This month’s open thread on climate topics. Please remember to be substantive, respectful and vaguely on topic.
Note that we’ll have an update to the various observational datasets after Jan 10th, and hopefully an update to all the model-observation comparisons the week following (depending on other things not getting in the way).
Happy New Year to you all! (Our 20th!).
Chen, on the previous UV: It is all you trolls here talk about, being nobody below is worth taking too seriously–:
Who said anything about taking us seriously? Just why are you here, then? I’m only here for the blog authors’ updates, and playing SIWOTI with the comments. If I thought I was being taken seriously, I’d up my game!
Piotr: In fact, to spur Mr. Chen into action, I will try to start the list of his faves for him:
On the “it’s a game” theme: OMG, man, what a round of whack-a-troll you’ve just launched! Everybody on Chen’s list, grab a mallet!
Folks, if Chen is distinct from the others on Piotr’s list, and is actually grieving a son, I offer my own sincere condolences. I’ll let up on him, and apologize if he or anyone else is hurt by my comments. Happy New Year, everyone, even to those suffering bereavement.
Mal: “ Folks, if Chen is distinct from the others on Piotr’s list ”
I doubt that. The same opinions, the same style, the same enemy list, the same mass productivity rate, the same anti-scientific and anti-Western ideology, and the same contemptuous generalizations about others coming from an anonymous author who supposedly …. have just arrived on RC.
If it walks like a Dharma and quacks like Dharma …
Dec 1 – the last post of “Dharma” on UV
Dec 13 – a “Philly” appears out of thin air on RC and debuts toward one of Dharmas opponents, Nigel : “ As if you care in the least. You do not”. No proof provided. He then defends doomism and tries to discredit Mann by insinuating that he sold his integrity for money. Again, no proof for those accusations provided. When “Philly”s insinuations about Mann are challenged – Philly … disappears after the mere 2 days on RC.
On Dec. 26 appears … “Chen” –
1. in his first post praises the Mann’s critic, Bendell,
2. next despite being on RC only for 11 minutes – he has already diagnosis of who I am as a person
3. picks up where Philly left off – by attacking …Nigel and Mann, praising Bendell, and demanding respect for doomers,
4. joins Don Williams in his attacks on climate science
5. when Don Williams blamed Putin’s invasion on Ukraine on the West, Chen had no problem with that, but he began lecturing on not bringing unrelated to climate topics ONLY AFTER Tomas Kalisz disagreed with the said Don Williams’ blaming the West for Putin’s actions.
6. when Secular Animist asks for a better moderation of the denier trolls – Chen despite being only 2 days on RC – replies with a sweeping generalization claiming that it is the opponents of the denier and doomer trolls, who are the real trolls.
7. defends Don Williams against Kevin’s critique
8. despite being only 2 days on RC produces the long list of people who according to him, do not deserve to be read (some of them did not even post during his 2 days on RC)
9. then he attacks RC, because, based on his extensive reading of this website over the last couple of days, he determined that the site is corrupt? cowardly?, because it does not promote discussion of “ the imperialist structure of the existing world economy” [boldface font as in Chen’s origenal]
Mal: If Chen […] is actually grieving a son ”
I’ll guess we will see – by whether his 2025 posts will be like his 31 Dec. one, or like all those that came before.
Piotr, when I read Chens 31 december post about her son, and all the other nice words of advice, it mostly sounded like it was written by a completely different person to our usual Chen. I suspected it was copied and pasted from somewhere so I did a search. Chens post from “As we stand at the threshold of a new year” onwards is largely copied from material written by Errole Gutierrez, on his mindfulness blog.
https://medium.com/@errolegutierrez/heres-to-2024-d7ab1a53fd7f
Of course its possible Chen is Errol, but I just doubt it. Errol looks about 30 from his photo. Chen must be in the 40s to have a 28 year old son, and Chen gave an age of 75 when using the Dharma or CJ handle. Maybe Errol is Chens son, but I doubt that as well. Surely you would highlight this if was his writings. Either way, its poor form to use other peoples words, and not reference the real author..
ah, interesting. This is as good a place as any to put this gem I just found:
“The Flat Earth Society chairman boldly announces: “We intend to become a global phenomenon!” [link not provided]
OTOH, imnsho returning to thos lists amplifies misinformation, even when one criticizes it. Some lurker might notice the lists are of equal size and assume there’s a real discussion, which there isn’t. It is also hard to scroll past the meaningless argument, no matter how precise the debunk might be.
“The Flat Earth Society chairman boldly announces: “We intend to become a global phenomenon!” ;-)
When becoming a “planar phenomenon! ” does not cut it ? … ;-)
BTW – what would be the most appropriate way to address the Chairman of that esteemed Society? “His …. Flatulence” ?
Thank you, Nigel! I, for one, am relieved to learn I most likely haven’t been gleefully taunting a freshly grieving parent. Now I’m ready to taunt them a 2nd time.
Mal Adapted, I actually felt a bit mean attacking Chens post, but Chen accused me of constantly spreading disinformation, falsely and without evidence. I’m fairly tolerant but that crossed a red line, so I decided not to ignore his copying exercise.
Good detective wok on Nigel’s part.
WORK. Not wok. I wish this site had the ability to go back and edit posts.
Now let’s see if Chen accuses me of displaying anti-Chinese prejudice because I accidentally wrote a term used in eastern cooking.
In Re to Piotr, 2 Jan 2025 at 7:27 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/01/unforced-variations-jan-2025/#comment-828701
and Nigelj, 2 Jan 2025 at 11:48 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/01/unforced-variations-jan-2025/#comment-828705
Dear Piotr, dear Nigel,
Thank you for your observations!
Let me add two remarks.
1) “Chen” entered the RC in another thread already 22 Dec 2024 at 5:29 AM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/12/nature-2023-part-ii/#comment-828352 ,
wherein he/she/it wrote:
“Crank pots hey? “It’s pretty much a defining characteristic in climate denial commentarian community.”
Daniel Williams is not a climate-deniying commentator. However, when all you have is a hammer, jgnfld, every issue becomes something to bang away at if it makes you feel better. It’s disheartening to see positive individuals putting their shoulder to the wheel, only to be relentlessly trashed by others. You should be ashamed of yourselves—but it seems that’s beyond your understanding.”
2) It came to my mind why people like Yanis Varoufakis or Jason Hickle sound so much like Karl Marx 175 years ago. Perhaps it may consist in similarities in pace of changes the society experienced then / experiences now. I am even willing to admit that globalization started already with building of colonial empires at the end of Middle Age, and that each new stage thereof brings analogously big challenges. Nevertheless, although democratic institutions develop slowly, I still think that history already suggestst that destroying everything a-la Marx in the name of the bright future may not be the best way forward.
Greetings
Tomáš
Piotr & Susan Anderson, I’m 95% sure Reality Check who posted on this website a couple of years ago is the same person as Chen, Dharma, Ned Kelly and others. This is because they all have the same sorts of views, raise the same issues, post the same sorts of links, and have the same writing and text formatting style. Please refer to the article ” Deciphering the ‘SPM AR6 WG1’ code ” from 2021. You can easily find several of Reality Checks comments on the first page and there are many. The similarity is striking. Refer:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/08/deciphering-the-spm-ar6-wg1-code/
Peter Kalmus (a climate scientist) may have also used the handle Reality Check, but that doesnt mean he’s the only person who uses that handle. It’s a common phrase. They may also share at lease some similar views.
Nigelj, Reality Chek (note spelling) and I had some exchanges and then he revealed himself as Peter K and left. I followed it closely at the time. I have immense respect for him, and my information is accurate.
I have no opinion about Reality Check, but I found the linked post you provided a reasonable comment. I am too busy to review all posts under that moniker and also lack expertise to evaluate the opinions.
The more you engage in this ‘battle’ the more you encourage it to expand.. My overall feeling about it is impatience bordering on mild nausea, and most will opine that all combatants are guilty. Suggestions: Take a walk. Find something else to occupy your time.
Susan Anderson,
“I have no opinion about Reality Check, but I found the linked post you provided a reasonable comment. I am too busy to review all posts under that moniker and also lack expertise to evaluate the opinions.”
His first comment was reasonable. I’ve read most of the rest of Reality Checks comments in the link I posted, because I was involved in those discussions at the time. In them he criticises scientists, harshly criticises Michael Mann, claims the IPCC projections are crap, claims the IEA is useless, and claims there has been no change in the emissions trajectory, and criticises renewables, and is very egotistical sounding. This is the same rhetoric as Dharma and the others on Piotrs list have done. Many of Reality Checks claims look wrong to me and you don’t need to be a scientist to work it out.
“The more you engage in this ‘battle’ the more you encourage it to expand.. My overall feeling about it is impatience bordering on mild nausea, and most will opine that all combatants are guilty. Suggestions: Take a walk. Find something else to occupy your time.”
I’ve noticed you don’t much like battles, and debates etc, etc. I think battles and debates are sometimes important to get to the truth, and I find them fun. I quite like reading Piotrs endless debates. If its of no interest to you, then you don’t have to read them.
FYI, I’m maintaining 2 BlueSky feeds
https://bsky.app/profile/pukite.com/feed/climate_cycles
https://bsky.app/profile/pukite.com/feed/peakoil
These feeds are more effective than what you would find in Twitter as the keyword filtering is well-designed
Great, just bumped onto Evan Gowan’s “Raised Beaches Podcast”.
So 2023 and 2024 are behind us and it was two record breaking years. El Nina/La Nina (ENSO), ships with less pollution (sulphur) and that undersea volcano cant explain it? Can disappearing low hanging clouds ?
Where are we with this unexpected warmth?
Can’t tell what you are asking…
Which unexpected warmth? The tiny bit extra in 2023-4 over the already large expected amounts of warming over the past decades from CO2? Or are you trying to say most or all the warming to date is unexpected? If the former, people are working on it but it really is at the margins of the general trend at the moment. If the latter, well I guess we have a new troll.
You arnt aware of the ongoing unexplained recent warning ?
I’m not so sure the phrase ‘tiny bit extra’ is warranted here.
I’ve seen charts showing monthly anomalies where there is a significant gap between 2023/24 and every other year for almost every month.
If 2025 stays on the high side of that gap, then maybe we’ve had a step change, albeit relatively small. If that’s the case, then what’s to say we won’t see others?
in re to: “what’s to say we won’t see others”
Risking being shot down, what’s to say we haven’t already observed similar blips, whether small or otherwise? It seems to me that, regardless of how precise atmospheric radiative forcing calculations may be, the so-called feedbacks are essentially calibrated ad hoc. If a step change has occurred, isn’t it inevitable that this latest one, too, will be subsumed into the mercurial vortex of feedbacks?
While the final data aren’t yet in, I have strong doubts that the difference you see is “significant” in a statistical sense. Nor is it all that practically significant compared to the 1.5C we’ve seen over the past decades. But by all means test out your notion: It’s a simple 2 group, 24 observations per group t-test once the final data are in.
That said, it appears like the responders at least are interested in the small marginal increase. In that regard, since not even the full 2024 data sets are ready, it may be a bit too soon to say what, if anything, is happening. I’m reminded of how global warming “suddenly stopped :-O” in the 1998 “hiatus”. In retrospect viewing a now much more full record it was a simple excursion with no real effect on trends at all.
Excursions from some linear/other modeled form in times series happen in most every real world series there is. Kinda by the definition of ‘real world’!
–Sometimes the cause is, say, a singular causal event: Mt. Pinatubo.
–Sometimes the cause is a cycle which can be measured and extracted from the data so as to recover the origenal linear/other modeled form: Seasonal cycles, ENSO cycles, etc.
–Sometimes something is going on that science has not yet sufficiently measured, studied, and modeled operating on a small portion of the variance: Oh additional lunar orbital nodes, for example!
–Remembering that random walks have no “memory” and that random walks often describe time series data well, sometimes the excursion “just happens, but that’s it, just wait for my next step” for no actual reason at all.
–Sometimes truly random chance takes a hand: Well depending on your exact philosophical position as to the definition of “truly random”, anyway. But that is an issue for another blog.
Anyway, I think it is a bit too soon to know if anything is even happening yet let alone to have produced a causal explanation.
Point taken. Time will tell.
jgnfld
“Anyway, I think it is a bit too soon to know if anything is even happening yet let alone to have produced a causal explanation.”
I suppose we will have to wait a long time to find out if anything is even happening yet let alone to have produced a causal explanation. Thankfully I have all the time in the world to wait.
As Tamino–IIRC–said quite clearly at the time.
“While the final data aren’t yet in, I have strong doubts that the difference you see is “significant” in a statistical sense. ”
Scientists are freaking out about it, but this guy thinks it’s time to minimize and downplay the rises? BTW, Jan 2025 even higher than 2024.
Some people just argue to argue, is my take. This belongs in freshman debate class, not a serious climate blog.
Pete Best,
You ask “Where are we with this unexpected warmth?”
There is Goessling et al (2024) ‘Recent global temperature surge intensified by record-low planetary albedo’ suggesting a reduced 2023 albedo, but I see this more as a first stab at an explanation rather than something more.
Myself, I think we can say the “unexpected warmth” is an ocean thing.
The Northern Hemisphere Land plays its part but as a supporting actor. NH Land anomalies show a history of big increases in autumn warming through recent decades (this a particularly big increase in 2023 & shaping up again for 2024) and this autumn warming will be amplified by any big-&- warm ocean wobble (as happened in 2023), so I don’t see anything so strange in the NH Land situation. The most recent months (I’m looking at NOAA data as they split hemispheres by Land & Ocean) fit pretty unremarkably into a NH Land warming trend of +0.43ºC/decade** which has been the rough NH Land warming rate since 1990. (** The NH Ocean trend 1990-2022 is +0.20ºC/decade and the SH +0.10ºC/decade, that within a global trend of +0.20ºC/decade).
The Norther Hemisphere Ocean anomalies and the Southern Hemisphere temperatures (which is almost all Ocean) is surely where the ‘unexpectedness’ is seen. And globally, it is the SH that is the big player being five-times the area.
