2020 officially saw a record number of $1 billion weather and climate disasters.

Are Guardian readers 'hippy liberal leftie' sorts? That is news to me..

The last few posts are interesting. Apparently, know one knows the extent of 'climate sensitivity', but every one knows that every weather event is influenced 100% by that climate sensitivity.

An interesting read.

Freak US winters linked to Arctic warming (nature.com)

But note how the headline is more than a little detached from the actual content of the article, which weighs in more inconclusive, and which is rooted in a slew of 'could be's' and 'might's'.

"The new analysis does not settle these questions, Matei says. Although changes in sea ice and snow cover do seem to have a role in wind anomalies high up above the Arctic, other factors such as decadal variability in sea surface temperatures could also drive wintertime anomalies in the Arctic atmosphere that can lead to unexpectedly cold weather elsewhere, she says. To complicate matters further, there are still significant uncertainties about how Earth’s climate as a whole responds to snow and sea-ice changes".

The key point, which is what got the other thread locked, is that there remains debate about how much of recent warming is directly caused by the increase in greenhouse gases, and how much can be attributed to natural variability.

The IPCC decided some time ago that more of the warming is human caused than has actually taken place, in other words, we live in a climate that should be slightly cooler than that of the late 19th century into early 20th century, but instead it is 1.0 to 1.5 deg warmer, so we caused more than 1.0 to 1.5 C warming.

When I wanted to insert the third point of view that (a) it's not a case of this warming being fictitious or disputed, (b) there is no strong evidence that the climate should be cooling, therefore (c) the warming is an aggregate of natural variability and some other portion that is human created, it led to even more of a bun fight than this thread has produced.

I was never too sure why other than perhaps the pro-IPCC group realize that the "should be cooling" hypothesis is their weakest point (very few informed people think that humans are having no warming influence on climate whatsoever), because it reduces the urgency of their parallel political agenda. There again, why should it weaken that, the problem is the same whether we are fully or partially responsible for the warming -- the warming is there and we need strategies to deal with it, but as I argued, let's make those strategies rational, a blend of what is possible, what is beneficial, and what is necessary. The more this warming has a natural origin, the less you would want to concentrate on the green agenda because you would realize that the naturally driven warming was here to stay and something we are going to have to deal with anyway.

Does a 2:1 natural:AGW blend have a different set of implications from a 2:1 AGW:natural? Possibly. But the IPCC didn't want any of that water in their wine, they wanted to create the impression that the crisis was all humanity's fault. This frustrates me to the extent that any reasonable inspection of climate trends from 1890 to about 1960 would convince anyone that a natural warming trend was well established throughout. A cooling of sorts developed for a few years after about 1962 and lasted until the early to mid 1980s. Stronger warmings have set in since then. It's possible that the ratio of natural:AGW continues to change decade by decade and perhaps by now it is more like 1:2, before 1970 perhaps 2:1.

We are stuck with the fact that our theoretical understanding of the climate system is weak at best. For example, it is pretty obvious that strong El Nino events have driven much of the recent warming. Yet nobody has a very convincing theory of how increasing greenhouse gases would cause more frequent or stronger El Ninos. Perhaps we live in a time of a great coincidence, we could be warming the atmosphere a lot, but actually we are not and natural processes are instead. That doesn't mean it would stay this way for a long time. The gradually increasing greenhouse gas concentrations might be all that some fear at some point in the future. On the other hand, the natural warming could actually change to a real natural cooling (not the one the IPCC falsely postulated), on the scale of the Little Ice Age. Several decades or centuries of reduced solar activity, or increasing volcanic activity, could create that change. Then we might have a different view of the AGW signal altogether.

Works both ways I'm afraid. On the other side, more often than not, are the Trump-supporting, gun-toting, freedom lovers, whose right to burn fossil fuels should take precedence over future generations' safety.

I'm getting the gun totin' bit, but the 'freedom loving'? Why is that presented as a bad thing? I thought freedom loving was also at the core of 'muesli ate'n liberal lefties (does such a people exist?) mantra as well?

Irrespective, do these freedom loving people use any more fossil fuels than those who constantly preach against it?

Harrison Ford: leaders who deny climate change are 'on the wrong side of history' | Harrison Ford | The Guardian

Harrison Ford collects planes, bikes and automobiles | British GQ (gq-magazine.co.uk)

I was thinking more of a libertarian thing - against big government, regulations, etc. Personal freedom taking priority over any any other concerns (gun safety, vaccines, environmental protection laws.) Definitely seems to be some correlation.

"You are all very much Isaac's children" - Orion402

I couldn't care less about Issac Newton or his 'laws' one way or t'other.

