Denier weirdness: Robot overlords are a bigger threat than global warming Who knew?

Anthony Watts doesn't agree with climate scientists. In his latest effort (archived here) he thinks that the biggest threats to humanity are: "the threat of nuclear war, asteroid and comet impacts, a super volcanic eruption, robot overlords, or a global pandemic". I've no doubt that some of these are potential threats, but none are as big a threat as global warming.

This is the YouTube clip to which Anthony Watts objected. We can overcome this biggest of challenges, but will we?

A strong, alarming warning from scientific luminaries: We have to decide...

This is an alert for denier watchers. Get ready for the possibility of another "whopping mad (crazy)" onslaught from the climate conspiracy theorists. Peter U. Clark and a team of leading scientists have published a paper in Nature Climate Change, this time looking ahead 10,000 years to changes in climate and sea level. The team is laden with some of the heaviest of heavyweights from the world of climate science:

Peter U. Clark, Jeremy D. Shakun, Shaun A. Marcott, Alan C. Mix, Michael Eby, Scott Kulp, Anders Levermann, Glenn A. Milne, Patrik L. Pfister, Benjamin D. Santer, Daniel P. Schrag, Susan Solomon, Thomas F. Stocker, Benjamin H. Strauss, Andrew J. Weaver, Ricarda Winkelmann, David Archer, Edouard Bard, Aaron Goldner, Kurt Lambeck, Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, Gian-Kasper Plattner.

Some people at WUWT agree with climate scientists: let's not go "howlingly barking mad"

In the absence of anything much at WUWT, I was going to write about the proposed Geoengineering research program. Slate published an article by the eminent climate scientist, Professor Raymond Pierrehumbert, with the headline and sub-head:

Climate Hacking Is Barking Mad

You can’t fix the Earth with these geoengineering proposals, but you can sure make it worse. 

Opposing geoengineering of climate does not equate to not exploring options

Prof Pierrehumbert, a fierce opposer of geoengineering, has co-authored an NRC proposal that a research program be established to consider geoengineering proposals. As he wrote:

This week, the National Research Council (NRC) is releasing a report on climate engineering that deals with exactly those proposals I found most terrifying. The report even recommends the creation of a research program addressing these proposals. I am a co-author of this report. Does this mean I've had a change of heart?

No.

The nearly two years' worth of reading and animated discussions that went into this study have convinced me more than ever that the idea of “fixing” the climate by hacking the Earth’s reflection of sunlight is wildly, utterly, howlingly barking mad. In fact, though the report is couched in language more nuanced than what I myself would prefer, there is really nothing in it that is inconsistent with my earlier appraisals.

Geoengineering and public opinion

Before I got to write about this, I saw that WUWT has picked up on the subject of geoengineering with two articles. Many science deniers don't want geoengineering any more than scientists do.

Christopher Monckton forgets about the sun then greets the men in white coats

One of the most-used denier myths about the cause of global warming has been "it's the sun".  It's still number two on the SkepticalScience.com list. You'll be surprised to find that at WUWT, Christopher Monckton is now ignoring the sun's role in keeping Earth warm.

First there's CO2

Yesterday's article (archived here) is a bit of pseudo-science, in which Christopher fudges some numbers that he claims came from an older IPCC report (from 2007) and proclaims that:

Broadly speaking, the IPCC expects this century’s warming to be equivalent to that from a doubling of CO2 concentration. In that event, 1 Cº is indeed all the warming we should expect from a CO2 doubling. And is that going to be a problem

I don't know if he's talking about an additional one degree rise this century or if he's arguing there will only be another 0.2 degree rise this century.  If the former, many scientists would disagree.  If we continue with business as usual we'll probably be in for at least two degrees of warming by 2100, so that would mean another 1.2 degrees this century.  That's being optimistic. It could be four degrees.

The thing is, with only 0.9 degree rise in the temperature in Australia we're seeing events never before recorded, like the unreal summer of 2009 in south eastern Australia, our Angry Summer of 2012-13, our hottest year ever plus this past year, catastrophic fires and floods all over the nation at once - so much so it dropped the global sea level.  Another one degree and our summers will be monstrous. A four degree rise would be beyond monstrous.

