by Judith Curry
Climate change officers are professionals who apply knowledge of climate-related risks and opportunities to their organizations’ near-term and long-term strategies. These professionals help their organizations to adapt and thrive in a world of climate uncertainty, and guide their organizations toward strategic decisions that are simultaneously strategic for the organization and beneficial to the climate. – Association of Climate Change Officers
There is a new professional society, Association of Climate Change Officers (ACCO). Information about the ACCO can be found at its web page.
ACCO’s board, advisory board and members have collaborated to produce the first version of Core Competencies for Climate Change Officers and Professionals. This publication is the first step toward the development and launch of the CCO Certification (scheduled for 2014).
Read the core competencies at: http://competencies.ACCOonline.org. Extensive excerpts:
The Role of the Association of Climate Change Officers (ACCO)
ACCO serves climate change professionals working in all contexts within an organization, including:
- professionals whose role and responsibilities are focused exclusively upon addressing climate change impacts upon an organization’s operations;
- professionals charged with addressing sustainability and/or environmental issues related to an organization’s operations; and
- professionals whose primary functions are in areas that are not necessarily considered environmental roles (e.g. supply chain and procurement, facilities management, risk management, investor relations, etc.).
ACCO supports the professional development of individuals in positions having any level of climate focus, providing resources, outlining professional development tracks, and connecting them to their peers in order to share successful strategies and lessons learned.
Core Competencies for Climate Change Officers: Three Categories of Knowledge, Experience, and Skills
Climate change officers have different responsibilities depending on the extent to which the organization’s climate-related risks and opportunities fall within their purview. The following sets of knowledge, experience, and skills encompass the most comprehensive set of responsibilities. Professionals for whom only part of their job duties pertain to climate will need to demonstrate specific subsets of each category.
- Foundational knowledge and skills include science literacy, environmental literacy, knowledge of the policy landscape, and management acumen.
- Organizational knowledge and experience include strategic planning, decision-making, compliance, enterprise risk management, asset management, the management of value and supply chains, corporate communications and corporate social responsibility, and organizational governance.
- Strategic execution competencies are largely skills-based and include supporting organizational change, helping to mitigate risk, engaging stakeholders, and being actively involved in policy efforts beyond the walls of the organization and maintaining other external partnerships.
Foundational Knowledge and Skills
Competencies in the foundational category are primarily oriented toward general knowledge about climate and organizational change.
Science Literacy
- Possess an understanding of anthropogenic climate change, with a sound basis in climate science
- Engage others in obtaining credible information on climate-related opportunities and risks related specifically to the organization
- Apply systems thinking to the organization’s operations and its markets in order to identify opportunities and risks and to address potential challenges posed by climate disruption
Environmental and Economic Literacy
- Identify the impact of climate change on the availability of natural resources of strategic importance to the organization’s operations and mission
- Maintain up-to-date knowledge of current trends seen in the impacts of climate change on ecosystems and the availability of natural resources on which the organization depends
- Develop strategies for optimizing the organization’s natural resource usage given current understandings of climate change impacts, for example, potential risks to and consequences of the organization’s use of energy, water, and land
- Establish and continually improve a rigorous system of accounting for the organization’s greenhouse gas emissions, based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and with appropriate third-party verification
- Evaluate and validate programs for carbon offsets and renewable energy credits, and related emissions markets
- Identify adaptation strategies for ecosystem impacts resulting from climate change that are strategic to the organization’s operations and mission
Understanding of the Policy Landscape
- Develop the organization’s ongoing positions on and implement its responses to voluntary mandates (e.g., Carbon Disclosure Project, Global Reporting Initiative, Water Disclosure Project, CEO Water Mandate, government partnership programs, etc.)
- Establish and continually improve the organization’s capacity to track and assess the impact on the organization’s operations and mission of existing and evolving financial, energy, and climate legislation and regulations
- Assess and continually improve the ability of the organization’s own policies and those of its supply chain partners to leverage opportunities and mitigate risks associated with climate change
Management Acumen
- Ensure that the organization takes into account the economics and future prices of energy, water, air, and other natural resources in its strategies, plans, and decision-making
- Understand and advocate for the appropriate use of system tools such as biodiversity assessments and product life-cycle assessments
- Develop, continually improve, and secure resourcing for a portfolio of projects to advance the organization’s strategy for opportunities and risks associated with climate change
- Define, structure, and resource the successful execution of high-value, complex projects that contribute meaningfully to the mitigation of and/or adaptation to climate change
- Use sound cost/benefit analysis to convince the organization’s leadership to resource initiatives that will lower the organization’s contributions to climate-relevant emissions and to protect the organization from the impacts of climate disruption
Organizational Knowledge & Experience
Competencies in the organizational category pertain to how the climate change officer combines his or her foundational knowledge with organization-specific knowledge and experience.
Strategic Planning
- Contribute relevant climate change considerations to the strategic planning process by providing the necessary data on the organization’s own operations as well as global climate data
- Conversely, articulate how the organization’s strategy, mission, and strategic plan can inform the organization’s climate change program
- Assess the vulnerabilities of assets, product lines, and service offerings to physical climate change impacts as well as to potential regulations and legislation
Decision-Making
- Ascertain which types of decisions in the organization require or warrant the incorporation of climate change considerations, and implement a system to codify their incorporation
- Identify the key people in the organization whose participation is essential for the successful implementation of the climate change program
- Provide guidance to the organization’s leadership on optimal ways to incorporate climate change considerations into critical decision-making
- Engage key stakeholders to catalyze the key decisions relative to mitigating and/or adapting to climate change that the organization needs to make
Compliance and Enterprise Risk Management
- Apply the climate change perspective to the organization’s compliance and enterprise risk management programs to enable the organization to increase value in the short- and long-term
- Utilize a systems approach and compile necessary data for the relevant climate change considerations to be incorporated into the compliance and enterprise risk management programs
Asset Management
- Assess and develop strategies to address the relationship between carbon emissions and the impacts of climate change on natural resources critical to the organization’s assets
- Utilize a systems approach and compile necessary data for integrating the relevant climate change considerations into the organization’s asset management strategy
- Develop mechanisms with which to factor in upstream and downstream considerations when the organization considers upgrades or other changes to assets
Value and Supply Chains
- Collaborate with the organization’s leadership to apply the lens of climate change to continually identify risks and opportunities associated with the organization’s value chains (e.g., innovation, product/service development, operations, etc.) and supply chains
- Work effectively with the organization’s leadership overseeing innovation, product/service development, operations, and supply chains to mitigate risks and develop opportunities associated with climate change
- Team up with organizational leadership to prioritize any climate-related opportunities by understanding the relationship between climate impacts and the organization’s market drivers, such as customer requirements, investor requirements, and the regulatory landscape
Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility
- Work effectively with the organization’s communications unit to incorporate the organization’s position on climate change into reputation management and meaningful messaging that is credible with key stakeholders
- Build the organization’s capacity to position products and services responsibly with regard to climate change and related environmental impacts
- Identify and develop the organization’s capacity to support non-profit efforts aimed at driving social consensus on anthropogenic climate change, mitigating climate change, and adapting to the impacts of climate change
Governance
- Establish an effective governance structure, such as a climate impacts committee, that will allocate the necessary resources and establish organizational policies and procedures to identify and mitigate risks and develop opportunities associated with climate change as these pertain to the organization
- Serve as chair or support the chair of the governance body
- Orchestrate strategies to deliver increased organizational value through solutions and processes that go across organizational boundaries and silos
Strategic Execution
Competencies in the strategic execution category center around the climate change officer’s ability to put his or her organizational knowledge and experience into action, bringing the key climate considerations to bear on the organization’s operations, strategic planning, risk mitigation, and stakeholder engagement.
