Reposted from Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.
Posted on March 25, 2019 by curryja
by Judith Curry
“For decades, scientists and policymakers have framed the climate-policy debate in a simple way: scientists analyse long-term goals, and policymakers pretend to honour them. Those days are over. Serious climate policy must focus more on the near-term and on feasibility.” – Y. Xu, V. Ramanathan, D. Victor
On twitter, Joe Duarte drew my attention to an editorial published in Nature: Global warming will happen faster than we think.
No surprise that the article sounds the ‘alarm’, accelerated warming, speeding freight train, and all that.
Towards the end of the article, the authors make some very astute recommendations regarding climate policy, which is reproduced in its entirety:
Four Fronts
“Scientists and policymakers must rethink their roles, objectives and approaches on four fronts.
Assess science in the near term. Policymakers should ask the IPCC for another special report, this time on the rates of climate change over the next 25 years. The panel should also look beyond the physical science itself and assess the speed at which political systems can respond, taking into account pressures to maintain the status quo from interest groups and bureaucrats. Researchers should improve climate models to describe the next 25 years in more detail, including the latest data on the state of the oceans and atmosphere, as well as natural cycles. They should do more to quantify the odds and impacts of extreme events. The evidence will be hard to muster, but it will be more useful in assessing real climate dangers and responses.
Rethink policy goals. Warming limits, such as the 1.5 °C goal, should be recognized as broad planning tools. Too often they are misconstrued as physical thresholds around which to design policies. The excessive reliance on ‘negative emissions technologies’ (that take up CO2) in the IPCC special report shows that it becomes harder to envision realistic policies the closer the world gets to such limits. It’s easy to bend models on paper, but much harder to implement real policies that work.
Realistic goals should be set based on political and social trade-offs, not just on geophysical parameters. They should come out of analyses of costs, benefits and feasibility. Assessments of these trade-offs must be embedded in the Paris climate process, which needs a stronger compass to guide its evaluations of how realistic policies affect emissions. Better assessment can motivate action but will also be politically controversial: it will highlight gaps between what countries say they will do to control emissions, and what needs to be achieved collectively to limit warming. Information about trade-offs must therefore come from outside the formal intergovernmental process — from national academies of sciences, subnational partnerships and non-governmental organizations.
Design strategies for adaptation. The time for rapid adaptation has arrived. Policymakers need two types of information from scientists to guide their responses. First, they need to know what the potential local impacts will be at the scales of counties to cities. Some of this information could be gleaned by combining fine-resolution climate impact assessments with artificial intelligence for ‘big data’ analyses of weather extremes, health, property damage and other variables. Second, policymakers need to understand uncertainties in the ranges of probable climate impacts and responses. Even regions that are proactive in setting adaptation policies, such as California, lack information about the ever-changing risks of extreme warming, fires and rising seas. Research must be integrated across fields and stakeholders — urban planners, public-health management, agriculture and ecosystem services. Adaptation strategies should be adjustable if impacts unfold differently. More planning and costing is needed around the worst-case outcomes.
Understand options for rapid response. Climate assessments must evaluate quick ways of lessening climate impacts, such as through reducing emissions of methane, soot (or black carbon) and HFCs. Per tonne, these three ‘super pollutants’ have 25 to thousands of times the impact of CO2. Their atmospheric lifetimes are short — in the range of weeks (for soot) to about a decade (for methane and HFCs). Slashing these pollutants would potentially halve the warming trend over the next 25 years.”
JC reflections
Although these recommendations come from a position of ‘alarm’, I agree with each of these recommendations, since each can be justified in terms of ‘no regrets’ actions.
I most particularly agree with the first recommendation on focusing on climate variability/change over the next 25 years. This is the time scale that is of greatest relevance for city/regional planning and for industry/enterprise. While recognizing the key importance of natural climate variability on this time scale, the authors miss what is likely to be the most significant event during this period: a transition to the cold phase of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.
The second recommendation recognizes the farce of the current international policy on emissions reductions.
