Julie Brigham-Grette, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Andrea Dutton, University of Wisconsin-Madison
While U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken draws attention to climate change in the Arctic at meetings with other national officials this week in Iceland, an even greater threat looms on the other side of the planet.
New research shows it is Antarctica that may force a reckoning between the choices countries make today about greenhouse gas emissions and the future survival of their coastlines and coastal cities, from New York to Shanghai.
That reckoning may come much sooner than people realize.
The Arctic is losing ice as global temperatures rise, and that is directly affecting lives and triggering feedback loops that fuel more warming. But the big wild card for sea level rise is Antarctica. It holds enough land ice to raise global sea levels by more than 200 feet (60 meters) – roughly 10 times the amount in the Greenland ice sheet – and we’re already seeing signs of trouble.
Scientists have long known that the Antarctic ice sheet has physical tipping points, beyond which ice loss can accelerate out of control. The new study, published in the journal Nature, finds that the Antarctica ice sheet could reach a critical tipping point in a few decades, when today’s elementary school kids are raising their families.
The results mean a common argument for not reducing greenhouse gas emissions now – that future technological advancement can save us later – is likely to fail.
The new study shows that if emissions continue at their current pace, by about 2060 the Antarctic ice sheet will have crossed a critical threshold and committed the world to sea level rise that is not reversible on human timescales. Pulling carbon dioxide out of the air at that point won’t stop the ice loss, it shows, and by 2100, sea level could be rising more than 10 times faster than today.
The tipping point
Antarctica has several protective ice shelves that fan out into the ocean ahead of the continent’s constantly flowing glaciers, slowing the land-based glaciers’ flow to the sea. But those shelves can thin and break up as warmer water moves in under them.
As ice shelves break up, that can expose towering ice cliffs that may not be able to stand on their own.
There are two potential instabilities at this point. Parts of the Antarctic ice sheet are grounded below sea level on bedrock that slopes inward toward the center of the continent, so warming ocean water can eat around their lower edges, destabilizing them and causing them to retreat downslope rapidly. Above the water, surface melting and rain can open fractures in the ice.
When the ice cliffs get too tall to support themselves, they can collapse catastrophically, accelerating the rate of ice flow to the ocean.
The study used computer modeling based on the physics of ice sheets and found that above 2 C (3.6 F) of warming, Antarctica will see a sharp jump in ice loss, triggered by the rapid loss of ice through the massive Thwaites Glacier. This glacier drains an area the size of Florida or Britain and is the focus of intense study by U.S. and U.K. scientists.
To put this in context, the planet is on track to exceed 2 C warming under countries’ current policies.
Other projections don’t account for ice cliff instability and generally arrive at lower estimates for the rate of sea level rise. While much of the press coverage that followed the new paper’s release focused on differences between these two approaches, both reach the same fundamental conclusions: The magnitude of sea level rise can be drastically reduced by meeting the Paris Agreement targets, and physical instabilities in the Antarctic ice sheet can lead to rapid acceleration in sea level rise.
The disaster doesn’t stop in 2100
The new study, led by Robert DeConto, David Pollard and Richard Alley, is one of the few that looks beyond this century. One of us is a co-author.
It shows that if today’s high emissions continued unabated through 2100, sea level rise would explode, exceeding 2.3 inches (6 cm) per year by 2150. By 2300, sea level would be 10 times higher than it is expected to be if countries meet the Paris Agreement goals. A warmer and softer ice sheet and a warming ocean holding its heat for centuries all prevent refreezing of Antarctica’s protective ice shelves, leading to a very different world.
The vast majority of the pathways for meeting the Paris Agreement expect emissions will overshoot its goals of keeping warming under 1.5 C (2.7 F) or 2 C (3.6 F), and then count on future advances in technology to remove enough carbon dioxide from the air later to lower the temperature again. The rest require a 50% cut in emissions globally by 2030.
Although a majority of countries – including the U.S., U.K. and European Union – have set that as a goal, current policies globally would result in just a 1% reduction by 2030.
It’s all about reducing emissions quickly
Some other researchers suggest that ice cliffs in Antarctica might not collapse as quickly as those in Greenland. But given their size and current rates of warming – far faster than in the historic record – what if they instead collapse more quickly?
