Wednesday, November 5, 2014

#B Jim Steele's IEEE Presentation: Climate and Drought: Landscape Changes vs CO2, examined

This the second half of my review of Jim Steele's recent talk. 
The first half can be viewed at 
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2014/11/steeles-ieee-talk-landscape-changes-vs.html
{I fear tomorrow evening when I can get back to double checking these two posts, I'll find more typos then I care to, but it's too late now, and don't want to wait till tomorrow evening to post this. }


"Jim Steele's IEEE Presentation Part 1: Climate Sensitivity and Drought: Landscape Changes vs CO2" by Jim Steele

7:37  To look locally, look there's a network the US historical climate network and the nearest one where we were doing our work was in Tahoe City and there's a couple things that stood out.  The first thing was in the thirties it was warmer, so how could global warming be accumulating heat if it was warmer in the thirties.  See CO2 couldn't be, you'd have to see something higher than the thirties. Where's this accumulation.
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Jim Steele seems to be going by the assumption that global warming means that the entire globe is suppose to warm at the same rate every where.  That's tragically disconnected from the reality of our global biosphere.  Furthermore, it's quite ironic how he shrugs off the significance of the night time trend and in fact the day time trend since 1966.

More importantly Jim's using one graph from one location and calling it a slam dunk, those who are interested in learning about what's actually happening need to cast a wider net, might I suggest:

Tahoe Climate Information Management System
A joint collaboration between the Desert Research Institute and UC Davis
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Climate change in the Tahoe basin: regional trends, impacts and drivers

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8:05   The second thing that sort of stood out was the different behaviors, not only was the global average not a good metric to use to understand ecological problems, the daily average is not good, if I'm trying to understand heat stress on an animal I look at the maximum temperature but the maximum temperature very {very??? not according to the above sources} low, if I'm trying to understand which drying out my meadow in I'm looking at maximum temperatures, the minimum temperatures when we would walk around early pre-dawn, when the minimum temperatures are measured, our pants would be soaking wet, minimum temperature could have the dew come out of the sky and condense, it is actually making the matter wetter. If you average those two together you get this a inappropriate rise in temperature that wasn't reflecting what was going on. so a lot of times the average is an inappropriate thing to use it, it hides different dynamics.
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There's nothing wrong about what he's describes, it's Jim's own conclusions that are the equivalent of a 'child's scribbling', Jim never defines exactly what phenomena he's talking about.  OK there's a lot of dew in the morning, but the meadow needs rains fall and snow accumulation to protect it in the winter, not to mention a host of other important influences on a meadow's health.  But, Jim's got no time for that, another example of the story-line driving chosen fact snippets, while discard everything else.
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9:00  This one reminds me of an old joke for a man had a speech stuck in the freezer and his head stuck in an oven and when the doctor can to examine him, he said jeez you look fine, on average your body temperature is perfect.  When you use an average when you measure different dynamics and conflate it that way you misunderstand what the local dynamics are.  You miss... that's why I'm trying to push one thing, you gotta start locally or else you're gonna miss analyze what's going on.
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Yea sure, and the same joke can be used against the folks who aren't interested in the fact that the timing/amount of rain and melt-runoff is critically important to biological systems.  

Month's of drought, broken by one torrential downpour that averages the typical season's rain fall may look wonderful in AGW denialist's articles, but it's hell on farmers and other living things.
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9:30  And is being science people, when they saw this temperature difference why would minimum act so much different the maximums.  And I started looking at a lot of different literature and one of the things was population effects.  Some people blame CO2, some people blame clouds for the different.  But a number study show as populations grew you dried out the land, you had asphalt that held the heat longer, different kinds of things.  But the temperature in that local area the higher the population the higher the minimum it didn't seem to affect the Maximum as much.
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That would give a skeptical scientist pause to wonder about what he's missing.  Beyond that, notice that Jim has turned this into an either/or argument, when every serious student of climate knows that all those factors are real and influence the sum total of what we are experiencing at any particular place and time.
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10:01  So I wondered if that's what's going. So I looked at California data. A California climatologist divided up California in to counties with people over a million and if you look at data it has a steep upward trend which is also the setting is what you'd expect for CO2 if you look at counties are rural in below a hundred thousand we don't see that trend there's a slight warming that you would expect as we came out of the Little Ice Age, but it's more cyclical.  
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Why such distortion?  We got out of the LIA long ago!

