Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change

[donsutherland1]

31 minutes ago, GaWx said:

Don and others,

 This was posted by JB 2 hours ago at WxBell:

“Continued Climate Community Denial

Dr Viterito writes:

This is the latest ‘buzz’ in the climate community. The BBC just ran an article on it, and the conclusion of the Berkeley Research Group is that the warming can be partially explained by a reduction in cloud cover due to reductions in sulfur dioxide, a reflective aerosol. Improved Chinese air quality is also listed as a possible cause.

 

Of course, the fallback position is ALWAYS what's happening above our heads and NEVER what is beneath our feet. So, it's business as usual as there is no mention of geothermal inputs into the system. 

 

First and foremost, the East China Sea is the locus of the warming. As Google Gemini posits:

 

Hydrothermal activity is widespread in the East China Sea, particularly in the Okinawa Trough, a back-arc spreading basin. Here, seawater circulates through the oceanic crust, becoming superheated and carrying unique chemical and biological properties to the seafloor. This activity is concentrated in the central and southern parts of the trough and is often associated with volcanic and tectonic activity. Notable sites include the Yokosuka vent field, which is the deepest and hottest known in the area.

 

And a huge rise in seismic activity has been recorded this past year. According to All Quakes (East China Sea Earthquakes Archive: Past Quakes in 2025 | AllQuakes.com), there has been a large amount of volcanic/seismic activity in 2025. Here are the summary statistics for the East China Sea:

 

In 2025, East China Sea has had 14,770 quakes of magnitudes up to 5.9:

50 quakes above magnitude 5

271 quakes between magnitude 4 and 5

1,375 quakes between magnitude 3 and 4

3,197 quakes between magnitude 2 and 3

9,877 quakes below magnitude 2 that people normally don't feel.

 

Keep in mind, we still have 10 weeks left in 2025. 

 

If we compare this with the FULL YEAR statistics for 2024, we see the following:

 

In 2024, East China Sea has had 12,143 quakes of magnitudes up to 6.4:

• 1 quake above magnitude 6
• 23 quakes between magnitude 5 and 6
• 382 quakes between magnitude 4 and 5
• 655 quakes between magnitude 3 and 4
• 2,365 quakes between magnitude 2 and 3
• 8,717 quakes below magnitude 2 that people normally don't feel.

 

That is, we have a 21% increase year over year, and if we adjust for the remaining time left this year (i.e., extrapolate out to the end of 2025), we would see a 53% increase, or an extrapolated total of roughly 18,500 seismic events for the year. More importantly, according to AllQuakes.com, the average yearlystatistics for the East China Sea are as follows:

 

East China Sea has a high level of seismic activity. On average, there are about 6,600 quakes every year.

 

That is, the extrapolated value for 2025 will be nearly three times higher than an average year for the East China Sea! And we aren't even factoring in the extraordinarily high vales for the fore-arc basins east of Kamchatka I discussed in the PSI article a few weeks ago. That activity will impact the temperatures of the Kuroshio Current as it makes its way into the north central Pacific.

 

We have to keep plugging away at this!!

 

Art 

 

 

You cant make this stuff up”

As I provided the SSTA data yesterday, I won't repeat that part of the post. I note that he asked GEMINI (AI) a question. The question he asked does not directly address the issue. The issue concerns whether volcanoes are driving the warming, not whether there is hydrothermal activity and/or what drives that hydrothermal activity.

Since he used GEMINI, let's see how it would respond to a direct question (note: I never provided "leading" information to generate a desired outcome):

Its response:

So, while he tried to create the impression that AI, or at least one AI, backs his thinking, when asked directly about the warming, the AI does not. It focuses on what the literature describes as the causes of the warming. Submarine volcanoes are not even mentioned its response.

Of course, he didn't ask the direct question. It doesn't fit his preferred outcome. The exercise was about confirming his view, not gaining objective information.

Although the AI performed quite well with the direct question, I still think it is better practice to go to the literature itself, as bad practices such as prompt injection can lead to skewed results from AIs.

A good paper on the subject can be found at: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020GL090956

 

 

[LibertyBell]

4 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

The following seems to describe their M.O.:

1) If presented by counterarguments, they largely ignore the counterarguments or, in infrequent cases of response, make broad claims that the arguments are incorrect, they shift goal posts, etc.

2) If presented with data and links to the data or scientific literature that anyone can access, that crosses a "red line." They seem to have a mortal fear about others having the ability to access the data or literature, perhaps because they know that their own view is hollow unsupported conjecture. Access to data is far more dangerous to their view than simple counterarguments.

He probably also hid your reply

 

[LibertyBell]

3 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

As I provided the SSTA data yesterday, I won't repeat that part of the post. I note that he asked GEMINI (AI) a question. The question he asked does not directly address the issue. The issue concerns whether volcanoes are driving the warming, not whether there is hydrothermal activity and/or what drives that hydrothermal activity.

Since he used GEMINI, let's see how it would respond to a direct question (note: I never provided "leading" information to generate a desired outcome):

Its response:

So, while he tried to create the impression that AI, or at least one AI, backs his thinking, when asked directly about the warming, the AI does not. It focuses on what the literature describes as the causes of the warming. Submarine volcanoes are not even mentioned its response.

Of course, he didn't ask the direct question. It doesn't fit his preferred outcome. The exercise was about confirming his view, not gaining objective information.

Although the AI performed quite well with the direct question, I still think it is better practice to go to the literature itself, as bad practices such as prompt injection can lead to skewed results from AIs.