As countries prepare to increase their Paris Agreement pledges in the runup to a United Nations meeting in November, Antarctica has three important messages that we would like to highlight as polar and ocean scientists.
First, every fraction of a degree matters.
Second, allowing global warming to overshoot 2 C is not a realistic option for coastal communities or the global economy. The comforting prospect of technological fixes allowing a later return to normal is an illusion that will leave coastlines under many feet of water, with devastating economic impacts.
Third, policies today must take the long view, because they can have irreversible impacts for Antarctica’s ice and the world. Over the past decades, much of the focus on rapid climate change has been on the Arctic and its rich tapestry of Indigenous cultures and ecosystems that are under threat.
As scientists learn more about Antarctica, it is becoming clear that it is this continent – with no permanent human presence at all – that will determine the state of the planet where today’s children and their children will live.
[Understand new developments in science, health and technology, each week. Subscribe to The Conversation’s science newsletter.]
Julie Brigham-Grette, Professor of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Andrea Dutton, Professor of Geoscience, University of Wisconsin-Madison
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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went to moderation
(I was here an hour ago, saw one post in the mod bin and it wasn’t yours, none at all at this time) SUMOD
Probably because you used the “D” word. I wish the ‘bad word’ filter wasn’t so sensitive. Maybe Anthony could give those of us who have demonstrated that we are not raving trolls, a pass on filtering. Long-term, it would mean less work for the moderators and more timely responses.
Thanks. … or in the ‘Reference Pages’ have a list of such words.
I think there are two word lists. One for WUWT and one that WordPress uses. Anthony said earlier that he has no control over the list WordPress uses.
it would be interesting to see a list of barred words.
Only two I’ve run into so far are contained within “sk!lled” and “Sc*nthorpe” (the town with the problem)
And either of those words would hit moderation too, because apparently WP has that town’s problem too, a shame in this day…
Model mania. All based on high emission scenarios with high forcings.
This Conversation piece is based on this Nature article:
“The Paris Climate Agreement and future sea-level rise from Antarctica”
Abstract:
Several points:
Their Reference #8 I looked at a bit more in detail.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17145#Sec21
It’s a study (by DeConto of course, the first author of this paper) where their future sea level rise associated ice sheet melt rates come from the use of RCP 8.5 forcing scenario. Wholly unrealistic junk.
So when they start with junk and then build upon it with more junk. The junk science on top depends on the junk science supporting it. It’s simply junk science all the way down through nested layers of well-known crap science scenario modeling.
In other words, they took output from a model and used that as input, maybe even as data, in this model, to produce exactly the answer they intended to produce before they ever even started.
and they used the recognized unrealistic high forcing scenario RCP8.5. And then they slapped a science label on it. Calling this science doesn’t make it so.
“So when they start with junk and then build upon it with more junk. The junk science on top depends on the junk science supporting it. It’s simply junk science all the way down through nested layers of well-known crap science scenario modeling.”
You just described Alarmist Climate Science.
The alarmists started out with an unsubstantiated assumption about CO2 and the Earth’s atmosphere, and it has gone downhill from there. Junk built upon Junk.
Ice below sea level cannot raise sea level any more than floating ice can.
So their models say ice cliffs are getting too tall. And that the sea ice is sticking out into the Ocean too far. And so both might collapse.
There is another inference to be drawn from cliffs of ice growing taller.
Here is RSS on South Polar temps since 1980.
I left the following comment at The Conversation:
One of the authors responded thusly:
I responded to her with:
Being in ‘No Man’s Land,’ I took some fire from some more aggressive defenders of the authors.
The other point to make is whose SUVs and power plants were generating GHG emission-warming in those earlier interglacials? The point being: if CO2 didn’t causethe melt-back in the deep past, it likely won’t be the cause if it happens again in the future.
Don’t hold your breath for those studies of Greenlands ice during previous interglacials. Even a cursory glance at the cross section through the ice sheet showing the relative ages of the ice layers indicate that previous interglacials were far warmer than ours and have been getting progressively cooler during at least the last 3 of them. That’s not the message these climate enthusiasts want you to have.
Nice one Clyde, she’s probably still picking up bits of her brain off the floor.
