and terrorist threats will be triggered by climate change.

There is a one-to-one correlation between zones of military conflict and a global map of water drought. This not only creates problems in the afflicted countries but also migrations towards less-affected areas, adding to the social pressure in the countries of destination too."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #163 on: October 23, 2016, 07:00:37 PM »
This is a re-post from the Science folder, because the following information (and attached image) supports the scenario presented in Reply #157 about the risks of a possible bifurcation into an equable climate if the WAIS collapses and the Arctic Sea Ice extent collapses well before the end of this century:

The linked open access reference provides recommendations on how to better use paleo data about fast and slow feedback mechanisms in order to better estimate future non-stationary climate sensitivity (see the attached image of Figure 2 from the reference):

von der Heydt, A.S., Dijkstra, H.A., van de Wal, R.S.W. et al. (2016), "Lessons on Climate Sensitivity From Past Climate Changes", Curr Clim Change Rep; doi:10.1007/s40641-016-0049-3


http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs40641-016-0049-3?wt_mc=Affiliate.CommissionJunction.3.EPR1089.DeepLink&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=commission_junction&utm_campaign=3_nsn6445_deeplink&utm_content=deeplink

Abstract: "Over the last decade, our understanding of climate sensitivity has improved considerably. The climate system shows variability on many timescales, is subject to non-stationary forcing and it is most likely out of equilibrium with the changes in the radiative forcing. Slow and fast feedbacks complicate the interpretation of geological records as feedback strengths vary over time. In the geological past, the forcing timescales were different than at present, suggesting that the response may have behaved differently. Do these insights constrain the climate sensitivity relevant for the present day? In this paper, we review the progress made in theoretical understanding of climate sensitivity and on the estimation of climate sensitivity from proxy records. Particular focus lies on the background state dependence of feedback processes and on the impact of tipping points on the climate system. We suggest how to further use palaeo data to advance our understanding of the currently ongoing climate change."

Caption for Figure 2: "Schematic of the phase diagram of a climate model with two stable coexisting climate states. The shape of the S curve follows closely that discussed in [62–64]; see also [65]. The climate sensitivity parameter S is defined on each of the stable branches as the local slope of the global mean surface temperature T versus the (logarithm of) atmospheric pCO2 (cf. Eq. 8 ). Type I state dependence: When starting at point A (e.g. the pre-industrial climate), the temperature increase after a doubling of pCO2 (point B) is smaller than when starting from a colder climate (point C) on the same branch. Type II state dependence: When the initial pCO2 is the same as in point A, but the climate is initially on the cold branch (point D), a doubling of pCO2 results in a smaller temperature increase (point E) than if starting from point A and ending in point B. S becomes undefined at the transition points (open squares) between the two branches. The conditional climate sensitivity is equal to S for small perturbations (going from points D to E), but largely increases if the perturbation in CO2 is large enough to move the system from point D beyond the bifurcation point (blue open square) and jumps to the warm branch. Note that S is generally defined as a local gradient, while the 2xCO2 definition in the ECS may involve a perturbation too large for the linear assumption along the branch to be applicable."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #164 on: October 27, 2016, 03:19:43 PM »
The linked article by Peter Wadhams is entitled: "As Arctic Ocean Ice Disappears, The Global Climate Impacts Intensify".  While Wadhams concerns may seem alarmist to some, he presents a clear and rational scenario for a continuation of the Arctic sea ice "death spiral" and the impacts of Arctic Amplification on the rest of the globe:

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/as_arctic_ocean_ice_disappears_global_climate_impacts_intensify_wadhams/3037/


Extract: "Few people understand that the Arctic sea ice “death spiral” represents more than just a major ecological upheaval in the world’s Far North. The decline of Arctic sea ice also has profound global climatic effects, or feedbacks, that are already intensifying global warming and have the potential to destabilize the climate system. Indeed, we are not far from the moment when the feedbacks themselves will be driving the change every bit as much as our continuing emission of billions of tons of carbon dioxide annually."

See also:

http://www.alternet.org/environment/how-disappearing-arctic-ice-could-lead-global-climate-catastrophe

Extract: "How Disappearing Arctic Ice Could Lead to Global Climate Catastrophe
The monumental loss of sea ice is triggering a cascade of effects that could destabilize the global climate system."

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #165 on: October 27, 2016, 05:27:26 PM »
The linked BBC article is entitled: "World wildlife 'falls by 58% in 40 years'".  Even if mankind is so callous as to only care about human life; this trend bodes poorly for our collective future.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37775622

Extract: "Global wildlife populations have fallen by 58% since 1970, a report says.

The Living Planet assessment, by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and WWF, suggests that if the trend continues that decline could reach two-thirds among vertebrates by 2020."

See also:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/10/27/the_earth_has_lost_more_than_half_its_animals_since_1970.html
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #166 on: October 30, 2016, 06:06:21 PM »
The linked Bloomberg article makes a convincing case that IPCC scientists are currently engaging in Magical Thinking (see image & following extract).  I submit that the Bloomberg article errs on the side of least drama:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-26/magical-thinking-won-t-stop-climate-change

Extract: "The gap is probably even bigger than the chart suggests. As climate scientists Kevin Anderson and Glen Peters argue, an element of magical thinking has crept into the IPCC projections. Specifically, they rely heavily on the assumption that new technologies will allow humans to start sucking carbon out of the atmosphere on a grand scale, resulting in large net negative emissions sometime in the second half of this century. This might happen, but we don’t know how to do it yet.

The assumptions about negative emissions amount to a bizarre step in what ought to be a cautious and conservative analysis. The IPCC scenarios essentially ignore the vast uncertainty surrounding a technology that does not yet exist, and about our ability to ramp it up to the required scale. To eliminate that much atmospheric carbon, as geophysicist Andrew Skuce estimates, we would need an industry roughly three times as big as the entire current fossil fuel industry -- and we would need to create it fast, building something like one new large plant to capture and store carbon every day for the next 70 years. Does that sound likely?"
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #167 on: November 02, 2016, 12:00:05 AM »
The linked open access commentary is entitled: "The World's Biggest Gamble".  While the commentary is meant to motivate decision makers to take immediate and strenuous actions to fight climate change; nevertheless, I believe that the commentary errs on the side of least drama (especially with regard to the risk of high climate sensitivity):

Johan Rockström, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Brian Hoskins, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, Peter Schlosser, Guy Pierre Brasseur, Owen Gaffney, Carlos Nobre, Malte Meinshausen & Joeri Rogelj, (27 October 2016), "The world's biggest gamble", Earth's Future, DOI: 10.1002/2016EF000392

