Reddit mentions: The best climatology books

CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but the debate is how potent of a climate gas CO2 is when added to our atmosphere. How much of the warming since 1850 is caused by CO2 is uncertain because other forcings influence the temperature simultaneously.

In climate modeling "ECS"(Equilbrium Climate Sensitivity")
expresses the potency of CO2 as a climate gas. ECS expresses how much temperature increases from doubling CO2 at equilibrium. Changes in "forcings" take centuries to fully propagate in climate due to thermal inertia, and ECS is "at equilibrium".*

The IPCC in AR5 (2014) stated that the (ECS) is "likely between 1.5 and 4.5"
The climate models "CMIP5" cited by IPCC in AR5 have an average ECS of 3.2.

The significance of ECS=1.5 would be huge, implying almost no further warming this century.
CO2 has increased from around 280 ppm in 1850 to around 410 in 2019 (due to human emissions), and in that time the temperature on earth has increased approximately 1 degC. Atmospheric CO2 looks set to hit 560 ppm (a double from 1850-levels) sometime late this century. ECS of 1.5 will imply another 1.5-1=0.5 degC of eventual warming, while ECS=3.2 implies 3.2-1=2.2 degC eventual warming.

The IPCC have themselves observed that lower ECS better fit observations and that their climate models are running hot.
ECS can be estimated directly from data without climate models.
AR5 WG1 technical report states that "best fit to the observed surface and ocean warming for ECS values in the lower part of the likely range" (page 84) ("no best estimate for ECS is given because of a lack of agreement").
"For the period from 1998 to 2012, 111 of the 114 available climate-model simulations show a surface warming trend larger than the observations" (Box 1.1, Figure 1a). A comparison of temperature and CMIP5 model predictions can be found here.

ECS estimates vary based on what temperature sets are considered, choice of start- and end-dates in the analysis, carbon-cycle modeling and what warming is attributed to other sources.
Temperature datasets differ significantly. Using the sattellite dataset UAH (starting in 1979) and removing vulcanic events and El-Ninos results in ECS-estimates in the 1.5-2 range [paper1], [paper2].
Man-made emissions are part of a larger carbon cycle, and simulations of the "coupled earth-system response" to man-made CO2-emissions indicate TCR below 1
The accelerated recent warming in datasets like GISTEMP is not corroborated by an accelerated sea level rise at tidal gauges, indicating that warming in them may be spurious. "homogenization" in GISTEMP is accused of spurious warming, and an audit of HADCRUT4 has found serious data-quality issues.

Changes in solar forcing occurs on longer timescales than our satellite- or instrumental records, and is potentially the cause of exaggerated ECS estimates. The solar activity is known to oscillate with 11-year cycles, but also longer ones (see and sources therein) including a grand 350-400 year cycle and a major ~1000 year cycle. Solar forcing(TSI) had two major minima (1645–1706 Maunder solar minimum and 1810–1838 Dalton solar minimum) prior to the beginning of the instrumental temperature record around ~1850. The period 1700-1850 is referred to as the end of the Little Ice Age(LIA), a time when historical sources document average winter temperatures dropping 2 degrees (in Europe). After a dip around 1900 TSI has been increasing throughout the 20th century.
There is ample evidence that 1850, start of the instrumental record and baseline pre-industrial temperature, was an unusually cold period. Temperatures will have recovered gradually after 1850 due to climate inertia and gradual TSI increase, a temperature recovery that could be mistaken for CO2-related warming.

Climate models cited by IPCC assume that solar forcing varies little, potentially causing the warming after the LIA to be wrongly attributed to CO2 increases. TSI estimates before about 1980 are constructed from proxies and are uncertain, while satellite measurements exist since then. Some TSI estimates are "high variability" while other are "low variability". A low-variability solar forcing dataset is mandated in "CMIP5" climate models.
Some authors have studied ocean temperatures found that historical changes in ocean temperature are 5-7 times
greater than TSI-estimates suggest (but no accepted explanation as to why).
Changes in low-variability TSI-estimates are also too low to explain the temperature declines at the end of the LIA. These observations hint that TSI may be changing far more on the timescale of centuries than is currently thought. The "high-variability" Hoyt&Schatten TSI-estimate is correlated with the equator-pole temperature gradient and a causal link has been suggested. If Hoyt&Schatten is a better estimate of TSI, it would directly explain much of the solar "amplification" seen.

Solar forcing variability of just 5 W/m2 or 0.3% would be enough to explain the 1 degC warming since 1850. TSI ~1360 W/m2 raises the earth's temperature from around -268 degC to 15 degC (284 degC), a gain of 0.209 degC per W/m2. Existing "high-variability" TSI-estimates vary by 3-4 W/m2 over the past centuries.

CMIP5 model properties indicate that solar forcing is under-estimated. As solar activity fell from around 2000 (as seen here ),
CMIP5 models have run warm, as the IPCC itself states.
If climate models underestimate TSI-increases, one would expect that they would need larger-than-life ECS-estimates be able to describe the warming of the past century, and this is exactly what has happend: "AOGCMs [...]with ECS values in the upper part of the 1.5 to 4.5°C range show very good agreement with observed climatology"(WG1 AR5 report). This discrepancy should be seen as a sign of structural model errors rather than evidence of a high ECS.

Compensating for "high-variability" TSI-changes results in ECS even lower than 1.5.
ECS estimates based on "high variability" Hoyt&Schatten TSI-estimate gave an ECS of 0.44. Authors hand-picked rural temperatures, but would still have obtained low ECS estimates with other data sets. It was encouraging that their model autonomously chose a gain of 0.210 degC per W/m2 (close to expected value).

Exaggerated ECS in CMIP5 is evidenced by IPCC observations that (a) temperature predictions overshoot since 1998, and (b) lower ECS better fit observations. Under-attributed (1)solar variability, (2)transient warming after LIA, and (3)carbon-cycle response could separately or jointly explain the discrepancy. Persistent flaws in climate research is plausible, outside investigators have commented on the the tendency to downplay flaws in climate research and to withhold data requests and on weaknesses of models used.
ECS 1.5,the low end of the IPCC likely range, indicates only 0.5 degree of eventual extra warming from CO2-concentration doubling by late century, and would have enormous policy implications.

(Peer-reviewed literature where possible, presumably vetted by independent reviewers. Known that some of the cited authors are shunned by established climate scientists.)

*= "TCR" (Transient Climate Response) expresses the temperature change immediately after doubling CO2 gradually, before transients settling. TCR and ECS both express the potency of CO2, TCR is often lower than ECS by 0.5-0.8 degC. TCR likely range is given as 1-2.5 degC in AR5. ECS 1.5 is roughly equivalent to TCR~1.

Read the linked papers:

CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but the debate is how potent of a climate gas CO2 is when added to our atmosphere. CO2 has increased from around 280 ppm in 1850 to around 410 in 2019 (due to human emissions), and in that time the temperature on earth has increased approximately 1 degC. Atmospheric CO2 looks to hit 560 ppm (double 1850-levels) late this century.

The potency of CO2 is expressed as "ECS"(Equilbrium Climate Sensitivity") in climate modeling. ECS expresses temperature increase at equilibrium from doubling CO2.
Due to climate's thermal inertia roughly half of a temperature change due to forcing is realized within 10 years, while 14-40% has still not arrived after a century. The IPCC in AR5 (2014) stated that ECS is "likely between 1.5 and 4.5" The climate models "CMIP5" cited by IPCC in AR5 have an average ECS of 3.2 *.

Lower ECS ~1.5 better fit satellite era observations. ECS can be estimated directly from data without climate models. AR5 WG1 stated "best fit to the observed surface and ocean warming for ECS values in the lower part of the likely range" (p.84). There is least uncertainty in temperature data after the start of satellite record ~1979, and for this timeframe ECS is estimated in 1.5-2 range [1], [2]
(In general, ECS-estimates vary based on temperature dataset**, choice of start- and end-dates, carbon-cycle*** modeling and warming attribution to other sources (overview)).
The significance of ECS=1.5 would be huge, implying almost no further warming this century. ECS of 1.5 will imply another 1.5-1=0.5 degC of eventual warming, while ECS=3.2 implies 3.2-1=2.2 degC eventual warming. ECS=1.5 thus implies four times less warming from CO2 increases this century than current IPCC models!

Removing multi-decadal oscillations from data yields ECS 0.5-1.5. Natural oscillations with multi-year periods such as El Niño(11y), AMO(~60y) and PDO(~50-60y) dominate data on the timescale since 1850. Climate models do not accurately [ch1.2] model these oscillations. Removing oscillations mathematically to isolate underlying warming results in much lower climate sensitivity than in AR5: ECS ~1.5,TCR ~1.2 on 150 years of instrumental data, and ECS=0.6 on ~1000 years of proxy-data. These papers remove oscillations without the need to attribute causes to them, but as some of the oscillations removed will be solar-induced, the work is related to the sections below.

