Kevin Anderson Climate change and the need to change behaviour in the West

Here is a new Kevin Anderson video. Anderson spoke at an event hosted by the Danish Institute for International Studies on Thursday 26 April 2018.

Kevin Anderson new talk - Leader or Laggard? Reviewing Sweden climate and sustainability agenda

Kevin Anderson has a new talk in Sweden up on Youtube.

Kevin Anderson talks for 19 minutes. Then there is a panel discussion.

Here is the talk background from the University of Uppsala.

Graph of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations from another cool data package

I feature another cool self-updating data package, this time of concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide recorded from the well-known Mauna Loa Observatory, in Hawaii. Graphs of this data are perhaps the most iconic images of anthropogenic climate change.

This post features the atmospheric carbon dioxide data package. Again, it is one of the Open Knowledge International (OKFN) Frictionless Data core data packages, that is to say it is one of the

"Important, commonly-used datasets in high quality, easy-to-use & open form".

The data is known as the Keeling Curve after the American chemist and oceanographer Charles Keeling. It is an iconic image for anthropogenic climate change.

Like the global temperature data package, the atmospheric carbon dioxide data package is open and tidy and self-updating and resides in an underlying Github data package .

Similarly, the data package can be downloaded as a zip file and unzipped into a folder. That will include the data files in .csv format, an open data licence, a read-me file, a json file and a Bash script that updates the data from source.

I can run the Bash script file on my laptop in an X-terminal window and it goes off and gets the latest data and formats it into 'tidy' csv format files.

Here is a screenshot of the script file updating and formatting the data.

Here is my chart.

Here is the R code for the chart.

2016 the warmest year on record via a cool self-updating data package of global temperature

Radio New Zealand reports that 2016 was the new record warmest year in the instrumental record, so I will pitch in too. But with an extra touch of open data and reproducible research.

It's been a while since I uploaded a chart of global temperature data. Not since I made this graph in 2011 and then before that was this graph from 2010. So it's about time for some graphs. Especially since 2016 was the world's warmest year as well as New Zealand's warmest year.

When I made those charts, I had to do some 'data cleaning' to convert the raw data to tidy data (Wickham, H. 2014 Sept 12. Tidy Data. Journal of Statistical Software. [Online] 59:10), where each variable is a column, each observation is a row, and each type of observational unit is a table. And to convert that table from text format to comma separated values format.

I would have used a spreadsheet program to manually edit and 'tidy' the data files so I could easily use them with the R language. As Roger Peng says, if there is one rule of reproducible research it is "Don't do things by hand! Editing data manually with a spreadsheet is not reproducible".

There is no 'audit trail' left of how I manipulated the data and created the chart. So after a few years even I can't remember the steps I made back then to clean the data! That then can be a disincentive to update and improve the charts.

However, I have found a couple of cool open and 'tidy' data packages of global temperatures that solve the reproducibility problem. The non-profit Open Knowledge International provides these packages as as part of their core data sets.

One package is the Global Temperature Time Series. From it's web page you can download two temperature data series at monthly or annual intervals in 'tidy' csv format. It's almost up to date with October 2016 the most recent data point. So that's a pretty good head start for my R charts.

But it is better than that. The data is held in a Github repository. From there the data package can be downloaded as a zip file. After unzipping, this includes the csv data files, an open data licence, a read-me file, a .json file and a cool Python script that updates the data from source! I can run the script file on my laptop and it goes off by itself and gets the latest data to November 2016 and formats it into 'tidy' csv format files. This just seems like magic at first! Very cool! No manual data cleaning! Very reproducible!

Here is a screen shot of the Python script running in a an X-terminal window on my Debian Jessie MX-16 operating system on my Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop.

The file "monthly.csv" includes two data series; the NOAA National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), global component of Climate at a Glance (GCAG) and the perhaps more well-known NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Surface Temperature Analysis, Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index.

I just want to use the NASA GISTEMP data, so there is some R code to separate it out into its own dataframe. The annual data stops at 2015, so I am going to make a new annual data vector with 2016 as the mean of the eleven months to November 2016. And 2016 is surprise surprise the warmest year.

Here is a simple line chart of the annual means.

Here is a another line chart of the annual means with an additional data series, an eleven-year lowess-smoothed data series.

Here is the R code for the two graphs.

An intelligent and observant Martian would be entitled to believe the human race insane.

Australian Robert Manne has written an excellent long-form overview of the problem of climate change policy.

I have shamelessly abbreviated one sentence for the title of this post. The full sentence is.