What about the sun?

In the comments Christopher wrote about the Neoproterozoic era:

Mr Tyler asks whether there were earlier periods when CO2 concentrations were higher than today and the weather was colder. The best example of many is the Neorproterozoic (sic) era, 750 million years ago, when I was young. At that time there was at least 30% CO2 in the atmosphere, compared with 0.04% today, and yet glaciers came and went, at the equator, twice. It is fascinating watching true-believing paleoclimatologists trying to explain that one away. They usually do it by saying that the CO2 concentration must have been much more variable than it was. But we know it was at least 30%, for otherwise the dolomitic limestones could not have precipitated out of the oceans.

Thing is that there were a lot of things different about the the Neoproterozoic world.  Days were shorter, the moon was closer, land masses were organised differently and, most particularly for climate, the sun was fainter.  We're talking about a period spanning from around 1,000,000,000 years ago to 540,000,000 years ago.  Before there was much life on Earth at all.  Some organisms appeared over that time - mostly in the water of course.  There were no plants on land so silicate weathering, an important part of the long term carbon cycle, would have been less efficient than now.

I'm no expert in paleoclimatology but I found a review paper called "Climate of the Neoproterozoic" written by some experts, Raymond Pierrehumbert and colleagues.  Here is an excerpt by way of a short introduction to the era:

The Neoproterozoic is a time of transition between the ancient microbial world and the Phanerozoic, marked by a resumption of extreme carbon isotope fluctuations and glaciation after a billion-year absence. The carbon cycle disruptions are probably accompanied by changes in the stock of oxidants and connect to glaciations via changes in the atmospheric greenhouse gas content. Two of the glaciations reach low latitudes and may have been Snowball events with near-global ice cover....

...Until near the end of the Neoproterozoic, however,much of the Neoproterozoic show played out on the microbial stage and was recorded only dimly in the fossil record. The Neoproterozoic is like a dark tunnel. The ancient microbial world enters the far end, endures the biogeochemical and climatic turbulence of the Neoproterozoic, and comes out into the light of the metazoan-rich Phanerozoic world on the other side. 

The paper is fairly easy to read at the beginning. (It gets technical further in.)  In regard to carbon dioxide and climate, this is some of what was written:

The Neoproterozoic glaciations provide the main indication of climate variability, but apart from that and the broad inferences that can be drawn from survival of various forms of marine life, there are no proxies to tell us how hot it may have been between glaciations.

Christopher Monckton seems a lot more sure of himself than are scientists, when he talks about the Neoproterozoic.  He's convinced that "there was at least 30% CO2 in the atmosphere, compared with 0.04% today, and yet glaciers came and went, at the equator, twice" - implying that CO2 levels didn't change in 460 million years or so.  Given how CO2 has increased by 40% in the blink of an eye since industrialisation, that seems a strange position for him to take.  Not so strange when you know something of the potty peer I suppose.

The paper states that the "absorbed solar radiation averaged over Earth’s surface would have been approximately 14Wm^-2 less than it is at present".  Therefore, to keep the temperature the same as today, there would have had to be around 12 times as much CO2 as there was prior to industrialisation. That is, around 3,360 ppmv - with perhaps some CH4 substitution.  However in the non-glacial periods of the Neoproterozoic, it was probably warmer than the Ordovician, with higher levels of CO2 than 3,360 ppmv.

What about the glacial periods? It's likely or at least possible that there were two periods in the Neoproterozoic era during which Earth probably or possibly had snowball earth events. That is, most of the oceans froze over. What would have caused that to happen would be a large reduction in CO2.  And to come out of the snowball earth would have taken probably an even greater rise in CO2 or other greenhouse gases.

The paper I referred to discusses how δ13C had enormous fluctuations during the Neoproterozoic and puts forward potential mechanisms for this. If, like me, you're not all that familiar with these topics, then you might find you need to concentrate. I won't attempt to distil the information here at HotWhopper.  I've learnt a lot more than I knew before reading the paper but my knowledge of the subject is way less than the authors (and probably less than many HW readers). One little fact I can impart - the enormous shifts in global temperatures during the 460 million years or so of the Neoproterozoic era had much to do with greenhouse gases.

