Global Warming...Fact or Fiction?

[Wooglin]

lol, the point of the EPA is to -protect human health and the environment-.

do you think industry lacks in lobbying power to weigh in on the 'impact and cost side' of the equation? and it's interesting that you assume that scientists just 'rubber stamp what environmentalists want'.

this is akin to using wolves to protect the chicken shed.

like i said, we're in a situation where if you're interested in environmental protection at all, you either side with the party that also believes in anthropocentric global warming or you get diddly squat.

Obviously you have no idea what you're talking about and again using assumptions as facts.

I guess industry didn't get to weigh in on this one beforehand.

https://www.rpc.senate.gov/policy-pa...enefits-matter

On June 29, the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency acted unreasonably when it wrote its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule. The agency failed to consider cost as a factor when making its threshold determination that the rule was “appropriate and necessary” under the Clean Air Act. The court remanded three consolidated cases – referred to as Michigan v. EPA – to the D.C. Circuit, where the MATS rule will be reconsidered. Even if the appeals court vacates the MATS rule, it will make little difference for power companies that have already shut down coal-fired power plants to comply with the rule. It will also do little to help energy consumers who now face higher electricity rates and reduced electric reliability. Nonetheless, the ruling may force the EPA to justify their regulations with more reasonable cost-benefit analyses in the future.

Good thing they'll actually analyze common sense factors like cost/benefit BEFORE they start enacting regulations now. Oh, the horror!!

[astralis]

lol, the point of the EPA is to -protect human health and the environment-.

do you think industry lacks in lobbying power to weigh in on the 'impact and cost side' of the equation? and it's interesting that you assume that scientists just 'rubber stamp what environmentalists want'.

this is akin to using wolves to protect the chicken shed.

like i said, we're in a situation where if you're interested in environmental protection at all, you either side with the party that also believes in anthropocentric global warming or you get diddly squat.

[Wooglin]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/07/u...iew-board.html

pretty much what i said earlier.

even if you don't subscribe to the anthropocentric global warning aspect of the environmental movement, there is no political alternative where environmental protection is embraced.

Not sure what the problem is here... that impact will actually be taken into account for a change? Why is stacking the board with govt funded academics that merely rubber stamp what environmentalists want so much better than including people who might actually understand the impact and cost side of the equation?

[astralis]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/07/u...iew-board.html

pretty much what i said earlier.

even if you don't subscribe to the anthropocentric global warning aspect of the environmental movement, there is no political alternative where environmental protection is embraced.

[JRT]

WHOI scientists partner with Rhode Island fishermen to understand rapid changes in Gulf Stream-dominated east coast shelf waters

by CarolAnne Black
Friday, March 31, 2017
Marine Technology News

In 2011, oceanographer Glen Gawarkiewicz sat in the back row at a National Science Foundation (NSF) public hearing about the upcoming installation of a vast and long-term ocean monitoring system, called the Ocean Observatories Initiative Pioneer Array (Pioneer Array). The chosen location, right off the coastal waters of New England, meant the array could interfere with fishing and shipping, and there was concern that the science generated by the array could be used to force fisheries closures. The people whose livelihoods depend on this ocean region were at the hearing and they meant to be heard. “There was a very crowded room in the public library in New Bedford,” recalls Gawarkiewicz, “and there were some contentious moments.” He was sitting next to a woman he hadn’t yet met, and Gawarkiewicz remembers one of them said to the other, “There’s got to be a better way than this.”

That day, Gawarkiewicz, Associate Scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), had been sitting next to Peg Parker, the then Executive Director of the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation (CFRF), a non-profit private foundation based out of Rhode Island that works to involve fishermen in the science used to manage their industry. The two decided to stay in touch.

Not long after the public hearings, the NSF decided there should be negotiations between the Pioneer Array scientists and representatives from the commercial fishing industry to determine how the Pioneer Array could be altered to minimize multi-use conflicts. For four four-hour sessions, Gawarkiewicz, Parker, researchers and industry representatives met to discuss possible alterations. Gawarkiewicz explains that Parker had to walk a tight line, because “there were people in the industry saying ‘this is going to lead to closures,’ and other people saying, ‘No, no, the ocean is changing. We need to learn about this.’”

On the very last day of negotiations, three of the fishermen approached Gawarkiewicz. “[They said,] ‘actually, we learned a fair amount talking to you guys about the ocean out here, and we want to let you know there’s very warm water out on the edge of the continental shelf, and currents that are tearing up all the lobster pots. What’s going on out there?’” Gawarkiewicz told the fishermen he would get back to them in a couple of days. Then he went digging.