Human CO2-emissions coincide with the end of the "Little Ice Age"(LIA) and with solar forcing transitioning from abnormally low to abnormally high. LIA had globally colder climate, coinciding with "Maunder" (1645-1715) and "Dalton"(1790-1830) solar minima. LIA average temperatures were 0.5-0.7 degC lower than Medieval Warm Period(MWP). 1850 at the end of LIA was unusually cold, is thus a poor baseline. Climate inertia should apply for solar as well as CO2-driven warming, implying a long post-LIA transient warming. Second half of the 20th century is the period of highest solar activity in the last 8000 years. A link between solar forcing changes and LIA/MWP has been found, so solar variation partially explaining modern warming up to the early 00ies is also plausible.

There is disagreement on if solar variability is "high variability" or "low variability"
Modeling solar activity is challenging because no direct measurements of solar variability exist prior to satellite record from ~1980, and because the record is "grafted" together from a data from many short-lived satellites, (review of challenges given in ch1).
CMIP5 uses a "low-variability" estimate of solar variation "PMOD" based on work by Kopp&Lean,
that has been strongly critized(ch9) for being an unverified theoretical model which implements alterations not recognized by the original experimental teams to drifts that are postulated but not verified. The alternative to "PMOD" are "high-variability" TSI-estimates such as that of Hoyt&Schatten that agree with "ACRIM" satellite data. Evidence that high-variability TSI-estimates are more accurate are:

• "low-variability" TSI-changes appear amplified 5-7 times in oceans,
  
• "high-variability" TSI is correlated with the equator-pole temperature gradient, and
  
• "low-variability" TSI-changes are too small to explain MWP/LIA temperature changes (AppendixB).
  
  Solar forcing variability is key to climate modeling, because just a 0.3% (5 W/m2) increase is enough to explain the 1 degC warming since 1850. TSI ~1360 W/m2 raises the earth's temperature from around -268 degC to 15 degC (283 degC), a gain of ~0.2 degC per W/m2.
  "High-variability" TSI vary by 3-4 W/m2 over the past centuries, and could thus explain 50-80% of observed modern warming.
  
  CMIP5 models are running hot as solar activity falls, indicating that variability in their solar forcing estimate is too low. Because solar forcing and CO2-concentrations co-incident rise 1850-2000, underestimating climate solar sensitivity would wrongfully raise CO2-sensitivity (ECS),explaining why:
  
  
• as solar activity fell from around 2000 (as seen here ), CMIP5 models have run warm. "For the period from 1998 to 2012, 111 of the 114 available climate-model simulations show a surface warming trend larger than observations" (Box 1.1, Figure 1a)(A comparison of temperature and "hot" CMIP5 model predictions can be found here)),
  
• larger-than-life ECS were needed to fit data pre-2000: "AOGCMs [...]with ECS values in the upper part of the 1.5 to 4.5°C range show very good agreement with observed climatology"(WG1 AR5 report), and why
  
• CMIP5 underestimates solar-induced LIA/MWP in hindcasts.
  
  Compensating for "high-variability" TSI-changes results in ECS<1.5. "Hoyt&Schatten" TSI-estimate results in ECS of 0.44. Paleo-analysis of climate, CO2 and sun variability similarly found ECS=0.5.
  
  Persistent flaws in climate research are plausible, outside investigators have commented on the the tendency to downplay flaws in climate research and to withhold data requests.
  
  * "TCR" (Transient Climate Response) is temperature change immediately after doubling CO2 gradually (before transients settle). TCR and ECS both express the potency of CO2, TCR is often lower than ECS by 30-40% (or 0.5-0.8 degC). TCR likely range is given as 1-2.5 degC in AR5.
  
  ** Estimates of ECS from data prior to 1979 require use of GIS/HADCRUT instrument records, adjusted by proprietary algorithms using climate models and homogenized which can create spurious warming. Audits of these datasets have uncovered data-quality issues, but datasets are generally hard to independently verify. The sea/surface global temperature record is only globally complete for the satellite era. A reason for skepticism is that recent warming is not corroborated by an accelerated sea level rise at tidal gauges. Prior to~1880 proxies are used, but suffer from «the divergence problem» of not describing recent warming.
  
  ***Carbon cycle simulations indicate TCR below 1

TESTING COPY PASTE OF TEXT:::: PLEASE IGNORE.

Read the linked papers:

CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but the debate is how potent of a climate gas CO2 is when added to our atmosphere. CO2 has increased from around 280 ppm in 1850 to around 410 in 2019 (due to human emissions), and in that time the temperature on earth has increased approximately 1 degC. Atmospheric CO2 looks to hit 560 ppm (double 1850-levels) late this century.

The potency of CO2 is expressed as "ECS"(Equilbrium Climate Sensitivity") in climate modeling. ECS expresses temperature increase at equilibrium from doubling CO2.
Due to climate's thermal inertia roughly half of a temperature change due to forcing is realized within 10 years, while 14-40% has still not arrived after a century. The IPCC in AR5 (2014) stated that ECS is "likely between 1.5 and 4.5" The climate models "CMIP5" cited by IPCC in AR5 have an average ECS of 3.2 *.

Lower ECS ~1.5 better fit satellite era observations. ECS can be estimated directly from data without climate models. AR5 WG1 stated "best fit to the observed surface and ocean warming for ECS values in the lower part of the likely range" (p.84). There is least uncertainty in temperature data after the start of satellite record ~1979, and for this timeframe ECS is estimated in 1.5-2 range [1], [2]
(In general, ECS-estimates vary based on temperature dataset**, choice of start- and end-dates, carbon-cycle*** modeling and warming attribution to other sources (overview)).
The significance of ECS=1.5 would be huge, implying almost no further warming this century. ECS of 1.5 will imply another 1.5-1=0.5 degC of eventual warming, while ECS=3.2 implies 3.2-1=2.2 degC eventual warming. ECS=1.5 thus implies four times less warming from CO2 increases this century than current IPCC models!

Removing multi-decadal oscillations from data yields ECS 0.5-1.5. Natural oscillations with multi-year periods such as El Niño(11y), AMO(~60y) and PDO(~50-60y) dominate data on the timescale since 1850. Climate models do not accurately [ch1.2] model these oscillations. Removing oscillations mathematically to isolate underlying warming results in much lower climate sensitivity than in AR5: ECS ~1.5,TCR ~1.2 on 150 years of instrumental data, and ECS=0.6 on ~1000 years of proxy-data. These papers remove oscillations without the need to attribute causes to them, but as some of the oscillations removed will be solar-induced, the work is related to the sections below.

Human CO2-emissions coincide with the end of the "Little Ice Age"(LIA) and with solar forcing transitioning from abnormally low to abnormally high. LIA had globally colder climate, coinciding with "Maunder" (1645-1715) and "Dalton"(1790-1830) solar minima. LIA average temperatures were 0.5-0.7 degC lower than Medieval Warm Period(MWP). 1850 at the end of LIA was unusually cold, is thus a poor baseline. Climate inertia should apply for solar as well as CO2-driven warming, implying a long post-LIA transient warming. Second half of the 20th century is the period of highest solar activity in the last 8000 years. A link between solar forcing changes and LIA/MWP has been found, so solar variation partially explaining modern warming up to the early 00ies is also plausible.

There is disagreement on if solar variability is "high variability" or "low variability"
Modeling solar activity is challenging because no direct measurements of solar variability exist prior to satellite record from ~1980, and because the record is "grafted" together from a data from many short-lived satellites, (review of challenges given in ch1).
CMIP5 uses a "low-variability" estimate of solar variation "PMOD" based on work by Kopp&Lean,
that has been strongly critized(ch9) for being an unverified theoretical model which implements alterations not recognized by the original experimental teams to drifts that are postulated but not verified. The alternative to "PMOD" are "high-variability" TSI-estimates such as that of Hoyt&Schatten that agree with "ACRIM" satellite data. Evidence that high-variability TSI-estimates are more accurate are:

• "low-variability" TSI-changes appear amplified 5-7 times in oceans,
  
• "high-variability" TSI is correlated with the equator-pole temperature gradient, and
  
• "low-variability" TSI-changes are too small to explain MWP/LIA temperature changes (AppendixB).
  