Adaptation makes a lot of sense, and the adaptation objectives are mostly the same whether the cause of the extreme events or trend is caused by humans or nature.
And finally, the climate rapid response plan. I don’t know why this hasn’t received more traction, particularly related to soot.
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Of course the IPCC would love it! Send more money! Send lots more money!
And haven’t we been told that the current models can’t be used on a regional scale or short time periods? Of course they will say “We need better models, so send lots, lots more money.”
I say don’t give them another dime.
Gee, Judith, you may be blinded by just being a climate scientist. You rebelled to your credit and your cost, but what you rebelled against was only an iceberg tip that is the sciency part. The real Leviathin is what so-called climate science is fronting for.
Basically all the “research” done by the consensus is not science at all. Worse, I think many of its purveyors, possibly you, are (were?) unaware that they are serving a master with plans for us all that has nothing whatever to do with climate or concern for the planet, people, wildlife, forests, etc. The masters have even come out of the shadows enough for all to know climate ain’t really the point.
How is IPCC or the Wizard of Oz going to give us the guidance being asked for. Svante Arhenius, Tyndall in the 19th Century and Guy Calendar and Exxon scientists in the 20th, gave us a fair foundation to work from. Guy Callandar, a steam engineer in the 20s and 30s gave us a model that’s still the closest to today’s observations! Exxon scientists gave us an ECS of 1.5C but even argued that clouds and other agencies could make this less.
What kind of a science with hundreds of billions spent and tens of trillions laid out to combat a problem that hasn’t manifested itself, a science that has not progressed, has not refined and honed in on better numbers for the CO2 effect, has ignored natural variation which we know to be much greater than anything we’ve had to deal with today, has purposefully destroyed the database so that it’s useless for discovering real effects?
Nothing like having Trump beginning to set up a group to definitively investigate all this and arrive at real conclusions to have the status quo tripping over themselves to belatedly try get ahead of the parade. Gee, Judy its much worse than you think.
The greenhouse gases theory is so flawed, so based on wrong assumptions and misused theories that the first thing to do should be to evaluate its very basics particularly with respect to quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, radiative heat transfer and liable measured data such as the Earth’s energy budget.
My opinion, based on the confrontation of this theory with basic science and measured data, is that this scientific tragedy deserves to be thrown in the trash with all the CO2 based policies and that climate science needs to go back to the drawing board.
Some very basic questions :
– what is the only way for the atmosphere to lose heat into space (there is neither convection nor conduction in the vacuum) ?
– given the atmosphere temperatures range (from 150 K to 320 K), if any, in which spectral region does it radiate heat ?
– what are the only components which absorb / emit in atmospheric radiative heat spectral region* ?
– does the atmosphere comply to the Stefan – Boltzmann law or should we take into account each absorption / emission band of each atmospheric component in order to study its radiation properties* ?
– how can the atmosphere be warmed by the only components that allow it to radiate heat into space in the infrared spectrum** ?
*see Modest 2003, Radiative Heat Transfer, or Kondratyev 1969, Radiation in the atmosphere.
**According to Kiehl & Trenberth 1997 or NASA Earth energy budget 2009, the atmosphere radiates 165 to 170 W/m² into space in the infrared spectrum, which is much more than the 17 to 26W/m² it absorbs from the surface upward infrared radiative flux.
The one thing I can’t reconcile from the alarmist side and the political class is their utter and complete lack of concrete action to either reduce greenhouse gas emissions or implement a course of action to mitigate the most dire impacts of climate change.
If people really, truly believed in their core that climate change was an imminent and existential threat to humanity, we would be building nuclear reactors with abandon. There is simply no conceivable way that solar and wind power can fuel a modern economy. The sheer volume of land needed to build enough solar farms and wind turbines simply eliminates this as a real option. Yet many, if not most alarmists, dismiss nuclear out of hand.