[QUOTE FROM ARTICLE]”Parts of the Antarctic ice sheet are grounded below sea level on bedrock that slopes inward toward the center of the continent, so warming ocean water can eat around their lower edges, destabilizing them and causing them to retreat downslope rapidly. Above the water, surface melting and rain can open fractures in the ice.” [END QUOTE]
Where is the evidence that ocean water near the Antarctic ice sheet is warming? Sea ice around Antarctica has been increasing in year-to-year comparisons at the same date.
If “warm” (i.e. less cold) water did result in some melting, the latent heat required to melt the ice would be absorbed from nearby water, causing it to cool. The heat required to melt 1 kg of ice can cool 80 kg of water by 1 degree C. If an “ice cliff” at the edge of the glacier did break off and fall into the sea, the heat required to melt the resulting iceberg would cool down much of the surrounding water and prevent further melting of the edge of the glacier.
Most of Antarctica is at more than 70 degrees south latitude. How much “rain” would the Antarctic coast receive even in summer to open fractures in the ice? Wouldn’t these cracks be refilled by ample snowfall during autumn and winter, then re-frozen?
In the Arctic, relatively warm water from the Atlantic can flow northward into the Arctic through the space between eastern Greenland and Scandinavia, which can warm the Arctic waters north of Scandinavia and western Russia, while cold water returns southward through the Bering Strait (into the Pacific) and between Labrador and western Greenland (the cold Labrador Current). Of the land which mostly surrounds the Arctic, only Greenland is glaciated, while the northern coasts of Russia, Alaska, and Canada are snow-free in summer, and can absorb sunlight and warm the Arctic waters near the coasts.
Antarctica, however, is a polar island continent, with no path for warm water to flow under the land-based ice, analogous to Greenland. If any warm water approached the Antarctic coast, an equal volume of cold water would be displaced northward, which would cool the surrounding ocean. Most of the area between 40 and 65 degrees South latitude around the world is covered by water, with very few land masses (only the southern end of South America and the Antarctic Peninsula and a few small islands), so that ocean water (and storms) tend to circle Antarctica from west to east unimpeded, with little flow of warmer water southward from lower latitudes. During the southern hemisphere summer, the mid-latitude ocean reflects most of the sunlight, with little warming of the oceans. Where would all the warm water come from to melt the edges of the Antarctic ice cap?
Above average actually:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
Perhaps from the 90+ volcanoes and the southern extension of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge Spreading Center.
And of course those recently discovered volcanoes are all emitting CO2 under the ice. So when the bubbles in the ice are analyzed….. where did that CO2 in the bubbles actually come from?
They only have anecdotal statements and single samples for what’s going on under the ice shelves. But they are willing to let you think they have the same quality of continuous data found in other systems and settings.
“Here we use an observationally calibrated ice sheet…..”
There are 12 reference citations in the abstract and a claim that the Paris agreement implementation targets have not been “directly tested with physics-based models.” There is no data or summary of same in the abstract, only conclusions with numbers. Always check the fine print hidden way down in the paper.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03427-0
Is it a review or some sort of conglomeration?
I stop reading any article that uses expressions void of any rigorous scientific definition, like “tipping point”, “forcing”, “runaway”, etc.
From where I stand, these expressions and words indicate that someone is trying to push an ideia into my head.
So many words. So little knowledge and understanding.
For openers, the GCMs are faulty. Besides Christy’s graph showing GCM calculated temperature increase rates averaging about twice measured, measured water vapor increase is about 43% more than the GCMs calculate. WV has been increasing faster than possible from planet warming which demonstrates that CO2 change does not cause climate change. https://watervaporandwarming.blogspot.com
Please stop this global warming nonsense. What we really want to know is why The Pentagon thinks UFOs may exist after all… and the evidence is growing”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/21/ufo-uap-aliens-report-sightings-us-government-encounters
Well it’s one way to divert attention away from what you’re really up to.
“Don’t look at the men with their hands in the till – look at the alien spaceships!”
It is interesting that the subject gets little attention. I guess we are too busy looking for radical white supremacist Trump supporters ready to spring another insurrection.