Dr Jan Oosthoek 's Environmental History Resources 
The Little Ice Age is a period between about 1300 and 1870 during which Europe and North America were subjected to much colder winters than during the 20th century.

The further distortion is that Steele ignores that CO2's impact is in the atmosphere, making it hold in more heat.  This business of trying to draw global conclusions from local weather variations in any one area is pure crazy-making.  It's impossible to understand global impacts from any local area!
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10:33 Now as an ecologist for me the important one is the rural.  I'm trying to look at how natural climate is changing, how it's affecting wildlife.  I'm not interested in more urbanized areas because that's an urban heat effect, that's a completely different environment and sometimes I think that the debate is caused because people are looking at two different things urbanized places verses natural habitat.
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Hmmm, that's a curious statement for an ecologist to make.  Think about it, in a state and nation where the rural urban interface has reached a huge percentages of the landscape how can a scientist serious isolate rural from urban.  
Jim, where does this "Natural Habitat" you're interesting in exist? 
Take a look: 
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10:59  If you look at tree ring data a lot of the tree-ring data says the same thing as about rural data, the tree rings don't show the sharp rise in the temperature.  
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Here is another example of Mr. Steele playing fast and loose with the facts:
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Climate-Driven Hypotheses for the Tree Ring Divergence Problem
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #PP51D-1902
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Dendrochronology’s “Divergence Problem” Explained?
Francis Ludlow | July 4, 2014
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Past, Present, and Future Temperatures: the Hockeystick FAQ
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11:05  The other thing you start to see as I looked in the literature to try and understand this is a lot of these consensus scientists* that say, they're listed on... as the 97% that greenhouse gases are affecting climate 
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What is this sort of characterization if not a dog whistle intent on slander.  The "consensus" means the current state of the scientific understanding - it is not some conspiratorial tome constructed by a cabal whom everyone else follows.

As for these 97% surveys, they are actually based on studies published - and yes the evidence drives the consensus and the consensus evolves as the evidence builds up.  Why not read for yourself how this figure was arrived at and don't forget there is more than one study/review coming up with roughly the same figure.

BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER - The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change by Naomi Oreskes*
Science 3 December 2004: Vol. 306 no. 5702 p. 1686  | DOI: 10.1126/science.1103618


- - -
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Expert credibility in climate change
vol. 107 no. 27 - doi: 10.1073/pnas.1003187107 | April 2009
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Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature
John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs and Andrew Skuce | Published 15 May 2013
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Of course, it's true that every researcher who's been involved in these projects has been roundly villainized and dismissed by climate science skeptics - but that says more about the contrarians then it does about the substance of those three listed studies that contrarians refuse to look at and digest.  
Whatever happen to healthy introspection, self-skepticism, and a willingness to accept mistakes and learn from them???
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11:15  they also say landscapes do it.
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{Of course they do, because the evidence points that way!
This following quote is up on Jim's screen.}
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"influences on climate are the emission of greenhouse gases and changes in land use, such as urbanization and agriculture.  But it has been difficult to separate these two influences because both tend to increase the daily mean surface temperature.  Dr.Eugena Kalnay" 
11:22  If you read this quote it's also saying that greenhouse gases are effecting climate, it also says urbanization and agriculture affected it and they also say is hard to tell the difference. So how do we know when a CO2 when it's not.  How do we know when it's the landscape.
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By studying and quantifying, which climatologist have certainly done, but Mr. Steele chooses to ignore all that, it doesn't fit into his story-line.  If you want the answer to Jim's question, you must do a little research of your own.   Here's a start:

"Ignoring the IPCC"
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11:38  And that's why we need more debate more discussion.
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The key point here is what are the ground rules for this debate/discussion Jim Steele is advocating for? 