Governments around the world spend trillions on climate research, subsidies for renewables and all kinds of questionable schemes, but I don’t see anyone building sea walls, or investing in projects to thin out the deadfall that make forest fires more dangerous. How much money is government spending on research to build better batteries? Is it even a fraction of the money spend on climate research?
If people really, truly thought climate change was an existential threat, we wouldn’t be spending trillions on things that don’t make a difference. We would be taking concrete steps to address the issue in a meaningful way.
People can talk, talk, talk, but I won’t believe they truly see climate change as a threat until they actually take steps to address the issues in a meaningful way. When I see governments investing in engineering projects to mitigate the impacts of climate change that’s when I’ll believe they actually see it as a threat. When I see people taking concrete steps to reduce their own carbon footprint that’s when I’ll believe they actually believe in the propaganda they foist on the rest of us.
If we look at the actions of governments and the most influential alarmists, this tells us what they truly think of the issue.
Go and get yourselves a bucket of water and a heat gun. Aim the the heat gun at the surface of the water and tell me if your kitchen fills with steam. Enough said.
“Some of this information could be gleaned by combining fine-resolution climate impact assessments with artificial intelligence for ‘big data’ analysis of weather extremes, health, property damage and other variables.”
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Again, the impossible creation of an independent artificial intelligence
gets equated to make, dress, manage a dependent, quasi remote-controlled machine.
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conducting a dishonest course of science.
Sometimes I read comments like
“02.03.2019 · From Dr. Roy Spencer’s blog , March 1st, 2019 by Roy W.
… Are you pushing Nikolov-Zeller hypotheses Johann?
___________________________________________________
Be assured I’m not pushing hypotheses but citating NASA-Websites like
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6605
:
Not all Jupiters are created equal
Juno’s detailed examination of Jupiter could provide insights into the history, and future, of our solar system. The tally of confirmed exoplanets so far includes hundreds in Jupiter’s size-range, and many more that are larger or smaller.
The so-called hot Jupiters acquired their name for a reason: They are in tight orbits around their stars that make them sizzling-hot, completing a full revolution — the planet’s entire year — in what would be a few days on Earth. And they’re charbroiled along the way.
But why does our solar system lack a “hot Jupiter?” Or is this, perhaps, the fate awaiting our own Jupiter billions of years from now — could it gradually spiral toward the sun, or might the swollen future sun expand to engulf it?
Not likely, Ciardi says; such planetary migrations probably occur early in the life of a solar system.
“In order for migration to occur, there needs to be dusty material within the system,” he said. “Enough to produce drag. That phase of migration is long since over for our solar system.”
Jupiter itself might already have migrated from farther out in the solar system, although no one really knows, he said.
“Climate assessments must evaluate quick ways of lessening climate impacts, such as through reducing emissions of methane, soot (or black carbon) and HFCs. Per tonne, these three ‘super pollutants’ have 25 to thousands of times the impact of CO2. Their atmospheric lifetimes are short — in the range of weeks (for soot) to about a decade (for methane and HFCs). Slashing these pollutants would potentially halve the warming trend over the next 25 years.”
___________________________________________________
“Researchers demand more modern filters
Federal Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks (SPD) rejected the criticism in the world on Sunday. Germany is one of the few countries in the world to have mercury limits, Hendricks said. These would be lowered continuously. “Germany has been working to re-launch low EU limits, including the reservations of our EU partners, who were not all ready to lower and monitor mercury emissions,” Hendricks said. But further mitigation measures are necessary. ”
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Former German Minister of the Environment, Barbara Hendricks, declares that German coal-fired power stations are no longer producing “environmentally harmful” mercury.
Of course, “polluting” soot, “long-lived” methane and similar “pollutants” have long since been regulated.
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To avoid misunderstandings:
Barbara Hendricks was and is a “died in the wool” “climate protector”.
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https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-samsung&ei=3EOiXNXiIOqsrgT1gLzIDw&q=Barbara+Hendricks+Kohlekraftwerke+Quecksilber+russ&oq=Barbara+Hendricks+Kohlekraftwerke+Quecksilber+russ&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.