The point is that Christopher Monckton doesn't have much of a clue when it comes to climate science. Whether it's science of the present day climate or that of a thousand million years ago.  And given how deniers love to claim "it's the sun", it's ironic that Christopher ignores the sun when he talks about climates of the deep past, arguing as if the world back then was in the same situation as it is today.  It was different in so many ways.

From the WUWT comments

A swag of comments - here are some for you to enjoy - or whatever.

Martin A says:

March 26, 2014 at 7:31 am
I’d like to thank the quaintly named Monckton of Brenchley for his kind reply (3:05 am) to my comment and my question.

The quaintly named Monckton of Brenchley goes some small way to redeeming himself (extract):

March 26, 2014 at 8:01 am
...Mr Kelly says that because CO2 concentration change lags temperature change by an average of 800 years the overall temperature feedback gain factor must be zero. Mr Haynie makes a similar point. However, theirs is a common misconception. Though it is clear on paleoclimate timescales that it is temperature that changed first and CO2 concentration change that followed, the CO2 concentration change was – and is – capable of reinforcing and amplifying the temperature change.

KevinK isn't buying the idea and says:

March 26, 2014 at 6:04 pm
Go on, pull my other leg while you are at it. That is not only a bad example of circular logic it isn’t even a good example of mobius strip logic.

So to state it another way; temperature drives CO2 levels AND CO2 levels drive temperature, UM KAY….. If you say so.

Surely you are joking….. (Ok, apparently you are serious and I’ll refrain from calling you Shirley).

It has to be ONE or the OTHER, not BOTH.

CO2 levels could conceivably affect the response time of the gases in the atmosphere (causing them to warm/cool more quickly after sunrise, for example), but they cannot be controlled by AND ALSO control the average temperature.

How, one would reasonably ask, can this mythical molecule (CO2) know when to “obey” the temperature and when to “command” the temperature ?????

Your logic would lead to a runaway train…….

Cheers, Kevin. 

highflight56433 says:

March 26, 2014 at 9:14 am
I cannot buy into CO2 warming a H2O system as it (the CO2) would dilute molecule for molecule any concentration of H2O vapor, resulting in a cooling response as CO2 is less a heat absorbent than water. The cooling would then dry the atmosphere causing even further cooling. How many time do we have to look at the ice cores to verify an increase in CO2 cools the planet? And then there is the fact that it is the surface that warms the atmosphere, so first there must be warmer temps on the surface to increase air temperature. All being equal, less concentration of H2O is a cooler atmosphere. 

GogogoStopSTOP (as Bernard) said he was having a problem viewing WUWT and wondered if it was the site or him, to which Anthony replied in a somewhat condescending manner.  GogogoStopSTOP wasn't impressed and says:

March 26, 2014 at 9:57 am
Well pardon me Anthony! The last time I spoke with you personally, it was at the Heartland meeting in DC a few years ago. You seemed like such a pleasant, knowledgeable gentleman.
I’ve followed your blog for years. I have an Apple Macbook pro, running Mac OS X 10.7.5…

Thanks for the advice, but it’s a little unbecoming of you, as was, probably, my asking if there was something affecting your operation more broadly.

Christopher greets the men in white coats

Let's finish up with one of Christopher's incomprehensible ravings as he toddles off to greet the men in white coats. The quaintly named Monckton of Brenchley says (excerpt):

March 26, 2014 at 3:56 pm:
As it becomes ever more apparent to all that the claims of the totalitarian Left about the climate are in all material respects exaggerated, people will perhaps look more closely at the habit of routine and egregious mendacity that is a consequence of the enormous campaign of disinformation by a million agents of Soviet propaganda, that infected our media, our academe and our other institutions for decades. Though the evil empire that promoted that vicious campaign of lies was eventually flung into oblivion, today’s hard Left, having learned how to dissemble on the grand scale, have now largely lost the ability to tell the difference between that which is true and that which is not. To them, as to the Soviets who trained them so well and often without their knowledge, it is not the truth but the Party Line that matters. On the climate, the Party Line is now being daily demonstrated to have been in substance false. As more and more people come to realize this, they will begin to question everything they are told by the left/Green inheritors of the Communist/fascist mantle, and the world will be a merrier place for that.