Enterprise Risk Mitigation
- Perform economic risk assessments of climate change impacts that the organization can use to inform its risk mitigation actions and plans
- Demonstrate to stakeholders the organization’s strategy for addressing climate risks through its risk mitigation plans and actions
- Address the climate-related risks to market drivers and market requirements through risk mitigation plans and actions
- Address longer-term risks that have the potential to substantially impact the organization by beginning risk mitigation efforts as early as possible
- Ensure that risk mitigation plans are articulated and executed across all levels of the organization
Supporting Change Within the Organization
- Develop education and communication plans to support the changes needed at all levels of the organization
- Raise awareness within the organization about the potential impacts of climate change on its mission and operations, in order to inspire action aimed at leveraging the opportunities and mitigating the risks
- Provide employees with a frame of reference to enable the right level of action to address climate change, according to the organization’s mission and operations and each employee’s job duties or overall level of concern
- Participate in relevant professional networks devoted to climate change mitigation and adaptation in order to relay to the organization the best practices and optimal tools for successful climate change programs
- Enlist the key people within the organization, as well as external people and organizations, whose involvement is essential for the successful implementation of the organization’s climate change programs
- Support employees as they build their climate change expertise, think through system-wide issues, and take action according to their role and place in the organization
- Work with people and departments that pose obstacles to the organization’s efforts to address short- and long-term risks posed by climate change, converting them into supporters of the organization’s climate change programs
- Embed the urgency of climate change impacts in decision-making, strategies, processes, and initiatives at every level of the organization
Stakeholder Engagement
- Provide stakeholders with the strategic context for the organization’s product and service innovation, placing innovation in the context of potential climate change impacts
- Work effectively with the organization’s communications department to incorporate the organization’s position on climate change into reputation management and meaningful messaging that is credible with key stakeholders
- Articulate succinctly the distinctions and overlaps between the topics of sustainability, greenhouse gas reduction, climate change mitigation, and climate change adaptation, assisting the organization in helping to increase these concepts currency in the broader culture
- Establish relationships with a broad diversity of stakeholders across sectors, organizations, and hierarchy, including those with different perspectives on climate change, to define creative strategies and innovative partnerships with which to address climate change and the attendant opportunities and risks
- Collaborate with climate change officers in other organizations to discuss diverse types of climate change programs
Reaching Beyond the Organization
- Help to drive legislation and modifications of regulatory environments so that they optimally support organizational strategies that have sufficient magnitude to meaningfully address and adapt to climate change
- Form the necessary external partnerships and collaborations with supply chain partners, competitors, and others to accelerate strategies to mitigate risk and adapt to the impacts of climate change
JC comments: I encountered this for the first time a few weeks ago. It seems to be a serious effort, with an impressive list of organizational memberships.
There is a well established weather risk management community, that focuses on targeted weather forecasts for specific industries and sectors and financial instruments such as insurance, weather derivatives, catastrophe bonds.
About 5 years ago, I formulated an informal proposal for enterprise environmental risk management that integrated weather risk management, climate variability/change, and environmental quality issues.
As far as I can tell, Climate Change Officers are focused solely on anthropogenic climate change. I’m having a difficult time figuring out how investment in a CCO as formulated here would pay off for a company. Yes, being ‘green’ can be used as a successful marketing tool for some companies. However, the near term risks are associated with natural variability. Climate Informed Decision Analysis and a longer range extension of weather risk management seems to me a sensible way to go, but that does not seem to be what CCO’s would be trained in.
First they all have to admit that: there isn’t such a thing as GLOBAL warming; climate never stops changing – it’s necessary for hardening, and subdividing of species in fauna and flora, including human. yes, including human; because in most of the humanity, natural selection has stopped…
It was the best of times and it was the worst of times to be a writer for Jay Leno. So much ridiculousness and only a few minutes on each Night Show in which to mock it. Triage in the writing room must leave the floor littered with discarded material, probably including this, littering the floor like hay in barn.
Piers Corbyn and I have independently concluded the Bilderberg Group and the Noble Prize Committee house Officers of Global Climate Change
http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews13No19.pdf
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/20130609.pdf
Investment in a CCO wouldn’t pay off for a company, but it would pay off for the CCO. I can imagine pressure from the government or otherwise that would force companies to hire CCOs, even though the CCOs wouldn’t help the company succeed. A comparable situation already exists today with Affirmative Action officers.
Exactly. Another place to park the son in law to keep him from doing any real damage. It’s not climate change risk mitigation, it’s son in law risk mitigation.
Sounds like a jobs bill–e.g., companies get a tax credits for hiring EPA retirees.
CCO – a job that can be summed up in one 3 letter acyronim – TOB
(as in “as useful as tits on a boar”)
Even if the IPCC have got it right, it is accepted that the climate models have little or no regional skill. Every enterprise operates in regions – even the global ones – so it’s hard to see how this organisation can be anything but a rip-off.