People who do not view education as a waste of time and who actually understand the meaning of the words we use.

Source?

I have personally argued this multiple times in the past, that the full extent of human induced climate change is actually more than 100% of the observed warming since the mid 2oth century. Because The earth was in a naturally cooling phase due to slightly reduced solar output. There's also the impact of human aerosol emissions which declined in the 1980s but have remained fairly static since then, meaning that some degree of our warming is being masked by the additional aerosols emitted by humans

Your logic tends to fall down when you try to argue that because the earth is naturally cooling now, that this somehow means that climate change is potentially being overstated, when in reality, it means it is more likely to have been understated, because when the natural cooling cycle shifts to a neutral or warming cycle then the observed warming will likely surge ahead as natural, and anthroprogenic forcings would be pushing in the same direction

If you want to argue that we are actually in a natural warming phase now, even while the sun is slightly cooler, you need to show what the mechanism for this warming phase is, and no 'skeptics' have ever been able to give any plausible explanation for the current observed warming other than Increased GHG emissions and changing land use

Since there is talk of human aerosol emissions and pollutants and how they played a part in helping cool the planet (or at least, keeping it cool) I did up a fun graph:

It's rushed and crappy looking I admit, but blue indicates the average annual Euro region temp for the years 1990, 2000, 2010 & 2020. The orange line shows the 'inland' consumption of hard coal in the EU region for the years previously mentioned. I just put the R2 value in there for the hell of it

Data sources:

Overview - Energy - Eurostat (europa.eu)

Climate reanalysis | ECMWF

Edit, on reflection, I'd advise ignoring that R-Squared value, as this may have been the value I accidently created between the Euro Temp and its linear trend line. However, I ran a correlation test (Pearson) and that came in at

Which also should be impossible so I can only assume that it is I who is doing something drastically wrong. Here is the data for anyone who might care to check for themselves and have me stood corrected (which I will gladly accept) should that be their whim.

Because corporation tax is not particularly relevant to this thread. I completely support international efforts to place a floor on corporation tax and in many other threads down through the years I have stated that Ireland’s low CPT and reliance on transfer pricing represented a part of the race to the bottom and was short sighted and could backfire at any time.

I am strongly in favour of regulating industry to reduce their ecological impact and force them to pay their fair share in taxation and improve pay and conditions for their workers

Am I still neoliberal?

Well the definition of significant is subjective. Solar output definitely does affect earth's radiative balance even when it's only a small change in solar output, it global temperature will increase when the radiative balance is positive, and decrease when the radiative balance is negative, and not change when the Radiative balance is neutral

You have not explained how atmospheric ridging can possibly result in global average temperature rises. Are you suggesting that there is a huge pool of heat in the upper atmosphere that is being held in reserve and dragged down every x period and then sequestered again in the return part of the cycle?

Or where else is that energy coming from? Upwelling from the deep oceans? The measurements that we have indicate that oceans are warming across all layers on average. The total ocean heat content is increasing, the total cryosphere heat content is increasing, the total atmospheric heat content is increasing

When all of these systems are increasing at the same time, then how can it be an internal cycle? that energy has to come from somewhere, and AGW and climate science explains that it comes from changing the atmospheric radiative forcing by trapping more of the suns heat and allowing less of that heat to radiate out into space.

Or are you suggesting that these atmospheric ridges are allowing hot spots and cool spots in the atmosphere where certain certain atmospheric conditions allow more solar radiation into space? There is absolutely no evidence of this, and our satellites would notice this very quickly given how we have specific instruments in orbit to precisely measure temperatures at various atmospheric levels for weather and climate monitoring

TLDR, where is the extra energy coming from? internal Natural Variability only allows changing distributing of existing energy, not net increases in global average temperature

yes, and we have medium confidence and low confidence projections too.

The IPCC assessment report all of the studies and made assessments based on the evidence to hand. They are more confident about some elements than others, and are open about this.

In general, there is higher confidence associated with statements relating to the current state of the climate and the past, because these have already happened, there are no scenarios associated with them, other than the hindcasting scenarios used in modelling

As soon as we start talking about projections into the future, it becomes less certain because there are always caveats. But in general, the IPCC produce a weighted assessment of future projections, which is what the IPCC do.

IPCC probability statements from Ar6

• Virtually certain 99-100%
• Very likely 90-100%
• Likely 66-100% probability

And then we have the quality and quantity of the research that this assessment is based on

Very High Confidence > 90% of research findings support this out of a sufficiently high volume of good quality research

So you accept the findings of the IPCC then, and it's just the framing in the guardian that you object to, or are you going to come back later and say that actually, the IPCC are all alarmists too?