Climate science from climate scientists...

This month’s open thread on climate topics. Check out the new State of the Climate in 2021 report from NOAA and BAMS. A blast from the past, though yamal-age may vary…

As always, please stay civil, on topic, and limit comments to one a day.

Filed Under: Climate Science, Open thread, Solutions

I am having birthday today, never forget it. And I read on the net that rain is pouring down in Cezuan after 2 months of cathastrophic drought.

Pakiistan, the Indus bassin and walley is also drowning, so why worship together with all those strange provincial US flat earthers desert walkers and blind believers??

It has been raining heavily also in western Norway all the summer but maybe temporarily a bit dry on this side of the mountains. I would say it is quite normal, so what are you complaining about?

Something is not quite normal howener. We are having sweet and ripe Vitis vinifera in the sunny wall end of august allready, and there may be bitties frull at eqvinox that is the normal mark for us. I must say alltogether slightly warmer than it has been as long as I can remember. They are making up wineries all over England.

But not everyone will agree on that. The surrealists here are predicting a quite more cool period from now on., as they have predicted for the last 15 years allready.

“Pakiistan, the Indus bassin and walley is also drowning, so why worship together with all those strange provincial US flat earthers desert walkers and blind believers??”

Please communicate your views to WUWT proprietor Anthony Watts, who could use a few prayers for the salvation of the air conditioner, on which the survival of the Worlds Most Visited Climate Blog may depend.

For the second day and night running, Chico , Califonria, was hotter than anywhere in Pakistan, with an overnight low of 40 C / 104 F

How strange that there should be no report from the well-instrumented weather station in his back yard:

https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2022/09/not-in-his-back-yard-northern.html

Yes. It fairly defies explanation, doesn’t it?

Hr Russel I have done my best too educate and to teach at the WUWT that the earth is round and that what goes up must also come down somewhere sometimes. And of the vapour pressure and dew point curve of water. But I was EX-COMMUNICATED and etnically rinsed out there, probably because I told them the truth also about manners, politics , and religion. I made them aware that they ought not to believe and to behave like KADRE missionaries from the so-vi- ett science academy in Ljeningrad,… where the earth is flat as can be….but only om political and local national level.

“Dr” A. Watts then fell back on his Politically Progressive routine from the Party with P.. because, “I mention too much about communism” he said.

That is touchy for those secret KADRE- agent missionaries you see, if we psychoanalyze them and discuss their underwear, their true standpoints reasons and manner behaviours.. .

It looks like infiltration. There are hardly many Apparatchics in russia with their cryllic alphabet, who also lay behindv in IT technology, who hack and who infiltrate and contaminate the US politics , elections and websites. It is hard necked “nerds” and convinced revolutionary denialists within then US itself. And they are paid or expect payment from Thinktank in Chateau Heartland Michigan who took over ther religuious DDR structures and progressive manners…

Putin has got nothing to do with it. He only smiles and says “Very fine, thank you!” when it is done volontarily for him, and his thoughts andv plans are being served that way by hardcore dia- lectic materialists within the US itself. .

UAH TLT has been posted for August with an anomaly of +0.28ºC, a bit of a drop from July’s +0.36ºC which remains the highest anomaly of the year-to-date but with August second highest, the Jan to Jun anomalies spanning +0.00ºC to +0.26ºC.

August 2022 sits as the 5th warmest August on the UAH TLT record, behind 1998 (+0.39ºC), 2016 (+0.32ºC), 2020 (+0.30ºC) & 2017 (+0.29ºC) and ahead of 2019 (+0.26ºC), 2010, 2021, 1995 and 2015, & 2001 in equal-tenth spot(+0.12ºC). August 2022 sits =48th in the all-month UAH TLT rankings.

The high August anomaly pulls 2022 more strongly into 7th place in the year-so-far average anomaly rankings with 6th spot still a possibility. To drop to 8th would require the Sept-Dec anomaly to average below +0.08ºC. To rise to 6th would require the Sept-Dec average to top +0.25ºC. 5th would require a worryingly scorchy average above +0.46ºC for the last four months. …….. Jan-Aug Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking 2016 .. +0.45ºC … … … +0.39ºC … … … 1st 1998 .. +0.44ºC … … … +0.35ºC … … … 3rd 2020 .. +0.37ºC … … … +0.36ºC … … … 2nd 2010 .. +0.27ºC … … … +0.19ºC … … … 6th 2019 .. +0.26ºC … … … +0.30ºC … … … 4th 2017 .. +0.22ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 5th 2022 .. +0.16ºC 2002 .. +0.11ºC … … … +0.08ºC … … … 10th 2018 .. +0.10ºC … … … +0.09ºC … … … 9th 2021 .. +0.09ºC … … … +0.13ºC … … … 8th 2015 .. +0.09ºC … … … +0.14ºC … … … 7th

“Aww, did we catch a chill? If so, I don’t see how that statement gave it to you. It is merely saying that we are going to have to change the behaviors that got us into this predicament to begin with.”

V: So, Ray. Exactly what sort of “broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioral changes,” as advocated by the IPCC, would YOU recommend?

“Exactly what sort of “broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioral changes,” as advocated by the IPCC, would YOU recommend?”

Use less mined fossil fuels by finding other methods?

Saving instead of spending requires change. Losing weight requires drastic change, often. Moving from or to city requires change. Many changes are irreversible. Drilling out a cavities and filling them is economic, technological, and irreversible, for example. So your advice is to let teeth rot “naturally”, I assume.

Oh shame shame shame on us. So, Mr. jgnfld, what measures would you recommend we take to change all those spenders to savers, fatties to skinnies, tooth neglectors to dentist lovers? How about gluing yourself to a telephone pole. That should do the trick, no?

Maybe start by helping them face the fact that their behavior is self-destructive, and continue by helping them understand and believe that they do have the ability to make changes in their own lives?

Or is that too radical?

Yes up to a point. The fact that we have so many fat people in Western society most whom I suspect are not happy with their weight suggests to me that losing weight via significant lifestyle changes is very difficult to near impossible for many. Highlighting the extreme cases of individuals who have lost large amounts of weight and gone from fat to fit (analagous to those who have made extreme changes to their carbon footprint) doesn’t change the large scale picture.

Moderators: If you want to see friendly discourse on these threads I think it would be a Great idea to eliminate the bad actors and constant trolling by people like Victor who are constantly dragging down the discussion by posting bullshit and false information that others are forced to respond to. Many people have repeatedly pointed this out with absolutely no help from the good people who run this site. It’s not fair and it’s way past time. Something needs to be done about it.

Victor: ***V: So, Ray. Exactly what sort of “broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioral changes,” as advocated by the IPCC, would YOU recommend?***

The ones that are necessary to avoid climate catastrophe, dear Weaktor.

V: So, Ray. Exactly what sort of “broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioral changes,” as advocated by the IPCC, would YOU recommend?

RL; The ones that are necessary to avoid climate catastrophe, dear Weaktor.

V: And what are those, specifically, Ray? And how would you go about enforcing them?

Mr. Know It All says

Maybe the California plan? Force everyone to buy electric cars. Tell everyone they can’t charge them. It’s Killian approved – it’s gotta be good!

KIA yeah, and before you know it, those hippy liberal socialists will be requiring functioning headlights, turn signals, brake lights, seat belts, emission controls, and inspections to make sure they all work, not to mention licensing and registration. You’d think they confuse cars with firearms, all in the name of “promoting the common welfare”.

You didn’t ask me, Victor, but when did that ever slow me down?

So rushing in, IMO the ‘top-down’ principles would be:

1) End the culture of disposability/”convenience” 2) End the culture of endless growth, replacing it with a culture of enough/satisfaction 3) Seek a balance of community and individual (recognizing that radical individualism is toxic, and truly healthy individuals only exist in community)

3) Seek a balance of community and individual (recognizing that radical individualism is toxic, and truly healthy individuals only exist in community)

Partially right, partially wrong. This is what comes of trying to understand what a human is by watching us from within the self-constructed rat maze-like zoo we have created for ourselves rather than from observations of regenerative indigenous communities.

That sort of myopia is killing us.

In reality, regenerative communities have absolute individual autonomy while practicing extremely high levels of cooperation. Both are “radical” in their extent from a “modern” point of view.