It is well proven for two decades that Consensus Climate Scientists and Models have no regional or global skill.
Many Meteorologists do much better. Climate is just multiple years of Meteorology. We must get some of them to expand their time frame.
That kind officials are plentiful in European companies. Their task is usually not to ponder about the direct influence on climate change on the company, but analyze changes in the business environment from government actions, customer behavior and changes in competition.
They must understand climate science to fair extent to have a possibility of foreseeing what’s most likely to happen in the business environment.
Another important task for such officials is complying with the (far too complex) reporting requirements set by EU.
Pekka,
A quick Google search gave me these:
And, From Figure 2 here: http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/number-of-organisations-with-registered/assessment the number of ISO14001 certified organisations was 80,000 in 2009 (say 120,000 now).
Adding another requirement like CCO, will only add weight to the anchor that is reducing EU’s productivity and competitiveness. If companies reckoned they needed CCOs, they’d do it themselves without government ‘encouragement’.
Don’t ya love the unconscious irony from a policymaker of such magnitude and naivete?
===============
Peter,
“That kind” refers to the range of tasks covered by the ACCO material, What else could I have had in mind.
I have no count, but I know very many companies who have in their management specialists whose most important responsibility is related to climate issues. I think that more or less every large company has such an official, many have more than one.
The first cases predate the Kyoto protocol and those specialists have in some cases been very valuable for their company as they helped in preparing to the changes in the market place the protocol led to.
For a company it’s more important to foresee near term changes in business environment than long term changes in the natural environment, but the long term changes are also important to strategic planning as the will influence sooner or later the business environment as well.
For the CCO of an European company it’s, however, more important to foresee EU level climate policy than to foresee climate itself.
Pekka,
As usual you make a baseless statement and when asked to back it up you write five paragraphs of arm waving waffle. I remain amazed at how you can claim to be an energy economist when you never show the slightest understanding of anything to do with economics or costings.
Your arm-waving comments and answers are frustrating, given your claims about your expertise.
Yup. A weasel just called and wants his name back.
Heh, the banality of blase.
==============
I disagree Peter. Pekka’s answers are straightforward and helpful. They help explain how deeply entrenched AGW is in the EU.
Not surprising Pekka, as Europe gave us ISO 900. A leading candidate for most worthless quality standard of all time.
The issue for corporations and companies isn’t “climate change” as the term is usually used, as that has a 50- or 100-year planning horizon.
Most businesses and corporations, on the other hand, are focused on this quarter’s profits, or perhaps this year’s profits, and perhaps a vague 5-year strategic plan, and what will affect those things. A Climate Change Officer would be as much use to the overwhelming majority of companies as a trailer hitch on a bowling ball. What they need is someone to advise them on weather catastrophes, not whether the globe will be one degree warmer in fifty years.
Finally, we have absolutely no evidence that a warming planet leads to more extreme weather. The planet’s been warming for a couple centuries now, so we would have seen it if it were significant.
As a result, I would class all this CCO greenwashing nonsense as what we used to call “Hitchhiking to Chicago”, with the appropriate rude hand gestures …
w.
+1
No what they need is someone to monitor political climate change. Unlike actual climate change political climate change is real, happens rapidly, and can have devastating consequences for a blindsided corporation or, alternatively, political climate change can provide wonderful opportunities to profitably exploit.
But I really can’t see this function vested in a single person. Sniffing the political wind is something that’s done by officers with a wider range of responsibilities using input from consultants in the lobbyist community.
I’d see the “climate change officer” as the person who understands the jargon and can deal with “climate change” regulators and NGO fanatics on their own terms.
Yeah something like that. HGOIC – Head Greenhouse Officer in Charge
Not only that, but if a capital investment is involved, the horizon for that is never more than 30 years. I can’t imagine any capital investment that would need to see beyond the 30 year horizon.
And in the larger scheme of things, there are a lot of risk factors for a 30-year capital investment that are far more uncertain than the weather … err … climate. The biggest is usually political/regulatory risk.
Which brings up another issue. Most companies in processing industries already have an environmental bureaucracy, and an environmental officer at the VP level. This is organizationally redundant.
Professional societies have their respective technical subcommittees. e.g.
IEEE PES CCTSC, Climate Change Tech Subcommittee (cf at LinkedIn)
Natural variation and persistence needs to be the top priority as the greatest impact in the near to mid term – (including Hurst Kolmogorov dynamics.)
Oh, I get it. It’s like the EO thing. You want the government breaks and contracts? Show us your CCO. If you can’t afford one, there’s always a consultant available. He or she will say you are trying hard (hence consultancy), need to try harder (hence follow-up consultancy) but you’re okay for the moment.
Contract!
+1
Bingo. That is exactly what this is. It is a combination of PR and sucking up to government bureaucrats.
There is a scrolling list of companies who are “members” of the ACCO on their website. No individuals are listed, just companies, universities etc. (although individuals can apparently join).
The best thing is now we have another contingent of people who derive their income from the CAGW political/academic complex.
Could be a good thing though. In a more profit focused corporate structure (outside of academia/NGO’s) there is greater accountability. These officers can’t talk about the oceans boiling off, or hint at conspiracy of funding denial.
In fact, I would think a lot of these officers efforts would need to be walking back public CAGW statements, if they are being scored year to year like most private sector management.
One million companies with one CCO each at $100,000 per year salary = $100 billion taken out of the economy. Please show me the economic gains that exceed this cost.
Add CCO to this list of costs:
Let’s consider the first dot points:
How do you define what is a sound basis in climate science? Is it what is being taught in the green programs in universities?
I would define it as “indoctrinated”, also known as brainwashed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoctrination
Now Peter that’s not the bit that matters, the imprortant bit
is in Core Competencies concerning knowledge of the
policy ie ‘political’ landscape and if yer git it, why, it’s
‘welcome on board!’
A serf.
Yes, Beth. You also zoom in on the key bits.
I want to know the economic analysis for the whole country. How will CCO’s increase our country’s productivity and international competitiveness?
Peter,
Yer want me ter quantify?
Even a serf gits it. lolllllllll !
Peter
Pekka is quite right. Climate change officers are old hat in Europe.
In the UK they are especially well developed as it is a requirement of the Climate Change Act that companies should prepare for climate change and councils have a legal obligation to promote climate knowledge amongst the business community and the public.