---

Pierrehumbert, R. T., D. S. Abbot, A. Voigt, and D. Koll. "Climate of the Neoproterozoic." Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 39, no. 1 (2011): 417. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-earth-040809-152447

How much CO2 can the atmosphere take?

Or, more properly, how much CO2 in the atmosphere can we, as humans, tolerate?

The EU Commission has agreed new targets for reducing carbon emissions. The EU plan is described at the Guardian as:

• To cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030, compared with 1990 levels.  
• 27% of energy must come from renewable sources by 2030, which is described as a binding target as well as being described as "not yet clear whether the target will be binding at the level of member states". 
• No new legislation to regulate shale gas development.
• Reformation of the EU carbon trading scheme.

There is an article at the Guardian by Fiona Harvey and Ian Traynor that describes the EU's new targets in a bit more detail and provides some context.  For example, at one point they write: "Studies show that the EU's emissions are likely to be 25% below 1990 levels by 2020, making the targets easier to meet."

It's not a done deal yet.  It is still to be debated by member state governments, which I gather will be happening during March this year via the European Council, and the European Parliament. Given that some countries are forging ahead with emission reductions through renewable energy development and other means (eg energy efficiency), I gather that the emissions target and the renewables target are thought to be achievable.

The Cumulative Carbon Emissions Budget

The plan may be thought by some people to be ambitious, certainly compared to targets in other places, but is it enough?

Damian Carrington has an article at the Guardian about this from the point  of view of the cumulative carbon emissions budget.  He wrote:

For those focusing on climate change – the atmosphere right now is half full of carbon dioxide – the European commission's plan is clearly inadequate to meet the EU's own target of limiting global warming to 2C. For those focusing on the economy of the bloc today – EU citizen's pocket are half empty after a crushing recession – the deal was the most ambitious possible.

Damian put up the UK Guardians' version of this IPCC chart, which I've annotated. (Click for larger version.)

Adapted from Figure SPM.10: Global mean surface temperature increase as a function of cumulative total global CO2 emissions from various lines of evidence. Source: IPCC AR5 WG1 Summary for Policy Makers

To keep global temperatures at or below two degrees of warming (ie two degrees above temperatures of the beginning of the twentieth century), we need to limit the total amount of carbon emissions from all sources to around 1000 GtC or less.

Temperature rises linearly with emissions

The interesting thing is that there is a robust relationship between temperature and emissions.  The temperature response to carbon emissions has been shown to be linear up to around 2,000 PgC.    It doesn't matter over what time period or what the resulting CO2 concentration is.

That's an important point, so I'll repeat it.  Whether or not we emit the next 500 gigatonnes of carbon over a decade or over a century, the temperature will rise the same amount.  And it doesn't matter if atmospheric CO2 goes up by double or a bit less or a bit more.  The relationship we're talking about is between emissions and temperature not CO2 concentration and temperature.

That is why the focus is shifting away from concentrations of CO2 to carbon emissions.

This is explained quite clearly in a paper by H. Damon Matthews, Susan Solomon and Raymond Pierrehumbert.  To get some idea of how much temperature goes up for every 1,000 PgC emitted, the above paper shows the following:

• a very likely (5–95%) uncertainty range of 1–2.5°C of global temperature increase per 1000 PgC of cumulative carbon emitted
• the observational record showed a mean value of 1.5°C per 1000 PgC emitted, and a 5–95% range of 1 to 2.1°C/1000 PgC.

I doubt the 1.5°C observed rise factors in slower feedbacks. So I suggest adding a half a degree at least.  This is a moving target because we are still increasing the rate of growth of emissions.

The EU targets and those of all other countries need to be assessed in the light of how much they will add to cumulative emissions.  If we don't keep cumulative emissions to less than 1,000 gigatonnes (1,000 PgC) then temperatures will be likely to rise above 2°C.  Obviously there needs to be a cooperative international effort to limit cumulative emissions.  That's not to say that all countries have to have exactly the same route to reducing emissions.  It is to say that taken together, the whole world needs to keep cumulative emissions to less than 1,000 gigatonnes of carbon.