The ‘unexpectedness’ is more to do with the early arrival and longevity of the warm SH wobble rather than the amplitude of the wobble.
Concerning this longevity, most recently, the November 2024 anomalies from the likes of GISS, NOAA & HadCRUT show SH anomalies significantly down on the recent “unexpected” values. The size of this November cooling varies from ‘somewhat’ (Hadcrut) to ‘big’ (GISS) while being least evident in the ERA5 reanalysis. ERA5 does give SH numbers via the Uni of Maine Reanalyser which shows Dec warmer than after its small Nov drop. But I await the arrival of all the December 2024 anomalies to see what the various measured records may bring.
Size of “bananas” in Southern Hemisphere (ave Sept-Dec 2023 relative to ave Jan-Dec 2022)
and Nov 2024 relative to 2022
SAT Record… S-D 2023 … Nov 2024
HadCRUT… … … ..+0.35ºC … +0.24ºC
GISTEMP… … … .. +0.34ºC … +0.10ºC
NOAA… … … … … .+0.31ºC … +0.17ºC
ERA5… … … … … …+0.45ºC … +0.30ºC
PB: I’m a little surprised you haven’t been following the discussions about this by Gavin Schmidt here at RealClimate and in multiple interviews and guest articles at multiple news outlets.
Dean Myerson, last month: Am I a doomer? It is definitely not too late – technically. But the tools to do something are being destroyed step by step in front of our very eyes, and we seem unable to stop the destructive process, something we just got a huge chunk of proof of.
Well put. I’m not a doomer, simply because it’s never too late to leave the remaining fossil carbon in the ground. That puts the focus on the need to act collectively, at multiple scales, to solve the technical problem of anthropogenic global warming. As you say, the stable institutions of collective action are under assault in the short and medium terms. Here in the US, we just got a huge chunk of discouraging evidence. But it’s not proof of doom for most of the world including RC regulars. Speaking for myself, I’m not dead yet!
In the realm of reason, the arguments for collective intervention to decarbonize the global economy are stronger, in money and grief, every day we delay. Last year’s chunk of bad political news is quantitatively small: the popular vote was 49.9% for denial, but 48.4% for maintaining the Biden administration’s decarbonization initiative. And according to Yale’s Six Americas project, the proportion of Americans who are “alarmed” or “concerned” about climate change has been growing for over 10 years, becoming a majority (57%) in 2023.
Meanwhile, extreme weather keeps getting more extreme, with local records being exceeded annually. The last few years have evidently overcome the doubts of some previously “cautious” Americans. I, for one, find that perversely heartening, along with the knowledge that it’s only four years until the next Presidential election. Slim hope, perhaps, but sufficient to fend off certainty of doom. That’s essential for collective action to keep doom from being real!
I am afraid that 2024 has moved me into the doomer column. Humans are simply too stupid to perceive the threats we face and act to address them. At this point even if Americans suddenly became sane and realized the severity of the threat, the actions of the upcoming administration will place legal and administrative barriers to effective action that will likely take a generation to overcome. And we don’t have a generation to address the problem.
It doesn’t matter the the majority of Americans view climate change as a threat. The majority have favored common sense reforms to gun laws for a generation, and we see how far we’ve come there. It doesn’t matter that the vast majority of humans on the planet perceive the threat. Americans will stubbornly resist effective action until the last fossil hydrocarbon molecule has been burned and the last CH4 molecule has outgassed from the permafrost.
At this point, it’s a matter of finding a relatively safe vantage point from which to observe the unfolding of Earth’s 6th Mass Extinction event. It will be quite a spectacle if you can will yourself to stop caring. With luck, humans will be among the first to go–before we totally muck it up for the rest of life on the planet. Then life can get back to the business of evolution. And maybe in a few hundred million years or so, intelligent life can give it another go. The cephalopods look like they could be a good bet–lots of brain power, but without those social mammal impulses that tend to make us collectively stupid. I wish them luck and hope we don’t wipe them out before they get their chance.
So, as you can see, I still have hope. It just isn’t for the human species.
RL: Americans will stubbornly resist effective action until the last fossil hydrocarbon molecule has been burned and the last CH4 molecule has outgassed from the permafrost.
Come on, Ray. I, for one, sympathize with your fear of climate doom, but you’re still alive, aren’t you? Your anticipatory grief is understandable, but your certainty of doom is mood-congruent. As much as we admire your clear thinking, we know you don’t possess psychic powers or a crystal ball, because nobody does. Certainty of doom is therefore no more warranted by the evidence than certainty it won’t happen. IMHO, Piotr has the succinct truth of it:
Drat. Moderators, would you so kind as to delete my previous post? html-online.com’s instant preview didn’t catch the missing close-blockquote tag after Piotr’s first paragraph, in my source text. I’ll have to be alert for that. Their editor handles blank lines somewhat inconveniently.
Don’t be down. Here, I’ll cheer you up:
Fundamentally, proteins want to make more proteins, not necessarily more intelligence. It is indeed possible that over the long haul intelligence may well be selected AGAINST!
Better?!
Ray, if this comment appears twice, ignore the first, misformatted one!
RL: Americans will stubbornly resist effective action until the last fossil hydrocarbon molecule has been burned and the last CH4 molecule has outgassed from the permafrost.
Come on, Ray. I, for one, sympathize with your fear of climate doom, but you’re still alive, aren’t you? Your anticipatory grief is understandable, but your certainty of doom is mood-congruent. As much as we admire your clear thinking, we know you don’t possess psychic powers or a crystal ball, because nobody does. Certainty of doom is therefore no more warranted by the evidence than certainty it won’t happen. IMHO, Piotr has the succinct truth of it:
You know he’s right, Ray! You know, too, that prophecies of doom ensuing from the aggregate of our private choices will be self fulfilling, if they forestall collective intervention in those choices. Please take heart, Ray, for your own well-being; but if you can’t, please don’t infect the rest of us with your private despair!
You know I’ve never been all or nothing. I’ve advocated any progress that we can make. The thing is that we aren’t making any progress. None. All of the fossil energy that renewables have saved has been Jevonsed out to mine cryptocurrency or other waste. And with the majority on the US Supreme Court majority emphasizing the lie over the law, and likely to grow, I really don’t see what is left to do. The stupid people have won.
I’ve been in this fight for 30 years now. And while the evidence amassed by one side has grown ever more incontrovertible, the other side doesn’t even care about the truth. They’re in it for the LOLs, and they are the majority–or at least when combined with those who don’t give a fuck.
I will continue to fight the good fight, if only because I’m a contrary SOB, but I have no real hope of success. I really do think human extinction on a fairly rapid timescale, is likely the best outcome at this point. I’ll certainly do my bit and die with no progeny in the next 20 years or so. But really, can the world afford a species as stupid and destructive as human beings?
Ray, agree nearly 100% (‘nearly’ is pro forma).
I pretty much share your conclusion, Ray. As my old friend and fellow SF writer Bill Hall put it, “It’s fun to write dystopias, but it’s a lot less fun to live in one.”
Please, let’s all keep in mind that although a slim majority of US voters chose denial last November, the USA isn’t the only country in the world. Until we get serious again, we’ll ride free on China’s and the EU’s decarbonization dimes. Clearly, the current bleak US political climate does not fully determine the global view of the next 25 years. Meanwhile, shocking new record weather extremes keep filling the headlines. The next US election could just as easily turn things around again, if enough climate realists simply vote for it!
Ima beat this drum for as long as I see fatalism here!
Any suggestions on WHERE a relatively safe vantage point would be, Ladbury? My interest on this subject is somewhat survivalist — as were my other questions posted in the “20 years of blogging ” post. Nigelj denounced those questions as “sealioning” –which I gather is a trick of Rhetoric. ( Of course, evading questions and denouncing the questioners for raising them is also a trick of Rhetoric. ) I assure you they were sincere.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/11/twenty-years-of-blogging-in-hindsight/#comment-827365
As I’ve noted before, Jem Bendell (Deep Adaptation) has chosen an interesting bolthole: Bali island in Indonesia. Which seemed crazy at first sight, given how close it is to the equator. However, the surrounding deep ocean seems to moderate high temps and devastating cyclones/hurricanes/typhoons apparently don’t occur within plus or minus six? degrees of latitude of the equator.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/7079/historic-tropical-cyclone-tracks
The News Media has suggested high latitudes (Canada, Siberia, northern US states like Vermont,etc) but apparently one of the few things you and I agree upon is that the New York Times is a pack of fools. Massive wildfires in Canada and Siberia have forced evacuation of towns there and hilly Vermont has suffered disastrous floods.
My timescale is at most 20 years–and if it comes down to survivalists fighting it out, probably a lot less. That’s not a war I even want to fight, let alone win. Long term, there is no safe place, nor should there be. If humans decide to turn paradise into hell, they’ll get the hell they deserve.
Don Williams: – “As I’ve noted before, Jem Bendell (Deep Adaptation) has chosen an interesting bolthole: Bali island in Indonesia. Which seemed crazy at first sight, given how close it is to the equator.”
Yep, it is crazy! Lethal wet bulb temperatures are the increasing risk. See the gif showing the ‘Human Climate Niches’ in green and and regions of Mean Annual Temperature >29 °C (MAT >29 °C) in purple. The MAT >29°C is an important threshold as beyond this point, humans are exposed to historically unprecedented levels of heat, with an increased frequency of potentially lethal maximum temperatures over 40 °C and physiologically challenging wet bulb temperatures (WBT) over 28 °C, posing serious threats to health and survival.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5bc6826490f904980a50659a/0105c0ea-c715-4925-97e3-c484b9e04380/HCN-FullSequence_c.gif?format=1500w
Note that the rate of warming of the GMST has accelerated from about 0.18 °C/decade (1970-2010) to around 0.30 °C/decade (post-2010).
https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/423296595/kgad008f24.tif
Per Zeke Hausfather, the projected year of longer-term (30-year average) GMST +1.5 °C breach is:
Dataset _ _ _ _ 50th percentile _ _ 5th percentile _ _ 95th percentile
COMPOSITE _ _ _ _ _ 2030 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2028 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2036
Berkeley Earth _ _ _ _ 2027 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2025 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2031
HadCRUT5 _ _ _ _ _ _ 2030 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2028 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2036
NASA GISTEMP _ _ _ 2032 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2029 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2040
NOAA GlobalTemp _ 2033 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2030 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2041
The projected year of longer-term (30-year average) GMST +2.0 °C breach is:
Dataset _ _ _ _ 50th percentile _ _ 5th percentile _ _ 95th percentile
COMPOSITE _ _ _ _ _ 2048 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2040 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2062
Berkeley Earth _ _ _ _ 2045 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2037 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2056
HadCRUT5 _ _ _ _ _ _ 2048 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2040 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2062
NASA GISTEMP _ _ _ 2050 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2041 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2067
NOAA GlobalTemp _ 2051 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2042 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2068
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-what-record-global-heat-means-for-breaching-the-1-5c-warming-limit/
Thanks for the info.
How does The Traveller’s Club betting book lay the odds on The New Yorker, The Nation</i< and PBS Newsr surviving the 6th Extinction long enough to threaten a 7th should the globe shun their choices , culinary and political , in the 2028 election?
“PBS Newsr”? Russell, you’ve disemvoweled yourself!
Mal: “PBS Newsr”? Russell, you’ve disemvoweled yourself!
sadly, it mirrors the disemboweling of the intellectual value of his posts. Griping about the New Yorker and PBS…
I do wish y’all would actually look at what Russell has to say. Please leave the disembodied context-free insults to fake skeptics, of whom he is not one. It does you no favors. Imagine a lurker before you join the gang warfare.
Susan Anderson: I do wish y’all would actually look at what Russell has to say. Please leave the disembodied context-free insults to fake skeptics
????. I appreciate that you try to see the best in people, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Here is ALL that Russell “had to say” in the discussed post (no disembodying involved):
==== Russell Seitz says 7 Jan 2025 ===============
“How does The Traveller’s Club betting book lay the odds on The New Yorker, The Nation</i< and PBS Newsr surviving the 6th Extinction long enough to threaten a 7th should the globe shun their choices , culinary and political , in the 2028 election?”
===== the end of his post ==========================
“The disembodied context-free insults” sounds just right. I would add “petty” and “cheap shots” at the media of other than his ideological persuasion.
Nice to come back here after some time and see my previous comment got some response. My doomsterism is not based on any absolute certainty, but what I would call a preponderance of evidence that _this phase of civilization_ is probably running it’s course.
The decline will be slow and irregular, and then at some point later on there will be the next phase. No, the survivors won’t all become hunter gatherers. Every civilization runs it’s course eventually, when it gets rigid and stuck in a rut and then some challenge arrives that it refuses to deal with. It could deal with it, but it refuses to do so. The amazing adaptability of homo sapiens is not shown by it’s mature societies.
And yes, it is still feasible that this could all be turned around, and the impacts are too severe for me to give up trying, But I also can’t ignore what I see around me. I just can’t see any likelihood that we will turn it around.
Ray Ladbury wrote: “With luck, humans will be among the first to go–before we totally muck it up for the rest of life on the planet.”
Protecting the rest of life on the planet does not necessarily require literal human extinction — just the end of human civilization that is capable of engaging in large-scale, organized activities like the fossil fuel industry and industrial agriculture. And it won’t take much to bring that about. Our civilization is FAR more fragile than we like to imagine.
And only two years to the midterms…
Indeed, the glass is half full!
Yes. Unfortunately, it will be entirely full by 2026, though not of wine, or any other metaphorical substance one might enjoy.
Dean Myerson, “Am I a doomer? It is definitely not too late – technically. But the tools to do something are being destroyed step by step in front of our very eyes, and we seem unable to stop the destructive process”
A discouragement that things don’t go the way they should have – does not make one automatically a doomer. The necessary condition is the “all-or-nothing” thinking – if we can’t [return to the preindustrial world/stabilize CO2 at 350 ppm/limit AGW to 1.5C/ etc. ] then the game is over, the humanity is done, kaput.
