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How Trump Climate Denial Is Catalyzing the World: Q&A
Jonathan Tirone
Jessica Shankleman Jess_Shankleman
November 19, 2016 — 3:17 AM CST Updated on November 19, 2016 — 7:05 AM CST
Donald Trump says that the overwhelming majority of scientists could be wrong in warning about cataclysmic impacts of global warming. That puts him -- and, as of his inauguration on Jan. 20, the U.S. -- at odds with much of the world. During two weeks of meetings in Marrakech, Morocco, which wrapped up early Saturday, top officials from almost 200 countries responded to Trump by reinforcing their December Paris Agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions and warned that the president-elect could isolate the U.S. by failing to grasp the urgency of climate change.
1. Was Trump a big topic at the meeting?
Yes. His notion that climate change is a hoax -- the topic of a 2012 tweet that Trump has since tried to walk back -- hung over the proceedings. Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the majority of U.S. citizens still back action on climate change and “no one has the right” to impose ideological beliefs on billions of people. China’s vice foreign minister, Liu Zhenmin, rebuked Trump’s onetime assertion that Chinese leadership made up global warming to hurt U.S. manufacturing.
2. What has Trump said about the Paris Agreement?
That he would "cancel" the pact and "focus on real environmental challenges, not the phony ones we’ve been looking at." He also called renewable energy -- wind and solar and the like -- "just an expensive way of making the tree-huggers feel good about themselves."
3. What happens if the U.S. walks away from the pact?
It depends on how the U.S. went about that. It could just ignore its responsibilities, leaving the rest of the world free to keep moving forward. It could, under the terms of the Paris accord, give notice of its intent to leave and then wait four years. Or it could take a more disruptive approach by renouncing the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, the treaty that established the talks.
4. Can the Paris Agreement survive without the U.S.?
The U.S. is the world’s richest country and its second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, so its exit would be a major blow to nations working to mitigate climate change. But it wouldn’t necessarily kill the Paris accord, which has now been reinforced. Envoys from Europe to China and the United Arab Emirates said the shift to a low-carbon economy is now unstoppable and warned any country backing out of Paris would miss out on major business opportunities.
5. Would dropping out carry a cost to the U.S.?
Most likely. As part of the global move toward clean power and energy-efficient technologies, countries are creating new industries employing millions of workers who are inventing new ways to generate and distribute energy. Boycotting that movement could lock the U.S. into the century-old system of fossil-fuel exploitation at the expense of new economic opportunities.
6. What does the agreement do?
The Paris Agreement, finalized in December, pledges to keep temperature rises well below 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels to avoid the rising seas and superstorms that climate models predict. The pledges made to hit that target aren’t nearly enough and new UN estimates point to temperatures 3.4 degrees higher, levels that will render life impossible in some areas of Earth and result in massive habitat displacements. Countries have agreed to review their pledges every five years with a view to pledging deeper emissions cuts.
7. What was accomplished in Marrakech?
Members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change -- which includes the U.S., at least for now -- agreed to establish rules by 2018 that countries need to follow to cut emissions. Countries agreed to spur faster adoption of renewable energies like wind and solar power. They also reviewed a “loss and damage” mechanism to aid the poorest countries poised to suffer the most from the rising seas, droughts and famines predicted as a result of global warming. European nations pledged to finance a so-called Adaptation Fund. Participants issued the Marrakech Action Proclamation, saying their “momentum is irreversible – it is being driven not only by governments, but by science, business and global action of all types.”
8. Isn’t it true that renewable energy is expensive?
Solar and wind power still cover but a fraction of the world’s energy needs and their costs remain out of reach for the vast majority. That was a big topic in Marrakesh. Nevertheless, rich countries like Germany, and even Portugal, have proven it’s possible to cover an entire nation’s electricity requirements with renewables -- at least some of the time. Solar costs could plunge about 60 percent and offshore wind about 35 percent in the next eight years.
