by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
Climate Change: Brand or be Branded
From oilprice.com, an essay on the current state of the climate debate.
On both sides of the divide, the public relations campaign has been a complete fiasco, and this is clearly illustrated by asking the average person what they think about climate change or global warming—an answer that invariably depends on the weather at the particular moment the question is asked.
From the media-duping “Climategate scandal” in 2009 to the “Unabomber Believes in Global Warming” campaign that bestowed its intelligence on us this year, we are led to understand only that our elite are not up to the challenge of rational arbitration.
Those pushing for recognition that climate change is something that should be a major concern, and even a national security threat, have painfully mismanaged their efforts. Politicians do not understand scientists, and scientists clearly have no acumen for talking to the media, whose pull-quote analysis seeks to maximum damage and entertainment.
The way “climate change” has been handled by the “acceptance” camp in terms of public awareness has accomplished nothing other than to brand the idea as something only “hippies” believe in, something “alarmist” and not grounded in reality.
On the other side of the divide, the “deniers” camp has been equally adept at failure, leading to the branding of those who do not “believe” in climate change, or even those who have unanswered questions, as enemies of the Earth, right-wing Conservatives with no respect for the environment and on the payroll of corporations. Both cry conspiracy. Anyone who falls in between these two groups, and invariably this is the larger percentage, is entirely sidelined and branded at will by the other two.
LSE: Climate Change Challenge
As a possible antidote to the problem described above, a blog post from LSE writes:
Academic evidence should expect to be challenged, particularly when that research partners uncertainty with important social policy issues. Nafees Meah writes that social scientists and their counterparts involved in climage change research must be ready to push forward their evidence and be prepared to defend it.
Where science has an important public policy role, as is the case with climate science, then one should expect the scientific evidence to be challenged – especially given the intrinsic uncertainties in predicting the likely consequences of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations on the earth system and on social systems. When this happens, then the most appropriate course of action for scientists and policy makers is to be open and transparent. An important corollary is that scientists also need to be prepared to go out and defend their findings to the public. Addressing the challenge of climate change has to be done discursively through argument and debate as well being informed by evidence.
Can we survive the new golden age of oil?
An interesting post by Michael Levi at Energy, Security and Climate. Some excerpts:
In an insightful post today at Foreign Policy, Steve LeVine drills down on the tension between the emerging “golden age of oil” narrative and the need to tackle emissions.
I find it useful to separate the question of how oil abundance might affect climate outcomes into a physical/economic dimension and a political one.
Start with the physical and economic elements. Lots of oil intuitively means lots of emissions. How, though, does this shake out economically? The likely impact is smaller than you might think, in part because oil is only part of the emissions picture, and in part because oil consumption is driven by a lot more than how easy the fuel is to produce.
The difference between oil scarcity and abundance isn’t as automatically consequential for climate change as one might suppose.
What I’ve left out, though, is the political dimension. Abundant oil can influence emissions by changing the political environment in which battles over what to do about our energy systems play out. This might ultimately be more consequential for emissions than the economic and physical influences are.
The influence of oil abundance on climate policy could run either way.
A sense of oil abundance could reduce any urgency surrounding efforts to curb traditional consumption of fossil fuels. The popular discourse often conflates the dangers posed by oil scarcity and climate change. If oil scarcity concerns weaken, then, it wouldn’t be surprising to see climate ones fade too. Since serious leverage over emissions will ultimately require concerted action from policymakers, the consequences of this dynamic don’t look good.
But a belief that oil is newly plentiful could also cut the other way. Oil scarcity could drive policymakers toward promoting synthetic fuels that actually have worse climate consequences than oil does. Let me highlight one possibility: efforts to convert coal to liquid fuels will be a lot more popular if countries fear that oil resources are scarce than if they believe that they’re abundant. Alas coal-to-liquids (absent carbon capture and sequestration) yields nearly twice the emissions of conventional oil. Oil abundance could actually blunt this dynamic. That would be good news for emissions.
My sense is that the political dynamics are more important than the economic and physical ones here. So which way will things actually break? Only a fool would try to predict that outcome.
U.S. leads the world in CO2 reductions since 2006
The Vancouver Observer reports:
As the IEA highlighted: “US emissions have now fallen by 430 Mt (7.7%) since 2006, the largest reduction of all countries or regions. This development has arisen from lower oil use in the transport sector … and a substantial shift from coal to gas in the power sector.”
As the IEA pointed out, it is the plunging use of oil and coal that is driving the decline in CO2.
Coal use in the US plunged 13 percent in the last six years as natural gas and renewables took its place.
Duetsche Bank has called coal use in the US a “dead man walkin'” saying:
“Banks won’t finance them. Insurance companies won’t insure them. The EPA is coming after them…And the economics to make it clean don’t work.”
The Americans buy more oil than any other nation on earth. But, as I wrote last year, rapidly rising oil prices are driving a big decline in America’s oil use. The price of oil has more than doubled since 2005. Double the price of a commodity and people will use less.
Per person, Americans are back to 1960 levels of oil consumption. Oil is the biggest source of CO2 in the USA. Now with rising oil prices, new vehicle regulations and the emergence of electric cars it looks like the USA’s biggest source of CO2 will continue to fall. Considering that Americans could cut oil use in half and still use more per person than Europeans, there is clearly lots of room for big declines ahead.
The new oil abundance signifies that the peak-oil doom prophets were totally wrong. The biofuel madness must stop now, as they don’t contribute nothing to emission reduction.
With gas and oil available now, coal use will be reduced too.
The emissions reduction of 7.7% in 6 years is insignificant, and will stay so. A reduction of a few percent isn’t the 50-80% reduction that the alarmists demand (and that is totally un-achievable). Part of the emission reduction has been achieved by exporting heavy industries to other countries, so it is not a real reduction.
In the end – what we have is “business as usual”, there are no shortcuts to green utopia, all that climate alarmism has achieved so far is a colosal waste of resources on wind and solar useless devices.
Jacob,
The rational bet is to always bet against the malthusians, despite their always claiming to be the intellectual cutting edge. In reality Malthusians, from Malthus to Ehrlich and gang to our dear Web Hub telescope, are always wrong.
I would not make such sweeping generalizations, but Climategate and “official” responses to manipulation of global temperature data have already:
1. Exposed “official” efforts to obscure information about the energy stored at the cores atoms, stars, and galaxies since 1945:
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/ . . .
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-105
2. Encouraged talented scientists and writers to help restore:
_ a.) Integrity to science
_ b.) Science as a useful tool of society
_ c.) Joy of discovery in the lives of scientists
_ d.) Strict constitutional limits on political leaders
See BLOGROLL on right side =>
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
Emeritus Professor of
Nuclear/Space Science
http://www.omatumr.com
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/
I would not make such sweeping generalizations, but Climategate and “official” responses to manipulation of global temperature data have already:
1. Exposed “official” efforts to obscure information about The Overdue Pedestrianization of Chicago’s Streets:
http://archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=5594
lolwot, you and other promoters of AGW dogma are not to blame for overlooking Copernicus’ discovery in 1543 that the object in the center of the solar system controls debris ejected from its core five billion years (5 Gyr) earlier, including Earth.
http://tinyurl.com/7qx7zxs
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1994Data.htm
You were deceived by those who wanted to “save the world” from destruction by “nuclear fires,” like those ignited by
a.) Cores of U atoms on 6 Aug 1945 to destroy Hiroshima
b.) Cores of Pu atoms on 9 Aug 1945 to destroy Nagasaki
Please take a minute to read:
c.) The abstract of the false 1946 error that led to Climategate
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-105
d.) Bohr’s discovery in 1915 that atoms consist of light-weight, negatively charged (-) electrons orbiting a central, massive, positively charged (+) nucleus, just as lightweight planets like Earth orbit the massive Sun.
http://tinyurl.com/6mhbgas
Again, lolwot, you are not to blame for believing that energetic cores of atoms and stars are made of the same material that covers their exterior surfaces.
I would not make such sweeping generalizations, but Climategate and “official” responses to manipulation of global temperature data have already:
1. Exposed “official” efforts to obscure information about the Overabundance of alpacas in Pocopson Township
http://www.southernchestercountyweeklies.com/articles/2012/03/15/avon_grove_sun/news/doc4f620b6c94916453164293.txt?viewmode=fullstory
omanuel,
You keep referring to the iron core of the sun, but certainly you mean Neutron star core with iron accreted around it?
Instead of Neutron star core, what about the elusive dark matter.
If it’s Neutron star core where did all the mass go?
A Neutron star is what can be left after a supernova. The star before our current star that inhabited this gravitationally bound region of this galaxy went supernova. We are fortunate that it did as it created the heavier atoms (such as the iron in our blood and iron in the core of our Earth). Omanuel et. al., would posit that this Neutron star is actually the core of our current sun, and around this Neutron star exists an iron core. Is that approximately correct, omanuel?
BTW, in researching Neutron stars I did come to realize that Jocelyn Bell, one of the discoverers of Neutron stars did get severely “ripped off” by the Nobel Committee in awarding the Nobel Prize to two others but not her. So, thanks to omanuel for causing me to do a bit of further research into the history of Neutron star discovery and to learn a bit more about Jocelyn Bell, who now is one of my modern female scientist heroes, along with of course, JC. :)
That is right, R. Gates.
Cores of the Sun and other ordinary stars are neutron stars.
They produce heat and discard H to interstellar space, just as the father of chemistry, Antoine Lavoisier, discovered in 1783 that mossy zinc and sulfuric acid produces heat and discards H.
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/Quiz.htm
Cores of the U and Pu atoms that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 Aug and 9 Aug, 1945, are also made of neutrons energized by neutron repulsion [“Neutron repulsion,” The Apeiron Journal 19, 123-150 (2012) http://tinyurl.com/7t5ojrn http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V19NO2pdf/V19N2MAN.pdf
Astronomers, astrophysicists and solar physicists assumed the interior of the Sun is iron-rich, until Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed on6 Aug and 9 Aug, 1945, respectively.
The United Nations was established on 24 Oct 1945.
In 1946 Fred Hoyle published two papers that abruptly changed the internal composition of the Sun from iron (Fe) into hydrogen (H) and diverted “scientists” and society to the present fascist Orwellian state, guided by a plentiful supply of government research funds for compliant, consensus “scientists.” See:
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-105
“The rational bet is to always bet against the malthusians, despite their always claiming to be the intellectual cutting edge. In reality Malthusians, from Malthus to Ehrlich and gang to our dear Web Hub telescope, are always wrong.”
Well, that certainly isn’t rational.
In fact I think the general “they were wrong before so they will always be wrong” form of your argument is even a logical fallacy.
If someone repeatedly gives advice that consistently turns out to be wrong, this is strong evidence that future advice is likely to be wrong as well.
It doesn’t guarantee they will be wrong in future. It is possible they will make a mistake and accidentally give correct advice.
Except for the fact that eventually the “Malthusians” will be correct in that some Black Swan event will undoubtedly destroy mankind.
Jacob
Re: “emissions reduction of 7.7% in 6 years is insignificant”
It was primarily due to the economic crisis/recession plus shale gas boom. Not “insignificant”.
Re “peak oil”.
Look at the regime change that occurred from highly elastic to inelastic in 2004.
IEA confirms new high in fuel production
The main climate-science (rather than politics) news this week concerns the paper “Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium”, by Gergis et al, which received a media blitz a couple of weeks ago, with claims that recent warming is unmatched over the last 1000 years (cited in IPCC AR5).
When climate audit statistician Jean S started to check one of the key parts of the paper – the criteria used for selection of proxies – he found that he was unable to reproduce the results. This is important because it is well known (even to some climate scientists) that this selection procedure can lead to a bogus hockey stick effect.
Today, the press release trumpeting the paper’s findings disappeared from the web pages of two of the authors of the paper (Gergis and Phipps), and the paper itself disappeared from the website of the Journal of Climate, where the paper had been posted, replaced with a message reading simply “The requested article is not currently available on this site.”
Note that it is still up in Melbourne.
=========
er, H/t Steve.
========
I suspect it is gone today. Honest Climate reports that Australian Prime Minister Gillard faces an economic revolt:
http://anhonestclimatedebate.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/gillard-faces-revolt-on-economy/
The withdrawn paper by Gergis et al. and the economic revolt in Australia are encouraging signs of an awakening to the danger of government policies based on manipulated information.
An abrupt U-turn in science in 1946:
a.) Disrupted centuries of advance (1946-1543 = 403 yrs)
b.) Deceived the public for 66 years (2012-1946 = 66 yrs)
c.) Guided scientists along a well-funded path to fascism
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-105
George Orwell recognized and wrote of the danger of fascist socialism: http://www.george-orwell.org/l_biography.html
He died in Jan 1950, soon after “1984” was published.
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/
Less than four years after the abrupt U-turn in science in 1946
Well, I suppose this is a step in the right direction on the part of Gergis et al. and the journal. Although it is disappointing that they have failed to acknowledge the reason.
What will be interesting to see – considering the IPCC’s new, improved “guidelines” regarding material eligible for consideration in assessment reports (which specifically exclude blogs as an acceptable source) – is whether or not the paper will continue to be cited in the draft of AR5.
Given the early hype, will the “author team” stick to their guns and insist on relying on the paper (because the faults were revealed via blogs)? Or will they just quietly “disappear” it, too?!
Desperate circumstances, desperate means.
====================
See: Gergis “Significance” at Climate Audit
Heh, when you’ve lost Ol’ Nick.
======
Now: Gergis et al put on hold
I would not over read the importance of the disappearence of the references to the paper or under estimate the creativity of the team.
ahem.
That said, if the paper is withdrawn or corrected then the journal
should take a serious look at requiring that code and data be released
and that they move to support reproducable results as a requirement of publication
http://cooley.libarts.wsu.edu/schwartj/pdf/Geddes1.pdf
This paper provides a good explanation of the “selecting on the dependent variable” problem inherent in selecting trees that appear well correlated with temperature as a basis for doing temperature studies.
If you only select trees that appear correlated with temperature, you are ignoring the larger body of trees that are telling you that trees are not a good proxy for temperature.
For example, say we selected companies that were highly profitable to study why they were profitable. We found that factor X was common to all successful companies. This might lead us to conclude that factor X cause companies to be profitable.
However, by not studying unprofitable companies, we overlooked the fact that factor X was common to unprofitable companies as well, and thus had little or no influence of profitability.
The same situation with trees. The assumption is that temperature (factor X) determines tree growth (profitability). By only studying trees that correlate with temperature, climate science has ignored the large body of trees telling us that temperature (factor X) is also common to trees that show no growth (low profitability) and thus had little of no influence on tree growth (profitability).
In addition it ignores the fact that correlation is not causation. Income level is positively correlated with shoe size, for example, but shoe size is coincidental not causative.
Great blog post and article. Even bigger declines are in store as natural scientific and technical developments improve existing systems and replace them with entire new technologies. Think 30% wind provided electricity by 2030, New photovoltaic solar panels on almost all roof tops and much open desert areas in the west outside of national parks. New natural gas with advanced combined cycles for power and process heat. Then go to advanced fission plants in the east and coal fired advanced power plants with carbon dioxide sequestration in old oil fields for tertiary oil recovery. Then in order to keep coal plants rolling carbon sequestration in salt domes and depleted deep oil aquifers or salt brine water solutions. Geothermal resources in the west with closed cycle working fluids. Finally fusion power to change the game in the next 50 years. As long as the astroids don’t hit the US should be ok and leading the way out of the mess prior to the 2 degree C hits. Fusion power will also allow desalination in the west to help with the fresh water problems and then on to the world. Exciting times for the young scientists and engineers.
I can’t figure out whether or not that’s satire.
Nope. I am optimistic about the challenges and ingenuity of the scientific and engineering community in the US. Just got to keep focused on objectives for improvement, not more control by politicians. Lots of interesting work to be done. Even climate change modeling has lots of work ahead of them if they can just acknowledge the science is not settled and in the nature of scientific inquiry, can never be settled.
You’re gonna feel a lot better when you realize that carbon dioxide has been demonized, and that warmer is better than cooler. That’s gonna simplify your path ahead. Keep on keepin’ on imagining on et on.
==========
History does show that warmer is better for many people than cooler.
History does show, for the past ten thousand year, this warm period temperature is near the upper bound of how warm it does most often get. The next few hundred years will drop toward the lower bound, toward the cooler temperatures of the little ice age. CO2 is a trace gas and it is a trace cause of any temperature changes. Ocean temperature can and does cause CO2 vapor pressure to go up and down, just as it does in Carbonated Drink cans and bottles. CO2 makes green things grow better using less water. We have more and more better data coming in. With honest and sincere research, discussion and debate, this issue will likely be resolved in a few more years.
+1
Scott equates tech advances with solar and sequestration. Neither is worth the powder to blow them to smithereenies, which is the very best that should be done with them.
Scott: I’ve got $100 here that sez fusion renders the whole issue moot within 5 yrs. brianfh01-at-yahoo.ca if you want to take me up on it.
Go for broke. Dilithium crystals.
Now your being funny. Too bad we won’t be here when fusion starts but by 2015 we will get breakeven! Then it is a matter of engineering and cost. How much fun that will be. PE, if you are a PE we can do this.
I hope we have the fusion plants on the coast with desaliniation to revlieve the pressure on the poor rivers in California. Let the rivers run unvexed to the sea. Conservatives can be environmentalists, just not politically correct. Technology and wealth creation are the way out.
Kim, I agree about the carbon dioxide but as long as the ruling class wants somethng done with it we may as well do it smartly.
Great – now we just need anti-matter – http://www.space.com/10602-antimatter-beams-thunderstorms-nasa.html
P.E. said this about a perfectly sound comment by Scott:
This is in the midst of ongoing satire by the likes of Oliver Manuel, Herman Alexander Pope, and David Wojick, who P.E. must believe are voices of profound genius.
These are indeed exciting times for the young scientists and engineers, and also older ones that aren’t bitter about some past wrongs inflicted on them.
Scott,
If we do solar and wind as you claim to wish, we will be too broke to do nuke.Carbon sequestration is a bs idea that is insanely expensive and will not work.
Fusion has been just a few years away for over 50 years.
Additionally, since there is no actual evidence that 2.0C is likely, much less a problem, your motives are based on fantasy.
Why do you claim to be optimisitc?
If Solar and Wind can compete in a fair market, I am all for it. If solar and wind cannot make it without subsidies and tax credits, let it wait until it can. Solar and Wind cannot be used if you don’t have something else to take up the load when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. That adds a lot of cost to using wind and solar and the intermittent supply of the wind and solar makes the backup power run much less efficient. The green energy gain is not much of a gain and the cost is much higher. This and Ethanol are really not good for anyone, except for those who are now rich because we pay more for energy in taxes and energy costs.
This does mean that the Solar and Wind must pay for the backup power that is needed when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.
Good luck hunter. You think as you wish. Nuke is expensive and difficult to build but works great for base load power. Politics in the west US won’t allow it but the SE will likely build some followed by Texas. Lots of solar potential as we reduce the cost of photovoltaics. Already competetitve in sunny areas that need lots of power line construction. Putting new solar panels on roofs and parking lots car ports will help but CA will be in trouble as base load generation requirements amp up. The wind turbine energy costs have dropped tremendously in price and will continue to fall. We have lots of good areas left to expoit. The natural gas and shale gas potentials are huge. Coal is too big a resource in the east and Wyoming to not use so to please the environmentalists we can sequester carbon until replacement technologies. Fusion developments can change everything. Take a look at the LLNL web page on fusion at NIF and the work in Europe at ITER. I know 50 years has been the target for 50 years. but this things don’t predict linearly, not unlike climate responses. As for the 2 degrees increase, I agree with you but most of the political class does not so we need to accept that level of reality. But I am optimistic that ingenuity and energy will succeed.
You really should have a closer look at regional costs and why something is economically viable in one region of the country and not viable in other regions of the country.
Central Appalachian coal mines need to get at least $70/ton to be financially viable. The layoffs are coming fast and furious. Natural gas needs to be around $4.20/MMBtu for many eastern coal mines to compete on price.
Wyoming coal mines need to get $12/ton to be financially viable but coal transportation is about 2-3 cents per ton/mile.
Solar makes some financial sense is Southern California because the differential between Summer and Winter Peaks is about 15GW. Solar works fairly well in the summer when the sun shines which is when California needs that 15GW’s of extra power.
Solar doesn’t make much sense in Texas because the difference in Summer and Winter Peaks is only 1-2GW. Texas needs almost as much power in the Winter when the sun isn’t shining as it does in the summer when the sun is shining.
I’d like to see some actual numbers on ‘wind turbines’ dropping in costs other then an assertion….the most important numbers being ‘total project cost’. The sites with ‘good wind’ and ‘easy road’ access near ‘existing transmission’ structure are disappearing fas. In the US Northwest the ability of Bonneville Power to ‘load balance’ wind at a minimal cost is almost exhausted.
But aside from all that, it’s all wunnerful, wunnerful, wunnerful.
Hunter,
Cheap solar is entirely possible and not too far away – and great for very many places and applications. Carbon sequestration in grazing lands is not only possible, has huge potential, is happening now and brings immense productivity, water efficiency, ecosystem, and costs benefits.
There are a couple of fusion ideas – Eric Lerner with his plasmoid and laser containment systems – that might work and be game changers.
4th gen. fission designs have been under development for 50 years and will happen in the next 10.
As you know, I don’t think AGW is an adequate paradigm at all. It needs to be replaced with something more dynamic. But it should all be about cheap power anyway.
Cheers
Scott – “As long as the astroids don’t hit the US”. No, they’ll be safely in lunar orbit being mined.
You really don’t understand real risk, even though small.
Take a look at http://b612foundation.org/ for the chances of a civilization destroying 0ne kilomoeter astroid colloiding with earth. big ones hit every 30,000,000 years or so and destroy most life but medium. Tens of thousands cross our orbit but the chances of a collision are small with big impacts. But much more real than a few degrees C in maybe 100 years.
Scott | June 8, 2012 at 1:12 pm | Reply
“Think 30% wind provided electricity by 2030, New photovoltaic solar panels on almost all roof tops and much open desert areas in the west outside of national parks.”
Would you care for some unicorns with that, sir?
The transparency issue has been the bane of climate science. Every climate scientist should be bending over backwards to get every bit of data and code in the public arena. Only then will they have a foundation from which to make their arguments.
jim2 | June 8, 2012 at 1:36 pm | Reply
“The transparency issue has been the bane of climate science. Every climate scientist should be bending over backwards to get every bit of data and code in the public arena. Only then will they have a foundation from which to make their arguments.”
No Jim. It’s better for them to conceal the evidence and appear dishonest than to reveal the evidence and remove all doubt.
“On the other side of the divide, the “deniers” camp has been equally adept at failure, leading to the branding of those who do not “believe” in climate change, or even those who have unanswered questions, as enemies of the Earth, right-wing Conservatives with no respect for the environment and on the payroll of corporations. ”
Wrong. it’s the warmists who have been adept at painting skeptics as “deniers” and “enemies of the earth” and paid hacks. One misguided bill board campaign that lasted less than a day in no way let’s the alarmists off the hook for years of vitriol.
It’s not just one misguided billboard campaign is it. The skeptic blogs are awash with stupidity and extremism. You can’t reason with people who are looking for any excuse to deny.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/co2-sanity/
The alarmist blogs are awash with more and more dangerous warming.
Climate data is awash with temperatures that have no significant warming since 1998.
You can’t reason with people who keep making alarmist warnings with no data to support them.
This does really help me sort out which side is stupid and extreme.
There is a green hype wave building up to Rio+20 later this month.
I wonder what hammer is going to drop on the poor sods this time?
Like too many people, he doesn’t want to accept the fact that although human emissions are only 5% (actually maybe 3%) of the flux in and out of the atmosphere every year, they account for more than 100% of the net. The other inputs and outputs would balance — as they have very closely for 10,000 years — but our “tiny” contribution has upset that balance. And since our excess has accumulated, we’re responsible for all of the increase since pre-industrial times. Which amounts to about 40% more CO2 than was there in pre-industrial times.
3% of a trace gas is causing a major problem for earth. That is total BS. That something a reasonable person should never believe.
CO2 has been rising for seven thousand years, with Temperature going up and down with no connection to CO2 levels.
http://popesclimatetheory.com/page38.html
“3% of a trace gas is causing a major problem for earth. That is total BS. That something a reasonable person should never believe.”
40%. CO2 has increased 40%. Not 3%.
No wonder we have no chance with deniers, you guys are SO SLOW. Whether it’s deliberate stubborn “avoiding the facts” kind of slowness or just an inate inability to follow an argument I don’t know.
And your logic is absurd. We shouldn’t believe a trace gas has no effect? How many times do we have to correct you guys over your silly “trace amount = trace effect” fallacy? Like I said you are SO SLOW.
“CO2 has been rising for seven thousand years, with Temperature going up and down with no connection to CO2 levels.”
CO2 went up 8%. How much warming do you think warmists expect from an 8% increase in CO2?
Seriously going over and over this kind of stuff again and again is SO TIRING AND SAD. Why can’t you guys figure out the obvious and blatent problems with your own arguments?
Because there is nothing wrong with these arguments. You just interpret them stupidly.
when you write educational material for children will it follow the lines of what you believe here, or are you planning to tone it down? I could wait and see to know for sure but maybe will say now.
David if I argued that GCRs could have no effect because they were trace particles ( much smaller trace than C02) would you call that a good argument?
Seriously. Lets here your stance on
X cannot have a large effect because it only exists in trace amounts.
That argument. what do you think? is that an argument you want to let schoolchildren believe?
My educational materials are not going to present arguments. They are going to point out that there is a debate on specific topics. I do not want the students to take sides, just to understand that there is a scientific debate. The substance of the debate is too advanced for K-12.
Mosher, you ask for my stance on the argument that “X cannot have a large effect because it only exists in trace amounts.” The answer is that it depends on the case. In many cases it is a good argument. In other cases it is a bad argument. For example, many health standards specify trace levels that are harmless.
The thing is that nobody makes this argument, as stated, in climate. It is sometimes stated as a conclusion, as it was above, but not as an argument.
That is an excellent blog post by Tamino. A commenter pointed out that “WUWT has recently descended into farcical/conspiracy theory territory”.
Asking the excess CO2 origin question is the best way to separate the fake skeptic from the true skeptic (in the Martin Gardner tradition). As another commenter at Tamino says:
“I know there are a lot of crazies over there, but it’s still disheartening that there aren’t more genuine skeptics willing to speak up.”
Web, I like the idea that the CO2 rise is not primarily human caused. Does that make me a fake skeptic. What does that mean by the way?
“I like the idea that the CO2 rise is not primarily human caused”
So will you be teaching that as part as your education to kids?
“i like the idea”
Could be the skeptics slogan!
Evidence…..huh?
I like Howard Hayden’s argument. Not familiar with it? Not my problem.
Oh yeah, he’s the guy that wrote this piece of stupid,
“A warmer world is a better world. Look at weather-related death rates in winter and in summer, and the case is overwhelming that warmer is better.”
See, you can be a physicist, and not have a clue.
Liking the idea is fine…believing it is something entirely different. Just as I like the idea that some day humans will all lay down their weapons and live in peace.
Michael, I take it you are not aware of the argument that warmer is better, especially on winter nights in high lattitudes, where most of the warming seems to be taking place, according to some statistical models. Do you know anything about the arguments in this debate? You give no evidence thereof. You just call everything stupid, as though that settled the issue. How stupid is that? Are you a teenager by any chance?
Gates, I like it enough to have reserved judgement on the issue. Does that satisfy you? More generally I think that everything in nature oscillates, so any argument that assumes a natural steady state is suspect. So far as I can tell there are no steady states in nature.
Well, it is true that CO2 is going to “oscillate” back to Cretaceous values by the end of the century. I wonder if temperature will follow. Perhaps we need to look into that.
Hearing that sort of stuff from Tamino is a great way to start the weekend with a smile.
It is almost as good as some neo-malthusian coming up with claims about the end of oil.
Are neo-malthusians those that believe these are “exciting times for the young scientists and engineers”, or is that considered a neo-luddite?
Hunter is still bitter over the end of the whale-oil era.
It’s better at separating the faithful from the agnostics, actually.
Human CO2 emission is 3% of natural emissions. Atmospheric CO2 is increase is 1.5% of human emission. Anyone who says CO2 molecules wear ID tags describing whether they’re natural or artificial is blowing smoke. It’s a fact that the environment is removing at least half of human emissions and we have no idea why it isn’t removing all of it or if that’s the true source of the overage. The vast majority of CO2 is dissolved in the frigid depths of the ocean. Recently liquid drops of pure CO2 were discovered near oceanic trenches where new crust is formed. Just a slight change in mixing rate of warmer water with colder water would release as much or more CO2 as humans do.
While the correlation between human emission and a lesser accumulation in the atmosphere is compelling it’s not nearly as compelling as it would be if human emission were equal to atmospheric accumulation. Clearly there’s more to the story and in any case correlation is not causation.
What I’ve just revealed to you is the difference between being positive about something which is unproven and retaining a modicum of doubt about what is not proven. The latter is the scientific method. The former is the religious method. Get with the program. Throw off the yoke of blind faith and put on agnostic hat worn by men of logic and reason.
If you add the atmospheric accumulation and ocean acidification, it comes out to the human emission. You forgot the ocean change that is also observed.
Andy Grove made billions for Intel by characterizing the process known as diffusion. To those that don’t understand diffusion, it all must seem very mysterious.
Gee lolwot, I find your posts stupid and extreme. Go figure.
I wonder if Dr Curry sees anything disturbing with a situation where someone designated to write K-12 educational material on climate admits “I like the idea that the CO2 rise is not primarily human caused”
Maybe I am wrong and you are all correct. Maybe the strength I see in the evidence for ongoing CO2 rise being mostly, if not entirely, man-made is in error. Maybe the opposite is just as, or even more, likely. Maybe the mere fact that CO2 is a trace gas really IS a great argument that man isn’t the cause and I just can’t understand that. Maybe the fact temperature over the last 7,000 years hasn’t followed a 7% increase in CO2 really IS a great argument that CO2 has negligible impact on global temperature.
After-all you and Hunter, and possibly Pope, have been at this climate game for long enough. It’s not like any of you are stupid. You have had the time and ability to understand these matters of science. You are all more than capable of reason and logic and diving into details about the science as you do on occasion, better than myself.
And it’s not like you are alone. You three typify the majority of climate skeptics out there from my experience. Your views and arguments are in no way extreme or unusual compared to what typical climate skeptics say.
But try as I might I can’t see where I am wrong on the three cases above. It still seems to me that the arguments you three made and defended are wrong.
Yet how can two non-biased humans armed with the same facts reach such different conclusions?
The simplest explanation is that one of the two parties is biased, and by virtue of self-reflection I know it is not me who is biased. Which suggests an inconveniently rude conclusion about the majority of climate skeptics…
But it wouldn’t be unknown – there’s a huge swathe of evolution skeptics out there who accept and deploy bad arguments on the science because of religious bias. I know that now, it took me time to figure out but through arguing with them for years I eventually twigged how the filtering system works so well. They function fine when analyzing non-threatening areas of science, they just break down into bad argument on particular science that interferes with their religious beliefs, as if some kind of blinkers had come down to protect them from reality.
But what could the equivalent bias behind the majority of climate skeptics? It’s obviously not religion. The candidate I think is political bias. I notice that a large number of climate skeptics do seem to be really into the whole individualist/libertarian/anti-government control thing and talk about it a lot. I also notice that you call the “warmists” politically biased a lot (“communist”, “socialist”, etc) and refer to the science as political. Which is eerily similar to how evolution-skeptics attack evolution as a “religion” and accuse it’s advocates of being religiously biased to accept it. Ie it’s that psychological “projection” phenomenon where people project their own flaws onto others.
As far as I see there ARE climate skeptics who present good arguments, eg Stephen Mosher. But the large majority of climate skeptics don’t from my perspective.
Lolwot, what you apparently cannot grasp is that reasonable people of good will can look at the same evidence and come to opposite conclusions, especially if the evidence is complex. This is why there are different political parties. People are different.
I think we can, it’s just when people re-state the same old clearly wrong nonsense, then we know it’s about people wanting, not their own opinions, but their own facts.
Like I said Michael, you folks do not accept disagreement. We have to say the same thing over and over again because you do. There is nothing clearly wrong about either side, which is a normal stage in every science. That is why we are here. The difference between us is that I think this is an honest debate, but you do not. There you are clearly wrong.
lolwot: by virtue of self-reflection I know it is not me who is biased.
that’s a good one. :-)
As far as I see there ARE climate skeptics who present good arguments, eg Stephen Mosher. But the large majority of climate skeptics don’t from my perspective.
that’s another good one. From your perspective you have deprecated some of my skeptical arguments. I have engaged in a considerable amount of self-reflection, and I know that I am not biased. So you must be biased …,
at least from my perspective!
“The simplest explanation is that one of the two parties is biased, and by virtue of self-reflection I know it is not me who is biased. ”
Too rich for words. It sounds like something Mr Spock would say to Captain Kirk when explaining his logic. Good entertainment.
Lolwot, please say more about your bout of self reflection. How did you do it? How long did it last? Did you have a guide, or use drugs? Just kidding. Where you able to change any of your basic beliefs. Not kidding. If not then why do you think this exercise shows that I am biased while you are not? Strong belief is not bias, that is, it is not a form of error.
What makes you think you’re immune to that?
You may not be religious, but what makes religious beliefs any different, in effect, to any other beliefs?
And what makes you think that any amount of “self-reflection” is going to help you see past your beliefs?
Because I don’t have strong political or religious beliefs. Skeptics here evidentially do (strong political beliefs) and IMO have allowed this to bias their analysis of the science to the point that they make and defend very bad arguments on the issue.
I disagree this subject is just down to opinion, as if one person can believe CO2 rise is natural and another can believe CO2 rise is due to man and both are “right”. For complex subjects that could be the case, but not for this one.
Coincidentally this “everyone is right” philosophy is what creationists advance to justify their ludicrous resistance to certain scientific subjects. With their “fairness” strategy, they argue a 6000 year old earth and a 4.5 billion year old earth are just different valid “interpretations” of the same facts.
I look at the evidence behind the CO2 rise being due to man and it’s very strong. I don’t see any room for people to reach the opposite conclusion unless they are biased.
If it was just the “CO2 rise cause” issue I might gloss over all this. But it isn’t. There are many other areas where skeptics stick to diametrically bizarre conclusions and bad arguments (there were 3 above, including the CO2 cause one).
But the icing on the cake is the contradictions, which are a classic tell of a biased approach. Contradictions form much like how a prolific liar will have trouble keeping track of all their lies and will eventually slip up.
For example the instrumental global surface temperature records show global warming. A biased individual may resist that and try to find ways it doesn’t, such as arguing that the instruments are biased, badly sited, adjusted etc.
Then when confronted with the satellite record warming, perhaps they can’t deny that, but their bias wants to find some foothold to argue from anyway, so they point at the instrumental temperature records and argue that the early 20th century saw just as fast warming as the late 20th century.
The problem is they are bending the facts to fit a conclusion they want to reach, rather than letting the conclusion follow from the facts. As a result they accidentally made a contradiction: Arguing the surface temperature record is unreliable, but then arguing it’s so reliable we can compare early 20th century and late 20th century trends.
Contradiction forming is the best sign of bias. Creationists do it too. If you approach science unbiased you fit the facts into a coherent framework and shouldn’t make such contradictions. If you bend the facts to fit a bias you easily slip up and make contradictions.
lolwot – See the paper @ steven | June 8, 2012 at 4:29 pm
It shows that CO2 lags temperature. So, I respectfully suggest you are wrong on this point.
You are absolutely correct, lolwot.
Scientists use contradictions to eliminate faulty paths of logic and strengthen the robust paths.
Fake skeptics treat contradictions as equally valid outcomes, useful to build up a web of deceit and rising FUD, thinking the more drivel that they can spew, the more difficult it is for the layperson to sort things out.
If you don’t believe me, look at all the wacko theories presented here and how infrequently the fake skeptics will question those theories. Those are rife with contradictions and so are perfect fodder for the Heartland crowd.
They are not on a path to understanding, but on a dead-end path of confusion and hope to draw as many people in on this path as is possible.
I assume that you are looking at Figure S2 of the supplementary material by Lovejoy. What they are doing is a cross-spectral analysis and not a cross-correlation analysis. They are looking in the frequency spectrum so values smaller along the x-axis are the longest time scale correlations.
There is only so much that one can do in interpreting this paper because the charts and figures are a complete mess.
If one wants to look at a professionally written paper to start with, go with the recent Sato and Hansen article.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20120508_ClimateSensitivity.pdf
lolwot: Because I don’t have strong political or religious beliefs. Skeptics here evidentially do (strong political beliefs) and IMO have allowed this to bias their analysis of the science to the point that they make and defend very bad arguments on the issue.
I absolutely agree with one of your points: that is your opinion.
lolwot, why do you persist in trying to put words in my mouth?
I do not subscribe to the “everyone is right” philosophy, so most of your argument falls flat.
Do you think that just because you don’t have any particular religious or political beliefs that you don’t have any beliefs?
Like a belief that virtually 100% of everything climate scientists say is virtually 100% correct, data and models are beyond reproach, etc?
Like a belief that virtually all sceptics are wrong most of the time?
Like a belief that all sceptics sing from the same hymn sheet?
The other thing about beliefs is that the stronger they are, the less you’re aware that you have them.
Lolwot, your hypocrisy is astonishing. You are an extremist. You have made, I am guessing, well over 1000 comments here, far more than I have, and probably more than almost anyone. Perhaps 20% include scientific substance, but the rest are mostly repeated assertions that the science is clear and skeptics are stupid.
Most of us skeptics are arguing science, not politics and certainly not religion. I myself have no interest in either. I do have a strong interest in stopping your ideology, which I regard as dangerous. But it is your ideology that is driving the debate. If you stopped then I could go do something more useful. So your “I am more rational than you are” assertions are just more of your usual junk.
David “The coal burners are my heroes and I am proud of my advocacy work, especially as I am winning and you are losing.” Wojick says:
Could have fooled me.
Actually, WHT, it’s a conspiracy against climate scientists.
Don’t we all?
lolwot,
Hearing this from you is an extrem example of the pot calling the kettle black.
You and your utter lack of understanding of risk and precautionary ideas, along with your dogged, fact-less support of AGW extremist garbage is far more extreme than anything said on most skeptical blogs.
And you are a rather mainstream, relatively sane true believer.
Oil Price’s analysis of the two ‘camps’ is frightfully flawed.
=============
For one thing, where’s the conspiracy in the first camp? The only conspiracy described is a projected one, completely masked from the author.
==========
They seem to be reading an awful lot into a few electronic billboards in Chicago for a week.
Yes, the assymetry there was disorienting.
===========
One billboard, for one day, and which a lot of people liked. WUWT ran a poll and 22% favored the billboard. Heartland picked up some new sponsors as a result. That it was damaging is just more green hype.
Wow, even 78% of the WUWT crowd thought it was extreme.
Can you get anything correct?
http://polldaddy.com/poll/6199128/?view=results
72% thought it was a blunder. “Blunder” and “extreme” are not synonyms and 72 is not 78, Michael, whoever you are.
And the survey was open to anyone making you at least 78% stupid and 100% wrong.
WUWT ran a poll? Oh, there is a neutral group!
What a wonderful illustration of the old saw about the pot calling the kettle black. Hypocrite much? ROFL
On another topic, the IPCC is meeting now, with lots of documents to look at:
http://ipcc.ch/scripts/_session_template.php?page=_35ipcc.htm#.T9I4VNUV2So
The budget history is interesting.
http://ipcc.ch/meetings/session35/doc2_budget.pdf
It is in Swiss francs, which are slightly larger than US dollars. The budget was about about $7 million for 2011, with about $2 million of that from the USA. Historically the US has been by far the largest supporter. Maybe that an change.
LOL – I hear Romney is planning a leveraged buyout of the IPCC and will then load it up with debt, extract more money than the U.S. paid into it, and finallyput it out of our misery with a Chapter 13 filing. He’s got exactly the experience we need in this case.
Further on: Global carbon-dioxide emissions increase by 1.0 Gt in 2011 to record high IEA 24 May 2012
Observations:
1) The Non-OECD rate of CO2 growth (led by China & India) is ~1000% of the OECD decline in CO2.
2) The politically declared limit of 32.6 Gt for +2C (for 450 ppm CO2) will likely be reached in 2013, (given the current economic slow down and assuming we do not have a severe global depression by then.)
For perspective see World Energy Consumption Since 1820 in Charts by Gail “the Actuary” Tverberg
Expectation: Global temperature trends will likely be ~ <0.137 C/decade, ~ 2 sigma lower than IPCC’s mean 0.2 C/decade, but in line with predictions by Nicola Scafetta and Don Easterbrook.
Conclusion:
Pragmatism and economics indicate that we will adapt to global warming, and not mitigate it, regardless of one’s “beliefs”, “projections” or predictions on climate futures.
(Despite much wringing of hands and giving schoolchildren nightmares over catastrophic global warming, the world will continue into the coming oil shortage driven economic recession/depression. See:
A student in despair over Romm’s 11°F temperature increase article – if this comment was reversed, it would be called a ‘death threat’ .)
Bibliography:
Christopher Monckton “Why mitigating CO2 emissions is cost-ineffective”
Joseph D’Aleo and Don Easterbrook Relationship of Multidecadal Global Temperatures to Multidecadal Oceanic Oscillations
Scafetta N., 2012. Multi-scale harmonic model for solar and climate cyclical variation throughout the Holocene based on Jupiter-Saturn tidal frequencies plus the 11-year solar dynamo cycle. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 80, 296-311.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jastp.2012.02.016. PDF – Supplement
“See:
A student in despair over Romm’s 11°F temperature increase article – if this comment was reversed, it would be called a ‘death threat’ .”
Wherein Watts ignores the fact that Romm never reported 11F by 2050, he left the “(2050)” out, which was an error inserted by the journalist.
Also that “student in despair” is blatantly someone pretending, possibly a skeptic.
lolwot
You have no evidence to say the student is “pretending”. To the contrary:
If students have no basis for hope, then I would not be surprised at despair over global warming alarmism.
re; basis for hope…
I’ll see your Basis for Hope and raise you one Problem of Evil.
Dave Springer
I’ll raise you the second Problem of Evil –
Why do you think there is Evil or Good!
dodge away.
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=352991&CategoryId=14093
“Baby Survives 3 Days in Argentina with Bullet Wound in Chest
BUENOS AIRES – A 7-month-old baby survived alone for three days with a bullet wound in its chest beside the bodies of its parents and brother, who died in an apparent suicide pact brought on by the couple’s terror of global warming, the Argentine press said Saturday.”
Is it irrational to feel extreme anger upon seeing such reports, or is it just me?
Darwin disapproves of warmistas.
On another topic, the Green AAAS has published another piece on how science teachers refuse to teach about the climate debate, even when students raise the issue. G-AAAS sees climate skepticism as an unfortunate problem, cause by the evil of blogs (like this one).
http://membercentral.aaas.org/blogs/stemedu/classroom-clashes-pt-2-teaching-climate-change
I am glad to hear that skepticism is a common occurrence. The climate science curriculum materials that my team is developing for Heartland will help give these students the ammunition they need to fight the Great Green Teachings. AP students will have no trouble using our stuff in self study mode. Then the Green teachers will have some real explaining to do.
Interesting to see that AAAS uses the term “near-consensus” instead of the Green PR term “consensus.” This is progress of a small sort. I am a member of AAAS and I certainly do not support the company line.
You’re about ready for Robin’s ‘Invisible Serf’s Collar’ blog.
===================
Yes, they clearly need the equivalent of bark collars, which go off if the student says something skeptical, shocking them into silence. Critical thinking? We don’t need no stinking critical thinking.
But you just wrote elsewhere that K-12 isn’t capable of critical thinking in climate science hence your materials would only inform them there is a controversy rather than present arguments.
In my experience it’s the faculty who need the bark collars not the students. Actually I think they need pink slips but libtard union support in K-12 and tenure in higher level libtardia rules that option out.
For now…
Is there a single scientific society/group which hasn’t taken an AAAS-inine official position? For a while I had hopes for the AMS, but I guess not.
>:(
Did it even occur to the author of oilprice.com that the problem with climate science is not a communication problem but something much more basic. In 1988 government agencies world wide decided that the primary driver of modern climate was man made emissions. We will build 22 models and spend $80B to prove it. We will not spend a lot of time and resource to understand the natural forces and feedbacks of the natural system or look for other possible causes of climate anomalies. Lets not consider whether we fully understand the direct and indirect effects of the sun, or whether there are any natural thermostatic effects in place which change the heat transfer balance at the top of the atmosphere (Lindzen 2001, Spencer 2011, and others). And when a rouge scientist presents a reverse relationship between warming and the rise of CO2 (Salby 2011), we will just ignore it. When the observations don’t match the models, let’s conclude that the observations are wrong and the models are right (upper troposphere warming rate). We behave as though Climate Science is mature when in fact it is actually still embryonic.We don’t understand clouds, aerosols, or ocean oscillations to a degree that allows future projections on any scale beyond a week or so, a capability which existed before 1988. This is not a communication problem it is a leadership problem.
“a rouge scientist” — are those reds, as in watermelons? I have more faith in rogue scientists than those.
haha. this caught my eye.
http://www.amusingplanet.com/2011/11/ivanhoe-reservoir-covered-with-400000.html#12
Wild. Is it real?
But, but, they contain carbon.
That takes balls.
That brings new meaning to the term “liquid crystal.”
cool patterns
Hmm. maybe we can use white balls and geoengineer ‘fake’ arctic ice.
albedo control.
Question: how many white plastic balls would it take ? ha.
No help for the PBs; they couldn’t walk on them. Ho.
question is, where will you find all that white carbon? ;-)
The racial overtones are deafening.
I’m in favor of everything but blue balls.
What on earth are you talking about?
Are you one of those people who imagine a racist behind every bush?
Dr. Curry, here’s the makings for a thread:
Why Do Kids Prefer Sci-Fi Over Science?
We’re seeing exhibit A upthread.
P.E.
The AGW movement is proof of that question’s validity.
Some people like to play with their telescopes ^^^. I outgrew that in junior high.
What’s the difference between climate science and science fiction?
One is designed to frighten the young and the gullible and the other is found in the fiction section of bookstores.
“efforts to convert coal to liquid fuels will be a lot more popular if countries fear that oil resources are scarce than if they believe that they’re abundant. Alas coal-to-liquids (absent carbon capture and sequestration) yields nearly twice the emissions of conventional oil”
That is not strictly true. The amount of CO2 generated depends on the inputs, if you use only coal and water, you do indeed have a lot of wasted carbon, but if methane and coal are combined to make Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG); propane (C3H8), and butane (C4H10), it will be much less. So
8 CH4 + 4C –> 4 (C3H8)
10 CH4 + 6C –> 4(C4H10)
all you are doing is making methane as source of your hydrogen in the hydrogenation reaction.
No matter. There are about 9 TRILLION barrels of oil under the Arctic. There is shale gas. There is methane clathrate. Who knows what else we have to burn.
So what — look at this item
40 TRILLION barrels of oil and 1 billion barrels per day by 2015, which is remarkable when you consider that the whole world consumes only 80 million bpd today.
Do you believe everything you read? You don’t seem to be much of a skeptic, more like a fake skeptic. Or perhaps you are a convenient skeptic, one that uses data that conveniently reinforces your underlying agenda.
It doesn’t matter if the data reinforce my beliefs or not, it only matters that it is true or not.
well jim2, you are not a real_climate_scientist; data is only true if it matches your viewpoint.
After further poking around the web, it appears the 9 trillion number was wrong. It is more like 90 – 160 billion.
“In new findings that year, the US Geological Survey estimated the Arctic may be home to 30% of the planet’s undiscovered natural gas reserves and 13% of its undiscovered oil.
Huge reserves
It showed that up to 160 billion barrels of oil could lay undiscovered beneath the Arctic – compared to 90 billion barrels previously estimated in the region.
Researchers say that deep ocean basins have relatively low petroleum potential, but crucially the Arctic is one of the world’s largest remaining areas where oil and gas are accessible.
Arctic Green campaigners fear for the Arctic wildlife
Most of the reserves are projected to be in less than 500 metres of water – roughly a third of a mile deep.
The US government estimates that the world uses around 30 billion barrels of oil in a year.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14728856
But just now found this. It says Russia alone might have 100 billion tons? That comes out to .75 trillion bbls, if I did the calculation right.
“The reserves in the Russian Arctic are vast,” says Roland Nash, chief investment strategist for Verno Investment in Moscow. “Nobody quite knows how vast, but the numbers are enormous.”
Some estimates put the oil and gas reserves in Russia’s Arctic waters at 100 billion tons. According to Simonov, the deal with Exxon Mobil is a sign that Russia knows it needs international investment and technology to get to those reserves.”
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/25/153603820/to-tap-arctic-oil-russia-partners-with-exxon-mobil
“Addressing the challenge of climate change has to be done discursively through argument and debate as well being informed by evidence.”
From scientists, the public gets lots of argument, little opportunity to debate, and no evidence. “I said so” is not evidence.
Michael Levi essentially lays waste to a few of the talking points by climate skeptics.
This one is pretty obvious and what I have been saying for quite some time. Risk mitigation efforts for AGW and crude oil depletion directly overlap. The common strategy is to look for alternatives to fossil fuel. This falls under the umbrella of sustainability. If we had truly abundant crude oil, lots of the green energy initiatives would not have gotten a toehold. This has been a symbiotic relationship no matter how much the climate skeptics try to deny it. They actually think that AGW is totally responsible for green technology. Yea, for sure, just ask all the countries with no fossil fuels to speak of, Japan, Germany, etc. etc..
This one points to the Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) metric, which has long been decreasing, starting from beyond 100 in the early 1900’s to approaching 1 today. The underlying concern has always been that dredging out fossil fuels with poor energy density will exaggerate pollution as additional emissions and waste by-products are created that never do real work.
One just has to be patient and wait for this discussion to emerge, because it has always been there. Climate skeptics of course hate this trend, because it has nothing to do with environmentalism (the favored whipping boy) and everything do with with non-renewable resources and finite constraints.
Energy Return on Energy Investment is critical for future energy use, Peak Oil and global warming.
For EROI, see Charles Hall & Kent A. Klitgaard
Energy and the Wealth of Nations, Understanding the Biophysical Economy, Springer 2012
See discussion on EROI at http://www.TheOilDrum.com
EROI at Google Scholar
For the latest on EROI, Charles Hall ref to:
MDPI Sustainability Hall
WebHubTelescope | June 8, 2012 at 4:04 pm | Reply
“They actually think that AGW is totally responsible for green technology.
You conflate alternative techologies with green technologies. If it weren’t for AGW then “green” wouldn’t be all about carbon-neutral it would be about things like deforestation, arsenic and mercury, and things of that nature. “Green” has been redefined to include CO2 emission and without ginned up CAGW fantasies it would have never happened.
I found a free version of this paper that Pielke highlighted on his blog yesterday.
http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~gang/eprints/eprintLovejoy/neweprint/Climate.sensitivity.supp.merge.2.5.12.pdf
a thread on this is coming next week
I looked at that paper earlier. From the cluttered appearance of the charts and figures, they seem not to care about quality scientific exposition.
Figure 1 of the supplementary material is a power spectrum of temperature changes that spans a huge time range. It has a spike at 1 year which is obviously seasonal. The rest looks random, like the power spectrum density of natural terrain.
So, if this result holds up under criticism, the GCMs output, when processed in the same manner, should match the continuous spectral “background” given in the paper.
Given that the news is full of a pending tidal wave of shale oil and gas the threat of oil scarcity seems to be fading indeed. See for example this latest:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/06/04/bakken-bazhenov-shale-oil/
Let’s hope climate concerns do fade along with oil concerns.
Yes, indeed the era of crude oil availability is fading fast.
http://i777.photobucket.com/albums/yy52/TheDudePeakOil/PercentageofcomponentsofAllLiquidsWorldProductionDatafromEIA.gif
The proportion of crude oil production continues to decrease year after year.
The Other Liquids category includes: Biodiesel, ethanol, liquids produced from coal and oil shale, non-oil inputs to methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), Orimulsion, and other hydrocarbons.
Replacements for crude oil will continue to be much more expensive, highly energy intensive, extraction damaging to the environment, found in remote and inhospitable areas, small scale, and short-lived.
I doubt you know the average lifetime of a Bakken well.
Concern is based on what’s in the news, not what’s in the ground. You are missing the point. If concern were based on reality we would not be here.
I think that will be the underlying philosophy of Davids ‘educational’ material.
Forget reality, focus on perceptions.
My materials will focus on the reality of the debate.
Hess is pretty big in the Bakken, they have made pretty major changes in the number of perforations, size of the sand and the number of wells per site. That should change things things a touch.
Does Hess present any kind of historical analysis?
I thought not, and who would trust them anyways..
We have been through this before. It is only up to the citizenry to analyze the production rates and to figure out what it means, as no one will do it for us:
http://theoilconundrum.blogspot.com/2012/05/bakken-growth.html
That blog post I linked to has two parts. In one part I look at the depletion rates of the average well in several counties within the Bakken. The half-lifes are:
McKenzie county is 0.75 years
Williams county is 1.2 years
Mountrail county is 2.3 years
Wow, 0.75 years before production decreases by half. Some of the conventional wells in Texas are still going after decades of continuous use.
The second part is an analysis of how “gold rush” proliferation of wells can obscure the underlying rapid decline of individual wells. This is harsh reality that is historically accurate. That entire area will no doubt consist of ghost-towns in a few years, just like Deadwood Gulch.
Not to say that people won’t make money. Of course they will, especially the ones that get in early.
Historical analysis, I have only seen some bits and pieces. They invested near 6 billion a few years ago, are pumping around 47,000 barrels a day and took a 50% haircut. The drilling setup looks interesting though.
In the 1970’s oil became so expensive serious efforts were launched to find cheaper alternatives then before those efforts could yield fruit the price of oil declined and the efforts were abandoned.
It’s deja vu all over again. ~Yogi Berra
OPEC and others with vested interests in high oil prices are playing the rest of us like a fiddle. ~Me
Yes and no.
How to explain why Saudi Arabia had to recently work their way through a diesel oil shortage.
http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Oil/8358859
Also Egypt has oil shortages:
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/3/12/43458/Business/Economy/Whats-behind-the-third-Egyptian-fuel-crisis.aspx
And of course Pakistan is having continual problems:
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/national/08-Jun-2012/zardari-seeks-china-s-help-over-energy-crisis
Libya which is one of the few sources of light crude necessary for producing diesel put the scare on everyone.
I think many nation-states are being very cagey on how they dole out their natural riches (or lack thereof). They sense that everything is an import/export problem, and that they need to save enough for themselves eventually.
I was somewhat disappointed in the oilprice article. As I had commented there:
IMHO, a far superior article – somewhat related, but with a different take – is offered in this month’s issue of Commentary in which the author, Andrew Ferguson, discusses:
Ferguson explores this concept, and in this context reviews a number of climate change issues that are familiar to all, I suspect :-) He concludes:
AKA Limited Hangout
And, come to think of it, as deployed in the Gleick “confession”
The phrase of “admissions against interest” is a euphemism for “not lying” or “telling the truth”. The scientific method has a built-in mechanism against that which involves the process of eliminating contradictions. Scientists love contradictions because they help point out the invalid paths and those that don’t have contradictions build up a trail of evidence. As more contradictions line up, often the more valid model becomes apparent through the process of elimination
Monbiot is one of the best of the scientific journalists when it comes to applying techniques that journalists and scientists both share.
‘An important corollary is that scientists also need to be prepared to go out and defend their findings to the public.’
‘An important corollary is that scientists also need to be prepared to go out and defend their findings to the public.’
Yes indeed, Judith. If the IPCC had really believed in their cause, they would have sent their scientists to every Town Hall in the world, both to justify their conclusions and the urgency of the task ahead. Instead they tend to keep a low profile, perhaps because they are uncomfortable with their lowest common denominator conclusion. I agree it is the duty of scientists to explain their conclusions to any one who will listen. Not always easy, but necessary, especially when it could involve every one on the planet. Instead we have been harangued by economists and politicians who have accepted uncritically the scientists’ conclusions.
From yesterday’s National Post: Michael Den Tandt: Blind faith won’t make gaps in climate science go away
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/06/07/michael-den-tandt-blind-faith-wont-make-gaps-in-climate-science-go-away/
First half is about Canadian politics, second half is on science, with quotes from McKitrick and Curry.
“There are credible scientists who belong in neither ideological camp. They agree global warming, certainly over the past century, is incontrovertible. But they disagree on the level of certainty we can have about its causes. And they raise troubling questions about the wisdom of policy remedies based primarily on faith.”
From climate Audit–an email from David Karoly to Steve McIntyre re Gergis et al 2012:
“Dear Stephen,
I am contacting you on behalf of all the authors of the Gergis et al (2012) study ‘Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium’
An issue has been identified in the processing of the data used in the study, which may affect the results. While the paper states that “both proxy climate and instrumental data were linearly detrended over the 1921–1990 period”, we discovered on Tuesday 5 June that the records used in the final analysis were not detrended for proxy selection, making this statement incorrect. Although this is an unfortunate data processing issue, it is likely to have implications for the results reported in the study. The journal has been contacted and the publication of the study has been put on hold.
This is a normal part of science. The testing of scientific studies through independent analysis of data and methods strengthens the conclusions. In this study, an issue has been identified and the results are being re-checked.
We would be grateful if you would post the notice below on your ClimateAudit web site.
We would like to thank you and the participants at the ClimateAudit blog for your scrutiny of our study, which also identified this data processing issue.
Thanks, David Karoly
Print publication of scientific study put on hold
An issue has been identified in the processing of the data used in the study, “Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium” by Joelle Gergis, Raphael Neukom, Stephen Phipps, Ailie Gallant and David Karoly, accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate.
We are currently reviewing the data and results.”
It’s very nice to see people being civil and decent, in fact cordial. This is heartening to me.
On second thought, the back and forth has been a mixed bag.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/6/7/another-hockey-stick-broken.html
got a message from the California Energy Commission today on an upcoming meeting (with some presentation materials):
“Lead Commissioner Workshop on Renewable
Integration Costs, Requirements, and Technologies
The California Energy Commission Lead Commissioner on the Integrated Energy Policy Report
(IEPR) will conduct a workshop to gather input on issues related to integration of renewable
resources in California with the goal of developing strategies to minimize integration costs and
requirements at both the transmission and distribution levels. Commissioner Carla Peterman
oversees the 2012 Integrated Energy Policy Report Update. Other Commissioners may attend
the workshop. Other agency representatives may also attend and participate.
MONDAY, JUNE 11, 2012
Beginning at 9 a.m.
CALIFORNIA ENERGY COMMISSION
Presentations – June 11, 2012, Lead Commissioner Workshop on Renewable Integration Costs, Requirements, and technologies
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2012_energypolicy/documents/2012-06-11_workshop/presentations/ “
On IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report.
I have been exchanging emails with a top climate scientist involved in AR5 regarding the issue I had with IPCC’s 0.2 deg C warming in the next two decades claim. Here is what he wrote me.
For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emissions scenarios’ is misleading, because it does not take into account the natural decadal to multi-decadal variability. The next (AR5)-Report will present initialized projections and they generally show less short-term warming
I will not disclose his identity.
Academic evidence should expect to be challenged, particularly when that research partners uncertainty with important social policy issues. Nafees Meah writes that social scientists and their counterparts involved in climage change research must be ready to push forward their evidence and be prepared to defend it.
IPCC not only underplayed the uncertainty but also mislead the world with its accelerating warming claim => http://bit.ly/b9eKXz
Instead, the warming has been uniform => http://bit.ly/L5FSBg
Who is going to defend the truth?
Indeed. At 0.06K/decade. 0.6K/century.
Long may it continue!!
Does Ben Santer of someone of his ilk get to make 12th hour edits again?
will deniers lie again that he did?
There really isn’t must to the ‘conspiracy’ when it comes to global warming. The US has no friends in the UN. And, the EU has been doing whatever it can to put a knife in America’s back for many, many years. And the Left in the US is more honest now in their objectives than they have ever been and freely admit the Constitution means very little, capitalism is bad, business people are evil and government knows best, about everything.
““Unabomber Believes in Global Warming” campaign”
A single billboard for a single day which cost a whopping $200 is difficult for me to characterize as a “campaign”.
Anyone kind enough to say something that stupid does the thoughtful reader a great service for this is an early and certain indicator that the rest of the essay can be safely avoided without threat of missing anything worthwhile.
“An important corollary is that scientists also need to be prepared to go out and defend their findings to the public.”
If public defense is needed it’s usually because it isn’t science that’s in need of defense but rather it’s a narrative in need of defense. Science gave us the atom bomb. The public was convinced after the first detonation. Science is about demonstration not hand waving and just-so stories.
Crichton is effectively making attacking strawman there, but probably not intentionally.
Science shouldn’t work by consensus, but consensus is important when reporting science.
This is perfectly valid:
“What does the science show?”
“Well the consensus of experts is that XYZ”
That is what is done. When people appeal to the consensus of climate scientists they are using consensus in the *reporting of science*
The act of science itself is not about consensus. But no-one is claiming it is.
If a consensus forms by itself, and in high agreement with observations, after being subject to serious and very critical scrutiny – then it’s a valuable consensus. But even then, it should be open to criticism, always.
It’s not in agreement with observations. Take away two modeled adjustments called SHAP and TOBS from the land surface temperature record 1900-present and there’s no warming trend in it. In the far more reliable and very nearly global satellite temperature record from 1979-present there is no warming trend in the second half of it yet CO2 emission accelerated during that second half.
We seek and offer ourselves to be gulled. — Michael de Montaigne (1533-1592)
You have been gulled.
The AGW consensus is embarassing.
“It’s not in agreement with observations. Take away two modeled adjustments called SHAP and TOBS from the land surface temperature record 1900-present and there’s no warming trend in it.”
GHCN raw isn’t TOBS or SHAP adjusted is it? That shows warming:
http://rhinohide.org/rhinohide.cx/co2/crutem/ghcn_raw-crumet-compare.png
” In the far more reliable and very nearly global satellite temperature record from 1979-present there is no warming trend in the second half of it yet CO2 emission accelerated during that second half.”
There is warming in the later half, what you mean is it isn’t statistically significant. And that’s because you’ve cut the record in half so there’s not long enough period to achieve statistical significance.
I doubt the first half of the record has statistically significant warming either.
Consensus is important when reporting narratives pretending to be science. Real science speaks for itself. It’s the difference between saying a single bomb will destroy Hiroshima, which is a narrative, and making a film of a single bomb actually destroying Hiroshima which is a demonstration.
Anthropogenic global warming is a narrative. The demonstration isn’t looking too good given the best sensor system we have (satellites) have detected no warming trend in the lower troposphere for the past 15 years which fully half of the entire period we’ve had the ability to sense the average temperature over the entire planet to a precision in the hundredth’s of a degree per decade. Global warming is a falsified narrative. That’s why the marketing department in charge of it changed the name of the story it was selling from the global warming to climate change. Did you not get the memo regarding the new and improved title of the story?
UAH shows 0.08C/decade warming in the past 15 years.
0.08C +- ?C of course.
Your claim that there’s no warming would only be justified if the uncertainty range was at or below 0. It’s not.
Indeed 15 years is the wrong number. There is a step warming coincident with the 1998-2000 ENSO. The correct statement is that there is no warming from 1978 to 1997 and no warming from 2001 until now, but the later flat line is warmer than the former. There is no warming trend whatsoever, across the entire 33 year period, just an ENSO step. This is what falsifies AGW, not the last 15 years, but the last 33 years.
I am pretty sure if you generated 30 years of gradually increasing test temperature data and added sufficient ENSO noise over the top you would find the same thing: *apparent* step jumps.
You say tomahto, I say tomato, but I think “appeals to consensus” like this are what Crichton was referring to.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full
I’ll let others parse and dissect as they wish.
CO2 is a trace gas. So?
Take two 1000 pound metal car bodies. Cover one with ten pounds of white paint and cover the other with ten pounds of white paint mixed with 1 pound of black pigment. Put each car body out in the sun and measure the temperature. You will find that 0.1% by weight of black pigment has a large measurable effect on the temperature of the far more massive car body.
CO2 works like that pigment does. Don’t let its comparatively small mass fool you into thinking it can’t have much effect.
That’s not to say it has much effect, because it doesn’t, but it isn’t due to being a trace gas. It has to do with evaporation and convection being free agents more than able to compensate for the modest increase in impedance through the radiative pathway. Where evaporation is greatly hindered is where CO2 can reach its full potential for 1.1C surface temperature increase per doubling of CO2 concentration. In the case of evaporation being hindered the only pathway left to take up the difference is conduction and conduction in air is very poor. In order to raise the amount of energy flowing from surface to air through conduction the temperature difference between the two must rise. With evaporation no rise in temperature is required because water can exist as both liquid and vapor at exactly the same temperature but where the vapor carries a hugely larger amount of energy in a form called latent heat of vaporization. Thus without warming up the surface or the air near the surface one little bit increased CO2 raises the evaporation rate and the energy that would otherwise be thermalized by a solid surface is insensibly carried away from the surface where it eventually reappears far above the surface in a cloud.
So we find CO2 having its only really measurable effect in higher northern latitudes where evaporation is greatly hindered by a frozen surface. The southern hemisphere is less effected because it has only half the land area as the northern hemisphere.
The ironic part is that if you actually ask people who live in higher northern latitudes if they want a colder climate they will usually say no. CO2 has the wonderful effect of warming things up precisely where we most welcome the additional warmth.
Dave,
Your physics is guesswork by a person who hasn’t learned physics. That approach is bound to fail.
In order to understand the role of CO2 in energy flows trough the atmosphere you must understand
– how different wavelengths contribute to the radiative energy transfer
– what exactly is the basis for the adiabatic lapse rate
– what determines the altitude of tropopause, i.e. what determines how far up the lapse rate is close to the adiabatic lapse rate.
The last point and it’s essential role in the atmospheric physics is the most difficult one and overlooked in most presentations of these issues. Pierrehumbert does discuss it in his book of Planetary Climate, but even he doesn’t emphasize it sufficiently.
You’re projecting, pekkahead.
Your physics is obfuscation of basic principles and material properties of common substances. Volumes of mental masturbation by an ancient academic who accomplished nothing of real value in his whole life. Spare me.
“CO2 is a trace gas. So?
Take two 1000 pound metal car bodies. Cover one with ten pounds of white paint and cover the other with ten pounds of white paint mixed with 1 pound of black pigment. Put each car body out in the sun and measure the temperature. You will find that 0.1% by weight of black pigment has a large measurable effect on the temperature of the far more massive car body.
CO2 works like that pigment does. Don’t let its comparatively small mass fool you into thinking it can’t have much effect.”
Many things about analogy. First black cars aren’t significantly warmer than white cars. When someone says that cars looks hot, one isn’t talking about
temperature.
Second, CO2 is a fraction of greenhouse gases. So you talking having a grey car, and making it slightly darker grey.
Next, you aren’t talking about average temperature of day and night.
Nor about if car is actually moving.
Third or fourth, you talking about skin temperature. No mechanic ever says black cars are warmer than white cars- cause they aren’t- the engine and the frame [vast majority of car] isn’t getting hotter.
Next the hottest part of any car that works, is the engine, Other some desiring paint engine black, radiant nature of this dealing with the enormous amount heat isn’t significant.
Finally, gas is different than a solid or liquid in terms absorbing radiation- a molecule of gas in terms energy in regards to the atmosphere is about the speed of the velocity of the molecule of gas. So for gas molecule and a car, it’s heat is how fast the car is going not what color the car is.
Kudos to Steve McIntyre. He is a one-man rogue-climate-scientist slayer!!
“American Meteorological Society disappears withdraws Gergis et al paper on proxy temperature reconstruction after post peer review finds fatal flaws
Posted on June 8, 2012 by Anthony Watts
UPDATE: It appears the paper has been withdrawn and credit acknowledgement given to Steve McIntyre, see below:”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/08/american-meteorological-society-disappears-gergis-et-al-paper-on-proxy-temperature-reconstruction-after-post-peer-review-finds-fatal-flaws/
This is the sort of thing that if it happened in the business world it would curtain the company. And, the quality of the product the company shipped in previous years would be suspect.
But we are to accept everything they tell us, including to go back to living in a hole somewhere, eating algae and sea weed. Right.
Not only that but the IPCC even told us to erect strawmen
The paper passed “peer review” but failed blog review. That’s a laugh. More on this …
“300,000 dollars and three years to produce a paper that lasted three weeks: Gergis
The paper might have been scientifically invalid, but it was a box-office success. The headlines were everywhere
“1000 years of climate data confirms Australia’s warming” said the press release from University of Melbourne. It was picked up by The Guardian: “Australasia has hottest 60 years in a millennium, scientists find”; The Age and The Australian led with “Warming since 1950 ‘unprecedented’. The story was on ABC 24 and ABC news where Gergis proclaimed:” there are no other warm periods in the last 1000 years that match the warming experienced in Australasia since 1950.” It was all over the ABC including ABC Radio National, and they were “95% certain“! On ABC AM, “the last five decades years in Australia have been the warmest. ” Plus there were pages in Science Alert, Campus Daily Eco news, The Conversation, Real Climate and Think Progress.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/09/jo-nova-chronicles-the-snapping-of-the-gergis-hockey-stick/
I wonder what its status will be regarding inclusion in AR5, now that it has been withdrawn. How inconvenient!
Can Japan No Longer Afford Ambitious CO2 Cuts? WSJ
Conclusion: Japan will try hard just to keep the lights on! “CO2 cuts” have become CO2 increases with the switch from nuclear to fossil. Pragmatically, there will be no “cuts”. There will likely be a major effort to restore nuclear rather than having rolling blackouts or go into deep depression.
And over in the EU-
http://www.businessinsider.com/europe-moves-from-gas-to-coal-2012-6
…….”
At the end of May, the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change announced that coal consumption in Britain had risen to 46 percent of Q1 total energy generation, the highest level in six years. Both Germany and Spain have also reported higher coal consumption in recent months.
Despite trenchant efforts to reduce its reliance on fossil-fuel generated electricity, Germany in particular is expected to increase its coal consumption. Its coal use is expected to rise 13.5 percent this year as it searches for the cheapest path to replace 12.3 gigawatts of idled nuclear power. ” ………
Do any AGW dominated countries actually do anything that works, despite them doing what the AGW believers claim to want?
Curious that a world class high tech country like Japan relied so much on antique nuclear reactor technology not invented there. You’d think that, given their abject poverty in domestic fossil fuel reserves, they’d have cracked the nut on some liquid flouride thorium reactor or travelling wave depleted uranium reactor by now, huh?
Japan’s debt to GDP ratio is 208 %. They are lucky they can afford sunshine.
Zimbabwe 230.8 2011 est. 70.33 2011 Africa
Japan 208.2 2011 est. 229.77 2011 Asia
Saint Kitts and Nevis 200.0 2011 est. 153.41 2011 North America
Greece 165.3 2011 est. 160.81 2011 Europe
Lebanon 137.1 2011 est. 136.22 2011 Asia
Iceland 130.1 2011 est. 99.19 2011 Europe
Antigua and Barbuda 130.0 2010 est. 74.55 2011 North America
Jamaica 126.5 2011 est. 138.98 2011 North America
Italy 120.9 2011 120.11 2011 Europe
Singapore 118.2 2011 est. 100.79 2011 Asia
Portugal 108.5 2011 106.79 2011 Europe
Ireland 108.4 2011 104.95 2011 Europe
Barbados 103.9 2011 est. 117.25 2011 North America
United States 103.0 2011 est. 102.94 2011 North America
You little cherry picker you left North Korea off the list. It has a debt-to-GDP ratio of 0.4 (no typo that’s zero point four compared to Japan at 208.4.
I’m gonna stick my neck out and say that debt-to-GDP ratio is a poor indicator of capacity for science & engineering accomplishment.
I stopped at the US, since I’m from there. But I didn’t leave anything out in between. North Korea has other problems.
And you are right, North Korea is a little cherry in every sense of the word.
They dropped a lot of cash on sodium cooled breeder reactors hoping to achieve a closed loop fuel system. Of course as has been the case with more then one sodium cooled reactor if you spring a bit of a leak you end up with a fire.,,theirs sprung a leak and had a fire as well.
The Japanese also played with gas cooled reactors.
US NRC released a report in 2004 on the US’s ‘gas cooled’ reactor at Fort Saint Vrain…in short ‘leaks’
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/contract/cr6839/cr6839.pdf
I think we are stuck on Light Water reactors at the moment simply because we have a lot of operating experience.
The dirty little secret is that nuclear power costs as much per mega-Watt/hour as burning biomass to heat the boiler for a steam turbine. I sheet you not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#US_Department_of_Energy_estimates
Advanced Nuclear – $113.90
Biomass – $112.50
The greenies should be chopping more trees instead of hugging them. Wood burning boilers, unlike nuclear boilers, don’t poison vast expanses of land & water if they blow up or melt down. And the cost is the same. Why should we bother with nuclear energy when there’s a clean, carbon-neutral alternative for the same price? Seriously. Why?
I have a feeling biomass would cost a whale of a lot more than nuclear if it made up even 20% of our total electricity energy mix.
2011 US energy consumption was just shy of 100 quads. Two quads came from burning wood and two more quads came from other than wood. Don’t forget that homes can be heated with wood that grows locally so we aren’t just talking about electricity. One percent of U.S. electrical production is via biomass.
So biomass accounts for 4% of US energy consumption already. But you may have a point in that current consumption is the low hanging fruit. On the other hand we have no idea how much more efficient we could make biomass production if we really tried. I have a feeling we could do a lot better and produce a lot more if we really tried. There’s just no big incentive when it’s twice as expensive as natural gas and there’s enough natural gas in the US to last a hundred years which should be plenty of time for science & engineering to figure how to cheaply capture, convert, and store solar energy direct from the sun with far more efficiency than trees.
We have a few ‘biomass’ electric generating plants in Washington State.
We used to refer to them as paper and lumber mills. The ‘biomass’ is dirt cheap because it’s the waste product of a more valuable product….I.E. making Lumber and Paper.
“Why should we bother with nuclear energy when there’s a clean, carbon-neutral alternative for the same price? Seriously. Why?”
Well, it should be pointed out that you didn’t include “Natural Gas Fired Conventional Combined Cycle: 66.1
And instead picked: Biomass: 112.5
So for some reason you prefer something cost almost twice the cost.
In addition you equaled Biomass with chopping down trees to be used
for fuel.
Whereas biomass is mostly using waste products for fuel. Such as sawdust from making lumber. Or cow manure or human manure or garbage which is used make methane gas.
A thing about waste products is there aren’t valued very high- hence the term waste product. If you try making waste products as goal, it’s no longer a waste product. So major cost of using waste is hauling or getting it somewhere to use. Or in site also lowers that particular cost.
So the point is there is a limited supply of waste, and sometimes it be very good idea use waste for energy production. And has the advantage of instead of venting CH4, and have add to greenhouse gases, to use it.
Though wrapping a plastic bag around your bum, may not be such an economically good idea.
Though no doubt some genius will want us wear “Dune” type suits, to recover such waste.
The fundamental problem is the lack of understanding of scale, coupled with an arrogance that makes some people think they have a clue of anything.
Strawman. I asked why we should choose nuclear energy over biomass.
Of course we prefer, me included, natural gas at half the cost of either nuclear or biomass. Frack baby frack.
“Strawman. I asked why we should choose nuclear energy over biomass.”
We should use biomass. We are using biomass.
But It a different point if you suggesting that biomass
be used significant more than it already is being used.
So, first definition, wiki:
“Biomass, as a renewable energy source, is biological material from living, or recently living organisms. As an energy source, biomass can either be used directly, or converted into other energy products such as biofuel.
In the first sense, biomass is plant matter used to generate electricity with steam turbines & gasifiers or produce heat, usually by direct combustion. Examples include forest residues (such as dead trees, branches and tree stumps), yard clippings, wood chips and even municipal solid waste. In the second sense, biomass includes plant or animal matter that can be converted into fibers or other industrial chemicals, including biofuels. Industrial biomass can be grown from numerous types of plants, including miscanthus, switchgrass, hemp, corn, poplar, willow, sorghum, sugarcane, and a variety of tree species, ranging from eucalyptus to oil palm (palm oil).”
So we talking about first sense, biomass used to generate electricity.
And wiki goes on:
Environmental impact
The biomass power generating industry in the United States, which consists of approximately 11,000 MW of summer operating capacity actively supplying power to the grid, produces about 1.4 percent of the U.S. electricity supply.
Currently, the New Hope Power Partnership is the largest biomass power plant in North America. The 140 MW facility uses sugar cane fiber (bagasse) and recycled urban wood as fuel to generate enough power for its large milling and refining operations as well as to supply renewable electricity for nearly 60,000 homes. The facility reduces dependence on oil by more than one million barrels per year, and by recycling sugar cane and wood waste, preserves landfill space in urban communities in Florida.”
Using biomass as a fuel produces air pollution in the form of carbon monoxide, NOx (nitrogen oxides), VOCs (volatile organic compounds), particulates and other pollutants, in some cases at levels above those from traditional fuel sources such as coal or natural gas.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass
So, [and probably more wiki seems to suggest] we using are biomass, but in terms adding to the grid [which I would guess most of it isn’t adding to the grid, because there is in site uses for the energy] it is small percent of power.
Though probably more than wind power or solar power.
Could increase the use of biomass?
It seems like it could good idea for cities to look into the matter, but it probably it has been looked into. Whether it’s done or not is mostly related to political considerations.
But assuming a political process can function well and everything which should done is done, it will not be major part of the answer in terms of national energy policy.
Whereas nuclear energy is a national energy issue. We have about 20% of energy coming from this source, and it would probably better to have say 40% coming from nuclear energy. This would take decades of time, and requires number issues to be resolved, one being the storage of radioactive material. Which at best could be called a fiasco so far, and unresolved matter for decades. And is solely due to incompetence of the politicians involved.
And a reason nuclear energy costs in high has again to do with incompetent political leadership.
Though pains me to say it, France is far ahead of the US in terms of nuclear energy policy.
You ignore people who heat their homes with wood burning furnaces and fireplaces. The newest wood burning furnaces are engineering marvels of high efficiency and low maintenance. I have many friends in the northern US who harvest enough wood off their own land to heat their homes every year and many more who purchase it by the chord for the same purpose. I bet you’re a city slicker who’s never used a chainsaw, seen a hydraulic wood splitter, or even knows anyone who heats their home with wood. It’s cheaper than natural gas if don’t count the cost of your own labor. Of course if you value sitting your ass playing World of Warcraft more than getting some healthy excercise and lowering your cost of living while you’re at it then heating with wood probably isn’t your cup of tea.
82% of the US population is either urban or suburban. If I cut every tree on my suburban postage stamp lot I wouldn’t be able to heat for a single winter.
If you are one of those unfortunate souls that doesn’t have access to natural gas and has to burn oil or LPG then wood becomes a fairly viable option.
Harrywr2- I wish I had natural gas (LNG would do as well) unfortunately I only have electrical energy or propane (at close to $3.00 gallon BEFORE our cap and trade program kicks in to reduce CO2 levels) as sources of energy to pump my water, provide HVAC, due the laundry, etc. Hard to believe, but I have been checking out Craig’s list for an alternative for heating- a wood stove. Our place had a wood cooking stove for about 100 years, but with the advent of electrical energy that was abandoned about 30 to 50 years ago. Looks like I get to put it back- the heating capabilities in the wood stove that is.
We have a steady supply of oak on our parcel that is a bit hard to get to- to say the least. It looks like I won’t need a gym membership to keep fit after all. Getting the wood from point A back in the hills to a place – Point B- I can use it (or sell it) takes a few calories. The downhill (about 40 feet elevation change) part of the trek from A to B isn’t bad. It’s the 2 treks of 30 feet up hill then 10 feet down that is the calorie burner.
Climate Sensitivity (CS) Estimation
Observed CS = IPCC CS * Observed Trend/IPCC Trend
Observed CS = 3 * 0.08/0.2 = 1.2 deg C for doubling of CO2
That may be the net forcing, not for doubling of CO2, but overall, including known and unknown unknowns.
Ya know, Girma, a tenth of a degree here and a tenth of a degree there soon leads to some real warming.
Ramstorff (2008) – The global temperature increase since the beginning of the industrial period (taken as 1750) is about 0.8 °C, and the radiative forcing due to CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases (mainly methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons) emitted since that time is about 2.6 W/m2. Neglecting other forcings and considering the temperature increase to be an equilibrium increase would lead to a sensitivity of about 1.1 °C.
I’m giving away a lot of uncertainty in the 0.8C warming too. That temperature increase is marginally confident only for the continental United States which during that period of time underwent vast land and water use changes which must somehow removed from the instrument readings to isolate CO2-only changes. In fact without two adjustments to the record called SHAP and TOBS there is no temperature increase at all which would put the observed CO2 sensitivity at precisely 0C per doubling. I remain convinced that in the real world 1.1C per doubling is obtained only when evaporation and convection are ignored. This despite Pekka Hed Pirali’s willful ignorance that evaporation and convection continues to function and provides, where there is a supply of water an an unsaturated atmosphere, an exceedingly efficient pathway for thermal energy to leave the surface.
Are you ignoring aerosols because you don’t know anything about them? This is Lindzen’s argument. 2.6 is the number without any aerosol effects. On the other hand, you do agree now that manmade GHGs can account for all the warming, which is perhaps a little like the IPCC position on attribution. Other skeptics are still having difficulty with that one.
In physics correct understanding is most often learned through application of exact and well known formulas. Until that’s done one can speculate on many alternatives, but the formulas tell which of these alternatives are right and which turn out to be of lesser relevance.
Convection carries a lot of energy and so does the cycle of water through evaporation and condensation. The properties of both mechanisms are essential in the determination of the value of adiabatic lapse rate. The properties of radiative heat transfer determine, however, where this adiabatic lapse rate is present and where the atmosphere turns into stratosphere with very different properties.
The strength of the greenhouse effect depends on all of these in a way that can be calculated from thermodynamics and the radiative properties of gases.
There are other things that cannot be calculated nearly as well and those include the cloud formation and the influence of clouds on the climate.
“On the other hand, you do agree now that manmade GHGs can account for all the warming, which is perhaps a little like the IPCC position on attribution.” Can account for? Okay, let’s say AWGGs account for all of the warming from 1955 to present.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/tasmaniassataymyrgreenlandhadsst1880-1991from-2000.png
That reconstruction includes the 2010 Kobashi (cool name!) Greenland reconstruction. So now we can say we are “certain” that AWGGs “can” explain all of the warming since 1955, Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy :)
Dave.
If you had a station that was located at 1000m AGL from 1900 to 1930
and then you moved it down the mountain to 10m AGL. would
you consider the change in station location to be important. OR would you argue that the bias introduced by changing the station location was one that you could live with.
In short. Have you ever read SHAP code? I thought not.
So. Answer the simple question. If you move a station from high altitude to low altitude should you apply an adjustment to the data?
Trick question: do you approve of Roy Spensers “new” US temperature product and all the ‘adjustments’ he makes?
Stations are stationary. That’s why they are called stationary. If you move a station, you have a new station.
That is the Berkeley Earth approach.
Simple way to test. Take two stations which are located near by and use your ‘magic’ algorithm to predict what temperature of Station A would be if moved to position B. Then plot Prediction of B temp vs. actual B temp.
If I were to try to do such mathematical tricks to hide a move in biochemistry I would be fired for fraud.
That in fact is how the algorithms are developed and tested.
TOBS for example is empirically derived, tested and verified.
Same thing for SHAP. of course springer is an idiot and has never looked at the code or the tests. he could even do the tests you suggest with data that is available.
“CO2 is a trace gas. So?”
I agree. I hate the “trace gas argument. Joe Bastardi for one, never fails that bring it up. The guy’s a major talent, but he’s also not all that bright at times.
I hate the “Global” Warming argument. Even with their own cooked up data, Warmers show us that The Alleged Warming isn’t Global. That’s how stupid this whole thing is. It really is that stupid.
Andrew
Ah the “global population isn’t global if I can find an island with no people on it argument”
No, it’s the Global Warming isn’t really Global argument. Hard to miss.But apparently you did.
Andrew
Yeah act dumb and dodge having to address the flaw in your bad argument
There is no flaw in my argument. That’s why you regurgitated irrelevant nonsense.
Andrew
Bad Andrew | June 9, 2012 at 11:50 am |
If my car mechanic says to me “your air conditioning is working fine, so I can’t see how your engine could possibly be overheating,” I know he’s not just a Bad Mechanic, but a crook.
Is the engine overheating a global problem for the whole car? You betcha.
Bart R, an honest person discussing heating in a car would describe which parts are heating and which parts are not.
Andrew
Although I do admit to getting a tickle out of reading Warmers swinging Bad Analogies around. ;)
Andrew
I’d love for some mechanic to come up to me after examining my car and saying, “Your vehicle is experiencing a rise in the average temperature of it’s parts.That’ll be $500, please.” lolol
Andrew
Its more a case that the mechanic is telling you why it is overheating, but you choose not to believe him, perhaps because it is too expensive to fix, and want to just keep driving it and ignoring his diagnosis.
Jim D, I believe everything mechanics, car salesmen, lawyers, Jehova’s Witnesses, Democrats, Steven Mosher and Climate Scientists tell me.
Andrew
No, Andrew, I think you are the type of person who will only believe the mechanic when your car starts sputtering and smoking.
No I’m the kind of person who thinks drawings aren’t very convincing.
Andrew
Bad Andrew | June 10, 2012 at 12:10 pm |
By your own reasoning, in this case then, an honest report:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch1s1-3.html
Or did you mean something else?
Any report produced by a criminal organization like the IPCC I treat as disinformation.
Andrew
Yeah. Trace amounts of things can have very large effects. A tiny amount of impurities is all takes to turn pure silicon into a semi-conductor. Trace amounts of impurities in seawater enables it to thermalize 99.9% of shortwave solar energy in the first 100 meters or so of depth. Trace amounts of ozone absorb enough ionizing radiation high in the atmosphere so that living things could crawl out of the ocean without having their DNA scrambled beyond repair. And so on and so forth.
I sometimes think about certain poisons which are lethal in minuscule doses. It’s clearly a lazy, essentially meaningless argument, and why make those when there are so many valid arguments to make? I once wrote to Bastardi about this, but of course he ignored me.
I can’t possibly take anyone with a last name of Bastardi seriously unless they’re shaking me down at gunpoint.
Now you know how we feel.
At least Bastardi has the balls to use his full name, “Tom”, whoever you are.
What’s in a name?:o)
Nguyễn Ái Quốc
A trace amount of CO2 makes green things grow. Double the trace and you make green things grow better using less water. For the past fifteen years, CO2 has gone up and helped green things grow and earth did not warm. This will continue and this is good that more CO2 is only good.
Fukushima Caesium 137, found in San Diego Tuna provided in trace amounts by your friends at GE. Perhaps?
JEV envelope ~= 125
125 / 2 = 62.5 (resonance cycle)
JSUN envelope ~= Lunisolar Envelope ~= 180
180 / 2 = 90 (resonance cycle)
180 / 3 = 60 (nearest-harmonic beat)
(90)*(60) / (90 – 60) = 180
(90)*(62.5) / (90 – 62.5) = 204.5
(62.5)*(60) / (62.5 – 60) = 1500
A more precise calculation gives ~1470 years.
The trick is in realizing that resonance fades in & out TWICE per envelope since resonance can be off by timing being EITHER too fast OR too slow.
ENSO has been VERY effective in blinding investigators via spatiotemporal paradox.
China picks stable power prices over emissions targets
See article for promises, plans on CO2.
Runaway consumption must be reined in. Just kidding. What a metaphorical pile. Since when is emerging from poverty runaway consumption? Since the greenway.
You don’t see anything wrong in highly subsidiced energy prices?
Who said anything about subsidy? All it said was there are price controls that make it hard to pass costs on to consumers. Sounds Nixonian to me.
Residential Electricity consumption in China is 14% of the total.
China was attractive to heavy industry because it had cheap labor and cheap power.
Aluminum news –
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-09/alcoa-sees-aluminum-cuts-as-production-gains-commodities.html
About one-third of Chinese capacity, or 5.7 million tons, is “bleeding money” and won’t be able to afford power prices, Kleinfeld told analysts in a Jan. 9 conference call to discuss Alcoa’s fourth-quarter results.
Take away ‘cheap power’ and the Chinese economic miracle goes away.
Heliospheric Current Sheet (HCS) Earth-Crossings
http://i48.tinypic.com/2yydr92.png
Heliospheric Current Sheet (HCS) Earth-Crossing INTEGRAL (emphasizes shifts in persistence)
http://i45.tinypic.com/2nbc3dw.png
Dovetails with Tsonis framework:
http://www.billhowell.ca/Paul%20L%20Vaughan/Vaughan%20120324%20Solar-Terrestrial%20Resonance,%20Climate%20Shifts,%20&%20the%20Chandler%20Wobble%20Phase%20Reversal.pdf
Related Articles:
Mironova, I; Tinsley, B.; & Zhou, L. (2011). The links between atmospheric vorticity, radiation belt electrons, and the solar wind. Advances in Space Research. doi:10.1016/j.asr.2011.03.043.
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/asr
http://geo.phys.spbu.ru/~mironova/Mironova_Tinsley.pdf
Prikryl, P.; Rusin, V.; & Rybansky, M. (2009). The influence of solar wind on extratropical cyclones – Part 1: Wilcox effect revisited. Annales Geophysicae 27, 1-30. doi:10.5194/angeo-27-1-2009.
http://www.ann-geophys.net/27/1/2009/angeo-27-1-2009.pdf
Pérez-Peraza, J.; Leyva, A.; Libin, I.Ya.; Fomiche, V.; Guschina, R.T.; Yudakhin, K.; & Jaani, A. (1997?). Simulating the mechanism of the action of heliophysical parameters on atmospheric processes.
http://www.geofisica.unam.mx/unid_apoyo/editorial/publicaciones/investigacion/geofisica_internacional/anteriores/1997/04/perez.html
‘”Our first paper shows connection between temperature, transpiration, and stomata density,” Dilcher said. “The second paper really is about applying what we know to the future.”
That model suggests that a doubling of today’s carbon dioxide levels — from 390 parts per million to 800 ppm — will halve the amount of water lost to the air, concluding in the second paper that “plant adaptation to rising CO2 is currently altering the hydrological cycle and climate and will continue to do so throughout this century.”‘
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110303111624.htm
One of the little understood risks of atmospheric carbon.
The stoma size and count thing is a puzzle to me. The 13C isotpe is use as a proxy for stoma size in drought/precipitation reconstructions. I was looking at a White Mountain reconstruction by Bale et al 2011 after Hansen started using the Texas drought as an unprecedented event.
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o252/captdallas2/climate%20stuff/whitemountain13C.png
There have been quite a few changes according to that reconstruction and most others I have seen for the southwestern US. I wonder how they will be able to separate causes? In most cases CO2 reconstructions using stoma size are considered irrelevant to past CO2 but now relevant to current and future CO2. Looks like the same conundrum.
Why would we complicate things? The stomata count can be controlled for levels of CO2 in the modern context. There is less water transpired on a high CO2 environment. This is a fairly important aspect of local hydrologies and something to be considered.
Why would we over simplify things? That has already proven to be problematic. Carbon sequestering with char is a win win. Limited and no till agriculture is a win win. Watershed reconstruction and water based green spaces are a win win. Higher efficiency is a win win. Claiming a reduction in plant stoma in Florida which has an extend drought, over drainage of wetlands, massive shifts to non native landscaping and crops, is primarily due to increased CO2 is slippery.
“The scientists gathered their data from a diversity of plant species in Florida, including living individuals as well as samples extracted from herbarium collections and peat formations 100 to 150 years old.”
Here is a little history on Florida”s sugar cane industry. Note “massive” drainage started in the 1920s
http://floridacrackercrumbs.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/raising-cane-a-history-of-big-sugar-in-south-florida/
They may be right, but I an not a fan of the linear no threshold mentality.
Capt. – you are going far beyond anything I have suggested and this is to the causes of droughts and floods. The location of the samples in Florida is less importent than the characterisation the decrease in stomata. Which in itself is a widely understood from many other studies. This – as I have said for a long time – is a major part of the hydrological cycle. An evapotranspiration factor of 0.4 instead of 0.8 seems fairly significant – 15% of the cycle rather than 30%. Evaporation equals precipition over a few days. I don’t know what this means but we know that it is happening. It is like simple radiative physics. We know it is happening but distinguishing it from background variability is impossible.
Chief, I just like looking at the big picture. In hydroponics, nutrient availability tends to drive transpiration, not CO2. For plants in wild, hydrology would drive nutrient availability. CO2 is a likely an indicator not the cause of transpiration changes.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2008.02595.x/full
Interestingly, plants sequester CO2 in the soil based on the overall growing conditions. You could theoretically modify plants or crops to increase CO2 sequestering for a variety of growing conditions. Which would mean that the huge change in agricultural in the past few hundred years could have a larger impact on atmospheric levels of CO2 than expected.
‘… can it be concluded that the increased water loss is a result of natural selection in evolution increasing mass flow of nutrients to the root surface?’
So in water abundant and nutrient limited conditons some plants can increase water flow through tissue?
Perhaps I am biased in being Australian. In dessicating conditions plants limit water loss. In high CO2 environments – plants can limit water loss – with implkications for global hydrology – while maintianing gas exchange across stomata.
But certainly in the bigger picture C can be much better sequestered in grazing lands in particular.
http://soilsequestration.otmamto.com/
That was the biggest issue with the Florida plant selection. Australia plants would have a much higher CO2 response while Florida would be more water/nutrient.
So really, it is regional approaches to regional issues that would produce the best global solution.
No droughts in Florida? No seasonal rainfall? No ENSO influence? 1400mm average annual rainfall is not especially high.
Oscillations of Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) => http://bit.ly/LyJ9iw
Conclusion => +/- 0.3 deg C variation of the GMST is natural.
An individual’s body temperature typically changes by about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F) between its highest and lowest points each day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_temperature)
Why is the variation in GMST of 0.6 deg C of our globe is causing panic when the variation of 0.5 deg C of our fragile body is normal?
Actually the variation in our body’s temperature is 1 deg C!
The range for normal human body temperatures, taken orally, is 37.0±0.5 °C (98.6±0.9 °F).[4] This means that any oral temperature between 36.5 and 37.5 °C (97.7 and 99.5 °F) is likely to be normal.
3 to 4 C is fatal. Is this really the point you want to make?
Expect Super La Nina in the next five to ten years ( a further drop in GMST of about 0.2 deg C)
Expect Super La Nina in the next five to ten years => http://bit.ly/LyJ9iw
The ocean cycles enhance the effect of El Nino during the warm phase, but enhance the effect of La Nina during the cool phase => http://bit.ly/LyJ9iw
Someone needs to form a 12-step group for warmists with an obsession with tobacco. Those poor, miserable souls need help to see the larger problems we need to solve.
Nafees Meah writes that social scientists and their counterparts involved in climage change research must be ready to push forward their evidence and be prepared to defend it.
I couldn’t agree less. Scientists doing any sort or research, climate or otherwise, should be leading the charge to attempt to discredit their own research. This is the only honest way, and the only way to find out what really stands up. Where are the Richard Feynmans of climate science?
In science, the only proper way to defend your theories is to describe your attempts to destroy them.
Social and climate sciences — aren’t they the (only) ones that accept 10% confidence levels as “likely”, and admire 5% levels, and are in awe of 1%?
Yawn.
Wake me when they divide all those numbers by 100, like real sciences do.
Here’s another “feedback” – negative, that is:
“Global warming helps Arctic algae suck CO2
Massive phytoplankton bloom solves missing carbon mystery
By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco • Get more from this author
Posted in Biology, 8th June 2012 20:36 GMT
Free whitepaper – Enabling Datacenter and Cloud Service Management for Mid-Tier Enterprises
There’s good news for folks worried that atmospheric CO2 levels in the Arctic have passed 400ppm for the first time: a vast CO2-sucking phytoplankton bloom has been discovered beneath Arctic ice – and it may thank global warming for its presence.
“This wasn’t just any phytoplankton bloom,” Stanford University marine scientist Kevin Arrigo told The Christian Science Monitor. “It was literally the most intense phytoplankton bloom I’ve ever seen in my 25 years of doing this type of research.”
Arrigo’s research, conducted in the Chukchi Sea last year as part of NASA’s ICESCAPE Arctic-research expedition, is discussed in the online issue of the journal Science in a report entitled “Life Blooms Under Arctic Ice”.
The massive under-ice bloom discovered during ICESCAPE was thoroughly unexpected. The meager amount of phytoplankton in that area’s open waters had led scientists to believe that under-ice phytoplankton would be even more rare. Not so. Due to the recent thinning of the Arctic ice sheets, enough light is now able to penetrate below the ice, enabling phytoplankton to thrive.
According to Don Perovich of the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, ponds of meltwater form on the surface of the ice sheet, acting as “skylights” that let light reach the phytoplankton below. These skylights don’t have to let the light travel far: since satellite observations began in 1979, summer ice has declined by about 45 per cent due to global warming, wind patterns, and pollution.
Perovich told the Monitor that much of the melt-season sea ice is now no more than around six feet thick, and has little or no snow cover. No snow cover, more melting; more melt ponds, more skylights; more sunlight, more phytoplankton.
The amount of phytoplankton blooming beneath the ice, the theory goes, is so great that it contributes to the lack of blooms in open water – the under-ice blooms simply eat up all the available nutrients before they have a chance to make it out to the open ocean.
The huge amount of CO2 photosynthesized by the phytoplankton, in fact, may help explain why the ocean is absorbing more of that greenhouse gas than calculations would otherwise indicate: even though the amount of dissolved CO2 in Arctic waters is below predicted levels, that carbon is finding another home in the photosynthetic systems of the phytoplankton.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/08/phytoplankton_bloom/
The plants are thriving in part because the Arctic sea ice has been thinning for years, a result of global climate change, Arrigo said. Water from melted ice that pools atop the thin ice sheet makes it easier for sunlight to penetrate into the water, stimulating the growth of the phytoplankton.
In the Chukchi Sea, essential nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphates and trace elements are abundant for the rapidly multiplying plants, Arrigo said.
Various species of phytoplankton form the crucial diet for many marine organisms and some whales. They make up the base of the entire Arctic food chain, supporting fish, walrus, seabirds and more.
The thriving plankton bloom could eventually give rise to a vibrant fishery, providing a new food resource for humans, the scientists believe.
“The mass of phytoplankton we found was truly astounding,” Arrigo sai
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jun/09/tp-massive-bloom-discovered-in-chukchi-sea/
Or maybe a whale had some really bad diarrhea.
Lessee, doubling every day since summer 2009 — I computes that the entire Earth is now phytoplanktonic!
Dr. Curry, this is pretty funny (in th way only Walter Russell Mead can be), but also might make a basis for an interesting future post:
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/06/09/save-the-planet-get-out-of-vermont/
Also linked there is this story in the WP:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/home-energy-use-keeps-shrinking–thanks-to-the-sunbelt/2012/06/08/gJQA4VniNV_blog.html
Demography and migration… what do they mean in all this?
We know what global annual energy consumption is: 0.474×10^21 J
We know what the heat capacity of the atmosphere is: 5 x10^21 Joules/Degree Kelvin
So why isn’t this significant in the gloabl energy budget?
Over the earth’s surface, that amounts to 0.03W/m2
OTOH, assuming a doubling of CO2 over 100 years, that’s 3.8W/m2 extra forcing over 100 years, or 0.038W/m2 per year, so, on the face of it, the figures are comparable.
However, only a very small fraction of the 0.474×10^21 J will actually remain in the earth/atmosphere system.
Energy content In a carbon dioxide enriched atmosphere is higher. It matters little whether the energy comes from combustion or the sun.
“However, only a very small fraction of the 0.474×10^21 J will actually remain in the earth/atmosphere system.”
How small a fraction?
Nitrogen and oxygen don’t radiate a significant amount of energy, yes?
Yes, N2 and O2 have to transfer their energy (by collisions) to H2O and CO2 so it can be radiated to space. GHGs cool the atmosphere. The atmosphere has a cooling bottleneck, heat cannot be convected nor conducted away, only radiated.
That’s wrong, GHGs warm the atmosphere. If they weren’t around the atmosphere would be cooler than now.
Good thing Google does not index this site.
Some high school student might be researching on this topic, and this site is the last place he would want to look, given the amount of nonsense spouted by arbitrary drive-by shooters.
This is a perfect example of how believers think – they’re scared, think the science cannot stand on its own, needs to be protected from ‘heresy’ and don’t want students to think for themselves. Web, if it’s nonsense, it will be recognised as such, sooner or later. I will be a fool.
“If they weren’t around the atmosphere would be cooler than now.”
How would the atmosphere cool, without its radiative (GHG) properties? The space would be ‘dead end’, it could only cool via the surface.
If the atmosphere was all diatomic molecules or atomic such as N2, O2, Ar, He, etc, then these would largely be transparent to radiation (both ways) and the Stefan-Boltzmann law would hold as the earth acts as a black or gray-body depending on emissivity:
where A is the cross-sectional area of the earth and epsilon is the emissivity.
This says that the incoming solar power matches that emitted by the earth’s surface.
There is no possible way for the atmosphere on average to be warmer than the surface of the earth.
I have said before that you argue for the sake of arguing. You are a natural-born contrarian, and even when words come out of your mouth like those above that argue against your position, you will then argue against even those.
Web, yes I argue for the sake of arguing, because that’s where the science is. If I just repeat what the consensus says, what’s the point? What credit is that for me? Even pseudo-scientists repeat the dogma.
“There is no possible way for the atmosphere on average to be warmer than the surface of the earth.”
Yes.
The earth surface particularly land surfaces can reach and usually does reach much higher temperatures than the air.
And mostly the sun heats the ground which then heats the air.
Without a surface or ground heating the air, the air would not be heated much by the Sun.
In space, gas molecules can be accelerated and can absorb and emit the Sun’s energy but doesn’t have heat or temperature.
A tail of comet, for example. The sunlight drives gases so forms the tail, and the tail is bright, but it’s not warm- it doesn’t heat up or cool down.
If somehow, the sunlight was blocked and prevented from reaching the tail, the tail would stop glowing and stop acceleration- but it would not cool.
gbaikie,
Yes they do, assuming they are above absolute zero, and depending on the mass. All matter above absolute zero emits EMR, at intensities dependent upon temperature. You have indicated far more willingness than I to perform the necessary calculations. “Significance” is obviously relative. Compared with what?
I leave it to you.
As to “heat” remaining in the system – nonsense (with respect). Heat, unlike electrical charge, cannot be stored. EMR takes place whether you like it or not, until the matter stops emitting EMR. Absolute zero results in a theoretically perfect situation. In the case of the Earth, we have a wonderful thing called “night”. It seems to get rid of all the insolation from the previous day. Cool, eh?
GHGs do not “trap” or “retain” heat, in any useful sense. As with all matter, they can be heated, and they cool if they are surrounded by matter at a lower temperature, or a vacuum.
gbaikie, please take no offence. I am endeavouring to point out basic details to other readers without getting into too much detail.
If people want to believe that it is possible to raise the surface temperature of a molten blob of rock by surrounding it with CO2, then I wish them a happy life.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
That’s wrong, heat can be stored temporarily just like electrical charge can be stored temporarily. It is just a matter of how good the insulation is.
Good thing Google does not index this site.
Some high school student might be researching on this topic, and this site is the last place he would want to look, given the amount of nonsense spouted by arbitrary drive-by shooters.
Any student who’s taken in by any nonsense they may come across on the web is probably not cut out for a career in science.
If some hacker posts some workaround for a piece of software, or I can decipher bleeding-edge articles on http://arxiv.org, I am ahead of the game, thank you very much. Smart kids also learn this early on. Watch them.
Yet, when someone posts misleading fixes to software, people can get very angry. Funny, I don’t see that happening (if ever) compared to the spew coming out of agenda-driven poseur scientists on these kind of sites.
Web, I’ve spent decades writing software for safety-critical systems – simply accepting software of unknown validation status from any source is a foreign concept to me.
Like finding a workaround for a bug in a word processing program used to create a memo?
What gets me is why you don’t write everything in first-order predicate logic when you converse on this site. Certainly using a formal language like Z should help everyone remove ambiguities in what they are trying to convey.
Moreover, why are you making comments here? This site’s software is not validated and could potentially print out the logical negatives of everything you have stated.
Since what you have written has not been formally validated, I will just have to treat it as hear-say.
Scientific pragmatism.
I might have known that identifying myself as a softie would make me fair game for guys like you.
So I’ll leave you with this thought: software fixes for hardware bugs abound, but not the other way round.
WHT,
I apologise. I should have been clearer and said “heat cannot be stored like electrical charge.”
As an example, (real, not imaginary), electrical charges in floating gate transistors remain intact for many years. Any device using “flash memory” depends on stored charges. I have some of unknown vintage, but certainly more than 5 years that can still be read as written (photos, programs, data etc.). The charges have remained without apparent loss at 100% for this time.
Show me your device that can store water at 100 deg C for any time at all, with no drop in temperature.
The atmosphere heats up, and starts to cool immediately when the external heat source is removed. This is the nature of matter above 0K.
Believe, don’t believe. The Earth is cooling, apart from ephemeral heat generated by life and the works of Man etc. It will continue to do so until it becomes isothermal throughout. Given the radiogenic properties of the core, this will no doubt take some time.
Live well and prosper
Mike Flynn.
“As to “heat” remaining in the system – nonsense (with respect). Heat, unlike electrical charge, cannot be stored.”
A electrical battery can store it’s energy for years.
You say heat can not be stored. Strange since storing heat
as energy source has been proposed as a way to store energy:
“Reliance on solar power as the primary means of electrical generation means that some method of energy storage is used during the 2-week lunar night. (This implies that excess capacity is built into the primary sources to charge the storage system during the day). These storage methods may be chemical, mechanical, thermal or electrical.”
http://www.ajwm.net/amayer/space/lunapower.html
Now a reason for storing energy as heat for lunar operations, has to do mainly to do with costs- batteries are heavy to lift from earth. Thermal systems can use material on the Moon. My point isn’t to discuss merits of such a system, rather point point such thing could be practical- and main reason is the Moon in a vacuum. But Earth including it’s atmosphere, is also in a vacuum.
“EMR takes place whether you like it or not, until the matter stops emitting EMR. Absolute zero results in a theoretically perfect situation. In the case of the Earth, we have a wonderful thing called “night”. It seems to get rid of all the insolation from the previous day. Cool, eh?”
It doesn’t necessarily get rid of all insolation from the previous day.
Roughly, you talking about the average temperature remaining the same, if in Temperate regions and one different seasonal temperature.
Then as one approaches Summer, average temperature tend to rise. One is getting more sunlight [more energy added during day] and therefore higher daytime temperatures. But one is also increasing the nighttime temperatures. One can get distruption, that wipe out such gain, but generally you trends.If it’s cold, it takes a bit to warm back up, and if warm, tends to stay warmer the next day.
Next point, the higher the temperature the more energy being radiated. Earth average temperature is said to be 14 C. Not very warm. But average temperate of atmosphere is not 14 C. That is surface atmospheric temperature.
Half the atmosphere lies above 5.6 km elevation.
And 5.6 km or higher is a lot colder than 14 C in terms average temperature. It’s roughly same energy per molecule, but terms heat it’s cooler as it rises, roughly 5 to 9 K per 1000 meters. So 5 km up and it’s going to be 25 C cooler.
So you heat up air, it rises and it’s cooler in terms of heat but has same energy. And this resembles a battery.
You start earth like planet cold, say 200 K average temperature- all water frozen, and cold dense atmosphere. Turn on the sunlight and the planet will warm, but it doesn’t happen in one day or a week, it could take a million years to get to your temperatures. And does this by “charging the planet” with heat. The top surface of the ground could heat quickly, one day and surface could be 300 K or warmer in daylight at the equator. But the all the air isn’t going warm this quickly nor will oceans. So million years later, one has liquid oceans. Send scientist team to polar region, and that 200 K temperature will still be leaving a mark.
And getting back earth. As I see it, the cold period more 10,000 years ago, is still leaving mark in the ocean and polar caps and the last 10,000 years of warming is very slow accumulation of heat.
gbaikie.
I have clarified my statement to WHT re charges and storage. I apologise to you for not being clearer.
I was referring to EMR manifesting as heat, compared to electrostatic charge. The first continuously lowers the energy in a body, the second just sits there, so to speak.
I note you say that storing heat as an energy source has been “proposed.” Unfortunately, as soon as the initial source of heat is removed, the heated matter immediately starts to lose energy in the form of EMR.
As to non total emission of insolation energy at night, I obviously agree this is what occurs regionally. Not globally. After one complete revolution about the Sun, apart from ephemeral heat sources, the Earth system is slightly cooler than it was a year ago.
This has been occurring for some billions of years. There seems no good reason to believe that the core will increase its heat output, nor is it likely that the Sun’s total energy output will increase substantially in the light of current knowledge.
It doesn’t matter whether the Earth’s surface temperature is 14 C or some other temperature. It radiates EMR. It loses energy. It cools. Energy received from the Sun is unable to maintain the current surface temperature – I think you have calculated the approximate surface temperature using S-B method. Given the usual estimates of albedo, emissivity etc, around 255 K is the result for the Earth’s temperature.
When you say you start with a cold Earth, I am a little confused. The Earth is >99% molten (at a guess). Why would you pretend otherwise? Sure, matter heats up (increases its temperature) if it absorbs EMR (of any type) faster than it emits it. It cools down by losing EMR faster than it absorbs it.
Global warming? Nonsense.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn.
“As to non total emission of insolation energy at night, I obviously agree this is what occurs regionally. Not globally. After one complete revolution about the Sun, apart from ephemeral heat sources, the Earth system is slightly cooler than it was a year ago.
This has been occurring for some billions of years. There seems no good reason to believe that the core will increase its heat output, nor is it likely that the Sun’s total energy output will increase substantially in the light of current knowledge.”
Well, apparently 7 tons matter gets converted into energy per year from radioactive decay in earth. The Moon is getting slightly further away, so slightly less tidal energy.
In terms earth’s heat [whether cooling or warming in interior[], it seems it depends on how energy is escaping to earth surface. Since crust more or less stays the same year to year, a variable would depend upon total volcanism of the planet on any given year- less releasing of heat [via volcanism] less heat lost, which could mean- if not very much is lost- the heat could be building up.
“When you say you start with a cold Earth, I am a little confused. ”
I meant earth-like.
I am pretty certain earth has never actually been 200 K
gbaikie 9:07 pm
The amount of heat generated by radioactive decay is steadily falling, as the conversion of mass into energy takes place. Given the amount of energy stored within the Earth at the moment of its creation, it fairly obviously contains less now.
Hence the solidified crust, and the relatively cool (although still molten) mantle.
The heat from the core is lost to space slowly, relentlessly and remorselessly. It is slowed down by the presence of some thickness of non radiogenic mantle, a “cool” solid crust of some 5 km to 40 km thick, a variable depth of sea – up to 10 km or so, and an almost negligible (by comparison) bit of atmosphere.
Although there are different estimates of heat lost from the “surface” to space, all agree that the interior of the Earth is cooling, as is the outer skin. The Moon has lost heat more rapidly, probably because of its greater surface to volume ratio. Its molten core is far smaller, and will presumably keep cooling until the Moon is isothermal throughout, apart from diurnal surface heating and cooling.
I hope you will accept that I do not intend to cause offence, but it seems that some sort of infectious delusionalism pervades some fields of science. This has happened in the past, and many mainstream ideas in science turned out to be wrong. I am at a loss to comprehend why anyone would believe that wrapping a hot rock in carbon dioxide (in a very diluted form) could cause a rise in temperature.
However, I am always willing to change my thoughts if experiment and logic convince me. I used to accept that gastric ulcers were the result of spicy food and stress. I became convinced that a bacteria causes many gastric ulcers. I changed my thinking.
I also used to think that GHGs caused “global warming”, until I thought about the matter myself. It is interesting to me to see that there is precisely no experimental support for the magical properties of carbon dioxide. Sure, the gas can be warmed. It also cools if the surrounding environment is cooler.
This is pretty much like claiming that bitumen road surfaces cause “global warming” because they absorb heat during the day and get extremely hot.
Anyway, nice discussing the matter with you.
Live well and prosper,
Mike Flynn
Not very close. What happens when you keep injecting current into a capacitor? The charge will keep building:
… until at some point the charge induces an electric field (~ Q/d) great enough to cause breakdown. At that point the capacitor is no longer a storage device either as it starts to short circuit.
Our radiative imbalance is a leaky version of this. The solar radiation causes an imbalance that is gradually countered by an opposing infrared radiation flow.
It is your cherry-picking that selected an analogy that has a small voltage and little chance of leakage.
You lose.
CO2 does have some magical photonic properties that have experimental support and, perhaps more important, practical applications.
The CO2 laser that relies on the capability for the molecules to absorb huge amounts of energy and transfer that into coherent infrared radiation.
The use and characterization of CO2 in blast furnaces to provide carbon, and critically, to understand the influence that the CO2 environment has on the ultimate heating potential. If one doesn’t understand the radiative properties of CO2 you may destroy the furnace.
The CO2 in the upper atmosphere effects many sensor readings, and engineers have to correct for absorption that does occur.
So these magical radiative and photonic properties apparently don’t exist and all these instruments and products that rely on the inner workings of CO2 are just a figment of our imagination?
Yea, sure.
Heat coming from the interior of the Earth has a very small influence on the temperatures of Earth surface, oceans and the atmosphere in comparison to the energy received from the sun and radiated by the Earth to space.
The total amount of solar radiation that hits the Earth is about 4000 times larger than the energy coming from the interior of the Earth. The heat from the interior makes the Earth surface about 0.03C warmer than it would be otherwise and that differential changes extremely slowly. For most practical purposes such tiny effects can be safely left out of the consideration.
Before the Earth gets cold it will get extremely hot as the sun will expand to a red giant in some 5 billion years unless something unexpected occurs before that. According to the present estimates the Earth will be too hot for all life in a billion years or so.
Do you really think that because N2 and O2 don’t radiate significantly that most non-radiative energy flux must be by way of ‘greenhouse’ gases?
“Do you really think that because N2 and O2 don’t radiate significantly that most non-radiative energy flux must be by way of ‘greenhouse’ gases?”
Not particularly.
I think the ocean is more of “greenhouse effect” , as compared to non greenhouse gas having a “greenhouse effect”.
But say you had a bare rock for planet and just the non greenhouse gases.
And say you build a swimming at the equator. And let’s also build an actual greenhouse. So non-roofed swimming pool and 100 meter away one had double paned greenhouse. Say both are 100′ by 100′.
So no CO2, but say enough water vapor so there isn’t.
Nah, forget it.
Seal top of swimming pool so it doesn’t evaporation.
So, no greenhouses gases at all in the atmosphere.
Now I think such swimming pool will be quite warm- say 20 C or more.
As for greenhouse. It depends upon how it’s made:
Sand on our planet at the equator on clear day could be say 40 C.
In the greenhouse if same sand on the floor, it would also about 40 C.
Sand outside the greenhouse in this non greenhouse gas world would
also be around 40 C during the day.
Beyond that it would depend on how greenhouse was made and what temperature were at nite. But if warmest surface in greenhouse is 40 C, the air temperature will not exceed 40 C
A swimming pool has more thermal capacity, so it’s temperature is less affected by nite time conditions.
“lolwot | June 10, 2012 at 8:20 am |
Because I don’t have strong political or religious beliefs. Skeptics here evidentially do (strong political beliefs) and IMO have allowed this to bias their analysis of the science to the point that they make and defend very bad arguments on the issue.”
So you have weak political or religious beliefs?
What is the advantage, in your opinion, of having weaker political or religious beliefs?
It seems to me, that people with “strong” political or religious beliefs
are “overcompensating”. They are lacking in political or religious beliefs
and must show or demonstrate their political or religious beliefs.
And their weakness of their beliefs, makes them feel threaten by other beliefs.
It seems to me that a bible thumper, who knocks on your door, is at your door to strengthen his/her faith.
The bible thumpers always think they are there to get more people believing in their faith. But this is wrong, if that was purpose one have people who were more knowledgeable of the faith, the purpose is for them to test and learn more about their beliefs.
Though it also is useful as most advertizing is useful- brand recognition. Ads don’t sell, they familiarize people with a product- and if people remember something for any reason, it’s a plus.
“Alarmist” is such a useless term, outside of the correct application of it to mentally lazy public speakers and writers of tract, that I’m hoping to see it die off entirely, as people numbed to alarmism find a livable alternative in critical thinking, and the Darwisnism of pressure for circulation cause alarmists to become extinct. Nor is it a trait particular to any one side: doomsayers inflict themselves on every branch of opinion and line of argument. Ohnoes, the world will end in cataclysm. Ohnoes, the poor will starve unless we rich take up the burden of running their lives for them and make them wealthy just like us in every way. Ohnoes the guvment is controllin’ us with chemicals in the water. Ohnoes the terrorists will take over unless we give the gubmint access to all our Facebook pages.
There will always be cause for ‘alarm’: very few processes are purely good for everyone, in that there are competing interests that will parley even win-win outcomes to advantage-me/disadvantage-thee calculus. Even a ‘small’ loss of 0.01% of the low-lying coastlines of the Earth (how can something so small as 0.01% of anything be alarming?) creates quite striking cataclysmic outcomes whether from natural or human agency. It’s just good economic planning to seek to know and to ask faithful report of Risk, to best support allocation of investments. So your alarmist is my actuary, and your alarm is my indication to invest.
Bart R,
When the AGW community publicly and clearly deals with Hansen, gore, etc. etc. et.c etc., we can talk about “alarmist” and its now proper use. When the AGW community stops demanding policies and promoting fantasies like ‘run away greenhouse’, “mitigation”, ‘increases in extreme weather’, we can discuss it further.
Until then, tooooo bad.
You guys are alarmist hypeters.
CNN truly proves how a hoax dies. I saw a blatant “Moorean” dishonesty this morning on segment about “Golden Age of Gas” that was previewed with the, the iconic image of flames spewing from a kitchen faucet,” despite the fact that it has, “been shown to be wildly misleading.” But, anyone with a brain knows now that it is a lie.
And, that is how the global warming hoax dies. When the charlatans of doomsday being caught with their hands in your pockets and lies on their lips and it’s no longer about the hoax but those speading the hoax.
Hey, c’mon, that’s an effective an image as aliens bursting from your chest. Beats Polie Ice Bears all to Hell.
=================
The dependent variable problem is well recognized in other fields. In climate science, temperature is the independent variable and tree rings are the dependent variable.
Climate science selects only those cases (trees) where the dependent variable correlates with the independent variable. Substitute “climate science” for “comparative politics” in the paper below:
How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get:
http://cooley.libarts.wsu.edu/schwartj/pdf/Geddes1.pdf
This is not to say that studies of cases selected on the dependent variable have no place in comparative politics. They are ideal for digging into the details of how phenomena come about and for developing insights. They identify plausible causal variables. They bring to light anomalies that current theories cannot accommodate. In so doing, they contribute to building and revising theories. By themselves, however, they cannot test the theories they propose and, hence, cannot contribute to the accumulation of theoretical knowledge (compare Achen and SnidaI1989). To develop and test theories, one must select cases in a way that does not undermine the logic of explanation.
If we want to begin accumulating a body of theoretical knowledge in comparative politics, we need to change the conventions governing the kinds of evidence we regard as theoretically relevant. Speculative arguments based on cases selected on the dependent variable have a long and distinguished history in the subfield, and they will continue to be important as generators of
insights and hypotheses. For arguments with knowledge-building pretensions,however, more rigorous standards of evidence are essential.
ferd berple | June 10, 2012 at 11:49 am |
Yeah. Climate science is infamous for the cases it selects. Weather stations. Sea level gauges. Satellite-based sensors. Ice cores. Animal habitat range. Frequency and intensity of weather events. Those SOB’s, they’ll select only all observations available and .. wait, oh. I see. You meant the opposite of that thing that actually happened.
Nevermind.
Pleistocene age.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=063LYBBlR3c
Have a nice Day…
Do not forget death threats.
lolwot | June 10, 2012 at 8:20 am |
Because I don’t have strong political or religious beliefs.
=======
Anyone that feels the need to make a statement like that most certainly does have strong beliefs.
I had some discussions recently with Jim D., Steven Mosher and lolwot, on climate sensitivity. This has led me to a couple of questions. Are there two distinctly different typs of forcing; those which do not change the lapse rate; and those that do change the lapse rate? And if there are, in fact, these two different types, what is the difference between them?
Plenty of Branding going on here, I see. Namecalling doing well too.
Precious little debate, unfortunately.
More serious debate occurs on the technical threads. Week in Review is a bit of a free-for-all
“More serious debate occurs on the technical threads”
Color me skeptical that this is always true. ;)
Andrew
California Torn Over How to Spend Cap-and-Trade Riches
By Maria Gallucci, InsideClimate News [1] Jun 12, 2012
Sticky fingers regardless of high sounding principles.
That shocking! Every penny of a carbon tax would go only to resolving carbon related issues. Everyone knows there is no waste in an ideal government.