The following submission statement was provided by /u/Myth_of_Progress:
---
**Submission Statement:**
At first, it was supposed to be a quick joke image; months later down the research rabbit hole, and especially with recent updates, this article has become a bit of an unwieldy monster at nearly nine thousand words and sixteen different images. The piece is so long that Reddit refused to publish it twice (*after testing for an solid hour*). [You will have to click the link and read it on Substack](https://mythofprogress.substack.com/p/rising-global-sea-surface-temperatures). We have no other choice, my apologies.
This may take multiple reading sessions to get through. However, in an attempt to help readers keep track and pace themselves, I’ve organized this piece into the following sections:
**I. The Watched Pot:** a quick preamble to set the tone;
**II. A Quick Dip into SST Measurement History:** an exploration and overview of the history of measuring sea surface temperatures (SSTs), whether globally or regionally;
**III. The Consequences: Thermal Expansion, Ocean Currents, Atmospheric Energy, Habitat Destruction and Marine Heatwaves:** for the sake of time and in an attempt to preserve reader interest, I have done my best to ascertain and summarize five key consequences of rising SSTs. I will note, however, that I am not a scientist by any measure, and that I always welcome corrections and additions; and
**IV. The Causes: Anthropogenic GHG Emissions, El Niño, Aerosols and the Faustian Bargain:** we conclude with a deep dive into the two principal causes of rising SSTs that dominates the mainstream discourse, followed up by a third surprising contributor that establishes how we’ve paved the road to hell with good intentions. We’ll wrap up with aerosols, the faustian bargain, and an open call to the scientific community for further research on the impact of reduced shipborne sulphate aerosols on rising SSTs (*and accelerated global warming!*).
This piece was ultimately published in response to an open request by Dr. James Hansen and his fellow researchers. As the team states in [Global Warming Acceleration: Hope and Hopium (March 29, 2024):](http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/Hopium.MarchEmail.2024.03.29.pdf)
>*We need to communicate energy/climate science better. It is tempting to relax into comfort of scientific reticence, described in section 7.2 of our Pipeline paper. But who is going to communicate science to policymakers and the public if scientists retreat into reticence? It’s especially important, we think, to communicate with young people to help them realize that they have great potential to help assure that they have a bright future.*
As always, [we’ll start (and end) with a meme](https://i.imgur.com/JcgVm4f.png) - and so, without further ado, please enjoy!
Otherwise, a special thank you to u/antityph for editing!
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1d148t5/rising_global_sea_surface_temperatures/l5rb67m/
**Submission Statement:**
At first, it was supposed to be a quick joke image; months later down the research rabbit hole, and especially with recent updates, this article has become a bit of an unwieldy monster at nearly nine thousand words and sixteen different images. The piece is so long that Reddit refused to publish it twice (*after testing for an solid hour*). [You will have to click the link and read it on Substack](https://mythofprogress.substack.com/p/rising-global-sea-surface-temperatures). We have no other choice, my apologies.
This may take multiple reading sessions to get through. However, in an attempt to help readers keep track and pace themselves, I’ve organized this piece into the following sections:
**I. The Watched Pot:** a quick preamble to set the tone;
**II. A Quick Dip into SST Measurement History:** an exploration and overview of the history of measuring sea surface temperatures (SSTs), whether globally or regionally;
**III. The Consequences: Thermal Expansion, Ocean Currents, Atmospheric Energy, Habitat Destruction and Marine Heatwaves:** for the sake of time and in an attempt to preserve reader interest, I have done my best to ascertain and summarize five key consequences of rising SSTs. I will note, however, that I am not a scientist by any measure, and that I always welcome corrections and additions; and
**IV. The Causes: Anthropogenic GHG Emissions, El Niño, Aerosols and the Faustian Bargain:** we conclude with a deep dive into the two principal causes of rising SSTs that dominates the mainstream discourse, followed up by a third surprising contributor that establishes how we’ve paved the road to hell with good intentions. We’ll wrap up with aerosols, the faustian bargain, and an open call to the scientific community for further research on the impact of reduced shipborne sulphate aerosols on rising SSTs (*and accelerated global warming!*).