  Solar forcing variability is key to climate modeling, because just a 0.3% (5 W/m2) increase is enough to explain the 1 degC warming since 1850. TSI ~1360 W/m2 raises the earth's temperature from around -268 degC to 15 degC (283 degC), a gain of ~0.2 degC per W/m2.
  "High-variability" TSI vary by 3-4 W/m2 over the past centuries, and could thus explain 50-80% of observed modern warming.
  
  CMIP5 models are running hot as solar activity falls, indicating that variability in their solar forcing estimate is too low. Because solar forcing and CO2-concentrations co-incident rise 1850-2000, underestimating climate solar sensitivity would wrongfully raise CO2-sensitivity (ECS),explaining why:
  
  
• as solar activity fell from around 2000 (as seen here ), CMIP5 models have run warm. "For the period from 1998 to 2012, 111 of the 114 available climate-model simulations show a surface warming trend larger than observations" (Box 1.1, Figure 1a)(A comparison of temperature and "hot" CMIP5 model predictions can be found here)),
  
• larger-than-life ECS were needed to fit data pre-2000: "AOGCMs [...]with ECS values in the upper part of the 1.5 to 4.5°C range show very good agreement with observed climatology"(WG1 AR5 report), and why
  
• CMIP5 underestimates solar-induced LIA/MWP in hindcasts.
  
  Compensating for "high-variability" TSI-changes results in ECS<1.5. "Hoyt&Schatten" TSI-estimate results in ECS of 0.44. Paleo-analysis of climate, CO2 and sun variability similarly found ECS=0.5.
  
  Persistent flaws in climate research are plausible, outside investigators have commented on the the tendency to downplay flaws in climate research and to withhold data requests.
  
  * "TCR" (Transient Climate Response) is temperature change immediately after doubling CO2 gradually (before transients settle). TCR and ECS both express the potency of CO2, TCR is often lower than ECS by 30-40% (or 0.5-0.8 degC). TCR likely range is given as 1-2.5 degC in AR5.
  
  ** Estimates of ECS from data prior to 1979 require use of GIS/HADCRUT instrument records, adjusted by proprietary algorithms using climate models and homogenized which can create spurious warming. Audits of these datasets have uncovered data-quality issues, but datasets are generally hard to independently verify. The sea/surface global temperature record is only globally complete for the satellite era. A reason for skepticism is that recent warming is not corroborated by an accelerated sea level rise at tidal gauges. Prior to~1880 proxies are used, but suffer from «the divergence problem» of not describing recent warming.
  
  ***Carbon cycle simulations indicate TCR below 1

Just as a matter of technical clarification, it's helpful to distinguish between the harms associated with pollution and the harms associated with climate change contributions. While both of them are certainly harms (and many actions, like the burning of coal, will produce both pollution and greenhouse gases), there are subtle differences in the way the two both cause harm and induce moral culpability.

In particular, the harms associated with pollution are significantly easier to track and quantify than are the harms associated with greenhouse gasses (GHG). Pollution, while not as obviously harm-causing as (say) running someone down with your car, is significantly more local and direct in its harms than is the emission of GHG. When someone dumps a bunch of chemicals into a river, or opens a new coal burning power plant that pumps a bunch of soot aerosols into the local atmosphere, it's much easier to see both the causal link between the relevant action and the deleterious effects as well as the concrete harms associated with the activity. Pouring a bunch of fertilizer into a body of water might, for instance, trigger a harmful algae bloom that kills off normal aquatic life in the area, or it might lead to the kind of situation that we're seeing in the Flint, Michigan area right now, where the water becomes too dangerous to drink. It's pretty easy to see how the harms came about, to figure out what exactly they are, and how to go about remedying that.

Climate change harms aren't usually like that. While most GHGs aren't exactly pollutants per se--they don't usually have directly negative consequences on health--they're still certainly harmful. Those harms are extremely non-local and diffuse, though: a quantity of emitted CO2 doesn't lead directly to health problems or deaths in your city, but it contributes to a systemic problem that's literally global, and which is likely to lead to harm (or death), just indirectly. The diffuse and statistical nature of these harms make them very, very challenging to evaluate, and also keeps them from being psychologically salient in the way that most other harms are. It's a lot harder to get people worked up about an infinitesimal contribution to a change to the amount of thermal forcing to the whole globe than it is to get them worked up about turning their water supply brown. Modeling and quantifying the harms directly associated with the emission of a specific quantity of GHG is challenging, and an ongoing project.

With respect to your actual question, I don't necessarily think you're a hypocrite. A certain degree (no pun intended) of GHG emission--and so climate-related damage--is pretty much unavoidable if you're living anything like a normal life in the modern world, and it seems strange to hold people morally blameworthy for activities that they can't plausibly avoid. The extent to which doing something like posting on reddit or turning on a light is immoral is probably loosely comparable to the extent to which buying a cup of coffee every day instead of donating that money to starving people in developing nations is immoral; that is, it actually is probably wrong, but unless we're Peter Singer, we don't usually demand moral sainthood in either ourselves or other normal persons.

At a practical level, I think it's reasonable to attempt to both minimize the harm caused by your actions and to attempt to offset that harm by making positive contributions. The former requirement means (among other things) being aware of things like your carbon footprint, doing your best to not consume extra energy for absolutely no reason at all (e.g. try not to leave all the lights in your house on all the time), making small positive changes where you are able (e.g. set your air conditioning at 76 instead of 72 in the summer), and so on. At the individual level, these things don't make much of a difference, but then the concrete harms associated with most individual actions aren't all that large either; with both the harms and the positive changes, though, small contributions add up in the aggregate.

With respect to offsetting your negative contributions, what exactly you can (or should) do really depends on who you are and what your resources look like. Part of my approach to attempting to make up for my carbon footprint consists in working professionally in climate science and the philosophy of climate science--attempting to make a small (but meaningful) contribution to actually solving the problem. This kind of thing isn't feasible for most people, but there are lots of other things you might do. If you live in the United States, remaining politically engaged and pressuring your elected officials at all levels of government to take meaningful action on climate change is, in my opinion, one of the most important things the average individual can do. Helping to elect people at the local, state, and national levels who take climate change seriously and are willing to undertake meaningful political reform to help solve the problem is hugely important, so make that a central priority in your civic behavior. Likewise, you can (and should) pressure already elected officials to take more meaningful action on the issue: demand support for renewable energy, stronger and more numerous environmental regulations and policies, a reduction in subsidies for fossil fuel industries, and so on. The major plurality of GHG emissions comes from centralized energy production, so moving away from fossil fuel power plants to solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, or any other renewable is among the most important political goals. Support candidates who favor these things, and pressure politicians to take action in that area. It's also possible to vote with your wallet; try to support businesses that practice genuine environmental responsibility, invest (if you invest) in corporations focused on sustainability, refrain from buying products that are produced in places with poor environmental policies, &c. I think these sorts of systemic pressures are, all things considered, probably more meaningful for the average individual than are things like driving a hybrid instead of a regular car.

As far as the philosophical literature goes, environmental ethics is a booming subfield now, and it's only getting bigger. This isn't exactly what I do--I work on the philosophy of science side of things rather than the ethical side of things--but here are a few things that you might want to take a look at for more on this.

• Jamieson - "Global Responsibilities - Ethics, Public Health, and Global Environmental Change"
  
  
• Gardiner [ed.] - Climate Ethics: Essential Readings
  
  
• Gardiner - A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change
  
  
• Oreskes and Conway - The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future
  
  
• Oreskes and Conway - Merchants of Doubt
  
  
• O'Brien et. al. - "Climate Change, Ethics, and Human Security"
  
  
• Broome - Climate Matters
  
  
• Gordijn - "Ethics of mitigation, adaptation and geoengineering"
  
  
• Nikitina - "Geodiversity, and the geoethical principles for its preservation"
  
  
• Wagner and Zeckhauser "Climate policy - hard problem, soft thinking"
  
  
• Jamieson - Ethics and the Environment: An Introduction
  
  
• Elliott and Resnik - "Science, policy, and the transparency of values"
  
  Hope that helps. Feel free to follow up with anything else; this is my primary area of work. Among philosophers, the people who are doing the best work in environmental ethics right now are (in my opinion) John Broome, Dale Jamieson, and Stephen Gardiner. Anything you can find by any of them is probably worth reading.

>And in all those fields, there is a large number of people studying the issue, using different methods of data collection, and different methods of extrapolating it. And among all of them, there will be a general consensus, and disagreement about certain hypotheses - whether that comes from criticism of methodology, how the theory is applied, how applicable the theory is, etc. Climate science is no different.

It actually is different though. Why is it so hard to be given objective proof? There is talk that adopting a carbon tax will help curb global warming - why will that curb global warming?