It matters where you put your attention. I suggest you put it here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/200906/play-makes-us-human-ii-achieving-equality

And here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how-hunter-gatherers-maintained-their-egalitarian-ways

And here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-learn/200907/play-makes-us-human-v-why-hunter-gatherers-work-is-play

And here for a conversation with anthropologist Helga Vierich. If not on Clubhouse: https://www.clubhouse.com/room/P9WblXXe?utm_medium=ch_room_xerc&utm_campaign=0vIh7fkq9PMM2ZU9Db7TFQ-357933

If already on Clubhouse: https://www.clubhouse.com/room/P9WblXXe

You don’t really make it clear, but I presume that the “right” part (in your view, natch) is recognizing community as a value–something our current culture largely fails to do, while the “wrong” part is the implication that there is a contradiction or tension between individualism and community? Can you clarify further?

“Radical individualism” was completely incorrect.

How so? Do you disagree that radical individualism is toxic? Or that is a feature of our current culture?

1) End the culture of disposability/”convenience”

2) End the culture of endless growth, replacing it with a culture of enough/satisfaction

3) Seek a balance of community and individual (recognizing that radical individualism is toxic, and truly healthy individuals only exist in community)

Do you really want to know, or are you merely implying that it would be difficult and so we shouldn’t bother?

I’m up to discuss potential means seriously, but not as a mere rhetorical exercise.

I think it would be naïve in the extreme to see such measures simply as “difficult.” This is the whole point of the Jordan Peterson essay I quoted previously. The reforms being demanded, including (among many others) the ones you listed, would require major transformations in the lives of literally billions of people worldwide — as implied by the measures I quoted from that IPCC report, which ordained “broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioral changes,” The examples you offered sound innocent enough, but the devil is in the details. How could one possibly enforce them on a worldwide basis without imposing some form of totalitarian government, backed by force?

I’d love to discuss this with you as seriously and in as much detail as you like. I’m not being “rhetorical” but practical. If you can find a way to implement these sort of changes in a peaceful, fair and democratic manner that would actually make a significant difference, then by all means share your wisdom.

Weaktor, How appropriate that you would cite Jordan Peterson as your source here, as both of you suffer from extreme Dunning-Kruger Syndrome.

This is not a matter of coercion. It is a matter of necessity if the human species wants to survive in anything like its current circumstances. Of course, if you don’t view continued human survival as a goal, all bets are off. However, there would still be the matter of fairness in leaving a livable world to the cockroaches that would succeed us as the dominant species.

The question is not one of how we “force people” to act in concert with their interests and those of their progeny, but rather how we incentivize them to do so. Promising them a better world –maybe one where the richest 3000 people don’t control 4% of global wealth or where they don’t have to choose between food and medicine or where they don’t have to work 3 jobs to support the families they never see. No doubt actuality will fall short of aspiration, but the world in 100 years is going to look very much different than our current one. That is just a fact. People might want to think about designing the world they want to live in rather than simply letting our current one develop into a hellscape.

I don’t think that the primary means of accomplishing my 3 suggested ‘top-down’ changes would be “enforcement.” Die Gedanken sind frei, right? So the prime means would lie a little closer to the primary competencies of thee and me, and indeed all laborers in the cultural vineyards. Minds must change, and that is not done by force.

Is this likely to be slow and uncertain and messy? Sure. Is there a role for some enforcement, in the forms of, say, regulations such as bans on single-use packaging, or incentivizing or even mandating various social, economic and technological changes that might be required? Likely so. (Indeed, some these exist now-for one small example, there’s a plastic bag ban in our little town.)

Unfortunately, this process isn’t going to be complete by, say, 2030. We need to be mitigating emissions in concrete ways as the culture changes hopefully in a helpful direction.

Going from horses to cars involved “broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioral changes,”. My grandfather was born in the early 1880s and never learned to drive until the 20s. Even in the 60s he drove a car just like a team of horses. But he nevertheless did drive a car.

So…of COURSE there will be changes REGARDLESS of whether they are directed at working to a fossil free future or dealing with the damage from BAU. You seem to want the world to be afraid of only those changes designed to reduce damage and dislocation as opposed to those guaranteed to produce more.

Well-said–although to play Devil’s advocate just a bit, it may be a tad early to declare the horse-auto transition “irreversible.” ;-O

Victor appears to be arguing that climate mitigation by way of technical solutions, lifestyle changes and socio economic changes is impractical, unrealistic and would or might require a totalitarian government to make it happen. Maybe he’s partly right. I can certainly think of a few ideas people have posted on these pages and elsewhere that fit if his definition.

However other mitigation and adaptation ideas seem reasonably practical, plausible and reasonably popular and possible with democratic governmment- if we do them right and maybe compensate people as RL suggests. Some have clearly already gained traction and have the potential to make a big difference to the climate problem, even if they are not a perfect panacea.

Victor might be in danger of convincing himself that because some proposals are crazy, or ominous sounding politically, so they all are. A form of deceptive rationalisation to avoid the discomfort of making ANY changes.

Much as I am loathe to agree with Victor I do have some sympathy for his argument, although I will not go as far as saying it is impossible. However, given that we have had the perils of anthropogenic climate change and potential destructive consequences of unsustainable lifestyles published for many decades, yet there is little to no evidence change is happening on anything like the rate it needs to happen and on the scale it needs to happen over that time (highlighting some remote tiny community consisting of an insignificant percentage of the global population isn’t helpful), and if anything has gone further in the wrong direction, and given people (at least the ones I interact with on a daily basis) seem to link consumerism with identity and status more than ever, can you lay a roadmap as to how we get from the here and now to a future where we all live sustainably and responsibly.

I agree with your observations.

You want a road map to get away from consumerism, and to get to sustainability?

I haven’t seen a feasible road map for decreasing consumerism in a fundamental sense. Our society is addicted to consumerism, it defines status as you mention and it defines perceived quality of life at the very least. Our entire jobs market depends on consumerism continuing, so trying to dismantle industrial society could have disastrous consequences especially if done rapidly. It may not be possible to change it at all. Suggest you google Joseph Tainters work.

Clearly we have road maps of a sort for substituting products with superior sustainability for products with poor sustainability, and to do recycling and these are slowly producing some results. This substitution maybe the best we can hope for.

Of course renewables will mean our energy use will decrease eventually because the build out at scale will be difficult and will have limits. But getting people to willingly reduce consumerism? ? I believe it will be token amounts at best.

The Copernicus ERA5 re-analysis has been posted for August showing a global SAT anomaly of +0.30ºC, down on July’s +0.38ºC and the 4th highest monthly anomaly of the year-to-date, the 2022 highest anomaly being March’s +0.39ºC and lowest Feb’s +0.23ºC. August 2022 becomes the =4th warmest Auust on the ERA5 record, below 2016 (+0.40ºC), 2019 (+0.36ºC) & 2021 (+0.31ºC), equaling 2017 and above 2020 (+0.27ºC), 2015 (+0.24ºC), 2018 (+0.21ºC), 1998 (+0.14ºC) & 2014 (+0.14ºC). (I note the ERA5 webpage appears to lump the top 5 Augusts together as “joint warmest” although this may be a typo for “joint 3rd warmest” lumping three together.) August 2022 becomes =56th highest all-month anomaly on the ERA5 record. In terms of the start of 2022, after seven months 2022 continues at 5th warmest.

…….. Jan-Aug Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking 2016 .. +0.48ºC … … … +0.44ºC … … … 2nd 2020 .. +0.45ºC … … … +0.47ºC … … … 1st 2019 .. +0.38ºC … … … +0.40ºC … … … 3rd 2017 .. +0.36ºC … … … +0.34ºC … … … 4th 2022 .. +0.30ºC 2018 .. +0.26ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 6th 2021 .. +0.22ºC … … … +0.27ºC … … … 5th 2015 .. +0.18ºC … … … +0.26ºC … … … 7th 2010 .. +0.16ºC … … … +0.13ºC … … … 8th 1998 .. +0.10ºC … … … +0.02ºC … … … 16th 2014 .. +0.09ºC … … … +0.11ºC … … … 9th

A year-on-year graph of ERA5 monthly anomalies is presented <a hrf="https://sites.google.com/site/housman100resultstemperarypost/home/graphs-subset1"here (Graph 2b). (Note Graph 2a awaits a rather tardy update from RSS TLT data.)