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016EF000392/full

Abstract: "The scale of the decarbonisation challenge to meet the Paris Agreement is underplayed in the public arena. It will require precipitous emissions reductions within 40 years and a new carbon sink on the scale of the ocean sink. Even then, the world is extremely likely to overshoot. A catastrophic failure of policy, for example, waiting another decade for transformative policy and full commitments to fossil-free economies, will have irreversible and deleterious repercussions for humanity's remaining time on Earth. Only a global zero carbon roadmap will put the world on a course to phase-out greenhouse gas emissions and create the essential carbon sinks for Earth-system stability, without which, world prosperity is not possible."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #168 on: November 02, 2016, 05:32:46 PM »
The linked reference (and related articles) confirms that following a pathway close to the current Paris Pact (COP21) that peak GMSTA will reach about 3C, and that unless an unreasonable amount of negative emissions technology can be implemented, then a relatively large solar geoengineering effort will be needed for at least 160 years.  The last linked Yale Climate Connections article indicates that such a solar geoengineering program is crazy (if for no other reason but that it would likely lead to war and would also be disrupted by war).  The Paris Pact more or less authorizes world leaders to take such desperate measures:

S. Tilmes, B. M. Sanderson & B. C. O'Neill (13 August 2016), "Climate impacts of geoengineering in a delayed mitigation scenario", Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1002/2016GL070122

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL070122/abstract

Abstract: "Decarbonization in the immediate future is required to limit global mean temperature (GMT) increase to 2°C relative to preindustrial conditions, if geoengineering is not considered. Here we use the Community Earth System Model (CESM) to investigate climate outcomes if no mitigation is undertaken until GMT has reached 2°C. We find that late decarbonization in CESM without applying stratospheric sulfur injection (SSI) leads to a peak temperature increase of 3°C and GMT remains above 2° for 160 years. An additional gradual increase and then decrease of SSI over this period reaching about 1.5 times the aerosol burden resulting from the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1992 would limit the increase in GMT to 2.0° for the specific pathway and model. SSI produces mean and extreme temperatures in CESM comparable to an early decarbonization pathway, but aridity is not mitigated to the same extent."

The linked NCAR article is entitled: "The 2-degree goal and the question of geoengineering".
http://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/just-published/122687/2-degree-goal-and-question-geoengineering

Extract: "With world leaders agreeing to try to limit the increase in global temperatures, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are taking a look at whether geoengineering the climate could counter enough warming to help meet that goal.
In a new study, the scientists found that if society doesn't make steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in the next couple of decades, injections of planet-cooling sulfates into the atmosphere could theoretically limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. But such geoengineeing would mean a sustained effort stretching over more than a century and a half, and it would fail to prevent certain aspects of climate change.
"One thing that surprised me about this study is how much geoengineering it would take to stay within 2 degrees if we don't start reducing greenhouse gases soon," said NCAR scientist Simone Tilmes, the lead author.
For the study, the research team focused on the potential impacts of geoengineering on temperatures, the drying of land surfaces, and Arctic sea ice. They did not examine possible adverse environmental consequences such as potential damage to the ozone layer. The sulfate injections also would not alleviate the impact of carbon dioxide emissions on ocean acidification."


Also see the linked article is entitled: "Geoengineering: Crazy for sure, but with a BIG but". 

http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2016/11/geoengineering-crazy-for-sure-but-with-a-big-but/

Extract: "Geoengineering the planet in the face of daunting challenges posed by a changing climate. It’s a crazy idea. Harvard researcher Gernot Wagner clearly acknowledges that and devoutly hopes things never get to that point.
But Wagner is just as emphatic in supporting our seriously researching the issue and learning all we can in case, just in case, it becomes the last best option.

In September, the National Center for Atmospheric Research released a study that found that geoengineering with sulfate particles will require a sustained effort of artificially pumping 18 megatons of sulfate particles into the stratosphere every year for 160 years – 160 years! – to slow the rate of warming.
And geoengineering alone won’t do it. The NCAR study assumes that the globe will also drastically cut carbon emissions beginning in 2040. But even in that best-case scenario, we’ll still see the consequences of elevated levels of CO2 already built into the climate system: more episodes of extreme heat in North America, more retreating sea ice in the Arctic, changing patterns of precipitation globally, and more. It just won’t be as severe as doing nothing.
Wagner says he is an optimist and also a realist. “Solar geoengineering is not a replacement for cutting emissions,” he says. “Whatever analogy you prefer — a Band-Aid, a fire extinguisher, chemotherapy for the planet, etc. – all point to the fact that we must treat the underlying condition. That means cutting CO2 and other greenhouse gases.”"
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #169 on: November 02, 2016, 05:41:45 PM »
With regard to my last post that the Paris Pact has authorized world leaders to use solar geoengineering (which is dangerous) to attempt to stay below a 2C GMSTA, I would also like to note that the Paris Pact also:

1. Encourages the development of relatively low cost sustainable energy which will drive down the price of fossil fuel energy, which will likely promote global consumption by an increasing world population.
2. Encourages the use of a natural gas energy bridge until sustainable energy becomes cost competitive, which will likely increase atmospheric methane concentrations.
3.  Promotes the transfer of dirty industries from first world to third world countries, where monitoring is more difficult.
4.  Does not adequately acknowledge the increasing recognition that high ESS values are more likely than most current model projections assume.
5.  Ignores the risk that a WAIS collapse initiated in the next few decades would trigger a highly positive ice-climate feedback mechanism.
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

sidd

  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 6774
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1047
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #170 on: November 02, 2016, 06:39:37 PM »
" ... the Paris Pact has authorized world leaders to use solar geoengineering .

There are precisely zero instances of the term  "geoengineering" in Paris COP 15. One may argue that those preliminary fossil carbon exhaust limitations proposed today are inadequate to limit temperature rise to less than 2C, and that further drastic cuts will be necessary. In fact COP15 acknowledges as much, specifically points out that more is necessary, and in fact includes a ratchet to ramp cuts upward. However, COP 15 remains entirely silent on geoengineering, and stating that it "authorizes geoengineering" is not correct. The arguments for engineering assume that cuts in atmospheric fossil carbon loading will be insufficient and conclude that geoengineering will be necessary.  The necessity of geoengineering rests on the assumption that upward ratchet will fail. COP15 makes no such assumption.

" Promotes the transfer of dirty industries from first world to third world countries, where monitoring is more difficult."

