-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
A recent article in the Daily Mail, and picked up by other media, claims an increase in Arctic ice foretells a cooling trend. The article boasts of a 60% increase in sea ice over the minimum that occurred in 2012. While the actual numbers from IARC-JAXA Information System (IJIS) show, as of yesterday, only a 50% increase, this is still a significant expansion.
Professor Judith Curry, climatologist and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, referred to the title as melodramatic and said of the content of the article: “the ‘cooling’ aspect has been overplayed.” Last year, University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins predicted that “there would be MORE Arctic sea-ice in 2013, compared to 2012.”
An important tool used in analyzing random data is the statistical phenomenon known as reversion to the mean, or regression to the mean. The extent of sea ice at the end of the annual melt, mid to late September, set a extreme minimum in 2012. Using reversion to the mean, it is more likely that the the extent in 2013 will be larger. Exactly what happened. The following graph indicates the variability of sea ice extent and the clear downward trend.
Cherry picking short-term results while ignoring long-term trends is a hallmark of misleading climate reporting. Long-term data needs to be analyzed to average out cyclical dependencies. There is a strong natural variability in sea ice extent and separating the natural from the greenhouse gases requires decades long timescales.
Climate science is an undertaking fraught with complex interactions and unknown cycles with unknown effects. It will take time and money to improve our understanding. However, improvement is mandatory if we are to be responsible conservators of our world.
Climate scientists estimate the amount of sea ice loss due to greenhouse gasses is between 50-70%.
H/T: Dana Nuccitelli, Steven Novella, Climate Dialogue, Alexis Sobel Fitts, Phil Plait.
@Bron
“you don’t think that improved farming technology will help with that at the point in time we have 36 billion people?”
I am sure there will be increases in efficiency. But there are two interesting points relevant to your question. First we can actually put some numbers on what would have to happen to feed 36 billion people. And second, we can consider some of the limitations on any possible increases in efficiency.
In regard to the first point, I will start with your statistic for total arable land: 1,365,069,800 hectares.
If we are trying to support 36 billion people we can calculate the arable area available to support 1 person as:
1365069800/36,000,000,000=0.0379 say .038 hectares to support 1 person.
From UN publications we know that with today’s technology it takes .07 hectares to support one person with a bare subsistence diet and .5 hectares to support one person with a western style diet. This assumes “a largely vegetarian diet, no land degradation or water shortages, virtually no post-harvest waste, and farmers who know precisely when and how to plant, fertilize, irrigate, etc.”
The increases in efficiency necessary to support 36 billion people can then be calculated:
Efficiency improvement to provide a bare subsistence diet to one person on .038 hectares can be calculated: .07/.038=1.8421 say 2.0.
Efficiency improvement to provide western style diet to one person on .038 hectares can be calculated: .5/.038=13.1579 say 13.0.
These numbers tell us that to provide a bare subsistence diet to 36 billion people on the arable land we know about today, we will have to improve agricultural efficiency by nearly a factor of 2.
If we want to provide a western style diet similar for what you and I take for granted we will have to improve agricultural efficiency by a factor of 13.
In response to your question, yes I do believe we can make some gains in agricultural efficiency. But I would argue that the question of technological innovation to support human nutrition is a complex one. Many assume that technological innovation is limited only by human imagination and creativity.
I would argue that when it comes to human nutrition there are real limitations that no amount of creativity can modify or overcome. For example, vegetarians know that they must take special steps such as eating both corn and beans in order to maintain complete protein in their diet. The issue is that we depend on protein to provide 23 essential amino acids. Neither corn nor beans alone provide complete protein.
It should be clear in this example, once agricultural scientist develop a grain that provides complete protein, then innovation is complete. No further improvement is possible.
Similarly with the quantity of protein. It may be a great benefit to improve the yield of protein from say 5% to 10 % . But improvement from, say, 80% to 90% maybe worse that useless. It may be detrimental.
The problem is that when it comes to human nutrition too much protein is a problem as much a too little protein. If we developed super high protein grains we might have to grow filler crops with them to reduce the percentage protein in each meal. The point is that at some point innovation that improves protein yields reaches a limit and can no longer be of benefit to humans – regardless of the motivation, imagination, creativity or genius of innovators.
We can see similar limitations in developing plants that are temperature or drought resistant. At some point, regardless of how temperature resistant a plant is, we have reaped the major advantage. More improvement just does not help very much.
There is a similar limitation with water. Ideally we would like to have plants that produce good yields without any water at all or inundated through the growing season. Even if we could develop such plants, at some point we have achieved to bulk of the gain in efficiency. At some point we would have plants that grow in all the places we have available. We might achieve more in the capability of the plant but at some point that would result in little additional production.