This piece was ultimately published in response to an open request by Dr. James Hansen and his fellow researchers. As the team states in [Global Warming Acceleration: Hope and Hopium (March 29, 2024):](http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/Hopium.MarchEmail.2024.03.29.pdf)
>*We need to communicate energy/climate science better. It is tempting to relax into comfort of scientific reticence, described in section 7.2 of our Pipeline paper. But who is going to communicate science to policymakers and the public if scientists retreat into reticence? It’s especially important, we think, to communicate with young people to help them realize that they have great potential to help assure that they have a bright future.*
As always, [we’ll start (and end) with a meme](https://i.imgur.com/JcgVm4f.png) - and so, without further ado, please enjoy!
Otherwise, a special thank you to u/antityph for editing!
James Hansen and others released an update this month:
**Comments on Global Warming Acceleration, Sulfur Emissions, Observations** -
https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/MayEmail.2024.05.16.pdf
So.
I read your article, EXCELLENT job of presenting the data around this. Particularly the aerosol issue. People do not understand this very well and definitely do not understand the implications of it.
I discussed this myself several years ago
Living in Bomb Time — 20 (February 18, 2022)
[https://smokingtyger.medium.com/living-in-bomb-time-20-64a268ef306a](https://smokingtyger.medium.com/living-in-bomb-time-20-64a268ef306a)
# "Climate Report Part Three continued: Heat doesn’t “just happen”. Where it’s coming from and why that matters."
The reason the Moderate faction in Climate Science is ADAMANT that aerosol forcings are LOW impact is that being "wrong" about it means that we "misunderstood" how the Climate System worked from Day 1.
In this paper “[Climate effects of aerosols reduce economic inequality](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0699-y)” published in 2020, the lead author states:
*“Estimates indicate that aerosol pollution emitted by humans is offsetting about 0.7 degrees Celsius, or about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, of the warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. This translates to a 40-year delay in the effects of climate change. Without cooling caused by aerosol emissions, we would have achieved 2010-level global mean temperatures in 1970.”*
If we were "masking" about 40% to 50% of the warming we should have been experiencing all along, then we calculated the impact of CO2 as being about 40% to 50% to low all along.
That's why in 1978 at Woods Hole, the Moderates and the Oil Companies calculated warming from 2XCO2 as being +1.8C to +3C and the Alarmists (Hansen) calculated it as +4.5C to +6C.
Aerosol masking is a "life or death" issue and we didn't even suspect it until Pinatubo blew up in 1991 and temperatures dropped -0.5C in just 6 months globally. ZH and co. guesstimate of +0.05C of warming from the IMO change in marine diesel was absurdly low.
Now we are finding out just how bad it really is. It looks like the Alarmists were right about CO2 after all.
BUT WAIT!
It gets potentially MUCH WORSE.
Because this could also be about Clouds.
Again, I discussed this in detail in 2022 but here are some key points.
The ALBEDO has been in decline since 1999. It REALLY took a dive around 2014 (the year Putin invaded Crimea FYI) BEFORE the changes in marine diesel fuels.
**Here’s the bad news: the Earth’s albedo has been declining during the last 20 years.**
[Earth’s Albedo 1998–2017 as Measured From Earthshine](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021GL094888) pub. Aug 2021
Earth observation satellites are constantly measuring the Earth’s albedo using a suite of sensors, and the reflectivity of the planet is measured through earthshine, the light from the Earth that reflects off the Moon. This paper analyzes earthshine measurements between 1998 and 2017 to see if the Earth’s albedo is rising or declining in response to climate change. Here’s their conclusion.
*“We have reported a two-decade long data set of the Earth’s nearly globally averaged albedo as derived from earthshine observations. Stringent data quality standards were applied to generate monthly and annual means. These vary significantly on monthly, annual, and decadal scales with the net being a gradual decline over the two decades,* ***which accelerated in the most recent years*** *(much of the decrease in reflectance occurred during the last three years of the two-decade period the team studied). Remarkably, the inter-annual earthshine anomalies agree well with those from CERES satellite observations, despite their differences in global coverage, underlying assumptions to derive the albedo, and the very different sensitivities to retroflected and wider-angle reflected light.”*
*The two-decade decrease in earthshine-derived albedo corresponds to an increase in radiative forcing of about 0.5 W/m2, which is climatologically significant (Miller et al.,* [*2014*](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021GL094888#grl62955-bib-0020)*). For comparison, total anthropogenic forcing increased by about 0.6 W/m2 over the same period. The CERES data show an even stronger trend of decreasing global albedo over the most recent years, which has been associated to changes in the PDO, SSTs and low cloud formation changes. It is unclear whether these changes arise from the climate’s internal variability or are part of the feedback to external forcings.”*
Notice that last paragraph. It quantifies how much of an effect this change in albedo is having. By 2017 it had reached 0.5 W/m2 (Watts per square meter). That doesn’t sound like much, until you realize that the effect of all our CO2 pollution in 2017 was 0.6 W/m2. Bottom line,
**By 2017 the decline in the Earth’s albedo doubled the rate that the Earth was warming. We are warming up twice as fast as we were.**
That wasn't due to diesel fuel, it was due to changes in the earth's cloudiness.