*Should we be forced to tell the truth to the best of our knowledge?  
*Should we be forced to incorporate the full spectrum of evidence?
*Should be willing to incorporate a dose of "self-skepticism" and remain open to learning new lessons even if they disagree with our current beliefs?
*Should economic interests override an honest assessment of the full spectrum of evidence?

Mr. Steele I invite to answer those questions.
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11:40  Well to figure out why my meadow was drying I had to drop the whole global warming thing 
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It took some looking since Jim doesn't give details, but he's talking about "Carmen Creek Watershed Restoration Project"
http://www.feather-river-crm.org/pdf/CarmanFinalReport%2011_2004.pdf 
But the thing is, there was no reason to invoke global warming given that the situation was rather well understood:
"...The Carmen Creek watershed drains into the Feather River in Sierra Valley, and contains extensive meadow habitat that has been severely degraded through past management activities. Upland and meadow hydrology has been adversely impacted by historic logging, railroad grade construction and livestock grazing. All meadow stream systems have down cut and stream banks and meadows are actively eroding and the main channel of Carmen Creek and all tributaries are down cut and have active head cuts. Down cutting in streams has lowered meadow water tables and in some cases disconnected meadow/stream hydrology from hill slope hydrology. ..." 
http://www.sierravalleyrcd.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/SVRCDCarmenPhaseII.246131608.pdf
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and as I examined it I realized that the problem began a hundred years ago.  Railroad tracks, were, when they went out logging they would take the railroad tracks out from the lumber mill and just extend them every place,when they came to wet meadow or a flood plain they want to raise the tracks above the floodwaters to do that they would dig a ditch to get some dirt to build the berms to the berm is here, this is where they ran the railroad tracks.  But the problem is when you have this ditch it captures the natural flow and once a stream is caught in this channel its all the power is stuck in that channel.  Usually when you have the spring floods with the snow melt the the waters go over their banks and spread out over the flood plain they lose all their energy but when their stuck in a channel they dig deeper and deeper and the big problem is that when you dig deeper and deeper you start draining the whole water table.  So, right there, that dark line that's were the water table was dropping in May and within two weeks would drop down to the level where the channel is. The deeper the channel goes the deeper the water table goes.  The vegetation that needs a high water table starts to die like the Willows which is what we were seeing.
When the vegetation dies the animals leave, it was a local problem, it wasn't global warming.
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Yea, but from reading the reports on the "Carman Creek Watershed Restoration Tahoe National Forest – Sierraville Ranger District" it's obvious Steele has fabricated this "Global Warm" straw man for his story line, since all the evidence at that meadow indicated quite clearly that the problems were local and no mystery to those who took the time to familiarize themselves with the meadow - it's this sort of dishonest manipulation of the facts that is the hallmark of a denialist, rather than a scientist.
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13:03  What it was was local problem that we could fix by fixing the hydrology, we worked with the EPA, the Forest Service and a local restoration group, we got the water out of the channel so it spread out on the flood plains.
13:20  This was my screensaver picture that I had for years. I'm feeling proud that I fixed something, 
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I give Jim his due, his effort and accomplishment at that meadow looks like something to be proud of - particularly since it appears that Jim was indeed a driving force in getting folks to worry about that meadow and motivated to do something to save it.  I commend him for that accomplishment - but why must he poison the good he did, with these nonsensical claims that this experience somehow puts a lie to what scientists have learned about atmospheric CO2???
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13:25  when you get the water table out on the flood plain it recharges that and it will run on the surface until maybe June but then the water table stays high and is a subsurface flow that lasts throughout the whole summer
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Right.  Now consider that underground network of pores and other spaces that this water migrates through and how the current extended drought, which is assuredly AGW related, is impacted that aspect of meadow health.  But Jim protects his audience from that inconvenient information.

