The Crisis Report - 38
Anthropogenic Particulate is a form of Geoengineering. Dissecting a Climate Disinformation Campaign and Discussing Historical Geoengineering of the Climate. - Part Two.
Let's Review.
We started with this bit of Climate Disinformation, “What the EPA doesn’t Want You to Know” by David Siegel. If you haven't read it, you might want to give it a glance. It’s very short and I want to be fair in my critique of Mr. Siegel’s work.
Mr. Siegel’s main point is encapsulated in this one graphic.
Because, to Climate Deniers, there is NO human caused warming before the 60’s. Everything on the left side of the chart is “natural variance”.
Natural Variance according to David Siegel.
“No one speaks for natural variance. A few people do, but we are not listened to.
Correlation is not causation. (IE increasing CO2 levels don't cause warming)
How many times do we have to say this? A lot, because people at NASA and other government agencies are intent on telling a mistaken story of human intervention, greed, and future suffering.”
Burn the term “Natural Variance” into your brain. You are going to hear a lot of it from the Climate Deniers over the next few years, as it gets rapidly warmer.
“Natural Variance” is how Trumpublican voters are being groomed to view the Climate Crisis that is unfolding.
Deniers point to charts like this to support their argument.
Want to talk about wildfires? Deniers will tell you that the worst wildfires happened in the 30’s.
A 2021 article from the conservative Heartland Institute argues that the role of climate change in increasing wildfires is "grossly overemphasized."
"U.S. acres burned each year are much fewer now — even in our worst years — than was the case in the early 20th century.” (debunked here Politifact)
Want to talk about heatwaves? Deniers will tell you that what happened in the 30’s was worse. Just look at the chart.
What they want to convince you of, is the idea that “Global Warming” didn't start happening until after the 1950’s.
Which means that all of the disasters that happened in the 30’s, were the result of “natural variance” in the Climate. Not a consequence of burning fossil fuels and putting CO2 into the atmosphere.
To Deniers the heatwaves of the 30’s, which caused the “Dustbowl” were “natural variance”, fossil fuels had nothing to do with it. If it happens again, well, Liberals will try and blame it on fossil fuels and CO2 levels but it's really “natural variance”.
The Great Famine of the 21st Century, A cautionary tale of our future climate - David Siegel
This interpretation of the facts is false.
It relies on most people not understanding the “debate” over measuring Global Warming from 1850 or 1880.
How much has the Earth Warmed since 1850?
When you look at this dataset, from BerkeleyEarth.org, how much warming do you see? How would you measure it?
Now some of you are going to say, well that cannot be right. The IPCC says warming is at 1.2C.
Does it really?
The 1.2C number you hear all the time is “Observed Warming”. It’s the warming you are actually feeling. The “Well-mixed greenhouse gases” bar is what they are saying is the ACTUAL amount of warming that’s occurred.
The IPCC says there has been 1.5C of warming, but we aren't feeling it because some of it is being “masked” by other gases and pollutants. Mostly, by Sulphur Dioxide (SOx).
We also use 1850 when modeling how much warming will result from doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere from 280ppm to 560ppm. This report.
An Assessment of Earth’s Climate Sensitivity Using Multiple Lines of Evidence
Which says, “there is a 95% chance at CO2 levels of 560ppm that the GMT will increase at least 2.3C and possibly as much as 4.5C, there is a 66% chance that the GMT increase will be between 2.6C and 3.9C”. There is a 05% chance that the GMT could increase as much as 5.7C.
Is “THE REPORT” that is accepted as the “gold standard” of climate modeling. It synthesizes the results, of what are seen as the best climate models in the world, to produce those numbers.
Climate Models use 1850 as their baseline because CO2 levels were at 280ppm. The maximum level that has occurred naturally for about 2.1 million years.
All of the CO2 in the atmosphere over 280ppm is NOT NATURAL. 1850 was the last period of time that CO2 levels were that low. Which makes it the perfect place for our models to start from.
Remember, our models are trying to show their validity by reproducing the observed warming from 1850. If they can reproduce the past they have credibility in terms of predicting the future.
So, if 1850 is the baseline that makes sense, why do we measure Global Warming from “the late 19th Century”?
Mostly because the Fossil Fuel Industry prefers it that way.
From an article in Forbes; “Exactly How Much Has the Earth Warmed? And Does It Matter?” published September 2018. Written by a University of Houston Energy Fellow it is the climate equivalent of the post 2000 election, “you need to just move on” statement by Republicans. The basic argument deconstructs as follows:
1850 was an arbitrary choice — The debate exists in part because the UNFCCC did not define preindustrial when setting the targets. What does “preindustrial” mean anyway? You can make an argument that it should be 1740, or 1820, or 1880. Each of these dates shifts the goalposts. We should pick a date all of us can agree on.