I have read COP 15 carefully, and I see no support for the statement above.

sidd
« Last Edit: November 02, 2016, 06:46:31 PM by sidd »

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #171 on: November 02, 2016, 08:59:44 PM »
"
I have read COP 15 carefully, and I see no support for the statement above.

sidd

sidd,


Bloomberg disagrees with you, and the Paris Pact projections are full of scenarios using negative emissions technology (which technically are geoengineering), as the linked article is entitled: "Geoengineering to Alter Climate Moves Closer to Reality".  The article indicates that: (a) the Paris Pact (COP21) essentially commits the signature nations to use geoengineering to remain below 2C as every other pathway is fantasy; (b) the UN is thus investigating means to re-engineers the Earth Systems; and (c) acknowledges that currently the impacts resulting from the use of geoengineering are unpredictable.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-31/geoengineering-to-alter-climate-change-moves-closer-to-reality

Extract: "A United Nations body is investigating controversial methods to avert runaway climate change by giving humans the go-ahead to re-engineer the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere.
So-called geoengineering is seen as necessary to achieve the COP21 Paris agreement clinched in December, when 197 countries pledged to keep global temperatures rises below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), according to researchers who produced a report for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
“Within the Paris agreement there’s an implicit assumption that there will need to be greenhouse gases removed,” said Phil Williamson, a scientist at the U.K.’s University of East Anglia, who worked on the report. “Climate geoengineering is what countries have agreed to do, although they haven’t really realized that they’ve agreed to do it.”
Large-scale geoengineering may include pouring nutrients into oceans to save coral habitats or spraying tiny particles into the Earth’s atmosphere to reflect sun rays back into space. Geoengineering proposals have been shunned because of their unpredictable consequences on global ecosystems."

Best regards,
ASLR
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

sidd

  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 6774
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1047
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #172 on: November 03, 2016, 05:22:37 AM »
My statement :

"I have read COP 15 carefully, and I see no support for the statement above."

referred to your point 3)

"Promotes the transfer of dirty industries from first world to third world countries, where monitoring is more difficult."

COP15 makes no such promotion.

Nor does COP15 mention geoengineering.  Your quote of Bloomberg does not  address my first para stating that COP15 makes no mention of geoengineering. Many, including the author of the Bloomberg piece, maintain that geoengineering will be necessary, and I already agreed one may make that argument. But the text of COP15 says nothing of the kind.

Will, in fact, geoengineering be necessary ? Depends on how pessimistic one is about fossil carbon reduction. Clearly Bloomberg and others, perhaps including yourself, are quite pessimistic.

sidd

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #173 on: November 03, 2016, 05:32:31 AM »
Your quote of Bloomberg does not  address my first para stating that COP15 makes no mention of geoengineering.

The term geoengineering is not sufficiently explicit to be included in the COP 21, but again the COP 21 implicitly indicates negative emission technology (which is geoengineering), and explicitly pledges the honor of the signatory nations to stay below 2C (which means that either the pledges are not worth the paper that they are written on, or that the nations will implement some form of geoengineering [whether effective or not]).

Edit: I note that the Paris Pact is a forward looking document, with the means as to how to stay below 2C to be determined after COP 21.
« Last Edit: November 03, 2016, 02:29:56 PM by AbruptSLR »
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

be cause

  • Nilas ice
  • Posts: 2441
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1012
  • Likes Given: 1034
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #174 on: November 03, 2016, 09:56:27 AM »
hedera {ivy} is a wonderful 'negative emmissions technology' which enriches the environment in  many ways .. yet here in Ireland it has been killed on millions of trees at the behest of government agencies and the National Trust . Not stupidity but insanity ..
Conflict is the root of all evil , for being blind it does not see whom it attacks . Yet it always attacks the Son Of God , and the Son of God is you .

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #175 on: November 03, 2016, 09:16:24 PM »
hedera {ivy} is a wonderful 'negative emmissions technology' which enriches the environment in  many ways .. yet here in Ireland it has been killed on millions of trees at the behest of government agencies and the National Trust . Not stupidity but insanity ..

b.c.,
Your suggestion of using Irish hedera is a sub-group of Bio-energy with carbon capture and storage, BECCS, which is a sub-group of Negative Emissions Technology, NET, which is the default form of geoengineering assumed by the Paris Pact related radiative forcing scenarios as discussed in the following link:

http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,363.0.html

However, I note that GeoMIP is currently calibrating climate models for geoengineering (including more active forms of geoengineering) as discussed in the following link:

http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/special_issue376.html

See also:
Oeste, F. D., de Richter, R., Ming, T., and Caillol, S.: Climate engineering by mimicking the natural dust climate control: the Iron Salt Aerosols method, Earth Syst. Dynam. Discuss., doi:10.5194/esd-2016-32, in review, 2016.

http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/esd-2016-32/
http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/esd-2016-32/esd-2016-32.pdf

Best,
ASLR

Edit, See also the following ESLD article entitled: "The world is racing to stop climate change. But the math still doesn’t add up":

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/11/03/the-world-is-racing-to-stop-climate-change-but-the-math-still-doesnt-add-up/?utm_term=.5cf04d186870
« Last Edit: November 03, 2016, 10:10:50 PM by AbruptSLR »
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #176 on: November 04, 2016, 09:32:33 AM »
Without major application of NET (negative emissions technology) achieving RCP 4.5 is impracticable.  Furthermore, the first & second attached images indicate that without future assumed ratcheting (which assume such large scale use of NET) the current CoP21 INDCs will result in about 3.7C increase using AR5 ELSD assumptions; which is close to the RCP 6.0 response.  The third image shows that the largest reason for our current continued BAU emissions is growth of per capita worldwide.  Thus even if we build more renewables it will likely me that we just consume more, rather than that we will cut GHG emissions.

The linked reference (with a free access pdf) reviews different NETs, and concluded that until 2050 afforestation is our best geoengineering option (see the fourth attached image of NET costs & readiness), but that all NET options will be insufficient to increase our carbon budget significantly; and that control of GHG emissions is the most important step in fighting climate change:


http://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/research-programmes/stranded-assets/Stranded%20Carbon%20Assets%20and%20NETs%20-%2006.02.15.pdf


Extract: "... characterising possible NET deployment scenarios up to 2050 and 2100 based
on the latest literature on technical potentials and limiting constraints on NET deployment. We find that between now and 2050, there may be the technical potential to attain negative emissions of the order of 120 GtCO2 cumulatively (~15 ppm reduction), with the vast majority of this potential coming from afforestation, soil carbon improvements, and some biochar deployed in the near term.

