Akrasia wrote: » My solution isn't to build better flood defenses, I'm saying that Houston could find that a lot of these places will be uninhabitable if these 1 in 500 year rainfall events keep happening 4 times a decade.
Gaoth Laidir wrote: » And you're still not acknowleding the effect of exploding population and its effects on natural drainage in the severity of these floods. Just for your info, here are some record events from 1900-2009. Had those the earlier ones (e.g. 1935 flood, Carla (1961), Claudette (1979), etc.) occured in today's Houston, with all its new weaknesses, then I reckon the effects would have been much worse.https://www.weather.gov/hgx/climate_holidays_hundred#6https://www.weather.gov/hgx/pns_memorable_events2000s
Gaoth Laidir wrote: » Galveston has a good precipitation record going back to 1871. Here are the monthly totals. August 2017 is an obvious outlier. Before that, the highest totals all occur before 1979, and mostly before 1940.
Both the observations and EC-Earth show an increase in intensity ΔI of around 16% per degree global warming (figure 7(a)). As this part of the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf Coast have warmed by about the same amount as the global mean, this is equivalent to two times Clausius–Clapeyron scaling. In contrast, the HiFLOR model only shows an increase of about 8%, which is more compatible with 1 #8201;CC scaling. The spread in results is not compatible within natural variability, χ2/dof ≈ 4 for the two datasets and two model results, so there are systematic differences between the models that must be taken into account. The same picture appears for the RRs (figure 7(b)); again, the EC-Earth results are in line with the observations (in spite of the too high variability). Extreme rainfall on the Gulf Coast in HiFLOR is less sensitive to global warming than EC-Earth in this region. We conclude that precipitation extremes on the US Gulf Coast have increased due to global warming. The increase is higher in the observations (12 < ΔI < 22%) and one of the two models (10 < ΔI < 23%) than in the other model (4 < ΔI < 11%). Both should include possible stalling effects. If the station observations are homogeneous enough, this points to 2 #8201;CC scaling. However, there may be inhomogeneities in the observations (well after 1948) that could cause an overestimation of the trend, which would imply somewhat lower scaling. The unweighted average of the local change in intensity in three relatively independent observational datasets and the regional change in the two models gives an increase of 15% with an uncertainty range 8%–19%. These increases are equivalent to an increase in probability of at least a factor two in the observations, somewhat less in the models. An unweighted average on a logarithmic scale gives a most likely increase of a factor of 3, with uncertainty range of 1.5–5. Extrapolating these trends to the future, we expect another similar increase if global warming is limited to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. However, under a 'business-as-usual' scenario in which the world continues to rely primarily on fossil fuels, the intensity of extreme rainfall events on the Gulf Coast would increase by about 50% as the world warms another four degrees. This corresponds to an increase in probability of a factor of roughly 10 (both numbers have large uncertainties). This is in rough agreement with the increase of a factor of 18 that Emanuel (2017) finds relative to 1981–2000 for large-area averaged precipitation (their value for 2017 is larger than ours mainly due to the linear interpolation rather than the exponential one we use).http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa9ef2
dense wrote: » I'm guessing Houstonians might be interested in your solution to solve their flood problems. (I have some contacts there.) What is it? If you have some concrete proposals I can make sure they're properly appraised. Naturally, they're a bit distrustful of those promising to solve their flooding issues given their history, but if you have a proven solution that would work, they're sure to be interested. My commission wouldn't be punitive.
Akrasia wrote: » The 'solution' is to go back in time 30 years and start taking climate change seriously . . . .
Carbon-Capping Cronies: Enron, Al Gore and Friends One of the big traders in the SO2 allowance market was Enron. Back at that time in the 1990s the company was diversifying its energy business, and already owned the largest natural gas pipeline that existed outside of Russia, a colossal interstate network. However natural was having difficulties competing with coal. The hype about global warming which had been ginned up by then-Senator Al Gore’s famous 1988 congressional hearings on the matter provided what Enron recognized as a dream opportunity. After all, since a cap-and-trade market had been established for SO2, why not do the same for CO2 which was already being blamed for a climate crisis? Natural gas was a lower CO2-emitter than coal. Besides, they knew exactly where to go in Washington to get some help. Enron’s CEO Ken Lay had met with President Clinton and Vice President Gore in the White House on August 4, 1997 to prepare a strategy for the upcoming Kyoto conference in December. Kyoto was the first step toward creating a carbon market that Enron desperately wanted Congress to support. But there was one very pesky problem. Unlike SO2 which really does produce unhealthy smog, CO2 wasn’t a pollutant…at least not yet…and therefore EPA had no authority to regulate it. So after Al Gore’s Senate pal Timothy Wirth was appointed to become undersecretary of state for global affairs in the Clinton-Gore administration, Enron’s boss Lay began working closely with him to lobby Congress to grant EPA necessary CO2 regulatory authority plus also gain public support for the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol initiative.more
Akrasia wrote: » Right. Except The US wasn't responsible for Kyoto, in fact, the US was one of the most intransigent players during the Kyoto negotiations and they insisted that clean energy commitments were watered down before agreeing to it, and congress didn't even ratify it in the end.