>Getting a degree in a related subject would be a start.

You shouldn't have to have a degree to have a concept explained to you. Surely you wouldn't expect a professor to simply assert it is a factual phenomenon as a form of teaching their students?

>Here. This is the first study that NASA are citing. And curiously enough, the results for all the sources in the politifact article comes to above 90%, with the exception of a poll of earth scientists, which states the consensus at 82%, although it rises to over 97% once they cut that sample down to actively publishing climate scientists, and the American Meteorological Society poll, which states the consensus was only at 73%, but once it was narrowed down to actively publishing scientists, rose to 93%.

Well, the first line in the NASA report is this: "The consensus that humans are causing recent global warming is shared by 90%–100% of publishing
climate scientists according to six independent studies by co-authors of this paper" - which is the same as what politifact reported on. It's a huge stretch to go from "97% of all scientists agree" to "97% of publishing climate scientists agree" - in particular when there are current accusations of bias in the climate science world.

That said, it is invariably going to seem like I'm moving a goalpost here, so I'm going to leave the matter to rest. I do appreciate your responses - we had a conversation on the topic, and it would be unfair to ask more of you.

>Here are some links to textbooks on the subject.
http://www.springer.com/gb/book/9789400757561 Climate Change Science: A modern synthesis - one of the authors is actually the guy who extrapolated the 97% figure.

>http://www.cambridge.org/features/climatechange/textbooks.htm - a list of textbooks compiled by Cambridge university on the various subjects of climate change.

>https://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Modern-Climate-Change-Dessler/dp/0521173159 - Introduction to Modern Climate Change; this is a textbook for beginners at degree level.

I'll check some of them out if I can find a digital copy floating around somewhere - though admittedly, when I asked for proof on it, I didn't mean the 97% figure, rather I meant the soundness of the evidence behind the man-made aspect of man-made climate change. Thanks. :)

Here he compares the CO2 alarmism to believing in magic:

>I haven’t spent much time on the details of the science, but there is one thing that should spark skepticism in any intelligent reader. The system we are looking at consists in two turbulent fluids interacting with each other. They are on a rotating planet that is differentially heated by the sun. A vital constituent of the atmospheric component is water in the liquid, solid and vapor phases, and the changes in phase have vast energetic ramifications. The energy budget of this system involves the absorption and reemission of about 200 watts per square meter. Doubling CO2involves a 2% perturbation to this budget. So do minor changes in clouds and other features, and such changes are common. In this complex multifactor system, what is the likelihood of the climate (which, itself, consists in many variables and not just globally averaged temperature anomaly) is controlled by this 2% perturbation in a single variable? Believing this is pretty close to believing in magic. Instead, you are told that it is believing in ‘science.’ Such a claim should be a tip-off that something is amiss. After all, science is a mode of inquiry rather than a belief structure.

And here he describes the global warming movement as a "cult".

>“As with any cult, once the mythology of the cult begins falling apart, instead of saying, oh, we were wrong, they get more and more fanatical. I think that’s what’s happening here. Think about it,” he said. “You’ve led an unpleasant life, you haven’t led a very virtuous life, but now you’re told, you get absolution if you watch your carbon footprint. It’s salvation!”

If you read the other comments here you will see that I said that oceans will absorb more CO2, that a greater number of clouds will reflect more heat back into space, and that a greater number of plants will process more CO2. I agree with Lindzen. Where do you think I formed my opinions from? It was from books like this, which reference Lindzen and others, and from Lindzen himself. Lindzen is a leader in this field.

GET A GRIP SON!

Sigh.

Anyone who throws there hands up and says "lolwut, itz too complicated i dunno!" is not a skeptic. Do you honestly think that climate scientists don't study natural phenomena like the ones on this list and try to understand their causes and implications? This post is especially pathetic, but it's literally just a list of natural phenomena; if you think think this stuff is what makes the climate complex, then you literally don't know anything about atmospheric science.

You might want to start with the following textbooks, which any climate scientist will have devoured by the time they have a Masters -

• Global Physical Climatology
  
  
• An Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology
  
  
• Atmosphere, Ocean, and Climate Dynamics
  
  
• Atmospheric Science: an Introductory Survey
  
  
• Fundamentals of Large Scale Circulation
  
  
• Dynamics and Ice Sheets of Glaciers
  
  
• Microphysics of Clouds and Precipitation
  
  There are, of course, higher level textbooks on my shelf as well. The majority of the stuff on this list is basic stuff that an undergraduate would be exposed to. It doesn't even scratch the surface of what our science is actually about.
  
  EDIT TO ADD -
  For example, geostrophy is this list. Do you know what geostrophic motion is? It's motion where the only forces acting on a parcel are the Coriolis force and the pressure gradient force. How do you get to geostrophic motion? Well, on the first day of your Junior year as a meteorology student, you start taking Atmospheric Dynamics. Your professor throws Navier-Stokes on the board and says "This is what we need to solve to figure out how the atmosphere works." Then he mentions that there is a million dollar prize for working with that equation and says "okay, let's see if we can simplify things." After that, you spend a few lectures deriving atmospheric motion following Holton, Lindzen, or Serreze - talking about the Rossby radius, coordinate transformations, Eulerian vs. Lagrangian and material derivatives, and path integrals through moving reference frames.
  
  Ultimately you re-derive equations of motion from scratch starting with F=ma, and arrive at a 3D set of equations where motion is determined by terms relating to the pressure gradient, accelerations, friction, gravity, and the Coriolis force. Then, you scale analyze the terms of the equations to see what the dominating terms are, given certain assumptions.
  
  Assume you're above the PBL; then, friction is negligible. You'll immediately see that acceleration/velocity-related terms are an order of magnitude smaller than the other terms. Assume hydrostatic balance and there is no acceleration in the vertical, truncating your motion to two dimensions. You're left with a balance of forces in both your basis vectors - pressure gradient and coriolis. Balance these two and you can solve for a balanced flow called geostrophic flow. Geostrophic flow is super-simple and only really works as an approximation for upper-level flows with small curvature (i.e. you need features larger than the Rossby radius of deformation or else the assumptions about 2D velocity are invalid). But it's a great learning tool for meteorology students to get their hands dirty with the math, and derive from first principles why flow is counter-clockwise around Low Pressures in the northern hemisphere.
  
  Relax some assumptions and you can also get gradient flow or cyclostrophic flow.
  
  You can't do any meteorology with these flows, though - you need at least to relax geostrophy and derive quasi-geostrophy with the aid of the circulation and divergence theorems to actually get vertical motion which is diagnosable from thermodynamics and fluid dynamics.
  
  Anything else from the domain of the atmospheric science that the skeptics here want explained? Now's your chance.

Sorry to hijack your thread, but the book "Climate Wars" by Gwynne Dwyer is a book I can't recommend enough for anyone wanting to get up to speed on what climate change really means for us and the wealth of knowledge that has accumulated over the years. He spent a year interviewing top scientists, policy makers, military and intelligence community members (basically people whose jobs and expertise it is to prepare for future threats to their countries) from around the world and asked them what they are aware of and what they are preparing for. It is a very comprehensive book and Dwyer is a world renown investigative geopolitical reporter. The book is a bit dated (April 2011) but its still very relevant in synthesis and analysis and its interesting to read about thresholds he predicts we wont cross until 2020 or later that we have already crossed. He also concludes that the IPCC reports, which policy makers use as a guide is unreliable for displaying and highlighting the realities of the situation for various reasons.

Doc Snow wrote a really great summary and review of the book with pictures that is quite comprehensive. I cannot recommend looking at this enough to all people and especially my fellow redditors who have the resources to not be in the dark. Knowledge is power.

Edit: Fixed link. Grammar and spelling.Doc Snow wrote a really great summary and review of the book with pictures that is quite comprehensive. I cannot recommend looking at this enough to all people and especially my fellow redditors who have the resources to not be in the dark. Knowledge is power.

Edit: Spelling and grammar.

I am an undergrad minoring in atmospheric science (hoping to go to grad school for meteorology), and my favorite textbook, hands down, is: http://www.amazon.com/SEVERE-HAZARDOUS-WEATHER-INTRODUCTION-METEOROLOGY/dp/075755041X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1304034575&sr=1-2
It's extremely easy to understand and I actually enjoyed reading it.

A better known introductory textbook is: http://www.amazon.com/Meteorology-Today-C-Donald-Ahrens/dp/0495555738/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1304035166&sr=1-2
The explanations and pictures are thorough and helpful, but I didn't like it as much. It does come with a cloud chart though!