An intelligent and observant Martian visiting the Earth and learning of our climate problem would be entitled to believe the human race insane

.

Manne has name-checked pretty much most of the key people we associate with the discourse on climate policy.

• Svante Arrhenius the Swedish chemist.
• Garrett_Hardin who coined the term Tragedy of the Commons.
• Stephen Gardiner who wrote the book A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change.
• Martin Weitzman the Harvard economist.
• James Hansen, no explanation necessary.
• Naomi Oreskes author of Merchants of Doubt.
• Bill McKibben.
• Dan Kahan who studies cultural cognition.
• Clive Hamilton.
• George Marshall (the British climate communicator.
• Naomi Klein
• Nicholas Stern.
David Victor

Its a really good read. I recommend it.

Bill McKibben - opening up space for change on the scale that physics requires

Bill McKibben has followed up his Maths of global warming with a great new article in Rolling Stone titled  A Call to Arms: An Invitation to Demand Action on Climate Change.

McKibben and 350.org.nz are planning a huge demonstration in New York to coincide with the September meeting of the United Nations.

McKibben on Barack Obama.

Sure, he's imposed new mileage standards for cars, but he's also opened vast swaths of territory to oil drilling and coal mining, which will take us past Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world's biggest petro producer.

McKibben on deniers and delayers.

In a rational world, no one would need to march. In a rational world, policymakers would have heeded scientists when they first sounded the alarm 25 years ago. But in this world, reason, having won the argument, has so far lost the fight. The fossil-fuel industry, by virtue of being perhaps the richest enterprise in human history, has been able to delay effective action, almost to the point where it's too late.

McKibben on the message from the scientists

"What exactly don't you understand about what we've been telling you for a quarter-century?"

Challenging New Zealand's '100 percent pure' reputation

TV3's Campbell Live has started a series of quick (what else but quick can you say about one fifth of a current affairs news show?) investigations into the state of New Zealand's environment. TV3 are calling it 'Challenging New Zealand's '100 percent pure' reputation' and the first segment, which went to air today, featured Massey freshwater ecologist Mike Joy Massey, Dr Jonathan Garden, Simon Kingham, Alan Palmer, James Renwick and Diane Brunton from Massey.

Each scientist was asked for a realistic alternative percentage of pure to the much-hyped "100% Pure"

I am refusing to go with percentages. So I will note the scores out of a total of ten. Just like school essays of yesteryear.

The lowest score was 1.5 out of 10 for biodiversity, awarded by Diane Brunton from Massey. Climate change was next lowest at 4.5 out of 10. Former NIWA climate scientist James Renwick, now at Victoria University of Wellington, gave NZ 4.5/10 for NZ's high agricultural emissions, high car ownership, and opting out of the Kyoto Protocol.

The gimmick was for the reporter to conclude the series of 60 second interviews bt averaging all the scores. The final average for NZ was 5.66/10.

Yes the planet is still warming

Gareth Renowden notes that John Cook of Skeptical Science has produced a short video debunking the false 'no warming for 16 years' meme.

Gareth says:

Spread this excellent new video from the talented team at Skeptical Science far and wide. It explains why the latest denialist trope — no warming for 16 years — is rubbish. Take out the impact of the three biggest factors driving natural variations in the global average temperature — volcanoes, the El Niño Southern Oscillation and the solar cycle — and what’s left is the underlying upwards trend being driven by our CO2 emissions. The world’s warming, Australia’s burning, ice is melting and we did it. No room left for wishful thinking or complacency.

The Guardian also reports that a revision in one of the UK Met Office's global temperature time series has caused the meme to have a brief run around the British media paddock. Leo Hickman investigates and also concludes that global warming is still warming.

The social and psychological taboo on climate change

Claire Browning has written a post Nemesis Narcissus.

It’s about how climate change - embarrassing, frightening, disempowering - has become almost a social taboo. People are (allegedly) aware, (reputedly) concerned - but not acting, and a bit frightened even to talk about it. We’re taking refuge in denial.

For Claire Browning, the substance of this denial is the unwillingness to let go of lifestyle.

We don’t want to give it up - the personal lifestyles, the geopolitics - to have to admit that, in some respects, our definition of progress was wrong; that it was a treadmill, and a trap. Easier roads lie in denial, and trust, and hope.

Claire refers us to The id and the eco. which says

"Thinking about climate change makes people feel helpless and anxious – but that’s why we must talk about it openly".

This is an article by Rosemary Randall, a British psychologist who has looked at resistance to the disturbing message of climate change.