A good paper on the subject can be found at: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020GL090956

 

 

we really need to ban AI on an executive level

many prominent thinkers/scientists have stated it will destroy our society

[donsutherland1]

38 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

we really need to ban AI on an executive level

many prominent thinkers/scientists have stated it will destroy our society

I used the same AI he used to illustrate a point. I still prefer using the actual literature. AI is here to stay, how it is used or misused will have profound consequences. I take no position on whether AGI or a “singularity” will be reached anytime soon.

[LibertyBell]

33 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

I used the same AI he used to illustrate a point. I still prefer using the actual literature. AI is here to stay, how it is used or misused will have profound consequences. I take no position on whether AGI or a “singularity” will be reached anytime soon.

we might need to place some restrictions so children (under 18) aren't using it for their school projects, I feel like it discourages independent thinking.

 

[donsutherland1]

9 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

we might need to place some restrictions so children (under 18) aren't using it for their school projects, I feel like it discourages independent thinking.

 

Yes, there are already some studies suggesting that it erodes critical thinking skills. That's a real problem.

[Typhoon Tip]

Fermi Paradox explanation, incarnate if you ask me.

It is a personal hypothesis of mine; in it's simplest preface states, 'the species evolves the ability, and then the ability unwittingly devolves the species'.  Which yet even more succinctly equates to, 'species evolution emerges the devolution of the species'

Whether there is any veracity to that idea or not, we cannot deny the intuitive suspicion, nor the outright observation of the 'emerging Idiocrasy' phenomenon, and the precarious vision of that state of affairs being in charge of a climate future, nuclear armament future, biological toxicity future ...etc, etc.

Maybe human evolution has reached the point whence the Law of Diminishing Returns has kicked it. The law of diminishing returns, often referred to as the law of lessening returns, states that if you keep increasing one factor of production while keeping others constant, the additional output gained from each new unit of that factor will eventually decrease...    I mean ... we can see that with a modest interpretation of that we might be observing how more and more provision of resource, both physical or informed, is resulting in less productivity ( perhaps a perversion of "intelligentsia" for this context ). Less is coming back from the people being effected by all that provision.  Perhaps that's twisting things too much, but I don't believe so.  It's anecdotal, but I've been finding vis-à-vis  with humanity that the ideas above don't even get comprehended on the first pass like they did decades ago.  I'm just now old enough to recall water cooler conversations where among the colloquy were sincere head nodders.  Now, you get a more gaped jaws under blank stares, followed by a some effacing joke about it being over heads.

Maybe in some physics sense it is also entropy growing within the system - I kind of like that actually. Because we learn via formal academia that entropy does in fact gain in every system that exists in nature. Entropy in simplest definition is the measure of disorder in a system.  So why would the evolutionary process not have to pay the "cosmological tax" of disorder. 

It is not hard to see how species evolution might lead to the devolution.  The reason is plainly acceptable, if one understands evolution to begin with, more specifically how it works.  Evolution perfects the specie's ability to survive by a transactional relationship between chance mutations during and preceding competition.  Those with insufficient mutation, thus lacking skill, don't win.   And the trophy?  the trophy is not OLED TV's, Buggatti cars, Yaughts and palatial estates, dinners with celebrities ... fortune providing eases of living - in fact, no "eases" even short of that illustrious list of aspiration is part of the trophy - not to nature.

In nature, the trophy is the ability to have sex with the best possible partner and give birth to the healthiest possible children, that in turn will carry on the lineage of those competition (and chance) refined genetics. The children of that union thus possess greater and greater prospects to achieve the same... Many generations later, the species has improved.  This is why we necessarily die.  That model provides we are receptacles of growing disorder that our offspring have a better chance to survive for being better equipped. However, they too are ultimately doomed to being receptacles; but their children may in turn be better suited ...and on and so on. Evolution is kind of an eerily genius adaptation to fend off entropy eventually eroding at a system to the point of demise.

See the paradox?  Where I am going is,  "eases of living" intrinsically lowers the competition ( or necessity for the arrival of favorable mutation) stresses that perfect the system.  Attempting to perpetuate the intrinsic vitality of any species, while lowering challenges spanning successive generation, smacks like physically impossible due to the ever growing quotient of disorder; there are no longer needs to improve via adaptation. 

This is why species - probably - fail once they get to some ceiling of achievements along their legacy, whence feedback  lessens returns. That science fiction novel is easy to write.  They end up in a figurative cul-de-sac of immensely powerful technological capacity but oops... the Idiocrasy has slipped below the necessary intelligence to responsibly serve as custodian and operator. 

But... any such Fermi Paradox explanation needs to apply universally.   The above essay might intuitively fit humanity. Based upon all available evidence, that is.  Perhaps some other species has evolved the "genetics" - if their life form even uses genetics as wee know it ... - to always be compensating for lessening returns ( which otherwise leads to a build up in critical entropy).  At least in our case, that's not possible though.  But the aliens abroad contend(ed) with entropy - that much of this is universally unavoidable. 

Every aspect of biology in an living organism serves a purpose. Evolution provided that.  Fits the biological model that living systems do not sustain cells and organs, etc, that are no longer being used. Everything in an organism is necessary.  For earth biology, as far as we can assume human kind being a part ... intelligence was an emergent property of all that. In our case, absolutely necessary for our rise out of obscurity. 

So, if the 'state of provision' and eases of living get in the way of needed intelligence, where does the intelligence go?   Just the last 20 years of recent modernity's surplus in 'how-to' and/or what-you-need-to-know at finger tips with nearly zero challenges, has managed to en masse vote a convicted criminal, harboring a dark triad narcissistic personality disorder ... into a position of self-fulfilling power.