And for a more technical look into atmospheric science I have this beaut: http://www.amazon.com/Meteorology-Scientists-Engineers-Roland-Stull/dp/0534372147/ref=pd_sim_b_4
The math is pretty straight forward for the most part, and has a lot of examples and practice problems. Plus it familiarizes you with thermodynamic charts, which are a lot of fun (and yes, I am being completely serious).

Hope that helped!

Wow, I'm surprised you followed up on this! yeah.. 100% chance of rain, high of 55. Just off by 20 degrees! hehe

​

Yeah as a pretty avid/nutso outdoors weekend warrior year around for 7-8 years, the amount of time I spent (wasted, perhaps?) looking at the NOAA forecast, reading meteorological discussions, and trying to divine what weather would come by the weekend... my ultimate take away is that outside of that specific high pressure summer ridge that develops over the Pacific that gives us our glorious summers, the forecast is especially tough to rely on beyond a few days off, sometimes even less then 24hr out is not reliable. There's a few exceptions to this, the biggest I can think of is when we get the rare occurrence of snow in the winter there's usually a high pressure system in play, that can sometimes give a longer range of predictable weather (usually sunny, clear, and windy af from the east!). But that can last for a few days to a few weeks even sometimes.

​

It's that air-mass colliding with the typical weather coming off the pacific that gives us the snow. The difficulty in predicting is that the ocean always wins that battle, eventually, but sometimes the situation is down to the last minute knowing if the colder inland air will hang on for X amount of time as the moist pacific air hits it.

​

If you want to geek out on the weather I recommend this book by a meteorological professor up at UW in seattle. It's slightly washington centric but touches on the gorge and Oregon enough to make it plenty relevant.

https://www.amazon.com/Weather-Pacific-Northwest-Cliff-Mass/dp/0295988479

​

let's just enjoy the rain tomorrow.. the weekend looks pretty decent!

​

​

I saw elsewhere in the thread that you live in Alma, so I chose Topeka as the nearest large comparison city: Cost of Living Comparison Between Topeka, KS and Seattle, WA.

Rent is indeed going to be a major factor for you. I don't know how things work in Alma, but here the rent usually only covers the structure itself (the "four walls" as it were); it doesn't include utilities: power, heating, water, garbage, internet, phone, etc. A lot of other cost-of-living factors are pretty similar. My girlfriend has lived in Seattle for several years on about $30k/yr (pre-tax) but she makes compromises to do so: lives with a roommate in low-rent housing, doesn't have a car (but uses Car2Go occasionally), walks miles to/from bus stops every day, cooks 90% of her meals at home, does most of her non-food shopping at thrift and second-hand stores, etc. It's definitely do-able.

/u/synthesizedjasmine's response was really quite good and I'd like to piggyback on that comment (and elaborate upon it) a bit, including some non-cost-of-living things:

• Sell one of the cars before moving here. You can get membership to a service like Car2Go or ZipCar for occasional car use.
  
• Violent crime rates are extremely low here, but property crime is very high; even if your rental agreement doesn't require it, renter's insurance would be a good idea. (Seattle crime map)
  
• The wealth inequality thing is pretty stark; there is a community of homeless people living in what is known as The Jungle, which on any given day could be driven past by more than one person whose net worth is more than all of those people will ever make in their lifetimes, combined.
  
• The traffic can be absolutely horrible, there's really no two ways about it. While you're sitting in that traffic, you'll be surrounded by entitled self-righteous dipshits driving $100,000 (or more) cars who haven't used a turn signal in years. Drive defensively if you're going to drive at all.
  
• Some notes about the weather. This is really important and can come as a shock to people.
  
• It doesn't rain here nearly as much (quantity) as people think it does: Comparing Topeka with Seattle again, we average less rainfall in Seattle than in Topeka.
  
• If you follow those links to the rainfall data, you'll notice that when it rains here is almost the exact opposite of when it rains in Topeka; high rainfall in the winter and low rainfall in the summer.
  
• It doesn't rain hard here and we seldom get storms (you can literally go years without hearing thunder) but it can drizzle for weeks on end, especially during the winter.
  
• Although the rain may not always fall, the sky can often look like it; cloudy days are more common in Seattle than in Kansas, about 22% more frequent.
  
• Predicting the weather here is hard. Really hard. Two mountain ranges and an unusual weather convergence zone can cause wild variations in weather in locations only a mile apart. Cliff Mass, a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington has a blog where he will often go into much greater detail about the weather forecast than you see on the news; he's also written a book about the weather here.
  
• Snow has become less frequent over the years. If it does snow, everything will shut down, even if it's only a couple inches of snow. Seattle is woefully unprepared for dealing with snow; there are a lot of hills, we don't use salt, and nobody knows how to drive in the snow. If it snows at all and you have the option of staying home, do so, you'll be safer there. Here are some videos if you would like more convincing.
  
• The Seattle Freeze has nothing to do with weather and can be a real thing. Forming new friendships here, especially for people who move from out of state, can be really hard. It doesn't happen to everyone, but it can and does happen to some.
  
  Edit to add:
  
  
• Seattle is a highly educated city. The person who makes your coffee is likely to have at least a bachelor's degree of some sort or be working towards it. The Seattle metro area is the sixth most well-educated in the country.

For Thermodynamics and Dynamics my professors referenced this book a TON. I used it more for Thermo, but it's good for each topic. Stull - Meteorology for Scientist and Engineers Good luck, dynamics was one of my tougher classes, but VERY interesting.

I'm afraid you will have to take that up with John Houghton who describes the process in his book Global Warming.

https://www.amazon.com/Global-Warming-Sir-John-Houghton/dp/1107463793

​

You say:

> Because temperatures cool as you go higher in the troposphere

Basic thermodynamics, the net flow of enthalpy is from higher temperatures to lower temperatures. The driver for all heat transfer is the delta T. The troposphere has to be cooler than the surface or all net heat transfer would be in the other direction. But I did not say the troposphere is warmer than the surface. The troposphere warms due to the greenhouse effect. This reduces the delta T which slows down the heat transfer from the surface causing the surface to warm. The troposphere becomes less cool before the surface warms. I'm surprised anyone participating in this kind of discussion does not get this. I truly recommend the Houghton book.

​

You say:

> ... warming predicted in the troposphere is a consequence of predicted warming of the surface (by almost any cause e.g. GHGs, solar),

Of course we are only speaking of the enhanced greenhouse effect here.

​

Think about it, if what you are saying is true and CO2 gases heat just the surface air, this means the absorption spectrum is saturated at the surface and any CO2 subsequently added to the atmosphere will have no incremental effect.

​

An IR photon emitted from the surface proceeds up the column of air. The net probability of it interacting with a greenhouse molecule is a function of the emission flux and the number of molecules along the emission pathway (not dissimilar from nuclear physics): the longer the pathway, the greater the probability of an interaction. The absorption of IR photons can occur throughout the column of air which is about 18 km high.

​

Now ask yourself what happens to a CO2 molecule that is heated (becomes energized) by an IR photon. Some of the energy is re-radiated away as a IR photon but some of the energy remains in the molecule as latent heat (2nd Law). This heats the molecule which conducts some of the heat to the cooler molecules surrounding it. This warmer pocket of air will convect upwards.

​

So, not only should the troposphere warm due to the radiative heat transfer from greenhouse effect it should also be warmed from below by other gases bringing heat upwards through convective heat transfer resulting from radiative heat transfer. The cumulative effect of this is a warmer less cool troposphere which slows down all other heat transfer from the surface causing the surface to warm.

​

​

I'm currently enrolled in a masters program in meteorology in Norway. I'm not sure what curriculum is in the courses you're mentioning, but the meteorology relevant courses in my bachelor basically consist of the geophysical fluid dynamics found in this compendium, and atmospheric physics found in this book. The compendium is written by my professor, so there is definitely better ones out there, but it gives you an overlook of what is relevant. The book however is used in four different courses at my university, and is basically our bachelor bible of meteorology. Good luck!

Correct. More fluid dynamics than thermodynamics. This will be your life your junior year unless something has changed, but I'm pretty sure this book has remained a constant throughout the years. Holton's Dynamic Meteorology. This used to be the book for AOS 310 and 311...the junior dynamics courses. 330 and 340 focus on Atmospheric physics. Topics can be found here, but that's where your thermodynamics come in. You'll spend more time on fluid dynamics than you do on thermodynamics. There are two physics based courses, but they cover a wider range of topics. The dynamics classes are narrower in scope, but a lot harder in my opinion.