The numbers for RSS TLT have been posted up to August (although yet to be added in to their web engine) showing a global TLT anomalies for July & August of of +0.78ºC & +0.70ºC, the highest of the year so far, monthly anomalies previously spanning from +0.50ºC to +0.68ºC. August 2022 becomes the =4th warmest August on the RSS TLT record, while July was their warmest July.

In terms of the start of 2022, after seven months 2022 continues at 7th warmest in RSS TLT but a final position from 5th to 8th by the end of the year remains entirely plausible. (In UAH TLT the plausible outcomes stretch from 6th to 8th, this due to the trend-defying UAH still ranking good old 1998 as 3rd warmest year). Given the strong ongoing La Niña which will be cooling these 2022 TLT numbers, the underlying upward trend continues,

…….. Jan-Aug Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking 2016 .. +0.89ºC … … … +0.82ºC … … … 2nd 2020 .. +0.84ºC … … … +0.82ºC … … … 1st 2019 .. +0.73ºC … … … +0.75ºC … … … 3rd 2010 .. +0.68ºC … … … +0.62ºC … … … 6th 1998 .. +0.67ºC … … … +0.58ºC … … … 8th 2017 .. +0.66ºC … … … +0.69ºC … … … 4th 2022 .. +0.60ºC 2021 .. +0.59ºC … … … +0.62ºC … … … 5th 2015 .. +0.54ºC … … … +0.62ºC … … … 7th 2018 .. +0.54ºC … … … +0.55ºC … … … 9th 2014 .. +0.48ºC … … … +0.49ºC … … … 10th

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62838627

Dear Gavin, I’ve seen with interest previous posts on Real Climate regarding worst-case scenarios. Bearing in mind that the above mentioned article is getting attention on mainstream media (or at least the BBC…) would mind spending a few minutes again on the subject and guide a layman through this “undiscovered country”?

Lowlander, the problem with these reports is that they say “it’s all connected” but then treat the individual phenomena as self-perpetuating in isolation.

First, if we keep adding energy to the system, then it is certainly possible that any of the things on the list could happen. But if you reach such a point, it would mean that there has already been serious disruption… to the climate system, and to the human system. It’s not like we will breathe a sigh of relief when there is famine and climate war and so on happening, thinking, “whew, at least the permafrost didn’t melt all that much after all!” .

As to individual phenomena continuing “even if there is no further warming”, as the article says, this to me is problematic. For example, the permafrost melting, or Greenland, is the result of energy input to the specific location resulting from complex interactions of the whole climate system.

My understanding of the consensus at this point is that if we stop adding GHG to the atmosphere, surface temperature will stabilize as the continuous increase in energy resulting from the existing levels is absorbed mostly by the oceans. But that energy isn’t located in Greenland or Siberia. So how do these phenomena “self-perpetuate”? Is it higher temperatures or back-radiation locally over those areas?

That’s my brief explanation; I’m sure others may supply more detailed analysis.

I’ve seen with interest previous posts on Real Climate regarding worst-case scenarios.

In the YouTube video titled ‘Biggest Scandal in Climate Policy’ – David Spratt on Tipping Points, IPCC, IAMs and Risks, published on 1 Jul 2022, duration 0:59:51, David Spratt discusses with the group Operaatio Arktis (Operation Arctic) on a wide range of reasons why the public, policy makers and even many activists have a way too optimistic image of the state of our climate system. David Spratt says (from indicated time intervals):

0:04:35: “So in the Arctic, we’ve got a classic example of a system feedback… which means the Arctic has passed its tipping point.”

0:05:21: “And we see the same thing in the Antarctic, where one of the early IPCC reports said that they expected the Antarctic to be stable for the next one thousand years. And yet, within a decade, in 2014, we had a paper from Rignot saying some west Antarctic glaciers are already past their tipping points. So, it’s this abrupt, non-linear, difficult-to-predict aspect that makes them really challenging.”

0:06:55: “Last year, Jason Box, a glaciologist, said Greenland had passed its point of system stability, and I think there’s really good evidence for that.”

0:07:06: “If you look at the recent research, there’s a lot of work suggesting that particularly the eastern Amazon rainforest is now passed its tipping point, and is actually emitting more carbon than it is storing.”

0:07:55: “Warming is now 1.2, and it’s clear that many systems have passed their tipping points, so… which nobody wants to say, because it is politically convenient to talk about 1.5 to 2, but clearly 1.5 is, is really unsafe, because those systems will be cascading. 1.2 now is unsafe. We talk to coral reef scientists, and we said what will be safe for coral reefs? What would stop them having these ocean heatwaves, and they said, for coral reefs to be healthy, warming would have to be less than 0.5 degrees.”

0:14:30: “You say to climate scientists, can you say something absolutely, and they’ll say no, and you say, what do you think your… what in your heart… what’s your best bet, and they’ll tell you something different. So their opinions are different from what you can prove in a peer-reviewed paper.”

0:20:00: “So the IPCC reports in summary, end up understating the risks.”

0:22:00: “What scientists know and think, and what they can demonstrate in black-and-white are two different things.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FRhM8si6Cw

Geoff, as I explained to Lowlander, and I believe I’ve explained to you in the past, the language here is just not correct.

These phenomena don’t exist in isolation, and you can’t make the case that they would be self-sustaining absent other energy inputs.

“Tipping point” has become this catchall phrase that means whatever is convenient for the person using it.

I doubt anyone thinks that I am an optimist about the climate, but that’s really the point… even if none of these things people want to rant about lately existed, we would still be facing catastrophic consequences if we continue to increase GHG.

Do you really think the people who ignore what’s actually happening right now are going to change their behavior because of some hair-on-fire video about the future????

zebra: – “…the language here is just not correct.”

What language? What’s “not correct”?

zebra: – “…you can’t make the case that they would be self-sustaining absent other energy inputs.”

The Earth System is not in thermal balance, driven by the Laws of Physics.

From Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Dr James Hansen, Makiko Sato and Reto Ruedy, in one of their commentary communications titled Global Temperature in 2021, published 13 Jan 2022, included:

Global surface temperature in 2021 (Fig. 1) was +1.12°C (~2°F) relative to the 1880-1920 average in the GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) analysis. ¹ ² ³ 2021 and 2018 are tied for 6th warmest year in the instrumental record. The eight warmest years in the record occurred in the past eight years. The warming rate over land is about 2.5 times faster than over the ocean (Fig. 2). The irregular El Nino/La Nina cycle dominates interannual temperature variability, which suggests that 2022 will not be much warmer than 2021, but 2023 could set a new record. Moreover, three factors: (1) accelerating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, (2) decreasing aerosols, (3) the solar irradiance cycle will add to an already record-high planetary energy imbalance and drive global temperature beyond the 1.5°C limit – likely during the 2020s. Because of inertia and response lags in the climate and energy systems, the 2°C limit also will likely be exceeded by midcentury, barring intervention to reduce anthropogenic interference with the planet’s energy balance.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2022/Temperature2021.13January2022.pdf

The planetary thermal imbalance is driving many environmental systems towards (and perhaps beyond) their instability thresholds – so-called ‘tipping points’. Climate scientist Professor Will Steffen discusses some of these ‘tipping points’ in the YouTube video titled SR Australia – Social and Earth System Tipping Points | Prof. Will Steffen + Dr. Nick Abel, from about the 9½ minute time interval. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn3WQGS9wOI

IMO, the ‘tipping points’ Prof Steffen discusses are highly inconvenient and potentially existential for human civilisation, particularly if a cascade of ‘tipping points’ ensue.

zebra: – “…we would still be facing catastrophic consequences if we continue to increase GHG.”

The atmosphere in 2021 contained GHGs with CO₂-equivalent of 508 ppm, of which 415 is CO₂ alone. https://gml.noaa.gov/aggi/

Humanity has now entered climate territory not encountered for millions of years. Even if humanity ceased all further human-induced GHG emissions tomorrow (& pigs might fly), evidence/data I see suggests the Earth System is already unsafe for humanity, and for the next few decades at least, will inevitably become increasingly hotter, more hostile and disruptive for many lives and livelihoods.

zebra: – “Do you really think the people who ignore what’s actually happening right now are going to change their behavior because of some hair-on-fire video about the future????”

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (1992-2018) and former chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change, in a Foreword to What Lies Beneath: The Understatement of Existential Climate Risk, concluded with:

But climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action, or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences.

Therefore, it is all the more important to listen to non-mainstream voices who do understand the issues and are less hesitant to cry wolf.