In our part of the world on the South Coast our council holds regular seminars as to how the many tourist businesses round here can prepare for the forthcoming Mediterranean climate (promised for 20 years) that will bring lots of new jobs.
It would be fair to say that ‘climate’ would be amongst a portfolio of jobs that someone within a smaller company would hold-typically they might look after human resources as well.
In larger companies climate officers are likely to have more specific responsibilities. Larger Councils would generally have someone dedicated to the job, smaller councils might again share it.
This first link leads to jobs in the industry;
http://jobs.trovit.co.uk/climate-change-officer-jobs
This second one is a good example of an officer in a local council.
http://www.hart.gov.uk/index/environment-and-planning/climate-change.htm
I’ve met up with a few from the councils and they range from the zealots to the rather sceptical but they were the only one available to do the job.
tonyb
TonyB,
I think you may have misunderstood my question. I wasn’t denying they exist. I was asking how many so we could estimate the economic cost. I gave a rough estimate. Now I’d like to know what economic benefit do they deiliver to the country, if any? I suspect it is negative.
On the flip side, imagine a powerful corporation with a coupla skeptics on board. Whoa, might see a competitive advantage, hey.
============
Say, what happened ter lean and mean in productive enterprises…
runnin’ a tight ship, keepin’ costs down, keepin’ cash flow and
the business afloat? Say, what would I know, I’m only a serf (
Sadly, serf, in these regulated times when bribery has to pass legally through a company’s books, there are no cheap options for real, make-money-or-else businesses. If you’re the type who sweats over every month’s end, bad luck. You won’t be able to just buy off your CCOs with crates of champers. (MInd you, you still should give ’em the champers – but it won’t come even close to buying them off.)
Of course, if a business is large and political enough it can just shift expenses round and round till they’re not expenses any more. Like that trick where mega-institutions sell carbon credits to themselves and win at both ends. I can think of a bank or two which will have a vibrant CCO division, working hand in hand with its carbon division for a cleaner, safer future for our children etc etc…
Sad… as yer say, mosomoso. A serf asks,: ‘So where is
innovation ter come from if the underground is plugged?
Here in Oz, innovative technology has historically come
from small business responding ter problems on the littoral,
not ter mention 80% of employment fer the workforce, so I’m
told. How now, that increasingly, small business has ter
submit ter punitiive regulation agreed upon by deals between
centralist governments and big business. Cui bono?
And who will benefit when creative adaptation, knee capped
by conn-sensus regulation, is no longer forthcoming? Hmm…
something about committees designing elephants comes
ter mind.
Bts
Beth, there are a few true believers in the corporate world but mostly it’s about public perception. This from my brother in-law who has run or been a top executive in some very large UK companies.
Jim
So, who’s on top of the CCO? – the one to talk with apparently.
I mean, seriously: who, below the obvious answer highest CEO and board level? It can e.g. be Quality, and then among engineers and product development, or among Marketing and then the front-end..
The word is: Politruk.
Game over. Looks like the era when rational thought, specifically science had its place in decision making is lost irrecoverably.
I demand Ghost Buster Officers, whose core responsibility would be to keep their respective organizations ghost free, and if that’s not possible, gain the ghost’s grace with all devices at their disposal.
You could get what you ask for, if the number of paranormal ghost hunting shows on US tv are any indication.
Innovation seems to be playing a keen competitive role in the West’s race to the bottom.
And the juggernaut rolls on despite having lost its bearings.
=================
wouldn’t that go in the column of positive effects of AGW?
It eliminates the laws of friction.
CCOs: Complete Control Officers. This is not “A New Hope”, it is “The Empire Strikes Back”. This is what happens when a country, an entire people, doubles down on false theory, on failed dogma, and the future should be clear from a slight knowledge of history. How many innocents died under Hitler? How many under Stalin? How many under Mao Tse Tung? Or further back, in the Inquisition? By Muslim conquest? By all the death cults masquerading as true faiths throughout the history of mankind? By all the tyrannies masquerading as robust civilizations? YOU DON”T SET ERROR IN STONE, IF YOU WANT PEOPLE TO LIVE.
It would be amusing to document the number of ‘climate change officers’ who’ve been asked by their organizations in the last six months about the danger of climate change to the cold side.
How about a poll? Maybe we can get competent officers to run it, newly out of shake and bake school as they are.
============
Under the heading, “Science Literacy”
“understanding”
Indeed man changes the micro climate – a reservoir, type of land use, de-forestation – it all changes the climate. What is not known, is by how much a contribution does mankind make to atmospheric dynamics – through his input of man made CO2 and the only credible answer – not much.
It surely is debatable – whether, such as; Trenberth, Mann and Jones have could lay any claim to the above competency. Even if it existed, I would think that, even Professor Lindzen would be loath to admit that he possessed a comprehensive ‘understanding’ of the mechanisms of “anthropogenic climate change”.
Man must know his limits and in changing the climate: atmospherically speaking – we are insignificant players.
Read ‘faith in dogma’ for ‘understanding, and the skies of comprehension clear.
==========
Indeed so.
Won’t be long before we start seeing carbon and environmental police.
Hi Judy – The concept presented of “climate change” perpetuates the view that in the absence of human activity, climate is nearly static on decadal and multi-decadal time periods. This is clearly not true; e.g. see
Rial, J., R.A. Pielke Sr., M. Beniston, M. Claussen, J. Canadell, P. Cox, H. Held, N. de Noblet-Ducoudre, R. Prinn, J. Reynolds, and J.D. Salas, 2004: Nonlinearities, feedbacks and critical thresholds within the Earth’s climate system. Climatic Change, 65, 11-38. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/r-260.pdf
Whenever I see the use of the terminology “climate change”, I see an inappropriately narrow view of the actual risks we face from the climate system.
‘Sustainability’ meet ‘climate change’. This wasn’t planned out very well, was it; greed, and lust for power having truncated thought?
============
Rpielke
The Met office firmly believes in a static climate until mans intervention and had a page on their web site to this effect until last year.
tonyb
The abolition of history? They tried that in Kampuchea a while back. It doesn’t work on the educated or uneducated. It works on the re-educated – briefly. Then everybody stops believing in Year Zero, even when they say they believe, out of habit or conformity.
Somebody tell the climatariat and our Green Betters that their horse is old and the punters have gone.