This potential represents an extension of the 2050 carbon budget by 11-13% for a 50-80% probability of meeting a 2-degree warming target. More industrial technologies (DAC, Ocean Liming, and BECCS) that rely on CCS are likely to have very limited potential by 2050, largely due to limits imposed by CCS development and more significant technical and policy challenges."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #177 on: November 05, 2016, 06:22:56 PM »
The linked SciAm article is entitled: "Brazil Greenhouse Gas Emission Spike Blamed on Deforestation".  Such trends raise serious doubts as to whether countries like Brazil (e.g. Indonesia, Congo, etc.) with substantial rainforests will be able to meet their pledges to the CoP 21 Paris Pact. Such likely non-compliance increases the risk that geoengineering will be used in a desperate (& ill advised) manner once we exceed the 2C target (which will probably occur long before 2030 (see the second linked ESLD reference):

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brazil-greenhouse-gas-emission-spike-blamed-on-deforestation/

Extract: "Over 2,000 square miles of forest were cut last year, raising emissions 3.5 percent according to researchers

The jump in emissions—the country is now at the same emissions level that it had in 2010—has called into question whether the South American country can meet its international climate commitments. The country pledged to cut emissions 37 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 and 43 percent by 2030.

“If emissions rose during a recession, if deforestation increased while the economy was contracting, we wonder what could happen when Brazil resumes economic growth,” said Carlos Rittl, executive secretary of Observatório do Clima."


The second linked ESLD reference indicates that the remaining carbon budget from 2015 may be as low as 590 GtCO2; and as CO₂-e emissions are around 50GtCO2 (which exceeds RCP 8.5 50%CL), it is easy to see that assuming ECS is 3C we could readily exceed the 2C limit by around 2030, or if ECS is 4C then we could exceed 2.7C by around 2032 to 2035, if we continue on our current BAU pathway for another 16 to 19 years. 
 
Joeri Rogelj, Michiel Schaeffer, Pierre Friedlingstein, Nathan P. Gillett, Detlef P. van Vuuren, Keywan Riahi, Myles Allen & Reto Knutti (2016) "Differences between carbon budget estimates unravelled", Nature Climate Change, Volume: 6, Pages: 245–252, doi:10.1038/nclimate2868

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v6/n3/full/nclimate2868.html

I note that the estimate of exceeding 2.7C by 2032 to 2035, does consider lag-time after the carbon budget has been exceeded, but does not consider the risk of accelerating Arctic Amplification due the potential early seasonal loss of Arctic Sea Ice Extent.
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #178 on: November 05, 2016, 06:59:40 PM »
The linked article is entitled: "The US keeps shutting down nuclear power plants and replacing them with coal or gas".  Such articles illustrate just some of the challenges associated with combating climate change, as Green BAU is still BAU as far as global warming is concerned:

http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2016/11/3/13499278/nuclear-retirements-coal-gas

Extract: "America’s largest source of zero-carbon power is in serious trouble. And I’m not talking about wind or solar. They’re doing fine. The trouble is with nuclear power, which still provides about 19 percent of the nation’s electricity.

So what does that future look like? A new report by Whitney Herndon and John Larsen of the Rhodium Group notes that 24 gigawatts of nuclear power are at risk of being retired between now and 2030 without major policy changes. That includes seven reactors currently scheduled to be shut down, like the two large units at California’s Diablo Canyon, as well as others that could face financial woes in the coming years.

If all these plants close, the Rhodium Group estimates, about 75 percent of that lost power will likely be replaced by natural gas, and greenhouse-gas emissions will be higher than they otherwise would be. (In many regions, wind and solar haven’t been able to scale up fast enough to replace that much lost electricity at once, though California’s hoping to pull this difficult feat off after Diablo Canyon.)"

See also:
http://rhg.com/notes/nukes-in-the-crosshairs-revisited

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #179 on: November 09, 2016, 04:52:37 PM »
The linked Nature news article expresses concern about the apparent truth that Donald J. Trump will be America's first anti-science president:

Jeff Tollefson, Lauren Morello & Sara Reardon (2016), "Donald Trump's US election win stuns scientists", Nature, doi:10.1038/nature.2016.20952

http://www.nature.com/news/donald-trump-s-us-election-win-stuns-scientists-1.20952

Extract: "Republicans sweep White House and US Congress, with uncertain implications for research.
 …
“Trump will be the first anti-science president we have ever had,” says Michael Lubell, director of public affairs for the American Physical Society in Washington DC. “The consequences are going to be very, very severe.”

Trump has questioned the science underlying climate change — at one point suggesting that it was a Chinese hoax — and pledged to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement.

Republicans also swept Congress, retaining control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. That will make it easier for Trump to push through his policy priorities and nominees for key positions — including the leaders of science agencies such as NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and for a current vacancy on the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court vacancy could put the fate of one major plank of US President Barack Obama’s climate-change strategy in Trump’s hands. The court is reviewing a regulation to curb emissions from existing power plants. Republicans have blocked Obama’s attempt to nominate a justice to fill the court vacancy, but Trump should be able to quickly fill the position. His nominee, not yet named, could cast the deciding vote in the climate case.

Fulfilling his pledge to exit the Paris agreement could take longer; legally, he would not be able to do so for four years. But Trump's election could factor into climate negotiations currently under way in Marrakesh, Morocco, where countries are hashing out how they will implement the Paris agreement. "
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

budmantis

  • Nilas ice
  • Posts: 1220
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 7
  • Likes Given: 34
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #180 on: November 09, 2016, 04:57:25 PM »
George W. Bush was also anti-science.

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #181 on: November 09, 2016, 05:01:08 PM »
George W. Bush was also anti-science.

Just because there are different shades of darkness is not an excuse for moving still further away from the light.
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

budmantis

  • Nilas ice
  • Posts: 1220
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 7
  • Likes Given: 34
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #182 on: November 09, 2016, 05:05:44 PM »
George W. Bush was also anti-science.

Just because there are different shades of darkness is not an excuse for moving still further away from the light.

True, but my point was that Trump is not the first anti-science president. I certainly hope he'll be the last!

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #183 on: November 09, 2016, 05:25:56 PM »
The linked Wikipedia article discusses George W. Bush's climate change policy.  While he clearly worked to distort science he did approve significant funding to study this matter.  We will so see how much worse Trump will be:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_policy_of_the_George_W._Bush_administration
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #184 on: November 16, 2016, 10:02:48 AM »
The linked article is entitled: “Climate change playing role in late-winter shift in polar vortex”.  This pattern should lead to the Arctic warming more rapidly than projected by AR5.


http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/climatechange/climate-change-playing-role-in/61124223

Extract: “New research published in the journal Nature Climate Change has found that the wintertime Arctic stratospheric polar vortex has weakened over the past three decades.
The result of this weakening is an increased probability of cold surface air from the high latitudes shifting southward into the middle latitudes.”