Drying Sierra meadows could worsen California drought
By Susan Suleiman | UC Newsroom | August 20, 2014
"... Under normal conditions, a mountain meadow acts like a sponge. Organic material in the soil allows the meadow to hold water, which is filtered and slowly released to mountain streams. Samples collected by Arnold and her colleagues found that the larger pores which trap and hold moisture are disappearing, to be replaced with smaller, more compact pores through which water doesn’t easily flow.As meadows dry out, flooding in wet years is likely to increase. And in drought years, parched meadows could result in less snowmelt reaching streams, exacerbating the state’s already precarious water situation. ..."
For more information:
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Journal of Applied Ecology - British Ecological Society
Decline in alkali meadow vegetation cover in California: the effects of groundwater extraction and drought
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Early Spring, Severe Frost Events, and Drought Induce Rapid Carbon Loss in High Elevation Meadows
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DROUGHT'S IMPACT, FROM SIERRA TO PACIFIC
Submitted by Chris Bowman on June 23, 2014 | UC Davis
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13:36 as soon as we did that the willows came back, they got higher, they got lusher, they got bigger, all the wildlife came back. Before we fixed this the birds were leaving by July after we fixed this the birds suffering from the dryness in the natural summer California drought were coming here is a refuge.
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CO2's insulating properties are quite natural and undeniable also.  Here I will be reprimanded and told that Jim clearly claims he does not deny CO2's greenhouse properties... yea, right, Jim just doesn't believe anything is happening and that we shouldn't worry about having increased pre-industrial levels by some 40% to levels not seen in hundred of thousands of years that's like saying you believe in math and 4+4=5
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13:55  The most amazing part about this is these last two years have been considered some the worst drought that California has ever experienced14:03  Between(?) 2014 2012 has been wetter than I have observed it in thirty years.  It's a testimony to what you can do locally.
14:10  Now I see a lot of people pushing, Oh California's drought rising CO2 that's just what climate scientists predicted.
What I want you to think about when you hear that is think of an alternative explanation
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Why doesn't Steele first try to understand what the experts in the field are saying before advocating alternative explanations from folks with superficial understanding of the details?

Furthermore, here is an example of how extremely conservative climatologists are

Stanford Report, September 30, 2014
Causes of California drought linked to climate change, Stanford scientists say
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BY Ker Than | Stanford News
The atmospheric conditions associated with the unprecedented drought currently afflicting California are "very likely" linked to human-caused climate change, Stanford scientists write in a new research paper.In a new study, a team led by Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh used a novel combination of computer simulations and statistical techniques to show that a persistent region of high atmospheric pressure hovering over the Pacific Ocean that diverted storms away from California was much more likely to form in the presence of modern greenhouse gas concentrations.
The research, published on Sept. 29 as a supplement to this month's issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is one of the most comprehensive studies to investigate the link between climate change and California's ongoing drought.
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""We've demonstrated with high statistical confidence that large-scale atmospheric conditions similar to those of the Triple R are far more likely to occur now than in the climate before we emitted large amounts of greenhouse gases," Rajaratnam says."
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EXPLAINING EXTREME EVENTS OF 2013 FROM A CLIMATE PERSPECTIVE
Attribution of extreme events is a challenging science and one that is currently undergoing considerable evolution. In this paper, 20 different research groups explored the causes of 16 different events that occurred in 2013. The findings indicate that human-caused climate change greatly increased the risk for the extreme heat waves assessed in this report. How human influence affected other types of events such as droughts, heavy rain events, and storms was less clear, indicating that natural variability likely played a much larger role in these extremes. ...
Looking through those reports it's clear that scientists are bending over backwards to be as caution has humanly possible before attributing any event to global warm and they absolutely refuse to stick their necks out a millimeter.   

Well time and tide waits for no man or woman and we are just in the early stages and given the complexity and variability of our climate engine, it shouldn't be surprising to anyone that it will take some time for the AGW signal to become absolutely distinguishable from other background natural variabilities.  