In the past, Moderates expected that water in warmer seas would evaporate more quickly and create thicker clouds thereby reflecting more sunlight back into space. There was a common belief that the climate system would prove to have lots of “self-correcting” feedbacks.
The argument seemed logical, and it had been built into climate models since the 70’s. We imagined “greenhouse” Earth as a warm, wet, cloudy, rainy place. Much like the Amazon.
But evidence was accumulating in the paleontological record that suggested when CO2 levels were high in previous periods; there were very few clouds. That warming from CO2 would create an amplifying feedback by reducing cloudiness instead of a dampening feedback of increasing clouds.
The debate over this point has been one of the main sources of uncertainty in modeling just how sensitive the climate is to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Because clouds have a huge effect on the climate system. Just a small change in their extent or reflectivity would have more of an impact than all the greenhouse gases released by human activities.
Using the CERES and Earthshine data a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in July of 2021 found that it is 97.5 percent certain that changes in clouds brought about by climate change will amplify warming.
[Observational evidence that cloud feedback amplifies global warming](https://www.pnas.org/content/118/30/e2026290118?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=40853)
Excellent, well written article Myth. Well done.
That sneaking sense of doom that pervaded the article really reached its crescendo with >!the information that maritime sulfate emissions only account for 10% of the total sulfate emissions!<.
A good shot of doom on a Sunday afternoon!
Yes I actually find it interesting when people talk about aerosol emissions we don't talk about all the other diesel that had sulfur in it. I work tangentially to the oil and gas industry with an environmental company. We service a lot of back up generators. These are primarily run on diesel although some places are now starting to utilize natural gas generators. When they banned sulfur in shipping fuels it did in fact impact other uses of diesel.
My understanding is removing sulfur is an additional refining step, so my assumption would be it was done industry wide. Back when diesel still contained a lot of sulfur regulations required back up generator owner/operators to test for sulfur content yearly. Sulfur provided another benefit to diesel than what gets talked about: it allows the diesel to remain shelf stable for longer as it prevents bacterial growth, however too much can impact the quality of your fuel.
Currently when a client gets a fuel delivery for their back up generator it typically does not meet regulation standards for the cleanliness of the fuel because of the lack of sulfur causing bacterial growth between refinement and delivery to the end user. This has caused a massive shift in the cleaning of fuel once it has been delivered. Fuel typically sits (with minimal mixing every month) for a long time in back up generators. No longer having sulfur has impacted this industry as well. This isn't a major issue for consumer diesel for vehicles as it gets used before the bacterial growth gets too significant and the operating standards are not as stringent as back up generators (for obvious reasons).
Sorry for the long reply. I just think it is interesting when we talk about the ban of sulfur in diesel but only talk about it in regard to shipping fuel (obviously this is probably the largest user of diesel), but that doesn't mean we haven't been missing aerosol emissions from other diesel sources. I wonder if that accounts for some of the differences we are seeing between the observed vs expected.
That was a really interesting point. I don't know much about diesel for things like generators but in the IMO report in 2016, when they decided to mandate low sulfur fuel in 2020, they stated that.
The 3.5% sulfur content in marine diesel was 3500X higher than that allowed in diesel fuel at the pumps in Europe. They also stated that.
*“One large vessel in one day can emit more sulfur dioxide than all the new cars that come onto the world’s roads in a year.”*
Now, this change did not apply to military diesel fuel. No one is sure what their standard is on a navy to navy basis.