For the reference see:

Jiankai Zhang et. al. (2016), “Persistent shift of the Arctic polar vortex towards the Eurasian continent in recent decades”, Nature Climate Change, doi:10.1038/nclimate3136

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3136.html


Abstract: “The wintertime Arctic stratospheric polar vortex has weakened over the past three decades, and consequently cold surface air from high latitudes is now more likely to move into the middle latitudes. However, it is not known if the location of the polar vortex has also experienced a persistent change in response to Arctic climate change and whether any changes in the vortex position have implications for the climate system. Here, through the analysis of various data sets and model simulations, we show that the Arctic polar vortex shifted persistently towards the Eurasian continent and away from North America in February over the past three decades. This shift is found to be closely related to the enhanced zonal wavenumber-1 waves in response to Arctic sea-ice loss, particularly over the Barents–Kara seas (BKS). Increased snow cover over the Eurasian continent may also have contributed to the shift. Our analysis reveals that the vortex shift induces cooling over some parts of the Eurasian continent and North America which partly offsets the tropospheric climate warming there in the past three decades. The potential vortex shift in response to persistent sea-ice loss in the future, and its associated climatic impact, deserve attention to better constrain future climate changes.”
« Last Edit: November 16, 2016, 10:10:19 AM by AbruptSLR »
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

Aporia_filia

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 172
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 109
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #185 on: November 17, 2016, 11:57:40 AM »
Part of human stupidity is his belief of being unique. Done as an image of god, so not like the rest of the living things. These Science articles advance that soon even insects are going to have an accepted conscience with emotions.

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #186 on: November 27, 2016, 06:04:02 PM »
The linked article is entitled: "Idiocracy now: Donald Trump and the Dunning-Kruger effect — when stupid people don’t know they are stupid".  It looks like with Trump's victory, America has fought for the right to Tea Party and the second linked article shows how the mediascape helped him do it:


http://www.salon.com/2016/09/30/idiocracy-now-donald-trump-and-the-dunning-kruger-effect-when-stupid-people-dont-know-they-are-stupid/

Extract: "Trump is not merely ignorant. He is also supremely confident and feels superior — the most dangerous kind of idiot.

… Trump is, in fact, supremely confident in his ignorance and sense of intellectual superiority over other people.
This is the psychological concept known as the “Dunning-Kruger” effect — put very simply, when stupid people don’t know that they are stupid — in action."

Also, the second linked article is entitled: "The Internet Isn’t Making Us Dumber — It’s Making Us More ‘Meta-Ignorant’"

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/07/the-internet-isnt-making-us-dumber-its-making-us-more-meta-ignorant.html

Extract: "Actor John Cleese concisely explains the Dunning-Kruger effect in a much-shared YouTube video: “If you’re very, very stupid, how can you possibly realize that you’re very, very stupid? You’d have to be relatively intelligent to realize how stupid you are … And this explains not just Hollywood but almost the entirety of Fox News.”

There is now an active field of research into how the internet is changing what we learn and remember.

So facts are more often forgotten when people believe the facts will be archived. This phenomenon has earned a name — the Google effect — describing the automatic forgetting of information that can be found online.

Today’s mediascape does not provide much guidance. It encourages us to create personal, solipsistic filters over information, making it unprecedentedly easy to gorge on news of favorite celebrities, TV shows, teams, political ideologies, and tech toys. This leaves less time and attention for everything else. The great risk isn’t that the internet is making us less informed or even misinformed. It’s that it may be making us meta-ignorant — less cognizant of what we don’t know."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #187 on: December 01, 2016, 03:39:06 PM »
The linked article is entitled: "Climate change will stir 'unimaginable' refugee crisis, says military".  This article only hints at the impacts of the road we are all foolishly heading down:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/01/climate-change-trigger-unimaginable-refugee-crisis-senior-military

Extract: "Unchecked global warming is greatest threat to 21st-century security where mass migration could be ‘new normal’, say senior military.

“Countries are going to pay for climate change one way or another,” said Cheney. “The best way to pay for it is by tackling the root causes of climate change and cutting greenhouse gas emissions. If we do not, the national security impacts will be increasingly costly and challenging.”"
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #188 on: December 01, 2016, 03:52:07 PM »
The linked article is entitled: "Frightened by Donald Trump? You don’t know the half of it".  People are fooling themselves if they think that the fossil fuel industry isn't mounting a major (and cloaked) campaign to resist climate change action.  Until people wake-up very limited progress will be made in the fight against climate change:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/30/donald-trump-george-monbiot-misinformation

Extract: "Yes, Donald Trump’s politics are incoherent. But those who surround him know just what they want, and his lack of clarity enhances their power. To understand what is coming, we need to understand who they are.

… I have watched as tobacco, coal, oil, chemicals and biotech companies have poured billions of dollars into an international misinformation machine composed of thinktanks, bloggers and fake citizens’ groups. Its purpose is to portray the interests of billionaires as the interests of the common people, to wage war against trade unions and beat down attempts to regulate business and tax the very rich. Now the people who helped run this machine are shaping the government.
I first encountered the machine when writing about climate change. The fury and loathing directed at climate scientists and campaigners seemed incomprehensible until I realised they were fake: the hatred had been paid for. The bloggers and institutes whipping up this anger were funded by oil and coal companies.

Don’t imagine that other parts of the world are immune. Corporate-funded thinktanks and fake grassroots groups are now everywhere. The fake news we should be worried about is not stories invented by Macedonian teenagers about Hillary Clinton selling arms to Islamic State, but the constant feed of confected scares about unions, tax and regulation drummed up by groups that won’t reveal their interests.

As usual, the left and centre (myself included) are beating ourselves up about where we went wrong. There are plenty of answers, but one of them is that we have simply been outspent. Not by a little, but by orders of magnitude. A few billion dollars spent on persuasion buys you all the politics you want. Genuine campaigners, working in their free time, simply cannot match a professional network staffed by thousands of well-paid, unscrupulous people.

You cannot confront a power until you know what it is. Our first task in this struggle is to understand what we face. Only then can we work out what to do."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #189 on: December 01, 2016, 07:29:59 PM »
The following articles discuss how the US Ex-Im bank loans have promoted carbon emissions overseas.  While these articles discuss short-coming with Obama's global climate change legacy, similar things could be said about other 1st World actions that have transferred carbon emissions from the developed world to the developing world.

The first linked article is entitled: "Obama's dirty secret: the fossil fuel projects the US littered around the world"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/01/obama-fossil-fuels-us-export-import-bank-energy-projects


Extract: "Through the Export-Import Bank, the Obama administration has spent nearly $34bn on dirty energy plants in countries from India to Australia to South Africa.

This unprecedented backing of oil, coal and gas projects is an unexpected footnote to Obama’s own climate change legacy. The president has called global warming “terrifying” and helped broker the world’s first proper agreement to tackle it, yet his administration has poured money into developments that will push the planet even closer to climate disaster.
For people living next to US-funded mines and power stations the impacts are even more starkly immediate."