“I found a drifter trajectory that ran right along the edge of the Gulf Stream and right up by the continental shelf. It was 2 m/s. 4 knots. It entirely corroborated what the fishermen were saying. It was really remarkable.” The north wall of the Gulf Stream, Gawarkiewicz found, was 200 km north of its normal trajectory.

To understand what was happening on the shelf, where profound changes and much of the fishing were taking place, they needed to fill the data gap onshore of the Pioneer Array. Then came their chance.

In 2013, there was an opportunity to pitch ideas to one of America’s largest independent foundations, the MacArthur Foundation. Gawarkiewicz, Parker, and Anna Malek Mercer — a CFRF staff member who would become its Executive Director after Parker retired in 2015 — saw how they could work together. They proposed a Shelf Research Fleet, for which the CFRF had expertise. Malek Mercer explains, “Over the past few we’ve worked to develop what we call the Research Fleet approach. That’s what we are taking here with the Shelf Research Fleet. What that looks like in practice fishermen ... actually doing or assisting with the research themselves.”

The fishermen, who work on the continental shelf off of Rhode Island, would collect CTD data inshore of the Pioneer Array’s moorings, and Gawarkiewicz would use the data to understand the ocean dynamics and the effects on the fisheries. The MacArthur Foundation wanted the project to be a vehicle to build relationships and help local people deal with the consequences of climate change. “That,” says Gawarkiewicz, “was just perfect for us and CFRF.”

Gawarkiewicz overlaid six boxes on a map of the shelf, with the goal of one CTD cast per week in each box. The team fishing vessels was equipped with iPads and CTDs. “We identified the RBRconcerto as the best instrument for that. Having that wireless download capability was the absolutely crucial thing. When you think about the guys out there in 15 to seas, they don’t want to be fussing with connecting wires on the deck.”

In October 2014, CFRF launched its Shelf Research Fleet. “One real benefit to the Ruskin [software] and RBRconcerto system is that you can immediately view that water column profile that you retrieved,” says Malek Mercer. She explains that some fishermen use the temperature and salinity profiles on the spot to decide where fish.

“One of the big science questions,” says Gawarkiewicz, “is, when we get Gulf Stream water at the edge of the continental shelf, for the warm and salty intrusions, how far onshore do they go?” He’s already beginning to be able to answer that question.

“We’re seeing a lot of these bottom intrusions of warm salty water and they’re very important because they may carry nutrients onto the continental shelf. We’ve found they can go 60 to 80 km onshore. They bring entirely different kinds of fish.”

“What’s going on now is that it’s warming at such a remarkable rate that the types of fish they’re catching are different, and some of them are not allowable south of New England yet. This is very important to document the temperature changes so that you can say, ‘Oh, we need sea bass quota now, because we’re catching them all the time, but we’re not allowed to sell them all.’ So it’s a very interesting time in terms of fisheries because the [species] ranges are changing so much.”

One of Gawarkiewicz’s parts of the project has been his twice-yearly meetings with the fishermen. He says he talks for fifteen minutes and the remaining nearly two hours is filled questions. “These guys ask me very hard questions. And the data that the fishermen have collected is absolutely a part of that discussion.” Reflecting on those talks, Gawarkiewicz says, “I feel like it’s a great privilege to have those meetings and hear back from the fishermen.”

The relationship has become such that when the fishermen see something unusual, they share their observations with Malek Mercer and Gawarkiewicz. “They have been out there, not only every but every day for decades,” says Malek Mercer. “The changes that we talk about theoretically, they’re experiencing every day. Bringing that perspective into the science is a priority of the Foundation.”

For Gawarkiewicz, this project has had a profound effect on his research. “They haven’t changed my science in a small way. They’ve changed it in a big because I’m much more aware of what’s going on right now. As scientists, we typically are working with experimental data from two years ago and really trying to get the last detail of understanding out of that. It’s exciting to get an email saying, ‘Hey, look at George’s Bank right now. Something really weird is going on. We’ve just had a big scallop mortality event,’ and then be able to say, ‘Oh, from the sea surface temperature imagery, I can tell there was just a big warm core ring there. How shallow did it get?’”