The Gorebellied Fool slipped out of the stable with the Four Apocalyptic Horses, but left his chakra tied to the stall. Ouch.
============
This is crucial, IMO. It’s Orwellian language. That’s why calling the skeptics climate change deniers is a projection – you have to deny climate change in order to believe in the Orwellian Climate Change.
excuse me. that’s Mosher/Orwell
write that down
I have the copywrite on that.
Mosherian?
The assumption that all CC is anthropogenic/greenhouse is embedded in the proffered ‘solutions’, which are all about CO2 reduction. If CO2 isn’t the primary driver, there’s a risk that this will produce a false sense of security that they’re doing something effective, when they aren’t.
This is an issue whether or not CC is primarily natural, or primarily anthropogenic but not greenhouse. That’s the real argument for adaptation rather than mitigation.
Hard to imagine a criticism of a profession developed to answer the professional marketing and falsification of competitors in the Market.
Any insurer wants to have solid understanding of the Risk impacts of climate kinetics. Many businesses need insurance to defray their risks, and unnatural trends are part of many corporate risk profiles.
Given the diversity and number of nations with various tax regimes, and one hopes in future carbon cycle privatization, aimed at stemming tyranny in the use of scarce resources, it’s hard to imagine good business would not want the advice of knowledgeable professionals dedicated to steering through such complexity.
SAP would want to codify these items into tables, at the very least, and its customer base is huge worldwide. As such, the profession would save time and money and provide assurance of quality, qualified information for business decisions. This would pay for itself many times over in speeding response and finding opportunity.
The Market is the place where most solutions most efficiently arise. If actors want to navigate the Market, they best develop expertise as the Market changes in new areas, techniques and understanding.
After all, it was only a few years ago unimaginable that there would be certified professional Twitter Officers, either.
They should have called them Occupational Climate Officers.
OCO- just another way to write CO2.
Another training prerequisite- candidate must suffer from acute Ocophobia.
I just added a word to my vocabulary. Excellent.
Do they carry guns? What are the rules of engagement?
Look: there’s a Denier! he’s wearing a Black Hat! Bam Bam!
Sigh, that’s a relief, a close run thing. The only good Denier is a dead Denier. We don’t want to get the War on Climate get away from us, otherwise it will look like The War on Crime, The War on Drugs and The War on Terrorism.
Hector,
You forgot the war on poverty.
Hector Pascal | June 10, 2013 at 10:08 am |
Way to turn this from something about free enterprise and professional standards to something about government and your pet interests.
So, which of your oxen is being gored: drugs, crime or terror?
“So, which of your oxen is being gored: drugs, crime or terror?”
None of the above. I live in a society where the police spend most of their time doing paperwork and drinking tea. My late father-out-law got confused trying to leave the house early one morning: I’d come home late the previous evening and locked the front door. A locked front door didn’t compute.
This isn’t “free enterprise an professional standards”. Its closed shop and state control.
Hector Pascal | June 10, 2013 at 11:06 am |
As a minarchist, I am quite interested in opposing state command and control and anything that increases the size of government.
How is the private employ by private companies (or even publicly traded ones) of private employees of an independent and unregulated, non-unionized profession by any stretch of any definition state control, or closed shop?
I suspect from your reasoning that your ox isn’t terrorism or crime.
I nominate Bart R as an idealized prototype of a Climate Change Officer. Not quite matching Nick Stokes precision engineering or Pekka Pirila fit and finish, but good enough for the show stand.
=============
kim,
But only if he promises to stop mangling the English language when it comes to economics and politics. Oh wait, that’s probably a prerequisite for the job. Never mind.
If these officers get badges, then I nominate Springer.
Been there. Done that.
Bart,
I’m generally in agreement with you here – so long as the decision is one of private companies. Where the “state” aspect can enter is when they formulate laws and regulations requiring companies to have such a position.
Washington is one of the states with mandated percentages for renewable power in their generation portfoilo. A utility does not have a choice in determining its generation mix. In some cases, primarily PUD’s, utilities are having to acquire generation assets they don’t need to meet the requirement. (They are hydro based and it was determined hydro was not renewable.) This is in effect a form of state control.
Speaking of gored oxen, there’s a hemi semi demi billion critter lying out there sacrificed for your engorgement. Keep your forks, there’s pie.
===============
Thanks, Professor Curry.
The question for many US citizens: Is the Global Climate Change Movement related to government spying ? http://tinyurl.com/jw7essw
JC Wrote: As far as I can tell, Climate Change Officers are focused solely on anthropogenic climate change.
Yes, there is not a Skeptic thought in the whole thing.
This will be as useless as a so called Climate Scientist who is not Skeptic.
Another gold mine for the people who enter the field and another money sink hole for the organizations that employ them.
They are beginning to recruit the foot soldiers for future oppression.
The army has found the enemy and is forming a circle.
========
Judith Curry
It seems to be yet another climate change organization: “all dressed up but nowhere to go.”
Damn the thermometers, full speed ahead.
========
Kim
Ah, I remember it well: Admiral Forgotten Team at the Battle of Sweet Bay.
Articulate succinctly the distinctions and overlaps between the topics of sustainability, greenhouse gas reduction, climate change mitigation, and climate change adaptation, assisting the organization in helping to increase these concepts currency in the broader culture
Amazing how you can fit anything into a sentence like this–e.g.,
Articulate succinctly the distinctions and overlaps between the topics of individual liberty, personal responsibility, self-reliance, common-sense, honor, integrity, proportion and Christian charity, assisting the organization in helping to increase these concepts currency in the broader culture
Based on my limited experience in the electric utility world, I have a couple of anecdotal observations. I do think that many large companies (>1,000) employees have a position within the organization for climate change impacts but there certainly would be differences between companies based on their products and services. I think most of the comments miss the real purpose of this position within a company. That role boils down to two essential things: how are the regulations associated with initiatives associated with climate change going to affect the company and how can the company leverage those changes to the company’s advantage.
Consider the roles defined by ACCO for climate change professionals working in all contexts within an organization:
professionals whose role and responsibilities are focused exclusively upon addressing climate change impacts upon an organization’s operations;
professionals charged with addressing sustainability and/or environmental issues related to an organization’s operations; and
professionals whose primary functions are in areas that are not necessarily considered environmental roles (e.g. supply chain and procurement, facilities management, risk management, investor relations, etc.).