With cumulative emissions approaching 500 gigatonnes and carbon emissions currently at around 10 gigatonnes a year and rising, it doesn't leave a lot of time to switch away from burning fossil fuels, such as by switching to clean energy.  This involves a massive change in electricity generation for example.

Thing is, we need to leave some spare capacity for future emissions even after we make the major switch away from burning fossil fuels.  Remember, this is a cumulative budget.  Even when we cut annual emissions to around 10% of what they are at present, we'll still be adding at least ten gigatonnes a decade to cumulative emissions.  If we use up all the budget now, then future generations will be much more limited in their options.

The chart above shows how much time we have or not, depending on which emissions pathway we choose.  But really, in the short term (say, to 2050), unless we make radical cuts in emissions in the next few years, we're heading for more than two degrees of warming this century.  If you took the cumulative emissions by the end of 2014 to be 500 gigatonnes and assumed a 2% growth in emissions each year, then we'd have reached the 1,000 gigatonne target by 2050.  Even if we were to stabilise emissions at the current approx 10 gigatonnes a year, we'd fill the 1,000 gigatonne quota by 2070.  After that we'd have to stop all emissions immediately to stick to the budget  - which just won't happen.  So the sooner we start to reduce emissions the better.

Anthony Watts goes for a literal interpretation

Damian Carrington wrote: "the atmosphere right now is half full of carbon dioxide", linking to an article about the carbon budget as described above.  Anthony put on his literal hat (as he does) and responded with (archived here):

Maybe Damian doesn’t understand that whole “parts per million” thing, if he did, he’s certainly know that 398.58 is nowhere close to “half full”. The value of 500,000 parts per million is what would be considered “half-full”. He’s only off be a couple orders of magnitude.

And showed he doesn't follow hyperlinks, by adding:

Maybe he was thinking in terms of saturation of the CO2 effect in the atmosphere on temperature? In that case, we are closer to 90%, and additional CO2 won’t make much difference.

No, Anthony.  You are very wrong when you claim "additional CO2 won't make much difference".  You are also wrong about what Damian was thinking.  Damian was referring to the cumulative carbon emissions budget, as you'd have realised if you'd read the article to which he linked.

Anthony then puts up this chart, with no humour or satire tag, so he does intend for it to be taken seriously.  Which means that post of his was meant to trick his dumber readers.  He doesn't explain what the chart is meant to represent.  What it appears to be is a chart of a log relationship of CO2 and temperature. Since Anthony chose temperature on the Kelvin scale, I've highlighted and enlarged bits of it to show just the relevant temperatures as anomalies.  I chose the baseline temperature as that when CO2 was around 280 ppm, which is what CO2 concentration was before industrialisation.  The result is shown below - as an animation:

Anthony's chart shows that with a doubling of CO2 from 280 ppm to 560 ppm, temperatures would rise by about 2 degrees Kelvin (which is 2 degrees Celsius).  So he's in the ballpark of climate sensitivity.  However what he wrote shows that either he doesn't understand that or he's deliberately deceiving his readers - neither of which says much about Anthony Watts.  He wrote:

This graph showing CO2′s temperature response to supplement the one Doug Hoffman cites from IPCC AR4. here we see that we are indeed pretty close to saturation of the response.

"Close to saturation" is a relative concept.  There is plenty of room for temperatures to rise and cause untold damage.   (Note that Anthony's chart stops at 800 ppm.  Plus he's got the Y axis at a scale that makes reading associated temperatures difficult, and hard to determine if his chart resembles reality).

Thing is, of course, that we're heading for much more than a doubling of CO2.  If we were to continue to increase emissions by two per cent a year, then by 2040 we'd have doubled the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere assuming that half the extra emissions continued to be absorbed at the surface.  Sooner if the oceans reckoned they'd already absorbed more than they could handle.  By the early 2060s CO2 would be up to around 800 ppm.  And by 2100 we'd be over 1500 ppm.