Gawarkiewicz says they are planning peer-reviewed publications as well as a publication on the Research Fleet approach for later in 2017. The MacArthur grant has run its course, and the team was fortunate to find funding for the next two years through the local van Beuren Charitable Foundation. “The important thing is to keep collecting the data because we’re in a time of very rapid change,” says Gawarkiewicz. They have also applied for NSF funding to use the Pioneer Array data in conjunction with the shelf data to study bottom intrusions and nutrient delivery on the shelf.

Lobster fisherman Mark Sweitzer has been involved with CFRF’s projects for many years, and his vessel is part of the Shelf Research Fleet. Sweitzer says, “The main thing that I’ve taken away from it is a positive feeling that science and government and fishermen can work together to try to come up with better fishing regulations and better fishing practices.”

Relating his experience with the conceptual ivory tower, Gawarkiewicz is direct: “I don’t think that scientists realize how damaging that is, the ivory tower. You really have to engage with the world. You have a responsibility in a democracy really to help your fellow citizens out. Especially on a planet that’s changing so rapidly. That’s something I really do firmly believe.”

...

[tantalus]

A sane analysis of ways forward in regard to climate policy.

Since I’ve argued that the cost/benefit approach doesn’t really make sense for such a wicked problem with massive uncertainties, does this mean I think we should ignore the problem?

NO, we should not ignore the problem, but we should reframe it in ways that put some realistic bounds on what we are dealing with– not just climate change, but also population increase and concentration of wealth in vulnerable coastal regions. Not to mention the growing needs of this increasing population for energy, water and food.

I would challenge the policy making community and the science-policy interface communities to consider the following questions and proposed analyses:

1.How many different combinations of assumptions in the SCC models can produce a SCC value that is not significantly different from zero, or within some ‘tolerable’ limit?

2.Imagine the worst plausible future climate outcome on the time scale of the 21st century (consistent with the AR5), and estimate the damages in the 21st century. Assess whether any conceivable path of CO2 emissions reductions in the 21st century would make a significant dent in those damages.

3.Estimate the costs of extreme weather in the 21st century, based on weather statistics from the 20th century while accounting for 21st century changes in population, demographic, property, GDP, etc. Then compare the impact of socioeconomic changes on 21st century costs relative to the hypothetical delta of extreme weather events as derived from climate models. I wouldn’t be surprised if population increase and concentration of wealth in coastal regions is a much bigger factor here than climate change.

4.Estimate the costs of sea level rise in the 21st century based on three different assumptions: 1) applying the average sea level rise rate over the 20th century; 2) applying the average rate of sea level rise for the past 50 years for each coastal location, which also includes land use, geologic factors, groundwater withdrawal, etc.; 3) apply the average rate of sea level rise from the IPCC AR5. I suspect that #2 will be associated with the most damage, since the most vulnerable locations have local sea level rise rates that far exceed anything that can be explained by warming. Apart from geologic and land use effects on sea level rise, the increase of population and concentration of wealth in coastal regions may also be a bigger factor than sea level rise associated with warming.

5. Estimate regional per capita water needs (globally), using population and socioeconomic projections for the 21st century. Compare that with 20th century water availability (total and per capita). Estimate the per capita water availability in the 21st century using climate models. Is the decline in 21st century per capita water availability caused by population increase or climate change? (Hint: whether or not you find them convincing, climate models predict overall MORE rainfall in a warmer climate; melting glaciers will help at least in the short term.) Assess the costs of meeting per capita water needs using 20th century rainfall versus 21st century projected rainfall.

6.Based on estimates from #3, #4, #5, decide on how much resilience we can afford, in terms of infrastructure, and work on other clever ways to reduce your vulnerability through land use policies, advance warning of severe weather, etc.

This list is by no means exhaustive; once you think about reframing the climate problem and the solutions, lots of new ideas pop up. Such analyses would provide the basis for a pragmatic climate policy that puts people first in the 21st century, which is a reasonable thing to do given the deep uncertainties surrounding the wicked climate change problem. Any rationale that supports rapid reductions of CO2 emissions needs to provide pathways for improved technologies for energy, transportation, agriculture, etc. Not to mention supporting human development in regions that currently do not have access to grid electricity.

The bottom line is: water, food, energy. Heck, even the folks attending Davos get it [link]. People need it and large numbers of people want more of it. And there are more and more people all the time. A single minded focus on reducing CO2 emissions neglects a lot of real problems facing many nations across the globe.

Climate variability and change impacts water, food and energy. But there isn’t much we can do to influence the climate on the timescale of the 21st century — however much we have impacted the climate over the past 70 years or so, those impacts (large or small) will work their way through climate system over the next centuries as the oceans act as a big flywheel on the climate system.