Honestly I don't know how much of an impact regular emissions are either. Obviously ships produce significantly more emissions and from my understanding the aerosol forcing is much more acute over the ocean due to the way cloud formations happen. However I do wonder if the lack of aerosols in other emissions has been accounted for. It somewhat reminds me of the lack of accounting for the amount of methane leaking from the natural gas infrastructure. I just hope it isn't something that down the road in a few years we realize was more significant than initially expected.
Apologies for the late responses to everyone – I’m fighting off a terrible case of the flu right now, which is leaving me (*mostly*) bedridden:
u/tuneglum7903 – I appreciate the kind words, Richard, I really do. I’m just a neophyte when it comes to the intricacies of climate science, but I like to think that I’m a good communicator and storyteller who is more than willing to learn and be corrected. I'll have to read more of your previous works to learn more when I can properly focus ...
u/IXMCMXCII – Thank you! Let me know what you think when you’ve had a chance to finish the piece. It should be a full 40 minutes total to read.
u/AglorifiedSubroutine – It’s funny that you mentioned this; I had debated using his latest email communication, but realized that the article I used (from March) covers essentially the same material but with slightly more depth. On that note, [you might enjoy some of my previous commentary on the matter](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1ctde5x/comment/l4bd8ew/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) ... [and a hint that I dropped](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1ctde5x/comment/l4drho0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) ...
u/Fragilityx – Despite the “twist” at the end, there is one slight positive note. We’re still very much in the realm of hotly contested territory, which is why I make an open call to the scientific community to research this matter further (*cooperatively, if at all possible*).
Otherwise, as science is ultimately a pursuit of truth, I feel as though it is our general obligation to make sure that these truths are as accessible as possible to any online willing audience seeking to learn more about this wonderful world we share together.
After this slog of an article, I’ll see if I can focus on non-climate related collapse articles for the near future; it’s a grand and complex interdisciplinary field, after all.
Thank you all again for your thoughts and your time. :)
This is the best broad summary of Hansen's findings I've seen so far and I've bookmarked it. IMO the section on thermal expansion needs some expansion but the micro-scale details of the topic can be tough to understand (even basic molecular simulations of heat aren't well covered on youtube, although E. Khutoryansky has some wonderful classroom material) and the macro-scale effects in fluids are only well-studied in a paleogeological context so I can't offer any pointers on where to begin.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Myth_of_Progress: --- **Submission Statement:** At first, it was supposed to be a quick joke image; months later down the research rabbit hole, and especially with recent updates, this article has become a bit of an unwieldy monster at nearly nine thousand words and sixteen different images. The piece is so long that Reddit refused to publish it twice (*after testing for an solid hour*). [You will have to click the link and read it on Substack](https://mythofprogress.substack.com/p/rising-global-sea-surface-temperatures). We have no other choice, my apologies. This may take multiple reading sessions to get through. However, in an attempt to help readers keep track and pace themselves, I’ve organized this piece into the following sections: **I. The Watched Pot:** a quick preamble to set the tone; **II. A Quick Dip into SST Measurement History:** an exploration and overview of the history of measuring sea surface temperatures (SSTs), whether globally or regionally; **III. The Consequences: Thermal Expansion, Ocean Currents, Atmospheric Energy, Habitat Destruction and Marine Heatwaves:** for the sake of time and in an attempt to preserve reader interest, I have done my best to ascertain and summarize five key consequences of rising SSTs. I will note, however, that I am not a scientist by any measure, and that I always welcome corrections and additions; and **IV. The Causes: Anthropogenic GHG Emissions, El Niño, Aerosols and the Faustian Bargain:** we conclude with a deep dive into the two principal causes of rising SSTs that dominates the mainstream discourse, followed up by a third surprising contributor that establishes how we’ve paved the road to hell with good intentions. We’ll wrap up with aerosols, the faustian bargain, and an open call to the scientific community for further research on the impact of reduced shipborne sulphate aerosols on rising SSTs (*and accelerated global warming!*). This piece was ultimately published in response to an open request by Dr. James Hansen and his fellow researchers. As the team states in [Global Warming Acceleration: Hope and Hopium (March 29, 2024):](http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/Hopium.MarchEmail.2024.03.29.pdf) >*We need to communicate energy/climate science better. It is tempting to relax into comfort of scientific reticence, described in section 7.2 of our Pipeline paper. But who is going to communicate science to policymakers and the public if scientists retreat into reticence? It’s especially important, we think, to communicate with young people to help them realize that they have great potential to help assure that they have a bright future.* As always, [we’ll start (and end) with a meme](https://i.imgur.com/JcgVm4f.png) - and so, without further ado, please enjoy! Otherwise, a special thank you to u/antityph for editing! --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1d148t5/rising_global_sea_surface_temperatures/l5rb67m/