Many people don’t agree with 1850 — There was no “worldwide” network of weather stations in 1850. So, the temperature measurements from 1850–1880 are uneven in both number and quality. Attempts to “fix” the data are always going to be biased and using it typically adds 0.4℃-0.6℃ to the amount of global warming that has occurred. We cannot move forward until we have a starting point that everyone agrees with and “many people” will never agree with 1850.
An exact value doesn’t matter — Although there are some out-of-the-mainstream views to the contrary, there is strong evidence the Earth has warmed about 1° C since pre-industrial times. Uncertainties in the data and lack of agreement on a reference date make it impossible to give a precise value.
1880 is a baseline we can all agree on — By 1880, a global network of weather stations using standardized equipment had been established. This makes it the most logical baseline for measuring global warming from CO2. Which, we can then agree, is 1.2℃.
It’s unfortunate that 1880 was the hottest year of the 19th century but that’s the year we started getting solid measurements. Being able to agree on the data and stop arguing about it is the most important thing at this point.
We need to work together, using 1880 lets us do that — This shift is actually good for those who subscribe to the belief that fossil fuels are the primary or sole cause of this warming.
If you really believe that it is urgent to reduce fossil fuel usage, then you understand how important that it is to stop fighting each other over a “few tenths of a degree that no one cares about” and start doing the real work of making that happen. Not agreeing with 1880 as the baseline makes you part of the problem at this point.
That's why, since the “Trump Years” both NASA and GISS state.
“Earth’s average temperature has risen more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century.”
That's why the Director of the GISS has stated in defense of the 1.2C measurement for Global warming. That 90% of Global Warming has occurred since 1980. That, although it appears that 1.1C of warming has happened since 1980, the actual amount is probably less.
Global Temperature Anomalies from 1880 to 2020 (2021)
Which is basically this.
Global Warming started in 1850 with the start of the Industrial Revolution and the large scale burning of coal to power it.
This did two things.
It dumped massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere causing it to trap more heat.
It dumped massive amounts of particulate into the atmosphere causing it to cool down.
The Global Mean Temperature started climbing in response to this almost immediately
Here’s what NOAA states at its site (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature)
“Though warming has not been uniform across the planet, the upward trend in the globally averaged temperature shows that more areas are warming than cooling.
According to NOAA’s 2020 Annual Climate Report the combined land and ocean temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.13 degrees Fahrenheit ( 0.08 degrees Celsius) per decade since 1880; however, the average rate of increase since 1981 (0.18°C / 0.32°F) has been more than twice that rate”.
Starting about 1850, when the Industrial Revolution started, global temperatures began climbing about 0.07C per decade. By the 30’s the Global Mean Temperature was about .56C higher than it was in 1850.
The warming in the 30’s was not “natural” in any way.
The particulate part of our pollution started cooling the planet at the same time the CO2 was warming it.
We pollute the atmosphere and have been doing it for millennia. Tiny particles spewed into the atmosphere by human activity, called “anthropogenic aerosols,” interact with clouds and reflect some of the Sun’s energy back into space. They have a short-term cooling effect that’s similar to how particles from major volcanic eruptions can cause global temperatures to drop.
This masks some of the warming caused by much longer-lived greenhouse gases like CO2, which trap the Sun’s heat in the planet’s atmosphere. It is, in effect, a huge geoengineering project that we unintentionally engaged in when we started burning large quantities of coal.
It has had a surprisingly large effect on how much warming we have experienced from the CO2 we have dumped in the atmosphere.
In the paper Climate effects of aerosols reduce economic inequality. Nature Climate Change, 2020; DOI: 10.1038/s41558–020–0699-y the authors find that:
Estimates indicate that aerosol pollution emitted by humans is offsetting about 0.7 degrees Celsius, or about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, of the warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. This translates to a 40-year delay in the effects of climate change. Without cooling caused by aerosol emissions, we would have achieved 2010-level global mean temperatures in 1970.”
The warming of the planet between 1850–1930 had huge consequences.
In the books I review as influencing my understanding of Climate Change (Living in Bomb Time — Ep04) I discuss the book, “Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World” by Mike Davis (2000). This book documents how the climate disruptions caused by the increasing global temperature resulted in about 8% of the global population starving to death between 1870 and 1910.
El Niño-Southern Oscillation related famines of 1876–1878, 1896–1897, and 1899–1902, in India, China, Brazil, Ethiopia, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Egypt, and New Caledonia resulted in the deaths of an estimated 60–120 million people (about 8% of the world’s population) all over the world during the latter part of the 19th century.
Just like the current warming is disproportionately impacting countries in the tropics, the first wave of Global Warming devastated them in the late 19th century. There were provinces in China where over 90% of the population died from drought and famine during this period.
This was not “natural” in any way.
We are about to experience a “repeat” of the 30’s. It's going to be worse this time, because our baseline temperature is over 1.0C hotter than it was then.
End of Part Two
This is my analysis.
This is what I see.
This is my “Crisis Report”
-rc 05012023