New financial instruments like green bonds are taking off and making renewables in some cases cheaper than coal.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-denial-is-catalyzing-the-world-quicktake-q-a
Jonathan Tirone
Jessica Shankleman Jess_Shankleman
November 19, 2016 — 3:17 AM CST Updated on November 19, 2016 — 7:05 AM CST
Donald Trump says that the overwhelming majority of scientists could be wrong in warning about cataclysmic impacts of global warming. That puts him -- and, as of his inauguration on Jan. 20, the U.S. -- at odds with much of the world. During two weeks of meetings in Marrakech, Morocco, which wrapped up early Saturday, top officials from almost 200 countries responded to Trump by reinforcing their December Paris Agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions and warned that the president-elect could isolate the U.S. by failing to grasp the urgency of climate change.
1. Was Trump a big topic at the meeting?
Yes. His notion that climate change is a hoax -- the topic of a 2012 tweet that Trump has since tried to walk back -- hung over the proceedings. Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the majority of U.S. citizens still back action on climate change and “no one has the right” to impose ideological beliefs on billions of people. China’s vice foreign minister, Liu Zhenmin, rebuked Trump’s onetime assertion that Chinese leadership made up global warming to hurt U.S. manufacturing.
2. What has Trump said about the Paris Agreement?
That he would "cancel" the pact and "focus on real environmental challenges, not the phony ones we’ve been looking at." He also called renewable energy -- wind and solar and the like -- "just an expensive way of making the tree-huggers feel good about themselves."
3. What happens if the U.S. walks away from the pact?
It depends on how the U.S. went about that. It could just ignore its responsibilities, leaving the rest of the world free to keep moving forward. It could, under the terms of the Paris accord, give notice of its intent to leave and then wait four years. Or it could take a more disruptive approach by renouncing the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, the treaty that established the talks.
4. Can the Paris Agreement survive without the U.S.?
The U.S. is the world’s richest country and its second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, so its exit would be a major blow to nations working to mitigate climate change. But it wouldn’t necessarily kill the Paris accord, which has now been reinforced. Envoys from Europe to China and the United Arab Emirates said the shift to a low-carbon economy is now unstoppable and warned any country backing out of Paris would miss out on major business opportunities.
5. Would dropping out carry a cost to the U.S.?
Most likely. As part of the global move toward clean power and energy-efficient technologies, countries are creating new industries employing millions of workers who are inventing new ways to generate and distribute energy. Boycotting that movement could lock the U.S. into the century-old system of fossil-fuel exploitation at the expense of new economic opportunities.
6. What does the agreement do?
The Paris Agreement, finalized in December, pledges to keep temperature rises well below 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels to avoid the rising seas and superstorms that climate models predict. The pledges made to hit that target aren’t nearly enough and new UN estimates point to temperatures 3.4 degrees higher, levels that will render life impossible in some areas of Earth and result in massive habitat displacements. Countries have agreed to review their pledges every five years with a view to pledging deeper emissions cuts.
7. What was accomplished in Marrakech?
Members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change -- which includes the U.S., at least for now -- agreed to establish rules by 2018 that countries need to follow to cut emissions. Countries agreed to spur faster adoption of renewable energies like wind and solar power. They also reviewed a “loss and damage” mechanism to aid the poorest countries poised to suffer the most from the rising seas, droughts and famines predicted as a result of global warming. European nations pledged to finance a so-called Adaptation Fund. Participants issued the Marrakech Action Proclamation, saying their “momentum is irreversible – it is being driven not only by governments, but by science, business and global action of all types.”
8. Isn’t it true that renewable energy is expensive?
Solar and wind power still cover but a fraction of the world’s energy needs and their costs remain out of reach for the vast majority. That was a big topic in Marrakesh. Nevertheless, rich countries like Germany, and even Portugal, have proven it’s possible to cover an entire nation’s electricity requirements with renewables -- at least some of the time. Solar costs could plunge about 60 percent and offshore wind about 35 percent in the next eight years.