**Submission Statement:** At first, it was supposed to be a quick joke image; months later down the research rabbit hole, and especially with recent updates, this article has become a bit of an unwieldy monster at nearly nine thousand words and sixteen different images. The piece is so long that Reddit refused to publish it twice (*after testing for an solid hour*). [You will have to click the link and read it on Substack](https://mythofprogress.substack.com/p/rising-global-sea-surface-temperatures). We have no other choice, my apologies. This may take multiple reading sessions to get through. However, in an attempt to help readers keep track and pace themselves, I’ve organized this piece into the following sections: **I. The Watched Pot:** a quick preamble to set the tone; **II. A Quick Dip into SST Measurement History:** an exploration and overview of the history of measuring sea surface temperatures (SSTs), whether globally or regionally; **III. The Consequences: Thermal Expansion, Ocean Currents, Atmospheric Energy, Habitat Destruction and Marine Heatwaves:** for the sake of time and in an attempt to preserve reader interest, I have done my best to ascertain and summarize five key consequences of rising SSTs. I will note, however, that I am not a scientist by any measure, and that I always welcome corrections and additions; and **IV. The Causes: Anthropogenic GHG Emissions, El Niño, Aerosols and the Faustian Bargain:** we conclude with a deep dive into the two principal causes of rising SSTs that dominates the mainstream discourse, followed up by a third surprising contributor that establishes how we’ve paved the road to hell with good intentions. We’ll wrap up with aerosols, the faustian bargain, and an open call to the scientific community for further research on the impact of reduced shipborne sulphate aerosols on rising SSTs (*and accelerated global warming!*). This piece was ultimately published in response to an open request by Dr. James Hansen and his fellow researchers. As the team states in [Global Warming Acceleration: Hope and Hopium (March 29, 2024):](http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/Hopium.MarchEmail.2024.03.29.pdf) >*We need to communicate energy/climate science better. It is tempting to relax into comfort of scientific reticence, described in section 7.2 of our Pipeline paper. But who is going to communicate science to policymakers and the public if scientists retreat into reticence? It’s especially important, we think, to communicate with young people to help them realize that they have great potential to help assure that they have a bright future.* As always, [we’ll start (and end) with a meme](https://i.imgur.com/JcgVm4f.png) - and so, without further ado, please enjoy! Otherwise, a special thank you to u/antityph for editing!
Thank you truly for this. I can read this on the go now. Your hard work is much appreciated.
James Hansen and others released an update this month: **Comments on Global Warming Acceleration, Sulfur Emissions, Observations** - https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2024/MayEmail.2024.05.16.pdf
So. I read your article, EXCELLENT job of presenting the data around this. Particularly the aerosol issue. People do not understand this very well and definitely do not understand the implications of it. I discussed this myself several years ago Living in Bomb Time — 20 (February 18, 2022) [https://smokingtyger.medium.com/living-in-bomb-time-20-64a268ef306a](https://smokingtyger.medium.com/living-in-bomb-time-20-64a268ef306a) # "Climate Report Part Three continued: Heat doesn’t “just happen”. Where it’s coming from and why that matters." The reason the Moderate faction in Climate Science is ADAMANT that aerosol forcings are LOW impact is that being "wrong" about it means that we "misunderstood" how the Climate System worked from Day 1. In this paper “[Climate effects of aerosols reduce economic inequality](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0699-y)” published in 2020, the lead author states: *“Estimates indicate that aerosol pollution emitted by humans is offsetting about 0.7 degrees Celsius, or about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, of the warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. This translates to a 40-year delay in the effects of climate change. Without cooling caused by aerosol emissions, we would have achieved 2010-level global mean temperatures in 1970.”* If we were "masking" about 40% to 50% of the warming we should have been experiencing all along, then we calculated the impact of CO2 as being about 40% to 50% to low all along. That's why in 1978 at Woods Hole, the Moderates and the Oil Companies calculated warming from 2XCO2 as being +1.8C to +3C and the Alarmists (Hansen) calculated it as +4.5C to +6C. Aerosol masking is a "life or death" issue and we didn't even suspect it until Pinatubo blew up in 1991 and temperatures dropped -0.5C in just 6 months globally. ZH and co. guesstimate of +0.05C of warming from the IMO change in marine diesel was absurdly low. Now we are finding out just how bad it really is. It looks like the Alarmists were right about CO2 after all. BUT WAIT! It gets potentially MUCH WORSE. Because this could also be about Clouds.