Akrasia wrote: » Anyone who thinks that climate change has been promoted by any government for any purpose has got it completely backwards. Scientists identified climate change as an issue and it took decades to get governments of the world to even accept that it's a problem, and decades more to get them to commit to actually tackling it. (and we're still not there yet)
Germany is Europe’s largest producer and burner of coal, which accounted for 40.3 percent of net power production in 2017: 15.5 percent from hard coal and 24.8 percent from lignite, also known as brown coal, among the dirtiest of fossil fuels, which Germany mines more of than any other country in the world. Germany’s electricity sector itself is responsible for more than a third of the country’s CO2 emissions. Even more damning: Germany is still digging new open-cast mine pits — as well as subsidizing the industry as a whole, although it has promised to phase out coal in the indefinite future (hard coal use will end in 2018). Among Europe’s power plants, Germany’s brown coal stations constitute six out of 10 of the worst polluters. The lignite power plants, which run 24/7 year-in, year-out, produce so much power that German utilities sell the surplus abroad. The reason behind Germany’s commitment to coal is not primarily, as the coal lobby claims, to shoulder the burden left by the nuclear reactors coming offline, or to provide backup for the renewables at times when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Experts say that all of the country’s coal plants could be shut down by 2030 — and German industry wouldn’t feel the pinch. But rather it’s all about the lignite-mining jobs (about 20,000 in total) in the economically hard-hit regions of western Rhineland and eastern Lusatia, which are Social Democratic Party of Germany strongholds, and the powerful clout of the mining and energy lobbies, not least Germany’s third-biggest union: IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie.more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaNzLvArGsk Benny Peiser in conversation with Professor Fritz Vahrenholt, one of the founders of the environmental movement in Germany and the Chairman of the German Wildlife Trust.
2. Oversupply means low power prices for some Energy-intensive industries in Germany are profiting from plunging power prices on wholesale markets, the result of growing overcapacity of renewable plants. As energy-intensive industries are partially exempt from the renewables levy, industries such as steel, copper and chemicals are given a remarkable competitive advantagemore
Pa ElGrande wrote: » The politics of Climate change today manifests as a wealth transfer mechanism from low income people to groups with political connections, while those with no skin in the game are quite happy to virtue signal and call for more more government regulation and to what end? That the climate will remain static this is a ridiculous unscientific notion.
Akrasia wrote: » You're making statements that you cannot possibly back up in a counterfactual scenario. What you're also saying is that these events which had lower rainfall than Harvey would have produced more fresh water flooding than Harvey if they happened today?
We all know that Houston is vulnerable to flooding, as is almost all of Florida, That's the whole point. Houston and places like this are extremely vulnerable to even small changes in extreme precipitation caused by global warming. Houston is the Canary in the mineshaft. The fact that they're not helping themselves by poor urban planning makes it worse, but doesn't change the fact that more intense rainfall is strongly associated with global warming. Using your logic when you're down in a mineshaft and the canary suddenly drops dead, you'd ignore it and say the canary probably had coronary artery disease
Akrasia wrote: » This is a blunt graph anyway because Houston suffers from two serious problems that are both likely to be exascerbated by climate change, Floods and Droughts. And the rainfall can be concentrated on small regions of the gulf coast, so Galveston mightn't get record rainfall but somewhere 10 miles upstream could get that rainfall which causes flooding in Galveston. Rather than taking rainfall stats at one location, you need to do a proper study Like this one
Gaoth Laidir wrote: » Not at all, I didn't say that. I said that had those events happened today, the flooding would have been worse than it was back then.
Good to see you finally acknowledge the developmental problems. Your final comment is nonsense.
Pa ElGrande wrote: » The only time energy consumption fell since the targets of the Kyoto protocol were agreed happened in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, something that is not attributable to the signatories of the agreement. China signed it and the Paris agreement but got an exemption . . . . and Canada has since pulled out.
Whatever point you sit in history, Climate change has either had a positive or negative effect on humanity and those cyclical patterns will continue long after the current generation is dead.
Lets look at the Realpolitik of Germany nothing must come in the way of its export machine . . . yet no country has made as much noise about it's energy transition (Energiewende) and must now dial back or face inevitable ruin.Germany Is a Coal-Burning, Gas-Guzzling Climate Change Hypocrite
The politics of Climate change today manifests as a wealth transfer mechanism from low income people to groups with political connections, while those with no skin in the game are quite happy to virtue signal and call for more more government regulation and to what end? That the climate will remain static this is a ridiculous unscientific notion.