Unfortunately for us, the wolf may already be in the house.

https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/whatliesbeneath

None of which contradicts what I said, and some of which directly agrees with me.

If you want to discuss science, you have to be willing to learn more about those laws of physics and understand the quantitative relationships.

If we stop adding GHG tomorrow, the permafrost would not ‘melt until it is all gone and all its GHG have been released’.

Nor would Greenland ice ‘completely melt away’ and raise sea level by whatever number of feet.

And if there were no permafrost, and no Greenland ice, and we continued to add GHG, the result would still be catastrophic.

This is very basic. If you think this is not correct, please describe the physical mechanism that would yield contradictory outcomes.

zebra: – “None of which contradicts what I said…”

You still haven’t revealed: What language is “just not correct”?

zebra: – “If we stop adding GHG tomorrow…”

…which I’d suggest is an extreme hypothetical, that has an infinitesimal chance of happening anytime soon…

zebra: – “…the permafrost would not ‘melt until it is all gone and all its GHG have been released’.”

zebra: – “Nor would Greenland ice ‘completely melt away’ and raise sea level by whatever number of feet.”

Are you disagreeing with glaciologist Professor Jason Box’s statement: ““Technically now, Greenland is beyond its viability threshold…“, zebra? https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2022/07/the-cos2-problem-in-six-easy-steps-2022-update/#comment-805978

What percentage of the Greenland Ice Sheet are you suggesting would melt & how much ice would remain, and over roughly what timeframe, zebra? Evidence/data?

The implication of the term “tipping point” is that the process is self-sustaining. Let’s review the basics of what’s happening with climate.

-The planet was in a state of radiative equilibrium. Energy from the Sun in = energy radiated to space. -We (humans) increased the amount of GHG in the atmosphere. -This resulted in radiative imbalance, because the CO2 converted outgoing radiation to thermal energy, which then accumulated in the system in various forms.

–If we stop increasing the GHG, absent some other change in input/output, the energy in the system will eventually reach a new level, where there is again radiative equilibrium. (This seems to be the part that you are missing.)

-The vast majority of that energy will be absorbed and mixed into the oceans. -GHG are removed from the atmosphere by natural mechanisms

So the question is, what would the climate system look like at that point. The answer is, obviously, “it depends” on how much energy has accumulated over the pre-industrial level.

The problem with the “tipping point” terminology is that it implies that in the new climate, the phenomena in question have become sources of energy or radiative disruption, so that radiative equilibrium cannot be achieved until their processes are exhausted.

But melting ice in Greenland is not a source of energy; it requires an energy input. At the most, surface melting allows for some reduction in albedo by lakes and pools. That’s obviously not sufficient for a self-sustaining melt.

With permfrost, the outgassing of GHG would have to be able to replicate the effect of anthropogenic increases in order to be self-sustaining. Again, not sufficient.

For all the ice and permafrost to melt, you would need to have reached a very high climate system energy level at the point anthropogenic GHG inputs ceased. (Remember, the energy is mostly going into the oceans, not being localized where the ice is, and GHG will slowly diminish.)

So we’re back to what I have said multiple times:

That high a level would already have completely disrupted the human ecosystem… it might be why we stop emitting; war and collapse of industrial civilization.

I hope this helps your understanding.

The following may be of interest to people. Its from Carbon Brief and is excellent on climate tipping points:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-nine-tipping-points-that-could-be-triggered-by-climate-change/

I believe the thing to understand is there is no perfect, precise quantifiable definition of tipping points, but this doesn’t make them any less real. Tipping points are generally defined as a rapid change to a new system state. This state might last a long time but is not necessarily permanent.

The following seems like a perfect example of a possible tipping point, one causing the arctic permafrost to enter into a new state that could persist for a considerable time even if emissions stop and global warming stops. Firstly for context we know the permafrost is melting due to the warming arctic and this also involves a positive feedback where that CO2 released reinforces the warming. Of course a positive feedback alone isnt a tipping point. But going on from there:

“For example, explains Dr David Armstrong McKay – a postdoctoral researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, focusing on modelling nonlinear biosphere-climate feedbacks – some areas of decomposition may release so much warmth (bacterial activity etcetera) that it triggers a so-called “compost bomb”. This is where the “internal heat generation becomes the main driving force for further thaw and carbon release”, he explains to Carbon Brief, “even if global warming stopped”.

“This effect could have its own tipping point, he adds:”

“In one study, a tipping point for this internal heat production occurred by the time local mean [absolute] annual air temperature reached around 1.2C, which is when organic decomposition became significant in their model. However, this process depends on how wet, insulated and organic-rich the soil is – all major sources of uncertainty – and will be localised rather than across the whole permafrost simultaneously.”

Gee, what a surprise. Not: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/01/a-bit-more-sensitive/#comment-442449

We can keep wishing that the science was neat and tidy, that we are not in a new paradigm of humanity, that the planet cannot possibly do what it is, in fact, doing… or we can realize none of this matters. Risk assessment and the precautionary principle say act, act decades ago, act quickly, act organically, act globally, and change *everything.*

If you love your children.

And it doesn’t matter if I am wrong: it is still the correct thing to do according to the risk assessment.

How long we have to see the science so consistently badly underestimate the change before we get error bars to the bad side that reflect the true worst-case scenarios, I do not know…. but I pray, figuratively, that it is not long.

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/01/an-arctic-methane-worst-case-scenario/#comment-224295

Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow climate disputants:

Things are going slower here now than we are able to think. It never was that way in the climate. Proof: we could allways think of real things at normal speed, in the climate.

So it is the question whether Gavin Schmidt & al are still able to follow up 0r whether they have resigned and gone to sleep.

How about some good news? As usual, a blurry mix of variations and responses: I saw a new article and study about how the southern oceans absorb a lot of our global warming and then store it deep in the ocean for millenia. That seems like good news. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32540-5

“Over the last 50 years, the oceans have been working in overdrive to slow global warming, absorbing about 40% of our carbon dioxide emissions, and over 90% of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere….

This Southern Ocean warming and its associated impacts are effectively irreversible on human time scales, because it takes millennia for heat trapped deep in the ocean to be released back into the atmosphere.”

so a lot of the heat is going right into the Southern Ocean where it will be stored for a long time. I expect this is especially good news for the global north, where most of us live.

saw a couple other “weather/climate” stories: https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/siberia-massive-craters-frozen-ground-permafrost-methane-gas-explosion-rrc/ This one is about permafrost and methane explosions. The holes after explosion are very cool. I think these are also called pingos, if I am not mistaken. All this is happening in northern Russia and not many people living up there, so we can all give thanks this is happening in a distant, sparsely populated region. It’s interesting, but I am not sure it would make the news if the explosion didn’t leave these cool holes to photograph. Methane is a flow gas, of course, not a stock gas, so definitely back burner stuff.

Plus here’s a good methane news story for balance: https://omaha.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/20-million-project-will-turn-methane-into-renewable-energy-at-omaha-wastewater-plant/article_23096752-2ebb-11ed-8979-3f27447ed9a5.html

$20 million project will turn methane into renewable energy at Omaha wastewater plant! American ingenuity. So, we probably just need to help Russia build wastewater plans in the far north and start capturing the methane and using it as renewable energy. We (americans) might need to stop spending so much money arming Ukraine to kill Russians so that we can start pouring our $$ into renewable methane projects in the far north. I am going to send a message to my representative suggesting we re-order our Russian projects in this way. A lot of americans think we are getting a lot of bang for our bucks by arming Ukraine, so I don’t know if we can regroup around capturing russian methane.

Also found good news on the CO2 story:

The U.S. is experiencing a shortage of carbon dioxide and Boston beermakers are beginning to worry they won’t have enough of the gas to get their products to market.

A CO2 production hub in Jackson, Mississippi, became contaminated by an extinct volcano, which cut down on an already limited supply of the gas.

https://www.axios.com/local/boston/2022/09/12/boston-beer-co2-shortage

I am not sure about bostonians, but americans, in general love their beer and they want it foamy. Football season is starting up, and beer consumption rises with football season, so I think we should expect to see the US gear up to capture the CO2 we need for beer foam and that’s can’t hurt with the global emissions issue.

Related story: Wyoming will be ready to supply the CO2 soon. That projects expects 5 million metric tons per year by 2030. Somebody needs to keep an eye on our CO2 removal projects to make sure we pull the CO2 out slowly enough to avoid problems. I am not sure what might happen if we scale up the atmospheric CO2 capture too fast. That’s a mistake we don’t need to make. Easy does it, right? Slow and sure wins the race.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90787507/wyoming-will-soon-be-home-to-the-worlds-largest-carbon-removal-facility

Wait, do I detect just un petit soupçon of irony?