New financial instruments like green bonds are taking off and making renewables in some cases cheaper than coal.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-denial-is-catalyzing-the-world-quicktake-q-a
What is right about selling a greenhouse gas 2000 times more powerful than co2?
I really don't get how you all think.
If he is correct... he is an eco terrorist scum... according to your team.
View attachment 168208 .[/QUOTE]
I really don't get how you all think.
If he is correct... he is an eco terrorist scum... according to your team.
View attachment 168208 .[/QUOTE]
Carbon dioxide is present in our atmosphere at trace levels. Although it is technically a greenhouse gas, it is a very weak absorber of IR, is removed rapidly from the atmosphere by plants and converted to carbohydrates. There is no observational evidence to support a claim that CO2 is responsible for global warming. There is, however, strong observational and theoretical evidence showing that CO2 rise in atmospheric concentration is temperature driven.
It may be that hydrocarbon pollution poses an actual threat. Hydrocarbons are photoreactive in the atmosphere, unlike CO2, their reaction products are orders of magnitude stronger IR absorbers than CO2. We know relatively little about processes that remove hydrocarbons from the atmosphere. Hydrocarbons, unlike CO2, may be persistent enough to build up their concentration over time. The release of methane and other geogases to the atmosphere by oil and gas producers should be reviewed and studied.
Meanwhile much more data and study is needed to determine whether the global climate is, on average, warming, cooling or remaining constant, and if it is changing what is the cause. Climate scientists remain hopeful that only one mechanism dominates which , of course, greatly simplifies the problem. The the multiple systems creating global climate, when acting in consort, are chaotic. We have insufficient tools to allow understanding of climate to the point of being able to make accurate predictions beyond a few hours into the future. Much of our effort as been aimed at guessing how the climate may work, creating a model and then testing the model. No model so far has been shown capable of accurately predicting long-range future temperature. The reason for failure is thought to be a combination of too many degrees of freedom combined within inability to adequately model important chaotic systems, such as cloud formation and convection. In the past, this latter problem was dealy with be ignoring factors that could not be modeled. The former problem,i.e., excessive degrees of freedom has been addressed by fitting models to collected data, and some progress has been made toward solving the latter problem, but there is as yet no successful model. To make matters worse still, the early predictions of catastrophic warming due to rising CO2 concentration required positive feedback. But positive feedback is inconsistent with both observation and logic. Suffice it to say all the early models from the 1980s failed to predict future temperature even roughly consistent with observation.
It may be that hydrocarbon pollution poses an actual threat. Hydrocarbons are photoreactive in the atmosphere, unlike CO2, their reaction products are orders of magnitude stronger IR absorbers than CO2. We know relatively little about processes that remove hydrocarbons from the atmosphere. Hydrocarbons, unlike CO2, may be persistent enough to build up their concentration over time. The release of methane and other geogases to the atmosphere by oil and gas producers should be reviewed and studied.
Meanwhile much more data and study is needed to determine whether the global climate is, on average, warming, cooling or remaining constant, and if it is changing what is the cause. Climate scientists remain hopeful that only one mechanism dominates which , of course, greatly simplifies the problem. The the multiple systems creating global climate, when acting in consort, are chaotic. We have insufficient tools to allow understanding of climate to the point of being able to make accurate predictions beyond a few hours into the future. Much of our effort as been aimed at guessing how the climate may work, creating a model and then testing the model. No model so far has been shown capable of accurately predicting long-range future temperature. The reason for failure is thought to be a combination of too many degrees of freedom combined within inability to adequately model important chaotic systems, such as cloud formation and convection. In the past, this latter problem was dealy with be ignoring factors that could not be modeled. The former problem,i.e., excessive degrees of freedom has been addressed by fitting models to collected data, and some progress has been made toward solving the latter problem, but there is as yet no successful model. To make matters worse still, the early predictions of catastrophic warming due to rising CO2 concentration required positive feedback. But positive feedback is inconsistent with both observation and logic. Suffice it to say all the early models from the 1980s failed to predict future temperature even roughly consistent with observation.