I have a hypothesis about the recent UFO incidents – and for that matter many UFO incidents. I suspect we are witnessing plasma phenomenon. In the lab, plasma takes on geometric shapes, it moves (following flows of ions), changes modes (glow, dark), and can do the things we see these UFOs doing. Plasma tufts or plasmoids are visible to the naked eye, would be detected by IR and likely radar. It would explain the extreme acceleration that no known lifeform or physical object could survive. If its energy moving, like a light beam, there is no mass to accelerate. Its simple the movement of charged particles or the z-pinch in a flow of ions. It could also explain the apparent teleportation – disappearing at one point and reappearing elsewhere. This can be explained by the plasma leaving glow mode, going to dark mode and the z-pinch going to glow mode somewhere else along the ion stream.
I just found this article that supports my hypothesis.
VERY INTERESTING!
U.S. Navy Laser Creates Plasma ‘UFOs’
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/05/11/us-navy-laser-creates-plasma-ufos/?sh=52a4a55f1074
More:
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/07/19/pentagon-scientists-are-making-talking-plasma-laser-balls-for-use-as-non-lethal-weapons/
I think it’s likely that plasma phenomena happen naturally and can explain most of the UFO observations. But the fact there are military programs to utilize plasma to create the illusion is essential to know!
All who care about the future of technology must look to advancements in plasma physics. So much lies therein, including great potential for alternate sources of energy.
I also suspect ion/plasma flows between the Earth and the Sun – which is just beginning to be studied – may play a role in climate, and have a non-trivial role in climate variation over time.
It’s all about the narrative
Is anyone else as exhausted as I am with these nonsensical pseudo-scientific predictions? The claims are utter rubbish. There is little to no net annual ice mass loss from warming air temperatures. The total Ice mass on the continent can decline simply because the yearly snowfall is less than the annual ice mass loss. Ice is created in only one way: snowfall. Ice mass can be lost in 4 ways.
1) Calving – ice falls into the sea due to new snow at higher elevations pushing thousand-year-old ice into the sea.
2) Sublimation – ice evaporating – transitioning from the solid to the gaseous state. Ice cubes in your freezer do this.
3) Solar radiation melting – direct exposure to sunlight causes melting, and the meltwater can evaporate or run into the sea.
4) Ambient temperature melting with the meltwater evaporating or running into the sea.
Ice mass loss in Antarctica has little to do with warming temperatures. The average temperature in the center of the continent (where most of the ice mass is) is -57C. It rarely exceeds 0C, even on the coasts.
The NASA JPL study from 2018 claims ice mass loss acceleration, but the data analysis shows the “acceleration” was from 1ppm/yr to 4ppm/yr. I calculated that if Antarctica were a 220lb man, the equivalent mass loss would be 8 human tears. That analogy should frame the utter absurdity of this subject.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2749/ramp-up-in-antarctic-ice-loss-speeds-sea-level-rise/?fbclid=IwAR2Vnkbxxa-NTU_v0lRUUGGDffMs4Q6BGvHX-KHzcHM7-q2B7IO59wCEiQc
But an application of fundamental physics provides for even more entertainment. We know that the air above 2.5km has an average temperature below 0C. So no thermal energy exists in the atmosphere above 2.5km that could possibly cause melting. The average air temperature between sea level and 2.5km is ~8C. A generous estimate of thermal energy can be obtained using this value and the mass of the atmosphere in that band. For every 1C of atmospheric thermal energy we exchange with the ice sheets, we can at most cause 0.4 inches of SLR. So if we exchange all of the energy in the atmosphere above 0C with the ice sheets, we can at most raise sea level by 3.4 inches. The global air temperature will now be at or below 0C, which is 4-6C colder than the coldest average temperature during a glacial maximum.
Indeed, the thermal energy in the oceans is sufficient to melt all of the ice. But we have the problem that there is no way this thermal energy will ever get to any significant portion of the ice. Unless the temperature gradients completely collapse, we have to contend with warming the interior of Antarctica from -57C avg to something significantly above 0C. It’s a preposterous scenario.
We have “scientists” with no education or experience in structural engineering whinging about Marine Ice Cliff Instability (MICI) possibilities. We know that the waters around Antarctica are very cold, and large icebergs can float around the continent for over 30 years before melting. In a hypothetical scenario where a “catastrophic” amount of ice “collapsed,” the likely scenario is that the ice would slump – filling fissures but remain grounded and in place. Why do scientists forget that ice floats with 90% underwater & 10% above the waterline? The ice is too tall in elevation to float. It will be grounded unless it breaks up into relatively small fragments. We are dealing with a mass of ice the size of the US east coast and over 3km tall. Are we to believe it will shatter into shards small enough to float?