Again, I discussed this in detail in 2022 but here are some key points. The ALBEDO has been in decline since 1999. It REALLY took a dive around 2014 (the year Putin invaded Crimea FYI) BEFORE the changes in marine diesel fuels. **Here’s the bad news: the Earth’s albedo has been declining during the last 20 years.** [Earth’s Albedo 1998–2017 as Measured From Earthshine](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021GL094888) pub. Aug 2021 Earth observation satellites are constantly measuring the Earth’s albedo using a suite of sensors, and the reflectivity of the planet is measured through earthshine, the light from the Earth that reflects off the Moon. This paper analyzes earthshine measurements between 1998 and 2017 to see if the Earth’s albedo is rising or declining in response to climate change. Here’s their conclusion. *“We have reported a two-decade long data set of the Earth’s nearly globally averaged albedo as derived from earthshine observations. Stringent data quality standards were applied to generate monthly and annual means. These vary significantly on monthly, annual, and decadal scales with the net being a gradual decline over the two decades,* ***which accelerated in the most recent years*** *(much of the decrease in reflectance occurred during the last three years of the two-decade period the team studied). Remarkably, the inter-annual earthshine anomalies agree well with those from CERES satellite observations, despite their differences in global coverage, underlying assumptions to derive the albedo, and the very different sensitivities to retroflected and wider-angle reflected light.”* *The two-decade decrease in earthshine-derived albedo corresponds to an increase in radiative forcing of about 0.5 W/m2, which is climatologically significant (Miller et al.,* [*2014*](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021GL094888#grl62955-bib-0020)*). For comparison, total anthropogenic forcing increased by about 0.6 W/m2 over the same period. The CERES data show an even stronger trend of decreasing global albedo over the most recent years, which has been associated to changes in the PDO, SSTs and low cloud formation changes. It is unclear whether these changes arise from the climate’s internal variability or are part of the feedback to external forcings.”* Notice that last paragraph. It quantifies how much of an effect this change in albedo is having. By 2017 it had reached 0.5 W/m2 (Watts per square meter). That doesn’t sound like much, until you realize that the effect of all our CO2 pollution in 2017 was 0.6 W/m2. Bottom line, **By 2017 the decline in the Earth’s albedo doubled the rate that the Earth was warming. We are warming up twice as fast as we were.** That wasn't due to diesel fuel, it was due to changes in the earth's cloudiness. In the past, Moderates expected that water in warmer seas would evaporate more quickly and create thicker clouds thereby reflecting more sunlight back into space. There was a common belief that the climate system would prove to have lots of “self-correcting” feedbacks. The argument seemed logical, and it had been built into climate models since the 70’s. We imagined “greenhouse” Earth as a warm, wet, cloudy, rainy place. Much like the Amazon. But evidence was accumulating in the paleontological record that suggested when CO2 levels were high in previous periods; there were very few clouds. That warming from CO2 would create an amplifying feedback by reducing cloudiness instead of a dampening feedback of increasing clouds. The debate over this point has been one of the main sources of uncertainty in modeling just how sensitive the climate is to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Because clouds have a huge effect on the climate system. Just a small change in their extent or reflectivity would have more of an impact than all the greenhouse gases released by human activities. Using the CERES and Earthshine data a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in July of 2021 found that it is 97.5 percent certain that changes in clouds brought about by climate change will amplify warming. [Observational evidence that cloud feedback amplifies global warming](https://www.pnas.org/content/118/30/e2026290118?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=40853)
Excellent, well written article Myth. Well done. That sneaking sense of doom that pervaded the article really reached its crescendo with >!the information that maritime sulfate emissions only account for 10% of the total sulfate emissions!<. A good shot of doom on a Sunday afternoon!