The issue is what's you mean as accurate non contaminated curated data, then how many degrees have it of reliable precision, and then given that precision how reliable is a mathematical model to deliver forecast on global scale assuming that by itself greenhouse gases can't hear the planet they need some questionable also domino effect on strong highly random, true mathematical models draw possible predictions based on the possible paths and actually the true chance for co2 to Cascade domino influence on water vapor in a 50yr period is like to win 3 times the lottery this period for a strong chance, and mostly likely to dilute to the space the extra trace heat.

I don't come here to show you what you previously didn't asked for, but generously I ask you to read Mototaka Nakamura work (also search about him)

https://electroverse.net/another-climate-scientist-with-impeccable-credentials-breaks-ranks/

Free Kindle ebook

https://www.amazon.in/kikoukagakushanokokuhaku-chikyuuonndannkahamikennshounokasetsu-Japanese-Nakamura-Mototaka-ebook/dp/B07FKHF7T2

>Any other field can show raw data and explain how that data is extrapolated, even with regards to a complex system.

And in all those fields, there is a large number of people studying the issue, using different methods of data collection, and different methods of extrapolating it. And among all of them, there will be a general consensus, and disagreement about certain hypotheses - whether that comes from criticism of methodology, how the theory is applied, how applicable the theory is, etc. Climate science is no different. Look into any aspect of scientific research, and you're going to find disagreement within the field, and plenty of good reasons to back up each point - most of the time.

>If the issue is so complex, how can so many people be so thoroughly certain of it?

Within any scientific field there is a massive range of topics being explored. Since nobody has the time to read all the material and decide for themselves, they tend to trust that the researchers know what they're doing. Published material is subjected to peer review to ensure that it isn't nonsense, and scientists who disagree with an assertion criticise it, and explain why.

Here are some links to textbooks on the subject.

http://www.springer.com/gb/book/9789400757561 Climate Change Science: A modern synthesis - one of the authors is actually the guy who extrapolated the 97% figure.


http://www.cambridge.org/features/climatechange/textbooks.htm - a list of textbooks compiled by Cambridge university on the various subjects of climate change.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Modern-Climate-Change-Dessler/dp/0521173159 - Introduction to Modern Climate Change; this is a textbook for beginners at degree level.

The takeaway message I'm trying to get across is that modern day climate research has an incredibly broad scope, and trying to get a full, top-level handle on all of it is near impossible due to the massive amounts of material out there. Getting a degree in a related subject would be a start.

>Simply asking where the figure that 97% of scientists agree comes from should really get a direct answer, yet it really doesn't.

Here. This is the first study that NASA are citing. And curiously enough, the results for all the sources in the politifact article comes to above 90%, with the exception of a poll of earth scientists, which states the consensus at 82%, although it rises to over 97% once they cut that sample down to actively publishing climate scientists, and the American Meteorological Society poll, which states the consensus was only at 73%, but once it was narrowed down to actively publishing scientists, rose to 93%.

So even if the 97% figure is disputed, it's also got plenty of good information behind it too. The reason it gets used so much is because there is enough credit put by it to consider it "good enough", and that the consensus itself: "Humans are contributing to climate change" is correct.

Which leads us to the final conclusion: if the vast majority of the scientific community believe that climate change is A) happening and B) affected on a major level by anthropogenic activity, then do we wait for the rest to get on board (bearing in mind that there are also biologists who believe in intelligent design), or do we accept that this is probably going to happen, and start drawing up ways of mitigating it?

Even if it's just a friend who told you things, you're ahead of most people there. It's definitely worth getting a level 1 cert. if you're gonna be out in the BC at all, plus learning about avys is really fucking cool in my opinion. Also you can read some of the 'classic' books. For example:

Staying Alive in Avy Terrain

The Avy Handbook

Because once you know what you're doing and are confident, you can ski every day fairly safely.

"The Avalanche Handbook" is a good, thick reference though drier then Trempers "Staying Alive."

Tremper has a new book that I haven't read.

"Snow Sense" is a classic but short.

I just recommended this book on another thread and it is really great and covers lots of emergency shelter style stuff. Written by two NOLS instructors one of whom happens to be a brilliant cartoonist. They have other books on avalanches and telemark skiing too.

Some good blogs are http://wildsnow.com, http://bedrockandparadox.com/, http://straightchuter.com/, http://forrestmccarthy.blogspot.com/.

> Could you please provide sources for these statements?

Can you tell me specifically what you would like sourced? I'll try to provide some avenues for further reading in this post a bit.

> For anyone else reading, radiative forcing is the difference between the incoming and outgoing energy through the Earth's atmosphere. I have never seen a climate change model from a credible organization that did not have this as at least a central component.

Current climate models relegate the influence of the sun on the climate at a 0.1% TSI variability over the solar cycle as it relates to upper atmospheric heating. This of course is valid. Where the problem arises is when it comes to particle forcing mechanisms. These are not considered in any mainstream climate model and, as such with all unaccounted natural variables, their effects don't go away but get attributed to humanity instead.

> It's worth noting that CMIP is comprised of climate scientists... CMIP's official stance is that man-made climate change is real... So I'm not sure who we are criticizing here...

Again, CMIP6 released two data sets. One with particle forcing and one without particle forcing. I have yet to see a single model that used the data set that includes particle forcing that shows humans are the driving factor. Climate science is not the monolith they would have you believe. The idea that all climate scientists are idiots and liars is of course absurd. There is absolutely dissent that is working towards what I think is the right direction, but with funding and peer review in this field being the way that it currently is, one must be careful with the way they say things in order to keep their jobs.

Do a google scholarly article search on solar forcing of various aspects of the climate that you can think of, practically none of them are accounted for in models. These are the same models that we see all these predictions being based off. There are huge amounts of papers coming out that aren't getting the publicity that anthropogenic climate change gets. A kid even recently won the national science championship showing the correlation between coronal hole activity and cyclones (Faris Wald is his name if you wanted to look it up, it is super interesting stuff). Mainstream science didn't make this connection, an 8th grader did.

Just recently Dr. Mototaka Nakamura (MIT, NASA JPL&Goddard, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science, Duke, Hawaii, Georgia Institute of Tech, International Pacific Research Center) wrote a book called "Confessions of a climate scientist - the global warming hypothesis is an unproven hypothesis." I highly recommend the read, the gist of it is summed up by him saying "Our models are mickey-mouse mockeries of the real world." I name him primarily as a recent high profile example of a dissenter, of which there are many who are not as vocal.

I appreciate the non insulting tone by the way.

> What else might happen that would be huge enough to bring us all together?

Climate change. A common problem. But we would have to view it as a shared task (and not the fault of this or that).

> And if for example global warming causes widespread drought, famine, and mass migration, leading to border skirmishes, terrorism and extremist leaders taking power, what would stop this situation from getting so out of hand that (for example) Pakistan doesn't nuke India for cutting off its access to a major river or the like?

That's actually a scenario in a book called Climate Wars by Gwynne Dyer.

> Talk me out of the idea that if things continue the way they are going, someone won't go so far as to use nukes. You mentioned hundreds of millions of people dying. Why wouldn't someone feel so provoked at some point that bombs get launched? Things are already getting bad faster than most projections had predicted they would.

Well, I'm not sure I can make the claim that they won't. We can hope that the leaders still use MAD as a deterrent. But to be honest, while I think I have an idea of how some of the future will play out, I do not have a pulse on this aspect of it.

But there are groups out there who are pushing for a truly advanced economic system that averts these problems, or can at least operate under such strain.

The problem that we face is our economic system, and our political system, are dogshit terrible at being efficient.

We can provide for everybody, even under climate strain, but it requires working together.

Dropping the notion of countries would be a start. Thinking of the entire planet as one society would go quite a ways to prevent tribal mentality.

The Zeitgeist Movement is currently in the education stage of their plan. That is, to inform as many people as possible, as wide a group as they can reach, that the fact that people are starving and hungry today is because of our shitty economic system.

And the problem is, the vast majority of people have only ever known this system, and are completely convinced that this is the best we can do.

And when they think this is the best we can do, they are convincing themselves it's necessary to wipe out parts to leave enough for the rest of us.

We will lose some parts of the world, we will have to evacuate. But we can feed 100 times more people with the same amount of water using vertical farming, than regular open air farming.

Our system is primed to waste as much as possible and be as inefficient and ineffective as possible because you get rewarded for the more solutions you can sell.

If we could change our farming methods to be 100 times more efficient, for the same cost in water...

What about computing technology ? What about building housing for all humans ? What about building transportation ? What about medical facilities all over the world ? And for free ?

What else are we short on because it's expensive, that we could have plenty of if we changed the way we think ?

So...

Here's a short series called Culture In Decline, EP 6

Basically it depicts two futures. One if we stay on what we have. And one if we alter course now.