If a large amount were to achieve floating status, it would likely ground before long in shallower water. If it continued to float and consume thermal energy from the water, that would not happen without consequence. There is only so much thermal energy transported to that area, and it would quickly be consumed, reducing melting potential elsewhere.
I rarely read the updated reports on these situations because they are entirely without scientific merit. The real issue now is to realize we are (and have been) in an information war that underpins a REALITY WAR. WE ARE IN A WAR TO DEFINE REALITY, and the climate crisis nonsense is one of the battlefronts.
Every major point of contention in our world today is sourced from the same root of evil. Are we witnessing violent, destructive and aimless riots, or are we witnessing peaceful protests as honorable expressions of American Democracy? Did we have the safest elections in the nation’s history, or was the election stolen out from under our noses while the perpetrators gave us the middle finger? Is our nation a racist, white-supremacist hell-hole, or is it a beautiful experiment in Liberty that doesn’t always live up to its potential because humans are fallible? Will Elon Musk create a million jobs on Mars, or is it likely that we will kill many people trying to put foot on the planet before giving up on the absurdity? Are we near climate catastrophe and another global mass extinction, or is the climate barely distinguishable from natural variability? Do we have a situation where the entire population was in dire jeopardy from a virus or was that risk very narrowly isolated to specific populations? Did they produce a safe “vaccine” in 9 months where 15 years would be the normal expectation, or are we being forced into a dangerous medical experiment with who knows what malicious agendas might be operating?
On each of these issues, ask yourself which side supports our system of Liberty and which supports totalitarian control. I have made all of the scientific arguments against climate alarmism I care to make. The other side is not listening. It isn’t the goal to listen. In each of these issues, the goal is to terrify people to give up power and freedom. Those who refuse to be terrified will be defunded, ridiculed, and shunned from academia and polite society. It’s time to stop debating. Science is not the issue. Science has long ago been the casualty in this war, and if there is “denial,” it is the denial of this fact. It’s time to fight this like the war it is. Either win it or lose. If we don’t organize and push back on all of these lies, then all is lost. My political opponents come out of the womb with a bayonet in hand, ready to fight for a cause. People on my side are not natural organizers and activists. But it’s time to learn from the enemy. Stop debating and start fighting. Peacefully and politically, of course. (At least for now). If you enjoy the parlor game of debating climate, then realize that is what you are doing. You are playing games while your enemies are weaving you into an evil future reality. Evil is defined as doing great harm in the name of doing great good. Our enemies are truly evil, and if they win, it’s because our side refuses to wake up and fight the war.
Welcome back, William!
🙂
Don’t get me wrong, as I’m the first to say that the climate “crisis” is a scam, but the temperature (energy) in the atmosphere isn’t a one-time thing that took many years to warm up. It isn’t like you can calculate the energy that the air gains by warming 1C and transfer that to ice thus figuring out how much ice can be melted. The atmosphere gains and loses heat quickly, it warms and cools many degrees per day. It gains heat from the sun and the warmer surface and it loses it to space by radiating and convecting heat to cooler surfaces. It’s actually more complicated than that but if you transferred enough heat in the atmosphere to ice to cool the atmosphere by 1C, the atmosphere would decrease the amount of energy radiating to space and it would just quickly heat up again providing more energy to melt more ice.
When heat is transferred from the atmosphere to the ice, there is no net change of energy on Earth. I’m not aware of any mechanism in physics that would cause it to “quickly heat up again.”
What I described is fundamental physics/chemistry. Its routinely used in the lab and
works at all scales. So, yes, you can calculate the atmospheric cooling that would take place for a given amount of ice melting and vice versa.
Since 1900, net of all variables, the surface temperature has increased 1C, and the sea level has risen by 1.5 inches. If none of the ice had melted, the atmosphere would be 4C warmer because the energy to melt 1.5 inches of SLR is equal to the energy to raise the surface temperature by 4C. Therefore, the energy “consumed” by the ice was 4x the energy “retained” by the atmosphere over the past century. We observed a 4:1 ratio of consumed heat to retained heat. It is reasonable to assume a similar ratio in the future, absent a good explanation of why it shouldn’t be.