Very well written, but sadly no one working in the field or in a decision-making capacity believes it*. The fastest horse doesn't always win, but that is the way to bet.
*Don't say Drumpf believes it, he wouldn't even understand it.
By the way, answering as a scientist, do you think a single paper could could prove or disprove AGW?
What a huge load of shit. We don't know if the world is warming? lol
No, positive feedback is not inconsistant with logic at all. It's very logical.
I now have to call you piehole again. You are like Dr Jekyl and Mr Hide.
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Be kind, this is Pie's sacrificial, make 'em think maybe he's not a good chess player, move. Keeps 'em in the game.
I got distracted. The post is badly edited as I got timed out when I went back to it. An observation I would make is that the non-scientific public is completely unaware of the controversy that is continuing in the primary literature. I would say that the atmospheric physicists are are now aligned by slight majority against the Hansen hypothesis, while the climatologists and meteorologists are by moderate majority aligned with the hypothesis the extent of agreement is no where near as one sided as the media would have us believe.
A big problem is semantics. I don't know what political genius decided to start referring to AGW as climate change, but that completely muddies the water. We have to decide several different issues ; none are as yet resolved in the opinion of at least a sizable minority of the scientific world.
These are some unresolved issues:
a. Is the temperature changing beyond its expected rate of change globally? Not just in the Northern Hemisphere but globally. Surface measurement says yes; satellite remote sensing says no. This discrepancy must be resolved.
b. If positive feedback is needed for CO2 to cause the catastrophic temperature excursions Hansen predicted would have arrived by now, and the feedback is positive, and hasn't just recently become positive, why didn't the Earth long ago become too hot? (If feedback is positive, any little warming by CO2 will cause a disastrous temperature excursion.) Logic, biosphere stability, and observation requires that the feedback response to a rise in CO2 be negative if CO2 significantly affects surface temperature.
c. CO2 is rising everywhere on the planet, and several regions are very demonstrably getting warmer. Why are a few regions getting demonstrably cooler.
d. CO2 concentration on a long-time scale rises with temperature, there is good correlation which is a necessary condition for CO2 to be the cause of the temperature rise. Looked at in some detail we see a slow long-time rise in CO2 consistent with the industrial revolution and increasing use of fossil fuels, and the correlation with the surface temperature data available in the 1980s is good! This is a good indication that CO2 rise might be causing temperature rise via the greenhouse effect. But when better, time-resolved temperature and CO2 data became available, the temperature record was resolvable into two components: a long, slow monotonic rise in temperature, and riding on top of this was a cyclical temperature variation with a regular and much shorter period that appears to correspond to oceanic surface temperature. The slow monotonic rise is consistent with deeper, oceanic water temperature. Also found, is the same pattern in CO2 atmospheric concentration. If CO2 concentration is driving temperature increase than CO2 concentration must be either in phase with or lead the the temperature cycle, but in fact the phase relationship is the opposite. This data is strongly supportive of Salby's earlier finding that temperature was in fact driving CO2 concentration; not the other way around. These observations taken together are consistent with the earlier, but poorly resolved, correlation of temperature with CO2 rise, and also consistent with both temperature rise being the driver of rising CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, or alternatively anthropomorphic CO2 being the driver of rising CO2. Although the time resolved temperature and CO2 data is consistent with much of the rise in CO2 concentration being from Anthropomorphic sources, it is inconsistent with anthropomorphic CO2 being the driver of temperature increase. This is a great conundrum that must be resolved.
The battle continues in the primary literature, a battle of which the public and our politicians seem totally unaware. I blame Hansen's unacceptable, and unprofessional behavior for this. He has stooped so low as to write papers and submit them directly to the media as though they were legitimate scientific papers without bothering to go through the peer review process.
I have no problem with a push toward development of alternative energy sources. I do not view the effort directed at lowering CO2 emissions as being particularly bad or wasteful, as it seems good will come out of it in the end. But I hate to see bad science championed in the media.