There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people actively working to alter course by bringing to everyone's attention that we can do so much better than this.

So to answer your question...

• I can't tell you for sure how to avoid it, except to say, make it known that there's a fork in the road coming up. There is another option than desolate waste from our inefficient and wasteful system.

The fact that CO2 concentrations are increasing in the atmosphere is literally the definitive consequence of an imbalance in global carbon dioxide fluxes. I'm getting this idea from the observations and my knowledge of the global carbon cycle and basics physics / chemistry. Since CO2 is a greenhouse gas, this also leads to a measurable energy balance.

Actually, the fact that CO2 emissions are increasing global temperatures has a overwhelming amount of support from climate models and direct observations of the greenhouse effect.

You're making all these wild claims about things we don't know or things you have to account for which I assure you climate scientists are aware of and account for. All of the questions you've asked were covered in my introductory Climate Science course. The literature on this stuff is very well established.

Also, why did you just make up that humans contributed 20 ppm for the current 400 ppm? It is abundantly clear that almost all of the CO2 increase from 310 ppm to 410 ppm between 1960 and 2017 is due to us. We know this from the oxygen isotopes of the CO2 and we know it from doing global carbon budgets. All of you claims are totally baseless and easily debunked by reading an introductory Climate Science textbook, so I will leave it at that.

An Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology by James Holton is probably the most commonly used dynamics book. Another one that I really like is Mid-Latitude Atmospheric Dynamics: A First Course by Jonathan Martin.

As far as thermodynamics goes A First Course in Atmospheric Thermodynamics by Grant Petty is a good one.

Nice dream, now read this and this and see your utopian dream go 'POP.'

Although your dreams could be based on this recent historical documentation.

Pleasant reading journey to you.

Ah! Those were questions addressed to the original reader of my response to get them thinking. The readers consist of conspiracy theorists and family members/family friends whom the conspiracy theorists CC when they share these articles.

Confirmation bias surely plays a role, as does, in many cases, misinformation, as documented in: http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/denialmachine/ and Hoggan and Littlemore's [Climate Cover-Up] (http://www.amazon.ca/Climate-Cover-Up-Crusade-Global-Warming/dp/1553654854).

John Cook's handbook is great, as is Oreskes and Conway's book (I've actually sent a copy along to one of the conspiracy theorists, not that I'm guessing it'll get read all the way through). I hadn't seen the Naomi Klein article, but I'm definitely going to check it out now. Thanks for passing that along!

The standard textbook that I think most of us have used in atmospheric dynamics classes is Holton but has a bit of steep learning curve, depending on your background. Another book, that I think is a bit better at easing you into the material is Wiley, and then theres Wallace & Hobbs which is more of an undergraduate book.

I'm not doubting the importance of this matter, and the fact that it's being highlighted by media and discussed again is obviously what's most important... But I'm fairly certain that this is not a new discovery? Last month I read Six Degrees [http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0007209053/] by Mark Lynas [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Lynas] (a non-fiction book that pulls together a great number of research and analysis reports into a straightforward account - for the laymen of us - roughly what is commonly predicted for each degree of global warming within the range of 1-6 predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and he definitely mentions that during the Eocene era tropical fauna (like palm trees) and warm-blooded mammals were able to survive far further into the polar regions than today. but heck, that book was published in 2008. Why is this in the news again now?

Excerpt from an article for the guardian written by Lynas in 2007:
> "To find out what the planet would look like with five degrees of warming, one must largely abandon the models and venture far back into geological time, to the beginning of a period known as the Eocene. Fossils of sub-tropical species such as crocodiles and turtles have all been found in the Canadian high Arctic dating from the early Eocene, 55 million years ago, when the Earth experienced a sudden and dramatic global warming. These fossils even show that breadfruit trees were growing on the coast of Greenland, while the Arctic Ocean saw water temperatures of 20C within 200km of the North Pole itself. There was no ice at either pole; forests were probably growing in central Antarctica."
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/apr/23/scienceandnature.climatechange]

You'll be hard-pressed to find a better introductory textbook than Wallace & Hobbs. It's a comprehensive and informative introductory tome that still manages to have lots of judiciously chosen pretty pictures.

https://www.amazon.com/Atmospheric-Science-Second-Introductory-International/dp/012732951X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505767093&sr=8-1&keywords=wallace+and+hobbs+atmospheric+science

> I remember someone stated that Earth has always had periods of warming and cooling.

It was not by accident that you just happened to hear this.

http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Cover-Up-Crusade-Global-Warming/dp/1553654854/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1347189033&sr=8-14&keywords=climate+change

Back to your question:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/12/previous-temperature-climate-change

More here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/index/


Yes I agree we should grow up and take responsibility for our actions.

> The global temperature is increasing wildly

Define wildly. Since 1975 it's increased by an average of about .15 to .2 ^o C per decade and it's increased about 0.8^o C overall since 1880, with about 2/3 of that coming since 1975. It's probably increasing by a bit more than that now because global emissions keep increasing.

> in a few years many heavily populated areas will exceed "wet bulb" temperature, meaning they will become so hot that it would be impossible for human life to exist there

That doesn't seem to fit Wikipedia's definition of wet-bulb temperature, although I'll admit to being very unfamiliar with the term; do you know in what context McPherson used it?

It would help to know exactly what McPherson's temperature projections are. To me, the notion that the usual projections could render places currently supporting hundreds of millions of people uninhabitable within the next few years, or even decades, is tough to believe without hard numbers to back it up.

If you're curious for other sources, my impressions are based roughly on Six Degrees, by Mark Lynas and Introduction to Modern Climate Change, by Andrew Dessler. I think climate change is definitely capable of causing our extinction eventually, but it would require a lot of inaction on our part, and it would still take several centuries at least.

How comfortable are you with math and at which "level" do you want to understand the concepts of weather? I.e., do you want to learn the physics behind it, or just know what fronts, cyclones etc. that they talk about on TV are?

For the former the book Atmospheric Science: An Introductory Survey is a comprehensive introduction, but I wouldn't recommend it to laymen who are just interested in weather.

Dennis Hartmann's textbook is an excellent introduction to Climate Science, with a few concluding chapters on natural and anthropogenic climate change.

That's the easiest to digest 12 pages of viewable data I have available from either side of the arguement. I should have linked directly to the paper, not the host. Its literally the first thing that pops up on google when you type, "environmental effects of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide."

If you are having some trouble with insomnia, I encourage you to read "Unstoppable Global Warming" by Singer and Avery. I subsist on a diet of data and beer and I couldn't get more than 70% of the way through.

I'll recommend Hartmann's Climate book.

If you ever wanted to learn about the climate system and all sorts of fun things this is where I'd start!

Definitely a better title than The Lightning Discharge.

Grease lightning!

Well then

https://www.amazon.com/Atmospheric-Science-Second-Introductory-International/dp/012732951X

That should get it done. If you want way more "headaches because I don't understand" math then this

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Dynamic-Meteorology-International-Geophysics/dp/0123848660

Those 2 are pretty standard for the field

I don't think you have to go that route. You can offset your footprint fairly cheaply by making minor adjustments to your lifestyle and donating to an organization like Cool Earth or TerraPass. That's what I do.

John Broome's Climate Matters is a nice resource for thinking about these issues.

This is the best book if you understand some basic undergraduate calculus.

http://www.amazon.com/Atmospheric-Science-Second-Introductory-International/dp/012732951X

If you want something a little more academic, try John Houghton's Global Warming: The Complete Briefing: 5th edition. It's an introductory textbook on Climate Change - it doesn't go into fine detail on how data sets are collected and managed, and any textbook like this will always be a little out-of-date. But it is a broad and comprehensive overview of the science of climate change, and the many consequences that flow from it.

That and oil companies thought "climate change" sounded less scary than "global warming" so they pushed in every way they could to rebrand it. The scientific community was the last to embrace that change.

"Global warming" is the specific theory that greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere will increase overall energy in the system and, in turn, increase global temperatures. Since energy companies depend, at least in the short run, on us pumping out lots of greenhouse gases, that's a scary term for them.

"Climate change" sounds more ambiguous and removes the blame from anybody in particular. Heck, it might even be getting colder.

Edit:

For an unbiased source of the difference in meaning between the two words, see NASA

>Global warming: the increase in Earth’s average surface temperature due to rising levels of greenhouse gases.

>Climate change: a long-term change in the Earth’s climate, or of a region on Earth.

For a discussion on how the oil industry, notably Exxon Mobile, pushed hard for the use of the second term over the first term, see this book

Spencer Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming, is awesome. The full text is available online, from the American Institute of Physics.