But, in the end the sick joke is on our children because this trajectory is going in one direction and has an incredible amount of momentum behind it, so that you can be sure once the global warming signal is clearly unequivocal attributable in all extreme weather event's it'll be game over for our complex society anyways.  
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For the curious this might be of interest.
"Colorado Floods - statistical certainty vs geophysical realities"  |  Oct 25, 2013
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14:30 that has two critical variables one is natural cycles like La Nina, La Nina and El Nino controls the way moisture comes from the ocean and is distributed to the land.  Once that moisture is on the land, then it's a matter how long that water stays on the land and both of those things kinda a contribute to the extreme the drought we're experiencing.
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Good point - now although according to the above reports California's current drought can't be 100% blamed on Global Warming, the warmer conditions are making this drought much more damaging than it would be in a slightly cooler world.
Also keep in mind those reports are from last year, and we've added on another year of extreme drought condition, so it'll be interesting to see what the next report says.
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14:46  So we kinda solved how long it's gonna stay on the surface and I think this is where a lot of money should go to fixing hydrology.
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"Solved"?  But, you know, we still need the rain and snow pack, if it's not coming down you can't keep it on the surface. 
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14:50   Half of the wetlands have been lost, almost 99 percent of the stream channels have been stuck, they drop down and they've been draining the water tables.
15:04  The crazy part about it is one of the reasons we've been losing our watersheds is governments have been subsidizing flood insurance they want people to build in the flood plains.  They want them to colonize it for some crazy reason.
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Here Steele inserts a picture of flooded New Orleans, the result of substandard levees breaking - we were talking about meadows restoration and climate, this sudden jump doesn't make sense from an understanding point of view, but it's great for government bashing, which then it degrades into conspiracy ideation.
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15:16  I almost suspect the reason they blame global warming is to cover their butt for such a bad policy.  They put people in harm's danger... {garbled, he fell over his words}

{For the record The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is a program created by the Congress of the United States in 1968 through the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 (P.L. 90-448). 

"Before 1950 flood insurance was part of the standard homeowner’s insurance policy. During the 1950s increasingly high correlation of losses by holders of flood policies of the same company caused many insurance companies to begin excluding flood coverage from standard insurance policies, selling flood insurance separately. Over time, insurance premiums collected were insufficient in covering payouts after major flooding events. In the 1960s flood insurance became completely unprofitable and private companies no longer offered flood insurance policies. This meant that the costs of floods were borne by property owners, many of which could not afford such high disaster costs. The government provided public disaster aid to affected property owners. In 1968, the National Flood Insurance Act established the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which allows property owners to purchase insurance from the U.S. government that covers certain losses from flooding. ..."
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Pushed by insurance and real estate industries and home owners - it may have made sense at one time, but I agree it's fundamentally unsound and counterproductive as heck - but claiming it's part of a conspiratorial plot is a outlandish.  It's actually nothing more than another example of everyone protecting their own interests while ignoring the ominous bigger situation and the interests of the whole.  We do live in the me, me, me society.

With Premium Refunds in Process, Washington Criticism of Flood Insurance Ebbs
By Andrew G. Simpson | July 28, 2014
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Senate looking to delay provisions of flood insurance reform
By Pete Kasperowicz | January 24, 2014
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15:30  James Hansen did an Oped at the New York Times, he's talking about apocalyptic droughts that were gonna hit up North America, due to global warming, due to CO2 and his advice was go protest against coal, get rid of fossil fuels.  
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Unfortunately there no relying on Steele's description - here's James Hansens Op-ed, the whole thing is worth a read: 
Game Over for the Climate
By JAMES HANSEN |  May 9, 2012

"Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. ""... Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. ..." 
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In contrast it was local hunting groups like ducks unlimited working in concert with wildlife managers when I said let's fix the land, let's try to get the water to stay on the land, so they started doing all these rehabs.
16:00  Where James Hansen was saying global warming is causing all these species to go extinct by fixing the land what they did is they brought duck populations up 43 percent above what they averaged between 1950 1980 despite the worst drought that we have been experiencing.  Again another testimony what you can do locally and what you can do by fixing the landscape. 
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What is Steele going on about.  What do duck populations or meadow restoration have to do with the fact that increasing our atmosphere's greenhouse concentrations to Pliocene levels will usher in a totally different climate system and world, one that will crumble our complex society.  It's an example of Jim Steele's denial of greenhouse gas realities.
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16:23  Probably the most iconic example of how by screwing up the landscape you can alter the climate you can cause it ecological disaster is the dust bowl thirties.  That started when government-subsidized we prices at two dollars it was way above, it was partly trying to fight the war, but it got speculators and farmers to start plowing up all the natural buffalo grass.  They got rid of a lot of vegetation to plant wheat.16:50  After the war was over subsidies were gone, prices dropped to a dollar so a lot of people abandoned all their farms.   They left the barren fields.  Farmers that stayed say jeez if it's only a dollar now maybe I should power up twice as much to make my money back because I was expecting two dollars, the end result was in area's as big as the state of Ohio was plowed up, all the natural vegetation through the buffalo grass and then when a natural La Nina caused drought hit we had disastrous results.  Over a third of the United States was in drought and they were getting dust as far as Washington DC.  They were saying boats on the atlantic were picking up some of this dust.
17:29  On the good side what government did was realized their mistake, they started paying farmers not to grow so they can grow grass at policies are written today is still happening but for the wrong reasons 
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yea, like self interested corporate lobbying
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17:40  and they started planting grasslands and made the National Grassland preserve because they knew if you keep the vegetation on the ground you can prevent this kind a disastrous drought, or you can minimize its effect.  It seems like government hasn't learned yet, so this what I call this climate hysteria there's been a big push for biofuels and for me it's taking conservation efforts backwards.
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I agree with him there, but digging up more coal and dumping it's vapors and sulfur and particles into our atmosphere for the next couple decades is a death sentence for our complex society just the same.

Besides, once again, this has nothing to do with the reality of what increasing CO2 is doing to our atmosphere and how that will impact the global climate we and our society depend on for everything - it's more hand waving and political dog whistles, but for those curious about a better understanding of this complex can of worms:

"How Good Politics Results in Bad Policy: The Case of Biofuel Mandates"
Discussion Paper | September 2010
Author: Robert Lawrence, Member of the Board, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
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Untangling The Political And Policy Knot Around America’s Biofuel Mandate
Jeff Spross POSTED ON JULY 26, 2013
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18:00  We know from satellite monitoring of maximum skin surface temperatures the forest will be 20 to 40 degrees cooler then a shrubland or a grassland Crescent is 60 degrees cooler then when you have a barren story or some kinda urbanized habitat when you drive the soil heated up you take waste heat capacity you make it heat up much fast than it normally would
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20°, 40°, 60° sounds like some very outlandish temperature increases, I've asked Jim to provide the source for this, though he has a habit of ignoring my requests for further information, we'll see.
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18:26  This deforestation here is in Indonesia.  Indonesia suffering badly because governments have been subsidizing a push for palm oil as a biofuel to me that's backwards.
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Why does Steele leave out that Palm oil production going into biofuel makes up less than 10% of the total Palm oil crop?  Oh yea, he's busy creating his villain, not so interested in actually understanding these complex issues and the competing interests that have created them.  Also it has absolutely nothing to do with the reality of what we are doing to our atmosphere

THE OIL PALMIn 2013 global production of palm oil amounted to around 58 million tonnes. Indonesia and Malaysia alone produced 50 million tonnes, 85% of the palm oil on the global market (see table).The countries with the highest rates of palm oil consumption are India (9.1 million tonnes), Indonesia (8.5 million tonnes) and China (6.58 million tonnes). In these countries palm oil is traditionally used mainly for frying and cooking. The EU is the fourth largest consumer of palm oil, using 5.67 million tonnes in 2013, of which around 2.5 million tonnes was for food production. Approximately 5-10% of the palm oil produced worldwide is used as biofuel, with the remaining 40% in cosmetics, detergents, candles, and as industrial lubricants. Germany's consumption of palm oil is around 1.3 million tonnes per year, representing approximately 2% of global production.   
http://www.forumpalmoel.org/en/ueber-palmoel.html 
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18:38  You go to the Amazon they've been subsidizing sugar cane for biofuels and they're cutting down rain forest to me that's backwards.
The sugar cane is used for making sugar to feed the world's craving, the left over biomass is burned for fuel 
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Yea, but what's that got to do with atmospheric greenhouse gases warming our planet?