Climate change impacts on operations has to be a pretty short list of concerns unless the definition of climate change impacts includes any unusual weather. Seriously, the endless arguments on the web over just how much the temperature has changed is reflected in the environment by what – a week longer growing season? The daily and seasonal variability is much greater than the purported temperature changes. However, new rules associated with climate change could have major impacts on operations.
Sustainability is a common buzz word topic nowadays. There are initiatives that include funding for “sustainable” projects that might be available for company projects. I think it is likely that there are people in many organizations charged with finding out what is available and working in the company to try to take advantage of those programs. If you can get a government agency to cover costs and risks, then you would be doing your investors a dis-service to not take advantage of those programs.
Given the tremendous publicity around climate change it is not surprising that people in organizations outside of environmental staff are either re-branding themselves for personal gain or the company is re-naming their positions for publicity purposes. For example, someone in investor relations has to be cognizant of climate change issues so company documents reflect the latest trends.
I want to make one final point. The number of people in these roles who take any interest in the science is very small. From the standpoint of negative publicity alone, there are very few companies willing to suggest in any way that climate change impacts are marginal much less non-existent. The real “denial” machine is the orchestrated publicity from environmental advocacy organizations that deny that there is any doubt about the science of climate change whenever anyone much less any organization dates suggest otherwise.
Actually, “sustainability” is a buzz word from 2-3 years ago. You don’t hear corporations marketing themselves as green, nor private homes for sale advertised as green.
Yes. The CCO would ideally be housed in the Rent-Seeking Department, which ought to have a matrix structure with Disadvantaging Competitors and Tapping Subsidies as its two primary dimensions.
CCO would report to the Emissions Policy & Regulations division of Disadvantaging Competitors and the Tax Optimization and Investment Subsidy division of Tapping Subsidies. Internal RSD politics between these dimensions impinging on the CCO would concern what to lobby for. What if there is a conflict between getting more cash through subsidies for the whole industry versus shaping technology mandates to penalize rivals? Only so much political capital to go around. A good CCO would manage that discussion internally and develop a coherent position that best serves the shareholders.
You have described it pretty well except for the last sentence. I would revise that to say “A good CCO would manage that discussion internally and develop a coherent position that best serves the company president’s compensation package targets for annual incentives related to quarterly and annual shareholder goals.” All the compensation targets are short-term with no long-term (say five year) company, shareholder or public good considerations included.
Rogercaiazza
Yes, to all your comment. Your comment and many others show that companies are creating senior positions to work out how best to capitalise on government regulations and/or minimise the cost to the company of government regulations.
It would be interesting to have a discussion about what is the total cost of these government regulations to the EU.
In an earlier comment I quoted figures for the number of registered small business enterprises (20 million) and the number of ISO14001 registered enterprises (est. 130,000 in 2013). If we assume there are 1 million CCO’s (i.e. about 5% of businesses have one full time equivalent CCO), then the cost would be $100 billion per year.
ExternE also gives an estimate for the cost of complying with the EU’s Kyoto commitments http://www.externe.info/externe_2006/externpr.pdf. Page 13:
The figures are given in euro cents per kWh of electricity supplied by fuel used for electricity generation, but I’ll give them here in €/MWh,
coal = 16
lignite = 20
gas = 7.3
nuclear = 0.3
PV = 3.3
wind = 0.4
hydro = 0.3
If we multiply the costs above by the amounts of electricity generated by each fuel in OECD Europe in 2009 http://www.iea.org/stats/electricitydata.asp?COUNTRY_CODE=25 the tgotal cost comes out at €21.4 billion per year. That’s just for electricity!
No wonder Europe is broke!
The product of shadow price and volume is not a valid estimate of the cost involved. It’s common that the actual costs are a tiny fraction of that product.
An optimization model tells typically both the shadow price and the cost of an optimal solution, where this shadow price occurs. The real world cost is usually significantly higher than that of the optimal solution, but at the same time only a small fraction of what one would conclude from the shadow price.
Here we have again a case, where I can tell that simple estimates are so poor that they are almost worthless in figuring out the actual costs, but where I’m also unable to tell, what the actual costs are.
Pekka Pirila,
More arm-waving from Pekka, but nothing of substance and nothing constructive offered.
Pekka, why don’t you provide a better estimate, and explain the basis of it, instead of baseless assertions?
You continually tell others they are wrong, but you don’t offer something better. You don’t show how to do a better estimate or what better sources to use. Why not? Are you just Captain Negativity or is it Captain Ego?
[repost with corrected formatting]
Pekka Pirila,
More arm-waving from Pekka, but nothing of substance and nothing constructive offered.
Pekka, why don’t you provide a better estimate, and explain the basis of it, instead of baseless assertions?
You continually tell others they are wrong, but you don’t offer something better. You don’t show how to do a better estimate or what better sources to use. Why not? Are you just Captain Negativity or is it Captain Ego?
[2nd attempt to get the formatting correct]
Pekka Pirila,
More arm-waving from Pekka, but nothing of substance and nothing constructive offered.
Pekka, why don’t you provide a better estimate, and explain the basis of it, instead of baseless assertions?
You continually tell others they are wrong, but you don’t offer something better. You don’t show how to do a better estimate or what better sources to use. Why not? Are you just Captain Negativity or is it Captain Ego?
[Damn. Try again]
Pekka Pirila,
More arm-waving from Pekka, but nothing of substance and nothing constructive offered.
Pekka, why don’t you provide a better estimate, and explain the basis of it, instead of baseless assertions?
You continually tell others they are wrong, but you don’t offer something better. You don’t show how to do a better estimate or what better sources to use. Why not? Are you just Captain Negativity or is it Captain Ego?
What does that mean? Please substantiate the assertion. You assert “ it is common” so please substantiate that assertion? How do you know? How common? By how much is my estimate overstated?
By the way, the tactic you frequently use to avoid a challenge to substantiate your statements, i.e. making assertions such as “It’s a clear fact” and then refusing to provider a link to substantiate it, is not acceptable.
For context for other readers, the EU researchers involved in the ExternE projects set out to try to estimate the damage cost of climate change but found they couldn’t do it, so they decided to estimate the cost of EU’s policies to achieve their Kyoto commitments.