Gaoth Laidir wrote: » I've taken all the stations in the GHCN-M database and plotted the maximum monthly rainfall totals for each year up to and including 2016. Is that the best way? Overall it should work, though not in the case where a flood event spans over from the end of one month into the start of the next, but the chances of that are relatively small. I omitted 2017 to see any trend that was occuring before then (though the linear trend is fairly useless in some cases). Overall, Galveston is downward over the whole series from 1871. Houston Intercontinental Airport (IAH) is upward in recent decades, however the trend in Houston WB City back in the first half of the last century was more severe (albeit over a much shorter period).
Akrasia wrote: » I dunno if the graphs didn't print properly, but are these supposed to all show data from the late 19th century to 2016? Regardless, the fact that different weather stations from different locations within the same region can show such variation surely demonstrates how useless it is to take a small number of individual locations as evidence for or against climate change. You need to do a much more detailed analysis like the paper I posted that uses gridded data to show long term trends.
Gaoth Laidir wrote: » With the exception of Galveston, the other stations have only limited data periods, as shown in each graph. This is the GHCN-M database which is used for climatological studies. Pretty hard to build any clear picture when the datasets are so sporadic. Just out of interest, here are the two stations with current data (Galveston and Houston IAH). One's going up, the other down. They're only 75 km apart. The study you posted has a pretty coarse grid spacing of 25 km.
Akrasia wrote: » That study used the GhCn-d network which has 312 independent stations in that area, they ended up using about a 85 stations covering periods of at least 30 years continuous data with a subsection of 13 stations of more than 80 years data They chose the 25km2 resolution on purpose because it allows consistency over longer timescales to get a climatological picture rather than location specific. You have to admit that this kind of study is more likely to be a better representation than your cursory glance at a couple of records
Akrasia wrote: » I have no idea what the local conditions are around this particular location. For all I know, there could have been a single factory or power-station upwind of this location that was producing particulates that seeded precipitation.There could have been a forest that was cut down or a reservoir that was built or any of a million local factors that might have caused an upward shift in precipitation in this particular location for these particular years. Or, it could just be random deviation, the fact that any random series will produce patterns like this, that appear non random or clustered. This is why climatologists look at long term data over wide areas and smooth it out to pick the actual signal from the noise. Observations are good for what they are, but when the sample size is small, it is impossible to determine any trend from the data. Models are necessary because they allow ensemble runs where instead of having a hundred years worth of data, you can run the model a thousand times using slightly different initial conditions, and you can pull out the trend from the noise. This ensemble model technology is the reason why weather forecasting is so much more accurate now than it has ever been and climate change models are able to recreate past patterns quite well, so it is reasonable to expect that those models will also be reliable into the future. Is it perfect? no, but like all experiments in science it's the best way we have of controlling the variables so we don't have to have these arguments about texas land use contributing to flooding. In the models, you can leave that variable static and just change the variables for CO2 forcings. Climatologists can also run the models with the real world variables all set to realistic parameters to see how the climate is expected to react to various combinations of ENSO, solar output, AMO, PDO etc etc.
Akrasia wrote: » Why are you using Energy consumption as the key metric? Surely you should use CO2 (equivalent) emissions. Most European countries are substantially below their 1990 CO2 emissions. Ireland are an exception, we're at 113% of 1990 levels but our per capita emissions have gone down. Throughout the EU per capita emissions are down and the percentage of energy from Renewable energy is up. We're just not doing it fast enough. The fact that Europe have started to cut our emissions means that we can stand up on the international negotiating stage and say that we have developed emissions reduction strategies and show other nations how they can do the same while still maintaining a successful economy. China are now at a per capita emissions rate comparable to countries like Spain and France so they have absolutely no leg to stand on to claim that they are entitled to increase their emissions because they're only catching up. It is only because Europe has begun reducing emissions that we can demand the same from China the USA, and the middle Eastern oil producing nationshttp://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/environment/air-emissions-inventories/main-tables Those are cyclical patterns. We're not on a cyclical pattern now, we're locking ourselves in for centuries of progressive warming. It's not gonna stop at the 2c by 2100. Sure, some places will benefit, but other places will be devastated. The last time the world was 2c above 1900 levels, oceans were 40ft higher than they are today. That's the equilibrium sea level for that global average temperature. It might take centuries to reach that high, but once temps are there, it's basically locked in without some kind of geo engineering to actively cool the planet (that's science fiction stuff though with all kinds of unintended consequences) Germany do talk louder than they act, but the way to get them to behave is to call their bluff and get them to commit to the emissions cuts that they claim they're working towards. They'll only commit if the other main polluting nations commit too. That's why we have these treaties. That's why Ireland faces fines if we don't meet our commitments. Because it's a competitive global economy and every nation is constantly looking to make sure others aren't getting a competitive advantage through gaming the system. The politics of climate change is that sensible countries accept that we need to act, but each country is under pressure to only act if they can be sure it won't put them at a competitive disadvantage compared with others, and each industry and lobby group within each economy will try to game whatever systems are in place for their own benefit. Nobody ever said this was simple. Actually, that's wrong. Conspiracy theorists think it's simple. They think that there's just a bunch of industrialists conspiring with governments to steal more for themselves by lying about the physics of the greenhouse effect somehow managing to fool every sensible physicist.