I agree that the land degradation is awful, but one thing should be mention about biofuels - the CO2 they inject into the atmosphere comes from the current carbon stores within our living biosphere, as opposed to adding carbon that's been sequestered from the carbon cycle for millions of years.
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18:48  Probably a classic example is Haiti and the Dominican Republic from a satellite view Haiti is on the left, they us biofuels and chop down wood to supply all the calories.  On the right is Dominican Republic they still use fossil fuels.
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Here's another example of Jim customizing the information he shares in order to move his story-line along.  Jim leaves out so much it's down right disgusting.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic: One island, two worlds
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Haiti and the Dominican Republic: A Tale of Two Countries
By Alexandra Silver | January 19, 2010
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The Conflict Between Haiti and the Dominican Republic
  By Jalisco Lancer
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19:06  So when we look at this balance I think we're making some of wrong choices, what we gotta start thinking about is how to keep our wildlife how do we keep our vegetation.19:15  Great Britain has been subsidizing wood-burning power plant but they don't have enough trees.  Thousand years ago the cut all the trees there so they could graze some sheep. To get enough wood to burn for energy in Great Britain they take trees from California, to me is crazy, it's all in the name of fighting climate change.
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What pray tell do people, driven by an overriding desire to make as much profit as possible, making bad choices, have to do with the scientific understanding of how greenhouse gases behave in our atmosphere?  More apples and carrots to move Steele's story-line alone.
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19:38  When you scrape the surface of the land to get your energy you endanger all the wildlife.  In Indonesia orangutans because of palm oil these guys are reaching a approaching extinction probably faster than any other animal.
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Again Steele only offers up the sliver of information that fits his story.  There's no doubt that Palm oil plantations are one threat, but it's only the latest addition to the many threats faced by Orangutans.

Why Are Orangutans Endangered?
As forest dwelling primates, orangutans are entirely dependent on the forest for their survival. Unfortunately, Indonesia and Malaysia have some of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, and logging, both legal and illegal, has seen wild populations decimated. Forest conversion for pulp and paper and palm oil plantations now pose an even bigger threat, and it is believed up to 1,000 orangutans are also killed every year, either for the pet trade, for consumption or as agricultural pests.
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19:52  Ah, palm oils also use for food but this biofuel has been the big issue.
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hmmm, no doubt biofuel driven deforestation is a big issue, but let's keep in mind <10 of Palm oil production is for biofuels, so it seems a bit unfair to focus on that threat to the exclusion og all the other threats.
See the above info at 18:26
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20:00  I think I made it clear how much landscape change can affect the climate.
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This was a garbled mess and nothing was made clear.  No one argues that landscape changes affect local climate before getting lost in the sauce of the greater climate system.  No scientist doubts that, but for Jim Steele to imply that landscape changes somehow trump the composition of our atmosphere when it comes to impacting our planet's biosphere is ludicrous.

All Jim has done in this 20:00 presentation is to present a confusing, contrived, one-sided opinion tailored to people who want to continue ignoring the evidence in order to justify doing nothing.  So tragic.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Here's an example of real skepticism in action, the foundation of science:

Published online 20 January 2010 | Nature 463, 284-287 (2010) | doi:10.1038/463284a
News Feature
The real holes in climate science
Like any other field, research on climate change has some fundamental gaps, although not the ones typically claimed by sceptics. Quirin Schiermeier takes a hard look at some of the biggest problem areas.
Quirin Schiermeier

- - - 

IPCC WGI AR5
Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis

The Twelfth Session of Working Group I (WGI-12) was held from 23 to 26 September 2013 in Stockholm, Sweden. At the Session, the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (WGI AR5) was approved and the underlying scientific and technical assessment accepted.


2 comments:

Sou said...

Good work, CC.

Jim has stopped trying to defend his climate science denial and has stooped to making up lies about you and I at the personal level, you might have noticed. He is not a person to be trusted at any level.

citizenschallenge said...

Thank you Sou,

That dialogue over at the YouTube comments section has gotten pretty weird, hasn't it - including another threat plus slandering me claiming I'm not gainfully employed - instead of responding to my specific critiques he's now encouraged his denialist pals to come to my home and have a "face to face chat" with me…

It is a spooky world out there and the apathy among those who do know better is appalling and quite depressing.

But as soon as I'm done with my current job I'll be back to look at his other videos. I promise to make those reviews shorter and to the point.