Randall writes;

Climate change is a disturbing subject that casts a shadow across ordinary life...what most people don’t admit — thinking about climate change is upsetting and brings to the surface an internal conflict about how to respond.

According to Randall, the common psychological response is defensive;

In dealing with climate change, we are in the terrain that psychoanalysis calls resistance or defence — the ability to defend ourselves from too much mental and emotional pain. Although each statement carries an element of truth, its primary purpose is protective: a rationalisation for inaction. These are subtler forms of denial than those found among outright climate sceptics or deniers. The reality of climate change is acknowledged but its significance is discounted, and the person involved avoids taking any responsibility for the issue.

Randall concludes with a call for a Churchillian 'fight them on the beaches' level of inspiration. Claire Browning invokes a previous post of hers on iconic Kiwi story-telling knocking the bugger off.

Both Randall and Browning are worth a read. May 2013 be a year where humanity overcomes it's resistance to taking action on climate change.

New James Hansen talk from 10 October

Here is a new talk by James Hansen on climate change and tipping points. It has been uploaded by Cornell University.

Dr. James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute addresses 75 international union leaders about the urgency of the climate crisis. The presentation was given in NYC on 10/10/12, and was part of the Energy Emergency, Energy Transition round table convened by Cornell University's Global Labor Institute (GLI), a program of the Worker Institute at Cornell, and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

Neil Armstrong coal mines carbon dioxide and global warming the High Court moon walks us to a very hot place

On the same day as the death of Neil Armstrong, the first astronaut to step onto the Moon, became public, the New Zealand High Court moon-walked its way to it's own off-the-world moment. It decided that greenhouse gas emissions and global warming are off-limits in the planning for an open cast coal mine. That's as just as 'out of this world' as denying that the Moon landings ever happened.

On Saturday, two bits of news struck home to me very strongly. The first was the death of moon-landing astronaut Neil Armstrong. The second was the decision of the New Zealand High Court that for new open-cast coal mines, their carbon dioxide emissions and global warming are legally and jurisdictionally unrelated in the Resource Management Act.

The moon landing. I remember very well as a seven year old listening attentively to the 'one small step' broadcast in 1969. The whole class was silent under the spell of our teacher's scratchy transistor radio.

It's one of my most strongly held memories of my childhood. I guess that reflects well on that class of seven-year olds. They stopped playing bullrush, sniffing with colds, and fighting over play-lunchs to listen attentively to the unfolding of one of humanity's most historic moments.

While I was still fondly remembering the Moon landing, the next news item struck.

It was the New Zealand High Court decision barring discussion of carbon dioxide emissions when coal mines seek Resource Management Act consents (see Radio NZ, NBR and TV3 and the Otago Daily Times).

Of course this is about the Perth coal company Bathurst Resources and their Escarpment Mine Project.

Bryan Walker of Hot Topic has posted that this project represents New Zealand doing a Pontius Pilate and washing its hands of the emissions.

I have previously posted that the decisions by councils and the Environment Court to date reflect the zombie ETS infecting the Resource Management Act with climate madness.

My Saturday morning reverie of the Moon landing was rudely stopped and I sort of grumbled to myself;

"Open-cast coal mines and global warming are unrelated!! Thats about as sensible as saying the Moon landings were faked by NASA. Neil Armstrong would just have smacked someone in the face!"

From small half-asleep reactions, blog posts do grow. With the wee footnote that it was actually Buzz Aldrin who punched the Moon landing denier.

I could do a review of the legal issues, but that would be just more legal-climate yadda yadda. I will just note that back in the early 1990s, the Bolger National Government not only considered that greenhouse gas emissions were an adverse effect under the Resource Management Act; they also considered the RMA to be one of the main tools to deal with global warming.

As for the science of it, I will just point to a couple James Hansen charts from his The Case for Young People paper.

The first is cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide. Approving new coal mines adds to cumulative global emissions of carbon dioxide. The second chart shows likely scenarios for temperature. The more carbon dioxide accumulates, the higher the likely temperature.

The facts are that each time a new coal mine is approved, we are just adding to the temperature overshoot above two degrees.

Why is it that the High Court can't apply this simple logic? Why are we even in a position where the High Court can sever the undeniable link between new coal mines, the volumes of carbon dioxide accumulating globally, and the inevitable temperature rise? What has has happened to our legal and planning systems to make this sort of decision possible?

To me this outcome - where the global effects of more GHG emissions are legally severed from approval of a new coal mine - is just as 'out of this world' as denying that the Moon landings even happened.