Back to the question posed by Revkin: Will Trump’s climate team accept any social cost of carbon? Well, I hope not. Here’s to hoping for a more pragmatic approach to all this in the Trump administration.

see full article for discussion on attempts to analysis emission reductions via a cost/benefit approach.

https://judithcurry.com/2017/01/17/r...ost-of-carbon/

To me, it's just plain obvious, we have much bigger environmental related issues in the 21st century than man-made climate change.

[Wooglin]

https://energyindepth.org/national/g...are-hyperbole/

Greenpeace Claims Immunity from Lawsuits Because Its Claims Are ‘Hyperbole’

There’s been an interesting twist of events involving Greenpeace, one of the major groups pushing the failing #ExxonKnew campaign: They’ve been sued by Resolute, a Canadian forest-products company, for defamation and false claims about the company’s operations.

But when Greenpeace had to answer for its actions in court, the group wasn’t so sure it could defend its claims. In fact, they admitted those claims had no merit. As Resolute’s President and CEO Richard Garneau explained in a recent op-ed,

A funny thing happened when Greenpeace and allies were forced to account for their claims in court. They started changing their tune. Their condemnations of our forestry practices “do not hew to strict literalism or scientific precision,” as they concede in their latest legal filings. Their accusations against Resolute were instead “hyperbole,” “heated rhetoric,” and “non-verifiable statements of subjective opinion” that should not be taken “literally” or expose them to any legal liability. These are sober admissions after years of irresponsible attacks. (emphasis added)

No “forest loss” was caused by Resolute, the groups concede — now that they are being held accountable.

As the Financial Post also reported,

But now Greenpeace says it never intended people to take its words about Resolute’s logging practices as literal truth.

“The publications’ use of the word “Forest Destroyer,” for example, is obvious rhetoric,” Greenpeace writes in its motion to dismiss the Resolute lawsuit. “Resolute did not literally destroy an entire forest. It is of course arguable that Resolute destroyed portions of the Canadian Boreal Forest without abiding by policies and practices established by the Canadian government and the Forest Stewardship Council, but that is the point: The “Forest Destroyer” statement cannot be proven true or false, it is merely an opinion.”

In other words, Greenpeace is admitting that it relies on “non-verifiable statements of subjective opinion,” and because its claims are not meant to be factual, the group believes it cannot be held legally responsible for what it says.

Notably, Greenpeace has been actively pushing for legal action against ExxonMobil, alleging the company “knew” about climate change in the 1970s and 1980s before the world’s top scientists had come to any solid conclusions. When the Rockefeller-funded InsideClimate News and Columbia School of Journalism produced their #ExxonKnew hit pieces, Greenpeace immediately called for the Department of Justice to investigate ExxonMobil, saying,

“The Department of Justice should open a federal investigation immediately and hold the company legally accountable for misleading the public, lawmakers, and investors about the impacts of climate change. A DOJ investigation should be broad and look into the role of other fossil fuel companies, trade associations, and think tanks in sowing doubt about the risks of climate change.” (emphasis added)

Greenpeace claims it cannot be sued because its misleading claims were not meant to be factual, but it then claims the U.S. Department of Justice needs to investigate an energy company for what it calls “misleading the public.”

It will come as no surprise that Greenpeace is also funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Rockefeller Family Fund, the same groups that have been bankrolling #ExxonKnew every step of the way.

Representatives from Greenpeace were in attendance at a secret strategy meeting in January 2016, held at the Rockefeller Family Fund offices in New York, where the activists met to brainstorm how “to establish in public’s mind that Exxon is a corrupt institution,” “delegitimize them as a political actor,” and “force officials to disassociate themselves from Exxon.”

A former member of Greenpeace’s Board of Directors, Kenny Bruno, last year tweeted,

“I don’t want to abolish Exxon. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

If it wasn’t already abundantly obvious, these latest developments just go to show how much credulity Greenpeace has.

[Parihaka]

Am more worried that he likes to be a judge.

The "put them in jail" meme has been running for a while, the mainstream warming cult is leery of it though because they know what comes round goes round and in another five years they'll need a soft landing as their con game gets undone.

[Doktor]

Apparently so. Yet this moron is shoved in my face as an expert.

Am more worried that he likes to be a judge.

[Parihaka]

1750? So the climate would not have changed on itself, but would have just frozen for 250 years? Not a single change anywhere?