A brief explanation of climate change in the form of a Reddit comment.

Cliff Mass is a well known Pacific Northwest weatherman and climate professor who wrote this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Weather-Pacific-Northwest-Cliff-Mass/dp/0295988479

And he writes a popular blog too:

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/

> the NYT publishes so much BS

> the church of climate change

Yikes, your bias is showing. You might want to consider trying to learn atmospheric science from an actual textbook instead of letting right-wing blogs tell you what to think. I'd recommend this one or this one if your math is up to par, after which you could probably then move up to a graduate-level text like this one.

Gwynne Dyer has also written some excellent stuff on climate change.

Read this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0618826122/ref=mp_s_a_1?qid=1318573506&sr=1-1 which you can get free on library.nu.

He compiles all the relevant research.

Check out the Gwynne Dyer book Climate Wars, his documentary for Canadian radio or the new film The Age of Consequences.

If we address issues people care about, they might listen.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0898868092/ref=redir_mdp_mobile?pc_redir=T1 this is a good starting place. And pretty cheap as yell.

it's the cover of a well known (to some) book as well.

> how we know that the earth is warming and how we came about knowing this

For that, your best bet might actually be this site: https://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm

It's also available in print form, but the web version is more detailed.

He is author of a book called "6 Degrees" which I think has been basically well received. Amazon UK link + reviews:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Six-Degrees-Future-Hotter-Planet/dp/0007209053/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261572715&sr=8-1

SS: This is a video I've seen references to on reddit that discusses the geopolitical impacts of climate change. Refugee crises, food conflicts, etc. could increase significantly. It's over 1hr in length so I didn't watch all of it. Gwynne Dyer also wrote a book expounding on his interpretation of climate change. It tends to be pessimistic but it's an interesting worst-case scenario look at what climate change could do.

Is this study acting like it came up with the idea? Because environmental theorists and economists have been suggesting it for years. It is discussed quite thoroughly in Kim Broome's Climate Matters.

And if you want to balance out your view you should also consider both sides

http://astore.amazon.com/wwwmichaelcot-20/detail/0521173159

http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Change-Observed-impacts-Planet/dp/044453301X/ref=cm_lmf_tit_1

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10300308-living-in-denial

http://www.amazon.com/Discovery-Global-Warming-Histories-Technology/dp/067403189X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274888732&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Uncertainty-William-Stewart/dp/0976729164/ref=cm_lmf_tit_3

http://astore.amazon.com/wwwmichaelcot-20/detail/1597265675

http://www.amazon.com/The-Weather-Makers-Changing-Climate/dp/B001PO66MG/ref=cm_lmf_tit_1

http://knopfdoubleday.com/2012/06/25/global-weirdness-by-climate-central/

http://mark-bowen.com/book_cs.html

http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Flat-Crowded-2-0-Revolution/dp/0312428928/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274888779&sr=1-1

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/six-degrees-mark-lynas/1100833125

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15856813-overheated

http://astore.amazon.com/wwwmichaelcot-20/detail/1608193942

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Contact-Sport-Inside-Climate/dp/1426205406/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274888885&sr=1-1

http://astore.amazon.com/wwwmichaelcot-20/detail/0822351099

http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Capitalism-Creating-Industrial-Revolution/dp/0316353000/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274888939&sr=1-1

If you really want to get an idea of the "big picture", grab a used copy of Meteorology Today. It's a college level introductory text for meteorology majors. You should be able to understand it without too much trouble. There's info on all the major atmospheric processes, with a lot of diagrams and pictures for visualization.

Cliff Mass's blog and book are worth reading too.

Given that the fossil fuels industry is funding a rather substantial propaganda campaign to convince Americans that they shouldn't limit CO2 emissions, this isn't terribly surprising.

free kindle edition

Dr Nakamura Mototaka - is the author. This link is included to demonstrate his qualifications.

Here is something that summarizes some of his scalding criticisms of climate models.

>The real or realistically-simulated climate system is far more complex than an absurdly simple system simulated by the toys that have been used for climate predictions to date, and will be insurmountably difficult for those naive climate researchers who have zero or very limited understanding of geophysical fluid dynamics. The dynamics of the atmosphere and oceans are absolutely critical facets of the climate system if one hopes to ever make any meaningful prediction of climate variation.

>Solar input is modeled as a “never changing quantity,” which is absurd.

> It has only been several decades since we acquired an ability to accurately monitor the incoming solar energy. In these several decades only, it has varied by one to two watts per square meter. Is it reasonable to assume that it will not vary any more than that in the next hundred years or longer for forecasting purposes? I would say, No.

Svar við punktum 1 og 2 geturðu fundið í þessum ágætu fyrirlestrum. https://www.audible.com/pd/Science-Technology/Earths-Changing-Climate-Audiobook/B00D8J4GAU
Hvað punkt þrjú varðar er það vissulega heppilegt að plöntumassi aukist vegna auknunar CO2, sérstaklegt í ljósi þess að skógar-og landeyðing ásamt ósjálfbærri jarðvegsnýtingu og annara þátta innan LULUCF, er einn stærsti þáttur aukningar CO2 í andrúmslofti. Plöntur vaxa meira þegar þeim er gefin meiri koltvísýringur, í rauninni alveg óháð því hvort þær séu C3, C4 eða CAM. Þessvegna er gúrkum, tómötum o.s.frv. gefin auka CO2 í gróðurhúsum. Hinsvegar þýðir það ekki að við séum að njóta þess á Íslandi, þvertámóti virðist gróðurþekja vera að minnka [amk á árunum 2002-2013], en sömu aðstæður eru enn við.

Áhrif aukins CO2 í andrúmslofti eru ekki grá, kannski væru þau það ef þetta væri allt að gerast mun hægar og á mun lengra tímabili, en það er ekki raunin. Það að það séu kostir þýðir ekki að þeir vegi nálægt ókostunum. Það er farið yfir þetta í miklum smáatriðum í Loftlagsskýrslunni í upphafsinnleggi (sem fjallar um þær breytingar sem við megum eiga von á) en líka í fyrirlestrunum hér að ofan. Þó módel séu mjög oft vitlaus, enda erfitt að spá í framtíðina og vísindin bakvið þau geta verið óheyrilega flókin, þá benda langflest módel í sömu átt, sjá skýrslu úr upphafsinnleggi. Bara súrnun sjávar ætti að vera nóg til að ganga til drastískra aðgerða.

Breyting. Þessi bók fer yfir hvernig loftlagsmódel virka auk þess að fara yfir helstu atriði loftlagsvísinda. Get ekki sagt að ég hafi lesið hana í þaula, enda var hún bara svona aukalesefni í einum áfanga sem ég var í. https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521602432/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/

>en það er heldur mikil hystería í gangi hjá almenningi vegna þess að athyglissjúkir vísindamenn eru að elska athyglina af einhverjum dómdagsspám.

Við erum ekki að tala um nokkra „athyglissjúka“ vísindamenn heldur vísindasamfélagið. Og við erum nú þegar byrjuð að sjá afleiðingar loftlagsbreytinga, sjá skýrslu í upphafsinnleggi.
Breyting. Þessi bók fer líka í málin mjög vel https://www.amazon.com/Global-Warming-Sir-John-Houghton/dp/1107463793

https://www.amazon.com/Climate-Wars-Fight-Survival-Overheats/dp/1851688145

You could buy one of the starter college books and work your way through it.

Probably buy a used, cheaper version (Meteorology Today)

I'll refer you to the book "Climate Wars" by Gwynn Dyer. While he reviews the science of climate change at the beginning, most of the book is based on scenarios developed by the US military and interviews of high-ranking officers. Gwynn Dyer is a military historian, not an environmental writer.

I don't own the book, but as I recall he sourced most of the material in it.

Quite an interesting read, his ebook is available on Amazon too (I'm making my way through it now). Dr Nakamura has excellent credentials and is highly qualified to speak on the subject. There are so many flawed assumptions that climate models make, it's nice to have someone speaking up about it to combat the hysteria. From the interactions I've had I can't believe the number of people who rabidly shriek about imminent apocalypse and death, I wonder how well they understand the science themselves? It's become a mainstream doomsday cult.

You should really just go read this book and fuck off.

https://www.amazon.ca/Avalanche-Handbook-3rd-Peter-Schaerer/dp/0898868092/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483725866&sr=8-1&keywords=avalanche+handbook

Been reading Gwynne Dyer's Climate Wars lately, and it explains in more detail what Neil was talking about -- major refugee crisis, serious food shortages, even numerous major conflicts / war, as people fight for arable land. It's kind of frightening when you think about all the ripple effects this could have.