I have been reprogrammed by the And then theres physics folks to look on the bright side. ATTP appears to be generally withdrawing from the back and forth instead of joining me on the sunny side of the street. I posted this over there earlier today on a methane thread:

Scientists continue to point to methane leaks and emissions as a large problem despite the fact that it should be clear to everyone that we need to focus on CO2 emissions.

I saw this one one the net today:

“Irakulis-Loitxate and Guanter said the satellite methods behind their study were bringing emissions to light that previously would have gone unreported.

“Methane is a huge challenge across the industry. Ideally, operators would embrace this new information,” they said.

Curbing methane emissions is considered a vital part of global attempts to limit global warming.”

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/scientists-who-detected-massive-pemex-methane-leak-say-no-way-they-made-mistake-2022-09-13/

Surely, curbing methane emissions is not a vital part of global attempts to limit global warming because it is a flow, not stock gas. There is also the huge concern that discussion and focus on methane emissions will cause us to lose our focus on CO2 emissions. There is no question that CO2 is the big dog. Methane is an ankle biter in comparison to CO2. When I think about Pemex, I think about the CO2 emissions that arise when they sell their petrochemicals, not the minor leaks of flow gas that they might be producing getting their product to market.

I think we should not waste efforts worrying about methane emission leaks from the petrochemical industry. If we just continue to reduce exploring for, pumping, storing, refining and burning fossil fuels, as we have been doing for the past few decades since we became aware of the problem of fossil fuel related CO2 emissions, we will see the atmosphere stabilize and our problem with temps and acidification will be behind us.

It very well may be that these scientists made no mistake with identification of a methane leak, but they don’t seem to understand that methane is not where our focus needs to be. That seems like it might be a mistake.

Reuters has done us all a disservice by pushing this methane story.

Alaska Highway News has a good news methane and carbon story: https://www.alaskahighwaynews.ca/local-business/15-million-for-oil-and-gas-innovations-5819961

The CleanBC Industry fund is committing 15 million dollars to projects that promise to sequester carbon and reduce methane leaks. 15 MILLION dollars, with a capital M, baby. If you think that is chump change, you know some very wealthy chumps.

(Just saying that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy)

Jean-François Fleury says 21 AUG 2022 AT 3:28 PM

“It is strictly impossible for the temperature to rise of 4,5°C. …”

JCH, That Jean-François Fleury comment was arguing that SSP5-8.5 was impossible as we are running out of fossil fuels. If we assume oil and gas remain the FF of choice and there is no helping had from natural feedbacks (I understand the SSP modelling uses projected CO2 concentrations and doesn’t actively modelled carbon cycles), it is difficult to see where the 2,000Gt(C) will come from to provide the SSP5-8.5 emissions by 2100. So far we’ve managed AGW with just 700Gt(C). The comment concludes by stating the view that AGW will end up somewhere between SSP1-2.6 & SSP2-4.5 which “gives by 2100 between 1,8° and 2,7° of warming…”

But the bold assertion that “It is strictly impossible for the temperature to rise of 4,5°C.” because SSP5-8.5 would struggle to find the FFs to power its AGW does overlook some of what is being said by IPCC AR6. And ditto the view that we will end up with AGW in the range +1.8°C to +2.7°C.

These global temperatures being quoted are central projections by 2100. A quick squint at IPCC AR6 WG1 fig 4.40a [FULL REPORT see PDFpage649] shows SSP5-8.5 could deliver an interesting +13.8°C by 2300. So that difficulty sourcing the required FFs is exceedingly good news. And putting SSP2-4.5 as an upper limit to AGW would suggest there is still potential for that “strictly impossible” +4.5°C to be delivered in the post-2100 world.

(And delving into IPCC AR6 WG1 Ch4, observant readers will note the small discrepancies between the numbers in WG1 SMP Table 1 (as faithfully reported in for instance Wikithing) and those in Table 4.2.)

IMO, clearly a false assertion: we’ve been warmer in the past, so the carbon is potentially there to drive such a change. (Particularly WRT the deep past, because ‘faint young sun.’) ECS mainstream estimates rise to 4.5 C for a doubling of CO2, and the paper linked below finds potential to see CO2 @ 5x today’s levels.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/arctic-could-warm-by-17c-if-all-known-fossil-fuels-are-burned-study-says/

Not sure what more recent research has to say on the topic.

JFF: “It is strictly impossible for the temperature to rise of 4,5°C. …” True or false?

BPL: False. What would prevent it?

Gavin’s Silurian Hypothesis paper on Anton Petrov’s y0utube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAF8ns-d4rc

GISTEMP LOTI has been posted for August showing a global SAT anomaly of +0.95ºC, up on July’s +0.93ºC and the 2nd highest monthly anomaly of the year-to-date, the 2022 anomalies spanning +0.83ºC to +1.04ºC. August 2022 becomes the 2nd warmest August in LOTI (6th in NOAA, =4th in ERA5 reanalysis), in LOTI below 2016 (+1.01ºC) while above 2019 (+0.94ºC), 2020 & 2017 (both +0.87ºC), 2014, 2021, 2015 & 2018 (+0.76ºC). August 2022 becomes =28th in the GISTEMP LOTI all-month record (=46 in NOAA, =56th in ERA5). In terms of the start of 2022, after eight months 2022 continues at 5th warmest with the last four months of the year to determine if 2022 maintains that 5th position or drops to 6th position (requiring a Sep-Dec average below +0.86ºC) or hops up to 4th (requiring a Sep-Dec ave above +0.94ºC), bigger moves in ranking requiring something a little dramatic over Sep-Dec.

…….. Jan-Aug Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking 2016 .. +1.08ºC … … … +1.01ºC … … … 2nd 2020 .. +1.05ºC … … … +1.02ºC … … … 1st 2019 .. +0.96ºC … … … +0.97ºC … … … 3rd 2017 .. +0.95ºC … … … +0.92ºC … … … 4th 2022 .. +0.91ºC 2015 .. +0.83ºC … … … +0.90ºC … … … 5th 2018 .. +0.82ºC … … … +0.84ºC … … … 6th 2021 .. +0.80ºC … … … +0.84ºC … … … 7th 2010 .. +0.76ºC … … … +0.72ºC … … … 9th 2014 .. +0.73ºC … … … +0.74ºC … … … 8th 2007 .. +0.71ºC … … … +0.66ºC … … … 12th

The LOTI global anomaly map continues to show the highest anomalies of the month are down in Antarctica, not a good place given the threat of SLR.

I have breaking news for you all.

Try “are the russians science savvy?” by Alexandra Borisova at http://www.themoscowtimes.com

Theree it comes out that 35% of russians today answer that the sun is revolving around the earth. The number was lower 20 years ago at about 28%.

With US citizens following right behind them at about 25% 0r 1/4 of the US population being scientifically illiterate along with a series nof poll questrions and good criteria.

Truly, it is what I also find here at this website. The frequency of the fameous desert walkers, blind believers, and flat earthers, is somewhere between 1/5 and 1/4. in the overall population. That is approximately similar with incureable racial Party background training upbringing and eternal membership among people in the normal population.. that bloody Party with P, the grand and old one.

Alexandra Borissova, who is obviously russian, states further interesting tings. They were told in the soviet that the case against Gallilei was about the copernican system yes or no. But that is not true. He was taken to court and set on index rather because he valued experimentation over Gods word.

Which is a further element that I am hoping will hit, scratch, and hurt deeply. :

Question: Do you believe in the websites and the “www.” the red, labeled, and holy scriptures, more than you are likely to value experimentation?

Because that is about being scientifically illiterate.

Mike: “The holes after explosion are very cool. I think these are also called pingos, if I am not mistaken. “ Pingos are not holes. Unless you mean negative holes (i.e. hills). Mike: The U.S. is experiencing a shortage of carbon dioxide and Boston beermakers are beginning to worry they won’t have enough of the gas to get their products to market. Heard the same story in Poland. Linked to the high prices of natural gas that caused a drop in production of fertilizers, which by-product was the commercial CO2.

Mr. Know It All says

Check out all these sea ice extent graphs. Very colorful!

Current worst-case estimates of how many feet of sea level rise by 2100?