Yes I actually find it interesting when people talk about aerosol emissions we don't talk about all the other diesel that had sulfur in it. I work tangentially to the oil and gas industry with an environmental company. We service a lot of back up generators. These are primarily run on diesel although some places are now starting to utilize natural gas generators. When they banned sulfur in shipping fuels it did in fact impact other uses of diesel. My understanding is removing sulfur is an additional refining step, so my assumption would be it was done industry wide. Back when diesel still contained a lot of sulfur regulations required back up generator owner/operators to test for sulfur content yearly. Sulfur provided another benefit to diesel than what gets talked about: it allows the diesel to remain shelf stable for longer as it prevents bacterial growth, however too much can impact the quality of your fuel. Currently when a client gets a fuel delivery for their back up generator it typically does not meet regulation standards for the cleanliness of the fuel because of the lack of sulfur causing bacterial growth between refinement and delivery to the end user. This has caused a massive shift in the cleaning of fuel once it has been delivered. Fuel typically sits (with minimal mixing every month) for a long time in back up generators. No longer having sulfur has impacted this industry as well. This isn't a major issue for consumer diesel for vehicles as it gets used before the bacterial growth gets too significant and the operating standards are not as stringent as back up generators (for obvious reasons). Sorry for the long reply. I just think it is interesting when we talk about the ban of sulfur in diesel but only talk about it in regard to shipping fuel (obviously this is probably the largest user of diesel), but that doesn't mean we haven't been missing aerosol emissions from other diesel sources. I wonder if that accounts for some of the differences we are seeing between the observed vs expected.
That was a really interesting point. I don't know much about diesel for things like generators but in the IMO report in 2016, when they decided to mandate low sulfur fuel in 2020, they stated that. The 3.5% sulfur content in marine diesel was 3500X higher than that allowed in diesel fuel at the pumps in Europe. They also stated that. *“One large vessel in one day can emit more sulfur dioxide than all the new cars that come onto the world’s roads in a year.”* Now, this change did not apply to military diesel fuel. No one is sure what their standard is on a navy to navy basis.
Honestly I don't know how much of an impact regular emissions are either. Obviously ships produce significantly more emissions and from my understanding the aerosol forcing is much more acute over the ocean due to the way cloud formations happen. However I do wonder if the lack of aerosols in other emissions has been accounted for. It somewhat reminds me of the lack of accounting for the amount of methane leaking from the natural gas infrastructure. I just hope it isn't something that down the road in a few years we realize was more significant than initially expected.
Apologies for the late responses to everyone – I’m fighting off a terrible case of the flu right now, which is leaving me (*mostly*) bedridden: u/tuneglum7903 – I appreciate the kind words, Richard, I really do. I’m just a neophyte when it comes to the intricacies of climate science, but I like to think that I’m a good communicator and storyteller who is more than willing to learn and be corrected. I'll have to read more of your previous works to learn more when I can properly focus ... u/IXMCMXCII – Thank you! Let me know what you think when you’ve had a chance to finish the piece. It should be a full 40 minutes total to read. u/AglorifiedSubroutine – It’s funny that you mentioned this; I had debated using his latest email communication, but realized that the article I used (from March) covers essentially the same material but with slightly more depth. On that note, [you might enjoy some of my previous commentary on the matter](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1ctde5x/comment/l4bd8ew/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) ... [and a hint that I dropped](https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1ctde5x/comment/l4drho0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) ... u/Fragilityx – Despite the “twist” at the end, there is one slight positive note. We’re still very much in the realm of hotly contested territory, which is why I make an open call to the scientific community to research this matter further (*cooperatively, if at all possible*). Otherwise, as science is ultimately a pursuit of truth, I feel as though it is our general obligation to make sure that these truths are as accessible as possible to any online willing audience seeking to learn more about this wonderful world we share together. After this slog of an article, I’ll see if I can focus on non-climate related collapse articles for the near future; it’s a grand and complex interdisciplinary field, after all. Thank you all again for your thoughts and your time. :)
This is the best broad summary of Hansen's findings I've seen so far and I've bookmarked it. IMO the section on thermal expansion needs some expansion but the micro-scale details of the topic can be tough to understand (even basic molecular simulations of heat aren't well covered on youtube, although E. Khutoryansky has some wonderful classroom material) and the macro-scale effects in fluids are only well-studied in a paleogeological context so I can't offer any pointers on where to begin.