The IPCC forecasts a 3C surface temperature rise this century. If the 4:1 ratio we observed last century is maintained, then it equates to a 4.5 inch SLR this century. In one scenario, the IPCC forecasts 2m SLR this century. With a 3C temperature rise, that equates to a 70:1 ratio of consumed to retained heat. What could explain the deviation from our observations last century? Melting 2m of SLR would require over 50x the energy being transferred to the ice this century. That is enough energy to heat the atmosphere by 200C! Of course, that can’t happen, but it would be possible for a constant flow of heat to transfer from the atmosphere to the ice such that the energy was consumed. The temperatures in Antarctica must rise significantly above 0C for much of the year over most of the continent. We see no indication of this.
The massive ice melt scenarios are not even remotely possible over a short time. Fundamental physics applies here, and it can set us free. We have a century of observations to guide us, but we are being asked to disregard them and instead adopt ridiculous models that fail the fundamentals. But as I said, this isn’t about physics. It’s about control and domination. It’s up to us now to tell Climate Alarmists to get lost.
The atmosphere heats and cools several degrees per day. That’s quick. How? The sun.
By the way, I taught Thermodynamics at a major university for years.
Yes, Antarctica is well below freezing nearly everywhere, nearly all of the time. Ice loss or gain is a function of snow fall and calving of icebergs. That’s also true for Greenland .
Actually, there is a fair amount of melting taking place at the lower elevations of the Greenland Ice Sheet in the Summer. There are photos of the melt-water streams on the surface. When I was there (near Thule AB) in 1966, I observed that the slush on the surface was coherent enough to support the weight of an Arctic Fox, but when I threw some cobbles out onto the slush, they sank a couple of feet into it.
And there’s Nansen Falls in Antarctica. This is the #3 Solar radiation melting mentioned in William Ward’s post. You can observe this in most places that receive winter snow. The sun melts snow on the roof, and icicles form in the cold air.
Sea level has been rising since record keeping began in the early 19th century, and the water has to be coming from somewhere. The ice caps and glaciers are a good bet for that. See #1 in Ward’s post. More ice calves into the sea than falls as snow in the interior.
The various IPCC reports distinguish between surface ice melt and ice loss. The ice caps may be losing ice, but it’s not due to temperature. It’s the press that leads its readers to believe the ice loss is due to melting. The reposted article from “The Conversation” with the head line “…catastrophic melting…” is testimony to that.
By the way, sea level rise due to thermal expansion is local, if the middle of the Pacific Ocean warms up during an El Niño it won’t cause sea level to increase in New York harbor.
One should not dismiss decades of recent sea level change being caused by small shifts in the volume of the container in which the oceans sit. We know that sea mounts form, we know that sea floors spread, we know that these factors can change that available volume holding the seas, yet for the sake of spinning a story about climate change we close our eyes like children told that Santa does not exist. What strange, anti-science behavior! Geoff S
Here’s the money shot:
“We build on previous work by improving a hybrid ice sheet–shelf model … using the NCAR Community Earth System Model. We test the future response of the AIS to scenarios representing +1.5 °C and +2 °C global warming limits, a +3 °C scenario representing current policies and extended RCP emissions scenarios. (my underline)“
Yet another models all the way down study, relying on climate models that have no predictive value.
Nature (London) needs a new name: Nature (crock).
Yawn, Rahmstorf 2.0 science fiction.
“The tipping point
Antarctica has several protective ice shelves that fan out into the ocean ahead of the continent’s constantly flowing glaciers, slowing the land-based glaciers’ flow to the sea. But those shelves can thin and break up as warmer water moves in under them.”
If that’s the tipping point.. it happened 10,000 years ago, when the ocean reached the level it’s at now.
But for some unknown reason, sea level rise slowed down and has been stable ever since.
Another Tipping Point, eh. It might be a good idea for the alarmists to assign numbers to these for quick and easy reference in case we get them confused with all the Last Chances
May I suggest stopping the manufacturing of all Renewable Green Energy Sources – that has added to the Carbon Dioxide for decades – that is contributing to the Increasing of Carbon Dioxide for the future? Or is that hypocrisy that should be ignored?