Each of the EU15 countries, separately, generated estimates for the external costs of electricity generation by ‘fuel type technology’ (see the table on p13 here: http://www.externe.info/externe_2006/externpr.pdf). They estimated the ‘Damage Costs’ for categories of: Noise, Health, Material, Crops, for each fuel type technology and attempted to estimate Avoidance Costs for Eco systems and Climate Change. They couldn’t estimate the damage costs of climate change so, instead, they estimated the cost to achieve the EU’s Kyoto Protocol commitments.
In other words, more baseless assertions. More bla bla bla from Pekka.
I didn’t claim my estimate is accurate. I showed a method for getting a rough, ball park, order of magnitude estimate. Engineers do this sort of thing all the time to
attempt to get a rough estimate the magnitude of a problem. It seems Pekka wants to fly straight into “An optimization model”. What a joke. How can you make an optimisation model when you can’t even do a simple rough estimate?
Pekka the more often you write your negative comments and provide nothing but negativity and baseless assertions, the more I see you as simply a scientist who was promoted outside your area of expertise into a chair of energy economics but without the background knowledge in economics or estimating to be able to handle the job. But you are an expert at obfuscation – like a politician – and that is probably the reason you got the job and managed to hold it for however long you did hold it.
I look forward to you substantiating what appear to be more of your baseless assertions (but not holding my breath).
By the way, can I interpret from your statement that “It’s common that the actual costs are a tiny fraction of that product.” that you believe the EU estimates of around 16 MWh for coal (say 16-20 per tonne CO2) over estimates the social cost of carbon by a factor of several times? Interesting. How will you weasel your way out of this conundrum?
Peter Lang
Let’s say Pekka is right and the estimate you cited for direct energy cost premium for EU residents for “Kyoto compliance” is exaggerated by 2:1, and is only €10 billion per year.
This means that each of the 200 million households in the EU only have to pay a relatively modest €50 per year.
The problem is that this added expense is totally non-value added – it is money poured down a rat hole, as it were.
The second problem is that this is only the direct premium paid for electrical power.
All products and services also have an energy component, which must be paid by the consumer in the end effect. In other words, an increase in energy costs would arguably multiply the direct premium by a factor of five to ten, to €250 to €500 per household per year.
At that rate, we are starting to talk of a real burden, especially to less wealthy families.
If there were a demonstrable “added value” for these families to pay this premium, it might have some merit. But, since this is not the case, there is no justification for this extra burden on an average household.
Maybe Pekka can convince me that there is an “added value”, but so far neither he nor anyone else has been able to do so.
Max
Manacker,
I agree. I am surprised more people do not seem to think ot the consequences of these policies. The many people who are interested in the science of CAGW, trends, stats etc. seem to become innumerate when it comes to considering economic outcomes of policies. And I include Pekka Pirila as one of those people.
Peter,
If you know, what a shadow price is, you know also that it’s not a measure of the cost involved (when multiplied by the volume). The difference may be very large, like a factor of one hundred in some cases.
Sometimes the difference is not a very big factor, sometimes it is. Simply it is not a relevant measure. Certainly it’s not limited to two as Max seems to think.
Why I don’t give better answers? Simply, because I don’t know the answer, but even so I can say that multiplying the shadow price by the volume is usually so far from thew truth that it has no value as an estimate of the real cost.
Having someone specializing in climate policies and their influence on strategic planning is not a major cost.
Cost of compliance to the EU regulations is larger, and badly justified in my view as the present regulations are far from optimal even if the goal is accepted. Even so I haven’t heard any strong complaints from companies telling that these costs would put an insurmountable burden on the them. These costs are not the reason for Europe’s economic foes or those of European companies, the policies themselves are certainly a more serious problem for many companies, while they add to the income of some others (like many power companies).
Pekka Pirila,
Again you’ve written a whole pile of arm waving and said nothing. If you’ve got nothing constructive to say why do you say anything at all? Is it just an ego trip?
If you haven’t got a better estimate or can’t suggest a better way to make a simple estimate, why do you make silly comments that say, in effect “you are wrong but I don’t know how to do it better”. What sort of nonsense is that.
ExternE said they could not estimate the damage cost of supposed AGW caused by GHG emissions. They it the uncertainties are enormous and it would be meaningless. So, instead they calculated the ‘shadow price’ for the electricity generations contribution to achieving the the EU’s commitments to the Kyoto. The cost per kWh multiplied by the number of kWh per year is the best estimate I have for the ‘externality’ of GHG emissions from electricity generation.
My estimate for electricity generation in EU15 is €22 billion (based on ExternE estimate of external costs and IEA figures for generation per fuel type in 2009).
If you’ve got a better estimate or better methodology, show it!
Climate Change Officer Opportunities. Any opportunity that presents itself for expanding a business “management” department should not be wasted. There should always be room for nepotism and lateral promotion in any organizational structure. As a climate change officer you will need experience in redundancy utilization and must be willing to travel. Compensation based on education and lack of relevant experience. WASPs need not apply.
+100
Capt’nDallas
Isn’t this one of those jobs you hear about around the Water Cooler? Scuttlebutt.
They need to reframe. The organization should be call the Coordinating Union of Climate Knowledgable Office Occupiers.
Ooh, CUCKalOO, a chugga choo choo, I think I can, I think I can.
=============
:-)
Or: “I thought I could…”
What I’m wondering is how does ACCO integrate such climate officers as Watts, Monckton, Christy, Spencer, Singer, Inhofe, Barton, even the Koch brothers themselves, into its professional structure?
My bet is anyone who pays dues can be a member. Maybe even the sky dragons
Having a CCO may positively impact the companies public image among some of the less knowledgeable. That may help a company to attract potential younger workers to choose to be employed there.
This is hilarious,expectations and outcomes with compliance are always divergent, the finance industry being a good example eg The JP Morgan whale.Where a strictly regulated entity,with a vast army of compliance officers,regulators and federal oversight ,could not ascertain the risk.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-03/whale-of-a-trade-revealed-at-biggest-u-s-bank-with-best-control.html
Mccain was especially scathing on the reckless use of WMD (derivatives)
Through an extensive bipartisan investigation, this Subcommittee has uncovered a wealth of new information. Internal e-mails, memos, and interviews reveal that these trades were not conducted by a group of rogue traders, but that their superiors were well aware of their activities.