JCH says 12 SEP 2022 AT 5:46 PM Jean-François Fleury says 21 AUG 2022 AT 3:28 PM

“It is strictly impossible for the temperature to rise of 4,5°C. …”

Does it count as a Bayesian prior that getting to 4,5°C by 2100 entails a rise of ~0.6°C / decade, and that it has for decades been impossible to find anyone to bet on a 0.25 °C decadal rise ?

@Gavin Any thoughts about this?

CarbonCapture Inc. Announces Five Megaton Direct Air Capture and Storage Project in Wyoming | Business Wire

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220908005446/en/CarbonCapture-Inc.-Announces-Five-Megaton-Direct-Air-Capture-and-Storage-Project-in-Wyoming

Brilliant!!! 5Mt(CO2)/y of DAC&S in Wyoming will do just dandy given Wyoming currently emits 60Mt(CO2)/y from FF use.

The company agrees that this project’s 2030 target for DAC&S is just 0.01% of global annual emissions (hopefully they don’t mean ‘2030 annual emissions’ because that would be a bit awful if emissions were running at such high numbers by then: it would be a 25% increase on today’s emissions) and elsewhere the company say “By 2050, DAC companies will capture upwards of 5 to 10 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year.” So they do appreciate the scale of the required CO2 drawdown we need to mitigate the worse of AGW. Meinshausen et al (2020) fig2c suggests SSP1-1.9 will require net negative emissions of 230Gt(C) = 845Gt(CO2) between 2050 and 2180, the peak value shown being 14Gt(CO2)/yr. And that is the net value.

But this company does seem rather vague on the energy requirements of their project and the form of the CO2 being locked away in “the perfect CO2 storage geology” These are the major considerations for this technology which brave words will not magic away..

You’re right that the release is pretty vague. But they do allow that:

CarbonCapture’s technology platform allows for a broad range of sorbent options, plug-and-play upgrades, mass production, unlimited scalability, and rapid technology iterations. CarbonCapture’s systems run on zero-emissions energy, capturing atmospheric CO2 for either permanent atmospheric carbon removal or for producing low-carbon synthetic fuels.

So it sounds as if there isn’t necessarily just one chemistry contemplated (though one does wonder how different chemistries can be ‘plug and play.’)

“Zero-emissions energy” also sounds promising; Carbon Engineering’s entrant was using natgas, last iteration I checked in on. Interestingly, they and their partners also expect to have a pretty large plant up & running soon: 1 MT/year, operational at about 1/2 that capacity in 2024, and ramping from there:

https://carbonengineering.com/news-updates/construction-direct-air-capture-texas/

Curious that CC is expecting about half the build time; that’s damn quick–unless they’ve already broken ground and for some inscrutable reason neglected to mention that.

Kevin McKinney, The build-time is short probably because all these guys are doing is dumping piles of giant vacuum cleaners out in the wilds, presently on the Wyoming prairie with presumably a pipe connecting a deep Class VII Well (à la EPA). Beyond that, they don’t say a lot** and I think that is because they are expecting the DAC solution-developers as well as those with innovative storage schemes to be beating a path to their door. The electric to power the operation is shown as renewable but how much electric it will take is presumably dependent on the yet-to-be-defined technology that will be deployed, both capture and storage.

(** They say they will use “solid sorbents … a wide variety of amines, MOFs, hybrid solutions, and other novel materials”. Amines are the standard technology for scrubbing CO2 out of natural gas or chimneys but that is a liquid technology, while MOFs are so far drawing-board stuff. The clever bit will be getting scalable low–energy-use, low-cost Direct Air Capture working and then deploying a way of disposing of the CO2, again scalable low–energy-use & low-cost. The IEA say the geological storage capacity for CO2 is globally massive which sounds encouraging. And even the UK, a country not shown as very promising on the IEA’s map, has 70Gt storage off-shore according to the British Geological Survey. Mind, the practicality of such storage may be doubtful. After all, a few years back it was the BGS who were telling us how much shale gas the UK was blessed with, & they are still at it although their latest findings are so far not for the likes of us plebs.)

Thank you for responding to my post. Can you break it down a little for a dummy like myself. I think what you’re saying in essence is that for something like this to work, it’s going to need to remove a lot more CO2 to make any noticeable difference.

CCS/DAC are boondoggles that cannot possibly meet the needs of society. Just look at the numbers in MAR’s post. The resources do not exist for the scale needed – and CC tech is just one industry that would have to grow massively over the next few decades **just to supposedly get to net zero**, which is incredibly dangerously slow and risks flipping tipping point after tipping point.

But in billions are being thrown at it.

Re resource limits: https://www.clubhouse.com/room/myog1Aln?utm_medium=ch_room_xerc&utm_campaign=0vIh7fkq9PMM2ZU9Db7TFQ-376286

Killian: – “CCS/DAC are boondoggles that cannot possibly meet the needs of society.”

Nearly three quarters of CO₂ captured annually is reinjected into oil fields to push more oil and gas out of the ground, to effectively produce more GHG emissions. Carbon capture technology is not new and it’s mostly not being used as a climate solution.

About three-quarters of the CO2 captured annually by multi-billion-dollar CCUS facilities, roughly 28 million tonnes (MT) out of 39MT total capture capacity globally, is reinjected and sequestered in oil fields to push more oil out of the ground.

https://ieefa.org/articles/carbon-capture-decarbonisation-pipe-dream

My take, with an attempt to be simple: It’s a prime example of greenwashing. Removing and storing 5 megatons CO2 a year is big for a single project, but it’s a very small fraction of what would be required to have a significant effect on climate. Still, it’s important to the present-day proposals to keep warming below 1.5 or 2C to be able to say that this would work in the future, so we can burn more than our limit of fossil fuels now. This project fits that need nicely.

Energy considerations: The laws of thermodynamics guarantee that it is impossible to burn coal (nearly pure carbon) and then put the resulting carbon dioxide back in the ground without a net loss of energy. It’s always easier in energy terms to leave the coal where it is. The story is less absolute for hydrocarbons, because you can use the extra energy you get by oxidizing the hydrogen atoms in the fuel into water, and set some aside for CCS. In practical terms, it won’t work for burning oil. Too difficult to extract, and not enough extra energy. It might in theory work for natural gas, using a really efficient process. Notice that the article doesn’t specify what fossil fuel is being burned, nor what the energy accounting is. If it’s coal, it’s just going to suck more energy than it produces. Since oil and natural gas generally need to be shipped somewhere else to be very useful (due to the low population of Wyoming), but the CO2 has to be captured onsite, I suspect that they will be burning coal.

Economic considerations: The article reads like an advertisement to attract new investors. They’re going to need lots of money to burn coal and then capture the carbon, since they’ll be operating at an energy loss. Forever. The company might still make a profit as long as they attract enough suckers – excuse me, investors – and the government keeps paying for those carbon credits that the article mentions. The original investors could do nicely if they can dump the financial risk on somebody else. If they do burn natural gas as part of the project, and manage a net energy gain after CCS, they will merely be competing at a disadvantage to the rest of the market. That’s because others still get to dump the CO2 into the air for free, instead of paying to make it go away again. They will need extra cash and/or subsidies until the free dumping privileges are eliminated, however long that takes.

Political considerations: Good move! You get to look like you’re doing something for the environment. So does the government. Everyone can pretend that they’re part of the solution. Wyoming should be an easy state to operate in. The economy is heavily dependent on fossil fuel, with many jobs on the line. There are lots of convenient holes to dump the CO2 in, and hope that it doesn’t come back up. Lots of wide-open spaces if it does. Low statewide environmental regulations help. The state is very conservative, has a low population, but two senators. If Wyoming can be brought along, the political problems of implementing huge changes to our energy economy will be reduced. No results are required before 2030. It looks like a good pilot project. (sarcasm intended)

Excellent post. Refreshing to have some clear-eyed commentary on this issue. There is n9 bigger lie out there right now than any form of mechanical carbon capture and storage. Farming, on the other hand, can sequester at least 50% of current emissions (@ 25gt: Take arable land x 2M deep x 1%/year added SOC). Add to that the *necessary* and *unavoidable* large reductions in consumption, we can be at net zero emissions within a decade – were we collectively a sane species.