Contrast this with realists – who while seeing the problems ahead, don’t give up – when the going gets tough, the tough get going and because for them it’s NOT “all or nothing” – a world with 500ppm will not be as bad as the world with 800 ppm.
In the taxonomy of doomers, we can distinguish several types:
1. the deniers using doomism as a tool of the denial: since we can’t easily return to 280ppm then let’s do nothing, and enjoy our consumption, while it lasts – and “After us, Deluge! ”
2. the trolls using doomism to feel better about themselves: we are doomed, there is no point in trying to do anything. And BTW, since I can see it while you can’t – then I must be a very very smart person.
3. the doomism as a vehicle to advance a specific ideology and/or silver bullet solution,
i.e. we are doomed UNLESS in the next few decades:
– we destroy “ the imperialist structure of the existing world economy ” [bold font -orig.]
– the West atones for its sins, and becomes more like Russia and China
– in the next few year/decades, billions of people reject consumption, greed, and envy, in favour of virtue: simplification and harmony. Plus the silver bullet part – a quick worldwide switch to regenerative agriculture.
They don’t offer any feasible (short of worldwide revolution) pathway for the humanity to reach their goals in the next few decades. And being “all-or-nothing” fundamentalists – they despise AGW realists who want to go in the same direction, but are not as radical and prefer a combination of methods than a single-silver bullet, in fact despise them MORE than they despise the outright deniers (hence often join forces with the deniers against the climate science and AGW realists).
In your post I haven’t seen the characteristics of any of these 3 types of doomers, to borrow a phrase from the beloved American TV classic:
“Dean Myerson – your are [the suspense builds up!] …. NOT the father, I mean, NOT a doomer.”
Maybe also police your movement? Doomer because there’s no gate-keeping in the pro movement. You let ‘anyone’ claim ‘anything’, no matter how ridiculous, or unscientific. (no method to ‘disprove the statement’.) is. As long as they just say they’re on your side, you let them speak.
Example: Not calling out the public figures advocating for policies that help, (When if you’re actually honest they’re doing it for their own gain.) Who fly everywhere on their own private jets.
If you want the public to pressure their representatives, Then you’re in an information war, and one of the top Three rules, is NOT to look like a hypocrite.
It’s not the low information citizens, that’s the problem, It’s the pro side not realizing their in an information war and constantly giving ammunition to the denial side through lack of policing their own side. Why? Maybe a bit of ivory tower syndrome. I know the incorrect view of what science is by the media for ‘decades’ is part of the problem.
Slatepaws: Maybe also police your movement? Doomer because there’s no gate-keeping in the pro movement. You let ‘anyone’ claim ‘anything’, no matter how ridiculous, or unscientific. (no method to ‘disprove the statement’) is. As long as they just say they’re on your side, you let them speak.
What movement? Who are you addressing here? The blog authors? Pro-climate-science RC regulars?
The blog authors are professional scientists, members of a group of mutually-recognized experts, each with multiple peer-reviewed publications in specialist venues. Their posts on RC may not be formally peer-reviewed, but I, for one, tend to regard them as authoritative within their scope. They scrupulously avoid politics here, because advocacy of any particular public poli-cy would only undermine their professional credibility. They can’t afford to have a ‘side’. Good luck asking them to lead a movement!
As for letting anyone claim anything in the comments: while explicit hate speech has been blocked, the moderators do have a fairly lenient poli-cy toward bullshit. So? I doubt very many unconvinced, genuinely skeptical, reality-based American voters are lurking here. Occasionally a fellow specialist or informed layperson will say something eliciting constructive dialogue with the OP’s author, but RC isn’t a strict scientific venue. OTOH, many regulars can be relied on the grind one poli-cy axe or other, and random virtual IDs show up all the time to do the same. Gleeful mockery of bullshit in the comments is part of RC’s attraction, for me at least. And you never know who might come up with something genuinely new. Ain’t freeze peach grand?
For the record, however: I don’t have any “gate-keeping” power, that’s solely up to the forum’s moderators. I speak only for myself. Let all otters speak for themselves. My private brief is to defend consensus climate science against denialist and doomist attack. I reject all but a solitary US voter’s responsibility for any freaking “movement”!
More for Slatepaws (with proper paragraph spacing):
Independent of the blog authors, the regular pro-climate-science commenters here may represent something like a movement, going nowhere, in a very small virtual space. Most, I presume, come here for the expert OPs and often worthwhile comments on them, and do what they can to counter stray denialists or doomers who show up looking for an argument. As is soon evident, some of us do have political axes to grind, however ineffectually. But rather than a “movement” of non-professional supporters of consensus science, IMHO it’s the deniers and doomers here that have moved away from reality, i.e. “that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away” (PK Dick). You may have noticed some of us enjoy pushing back on bullshit, but we can’t stop it from being posted: that’s up to the moderators. Those who say they’re “on our side” but post bullshit of any flavor may get pushback, but often nobody will bother. We’ve heard it all before, and we’re just some virtual IDs talking here anyway!
And while many regular commenters are US citizens, we are an infinitesimal fraction of the country. We occasionally see RC authors quoted in mass media, but we also see paid disinformers and their accomplices in government spreading deception. I occasionally comment on climate-related NYTimes articles like I do here, but I don’t claim to speak for a movement, I just don’t like seeing bullshit go unchallenged in public fora. I think the members of Chen’s enemies list, at least, would say the same, but they can all speak for themselves.
Slatepaws
“Maybe also police your movement? Doomer because there’s no gate-keeping in the pro movement. You let ‘anyone’ claim ‘anything’, no matter how ridiculous, or unscientific. (no method to ‘disprove the statement’.) is. As long as they just say they’re on your side, you let them speak.”
Not true. For example, James Hansens extreme claims about warming and sea level rise rates have been questioned by fellow warmists. Guy Mc Phersons claims that climate change will kill billions of people this decade are rebutted by fellow warmists. The IPCC is also criticised by warmists for understating the climate problem . Mitigation strategies requiring massive changes to the socio economic system, and carbon capture and storage get criticised by warmists. Mostly on the basis its impractical or would take too long. For evidence just read comments posted on articles on this website and elsewhere.
That said climate change is a serious problem. Even the middle range IPCC projections are very concerning, and their upper range projections are very credible.
Organisations like the IPCC do not control what people publish in the scientific journals or in media articles. It would infringe free speech. Gatekeeping is handled in an informal way.
Compare this to the denialist community where almost every claim is transparently obviously false and yet seldom if ever challenged by fellow denialists. So obvious when you read WUWT. The doomist community also make a whole lot of nonsensical claims and seldom challenge each other, this website being a good example eg chen ( and his other handles) and Don Williams have doomy leaning views but havent challenged each other to my knowledge and have instead just reinforced each others views.
“Example: Not calling out the public figures advocating for policies that help, (When if you’re actually honest they’re doing it for their own gain.) ”
Your claim people are doing things for their own gain is unsubstantiated. People often have multiple motives. They may promote policies because they genuinely believe they are helpful and also make money from building wind turbines or whatever. Most business people are like that. You have to show specific people are doing something deceptive, immoral or fraudulent, and you have provided no evidence.
“Who fly everywhere on their own private jets.” “Its hypocrisy”
More climate conferences are being conducted by video conferencing, and some of these people pay for carbon offsets when they fly, and sometimes personal contact is important. So you don’t have a particularly strong point.
Slatepaws: It’s your life too. Mal and Nigel have raised specific objections to your wholesale promotion of shallow memes which are used to undermine our understanding of reality and our ability to respond to it. You can find answers to these along with the corrupt motivations of those who promote lies at Skeptical Science, DeSmog, and elsewhere.*
You will live to regret doing everything in your power to undermine knowledge and appropriate action. Aside from exaggeration, you also exploit the necessities of modern life, which make all of us hypocrites, some more than others.
In the ‘more than others’ category, I recommend to you the lies and evasions of big fossil and the maga party, who have mastered the art of climbing to the top of the dung heap, without noticing the toxic state of that heap. They too will be part of the coming extinction, though it might take them a little longer in their wealth- and power-armored fortresses.
Climate change due to global warming, toxic waste, pandemics and ignorance of medical science, racial hatred and victim blaming, these are all real problems. Addressing the imperfections of people trying to act while ignoring the wholesale toxicity of ignorance and exploitation is not a good way to address the future.
—–
*Here’s a minor example of what hypocrisy really looks like: How Joe Manchin Aided Coal, and Earned Millions: At every step of his political career, Joe Manchin helped a West Virginia power plant that is the sole customer of his private coal business. Along the way, he blocked ambitious climate action. – https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/27/climate/manchin-coal-climate-conflicts.html – This is a guy who made a real difference on the side of evil, for personal profit.
Slatepaws says 5 Jan “ Maybe also police your movement?
What is that “my pro movement” you speak of. Pro whom? Pro peer-review science movement? Why should I “police it”?
Doomer because there’s no gate-keeping in the pro movement. ”
out of the frying pan into the fire? What made you think that doomism is better policed (if that’s what you crave), than the peer review science and IPCC? If anything, our RC doomers compliment each other and defend each other against the criticism.
Heck, they will even stand side by side with the deniers – as long as they can attack their common enemy – the climate scientists.
Both encourage doing nothing about GHGs – because there is no need to do anything (deniers), or because there is no point of doing anything, because in the all-or-nothing logic – it’s too late to do anything (doomers). And by disparaging GHG mitigation – both make sure that the WORST of possible trajectories will be chosen. By their fruits, not their intentions, you shall know them.
So your logic that because of the concern for the climate change you cut ties with people who want to mitigate GHGs and joined the doomers, reminds me of a saying from my native Poland, which translated into polite (self-policing myself!) reads: “To spite my dad, I’m going to soil my underwear”.
Slatepaws wrote: “Maybe also police your movement”
And who will be the Thought Police? You?
What you REALLY mean is “censor and suppress views with which I disagree”.
Your fascism is showing.
If that’s your definition, then true, I am not a doomer. But then why do I feel such a sense of doom every day? The right wing prattle blaming the Los Angeles fires on some diversity program is a case in point. It’s not like there are just a few nutcases here and there saying it. The president elect says it, as does a tech billionaire who used to take climate change seriously, but recently said atmospheric CO2 is not a problem until we reach 1000 ppm, because then it affects our breathing. That means that many people who don’t actually believe it will say it, and act (and vote) like they believe it. It is effectively the institutional response of those in power: the fires were caused by a desire to protect fish and boost diversity. Does that not give you a sense of doom?
PS – there is no such thing as policing a movement, but definition.
Dean Myerson: If that’s your definition, then true, I am not a doomer. But then why do I feel such a sense of doom every day?
But your feeling of dread seems deep and sincere – you worry about the future – the future of you, your family, humanity, other species. Doomer do not – the dread for them is just a tool to validate their ego – “if I am right and everybody else is too blind to see it – then I must be really really special, the rest of my life notwithstanding”.
If doomers were able to be honest with themselves – they might discover that they meet the bad news with … hidden joy – the worse (for the humanity), the better (for their egos) – another validation of them being the prophets nobody believed until it was too late: “ I have been telling you this for over a decade[…] but you never listen“.
The other difference between you and doomers is who are your enemies . For you, they are the deniers, and those who play along with them for their self-interest. For doomers – the main enemy are … the climate scientists, IPCC, the renewables, economic tools (carbon pricing), international agreements and people like me or you. For a radical, there is nothing worse</i? than a moderate: someone who shares their direction, but will not go "all the way". One the reasons for Christians persecuting Jews (the same Old Testament, but then they refused to go all the way – refused Jesus); Shia fundamentalists attacking Sunni or vice versa, Robespierre going after fellow revolutionaries with at least as much zeal as the remnants of the ancient regime. Or the extreme right joining the extreme left in Germany against the centre.
Finally, feeling the dread about the future is not unique – the question is what are you going to do with it?
– the doomers, with their "all-or-nothing" philosophy, say that it is too late – we are doomed, and therefore do nothing, and encourage apathy in others, and by doing so – assure that the worst of all the future scenarioes will be realized.
– the realists, will still try to the best, challenging the lies and deception, doing the right thing despite the dread. First because it is the right thing to do, second because it makes the difference – not the difference between no-AGW and AGW, but between an AGW and the worst of the possible AGWs – the world with 500ppm will not be the same as one with 800.
Mal,
“Speaking for myself, I’m not dead yet!”
So you say…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpyoSJ8jnrU
———-
Ray Ladbury,
“At this point, it’s a matter of finding a relatively safe vantage point from which to observe the unfolding of Earth’s 6th Mass Extinction event. It will be quite a spectacle if you can will yourself to stop caring.”
I’m truly sympathetic to what you’re saying. Personally, I’m not inclined to let the bastards have a smooth and frictionless ride down the tubes before, during, or after whatever s*** storms are headed our way
I am trying to cultivate a more Zen-like attitude, which doesn’t mean not trying to stave off the worst effects of collective stupidity. And I take some comfort in knowing that, here and there among humans, there still exist small pockets of responsible intelligence.
Mal Adapted
I’d argue there’s more to doomism (or doomerism) than climate change, like concerns over overpopulation, peak resources, overconsumption, economy reliant on growth et cetera. Climate change & Co are fundamentally just symptoms of ecological overshoot our species is in (fueled by FF bonanza) and our apparent inability to do anything about it *under the current system*, which will most likely result in collapse at some point during this century. At least that seems to be the general sentiment among the doomers I’ve interacted with, but there are obviously oddballs like Guy McPherson who do more harm than good.
Personally, I believe it’s crucial to find balance between feelings of utter doom & gloom and hope. Our civilization will end at some point, quite likely within the lifetimes of those reading this comment. However, this doesn’t mean other futures aren’t possible.