In terms of the carbon budget, that would take cumulative emissions to almost 2800 gigatonnes, which is off the chart (of the top chart SPM.10) and getting into the territory of six degrees of warming by the end of the century.  Not a pleasant thought.

In the meantime, fasten your seatbelts.  It's going to be a rough ride over the next few years.

---

Matthews, H. Damon, Susan Solomon, and Raymond Pierrehumbert. "Cumulative carbon as a policy framework for achieving climate stabilization." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 370, no. 1974 (2012): 4365-4379.

---

From the WUWT comments

The comments are mostly of the "dumb denier" type, which isn't a surprise given Anthony's article is also of the "dumb denier" kind. (Archived here.)

Les Johnson didn't bother reading Damian Carrington's article or following the hyperlink but says what "he thinks" he meant, which was wrong.  Damian was referring to cumulative emissions not CO2 concentration:

January 22, 2014 at 11:01 am
I believe that by 1/2 full, he meant that we are 1/2 way to a ‘safe’ level of CO2. From pre-industrial levels of 260, that would mean we are at 390 (we are), and must go no further than 520.

Just a guess. But you would think a journalist would be able to communicate the concept better. Warmist wonder they have communication problems…

albertalad goes for conspiracy lingo and says:

January 22, 2014 at 11:20 am
Sadly it isn’t just this guy off his rocker – it is the EU mass insanity driving themselves into poverty led by an even crazier class of leaders without a gain of common sense between the entire lot. Genuine science has ceased to exist in the entirety of the EU – replaced by a self imposed dark ages eagerly followed by the masses.

climateismydj says dryly of Anthony's speculation:

January 22, 2014 at 11:26 am
Maybe if the author of this article followed the link under his highlighted Guardian article text, he’d find the answer staring him in the face. But then again, WUWT has journalism standards to uphold…

nutso fasst says:

January 22, 2014 at 11:38 am
Given the atomic weights of carbon and oxygen, isn’t the total carbon in the atmosphere actually closer to 0.015%?

I don't know if DirkH is trying to be clever or if he is being extra thick when he says:

January 22, 2014 at 11:59 am
He thought it’s 398 percent, not ppm. And 398 percent is about half full.
Quite a good one from the Guardian.

thebleedingobvious is right when he says CO2 isn't the same as carbon, but not right when he suggests that "alarmists" always use the wrong term.  As he rightly points out, CO2 is not the same as carbon.  However total carbon includes the carbon in CO2 (and CH4 and other molecules containing carbon).

January 22, 2014 at 1:03 pm
Carbon dioxide is not the same thing as carbon.
Why do alarmists use the wrong term?

Illiterati dbstealey says:

January 22, 2014 at 1:06 pm
thebleedingobvious says: “Why do alarmists use the wrong term?”
The answer is simple: because they are scientific illiterates, who are just repeating the standard talking points given to them.

Bruce Cobb is keen to get to six degrees of warming and says:

January 22, 2014 at 1:43 pm
Since the ideal CO2 level is probably somewhere around 1,000 ppm, at close to 400 ppm we still have about another 100 ppm to go before we’re at half full. But, close enough. Burning more coal could help us get there.

As does "So dumb" MarkW who says:

January 22, 2014 at 2:33 pm
A few million years ago, the atmosphere had almost ten times as muchCO2 in it compared to today’s atmosphere. The idea that the atmosphere is half full is something so dumb that only someone completely in thrall to his religion could believe it.

Brian Davis says:

January 22, 2014 at 3:04 pm
Anthony, do you have the source for the chart at the end of your post showing the temperature response to CO2?

REPLY: See link in the story -A

Anthony's "link in the story" is no help at all.  It doesn't provide any source of his chart either!


Critical reading is not one of Ron House's fortés - he says:

January 22, 2014 at 5:50 pm
There it says: “The world’s leading climate scientists have set out in detail for the first time how much more carbon dioxide humans can pour into the atmosphere without triggering dangerous levels of climate change – and concluded that more than half of that global allowance has been used up.”

That just makes the stupidity even more appalling than the ignorance: Half of a maximum addition to something is not in general the same as half of the total amount.