John, you may be right that this is ultimately a form of greenwashing. But the project Chuck posted about, as well as the Carbon Engineering one that I mentioned, is “DAC”–that’s “Direct Air Capture.” Therefore, there is no fuel inherently being burnt at all. They extract the carbon from the free atmosphere. You’re clearly thinking of CSS, where carbon is extracted from flue gases in a power plant. The efficiency is an issue in that process because typically they are trying to extract usable energy. With DAC, that’s really not the case; they are using energy to extract CO2, which can then be either sequestered or sold for some use case. (There is the air-to-fuel case, though, in which they use the carbon to make hydrocarbon synfuel.)

I said “inherently being burnt” above for a couple of reasons–one is that the CE process, as I mentioned, was at last check still using natgas in the ‘calciner’ phase (IIRC). So there was still something of a carbon footprint there. They do allow that that can be done with RE, though. (The other is that synfuel thing.)

Thanks, Kevin. I obviously didn’t read the news release carefully enough.

That said, it makes the project look even worse. The thermodynamics of DAC are really bad, since CO2 is rather dilute in the free atmosphere. In addition, Wyoming is fairly high elevation with a rather cold climate overall. That means the partial pressure of CO2 is even lower, and extra heat may be needed to facilitate catalytic chemical reactions that might provide some efficiency.

I’m not sure what their proposed “renewable and zero carbon energy sources” are. However, unless they are looking at operating wind turbines as mechanical compressors to get greater heat and pressure for their DAC, they are taking renewable energy that could be going elsewhere to directly displace fossil fuel burning. Displacing burning would probably result in more net carbon storage than DAC. Their process runs on “high-quality carbon removal credits” for its economics.

Perhaps instead of “greenwashing” a better term would be “serial green credit laundering” for all of the entities whose reputation will be enhanced by their participation in this project. There’ll be pie in the sky, by and by, rather than excess CO2.

Killian has a good point about plants. They’re already excellent at DAC, and their carbon storage generally improves the soil. They are rather scalable. Even in Wyoming’s climate, they could probably farm quinoa, for example. A full cycle comparison of plant DAC vs. this project, including inputs and energy usage, would be interesting. I’m sure their processes, if real, would be proprietary, however,

I think you’re overlooking a possibility WRT zero-carbon energy inputs–namely that because it’s in principle time-flexible, it could be very useful to both stabilize the grid and to extract value from RE. Schedule your main production shift from late evening on to 6 AM or so, and you’re not displacing RE; rather, you’re making use of what would otherwise be wasted energy. Such a load could also be useful during the day, for those times when supply outstrips demand.

To be sure, appropriate market structures would need to be in place to enable this. But it’s a real possibility at least.

A hearty thank you to everyone who has voiced their knowledge about BECCS, DAC and the like. Removing CO2 from the atmosphere probably isn’t a great short-term solution.

The problem with DAC (direct air capture) as a means to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it is that its very expensive and resource intensive, but this situation will almost certainly improve. The whole DAC industry is in its infancy , at about the same point as the first wind farms and solar farms, and look how they improved. But anyone that thinks DAC is a miracle cure probably has their head in the clouds.

In my view pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere with other methods also faces some big challenges:

The problem with enhanced rock weathering is big energy intensive mining operations and transport costs.

The problem with regenerative agriculture sequestering carbon in the soils is firstly somehow MILLIONS of farmers have to be educated and convinced and in a timely manner. Does that look easy to anyone? Farmers are notoriously resistant to change because if new systems go wrong on them it can be devastating.

Then you have to keep the sequestered carbon in the ground, which requires regenerative farming be done meticulously well and consistently for thousands of years. And you have to get past the transition period where a warming climate is forcing C02 out of the ground due to enhanced microbial activity thus countering efforts to sequester carbon. That said, regenerative agriculture is not resource intensive, and is a simple change of farming methodology. These are big advantages..

The problem with planting trees is finding enough land for plantation forests, when there are so many competing demands for more land, and then stopping the trees being cut down prematurely by greedy business interests and their lobbying machines. There is potential for enhanced tree planting on existing farms as shelter belts, and in urban areas and back yards, but there are many lobby groups opposed to such things and people don’t have unlimited funds.

The problem with all such technologies is they encourage allowing emissions to continue, and the kicking of the can down the road.

Those look like the grim realities to me. So to put total faith in just one of those approaches looks crazy to me, given the downsides of each one. However if we developed all those technologies at the same time and as best as possible, with maybe a moderate scaling up of the systems, it would at least spread the resource load, because they all use different types resources, and it could potentially add up to sequester a lot of carbon.

Carbon Engineering says they can achieve $100/ton when they reach scale.

This is what plants and trees do every day as they photosynthesize, except Direct Air Capture technology does it much faster, with a smaller land footprint, and delivers the carbon dioxide in a pure, compressed form that can then be stored underground or reused.

Now, I’m agnostic about these claims. But I do think it’s at least worth acknowledging that they exist.

Kevin McKinney, That reference is a lot more informative than the waffly CarbonCapture Inc ref up-thread. Carbon Engineering Ltd are developing a technology using potassium hydroxide capture and calcium carbonate separation. Per ton CO2 delivered at 1.5 bar, they reckon to use 5.25Gj = 1,460kWh gas plus 365kWh electric, so a total of 1,825kWh energy. (Their A & B scenarion is 8.81Gj gas or 2,450kWh gas.) A kWh delivered of gas-generated electric releases something like 0.42kg(CO2) meaning a ton of CO2 produced would deliver 2,400kWh. So this DAC technology (which will surely get better) is using roughly 75% of the energy that would be generated by FF-power to re-capture the CO2 released by such FF-power generation. (And if the FF-power was coal it would be a rather unhelpful 130%.) Then there is the storage which presumably isn’t so energy intensive.

Carbon Engineering Ltd are working on a project with their “partner 1PointFive and is expected to capture one million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually when complete.” Building this Permian Basin plant began in 2022. The partner 1PointFive drills holes for storage and describe the project as begining operations at 0.5Mt(CO2)/yr by 2024 with the capability to double that to 1.0Mt(CO2)/yr. They talk of “a scenario to deploy 70 DAC facilities worldwide by 2035.” 135 DAC facilities are mentioned with “increase in global policy initiatives and demand in the voluntary market.”They have a Louisiana project where thay are already drilling although I don’t see tha capture technology mentioned other than a “DAC by CarbonEngineering” logo on the webpage footer. SSP1-1.9 shows net negative emissions of 14Gt(CO2)/yr meaning we’d need at least 14,000 of these 1Mt/yr DACS plants operating by the close of the century. And that 5.25Gj(gas)/t(CO2) for the DAC (not including storage) would be thus about 75,000Gj/yr which (if the beads on my abacus are behaving) is about half today’s 132 million million cu ft global use of natural gas.

Anybody… whatever happened to Hank Roberts? He was a pretty reliable poster and voice on realclimate.

I know–I miss Hank’s comments, too. I learned quite a bit from him, including the usefulness of Google Scholar.

“whatever happened to Hank Roberts? He was a pretty reliable poster and voice on realclimate.”?

Could the usual suspects have bored him into submission. ?

He is much missed on International talk like a climate pirate day. https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2022/09/international-pirate-climate.html

Ray Ladbury: Weaktor, How appropriate that you would cite Jordan Peterson as your source here, as both of you suffer from extreme Dunning-Kruger Syndrome.

V: If you say so, Ray.

Rl; This is not a matter of coercion. It is a matter of necessity if the human species wants to survive in anything like its current circumstances. Of course, if you don’t view continued human survival as a goal, all bets are off. However, there would still be the matter of fairness in leaving a livable world to the cockroaches that would succeed us as the dominant species.

The question is not one of how we “force people” to act in concert with their interests and those of their progeny, but rather how we incentivize them to do so. Promising them a better world –maybe one where the richest 3000 people don’t control 4% of global wealth or where they don’t have to choose between food and medicine or where they don’t have to work 3 jobs to support the families they never see. No doubt actuality will fall short of aspiration, but the world in 100 years is going to look very much different than our current one. That is just a fact. People might want to think about designing the world they want to live in rather than simply letting our current one develop into a hellscape.

V: Both you and I know very well, Ray, that the program you would like to see is totally unworkable. (Assuming such a program could actually exist beyond the realm of wishful thinking.) Anyone with any problems on that score should consult the writings of Bjorn Lomborg, where he demonstrates not only how disastrous any program of that sort would be, both economically and socially, but also how futile. The most extreme efforts might possibly delay the worst anticipated effects by a year or so.