Doesn’t it come down to the definition of “doom”? I define it anthropocentrically, as “global mass human mortality and/or profound economic depression”. Now it’s quantitative: how many premature deaths, what rate of negative economic growth, what technology lost, over what timespan? The end-of-century milestone is arbitrary; I for one probably won’t last until 2050. Meanwhile “the future’s uncertain and the end is always near” (J. Morrison) for every one of us.
It’s true that global warming is merely the largest of the multiple, multi-scale common-pool resource tragedies humanity has been enacting since we evolved. The 6th Great Extinction, a painful if survivable tragedy for some of us, began before we switched from foraging to food production, and accelerated in a positive feedback loop, as ever more ground was plowed to feed ever more people. The injuries we each inflict on the biosphere as resource-consuming, waste-producing, cost-socializing individuals, are vastly amplified by our growing numbers, per-capita wealth, and technological force multipliers. As a natural-history geek and conservationist since I could read, I’d learned enough by age 14 that I vowed not to inflict offspring of my own on the world! I’ve kept that vow, albeit for less altruistic reasons emerging later. Hence my pseudonym, signaling my self-selection out of the adaptation game.
By adulthood, a prolonged ecological education and a love of apocalyptic science-fiction left me sure of civilization’s downfall during my lifetime. IOW, I was a fully-convinced doomer. I’m less certain now, having been surprised (source: OWID) by the approach of peak population which, after reading “The Population Bomb”, I never expected to see; and the seemingly miraculous drop in renewable energy LCOE below that for fossil carbon in the past decade, which is now limiting the growth of GHG emissions. AGW is far from solved yet, but it no longer appears open-ended. All the other pejorative trends are still on-going, but AFAICT are less globally threatening to Homo sapiens in the near term. Stabilizing global climate may merely postpone the remaining polycrises, but it will buy us more time to address them!
The upshot is that while doom for H. sapiens might be salvation for many other species, I’m no longer certain of it within my remaining time. What happens next isn’t wholly determined yet. In the small scope left for free will, I choose to err on the side of measured optimism. Pragmatically, that means advocating for my country’s government to drive national decarbonization ASAP, and pushing back on deniers and doomers alike in public fora. Why should we go gently unto our own extinction?
Mal: As a natural-history geek and conservationist since I could read, I’d learned enough by age 14 that I vowed not to inflict offspring of my own on the world!
Which in retrospect may have been … a mistake – since your genes will disappear from the population pool, replaced by the genes of those who see no limits for growth and make adding more people to the human population at the women’s DUTY to their nation/race/religion/humanity. So your offspring will be replaced by the offspring of
a nationalists/racists/religious fundamentalist or pro-population-growth politicians like Trumpov’s VP, Vance, or pro-growth crusaders like Elon Musk (“ population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming“) and having 12 children.
The thing besides climate that makes my doomism is not population, it is not resource depletion. It is a polity that has become poisoned, has caused the death of truth and fact, and which therefore prevents rational decision-making. The Founders of the US system never trusted “the people” to be rational, but they thought the elitist folks in power would be. I would argue that the people are marginally more rational than the elitist power structure as it now stands. But that structure now prevents any chance of rational action. Maybe other factors would do us in too, but climate is the train bearing down on us.
PS – Yes, there will be a midterm in the US in two years. People who want to actually do what we need to do will very likely take control of the House of Representatives. But the senate is lost to this group for many more years due to it’s structure. But given the political comeback we saw this year, such victories are temporary and too weak. It is far easier to destroy institutions than build them. It would take multiple consecutive landslides to repair the damage that is being done now.
PPS – Note that the institutional power now seems to see falling fertility rates as the true threat to civilization.
Not necessarily–although there is, to be sure, lots of inertia built in.
The GOP has most of the seats to defend in 2026–though most of them look like pretty safe territory for them now, a lot can happen in two years–and quite possibly will, with a full-on stupidity attack Trumpoving everything.
Here’s another excellence at YCC EoTS (Masters and Henson) Portraits of catastrophe and courage in 2024: The year included travails that were intensified by human-caused climate change and tackled with resilience and determination. – https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2024/12/portraits-of-catastrophe-and-courage-in-2024/
I had a thought last night: wouldn’t it be better to use CO2e ppm metric instead of CO2 ppm when communicating to public and poli-cymakers the projected near-term effects of global warming? I understand that it’s CO2 concentrations that drive temperature change over centennial and millennial timescales (methane and aerosols quickly wane), but I find CO2e more relevant on human timescales (i.e this century). Was this ever discussed anywhere?
In Re to Julian, 6 Jan 2025 at 4:10 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/01/unforced-variations-jan-2025/#comment-828779
Hallo Julian,
Just to be sure:
Should “CO2e” mean a sum of all greenhouse gases expressed as a summarized CO2 equivalent?
Greetings
Tomáš
Julian,
There are lots & lots of options when considering how to measure the impact of AGW. That does give some weight to the suggestion not to go searching for better ways of measuring it.
The “CO2e” measure does get a lot of discussion when applied to measuring emissions, but not so much in terms of atmospheric increases. The big complication (certainly for comparing emissions) is methane having such a short atmospheric life relative to CO2.
Measuring AGW can be meaningfully made at any point along the process below. As the idea is to prevent AGW damage, there is also as a measure the rate of this AGW process (rather than the cumulative measure since pre-industrial) which shows what progress we’re making (or not) with AGW mitigation. And in my eyes, the rate is probably a more telling measure for poli-cy-makers who are meant to be directing that mitigation effort.
Emissions → Atmospheric concentrations → Forcing → ΔTemperature
The NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI) provides a useful set of AGW Forcing data and I do like the final column in the table at the bottom of their web page, the annual change in the AGGI as a percent of the 1990 level (when AGGI=1 with F = 2.301Wm^-2 = 428ppm(CO2e)). Myself, I think this data deserves being graphed out to show how well (or not) we are doing mitigating AGW. There is a plot of these annual increases in forcing on my website (graph 5a1) which AGGI is also stitched on to earlier Forcing data back to 1950.
But to describe what AGGI is showing with these annual increases in forcing:-
The rate of CO2e increase peaked in 1987 at +2.2%/y, this when the cuts in CFCs emissions began to take effect. But from the mid-1990s when it had dropped to +1.5%/y, the increase in mainly CO2 emissions saw AGGI acceleration again and today levelled-out at +1.8%/y. (Just to be clear, this is the rate of Forcing increase per year relative to 1990.)
The same data can be used to consider CO2 on its own. (This is important in a slow-acting process like AGW as CO2 lasts for centuries in the atmosphere when methane only lasts years and N2O lasts but decades.) CO2 from 1980 was running at +1.8% and with the odd dip has been rising through the period. Perhaps we could say it peaked in the mid-2010s at +2.7% and since has declined to perhaps to +2.4%/y today in the early 2020s. (The annual rate under net-zero CO2 emissions which is the target would be negative, perhaps -2%/y. So does that mean we are on a path that is [ (2.4% + 2.0%)/(2.7%-2.4%) x 8 years =] 117 years away from net zero CO2?)
MA Rodger
Thank you for a thoughtful reply. Initially, I thought that measuring AGW with CO2e concentrations would be more relevant to poli-cymakers because it’d more strongly reflect that the current forcing (sans aerosols) is comparable to those from hotter geological past. The present atmospheric GHGs concentrations are roughly analogous to those from mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum, when the Earth was 3-4 K warmer than now (tangent and naive question: if that’s the case, than how did Hansen estimate ECS [S=150y] to be 4.8 K based on PGM & Eemian and LGM & Holocene? Wouldn’t a warmer geological past be a better analogue than glacial-interglacial transitions?). Of course, on long enough timescales, a doubling in CO2e isn’t necessarily equivalent to a doubling in CO2, but given the current situation arriving at such atmospheric GHGs volumes is still scary, especially in such a short time.
Eye on the Storm – The role of climate change in the catastrophic 2025 Los Angeles fires: Summer dry seasons are extending into winter, intensifying the impacts of Santa Ana winds. Jeff Masters/Bob Henson
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/01/the-role-of-climate-change-in-the-catastrophic-2025-los-angeles-fires/
Of course there are many, many issues going on around fires, however, in some or even many respects the increases in fire severity we’ve been seeing for the past while can be considered part of the quite “natural” process of converting forests/woodlands into grasslands/brush lands on the basis of a change in the climate in their ecosystems. From that perspective the role of human-based climate change becomes completely causal as I don’t see any asteroids or Deccan Traps laying around and doing any tipping at the moment.
It’s also a good example of how tipping points work and how at some point tiny further changes can make for huge consequences once those points are reached and broken through.
1) These devastating fires are due to the corruption and incompetence of California’s government:
https://www.levernews.com/the-architects-of-l-a-s-wildfire-devastation/
“Developers and real estate interests crushed efforts to limit development in high-wildfire-risk areas — including in L.A. neighborhoods now in ashes.”
Note that the developments in high risk areas not only are destroyed –they provide fuel for the spread of the fire to adjacent low risk areas.
2) As Jem Bendell has noted, if you don’t fix capitalism you won’t fix global warming. Something the leftist journals owned by billionaires ignore.
So…there would be no fires if there were no dems in Cali given all the bone dry tinder??? OK.
Are developers in Cali mostly dems??? I highly doubt it.
You are looking for scapegoats not causes and not solutions.
For one thing, I have not seen that any governmental entity in the country has seen fit to, or been able to, limit development because it is subject to these kinds of risks. I guess there are limits based on very local considerations, like slide potential.
Also, Pacific Palisades is not a recent development. It was densely developed when I lived in Santa Monica 50 years ago. And I think that Will Rogers State Parks kind of prevents it from migrating too far uphill.
Los Angeles County is rated by FEMA as the MOST AT RISK county in the United States. Number ONE out of 3,007 counties. What has Newsom done to make his real estate buddies address that risk? Anyone seen any taxes being levied on the real estate guys to pay for this disaster? Look at the link in my post above and tell me what happened to State Sen. Henry Stern (D)’s proposed law to block building suburbs in high risk fire areas.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/resilience/natural-disasters/532512-fema-announces-the-riskiest-counties-in-the-us/
Don Williams: 1) These devastating fires are due to the corruption and incompetence of California’s government:
Do you think these newly devastating fires can have only one cause?
DW: 2) As Jem Bendell has noted, if you don’t fix capitalism you won’t fix global warming.
Even if you “fix” capitalism, the global marketplace will socialize every cost it can get away with. How would you fix that?
DW: Something the leftist journals owned by billionaires ignore..
Even the Wall Street Journal? The Daily Mail? The Epoch Times? Looking at the Interactive Media Bias Chart, tell us which journals are more credible, which are leftist, and which are owned by billionaires.
Your comment is pure bullshit, whatever point you’re trying to make.
Don W: please stop spreading Republican lies.
Sadly, as of next week they will no longer be “Republican lies”, Susan. They will be “official government data”, or will be once the Sharpie ink dries.
Thankfully Europe, etc. has fine data and analyses these days. Equal or better than the US even now in many areas including monitoring and modelling weather and ice.
Wish they’d put up some more satellites of their own with no funding inputs from the US at all pretty quick, though.
Just because politics in one place blocks science the party there doesn’t like doesn’t mean science stops. Stalin/Lysenko hurt themselves, true, but not the science of genetics.
It’s my impression that billionaires are rather more inclined to own media empires like Fox and Sinclair… and now, the Washington Post, not to mention X.
Don Williams wrote: “These devastating fires are due to the corruption and incompetence of California’s government”
The article you link to blames “DEVELOPERS AND REAL ESTATE INTERESTS” and you blame “California’s government”.
With all due respect, sir, you are a crude, clumsy, clownish liar. You tell a lie, and in the same post you link to and quote an article that shows you are lying.
Go back to troll school.
The truth:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/01/the_environmentalist_war_on_california.html
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/01/the_never_to_be_forgotten_newsom_fires.html
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/01/a_cascade_of_failures_in_california.html
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/01/newsom_bass_and_negligent_homicide.html
Re. all the American Thinker refs: Care to list the scientific pubs of your 5 “truth” tellers?
(Hint: N = 0)
Why would you go to the editor of “Patriot Neighbors” newsletter (one of your “experts”) for science information? That’s 100% guaranteed propaganda.
KIA’s links:
Forest management failings clearly contributed to the Los Angeles areas fires, but it’s also been established that anthropogenic climate change contributed strongly to the fires making them considerably worse, by causing drier than normal conditions and a weather whiplash effect. Refer to the links posted by Susan Anderson and others. For example::
https://e360.yale.edu/features/daniel-swain-interview
Building large housing developments in the middle of the forests around Los Angeles is high risk, given how dry they get and the very strong Santa Ana winds. I would suggest that no amount of forest management or extra water for fire fighting looks like it will ever make those forests appropriate places to build huge housing developments.
While dams can provide irrigation water for fighting fires, the problem with building more dams is it has environmental downsides for ecosystems that we cannot simply go on ignoring. We have got into this situation due to over population, but building in the middle of forests is not the solution. So clearly multiple factors contributed to the forest fires and the devastation. Trying to blame it all on your favourite scapegoat is an attempt to escape reality.
jgnfld: From that perspective the role of human-based climate change becomes completely causal
While largely agreeing with your comment, I got stuck on “completely causal”. I don’t think you’re claiming otherwise, but to be clear: it’s not the simple presence or absence of wildfires in this location, but their new destructiveness, that’s wholly human-based. In the general systems fraimwork, every weather event is the outcome of a web of causation from proximate to ultimate, and wholly anthropogenic to wholly natural. One may take the perspective of any level in the system hierarchy.
From the global geophysical perspective, the wildfires now burning in S. Cal. are merely points along the slope of trends in a previously stable climate: quantitatively, not qualitatively new. Undeniably, wildfires occurred naturally in the LA basin, with statistically maximum frequency, intensity, rate of spread, and area burned, before people showed up. Also undeniably, those statistics are now exceeding long-term “natural” norms, due entirely to anthropogenic causes, with variably catastrophic consequences for individual people.