Apparently so. Yet this moron is shoved in my face as an expert.

[Doktor]

1750? So the climate would not have changed on itself, but would have just frozen for 250 years? Not a single change anywhere?

[Toby]

Tucker Carlson eats Bill Nye for breakfast

They deserve each other....A nobody listening to A nobody....unreal conversations.com

[Parihaka]

I especially love Nye finally claiming the climate would otherwise be exactly like 1750

[Parihaka]

Tucker Carlson eats Bill Nye for breakfast

[JRT]

Retreating Arctic Coasts Cause Drastic Changes

By Joseph R. Fonseca
January 4, 2017
Marine Technology News


The thawing and erosion of Arctic permafrost coasts has dramatically increased in the past years and the sea is now consuming more than 20 meters of land per year at some locations. The earth masses removed in this process increasingly blur the shallow water areas and release nutrients and pollutants. Yet, the consequences of these processes on life in the coastal zone and on traditional fishing grounds are virtually unknown.

Scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) urge to focus our attention on the ecological consequences of coastal erosion in the January issue of the journal Nature Climate Change. According to the scientists, an interdisciplinary research program is required, and must involve policy-makers as well as inhabitants of the Arctic coasts right from the onset.

The difference could hardly be greater. In the winter, when the Beaufort Sea is frozen around the Canadian permafrost island of Herschel Island (Qikiqtaruk), the sea water in the sample bottles of the AWI researcher Dr. Michael Fritz looks crystal clear. In summer, however, when the ice floes are melted and the sun and waves start to wear the cliff away, the water sample of the Potsdam geoscientist contains a cloudy broth.

"Herschel Island loses up to 22 meters of coast each year. The thawed permafrost slides down into the sea in the form of mud slides and blurs the surrounding shallow water areas so much that the brownish-grey sediment plumes reach many kilometers into the sea," reports the polar researcher.

His observations of Herschel Island can now be transferred to large parts of the Arctic. 34 percent of the coasts around the world are permafrost coasts. This means, especially in the Arctic, that its soil contains a large amount of frozen water, which keeps the sediments together like cement. If the permafrost thaws, the binding effect fails. The sediments as well as animal and plant remains, which are frozen in the permafrost, are suddenly released in the water and are washed away by the waves.

In this process, greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are released and lead to even greater global warming. The eroded material also contains a lot of nutrients and pollutants such as nitrogen, phosphorus or mercury. These substances enter the sea, where they are further transported, degraded or accumulated and permanently alter the living conditions in the shallow water area. "We can until now only guess the implications for the food chain. To date, almost no research has been carried out on the link between the biogeochemistry of the coastal zone and increasing erosion and what consequences this has on ecosystems, on traditional fishing grounds, and thus also on the people of the Arctic," says Michael Fritz.

For this reason, Michael Fritz, the Dutch permafrost expert Jorien Vonk and AWI researcher Hugues Lantuit call on the polar research community to systematically investigate the consequences of coastal erosion for the arctic shallow water areas in the current issue of the journal Nature Climate Change. "The processes in the arctic coastal zone play an outstanding role for four reasons. Firstly, the thawed organic material is decomposed by microorganisms, producing greenhouse gases. Secondly, released nutrients stimulate the growth of algae, which can lead to the formation of low-oxygen zones. Thirdly, the addition of organic carbon increases the acidification of the sea, and fourth, the sediments are deposited on the seabed or are transported to the open ocean. This has direct consequences for the biology of the sea," the authors say.

The urgency of the topic also increases with the warming of the Arctic: "We believe that the erosion of the Arctic coasts will increase drastically as a result of rising temperatures, the shrinking of the protective sea ice cover, and the rising sea level," says AWI permafrost expert and co-author Professor Hugues Lantuit. He adds that “during the ice-free season the waves can hit the coast higher and affect more land”. An erosion of that magnitude will without a doubt alter the food web in the coastal zone, and will affect those people who depend on fishing and who cultivate their traditional way of life along Arctic coasts.

The main reason why research on this topic has not been carried out so far is linked to logistics. Much of the arctic coastal and shallow water zones are not accessible either by car or plane, or by large icebreakers. There is also no arctic-wide station network at the coast that could be used by researchers to collect reliable data. “Politics and science must find common solutions here, for example within the framework of the EU research program Horizon 2020. In order to make concrete statements on the consequences of erosion, we need an interdisciplinary research program that includes policy-makers and the Arctic population from the beginning,” says Michael Fritz.

...