A big problem is semantics. I don't know what political genius decided to start referring to AGW as climate change, but that completely muddies the water. We have to decide several different issues ; none are as yet resolved in the opinion of at least a sizable minority of the scientific world.
These are some unresolved issues:
a. Is the temperature changing beyond its expected rate of change globally? Not just in the Northern Hemisphere but globally. Surface measurement says yes; satellite remote sensing says no. This discrepancy must be resolved.
b. If positive feedback is needed for CO2 to cause the catastrophic temperature excursions Hansen predicted would have arrived by now, and the feedback is positive, and hasn't just recently become positive, why didn't the Earth long ago become too hot? (If feedback is positive, any little warming by CO2 will cause a disastrous temperature excursion.) Logic, biosphere stability, and observation requires that the feedback response to a rise in CO2 be negative if CO2 significantly affects surface temperature.
c. CO2 is rising everywhere on the planet, and several regions are very demonstrably getting warmer. Why are a few regions getting demonstrably cooler.
d. CO2 concentration on a long-time scale rises with temperature, there is good correlation which is a necessary condition for CO2 to be the cause of the temperature rise. Looked at in some detail we see a slow long-time rise in CO2 consistent with the industrial revolution and increasing use of fossil fuels, and the correlation with the surface temperature data available in the 1980s is good! This is a good indication that CO2 rise might be causing temperature rise via the greenhouse effect. But when better, time-resolved temperature and CO2 data became available, the temperature record was resolvable into two components: a long, slow monotonic rise in temperature, and riding on top of this was a cyclical temperature variation with a regular and much shorter period that appears to correspond to oceanic surface temperature. The slow monotonic rise is consistent with deeper, oceanic water temperature. Also found, is the same pattern in CO2 atmospheric concentration. If CO2 concentration is driving temperature increase than CO2 concentration must be either in phase with or lead the the temperature cycle, but in fact the phase relationship is the opposite. This data is strongly supportive of Salby's earlier finding that temperature was in fact driving CO2 concentration; not the other way around. These observations taken together are consistent with the earlier, but poorly resolved, correlation of temperature with CO2 rise, and also consistent with both temperature rise being the driver of rising CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, or alternatively anthropomorphic CO2 being the driver of rising CO2. Although the time resolved temperature and CO2 data is consistent with much of the rise in CO2 concentration being from Anthropomorphic sources, it is inconsistent with anthropomorphic CO2 being the driver of temperature increase. This is a great conundrum that must be resolved.
The battle continues in the primary literature, a battle of which the public and our politicians seem totally unaware. I blame Hansen's unacceptable, and unprofessional behavior for this. He has stooped so low as to write papers and submit them directly to the media as though they were legitimate scientific papers without bothering to go through the peer review process.
I have no problem with a push toward development of alternative energy sources. I do not view the effort directed at lowering CO2 emissions as being particularly bad or wasteful, as it seems good will come out of it in the end. But I hate to see bad science championed in the media.
How many are supposed to be the sizable minority of the scientific world. 25, 50 or maybe a hundred?
“Why 100 authors? If I were wrong, then one would have been enough!” Albert Einstein.
The split is multi faceted. See the Bulletin of the Meteorology Society for the 2014 survey of Meteorologists and Atmospheric physicists. I posted the results here on ET, but am not inclined to take the time to search for them. You will discover that there is nothing even approaching a broad consensus at this point, and alarmingly their are highly regarded experts are on both sides of the issue. The picture painted by the media is absurdly lopsided. I don't know the fundamental reason behind that, but I suspect it goes back to Hansen and Gore, their emotional investment and egos. Hansen hooked a lot of folks early on, and it is so darn hard for we H. sapiens to say "I was wrong" -- especially when in doing so we might be siding with "the evil ones."
______________________
incidentally I have tried many times here on ET, but to no effect, to make the point that Einstein was making . A single observation not in agreement with the AGW hypothesis calls the hypothesis into question. Either the observation is wrong, or the hypothesis is wrong. They can't both be right!
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