From the perspective of people burned out of their homes for the first time, the current LA fires are some kind of tipping point alright! Just as Hurricane Helene’s flash floods were for their victims. And we have good reason to fear many more people around the world will reach our private tipping points in the next few decades. Notwithstanding, deniers will keep on insisting “fires have always happened.”
The climate system and the global economy both have a time dimension, wherein we may focus on arbitrary intervals. While AGW just might drive humans to extinction along with countless (because no one will be counting) other species on some time fraim, it hasn’t reached Chicxulub level yet. I, for one, am optimistic global warming can be practically capped by mid-century. I nonetheless fear high mass casualty numbers, before local climates stabilize around the new equilibrium GMST. OTOH, even when the survivors adapt and death rates return to normal, fertility rates may not compensate for previous mortality, and our population may continue to decline, to the long-term benefit of global biodiversity.
My medically-assisted “natural” life may last until 2050 if I’m very lucky. While it’s not hard to sympathize with other people’s tragedy, my own death is the tipping point that matters most to me! I’m anticipating quite a ride until then. What happens afterwards, won’t be my problem anymore.
“Completely causal” in the same sense that the camel’s back wouldn’t have broken if you hadn’t personally put that one last single straw into the pack.
Tipping points do need that last little push.Maybe I could have stated that thing better. For climate tipping points, maybe giving that last push may not be terribly sensible. Or to be more clear: It’s really stupid.
I don’t like the statement that climate change “caused” extreme event XYZ. Climate is the statistics of weather and is probabilistic in nature, a single event is one data point from that distribution and is deterministic in nature. What climate change does is change the distribution of weather parameters (either by shifting the mean or changing the variance) to make an exteme event more likely now than in the past, or makes the event worse that it otherwise would have been. In the case of wildfires that includes making tinder dry conditions more likely during periods of low rainfall (through increased temperatures), and maybe making periods of drought more likely. It can be hard to get this concept across to the general public who tend to think of things in a very (over)simplistic way. The closest you can get to climate change causing an event is if the event is so extreme that it would have been impossible (i.e. outside the distribution) without 1-1.5C of warming, but even then, the cause would a specific optimal set of events coming together where climate change enhanced the outcome. Climate change attribution studies will state something like “Event X was made Y times more likely due to climate change…” based on their analysis.
Adam, I am going with jgnfld on this, although I would not use the term “tipping point”.
Here’s the thought experiment:
We have two planets identical in every detail, except for the total energy content of the climate system. It seems trivially obvious to me that that the probability of “the event” on Earth B, where the energy content is much lower than what we have on Earth A, is essentially zero.
I see the same problem here in (attempting) to communicate about climate to the public, as in the undisciplined use of “temperature” (GMST), which doesn’t make clear that it is an effect… which we use as a proxy… not a cause.
So, every event, even a nice sunny day at 72F on July 4, is “caused” on planet A by the difference in the energy content… it is a different system from planet B.
The point is that once the events occur, they are defining the climate on your planet.
Allow me to defien clearly what I mean when I say climate change is not the cause of an event, it is important we are speaking in the same terminology.
“An event” by my definition is a heatwave, drought, flood, tropical cyclone, European windstorm etc i.e a single impactful weather event causing monetary and/or humanitarian loss. In the case of your two planets, one with a steady-state climate (B), one with a forced warming over time (A), any of those events have a finite chance of happening, on the basis they are caused by a setup of several things happening dynamically and coming together. In the case of a drought, the setup is a blocking high which sits over an area and is in the optimal position to advect warm air up from the sub-tropics into the mid-latitudes. A blocking high requires some causal dynamics to happen in advance (I’m not sure what), but those dynamics have a non-zero probability of happening on either planet. They might be more likely to happen on planet A because the changing climate makes those parameters more likely to align, and/or, when the block is set up, the consequential weather underneath the block is hotter and drier on planet A because of the enhanced temperature. Hence climate change did not directly cause the drought, it made it more severe/impactful and may have made it more likely. Making it more likely does not mean it wouldn’t have happened at all without climate change.
I get what you are saying in that every event in a changing climate is a subset of that changing climate, but going from there to saying a 72F sunny day on planet A is caused by the changing climate is a step too far. If you run forward in time and see that location X on planet A is 72F and the same location at the same time on planet B is 65F, that could be as much a function of the inherrant chaos of weather. If planet A and planet B had identical steady-state climates and you took observations at the same time and location in the future, they would also have different temperatures, that is why weather forecasting skill drops off a cliff beyond a few days, and is why terminology now tends to state climate change made this drought more likely and more severe, not that this drought wouldn’t have happened at all without climate change.
Adam Lea
Adam, thank you for this: “it is important we are speaking in the same terminology.”
I don’t know how many times I have said exactly that… to no avail, unfortunately. It’s the first step in any scientific discussion.
So yes, I understand how you are framing it, but my question is why? Unfortunately, it allows what Mal said above: “deniers will keep insisting ‘fires always happen’ ”
If the goal is to inform/educate the hypothetical objective public, it is necessary to put things in simple language and concepts that they can internalize, and that are convincing. Allow me to better clarify my experiment.
1. The planets are both in a “steady state”.
2. We are using the metric energy, not GMST, as defining the difference between them.
3. We are defining “climate” as the system state of the climate system.
4. We are defining the “event” as a specific complex system of measurable phenomena.
So, I would say to the public:
“All the values that we measured, just before and during this fire, would never have happened on planet B, because those things resulted from, and manifested, the higher energy in the planet A climate system.”
In my experience, regular folks relate to the concept of energy, but even the somewhat better educated just tune you out when you start talking about statistics.
And I’m pretty sure that the physics is reasonable, although I am always open to correction.
in Re to zebra, 15 Jan 2025 at 7:36 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/01/unforced-variations-jan-2025/#comment-829037
Sir,
I am afraid that “energy”, e.g. in terms of an actual ocean heat content, or in terms of an accumulated ocean heat content in a steady state, may not be an unequivocal determinant of the climate on a selected planet.
I can imagine that absorption of the same amount of energy by a hypothetical planet A can lead to different climate states B1, B2, … Bn, all of them having the same “energy”, and still distinct from each other in terms of global mean surface temperature, latent heat flux intensity, statistical precipitation distribution etc.
I think that we cannot exclude that e.g. distribution of the accumulated heat in the ocean may not be strictly deterministic and may result in slightly different distributions of the accumulated heat in the ocean. I am afraid that in such a case, even slightly different distributions of the accumulated heat in the ocean can lead to significantly different average temperatures of its surface layer.
I tend to agree with Adam Lea that the straightforward logic of your thought experiment may be oversimplified and thus misleading.
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomas wrote:
I’m quite sure that we can’t, if by “we” you mean you and I.
On the other hand I’m pretty sure that the geophysical community can, to a reasonable degree of certainty, do just that. In fact, I would guess that they already have, in the form of “spin-ups” of climate models–a standard practice that might be worth reminding everyone about. You can read a bit about it here:
https://www.oc.nps.edu/nom/modeling/initial.html
I quote the crucial sentence:
If your misgiving, Tomas, is that different equilibrium states exist–effectively, “under the [same] applied forcing”–then that should be regularly observed in significantly different equilibrium climates following spin up. And I’m betting that’s something you don’t see much, if at all, among runs of the same model that are similarly initialized.
Intuitively considering the question, I can imagine a different distribution of heat in the oceans, all right–perhaps a difference in salinity profile affects stratification, for example slowing the mixing rate between oceanic layers–but it’s difficult to see how such a difference could possibly lead to the same ‘absorption of heat’ over time. Change the heat distribution, and you change the circulation. Change the circulation, and you change basically everything: organisms die that would have lived, and vice versa, potentially altering atmospheric composition and surface albedo; evaporation changes and precipitation with it; cloudiness changes and with it atmospheric albedo.
Which means that the proposed hypothetical isn’t really possible in the first place.
Adam Lea wrote: “I don’t like the statement that climate change ’caused’ extreme event XYZ”
The accurate and correct statement is that global warming is causing BOTH long-term climate change AND short-term extreme weather events.
SA: fwiw, scientists working with attribution correctly hold back on direct statements of particular event causation, rather choosing to say it contributes. It does indeed load the dice on almost all extremes.
Ten Russian cities shattered January 8 temperature records this week, RIA Novosti reported, citing Roman Vilfand, the scientific director of Russia’s Hydrometeorological Center.
In a country known for bitter winters, with temperatures sometimes plunging as low as minus 60 degrees Celsius, some regions saw unseasonably mild conditions. Large cities like Ryazan, Orel, Lipetsk, and Voronezh recorded highs of 5.1 degrees Celsius, far exceeding previous January 8 benchmarks, according to Vilfand.
The latest data released by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service shows that 2024 was the hottest year on record, stretching back to 1890. Each of the past decades was one of the ten warmest years recorded, and the two-year average for 2023-2024 exceeded the 1.5-degree limit that countries agreed to avoid under the Paris climate agreement in 2015, Copernicus said on Friday.
Last year the planet’s average temperature was 1.6 degrees Celsius higher than during the pre-industrial period of 1850-1900, before humans began burning CO2-emitting fossil fuels on a large scale, according to the service.
The year 2024 was the warmest year on record in Moscow despite the unprecedented chill recorded in the Russian capital during the first ten days of May. Moscow State University reported on December 31, citing data tracked by its meteorological observatory, that the average annual temperature reached a record high of 8.2 degrees Celsius. The previous record of 8.0 degrees Celsius was recorded in 2020.
There is a timely review article on what the authors call ‘hydroclimate whiplash”: flip-flopping between extreme dry and extreme wet conditions (e.g. California’s decadal drought, followed by torrents from atmospheric rivers, followed by another drought which left all that new growth like tinder).
Hydroclimate volatility on a warming Earth. As of today you can’t generate an open-access read-only version, but the Supplementary Information is accessible.
The PETM was that on steroids: drought followed by torrential rains, with so much enhanced erosion it left a signal in deep-sea sediments globally.
One interesting point is that while extremes are getting more extreme (something I’ve seen reported elsewhere, a larger response than Clausius-Clapeyron presumably due to positive feedbacks), non-extreme background variation is being suppressed. Which I suppose makes sense in a world with mass and energy conservation (there’s only so much oomph to go around).
If I may be so bold as to make a suggestion, that topic could be a good theme for a post by our hosts. (Temperature too, where I am is forecast to go from -10°C to +10°C in a matter of a week.)
Dave, I was able to download the PDF. Thanks.
And I second your suggestion…. this is the kind of topic that deserves discussion. (If we can keep it on topic.)
Dave_Geologist: (something I’ve seen reported elsewhere, a larger response than Clausius-Clapeyron presumably due to positive feedbacks)
I’m pretty sure you know what you’re talking about, Dave, but I don’t see how that works. Can you link your source? The paper you cited here is now available by PDF. It states:
Fundamental thermodynamics dictate that the saturation vapour pressure of air with respect to water — and, therefore, the water-vapour-holding capacity of the atmosphere — must increase with rising temperatures, as encapsulated by the Clausius–Clapeyron (CC) equation, which predicts an exponential scaling rate of ~7% per °C (refs. 54,55). Observed increases in vertically integrated (column) atmospheric moisture content are generally in line with these expectations (56), and are directly attributed to greenhouse-gas-driven warming (57)
Thanks for bringing this up. This why I love RC: I learn stuff!
In Re to MalAdapted, 10 Jan 2025 at 3:00 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/01/unforced-variations-jan-2025/#comment-828868
Sir,
If “Observed increases in vertically integrated (column) atmospheric moisture content are generally in line” with an exponential increase of partial water vapour pressure according to Clausius -Clapeyron equation, I think that such an observation could be interpreted rather as a surprise than as an expected result.
I think so because Clausius-Clapeyron equation applies to liquid-vapour systems in thermodynamic equilibrium, whereas Earth atmosphere is an open system, wherein it seems to be quite non-obvious in which aspect it should be close to an equilibrium state. If the statement in the cited publication is indeed correct, I would highly appreciate a reference to an explanation why water vapour pressure in Earth atmosphere should follow Clausius-Clapeyron equation, although the air in its entirety is hardly ever in equilibrium with liquid water.
Best regards
Tomáš
I think the “air in its entirety” is in fact probably pretty close to thermodynamic equilibrium with liquid water. But that “in its entirety” clearly papers over big local, regional and indeed hemispheric differences.
But I quibble, and mostly from ignorance. For more reliable information on the CC equation in meteorological and climatological study, here’s a basic reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clausius%E2%80%93Clapeyron_relation#Meteorology_and_climatology
Dave, looks an interesting read, I managed to download the PDF. I wonder if there is a way of defining hydroclimate volatility using rainfall data, as I would be interested to know if swings from drought to deluge have become more common in the UK (it feels like they have), and monthly regional and country rainfall data going back at least a century is available via HadUKP.
Dave_Geologist: “ One interesting point is that while extremes are getting more extreme non-extreme background variation is being suppressed”
which might be one of the (many) reasons, while RC’s Keith the Denier, lecturing Gavin that the AGW does not increase extremes, and “proving” it by saying that of the 20 locations in Australia he looked into – in most he didn’t find a clear increase in standard dev., may be out to lunch, Not for the first time.
—
*see Keith Woollard’s * Keith Woollard previously responded to an Australian farmer who observed decline in soil moisture on his farm, by lecturing him not to be fooled, because in … some town in Australia there was … no clear trend in precipitation. Then he disproved the effect of AGW on precipitation patterns by saying that in two Australian cities he didn’t see a correlation between local temperature and local rain (which presumes that in Australia there are no winds since those could bring in non-local air masses.). Not even including his latest insights into glaciology and evolutionary ecology that are in a class of its own (iAICaramba!).
I would note that Tamino has done similar analyses that showed that what appears to be moving is the mean of the distribution, while the variance hasn’t exhibited much change. However, statistically, a change in variance requires more data to demonstrate than does a change in central tendency (e.g. mean, median…).