Also, see the second linked associated article is entitled: "How Obama's climate change legacy is weakened by US investment in dirty fuel"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/30/us-fossil-fuel-investment-obama-climate-change-legacy

Extract: "… an agency inside the Obama administration poured billions into fossil fuel projects that will lead to global carbon emissions on a damaging scale.

During Barack Obama's presidency Ex-Im Bank approved roughly three times more financing for fossil fuel projects than it provided during George W. Bush's eight-year term. The bank was blocked from making new investments in July 2015 and was only fully operational for 6.5 of Obama's eight years in office.

Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan is estimated to reduce carbon emissons by 2.5 billion tons over 15 years. But, if all 70 Ex-Im Bank projects approved under Obama were running at full capacity during a 15-year period, they would produce about the same carbon emissions as the CPP savings.

The bank – which a growing number of Republican members of Congress oppose , viewing it as a symbol of government largesse and corporate welfare – is almost universally supported by Democrats, who see it as a job maker and economic leveler for US exporters in the global market, who must compete against foreign companies financed by their own country’s export banks.

However, our findings show that not only does the bank violate Democrats’ environmental platform to reduce carbon emissions, but more than 28% of the bank’s long-term loan financing since 2009 has supported foreign-owned exporters that directly compete with US companies – including nearly $540m to Caterpillar’s biggest foreign competitor, the Japanese-owned Komatsu, to build a copper mine in Mongolia.

“At a time when we need to boldly transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energies, the last thing we should be doing is providing corporate welfare to some of the biggest polluters on the planet,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, who opposes the bank."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #190 on: December 12, 2016, 05:32:57 PM »
The linked BBC article is entitled: "Methane surge needs 'urgent attention'", and it indicates that scientists need to re-focus on identifying the various sources and sinks for atmospheric methane (see the attached images).  Personally, I like scientists and one my typically cite this research of scientific integrity and clear thinking.  Nevertheless, I am posting this in the "Human Stupidity" thread for reasons including:

(a) the authors state that the GWP100 for methane is about 30 whereas AR5 indicates that it is 34;

(b) the authors downplay the importance of likely future increases in methane emissions from high latitude soils and thermokarst lakes; as well as from the coming degradation of tropical rainforests; and

(c) the authors note the uncertainties associated changes (reductions) in the atmospheric hydroxyl reduction of methane; however, they treat this like a reduction in a methane sink; when in actuality this process increases the GWP of all of the current and future atmospheric methane so the effective GWP100 for methane through 2100 is likely well above 34 (see the following Wikilink to learn about GWP).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential

Having scientists downplay the true risks that we are facing w.r.t. atmospheric methane is yet another example of human stupidity (a.k.a. human mental illness):

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38285300

Extract: ""Methane has many sources, but the culprit behind the steep rise is probably agriculture," Prof Jackson told BBC News.

"We do see some increased fossil fuel emissions over the last decade, but we think biological sources, and tropical sources, are the most likely."

Agricultural sources would include cattle and other ruminants, as well as rice paddies.
Emissions from wetlands are almost certainly a significant part of this story as well. But so too could be the role played by the chemical reactions that normally remove methane from the atmosphere.

One of the most important of these is the destruction process involving the so-called hydroxyl radical.

The concentration of this chemical species in the atmosphere might also be changing in some way.

According to the ERL editorial, there needs to be a particular push on understanding such methane "sinks".

CH4 is about 30 times better than CO2, over a century timescale, at trapping heat in the atmosphere."


See also the linked Vox article is entitled: "Methane levels in the atmosphere are now rising at their fastest pace in decades".

http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2016/12/12/13915950/methane-atmosphere-rise-agriculture

The following two references were cited in the articles cited previously in this post:

M Saunois, R B Jackson, P Bousquet, B Poulter and J G Canadell (12 December 2016), "The growing role of methane in anthropogenic climate change", Environmental Research Letters, Volume 11, Number 12,  doi:10.1088/1748-9326/11/12/120207.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/12/120207

Abstract: "Unlike CO2, atmospheric methane concentrations are rising faster than at any time in the past two decades and, since 2014, are now approaching the most greenhouse-gas-intensive scenarios. The reasons for this renewed growth are still unclear, primarily because of uncertainties in the global methane budget. New analysis suggests that the recent rapid rise in global methane concentrations is predominantly biogenic-most likely from agriculture-with smaller contributions from fossil fuel use and possibly wetlands. Additional attention is urgently needed to quantify and reduce methane emissions. Methane mitigation offers rapid climate benefits and economic, health and agricultural co-benefits that are highly complementary to CO2 mitigation."

Also see:
Saunois, M., Bousquet, P., Poulter, B., Peregon, A., Ciais, P., Canadell, J. G., Dlugokencky, E. J., Etiope, G., Bastviken, D., Houweling, S., Janssens-Maenhout, G., Tubiello, F. N., Castaldi, S., Jackson, R. B., Alexe, M., Arora, V. K., Beerling, D. J., Bergamaschi, P., Blake, D. R., Brailsford, G., Brovkin, V., Bruhwiler, L., Crevoisier, C., Crill, P., Covey, K., Curry, C., Frankenberg, C., Gedney, N., Höglund-Isaksson, L., Ishizawa, M., Ito, A., Joos, F., Kim, H.-S., Kleinen, T., Krummel, P., Lamarque, J.-F., Langenfelds, R., Locatelli, R., Machida, T., Maksyutov, S., McDonald, K. C., Marshall, J., Melton, J. R., Morino, I., Naik, V., O'Doherty, S., Parmentier, F.-J. W., Patra, P. K., Peng, C., Peng, S., Peters, G. P., Pison, I., Prigent, C., Prinn, R., Ramonet, M., Riley, W. J., Saito, M., Santini, M., Schroeder, R., Simpson, I. J., Spahni, R., Steele, P., Takizawa, A., Thornton, B. F., Tian, H., Tohjima, Y., Viovy, N., Voulgarakis, A., van Weele, M., van der Werf, G. R., Weiss, R., Wiedinmyer, C., Wilton, D. J., Wiltshire, A., Worthy, D., Wunch, D., Xu, X., Yoshida, Y., Zhang, B., Zhang, Z., and Zhu, Q.: The global methane budget 2000–2012, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 8, 697-751, doi:10.5194/essd-8-697-2016, 2016.