dense wrote: » Where are you getting your "industrialists conspiring with governments theories"? It's the Robin Hood principles of champagne socialiasts like Paul Murphy and co that is driving this scam.
dense wrote: » Where are you getting your "industrialists conspiring with governments theories"? It's the Robin Hood principles of champagne socialiasts like Paul Murphy and co that is driving this scam. Remember the UN guy explaining about how this isn't about climate or about science, it's about wealth distribution:https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/02/05/in-their-own-words-climate-alarmists-debunk-their-science/#1641d5268a37 This didn't all come about because a group of scientists who were originally forecasting global cooling jumping to global warming, it came about because of the UN's champagne socialist Maurice Strong engineering the Kyoto agreementhttps://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122368007369524679 And then came the UNIPCC and it's international agenda of "advising" policymakers using computer modelling. #climatejustice Nobody can take your (or anyone else's) views about the need to reduce Ireland's carbon emissions seriously whilst you and they constantly refuse to quantify either Ireland's alleged contribution to "catastrophic climate change" or the percentage of climate change which can be averted by Ireland becoming a carbon neutral economy. Ask any "climate activist", and they'll dodge the question. Same thing happened with John Gibbons and with the Citizens Assembly of easily swayed virtue signallers on Climate Change, and it happens here. Because to answer them would expose this whole Dance against Climate Change charade for what it is. That's why I class them as a bunch of phoney malcontents with vivid imaginations and too much time on their hands.
Oneiric 3 wrote: » 'Champaign socialists' are not socialists. Limousine liberals are not liberal. Climate science is not a socialist plot because climate science sits comfortably within the Capitalist, neoliberal paradigm. It is borne from it and is of it. Where once we had the Book of Revelations hanging the threat of an apocalypse over our heads, we now have climate papers, written by self styled prophets warning of us of essentially the same thing. There is little distinction between both.
Following cessation of emissions, removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreases radiative forcing, but is largely compensated by slower loss of heat to the ocean, so that atmospheric temperatures do not drop significantly for at least 1,000 years.
Wanderer78 wrote: » jebus! once again, please research modern political and economic theory! thank you
dense wrote: » It's interesting how the "science" has been cast aside.
dense wrote: » It's interesting how the "science" has been cast aside. I'm specifically thinking about the current vague (but meaningful) invitation to try to keep the warming below something undefined. Too late now anyway according to the literature, so make the most of it. Climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions is irreversible according to NOAA researcher Susan Solomon and colleagues in the scientific community.http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704/tab-article-info
Oneiric 3 wrote: » Also interesting to me is how many of its advocates are very concerned about the threat of climate change to 'our way of life'. The biggest questions asked, you will note, is how we (well, not us, the ordinary people), who have destroyed the planet, can continue to live the high-life in a more 'sustainable' way, while at the same time, as an article I posted yesterday concludes, we keep the poorest of the world in poverty so as we can enjoy our lifestyles with a freedom from guilt and a feel good factor that we have 'done our bit'. As a line from a song from one of favourite rock bands goes: 'The more you open your eyes the more you despise'. Never a truer statement made.
dense wrote: » Tell me again, who was responsible for the Climate Emergency Bill nonsense?https://www.stopclimatechaos.ie/news/2018/02/05/5-simple-things-you-can-do-to-support-the-climate/ Nice artwork don't you think?
Akrasia wrote: » if you think climate science is the same as religious prophesy then I don't know what to say to you Name me a single climate scientist who has any reputation worth talking about who calls him/herself a prophet. Revelations was full of crazy stuff like jesus shooting swords out of his mouth. Climate science warns us that a warming planet is one with higher sea levels, changing weather patterns, more extreme rainfall and storms fuelled by the extra energy trapped by the greenhouse effect. Climate science is 100% compatible with all known physics. The only uncertainty is with feedbacks in a chaotic and complex system. Your certainty that it's not real contradicts fundamental physics. If you can't at least satisfy yourself where the physics breaks down, then you're the one with a faith based opinion. Which part of the physical calculations relating to CO2 and the greenhouse effect do you believe is wrong?