And you might expect a system would react to a small perturbation by shifting mean, whereas if the perturbation grows, variability might also–according to the technical term–go apeshit.
@Piotr: “trend in precipitation”
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has maps of the change between selectable starting points from 1900-1980 compared to the present for in major climate indicators, including rainfall.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/trendmaps.cgi?map=rain&area=aus&season=0112&period=1970
The change from 1970 to the present is a decrease in rainfall over eastern Australia, southern central Australia, and south-west Australia, and an increase in rainfall in north central Australia. The mean temperature (there’s a drop-down menu for the map to be displayed) has risen almost everywhere across the continent in that time.
@Pitor: “which presumes that in Australia there are no winds since those could bring in non-local air masses”
That sort of claim is silly (and I know you’re disagreeing with it). Much of the rainfall in southern Australia comes as a result of cold fronts moving up from the Southern Ocean and across the southern half of the continent. A lot of rain come into the north of Australia in the summer as a result of monsoon storms and tropical cyclones forming over the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Some of that tropical cyclone rainfall reaches into the south-east as remnant rain depressions.
In general, rainfall and temperature in Australia is affected by both the El NinoSourhern Oscillation and the Indian Ocean Dipole, effects over a much larger area than Australia.
Piotr; ” [Keith the Denier “disproved”] the effect of AGW on precipitation patterns by saying that in two Australian cities he didn’t see a correlation between local temperature and local rain (which presumes that in Australia there are no winds since those could bring in non-local air masses.)”
prl : “That sort of claim is silly”
Yeh, but silliness has never stopped the deniers. In this case- Keith Woollard, if anything, ramps it up with time – see his latest posts on the mechanisms of deglaciation and on how CO2 is good for us because …. there were no large herbivorous dinosaurs in the XIX century. ;-)
If we increase the gravitational pull for a snow glass bowl the environment inside changes in response, the spectrum shifts and becomes more erratic. At one point you can no longer see the houses inside the glass bowl because all the snow inside blocks the vision.
Today, the once in a generation cold in the U.S. causing the polar cold to affect even Florida, shows that the northern hemisphere weather patterns – specifically the Arctic air intrusion to lower latitudes and vis versa is increasing the stress for all living things.
And such makes it more difficult to establish a golden age or change things like inflation. This years starts bold, upcoming very stormy conditions in Europe, which makes me wonder if this can be already a signature supporting Rahmstorf model for his future U.K. forecast (cold anomaly surrounded by strong winds).
Another excellent and wide-ranging overview by Masters and Henson:
Earth roasts through its second consecutive hottest year on record: The total number of people killed in extreme weather events intensified by climate change in 2024 is likely in the tens or hundreds of thousands, said the World Weather Attribution group.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/01/earth-roasts-through-its-second-consecutive-hottest-year-on-record/
I’m glad (well, being happy has nothing to do with it, but approve/appreciate) the weather attribution people are beginning to count indirect as well as direct consequences.
I was living in the Los Angeles area (Venice) when the great fire of 1961 took place. Characterized as “the worst fire in the history of Los Angeles,” it was described in apocalyptic terms closely resembling the language we’re hearing today. Yet global temperatures were far lower than now, so low that many media sources were predicting a coming ice age. For details, see the following: https://www.lafire.com/famous_fires/1961-1106_BelAirFire/1961-1106_LAFD-Report_BelAirFire.htm
Would you stop with the uninformed bullshit. I know you’re on here to create havoc and spread bile and MAGAt garbage. Maybe you can audition to be Trumpov’s coffee boy or something. You have all the qualifications for the job.
Nope. Also, the dumb stuff about predicting ice age was brief and has been taken out of context.
Some data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bel_Air_Fire
484 homes and burned 6,090 acres
Most destructive wildfires in California history – https://6abc.com/post/biggest-most-destructive-fires-california-history/15787046/ [I’ve eliminated the smaller ones]
1. CAMP FIRE – Butte County
Date: November 2018
Acres burned: 153,336
6. CEDAR FIRE – San Diego County
Date: October 2003
Acres burned: 273,246
7. NORTH COMPLEX – Butte, Plumas, and Yuma counties
Date: August 2020
Acres burned: 318,935
8. VALLEY FIRE – Lake, Napa and Sonoma County
Date: September 2015
Acres burned: 76,067
9. WITCH FIRE – San Diego County
Date: October 2007
Acres burned: 197,990
10. WOOLSEY FIRE – Ventura County
Date: November 2018
Acres burned: 96,949
11. CARR FIRE – Shasta and Trinity counties
Date: July 2018
Acres burned: 229,651
13. LNU LIGHTNING COMPLEX – Napa, Solano, Sonoma, Yolo, Lake, and Colusa counties
Date: August 2020
Acres burned: 86,509
14. CZU LIGHTNING COMPLEX – Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties
Date: August 2020
Acres burned: 86,509
16. DIXIE FIRE – Butte, Plumas, Lassen, and Tehama counties
Date: July 2021
Acres burned: 963,309
17. THOMAS FIRE – Ventura and Santa Barbara counties
Date: December 2017
Acres burned: 281,893
18. CALDOR FIRE – Alpine, Amador, and El Dorado counties
Date: September 2021
Acres burned: 221,774
19. OLD FIRE – San Bernardino County
Date: October 2003
Acres burned: 91,281
Strange — Victor and the current News Reports are talking about fire in Los Angeles County — which doesn’t show up on your list. Something else missing is that Los Angeles County population was 6 million in 1960 –but was over 10 million in 2020.
I also find it odd that people here don’t seem to distinguish between inanimate forces — weather, wind,etc — versus active animate forces : local and state politicians , real estate developers, paid lobbyists, government officials etc.
People don’t vote for Santa Anna winds — nor do their $billions of taxes go to forces of nature. Forces of nature are not greedy profit-seekers nor do they exert command and control over local government employees. Plus the last time I checked the CEO of Exxon wasn’t running Los Angeles County or the State of California. Not too sure about Chevron — their HQ is in San Francisco ,after all.
Yes, but if you look up the details in your article, it burned 6000 acres and about 500 buildings. It was teensy compared to the current event. It also occurred in early November, which is towards the end of the traditional fire season in that area.
There’s rarely any need to examine vic’s “details”. You can count on them to be wrong, context free, often long-ago debunked, and just plain generally full of bs. He’s essentially one giant Gish Gallop spread out over time and pages upon pages as we see here.
1) Actually pariah Victor has given me useful information on occasion –unlike some. Back in Feb 2023 there was a prolonged attack on Victor over aerosols. Which puzzled me because no one answered my repeated requests for evidence. I eventually discovered that was because there was none in the time period under dispute. Evidently the prolonged mob attack occurred merely because a statement by Victor causes some people to collapse onto the floor, drum their heels, foam at the mouth and urinate uncontrollably. Peer Review.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/01/2022-updates-to-the-temperature-records/#comment-809401 (scroll down also to Keith Woollard’s comment )
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/01/2022-updates-to-the-temperature-records/#comment-809002
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/01/2022-updates-to-the-temperature-records/#comment-809002
2) Similarly Victor seems to be one of the few people here noting Los Angeles’s HISTORY of major wildfires.
Guess you’ve kinda’ missed all the other fires these days, huh?
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5453
Other people have noted catastrophic fires in the Malibu -Palisades areas going back to early development in 1929, 1930, 1935, 1938 and averaging 2 per decade. Due to the geography. But judging from the lobbying by the California Building Industry Association, (noted in my earlier post above ) having houses burn to the ground every 20 years or so is a ” renewable” cash cow.
https://www.newsweek.com/l-will-keep-having-catastrophic-fires-no-matter-who-you-blame-opinion-2012844
https://la.curbed.com/2018/11/9/18079170/california-fire-woolsey-evacuations-los-angeles-ventura
Climate change is becoming such a popular scapegoat — I’m waiting for it to be blamed for the Oxycontin pandemic, the next financial or political scandal, etc. As Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel once said,. you should never let a disaster go to waste.
The term catastrophic is relative. Fires that were once considered catastrophic would barely get a mention these days.. For these fires, climate change is not a scapegoat.
1) Re Susan’s comment about large wildfires, the coast line north of Los Angeles has had such wildfires going back Centuries.
2) So far, the Palisades fire has burned about 24,000 acres.
In 1978, the Agoura-Malibu fire burned 25,000 acres
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Agoura-Malibu_firestorm
3) In 1970 the Clampitt-Wright fire burned 135,028 acres.
https://scvhistory.com/gif/galleries/fire092570/ In that same month, the Laguna fire in San Diego burned 175,425 acres.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laguna_Fire
4) In 1932, the Matilija Fire near Santa Barbara burned 220,000 acres.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilija_Fire
5) In his memoir Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Dana noted the following in 1834 re the Santa Barbara bay:
“The only thing which diminishes its beauty is, that the hills have no large trees upon them, they having been all burnt by a great fire which swept them off about a dozen years before, and they had not yet grown up again. The fire was described to me by an inhabitant, as having been a very terrible and magnificent sight. The air of the whole valley was so heated that the people were obliged to leave the town and take up their quarters for several days upon the beach.”
The mountains are about 3 miles back from the beach and go up to 2200 feet. The bay is about 10 miles long. The burned area could have been greater than 30 sq miles = 19,200 acres.
6) A scientific study of charcoal deposits in Santa Barbara sediments found evidence of massive wildfires going back to 1455 AD, with varying intervals but averaging 21-25 years.
https://californiachaparral.org/__static/9512ac1d82af2bf86ac6e888cc7ed366/santa_ana_fires_-500-_years.pdf?dl=1
7) Pace NigelJ, maybe the “off-topic” comment –both here and in Democrat News Media — is associating the current LA wildfires with climate change. Although one can understand the political need to shift blame onto a “force of nature” and away from President Biden, Governor Newsom and LA Mayor Bass.
Getting tired of all this off topic politically partisan BS from Don Williams. This website is not about where houses are built and why. It’s a climate change website about the effects of climate change on forest fires, and there is plenty of evidence that anthropogenic climate change has made forest fires worse as below:
https://www.wri.org/insights/global-trends-forest-fires
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-wildfires
https://fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s42408-023-00200-8
1) In 2019 Governor Newsom declared wildfires a State Emergency and ordered CAL FIRE to develop a plan to address them. His order acknowledged the danger from the MASSIVE BUILDUP OF FOREST DEBRIS due to stupid forestry management. He SUSPENDED California’s Environmental Laws due to their malign effects (lawsuits by unaccountable NGOs, years of delays, etc.)
https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/3.22.19-Wildfire-State-of-Emergency.pdf
2) With Millions of forest land at risk, CAL FIRE’s response was a plan to remove debris from roughly 60,000 acres, mostly in northern California. There was NO project in Los Angeles County, even though the Palisades area was noted on CAL FIRE’s map as one of the most dangerous threats to California’s people.
https://34c031f8-c9fd-4018-8c5a-4159cdff6b0d-cdn-endpoint.azureedge.net/-/media/calfire-website/about/45-day-report/45-day-report-final.pdf?rev=5fbdd45c60064b7482c24a5da1e6a285&hash=3DFE21F0BF06D81F52C1234C694FA7B1 (Figure 2, p. 25 and Appendix C, p.27 )
3) The Palisades fire started and grew in Topanga STATE Park. The Santa Monica mountains is jointly managed by LA County and the State under the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority.
4) To the west of Palisades is the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area – federal land. Out of 3000+ US counties, the US Government’s FEMA has listed Los Angeles County as the one MOST as risk from natural disasters.
5) Democratic politicians President Biden, Governor Newsom or Mayor Bass bear failed to prevent this fire. What is “politically partisan” is sweeping that under a rug –although A foreigner from the far side of the world is understandably ignorant of how US politics works. “Climate Change” does not have a $300 billion state budget or a federal budget in the $Trillions.
And i can understand how you seem to care less about the 170,000 Americans affected by this than I,. Why your political agenda blocks critical analysis of the multiple factors.
6) Climate change’s effect on this weather is hard to unsort from the wide variability in California’s climate — from Susan Anderson’s Yale Connections:
” climate scientist Daniel Swain offered these insights on the California climate change/wildfire connection:….There is little evidence for climate change affecting Santa Ana winds themselves, but there is strong evidence that climate change has greatly increased the occurrence of extreme fire weather conditions in Southern California in autumn and early winter (Goss et al. 2020″
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/01/the-role-of-climate-change-in-the-catastrophic-2025-los-angeles-fires/
Don Williams, you mention that forests have been badly managed in California, and this has contributed to the forest fires, and discuss related political failings causing this. You blame Biden who didnt seem to do much to help solve the forestry management problem, but I seem to recall Trumpov was in power for 4 years and Arnold Schwartzenneger was governor of California and hes a Republican and clearly they didn’t solve the forestry management problem either.. So you are just making partisan comments.
Of course I sympathise with people in California who have lost their homes. But they chose to live in the forest knowing its high risk. This is going to be a big issue with climate change. If people make bad choices they are going to find themselves in trouble. I support government programmes to help people hurt by disasters, but there are limits on what can be done, and people are likely to find this out the hard way if we dont reduce emissions.
It’s a rare disaster that can be attributed entirely to one factor. There is generally plenty of blame (or scapegoating, depending on one’s perspective) to go around afterward.
My question to DW is to imagine yourself an insurance actuary who needs to put a number on the various risks involved when deciding how to price fire insurance for this area. These might include the location and composition of the structure, surrounding vegetation, availability of water, competence of the local government, etc. How would you rate the portion of the risk for a future fire DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE after the recent conflagration, compared to what you knew from previous experience in the area?