http://www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/8/697/2016/

Abstract. The global methane (CH4) budget is becoming an increasingly important component for managing realistic pathways to mitigate climate change. This relevance, due to a shorter atmospheric lifetime and a stronger warming potential than carbon dioxide, is challenged by the still unexplained changes of atmospheric CH4 over the past decade. Emissions and concentrations of CH4 are continuing to increase, making CH4 the second most important human-induced greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide. Two major difficulties in reducing uncertainties come from the large variety of diffusive CH4 sources that overlap geographically, and from the destruction of CH4 by the very short-lived hydroxyl radical (OH). To address these difficulties, we have established a consortium of multi-disciplinary scientists under the umbrella of the Global Carbon Project to synthesize and stimulate research on the methane cycle, and producing regular (∼ biennial) updates of the global methane budget. This consortium includes atmospheric physicists and chemists, biogeochemists of surface and marine emissions, and socio-economists who study anthropogenic emissions. Following Kirschke et al. (2013), we propose here the first version of a living review paper that integrates results of top-down studies (exploiting atmospheric observations within an atmospheric inverse-modelling framework) and bottom-up models, inventories and data-driven approaches (including process-based models for estimating land surface emissions and atmospheric chemistry, and inventories for anthropogenic emissions, data-driven extrapolations).

For the 2003–2012 decade, global methane emissions are estimated by top-down inversions at 558 Tg CH4 yr−1, range 540–568. About 60 % of global emissions are anthropogenic (range 50–65 %). Since 2010, the bottom-up global emission inventories have been closer to methane emissions in the most carbon-intensive Representative Concentrations Pathway (RCP8.5) and higher than all other RCP scenarios. Bottom-up approaches suggest larger global emissions (736 Tg CH4 yr−1, range 596–884) mostly because of larger natural emissions from individual sources such as inland waters, natural wetlands and geological sources. Considering the atmospheric constraints on the top-down budget, it is likely that some of the individual emissions reported by the bottom-up approaches are overestimated, leading to too large global emissions. Latitudinal data from top-down emissions indicate a predominance of tropical emissions (∼ 64 % of the global budget, < 30° N) as compared to mid (∼ 32 %, 30–60° N) and high northern latitudes (∼ 4 %, 60–90° N). Top-down inversions consistently infer lower emissions in China (∼ 58 Tg CH4 yr−1, range 51–72, −14 %) and higher emissions in Africa (86 Tg CH4 yr−1, range 73–108, +19 %) than bottom-up values used as prior estimates. Overall, uncertainties for anthropogenic emissions appear smaller than those from natural sources, and the uncertainties on source categories appear larger for top-down inversions than for bottom-up inventories and models.

The most important source of uncertainty on the methane budget is attributable to emissions from wetland and other inland waters. We show that the wetland extent could contribute 30–40 % on the estimated range for wetland emissions. Other priorities for improving the methane budget include the following: (i) the development of process-based models for inland-water emissions, (ii) the intensification of methane observations at local scale (flux measurements) to constrain bottom-up land surface models, and at regional scale (surface networks and satellites) to constrain top-down inversions, (iii) improvements in the estimation of atmospheric loss by OH, and (iv) improvements of the transport models integrated in top-down inversions. The data presented here can be downloaded from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (http://doi.org/10.3334/CDIAC/GLOBAL_METHANE_BUDGET_2016_V1.1) and the Global Carbon Project.

Edit: Estimates of combined natural and anthropogenic methane emission rates through 2100 justify the use of the findings from Isaksen et al's 7 x CH4 case for calculating a revised GWP for methane, as follows:
 
As the radiative forcing in a 50-year time horizon for 4 x CH4 additional emission of 0.80 GtCH4/yr is 2.2 Wm-2, and as the radiative forcing for the current methane emissions is 0.48 Wm-2, thus an updated GWP for methane, assuming the occurrence of Isaksen et al's 4 x CH4 case in 2040, would be: 33 (per Shindell et al 2009) times (2.2/[0.8 + 0.48]) divided by (0.54/0.48) = 50 by 2100.
 
If the GWP of methane increases to 50 by 2100 then the RCP 8.5 scenario will significantly under-estimate global warming by the end of this century.

Isaksen, I. S. A., Gauss M., Myhre, G., Walter Anthony, K. M.  and Ruppel, C.,  (2011), "Strong atmospheric chemistry feedback to climate warming from Arctic methane emissions", Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 25, GB2002, doi:10.1029/2010GB003845
« Last Edit: December 18, 2016, 06:44:29 PM by AbruptSLR »
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #191 on: December 18, 2016, 06:38:48 PM »
It's all in how you look at it: human stupidity or just bad luck thinking.  It looks like we will just let Darwin decide.

Edit, see also the following linked article entitled: "Donald Trump's questionable intelligence:  All those false claims about his academic record and derision of others bespeak profound insecurity".

http://www.salon.com/2016/12/18/donald-trumps-questionable-intelligence-all-those-false-claims-about-his-academic-record-and-derision-of-others-bespeak-profound-insecurity/
« Last Edit: December 18, 2016, 09:22:52 PM by AbruptSLR »
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

Dundee

  • New ice
  • Posts: 44
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 6
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #192 on: December 18, 2016, 11:20:36 PM »
According to an old saying, the more you know the more you know you don't know.

I played the game long enough to be absolutely certain this is true in the world of national intelligence products; I also am of the opinion the reverse is true - the less you know, the less you think you need to know.

I suspect this is a factor in the confidence with which Trump can take or leave daily intelligence briefs.
« Last Edit: December 19, 2016, 02:26:43 AM by Dundee »

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #193 on: December 19, 2016, 01:52:00 AM »
According to an old saying, the more you know the more you know you don't know.

I played them game long enough to be absolutely certain this is true in the world of national intelligence products; I also am of the opinion the reverse is true - the less you know, the less you think you need to know.

I suspect this is a factor in the confidence with which Trump can take or leave daily intelligence briefs.

As discussed in Reply #186, in the USA we call this the Dunning-Kruger effect, as discussed in the linked article entitled: "Idiocracy now: Donald Trump and the Dunning-Kruger effect — when stupid people don’t know they are stupid". 


http://www.salon.com/2016/09/30/idiocracy-now-donald-trump-and-the-dunning-kruger-effect-when-stupid-people-dont-know-they-are-stupid/
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

Dundee

  • New ice
  • Posts: 44
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 6
  • Likes Given: 0
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #194 on: December 19, 2016, 02:53:08 AM »
The thought predates both Kruger and Dunning by many years - in my part of the U.S. we, by tradition, attribute it to Aristotle.

