Regarding plastic waste, perhaps landfill is the answer, or as I like to call it, Carbon Capture and Storage. A long time ago people were moaning that disposable nappies don't rot down. Seems like an ideal thing to bury then...

But seriously folks, all that needs to happen is for the # species of plastic to be culled to say five, each of which has an easy recycling process.

Waste, If it can be easily and properly be recycled it should be. Everything else (not hazardus when burnt) should be burned to make electricity. Not rocket science.

Apologies to The Guardian, they reported on Green Blob recycling con trickery in July 2018

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/23/uks-plastic-waste-may-be-dumped-overseas-instead-of-recycled
"Millions of tons of waste plastic from British businesses and homes may be ending up in landfill sites across the world, the government’s spending watchdog has warned.

Huge amounts of packaging waste is being sent overseas on the basis that it will be recycled and turned into new products. However, concerns have been raised that in reality much of it is being dumped in sites from Turkey to Malaysia".

Now they have reported on economic hardship being caused to Turkey's poor, by Green Blob greed.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-plastic-waste-imports-to-turkey-boom-but-at-what-cost

Should we landfill the Recyclers? They are profiting from collecting plastics, shipping them to the Far East where they end up NOT being recycled. Even The Guardian reports on "problems".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45911794

"The plastics recycling industry faces an investigation amid reports firms are illegally profiting from the market and in some cases polluting rivers.

The Environment Agency, the regulator, confirmed it had set up an investigative team and was pursuing "several lines of enquiry".

It comes as councils cut back their plastics recycling services amid a fall in demand for exports to China.

Importers are said to be worried about high contamination levels in UK waste.

Britain sends about two-thirds of its plastic packaging waste abroad every year, including plastic bottles, yoghurt pots and other items.

'Leaking into rivers'
Exporters charge retailers and manufacturers a rate per tonne for plastic waste, and retailers are allowed to use these payments as proof they are meeting their recycling obligations. But MPs have criticised the system for being open to fraud.

As first reported by the Guardian, allegations the Environment Agency (EA) is understood to be investigating include:

Exporters are illegally claiming for tens of thousands of tonnes of plastic waste which might not exist
Plastic waste is not being recycled and is being left to leak into rivers and oceans
UK firms accused of shipping contaminated waste - when non-recyclable items are mixed in with recyclables items - are being allowed to continue exporting."

Green Blob Fraud again. Is it British plastic waste that the BBC loves to film in Far Eastern rivers and streams that has been so caefully washed and sorted, and shipped to the other side of the world in otherwise empty shipping containers?

Robert Swan

I think I prefer Lewis & Curry. No residual bitter after taste. It does not matter what you put into Climate Science recipes, it ends up too hot, and everything is burning.

Entropic man:

Two in a day! I'd be blaming the coffee if I drank it.

As it happens, I do make curries. Sure, there are multiple input variables, but AFAICS there's still only one response variable, measured along the not very well quantified nasty-nice axis. So add a pinch of fennel seed to the Rogan josh -- nicer. Add a cupful -- awful. You might measure multiple response variables -- heat, sweet, appearance, etc., but you measure them one at a time.

I gotthis definition of climate sensitivity from the IPCC.

"The climate sensitivity is a basic measure of the response of the climate system to a change in forcing. "

Nothing about CO2 or other specific forcings or feedbacks.

And I got this out of Wikipedia:

Although climate sensitivity is usually used in the context of radiative forcing by carbon dioxide (CO2), ...

So everyone else has been understanding it by its "usual" meaning. As I said earlier, it's a pretty weird meaning in the first place and your wider IPCC definition manages to make it even worse. "The response of the climate system" -- what sort of woolly-headed idea is that? At least the "usual" definition -- the response of the mean surface temperature -- is a number, albeit a silly one.

What would you suggest?

I suggest some budding PhD student might start by choosing a small set of long-term weather stations and seeing if there are trends in the mins, the maxs (we're expecting all trends to be upwards, I suppose). I'd not be surprised if there were interesting things to see about the mins trending upwards much more than the maxs (urban heat island stuff). OTOH, there is fodder for alarm if we find the maxs (or mins) trending out of the "happy" range. Could then try expanding the window from day to month to year and seeing how min and max pan out. And then widen it to more stations and see how those trend.

Combining them to make one figure for the whole earth is to throw away most of the information. Subtract all the mins from the maxs, roll out the trusty mean, or cook up some sort of weighted average. And away you go.

Pretty pointless, especially with that last step, but no more meaningless than the global mean temperature.

What would you suggest?

Oct 20, 2018 at 12:50 AM | Entropic man

That Climate Guesstimators stop depending on Computer Generated Models that assume what ECS is. Has this deceit been going on for over 20 years?

Tomo

You've clearly spent more time with the OCO-2 data than I have. I would be iterested to hear your own answer to your question.

Robert Swan, Rhoda Klapp

Ever made curry properly? You put the spices into the mix in a specific order but the final frlavour is due to the chemical reactions between them. It is very hard to say that a particular aspect of the flavour is due to a specific spice.

You can do sensitivity analysis at the laboratory level, changing individual forcing variables and measuring the effect on individual feedback variables.

But like the curry, you can't separate them in the atmosphere. You can measure the sum of their effects, but must infer the individual effects.

I'm used to this. Trying to work with a mass of interacting variables is normal for a biologist, which is probably qhy I'm much more comfortable with it than you or Rhoda.

Some things you can reduce. The weather forecasters divide the planet into 25,000 odd grid squares each about 50km by 50km. They begin by using station and other data to calculate the state of each grid square.

You then calculate the effect of new energy inputs, outputs and interactions between squares to calculate the state at a later point in time. Repeat and you build uo a projection of the weather over the next few days. It works, mostly.

I gotthis definition of climate sensitivity from the IPCC.

"The climate sensitivity is a basic measure of the response of the climate system to a change in forcing. "

Nothing about CO2 or other specific forcings or feedbacks.

"A measure of variability -- measured, not modelled -- and trends in those figures might reveal information that the mean hides."

What would you suggest?