A-76 is really really big:
.
https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVFT.wFRPu9t3iJta6PFRGEckxy&pid=News&w=256&h=158&c=14&rs=2&qlt=90&dpr=1.25
Nope!
😀
Why do they bother. Crying wolf over and over just to get attention has diminishing returns, especially when the track record is one of consistent and complete failure in future predictions. They should all take their models, go play in the sand box and leave the adults to manage the really important stuff.
I’m not so sure about that. The PARABLE of crying wolf suggested that, but it appears the reality is that people buy into the next big disaster announcement even more than the previous. The more they cry wolf, the more people fear the non-existent pack.
The entire planet just cut emissions in a massive way over the last 16 months, yet CO² measured at Mauna Loa increased nearly 1% from April 2020 to April 2021. The entire planet shut down factories, cruise lines, a large church of air travel, and commutes to work were cut drastically. So, what else would we need to do?
Stop breathing.
Jim
Jeremiah,
The current NOAA Mauna Loa website data (available at https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/mlo.html ) shows that they have measured an annual atmospheric CO2 concentration increase of 2.7 ppm over the last three years. That translates of about 0.65% per year, only close to 1.0% per year by rounding off to the nearest percent.
More specifically, a posted green-box graphic at that website (identified to have been updated May 5, 2021) states that in April 2020 the atmospheric CO2 concentration was 416.45 ppm and in April 2021 it was at 419.05 ppm. Not that I believe the observatory can accurately measure CO2 concentration to two decimal place, but taking just those numbers yields an yearly increase of 0.62%.
That same webpage also provide a link (to https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/covid2.html ) that answers this question: “Can we see a change in the CO2 record because of COVID-19?”
The world’s reductions in CO2 emissions related to COVID-19 impacts on fossil fuel use pale into insignificance when compared to the total atmospheric mass of CO2 currently existing at an atmospheric concentration level of 416 ppm. They do not merit the adjective “massive”.
However, another way of looking at this is there is a demand to eliminate anthropogenic CO2 emissions with the expectation of stopping global warming. However, during the period of time (roughly February, March, April, 2020) that emissions were most curtailed (~18%), and the northern hemisphere trees had not yet leafed out to absorb CO2, there is no discernible change in the slope of the increasing CO2 concentration, nor was the early-May peak reduced noticeably. If a significant drop in emissions cannot be observed in the rate of increase or annual Spring peak, how reasonable is it to expect that even draconian reductions will accomplish the stated goal?
Clyde,
Using the same logic that says we cannot detect a Mauna Loa CO2 decrease from Covid-19, we likewise cannot detect an increase of 10% or so in CO2 emissions over much of a year. Can we then expect to detect a 20% increase over a year? Geoff S
The excuse given for being unable to measure year-to-year changes in CO2 is the natural variability. However, this problem is no different from asking the question about whether the mean value of a sample is statistically different from another sample. However, I haven’t seen anyone try to make this rigorous analysis.
A trough-to-peak (Fall-to-Spring) change of about 8 ppm (2019-2020)is essentially an order of magnitude greater than the precision claimed for the Mauna Loa measurements. A 10% change is nearly 1 ppm. Looking at the graphs, it appears to me that the year-to-year ramp-up variation is less than that. So time spent analyzing the record should be able to determine if the null-hypothesis should be rejected.
Keep in mind that during this same time interval a La Nina was present for much of the time. La Nina leads to ocean cooling which should increase absorption HadSST3 has in fact measured a fairly significant cooling.
Not only were there less emissions there should have been more CO2 absorbed by the oceans. The lack of any decrease in the CO2 trajectory is direct observational evidence that other factors are important.
“All models are wrong but some are useful”
An aphorism in statistics meaning that statistical or scientific models always fall short of the complexities of reality but can still be of use.
And then there are completely useless models……
Beautiful photo Charles.
Thank you.
Antarctic Sea Ice extent for 2020 either hovered same as 1980 or just above. 2021 is either the same or slightly above 2020. Appears to change every 5 years or so but in saying that over 40 years there is very little change in extent.