Kevin Anderson tenuous hope brutal numbers

This is a brilliant talk by Kevin Anderson of the University of Manchester and the Tyndall Center about how the OECD countries have deluded themselves that they are doing anything meaningful to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.

The title of the talk is "Going Beyond Dangerous Climate Change: Exploring the void between rhetoric and reality in reducing carbon emissions"

Or download the audio file

There is also this alternative version.

Professor Kevin Anderson - Climate Change: Going Beyond Dangerous

View another webinar from DFID

The Science is Clear - new James Hansen talk from TED 2012

I have just found this recent 2012 TED talk by James Hansen. It has been on-line since 7 March. The number of views on youtube was 13,473 when I watched it. I bet that rises.



The talk is very polished. Hansen reads from a script and has obviously run through the talk several times. Hansen discusses the natural greenhouse effect, the Earth's energy imbalance caused primarily by fossil fuel combustion, sea-level rise, species extinctions, impacts on agriculture and the need to act for the benefit of future generations as represented by his grandchildren.

Global mean land temperature chart NASA GISS Land

This is my version of the well-known chart of NASA's temperature data from land instruments showing global warming since 1880. Yes, the temperature series researched and prepared by James Hansen. I got the data from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre. Its just as easy to download the data from NASA as well.

The chart does not show absolute temperature on the vertical axis, it shows the difference (or the 'anomaly') from the mean temperature recorded for the period from 1951 to 1980. In other words, Wellington's actual temperature on any day will be very different from that of a place near the equator. However, the use of the anomaly or difference from the average temperature for 1951-1980, standardises the data to a common scale. Also, absolute temperature varies a lot over short distances, but annual temperature anomalies are strongly correlated out to distances of a 1000 km.

I made the chart with the R programme.

Here's the code, assuming you have downloaded the data file "gl_land.txt" to your R working directory.

Coming Clean - New Zealand's Emissions Trading Scheme Explained

There is a new video available on-line explaining the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme.

Its called Coming Clean - New Zealand's Emissions Trading Scheme Explained and the film maker is Lindsay Horner.

Its very good. It hammers the key points well;

• that the NZETS lacks the real cap on greenhouse gas emissions that is an essential part of a textbook 'cap-and-trade' scheme.
• that relying on post-1990 forestry carbon credits to match growth in GHGs since 1990 is the same as borrowing on a credit card, as the forestry carbon credits will have to be surrendered when the forests are eventually logged.

Coming Clean - New Zealand's Emissions Trading Scheme Explained from Lindsay Horner on Vimeo.

Cool NOAA climate change widget

Have a look at this cool widget on the website of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

It is a series of dashboard-style panels of time series data. The data are: global average temperature, atmospheric carbon dioxide, solar radiation reaching Earth (Sun's energy), seal level and the extent of Arctic sea ice. AT the top of the panel is a slider control allowing you to choose any time period between 1880 and 2011.

Queensland Floods

Gareth looks at the Queensland floods from a climate change point of view. The Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society say it is caused by the strongest La Nina event ever.

This BBC Weather webpage gives a graphical explanation of how the flows of the cold and warm currents change in a La Nina phase.
BBC Meteorologist Nina Ridge explains La Niña.

Good simple explanation. (Unlike the graphic on TV One News tonight where the moist air flow seemed to be twisting down onto western NZ, and completely missing Queensland!)

But is her name really Nina Ridge? It does appear too much of a coincidence.

Powered By Coal CBS 60 minutes

Here's a CBS 60 minutes documentary featuring James Hansen and the CEO of Duke Energy, the USA's third largest coal thermal power plant owner. The CEO says he totally accepts that carbon dioxide contributes to global warming. However, his plan is to phase out coal over 40 years.

CBS cuts to Hansen who of course says "No new coal fired power plants and a phase out must take place in 20 years or less". CBS goes back to the CEO and ask him how much Duke has invested in carbon capture and sequestration. The answer is nothing!

World Temperature Trends

Is the world's average temperature warming? Yes, it is.

Here is a chart I have made with the R programme from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies data.

The data is the Combined Land-Surface Air and Sea-Surface Water Temperature Anomalies (Land-Ocean Temperature Index, LOTI), Global-mean monthly, seasonal, and annual means, 1880-present

The chart is a line plot of differences in annual land-ocean average temperature from the average for the base period 1951-1980 global mean temperature index, 1880 to present. The dotted blue line is the annual mean and the solid red line is the five-year mean, calculated with a Lowess function.

Noami Oreskes on obscuring global warming

Here is science historian Noami Oreskes giving a talk back in March 2010, I think. The talk is about her book, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.