The fact is that technological innovation in agriculture to support human nutrition is not like innovation in other fields. It is hard to imagine ever reaching a limit in the speed or capacity of electronic communication channels. But agriculture is different. There are clear limits, at least when it comes to the ability of humans to make use of the increased capability.
I would guess that in regard to some characteristics of plants we have already reached the useful limit of development. I would also bet that we are within sight of the limits of innovation to produce useful results in most areas of improvement. That does not mean there will not be improvement. There will be. But we may have already taken the easy low hanging fruit of technical innovation when it comes to innovation in agricultural production.
In addition, there may be techniques of farming that work fine in Iowa with plenty of water and relatively inexpensive fuel that can never be transferred to Africa or Asia.
So to me it seems an open question whether we could use every hectare of land and increase efficiency by a factor of 2 in order to support 36 billion people.
I am no expert. I would have to say maybe yes, maybe no. It is any body’s guess.
“Prosperity reduces birth rates, or so it seems that the most developed countries have the fewest births.”
That is a good and relevant observation. But given the realities of constraints on food and energy production, the bulk of those 36 billion people may never reach high enough SES to find a reason to reduce fertility rates.
And you seem to be arguing at cross purposes. On the one hand you seem to claim that ‘technology will save us’ but on the other hand ‘it won’t be necessary for technology to save us because ‘the growing middle class will stop having so many babies.’
It is nice to have a backup plan. But if the back up to ‘technology failed to feed everybody’, is ‘reduced fertility rates of the growing middle class will save us’, then I am just not sure that I am convinced it will work that way.
I think it is more plausible that if technology fails to feed everyone it is far more likely that most populations never reach middle class status and never reduce fertility rates.
It seems to me to be a big, complicated question with no clear answer.
How about this from the DeSmog Blog. I know some folks will have a hard time believing this, but a government study anticipating upcoming conflicts over water in the US was nearly suppressed. No kidding !?! In the western states, water rights and availability have always been a source of contention, but the DoE predicts it is only going to get worse. People were killed over water rights out west as this country was being developed. What next?
Source: http://desmogblog.com/2013/09/13/buried-department-energy-research-predicts-increasing-conflicts-over-water-energy
Look at the bottom of the charts on the Global Change Dashboards and you will find clickable bars. Included in those data sets is information about the sun’s energy. Energy striking the earth from the sun remains constant, with only slight but predictable variability over 11-year cycles due to atmospherics on the sun. On the other hand, sea level rise, global mean temperatures, and co2 levels rise steadily.
The oil maggots have no foresight or imagination.
Thanks, OS.
One hardly needs to be able to read, to get the idea. It’s all consistent.
The troll won’t look at it. Not his job.
Is Bron going to look at it?
Looks like the troll has trouble understanding the difference between climate variability and global climate change. There is a difference. Want a chart? How about these from NOAA. Easy for rational people to read and understand, but incomprehensible for the willfully ignorant.
http://www.climate.gov/
Bron: “Detroit is pretty much what happens when the left has control of government.”
Gee, that’s not what Pat Buchanan says:
http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Pat_Buchanan_Free_Trade.htm
I saw a documentary about a big city in Michigan, Flint or Detroit I think and a clean up crew was working in the background, cleaning up this vast empty stretch of rubble, as a member of the crew was being interviewed. They were on the site of a manufacturing plant, some kind of heavy machinery plant, and the plant had been outsourced to China. Not just the work but the plant. The guy being interviewed was skilled labor and had worked on the take-down of the plant. They stripped everything from the plant and sent it to China because it was cheaper to do that also than build it new in China. Just ship everything and put it together in it’s new country.
This, the shows narrator indicated, was how it’s done pretty routinely these days. Not even the infrastructure is left, the physical capacity is removed. A new entrepreneur would have to build from the ground up instead of re-purpose or modify an existing plant. That struck me as tragic and downright un-American. To just foreclose the future that way.
Gene, the clarity and elegance of your chart is a beautiful thing.
My bottom link is to a set of charts that are pretty cluttered by comparison but anyone that reads this blawg and/or plants flowers or food from seed is aware of the new planting zone charts on every pack of seeds we buy. These are not insignificant changes. In the article below I specially like the way Terry Root puts it:
“It is great that the federal government is catching up with what the plants themselves have known for years now: The globe is warming and it is greatly influencing plants (and animals),” Stanford University biology professor Terry Root wrote in an email.
“Planting Zone Map On Seed Packets Updated To Reflect Warmer Century”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/25/planting-zone-map-updated_n_1230893.html
****
old and new charts:
http://media.nola.com/home_impact/photo/map-hardiness-012612jpg-dc5be5fc86441f38.jpg
Lets read what the EPA says in it’s Key Points. Pay particular attention to the last sentence. Now if you were to compare the graph to NOAA’s ADJUSTED temperature you will see that they have the 30-40’s cooler than 2010 where as the EPA is reverse. SOMEBODY IS LYING
Key Points
Heat waves occurred with high frequency in the 1930s, and these
remain the most severe heat waves in the U.S. historical record
(see Figure 1). Many years of intense drought (the “Dust Bowl”)
contributed to these heat waves by depleting soil moisture and
reducing the moderating effects of evaporation.
There is no clear trend over the entire period tracked by the index. Although it is hard to see in Figure 1 (because of the extreme
events of the 1930s), heat wave frequency decreased in the 1960s
and 1970s but has risen since then (see Figure 1).
Like the heat wave index, the percentage of the United States
affected by heat waves has also risen steadily since the 1970s (see
Figures 2 and 3). The recent period of increasing heat is distinguished by a rise in extremely high nighttime temperatures
The recent period of increasing heat is distinguished by a rise in extremely high nighttime temperatures
The recent period of increasing heat is distinguished by a rise in extremely high nighttime temperatures
The recent period of increasing heat is distinguished by a rise in extremely high nighttime temperatures
So much for no Urban Heat Island
http://www.epa.gov/climate/climatechange/pdfs/print_heat-waves.pdf
Dennis Miller is one of the biggest disappointments of the 21st Century.
Mike Spindell:
I dont think taxation is theft but I do think excessive taxation is immoral. I’d be happy with a 15-20% flat tax on all income and no deductions.
Detroit is pretty much what happens when the left has control of government.
Anecdotes ain’t science, sport. That falls into the No True Scotsman fallacy. A single datum cannot identify a trend line. A single year is a datum.
It is impossible to link a single event, or a single year of events, to a trend that may cover decades.
What proof are YOU prepared to put forward? Not a link to an astroturf site or a planted newspaper article, but some real science. Studies with baseline data and a standard error of measurement.
Bron,
“the changes in the sun are probably what is causing the ice to melt. It is natural earth cycles.”
No, it’s actually the wind causing the ice to melt. The wind, in turn, is generated by trees waving back and forth.
If anyone has a blog, you can get your CO^2 widget at this link. The widget link is in the right side frame.
http://co2now.org/
threads in order to bury relevant scientifically based information.
BAWAHHA HA HA HA HA
Tornadoes are not increasing
Fires (Burnt Acreage) are not increasing
Floods are not increasing
Droughts are not increasing
Hurricanes are not increasing
Typhoons are not increasing
Ice at both ends of the poles are increasing. 19,0000 Manhattans this year
Here is the full text of the white paper, Dealing in Doubt: The Climate Denial Machine Vs Climate Science.
PDF warning, it may open slow.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/report/Dealing%20in%20Doubt%202013%20-%20Greenpeace%20report%20on%20Climate%20Change%20Denial%20Machine.pdf
Gene,
One of the tricks they teach in troll school is to post lots of short, choppy, disjointed comments in climate change threads in order to bury relevant scientifically based information. Note the several comments posted in rapid succession, and we know damn well he did not have time to even skim over the material I linked to, much less read it for understanding.
Keep it up troll. We will be here long after you leave for someplace where the people are more gullible.
Speaking of IPCC, Greenpeace has updated their 2010 white paper. Greenpeace once again undertakes an exhaustive assessment of the climate change denial machine, which is funded by the fossil fuel industry. This paper tracks down its Exxon-funded and tobacco industry-inspired roots in the 1990s. Then, we go to the complex, intricate and highly secretive web of disinformation we are now seeing. Follow the links in the document for a more complete picture.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/Dealing-in-Doubt—the-Climate-Denial-Machine-vs-Climate-Science/
ICE AGE NOW: Earth Gains A Record Amount Of Sea Ice In 2013 –
Gained 19,000 MANHATTANS OF SEA ICE Since This Date Last Year,
The Largest Increase On Record!
http://thecelestialconvergence.blogspot.com/2013/09/ice-age-now-earth-gains-record-amount.html
Ha Ha keep your head buried in the sand.
Tornadoes are not increasing
Fires (Burnt Acreage) are not increasing
Floods are not increasing
Droughts are not increasing
Hurricanes are not increasing
Typhoons are not increasing
Ice at both ends of the poles are increasing. 19,0000 Manhattans this year
What they say:
‘ECS is likely in the range 1.5C to 4.5C… The lower limit of the assessed likely range is thus less than the 2C in the [2007 report], reflecting the evidence from new studies.’
What this means:
ECS – ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’ – is an estimate of how much the world will warm every time carbon dioxide levels double. A high value means we’re heading for disaster. Many recent studies say that previous IPCC claims, derived from the computer models, have been way too high. It looks as if they’re starting to take notice, and so are scaling down their estimate for the first time.