The title of Naomi Oreskes book says it all: “Merchants of Doubt.” In the context of real science, doubt is considered desirable. Only in the realm of religion is it seen as a problem.

I don’t share your concerns simply because I don’t buy the IPCC “consensus” and see no reason to assume the climate would be affected in any significant way by eliminating the consumption of fossil fuels. Beyond that, however, even if I did accept “the science” preached so ardently by alarmists like yourself, it seems obvious to me that undermining a source of energy that has become so central to modern civilization cannot possibly be the solution. If you want to glue yourself to a lamp post, preach endlessly to the choir and shout at the top of your lungs into the wind, you are free to do so.

What I hear from you is not an argument for implementing a solution to a serious problem, but an insistence that everyone in the world do penance for their past sins, in the hope that the Gods will take heed and respond with a miracle.

” I don’t buy the IPCC “consensus” ”

I’m curious. Who, exactly, do you envision could possibly care about your opinion over the opinions of the thousands of actual, practicing researchers conducting the original research in the area which is summarized in the IPCC reports?

But Weaktor, you don’t agree with the scientific consensus (it isn’t just the IPCC) because you are an innumerate, Dunning-Kruger poster child, so it would be difficult to find anyone whose opinion carried less value than yours.

Despite persistent–hell, even heroic–efforts of those who actually do understand science and statistics to explain the concept of correlation to you, you continue to insist that your fee-fees carry more weight and that your utter ignorance is an advantage because it makes you more “objective”

Congratulations, you have achieved epistemic closure.

As to the rest of us, we have to take action…and we have to realize that to postpone the decision, as we have done for 40 years, is to make the decision. I am sorry, but we can no longer wait for the slow students like you to catch up.

“But Weaktor, you don’t agree with the scientific consensus (it isn’t just the IPCC) because you are an innumerate, Dunning-Kruger poster child, so it would be difficult to find anyone whose opinion carried less value than yours.”

“Despite persistent–hell, even heroic–efforts of those who actually do understand science and statistics to explain the concept of correlation to you, you continue to insist that your fee-fees carry more weight and that your utter ignorance is an advantage because it makes you more “objective””

But the MODERATORS of this site must continue to allow Weaktor to post his drivel in order to keep everything “FAIR AND BALANCED” because, reasons.

Ray Ladbury: As to the rest of us, we have to take action…and we have to realize that to postpone the decision, as we have done for 40 years, is to make the decision. I am sorry, but we can no longer wait for the slow students like you to catch up.

V: You never answered my original question, Ray: “Exactly what sort of “broad and irreversible economic, technological, societal, and behavioral changes,” as advocated by the IPCC, would YOU recommend?” You insist “we have to take action.” Well, I’m still wondering what actions you have in mind, specifically. AND, exactly how such actions would be enforced — or, as you prefer to put it, ‘”incentivized,”

V: Well, I’m still wondering what actions you have in mind, specifically. AND, exactly how such actions would be enforced — or, as you prefer to put it, ‘”incentivized,”

BPL: A tax of $150 on CO2 emissions, to be rebated in equal amounts to every household, would work. Increase the tax by $10 per year.

And ban cutting down rainforests.

Uh, Victor, what about the program of economic equity that you dismissed out of hand?

[A world} where the richest 3000 people don’t control 4% of global wealth or where they don’t have to choose between food and medicine or where they don’t have to work 3 jobs to support the families they never see.

Both you and I know very well, Ray, that the program you would like to see is totally unworkable. (Assuming such a program could actually exist beyond the realm of wishful thinking.) Anyone with any problems on that score should consult the writings of Bjorn Lomborg, where he demonstrates not only how disastrous any program of that sort would be, both economically and socially, but also how futile.

Sounds like Lomborg–whose scholarship is to put is charitably not remarkably strong, BTW–is talking about something else.

https://www.newsweek.com/debunking-lomborg-climate-change-skeptic-75173 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-response-to-bjrn-lombor/

But let’s return to the main point. I can’t speak for Ray, but as for myself I DON’T “know” that a program of increased equity is “totally unworkable.” In fact, it looks to me as if it’s the American status quo that deserves that description–note for instance that the one thing most Americans agree on is that the country is on the wrong track:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/darreonnadavis/2022/07/05/88-of-americans-say-us-is-on-wrong-track/?sh=656f6c43287a

Meanwhile, there are a number of examples abroad that do it better than we do in regards to equity:

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-work-week-by-country

Uh, Victor, what about the program of economic equity that you dismissed out of hand?

V: I’m all for programs designed to promote economic equity, including hefty increases in the taxation of excessive income, including the implementation of a wealth tax. If you read some of the earlier postings on my “Mole in the Ground” blog you’ll see that I’ve held such a position for some time.

But the topic at hand is climate change, not inequality — and the socio-economic reforms mentioned by Ray look to me like red herrings, crude attempts at diversion. I’m still waiting for him to articulate exactly what reforms he has in mind that could possibly make a difference on THAT score. And how he would expect them to be implemented without the imposition of some sort of totalitarian government.

I would contend that inequity will *always* tend to promote environmental degradation, including for the foreseeable future at least, climate damage. Why? Because inequity always has a political dimension. It is precisely that dimension which allows for the environmental devastation we see (or choose not to look at) in Lousiana’s ‘Cancer Alley.’ Or in the lands Dominion Energy is trying to expropriate for an unnecessary natgas pipeline in North Carolina. Or around Midland, TX, which last time I went through conjured the name “Mordor” in my once Tolkien-addled brain. Or Canada’s Tar Sands. Or the Niger Delta, which has been called “one of the most polluted places on earth.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/9/9/niger-delta-oil-spills-bring-poverty-low-crop-yields-to-farmers

The point is, you can’t really run an FF-based economy without a bunch of folks who are poor enough or powerless enough that they have no better choice than to put up with the pollution. (Or at least, nobody has managed to do so up ’til today.)

So equity isn’t quite such a “crude attempt at diversion” at all. And it does provide a clear answer to a question you’ve asked twice now at least–to wit, how can climate be protected without resorting to “totalitarian” measures. That answer? Provide a clear vision of sustainability which promises *and delivers* a more satisfying and secure life–one less marked by a worship of profit and power, and more marked by valuing people, and life generally. Do that, and the polity will support sane policies.

Above I alluded to the need for 3 large-scale changes:

1) End the culture of disposability/”convenience” 2) End the culture of endless growth, replacing it with a culture of enough/satisfaction 3) Seek a balance of community and individual (recognizing that radical individualism is toxic, and truly healthy individuals only exist in community)

I’d note at this point that the first 2 go directly to both equity and avoiding a totalitarian society. Why? Because if you look dispassionately at typical American behavior today, most of us are constantly subjecting ourselves to messaging directed at making us feel needy, frightened and insecure. At the same time, our political elite work (much of the time) to ensure that we have rational grounds for feeling just that way, by ensuring that the private sector is always privileged to supply needs–or simulacra of them, at least–and by curtailing our power to assert greater control over our own economic lives.

The socially approved cure for these feelings is, of course, “retail therapy.” The system is calculated to drive profits, which means maximizing consumption, which, of course, entails minimizing satisfaction. To that extent, it also entails maximizing throughput and hence environmental cost. (That’s not to say that there’s no place for pollution abatement–that too, after all, is a product to be sold. But the expectation is that it’ll be sold in ever-increasing quantity–on the face of it, both unrealistic and unsustainable.)

So far, I’ve spoken mostly of the ‘carrot’–the latte, or the spa afternoon, or the vehicle/garment/device/experience/toy/service glittering for us in the agora. But there’s a stick, too–it might be the health insurance that mandates a third job (or maybe keeping the toxic one); it might be the fear of deportation in the hearts of the undocumented, keeping them from unionizing, or accessing even services to which they are legally entitled, or from reporting crimes against them; it might be various forms of implicit taxes on the poor, such as incarceration as an alternative to financial penalty. (For instance, the guy I met whose car quit on a restricted-access freeway, with the result of a 30-day jail term, and the loss of his job, and then the stranded vehicle which of course he then couldn’t redeem from impound without any income.)

I’d like to see a good deal less of both in society, and a great deal more sociability–meeting our social needs less from what we own, and more from whom we hang out with. That’s what we evolved with and for, and I think we’d be a lot happier–and a *whole* lot less prone to fall for the blandishments of faux populists and demagogues. And we’ll have a lower carbon footprint, too.

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