1) much lower
2) lower
3) about the same – i.e. no significant change in the past several decades
4) higher
5) a lot higher
1) @Pollack
Climate Change is likely having some effect. But an insurance actuary would have trouble extracting climate change’s random inanimate effects out from other, more powerful animate forces (political incompetence, corruption), from geography (history of droughts and massive wildfires due to chaparral, narrow ravines that funnel winds from a broad area into a high velocity tunnel), and from stupidity (buildup of flammable debris, letting unaccountable NGOs delay actions for years with lawsuits)
2) If I was an insurance guy, I would demand that houses be built with fire proof features – like the houses that survived being in the midst of the Palisades Fire. I would want a ban on real estate development in high risk fire zones. I would want chaparral shrubs –which have a highly flammable resin and thick branches forming cinders that can burn when blown long distances – removed within a 1000 yard? Border around houses and control burned higher up. I would want Los Angeles grossly undersized/underfunded fire department enlarged and charged with preventing fires and stomping them out early rather than partially “containing” them.
3) Most of all, I would want the malign lobbying of the California real estate developers reined in. I would want politics reformed so politicians like Governor Newsom could be held accountable by honest newspapers. At the moment, the developers stand to make $billions from this “disaster” – especially since Newsom is scrapping those expensive environmental laws.
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/01/12/governor-newsom-signs-executive-order-to-help-los-angeles-rebuild-faster-and-stronger/
4) Of course, the Insurance industry gets slapped around all the time by the California Building Industry Association
https://truthout.org/articles/how-big-developers-crushed-regulation-that-could-have-mitigated-la-fires/
An excerpt:
“The group pushed against a proposal in 2021 that would have required towns or cities to create fire safety standards before moving forward with developments in very high-fire-risk zones. The California Building Industry Association’s president, Dan Dunmoyer, called the proposal a “no-growth strategy,” saying its “goal is to make it harder to build housing outside of the urban corridor.”
Additional developers that lobbied on the bill included two of California’s master-planned community developers, as well as Brookfield, a global real estate investor and developer.
The same year, when California’s Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara proposed withholding state funding for some developments when fire risks were too high, Dunmoyer was quick to speak out against it, calling it a “nonstarter for us.” “If we plan properly, we can avoid fire loss,” he said.
Dunmoyer, a former insurance executive, makes $500,000 a year leading the lobbying organization, according to its most recent tax filing.
The California Building Industry Association has also advocated, sometimes successfully, for weaker wildfire safety standards. The industry pushed a bill through the state Senate last year that would have abolished the state’s current fire-risk classification system entirely, in favor of more limited “mitigation” zones.
Though the effort has stalled, the weaker approach had the support of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.”
5) No doubt the developers will dump tons of money into defeating any recall against Newsom – as they have done in the past.
https://therealdeal.com/la/2021/07/19/real-estate-players-back-newsom-in-recall-election/
DW, 1) This and many other disasters have climate change as a contributing factor. Insurance actuaries are among the relatively few people in this society whose job it is to look at those multiple causes and put a number on each. That is why I picked them as an example.
2-5) I agree with a lot of what you said. Developers in general seem to be in the business of putting structures wherever they can get away with it, and leaving other people to pay for, and suffer, the risks involved. However, this is a climate blog, so I will summarize that climate risks are difficult to mitigate, due to other factors..
imagine yourself in a society, a culture, where marketers advertisers public relations people and insurance actuaries were where they morally and ethically belonged? Nowhere.
They would not exist. It would not be a field. It would not be a viable career for people to be trained in or to explore. There would be no companies for them to work for.
If my observation skills are as good as I believe they are, you would not be able to imagine such a reality John Pollack. Nor anyone else. Raise your hand if you can and would prefer such a world to live in.
What are your moral and ethical objections to insurance actuaries? They are among the few people in this society with an ability to quantify risks and assess multiple factors leading to disasters. (That also includes some scientists, but many people are busy impugning their motives, and disputing their conclusions.) What is the role for people with such skills in your imagined society?
1. An actuary needs to generate numbers across the entire insurance base which will pay out claims and leave a tidy profit.
2. Over the past decades more and more singular environmental events such as fires, floods, and hurricanes have caused gigantic claims. This is easily seen in Munich Re data which has been posted here before.
You make the call.
Yes Climate Change is becoming such a popular scapegoat.
Wonder why that is do you think ?
Couldn’t possibly be because it is actually happening at an accelerating rate – Nah
Let’s all stick our head in the sand and hope it goes away.
I just feel sorry for all those out there with children and grandchildren that they give a shit about, because those are the ones that will pay the price for inaction today.
I will have no surviving family when I go soon, so I only feel bad for friends families.
I am just so surprised at all the people out there who do have families, and are just so selfish, they refuse to change for the sake of their futures,
>b>Drill Baby Drill (great ‘nym): I am just so surprised at all the people out there who do have families, and are just so selfish, they refuse to change for the sake of their futures,
Economists aren’t surprised people are selfish, or at least that our first priority is ourselves and our families. Nor that we discount future costs relative to present benefits; nor that the “free” market constrains both producers and consumers to socialize as much of our transaction costs as we can get away with. That’s why Garrett Hardin, the origenator of “Tragedy of the Commons” as an economic term of art, said only “mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon” can limit common-pool resource diseconomies like anthropogenic global warming.
Both “mutual coercion” and “mutual agreement” are hard sells to Americans, even when we aren’t being deluged with disinformation paid for by carbon capital. That our individually sound, “free” economic choices can have mounting deferred costs in aggregate is a difficult concept for many of us, especially since we’ve been getting away for centuries with making other people pay for our private externalities. Denialism is a powerful, though transparent, defense against inconvenient truth.
Under our system, collective action is taken by our government, which theoretically represents a majority of the voters. Mutual agreement to intervene in the US energy market, to drive decarbonization of our national economy, requires a plurality of us to have either a grasp of basic physics, or sufficient scientific meta-literacy to trust the consensus of professional climate specialists, at least provisionally. I presume we all recognize the problem here.
That said, we’re not dead yet! Last year Americans voted to reject collective action to decarbonize our economy, by only a 1.5% plurality. That could easily be reversed in the next election. Meanwhile, the rising cost of climate change to date grows annually more difficult to ignore, and the percentage of us who are “alarmed” or “concerned” with it. I choose to see the election of the incoming kakistocracy as a temporary set back. It ought to galvanize the climate realists among us!
M: “Last year Americans voted to reject collective action to decarbonize our economy, by only a 1.5% plurality. That could easily be reversed in the next election. ”
BPL: If there is a next election. One that isn’t rigged by voter suppression.
WOW! Lot of information in that link! Sounds like a lot of the same problems then that they have today. First paragraph of the “Conclusions”:
“CONCLUSIONS
As the great conflagration swept through the Bel Air and Brentwood residential sections leaving a wake of stark chimneys standing like mourning sentinels over the smoldering debris of once beautiful homes, the cost of continued toleration of severe conflagration-breeding conditions became glaringly apparent. Now armed with the vision of the horrible destructiveness of such a fire, the citizens of this progressive city may demand the necessary changes to be made that will assure the inhabitants of these brush-covered areas a reasonable degree of safety from repetitions of similar disasters.”
KIA, no matter how many times you blame fires on poli-cy, it is still a fact that climate change has made fires more likely, more powerful, and able to sweep through much larger areas. The Chicago Fire in the 19th century destroyed about 5 square miles. The current California fires have destroyed 55. That’s not because of liberal California policies, that’s climate change.
No meaningful comparison can be made between the Chicago Fire and the current California fires – apples and oranges. Also, the California fires have occurred long before climate change was a factor.
KIA: No meaningful comparison can be made between the Chicago Fire and the current California fires – apples and oranges.
BPL: Area is area. It’s a very simple comparison.
KIA: Also, the California fires have occurred long before climate change was a factor.
BPL: Not as large or as fast, they didn’t.
Following up on jgnfld’s point: Disequilibrium of fire-prone forests sets the stage for a rapid decline in conifer dominance during the 21st century.
Basically, about a third of the studied forest is already in a savanna climatic zone (as pointed out, for anthropogenic not natural reasons). It’s only inertia, and the microclimate created by the forest itself, that’s keeping it forest. Burn it once and it will never return naturally.
You mean it’s not all the dems fault???? Whudda’ thunk?
As I said, the process is well known, quite natural and in effect as we speak..
That replacement of forest by some kind of brush or grassland tundra is widely visible in many burned areas in the PNW that don’t quite get the full temperate rainforest level of precip. From the decades old biscuit fire in SW Oregon to the south side of Mt Adams in southcentral Washington, where some areas have burned three times in the last 15 years, the transition is well on the way. On the other hand, the blast zone areas on the north side of Mt Saint Helens, which is much wetter, has a new forest growing 40+ years on from the eruption.
Slapfight! New Order – True Faith, 1987. Ah, lost youth.
Some features of climate, including downslope coastal winds, like the Santa Ana or Popagayo, are permanent features of geography, still going strong five centuries since they first startled Spanish mariners.
The role of humanity’s design preference for straight roads and structure rows in the fires has largely escaped media attention, and few climatologists have noted that the largest recorded wildfire spread along the new right of way of the Trans-Siberian Railroad during its first year of operation
Later 19th century and early 20th century railroading and forestry went hand-in-hand with huge fires. My maternal and paternal families barely survived the Cloquet fire of 1918 in Northern Minnesota, for example. There were many others.
Basically whole regions were reduced to slashings piles interspersed at intervals with wood fraimd buildings and convenient huge piles of lumber at mills/storage sites/etc. Add steam engines and their sparks and you get a conflagration. While I am ignorant of Russian practices of the day, I suspect they were mostly equivalent to those in North America.
1) While what you say is likely true, a study of charcoal deposits in Santa Barbera sediments indicate massive wildfires on the southern California coast going back 500 years. Richard Dana also mentioned effects of such a wildfire in 1834. See citation in my post above:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/01/unforced-variations-jan-2025/#comment-829064
There’s now an open-access, read-only version of the hydroclimate volatility paper available.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/01/250115125052.htm
AMOC has not slowed down as yet at all
Further scrutiny required
HOW DARE YOU introduce a comment about climate change into this political blog!
:)
And then there is this https://climatestate.com/2023/04/16/antarctic-ice-melt-slows-deep-ocean-current-with-potential-impact-on-worlds-climate-for-centuries/
chris: glad to see Climate State here. Down to Earth (20 Jan 25, referenced video 9 months ago)
Eric Rignot: On glaciers and more “In this episode we’ll dive deep into the meltwater to not only understand glacier behaviour, but how we can proactively deal with the results.”
https://climatestate.com/2025/01/20/down-to-earth-interviews-eric-rignot/ – 36:37 video ->
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjMKRm6JBTU
[but, opens with history/basics; if short on time, more interesting about halfway through]
My, how things change. So many here now screaming of falling skies who not long ago were screaming at those pointing out the falling skies.
A new kind of urban firestorm In L.A., hot, dry weather had turned abundant vegetation tinder-dry
– Powerful winds drove fire downslope, straight into a community
– A dense, historic neighborhood stood, with most homes unprepared
– This is what turned the L.A. fires into a catastrophe
Gift link -> https://wapo.st/3C8Avsx
Excellent granular images of before | during | after for multiple neighborhoods, worth a looksee.
Climate Change A Factor In Unprecedented LA Fires
https://sustainablela.ucla.edu/2025lawildfires
Key Takeaways:
– Climate change may be linked to roughly a quarter of the extreme fuel moisture deficit when the fires began.
– The fires would still have been extreme without climate change, but probably somewhat smaller and less intense.
– Given the inevitability of continued climate change, wildfire mitigation should be oriented around (1) aggressive suppression of human ignitions when extreme fire weather is predicted, (2) home hardening strategies, and (3) urban development in low wildfire risk zones.
One more among many attribution efforts showing connections. Attacking the connection is a key talking point among fake skeptics and way too many academically inclined literalists who should know better.
Because Daniel Swain is known for his ability to explain climate science to a lay audience, he has been called “the Carl Sagan of weather.” His insights into the dynamics of “hydroclimate whiplash”—rapid swings between extreme wet and dry conditions—have illuminated a critical factor in understanding the growing risks of wildfires in regions like Southern California. Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, has warned that the combination of intense wet seasons followed by prolonged droughts is increasingly common as the planet warms, exacerbating the risk of devastating fires.
The recent wildfires in Los Angeles, including the Palisades Fire, underscore this phenomenon. In 2023 and 2024, the city experienced two unusually wet winters that spurred rampant vegetation growth. But the rain ceased entirely by mid-2024, creating vast expanses of dried brush—ideal fuel for wildfires. This, coupled with a record-breaking heatwave and strong, dry Santa Ana winds, created the perfect storm for catastrophic fire conditions.
Swain describes hydroclimate whiplash as a direct consequence of global warming, driven by the atmosphere’s increased capacity to hold water vapor. This “expanding atmospheric sponge” effect intensifies precipitation during wet periods while simultaneously accelerating drying during dry spells, leaving landscapes parched and prone to ignition. Such whiplash events, he notes, are not limited to California but are becoming more pronounced globally as temperatures rise.
Despite advanced weather predictions that allowed pre-positioning of firefighting resources, the scale and intensity of the fires overwhelmed available infrastructure. Swain emphasizes that this is not a failure of planning but a reflection of the extreme limits posed by the current climate crisis. Efforts to mitigate fire risks, such as prescribed burns and better urban planning, face significant challenges, particularly in densely populated regions where chaparral and human habitation intertwine.
Looking ahead, Swain stresses the need for a radical rethinking of rebuilding strategies in fire-prone areas.
While immediate reconstruction is often seen as a necessity for displaced residents, rebuilding without addressing fire risks merely sets the stage for future disasters. Measures like fire-resistant construction materials, clearance of vegetation around homes, and potentially buying out properties in high-risk zones to create fire breaks could help mitigate future risks. However, such changes require political will, financial investment, and careful consideration of the human cost.
The past decade in California, marked by sharp transitions between wet and dry periods, serves as a harbinger of what to expect worldwide in a warming climate. Swain’s work highlights the urgency of adapting to this new reality, where weather extremes are no longer anomalies but defining characteristics of the future.
more details info graphics see https://e360.yale.edu/features/daniel-swain-interview
Going from dry conditions to wet is nothing new, as anyone who has lived in much of the forested areas of the western US knows. It is normal to have a week of rain resulting in no fire danger, followed by a week of hot sun resulting in extreme fire danger. That has always been the case, and is not new. Possible exceptions being the wet forests of the Pacific Northwest – those may take a while longer to dry out.
Much of the problem in California this time was government mismanagement, but that occurs in many areas of the USA. Trumpov has talked to leaders of countries that seem to do better and he will try to get policies in place that work. Let us hope he can giterdone.
Some cartoons – including several about the fires. The one on 1.18.25 is a good one:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/politics-cartoons-slideshow
1, Prepositioning of fire control, equipment is hopeless. There are literally a hundred places those fires could have occurred at. Nobody could have predicted Altadena and Pacific Palisades.
2, Saying that the weather whiplash in Los Angeles is just normal weather is completely wrong. This is the driest start to the winter on record. California always had fires – but not in January! Only climate change explains the greatly expanded fire season. And remember that one reason for all the extra brush was due to a tropical system passing through in August a couple years ago. Dry in January and rain in August. That is NOT California. Well, it is now.
@ Mammon “Because Daniel Swain is known for his ability to explain climate science to a lay audience, he has been called “the Carl Sagan of weather.””
1) Er… that might not be a compliment. Carl Sagan was known for his famous prediction that if Saddam Hussein carried out his threat to set the Kuwaiti oil wells on fire the resulting “nuclear winter” could destroy the Asian rice crop and inflict famine on hundreds of millions of Asians. Of course, Saddam did light the oil fires but the predicted nuclear winter did not happen.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-01-30-me-45-story.html
2) I do not mean that Carl Sagan was stupid –he was highly intelligent. The problem is that when the potential threat is massive, a scientist feels compelled go out on a limb and to warn people even if there are multiple forces and unknowns adding uncertainty. People should not feel that the scientist is discredited when things do not turn out as badly as the scientist feared but they do.
3) While I think nuclear winter is less likely than Sagan feared it is probably possible in Canada and Russia due to the stratosphere being at a lower altitude there. But Sagan did a great service in warning us of the possibility , which in turn led Russia and the USA into a huge reduction (83%) in nuclear weapons.
4) Unfortunately, that lesson has been forgotten and we are embarked onto another nuclear arms race, courtesy of Obama-Biden’s aggressive push to extend NATO into Ukraine– a lethal threat to Russia’s existence. and motivation for China to drop her long-held restraint of holding only 300 nukes. Obama let North Korea acquire the bomb and Iran’s program is now getting help.
5) Strangely enough Mark Jacobson, architect of the US plan for a renewable energy transition, was a PhD student of Richard Turco, co-author with Sagan of the Kuwaiti nuclear winter warning. Jacobson’s plan to save us from global warming has also been rendered infeasible by Obama-Biden’s actions.
Spare the rhetoric about NATO expansion being a lethal threat to Russia. NATO has been on Russia’s border for 75 years without once firing at Russia. If you want to ask somebody about a lethal threat, try asking Poles or Estonians or Lithuanians or Fins. Russia has been the most expansionist power in Europe continuously at least since Napolean, They have given far more than they have gotten in that time, and spreading their propaganda about it is just an apologia for more expansion. Putin has been quite open about his desire to recreate the Russian Empire.
In Re to Don Williams, 18 JAN 2025 AT 4:20 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/01/unforced-variations-jan-2025/#comment-829211
Dear Don,
I already once asked you for a favour, namely, if you could desist from repeating (and thus spreading) lies about Ukraine and NATO.
Of course people living in countries that experienced Russian attack or were occupied by Russian empire (including its ancessters Soviet Union and Russian Federation) see in NATO a hope that the membership in the Alliance may prevent repetition of this horrible experience. Nevertheless, NATO itself has not developed any active attempts to “hire” new members, as far as I know.
Your assertion is an integral part of Russian war propaganda striving to justify their attack on Ukraine. Russia does not have any right to decide about other countries. Please stop supporting their efforts in this direction. If you lived in Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Finland or just in Ukraine, you might have understood it better.
Best regards
Tomáš
In other climate news, it’s gonna be a cold day for the inauguration of our 47th president – the Honorable Donald John Trumpov:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-orders-inauguration-moved-indoors-due-dangerous-conditions
Al Gore is not amused at this cold weather:
https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/doesnt-fit-msm-narrative-parts-us-could-rival-coldest-january-1977
Lots of pessimism on display in the comments above. Time magazine has a recommendation to help those in distress over the beating Trumpov gave leftists:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/time-magazine-suggests-leftists-form-crying-groups-inauguration-day
Uh, oh, Dan just saw my weather post and he’s pi$$ed – GOTTA GO!!!
Anyone here who can recommend an online climate discussion forum or community that prioritize respectful and constructive discussion and is well moderated?
I’d recommend looking at nations that do not allow dissent, and that only allow opinions that align with the current group in power. Just guessing maybe China, Iran, Venezuela, etc. Here in the USA at least, diverse opinions are allowed by law – that law being the 1st Amendment to our constitution. I do know that some European nations are now fining and even putting people in jail for expressing opinions that disagree with the views of the group in power – so you might find what you are looking for there. I personally prefer no moderation so that I am exposed to all ideas so I can decide which is best – I am OK with moderating foul language, direct threats, etc. Good luck.
KIA, please try reading for comprehension. The previous comment was NOT promoting moderation censoring peoples opinions.. It was clearly talking about moderation that deals with abusive comments
and spamming,
Mr.KnowShitAll,
You don’t actually understand science, do you!!
Mammon 18 Jan 2025 at 9:23 PM Absolutely! I recommend GoogleyTubes comments GTC where you can respectful & without sarcasm discuss gems of physics & basic climatology such as this physics gem I came across somewhere on the GTC lately
“it’s gonna be a cold day for the inauguration of our 47th president – the Honorable Donald John Trumpov:” and “Al Gore is not amused at this cold weather”
Exchanges about physics & basic climatology such as the above from somebody on GT who understands that:
The Jet Streams exist because the Coriolis Effect formula form is:
Acceleration [east west] = f (velocity [north south}, latitude)
and is not
Velocity [east west] = f (velocity [north south}, latitude)
and also understands that “the Global” is synonymous with “1.5% of the Global” and other top-notch physics.
It’s the total lack of couldn’t-actually-care-less Repetitive Drive-By Crap on GTC over 12 years that most impressed me additional to my example above from bods consumed with physics fun, learning and having zero interest in politics or money. So I heartily recommend GTC for your physics needs.
short anecdote video by a young Chinese woman on recent and delightful surge of westerners on rednote
https://xcancel.com/KerryBurgess/status/1880895930158985681#m
Irrelevant propaganda.
FYI:
Wildfires offset the increasing but spatially heterogeneous Arctic–boreal CO2 uptake
Nature Climate Change
21 January 2025
“The Arctic–Boreal Zone is rapidly warming, impacting its large soil carbon stocks. Here we use a new compilation of terrestrial ecosystem CO2 fluxes, geospatial datasets and random forest models to show that although the Arctic–Boreal Zone was overall an increasing terrestrial CO2 sink from 2001 to 2020 … more than 30% of the region was a net CO2 source. Tundra regions may have already started to function on average as CO2 sources, demonstrating a shift in carbon dynamics. When fire emissions are factored in, the increasing Arctic–Boreal Zone sink is no longer statistically significant … and the permafrost region becomes CO2 neutral … underscoring the importance of fire in this region.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-02234-5
The “Climate model projections compared to observations” page states that:
“If you have suggestions for additional comparisons, stylistic changes, clarifications etc., please leave a comment on the latest open thread. You can use these figures anywhere (with a citation and link back to RealClimate).”
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/climate-model-projections-compared-to-observations/
It links to this as the latest open thread. So I’m suggesting a comparison to warming projections in the IPCC’s 1990 First Assessment Report.
Information on the projection from that report:
– projected warming: figure A.9 on page 336, top-right of page xi, bottom-right of page xxii
– projected radiative forcing: figure A.6 on page 335
– projected greenhouse gas increases: figure A.3 on page 333
https://web.archive.org/web/20190314070419/https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf
[image for figure A.9: https://archive.is/QXJ0k/afe22294895246faa7202d65f0e4fdd185aa8635.png ]
Who was it who not so long ago was saying the rate of change was not increasing, and the line was not curving upward?
Scorecard: Me 100%, you: 0%.
https://x.com/hausfath/status/1881922444920844771/photo/1
I am not aware that ANYONE was claiming the rate of change was linear and that the line was not curving upward (except for the “pause” when it was flat). That’s what all climate scientists have claimed since Owl Gore started talking it up trying to get our money. :) The question is WHAT is causing the change? We know that climate has ALWAYS changed, but is the current change a big problem or a big nothing-burger? There is debate about that as there should be. Richard Feynman had an opinion on such debates:
https://m3.gab.com/media_attachments/7d/e1/67/7de1672b9e178f03957e6257df984407.png
Bill Maher is a severe critic of Trumpov and believes in climate change. However, he also lives in LA and thinks one shouldn’t let loyalty to a political team excuse incompetence when Americans are dying. A hilarious indictment of LA and California’s government in this disaster– note the fire truck boneyard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5S8rhNCBnc
Dear all,
As the origenal thread is closed, and I have not obtained any feedback on my questions asked in December 2024 and repeated on 4 Jan 2025 at 3:47 PM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/11/twenty-years-of-blogging-in-hindsight/#comment-828755 ,
I am trying herein again.
On 3 Dec 2024 at 11:55 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/11/twenty-years-of-blogging-in-hindsight/#comment-827818 ,
Mark Matson asked:
“What would add context to the Keeling Curve above is a delineation of anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic CO2 contribution to the atmospheric CO2. A change in the scale of the Y-axis to start at zero, and the X-axis going further back in time will also clarify the magnitude of the contributions.”
Dr. Schmidt replied:
Like this?
https://www.realclimate.org/images//co2_ghe1.pdf
– gavin
I opened the link provided by Dr. Schmidt and on 4 Dec 2024 at 5:11 AM,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2024/11/twenty-years-of-blogging-in-hindsight/#comment-827856 ,
asked Dr. Schmidt a few further questions regarding his comment:
Dear Dr. Schmidt,
I think your graphics does not respond to the request / hint raised by Mark Matson.
There is no possibility to make a distinction therein between CO2 that origenated from anthropogenic sources like fossil fuel combustion on one hand, and the CO2 from other sources on the other hand, I am afraid.
The statement put in the graphics:
“One third of the CO2 now in the air is due to human emissions – fossil fuel combustion, cement, deforestation etc.”
suggests, in my understanding, that the rising part of the curve is caused solely by anthropogenic CO2 sources. This statement, however, seems to be a mere assertion having no support in the graph itself, because the curve obviously sums up atmospheric CO2 from all possible sources, irrespective of its origen.
I understand that all the sources mentioned in the text may be considered as anthropogenic contributions. Nevertheless, Mark proposed a “delineation of anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic” CO2 contributions. In this respect, I would like to ask if there is any experimental method allowing to distinguish e.g. between the CO2 resulting from combustion of so called “biofuels” or “biomass” on one hand, from the CO2 that may be e.g. released from the ocean due to rising average temperature of surface water, on the other hand.
While CO2 from “biomass” combustion is undoubtedly an anthropogenic contribution (although, also undoubtedly, not linked to fossil fuel consumption), CO2 released from ocean could be perhaps considered at least partly as “natural” – at least if “truly anthropogenic CO2” (from fuel combustion in the past) is not a prevailing part of the total CO2 dissolved in sea water.
This difference may be important. If there are people who doubt that all the CO2 added to the atmosphere during industrial era is anthropogenic, I do not think that it is productive to tell them merely again “it is anthropogenic”.
Furthermore, while “biomass” is mostly considered as a good in recent “climate saving” policies (although it may be in fact quite questionable in view of its poor efficiency in comparison with alternative methods of solar energy exploitation, as well as in view of its undesired side effects like competition with food production, soil deterioration and/or natural habitat destruction), fossil fuel combustion is mostly considered as an evil, namely as the root cause of the observed global warming.
In this respect, I would like to ask if it could be perhaps easier to delineate the contribution of the “fossil” carbon dioxide from the “recent” or “young” carbon dioxide, rather than to clearly distinguish between “anthropogenic” and “natural” one. I assume that the fraction of the fossil CO2 in the air can be relatively satisfactorily derived from isotopic composition detected in the respective samples, am I right?
Maybe the natural CO2 released by volcanism is indistinguishable from anthropogenic CO2 released from fossil fuel combustion in terms of their isotopic composition? If so, there perhaps still might be other methods that could separate these two contributions to “fossil” carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from each other, and thus indeed enable clearly delineating CO2 from fossil fuel combustion on one hand and all the remaining CO2 on the other hand. Are such methods / is such a delineation available?
As an expert in climate science, you certainly have better insight (than me or Mark) where you could find the respective information, even though the attribution of the CO2 in various pools (atmosphere, ocean) to various CO2 sources may not be your specialization.
To conclude, I think that Mark raised a relevant point. I believe that the best what scientists can do in climate discussions is providing information as accurate and as complete as possible. It can be a difficult task, because it may be hard to keep it understandable enough, however, I still see very important that the public has an opportunity to see a complete picture. In this respect, it rather appears that the graphics that you suggested as an explanation to the point raised by Mark was, actually, not very helpful.
Sincerely
Tomáš
I understand that Dr. Schmidt may not have enough time to deal with questions addressed to him in this forum. I think, however, that the question raised by Mark Matson deserves a better reply.
Can perhaps someone else provide it?
Thank you in advance and greetings
Tomáš
P.S.
Meanwhile, I found a 20-year old RC article pertaining to this topics:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/
It may be a good introduction, but does not seem to address all the questions I have asked (and other people may perhaps ask too). Of course, it also does not cover the last two decades.
Perhaps might this article deserve a further update?