It is also distinct from Dunning-Kruger, which is specific to low ability rather than low awareness. The trap I refer to is at it's most brutal with folks who are otherwise very accomplished - it is this success that aids their absolute confidence in their knowledge. Intelligence is an invaluable but problematic resource - it is nearly always at least partially wrong (but more often than not, just right enough to be useful, with care). I can almost state it as an axiom that the more satisfied one who makes military plans is with their intelligence, the more likely it is for their plan to go horribly wrong. I have know need to personally test it scientifically, I've served under any number of superiors who went out of their way to provide a statistically viable number of relevant examples. Wisdom comes from experience, and it does not look like Trump's considerable experience was the right sort to foster wisdom.

The good news (for me personally) is that my "pointy end of the spear card" expired some years back, and my children are too old and my grandchildren too young to get conscripted into the profession. The bad news is, there are things that a president can fool with that will bring consequences that reach out and touch all of us (not the least of which is the clockwork that eventually connects to a flooded Mar-a-Lago).


AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #195 on: December 19, 2016, 07:08:36 PM »
The thought predates both Kruger and Dunning by many years - in my part of the U.S. we, by tradition, attribute it to Aristotle.

It is also distinct from Dunning-Kruger, which is specific to low ability rather than low awareness. The trap I refer to is at it's most brutal with folks who are otherwise very accomplished - it is this success that aids their absolute confidence in their knowledge. Intelligence is an invaluable but problematic resource - it is nearly always at least partially wrong (but more often than not, just right enough to be useful, with care). I can almost state it as an axiom that the more satisfied one who makes military plans is with their intelligence, the more likely it is for their plan to go horribly wrong. I have know need to personally test it scientifically, I've served under any number of superiors who went out of their way to provide a statistically viable number of relevant examples. Wisdom comes from experience, and it does not look like Trump's considerable experience was the right sort to foster wisdom.

The good news (for me personally) is that my "pointy end of the spear card" expired some years back, and my children are too old and my grandchildren too young to get conscripted into the profession. The bad news is, there are things that a president can fool with that will bring consequences that reach out and touch all of us (not the least of which is the clockwork that eventually connects to a flooded Mar-a-Lago).

Dundee,

Thanks for the wisdom of your experience (including the "… statistically viable number of relevant examples …" of your superiors).  I couldn't agree more that intelligence "… is nearly always at least partially wrong (but more often than not, just right enough to be useful, with care) …"; which, in my view results in a Pollyannaish view of the world not only by the right (ala Trumpism), but also by the left (ala green BAU-ism).  Most examples of "leadership" that I read about to address world challenges include at best half-baked mitigation measures w.r.t. climate change. 

As you point-out wisdom comes from experience, but in a world characterized by accelerating change (ala the 4th Industrial Revolution, increasing nationalism/populism, increasing world population, and of course non-linearly accelerating climate change); it is paramount to adopt a Bayesian worldview that is constantly up-dated with new information to create new wisdom.

Modern leadership (as opposed to narcissistic Trump-like populism) requires constant Bayesian feedback and accountability as our past leaders new that no one would hold them accountable for their climate change short-comings (note that significant climate change damage is already baked into the Earth Systems based on these past short-comings and future leaders will need to address these impacts while addressing continuing anthropogenic radiative forcing).  In a capitalistic system money is intended to provide an "invisible hand" to result in a sustainable balance of supply and demand; however, in the crony capitalism of the world economic system money is the root of all evil as it disassociates cause from effect and isolates the powerful from accountability. 

Thus if we are going to reduce the impacts of the short-comings of our current leaders (TPTB); one needs to reduce our over dependence on money (with its corrupting influence) to pick winner and instead to focus on constantly updated/calibrated information as light to dispel the darkness of egotistical/arrogant ignorance.  Further, in light of climate change uncertainties we collectively (leadership) need to focus on risk management including consideration of Donald Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns, rather than on the application of simple Frequentist logic to a chaotic world.  This will not only require leadership accountability but also, media responsibility to maintain information integrity and scientific responsiveness to monitoring and acknowledging our rapidly changing Earth Systems (see also discussion in the "Systemic Isolation" thread.

Best regards,
ASLR

Edit, see also my replies in the "Empire - America and the future" thread.
« Last Edit: December 20, 2016, 12:35:07 AM by AbruptSLR »
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #196 on: December 20, 2016, 10:27:09 AM »
Further, in light of climate change uncertainties we collectively (leadership) need to focus on risk management including consideration of Donald Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns, rather than on the application of simple Frequentist logic to a chaotic world.

Maybe scientists could use a meme of Inspector Harry Callahan to help explain our climate risks to the policymakers (particularly to Trump) by saying:

"I know what you're thinking: "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?"

Edit: I note that the IPCC's AR5 does not even define an upper-bound scenario (RPC 8.5 is not an upper bound, e.g. it does not include Hansen's ice-climate interaction, and many other reasonably plausible positive feedback mechanisms) so that policymaker could appreciate that they are staring down the barrel of the "most powerful handgun in the world".
« Last Edit: December 20, 2016, 05:55:14 PM by AbruptSLR »
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #197 on: December 20, 2016, 09:34:36 PM »
The linked article is entitled: "Climate Change Skepticism Fueled by Gut Reaction to Local Weather".  It looks like until the weather gets "bad" enough politician's feet will not be held to the climate change fire by the general US public.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-skepticism-fueled-by-gut-reaction-to-local-weather/

If it’s hot outside, you’re more likely to believe in climate change.

Extract: "The public’s perception of global warming is shaped by the weather that people experience".
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #198 on: December 28, 2016, 10:45:13 PM »
The linked article is entitled: "This one weird trick will not convince conservatives to fight climate change", and it hints that only issues of money, power & material interests will convince denialists to change their tune.

http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/12/28/14074214/climate-denialism-social

Extract: "How can conservative elites be persuaded to think and communicate differently about climate change? That’s a subject for another post, but here’s a spoiler: The answer won’t be found in clever arguments or skillful persuasion, but in money, power, and material interests."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 19703
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2268
  • Likes Given: 286
Re: Human Stupidity
« Reply #199 on: December 30, 2016, 07:57:06 AM »
Denialist thinking parallels that of naughty children who want to negotiate new boundaries with their parents.  In all such negotiations, the party that cares the least has the most power; which, is why all denialist actions are all about power and not necessarily about logic.  Thus to accelerate progress in the fight against climate change it is advisable to treat denialist like children, as discussed in the linked article:

The linked article is entitled: "Kids are Great Negotiators".

http://www.scotwork.com.au/insight/negotiation-tips/kids-are-great-negotiators/

Extract: "It turns out that children are natural negotiators and that adults are too, but we have lost this skill during our everyday activities and the confrontations we have during our lives.

… The first is to get creative … Make sure you are consistent … When you are negotiating get used to the other side saying no and actually welcome it. It shows that you are pushing hard for the deal … Watch out for hollow threats. They destroy all your credibility … Ask lots of questions."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson