Fine analysis as usual BUT the real takeaway is that THE EXTREME HEAT WAS CALUSED BY HUMANS - the Dust Bowl was notoriously a consequence of bad farming practices that plowed up the deep-rooted prairie sod; when it dried out the exposed dirt baked and absorbed more sunlight, leading to more drying etc. Moreover the PROBLEM WAS SOLVED by improved land use policies. So the heat peak is actually a perfect lesson, in miniature, of anthropogenic climate change!
Thanks, Dr. Weart! Mercenary and volunteer obstructionists love to reanimate the undead 'it was hotter in 1934' meme. Science defenders have commonly countered with 'not globally', which is both true and unassailable. It hadn't previously occurred to me that the extreme heat seen in the American Midwest was itself anthropogenic, though not because of greenhouse emissions to that date. Now it's plain as day! As the Gemini LLM says:
"Humans did not cause the sea-surface temperature shifts that kicked off the dry weather, but by dismantling the biophysical shield of the Great Plains, human land use converted a routine, ocean-driven dry spell into an unprecedented, self-amplifying thermal disaster. "
I read Worster's "Nature's Economy" 45 years ago, when anthropogenic global warming wasn't a clear and present danger. In it and his subsequent book "Dust Bowl", he makes clear the impact of sod-busting on the unprecedented regional drought and dust, but a direct connection to lethal heat waves wasn't made. I read "The Discovery of Global Warming" when it was first published, but it makes only the briefest mention of the dust bowl heat, in a photo caption:
"Terrible dust storms were accompanied by unprecedented drought and heat from sun warming the dessicated soil".
I feel like a big piece of the puzzle just fell into place!
Well, if that isn't just the cruelest thing to say to the victims of the 1.3C of anthropogenic (i.e. by you and me) global warming in the last 175 years and their loved ones. How 'miniscule' do you suppose they actually are? With reasonable certainty, they're at least more numerous than li'l ol' you! 'Interminable'? Don't be ridiculous. We can be sure it has terminated some homes, livelihoods and lives, even if not yours! You may as well say "I don't care! I'm buffered from climate change enough that I see no need to decarbonize myself, and other people don't matter!"
LOL! The Dust Bowl 'proves' only that humans can make huge mistakes and sometimes partially recover from them, after mass casualties. But your claim it 'proves' anything is strictly science-y: proof is for mathematics and distilled beverages. Both Drs. Hausfather and Weart are actual scientists. You just might be right, but my money's on them. Hell, pigs might fly, but I'm not investing my retirement savings in large sturdy umbrellas!
That's just it: It ·isn't· 1.3C ("global" "average" "scientifically calculated").
It's England acclimated to historic highs of 24°C having to deal increasingly more often with temps hitting >37°C. It's thawing permafrost slumping Arctic coastal villages into the sea. It's high tides sending brackish flooding ever more often up through the streets of the City of Miami. It's more coral reefs ("the nurseries of the sea") dying back due to high ocean temps. It's insurance actuaries throwing up their hands at the uncoverable increases in risk. It's temperatures creeping high enough that insect populations no longer die back during the winter. It's meteorologists arguing about whether they should add Category 6 to their tropical cyclone tables. It's mass rain events happening often enough that there's no time for affected communities to recover before the next one hits. It's civil engineers increasing the resilience standards for roads and bridges and transmission towers. It's wildfires that burn more combustible mass (crown fires) than in the past.
The problem is that "human ingenuity" cannot trump organized profiteering greed.
Sadly, the biggest advantage people see that renewable energy has over dirty, wasteful lung-damaging and habitat-destroying combustion technology is that it has gotten ·cheap· enough that people feel the difference in their wallets and budgets.
I'll take it, because depending on people with power to care about others is not reliable.
Yes, China subsidized electrification (alternative to combustion tech) for years, and even now that they've stopped subsidizing it, more companies are switching to wind/solar/battery power. Despite the initial higher price for EV semis, more than 50% of purchases are now EV (over traditional diesel trucks) because of the clear savings in maintenance and fuel costs. (China's economy is consuming ·less· diesel in absolute terms while its GDP is ·growing·, standing that ancient talking point on its head.)
Texas grid power consumers (like myself) are paying lower prices even despite increased demand and demand peaks (higher population and higher temps) because of the solar and batteries displacing fuel-reliant power generators.
"needed bribes in the form of tax subsidies"
You aren't American, so maybe you don't realize how much blood and treasure the US government has spent subsidizing access to oil&gas, putting Middle East military bases and wars on the federal debt credit card while oil&gas companies (and their bought politicians) reaped the benefits. Even before Operation Epic Fuckup, the US was spending $80 billion a year for the military posting a presence in the Strait of Hormuz. US oil&gas companies pay far lower taxes* in the US than in any other country, too, even as they employ fewer people for every dollar of profit they make here.
______________
*They double-dip on depreciation calculations for their wells, for one.
It sounds more and more like you get all your information from youtube and podcasts. You're falling behind. For one thing, Lazard has updated its analyses to 'LCOE+' (https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-energyplus-lcoeplus/), explicitly adding Cost of Firming Intermittency, Marginal Cost vs. New Build, and subsidized vs. unsubsidized views.
"The first blow in [Taylor's glibertarian lukewarmist argument] was offered by my friend Jonathan Adler, who was at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Jon wrote a very interesting paper in which he argued that even if the skeptic narratives are correct, the old narratives I was telling wasn’t an argument against climate action. Just because the costs and the benefits are more or less going to be a wash, he said, that doesn’t mean that the losers in climate change are just going to have to suck it up so Exxon and Koch Industries can make a good chunk of money."
Read a book, Smoke-y. Hell, read a magazine in the dentist's office. You might need to stop smoking whatever it is, first.
I guess my problem is understanding what 'internal variability' is. I get that the cycles such as the ENSO and 11 year solar max and mim turn at different rates so random climate conditions happen depending on their conjunction.
However, the the ENSO is in a self-reinforcing loop with itself and the solar cycle appears to build to a point and then flip back to the start.
If there is a significant trend in the increase of eg double jets over decades can this be said to be internal variability or do we have to look for a cycle or loop that they're in and/or an external cause?
I'm struggling with the concept of natural variation at the moment. Particularly in relation to heatwaves in Europe- I'm in the UK. I understand the solar cycles and the known El Nino etc atmospheric and ocean cycles. What I'm confused about is the eg increase in double jet stream events that are thought to have contributed up to 50% of the intensity of the recent heatwaves.
This increase in double jet streams is not on a known natural cycle. And can any variation be said to be natural; now that humans have altered the energy balance that, like you say, affects everything including temperature, water vapour and atmospheric and ocean currents?
May Occam’s razor bleed you dry! What does it take? The ice is melting, humans have made the release of sequestered carbon the primary activity of a species that makes lemmings look cautious. Coincidence? Other explanations that we can’t find or document but that must be out there because… we don’t want the obvious to be true? Venus says it all - atmosphere can trap heat & more co2 traps more heat. The science is there & it’s pretty basic. Is there a solution? I don’t think anyone has that answer - it doesn’t look good as of now, but denial is not a good one. Come on, it is beyond willful to pretend this massive, ongoing planet-wide release that is driven by the most advanced technology we can develop and the most self-serving attributes of human/animal nature just happens to be going on during an unmistakable spike in temperature but they are not related.
Nice analysis, Zeke. How about a pairing of humidity with temp? The water from the land is more in the air now so we are drying up and the wet bulb temps get reached quicker.
Would you be able to correct the graphic of Ed Hawkins style colour bars showing MWP, Little Ice age and 'modern warming' that clearly only goes up to the early 20th century thus remaining pink?
Two graphics there. The stripes are the like-for-like replacement, but the second one is the more useful of the pair — same PAGES 2k reconstruction plotted conventionally with the 95% uncertainty range, annotated with the big volcanic eruptions and the Maunder minimum. That's the one that actually answers "was the MWP comparable to now," because you can see the intervals rather than compare two shades of red.
Data's on figshare and it's CC-licensed, so it's adaptable. Only catch is it ends at 2019.
Temperature readings since 1895 aren't compelling AT ALL, not when you consider geological time, which you must do if you are truly a climate scientist, or even looking at the climate in a scientific manner.
The fact is that we are in an interglacial interval during an Ice Age, and that there are factors at work other than human-caused pollution, factors we are not close to completely understanding. This is confirmed by the fact that every single worst case climate model prediction has been proven wrong for the last 30 years.
Well, dang, how would you know what a 'true' climate scientist knows? Your sciencey claims about other factors besides human-caused pollution, and rhetorical denial of the demonstrated skill of rapidly advancing coupled GCMs to project future climates from specific emissions pathways, demonstrate no more understanding of science than a barbarian's. Oh, wait!
Sadly, a 55% majority of Ohioans vote barbarically in state and national elections.
Excellent and balanced analysis which makes important points. Keeping the discussion global allows the parochial arguments to be kept in context and not used to detract from the central issue.
Wish there would be a temp to water 💧 location attribution with the historical data. It would show as temps have gone up we lose land water. Also, besides the fure acceleration 🔥 the wet-bulb heat 🥵 amplification.
We know that night time temperatures are warming faster than day time temperatures, we know winters are warming faster than summers, we know polar regions are warming faster so leaving out Alaska is a choice. Add in a change over of thermometers that miss the peak daily temperatures and we have cherry picking of the highest order.
Fine analysis as usual BUT the real takeaway is that THE EXTREME HEAT WAS CALUSED BY HUMANS - the Dust Bowl was notoriously a consequence of bad farming practices that plowed up the deep-rooted prairie sod; when it dried out the exposed dirt baked and absorbed more sunlight, leading to more drying etc. Moreover the PROBLEM WAS SOLVED by improved land use policies. So the heat peak is actually a perfect lesson, in miniature, of anthropogenic climate change!
Thanks, Dr. Weart! Mercenary and volunteer obstructionists love to reanimate the undead 'it was hotter in 1934' meme. Science defenders have commonly countered with 'not globally', which is both true and unassailable. It hadn't previously occurred to me that the extreme heat seen in the American Midwest was itself anthropogenic, though not because of greenhouse emissions to that date. Now it's plain as day! As the Gemini LLM says:
"Humans did not cause the sea-surface temperature shifts that kicked off the dry weather, but by dismantling the biophysical shield of the Great Plains, human land use converted a routine, ocean-driven dry spell into an unprecedented, self-amplifying thermal disaster. "
I read Worster's "Nature's Economy" 45 years ago, when anthropogenic global warming wasn't a clear and present danger. In it and his subsequent book "Dust Bowl", he makes clear the impact of sod-busting on the unprecedented regional drought and dust, but a direct connection to lethal heat waves wasn't made. I read "The Discovery of Global Warming" when it was first published, but it makes only the briefest mention of the dust bowl heat, in a photo caption:
"Terrible dust storms were accompanied by unprecedented drought and heat from sun warming the dessicated soil".
I feel like a big piece of the puzzle just fell into place!
See also: acid rain, ozone hole
Well, if that isn't just the cruelest thing to say to the victims of the 1.3C of anthropogenic (i.e. by you and me) global warming in the last 175 years and their loved ones. How 'miniscule' do you suppose they actually are? With reasonable certainty, they're at least more numerous than li'l ol' you! 'Interminable'? Don't be ridiculous. We can be sure it has terminated some homes, livelihoods and lives, even if not yours! You may as well say "I don't care! I'm buffered from climate change enough that I see no need to decarbonize myself, and other people don't matter!"
LOL! The Dust Bowl 'proves' only that humans can make huge mistakes and sometimes partially recover from them, after mass casualties. But your claim it 'proves' anything is strictly science-y: proof is for mathematics and distilled beverages. Both Drs. Hausfather and Weart are actual scientists. You just might be right, but my money's on them. Hell, pigs might fly, but I'm not investing my retirement savings in large sturdy umbrellas!
That's just it: It ·isn't· 1.3C ("global" "average" "scientifically calculated").
It's England acclimated to historic highs of 24°C having to deal increasingly more often with temps hitting >37°C. It's thawing permafrost slumping Arctic coastal villages into the sea. It's high tides sending brackish flooding ever more often up through the streets of the City of Miami. It's more coral reefs ("the nurseries of the sea") dying back due to high ocean temps. It's insurance actuaries throwing up their hands at the uncoverable increases in risk. It's temperatures creeping high enough that insect populations no longer die back during the winter. It's meteorologists arguing about whether they should add Category 6 to their tropical cyclone tables. It's mass rain events happening often enough that there's no time for affected communities to recover before the next one hits. It's civil engineers increasing the resilience standards for roads and bridges and transmission towers. It's wildfires that burn more combustible mass (crown fires) than in the past.
I was merely inquiring whether 1.3C is intersubjectively 'miniscule', but I take your larger point!
The problem is that "human ingenuity" cannot trump organized profiteering greed.
Sadly, the biggest advantage people see that renewable energy has over dirty, wasteful lung-damaging and habitat-destroying combustion technology is that it has gotten ·cheap· enough that people feel the difference in their wallets and budgets.
I'll take it, because depending on people with power to care about others is not reliable.
'The problem is that "human ingenuity" cannot trump organized profiteering greed.'
I see what you did there!
Smokey used "trumps" first.
Wish I could like that, but I can't.
Yes, China subsidized electrification (alternative to combustion tech) for years, and even now that they've stopped subsidizing it, more companies are switching to wind/solar/battery power. Despite the initial higher price for EV semis, more than 50% of purchases are now EV (over traditional diesel trucks) because of the clear savings in maintenance and fuel costs. (China's economy is consuming ·less· diesel in absolute terms while its GDP is ·growing·, standing that ancient talking point on its head.)
Texas grid power consumers (like myself) are paying lower prices even despite increased demand and demand peaks (higher population and higher temps) because of the solar and batteries displacing fuel-reliant power generators.
"needed bribes in the form of tax subsidies"
You aren't American, so maybe you don't realize how much blood and treasure the US government has spent subsidizing access to oil&gas, putting Middle East military bases and wars on the federal debt credit card while oil&gas companies (and their bought politicians) reaped the benefits. Even before Operation Epic Fuckup, the US was spending $80 billion a year for the military posting a presence in the Strait of Hormuz. US oil&gas companies pay far lower taxes* in the US than in any other country, too, even as they employ fewer people for every dollar of profit they make here.
______________
*They double-dip on depreciation calculations for their wells, for one.
Then there's $35 billion in direct tax subsidies narrowly defined (https://oilchange.org/news/us-fossil-fuel-subsidies/).
It sounds more and more like you get all your information from youtube and podcasts. You're falling behind. For one thing, Lazard has updated its analyses to 'LCOE+' (https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-energyplus-lcoeplus/), explicitly adding Cost of Firming Intermittency, Marginal Cost vs. New Build, and subsidized vs. unsubsidized views.
Speaking of grifters, my favorite *ex*-Libertarian lukewarmer and Cato Institute VP, Jerry Taylor, said in an online magazine interview (https://theintercept.com/2017/04/28/how-a-professional-climate-change-denier-discovered-the-lies-and-decided-to-fight-for-science/):
"The first blow in [Taylor's glibertarian lukewarmist argument] was offered by my friend Jonathan Adler, who was at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Jon wrote a very interesting paper in which he argued that even if the skeptic narratives are correct, the old narratives I was telling wasn’t an argument against climate action. Just because the costs and the benefits are more or less going to be a wash, he said, that doesn’t mean that the losers in climate change are just going to have to suck it up so Exxon and Koch Industries can make a good chunk of money."
Read a book, Smoke-y. Hell, read a magazine in the dentist's office. You might need to stop smoking whatever it is, first.
"you will only embarrass yourself"
Dang. Harsh, bro ;^)!
From one data geek to another, this is absolutely gorgeous! Thank you.
Great post!! There is still plenty of clutching at straws out there in the sceptic community to try and support an agenda.
Great example of how these things are complex and understand the detail and nuance is needed to make any sort of informed assessment.
Zeke you should publish this so that it has a doi.
Kevin
Thanks! There will hopefully be a paper later this year that touches on this and related topics.
I guess my problem is understanding what 'internal variability' is. I get that the cycles such as the ENSO and 11 year solar max and mim turn at different rates so random climate conditions happen depending on their conjunction.
However, the the ENSO is in a self-reinforcing loop with itself and the solar cycle appears to build to a point and then flip back to the start.
If there is a significant trend in the increase of eg double jets over decades can this be said to be internal variability or do we have to look for a cycle or loop that they're in and/or an external cause?
I'm struggling with the concept of natural variation at the moment. Particularly in relation to heatwaves in Europe- I'm in the UK. I understand the solar cycles and the known El Nino etc atmospheric and ocean cycles. What I'm confused about is the eg increase in double jet stream events that are thought to have contributed up to 50% of the intensity of the recent heatwaves.
This increase in double jet streams is not on a known natural cycle. And can any variation be said to be natural; now that humans have altered the energy balance that, like you say, affects everything including temperature, water vapour and atmospheric and ocean currents?
May Occam’s razor bleed you dry! What does it take? The ice is melting, humans have made the release of sequestered carbon the primary activity of a species that makes lemmings look cautious. Coincidence? Other explanations that we can’t find or document but that must be out there because… we don’t want the obvious to be true? Venus says it all - atmosphere can trap heat & more co2 traps more heat. The science is there & it’s pretty basic. Is there a solution? I don’t think anyone has that answer - it doesn’t look good as of now, but denial is not a good one. Come on, it is beyond willful to pretend this massive, ongoing planet-wide release that is driven by the most advanced technology we can develop and the most self-serving attributes of human/animal nature just happens to be going on during an unmistakable spike in temperature but they are not related.
Zeke, just FYI: https://x.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/2080056407999779266?s=20
Nice analysis, Zeke. How about a pairing of humidity with temp? The water from the land is more in the air now so we are drying up and the wet bulb temps get reached quicker.
That is where I thought he was going to go with this (humidity with temp).
Along those lines, it's interesting how densely represented Iowa was with sensors back in the 1930s. And this overlaps exactly with the corn belt.
Thank you. This is top.
Would you be able to correct the graphic of Ed Hawkins style colour bars showing MWP, Little Ice age and 'modern warming' that clearly only goes up to the early 20th century thus remaining pink?
Jumping in — Ed Hawkins made exactly this after the fake version went around in 2020: https://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2020/2019-years/
Two graphics there. The stripes are the like-for-like replacement, but the second one is the more useful of the pair — same PAGES 2k reconstruction plotted conventionally with the 95% uncertainty range, annotated with the big volcanic eruptions and the Maunder minimum. That's the one that actually answers "was the MWP comparable to now," because you can see the intervals rather than compare two shades of red.
Data's on figshare and it's CC-licensed, so it's adaptable. Only catch is it ends at 2019.
Oh thank you- I think I saw that when searching but as I couldn't see the MWP at all thought it was a different time period! - I'll forward to.
Temperature readings since 1895 aren't compelling AT ALL, not when you consider geological time, which you must do if you are truly a climate scientist, or even looking at the climate in a scientific manner.
The fact is that we are in an interglacial interval during an Ice Age, and that there are factors at work other than human-caused pollution, factors we are not close to completely understanding. This is confirmed by the fact that every single worst case climate model prediction has been proven wrong for the last 30 years.
Well, dang, how would you know what a 'true' climate scientist knows? Your sciencey claims about other factors besides human-caused pollution, and rhetorical denial of the demonstrated skill of rapidly advancing coupled GCMs to project future climates from specific emissions pathways, demonstrate no more understanding of science than a barbarian's. Oh, wait!
Sadly, a 55% majority of Ohioans vote barbarically in state and national elections.
Heh! While fund-raising together with Arnold Schwarzenegger at a GOP event in 1990, GHW Bush said "I call him 'Conan the Republican!'"
If I were Zeke, I definitely would not completely understand you.
Have a look
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:T_comp_61-90.pdf
Excellent and balanced analysis which makes important points. Keeping the discussion global allows the parochial arguments to be kept in context and not used to detract from the central issue.
In other words, "Nice!"
Thanks, Zeke. Chris Martz has responded over at X
https://x.com/ChrisMartzWX/status/2079991468815491540
I'd be interested in your comments on his response.
w.
Excited water molecules vaporized more readily
Excited water molecules fend off cloud nucleation
This is a feedback loop
Hot Days, Dry Soils, Wet Skies
Wish there would be a temp to water 💧 location attribution with the historical data. It would show as temps have gone up we lose land water. Also, besides the fure acceleration 🔥 the wet-bulb heat 🥵 amplification.
Temp alone says alot but not enough
We know that night time temperatures are warming faster than day time temperatures, we know winters are warming faster than summers, we know polar regions are warming faster so leaving out Alaska is a choice. Add in a change over of thermometers that miss the peak daily temperatures and we have cherry picking of the highest order.