Traders at JPMorgan’s Chief Investment Office, the CIO, adopted a risky strategy with money they were supposed to use to hedge, or counter, risk. However, even the head of the CIO could only provide a quote “guesstimate” as to what exactly the portfolio was supposed to hedge. And JPMorgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon admitted that the portfolio had quote “morphed” into something that created new and potentially larger risks. In the words of JPMorgan’s primary federal regulator, it would require quote “make-believe voodoo magic” to make the portfolio actually look like a hedge.
Top officials at JPMorgan allowed these excessive losses to occur by permitting the CIO to continually breach all of the bank’s own risk limits. When the risk limits threatened to impede their risky behavior, they decided to manipulate the models.
http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/download/?id=14830ff8-9bc3-49aa-bcfb-b4f690ede181
Perfect job for a Eurocommie. Climate change politics corrupts the world economy. What works is not trying to keep success bottled up: a successful economy that increases net present wealth for all takes everyone working together within a system of free enterprise capitalism.
The founders understood such a system was only possible in a society that dedicated itself first to the preservation of individual liberty. How that first principle plays out in the world changes over time depending on what happens in the rest of the world that has zero respect for personal freedom.
In the world of today preserving individual liberty means achieving energy independence, not paying cash for clunkers. An oil-rich Mideast could care less if the US is energy independent. For the ME most of humanity resides elsewhere and OPEC can use its monopoly powers to pick all of the pockets in the rest of the world.
“These professionals help their organizations to adapt and thrive in a world of climate uncertainty, and guide their organizations toward strategic decisions that are simultaneously strategic for the organization and beneficial to the climate”
Let me fix that for you.
These professionals ripoff their organizations and taxpayers by fear mongering and promoting hysteria about climate uncertainty, and ride the eco greenie AGW Scam Gravy Train for their own benefit and at the cost and detriment of society.
There, much better
LOL–they are not ripping of the organization if they are doing what the orgaqnization expects
you need to proof your typing before hitting enter
+100
So what would a CCO do for a company exactly? Perhaps advise a manufacturing firm to stop making snow shovels because snow is a thing of the past? Yes, there is certainly a need out there.
Changes in the natural environment are so slow that they have little effect within the planning horizon of any company. Changes in governmental regulation or in customer behavior may be much faster, and affect significantly cash flows and profitability. Thinking about them is a prudent decision for any company.
A competent CCO doesn’t present stupid recommendations of the type many denizens seem to think. There’s no reason that he should have an alarmistic attitude, but he should understand enough about all the issues listed by ACCO to be genuinely helpful in the business planning of his company.
I know well one case where being the first to anticipate correctly the influence of future climate policies was worth hundreds of millions (if not billions) for a power company. Based on that they bought significant amounts of hydro power from another company, and the value of those hydro plants soared as consequence of later EU climate policies.
Pekka, I suppose the problem is trying to figure out a need for CCOs. If it is just a matter of how best to fleece the tax payer and/or consumer that is already covered by current well established professions.
Steven, the opportunities are endless. The CCO could do a cost benefit analysis on installing incandescent light fixtures to be converted to CFLBs then converted to LCD incandescent replacement and finally returned to incandescent bulbs in winter to offset reductions in heating costs. With subsidies for each stage of the circular transformation, he could justify his existence.
In Spain, a CCO found that it was cost effective to install solar PV panels with halide illumination to maximize night peak energy sales to French power companies while receiving Spain governments solar energy subsidies.
There are also opportunities in trading coal to China for wood pellet stoves to use US wood pellets manufactured by companies clear cutting pine forests in order to get “green” subsidies for albedo reduction prior to receiving grants to convert the clear cut lands to intensive grazing pasture reclamation with beefalo for the high end protein market while being subsidized for contributing to game corridors prior to leasing rights of way to high speed rail.
I’m not aware of any CCOs in the US yet our companies manipulate the tax code just fine. I suspect it is an overly specialised profession that will most likely lead to the unemployment line.
Many native American Indian tribes had CCOs. They were called shamans.
The difference being they gave you the weather you wanted instead of warning that you were going to get the weather you didn’t want. A much better return on investment. I suspect with about equal success rates.
…and, probably not a bad show either, what with all the dressing up, dipping, dancing, hopping and hooting about.
I see this as an attempt on the part of “alarmists” to marginalize businesss so they won’t oppose the alarmists agenda going forward and might even be a source of funding not fust for the CCO’s but for “the movement” as well. Or it may be just a brazen attempt to “cash in” before the Global warming/ climate change ship sinks.
Newsflash!
The Association of Climate Change Officers has just announced that it will become a global association, the World Association of Climate Change Officers.
Members of the group will be called “WACCOs”.
Max
–> CCO finds missing heat in ozone hole. News at 11!
Let’s play the devil’s advocate and assume CCO’s are necessary and appropriate. Because their scope covers environmental issues broadly both internally and along the supply chain, they may help reduce liability. Also, they might also help identify business and marketing opportunities. Cutting carbon can be a huge money saver if done by efficiency or process improvement. If deployed with entrepreneurial mandates, CCO’s can help companies be cleaner, stronger, faster, smarter.
Sorry to put a damper on conspiracy ideation at your friendly local paranoia confirmation group therapy session.
Nearly all of your nation’s scholars and scientists owe their primary livelihood to the involuntary generosity of the taxpayer. Some of your rent-seeking, scientific-technological elite, taking willful and shameless advantage of the taxpayer’s largesse and of the scientific illiteracy that is now widespread, are mightily enriching themselves by misleading your Congress into appropriating disproportionately large sums to permit them to address the non-problem of anthropogenic “global warming”.
~The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
QED
Businesses don’t need CCO’d to do that. It’s in self-interest to explore some of your points. My assessment of the attempt to ‘create’ a CCO position with it tied to an organization whose only purpose is to legitimize the creation of such a silly job, STILL STANDS. Ken
Sent from my iPhone
Ken:
I’m sure there are businesses that do a bang-up job and don’t need a corporate officer level type with broad powers to influence strategy and policy. I am also certain that due to corporate and social culture, many companies can reduce their net environmental footprint and increase worker safety by having a position with real authority to implement changes. In my experience, a lot of “hard green” opportunities are missed because of how operating budgets are structured.
But I get the visions of the opposition: some pencil-neck patchouli oil stinking deadhead with a gray ponytail and purple granny glasses going around telling line supervisors and tool pushers how to do their job. I think most of the cities and counties have hired these guys in California already.
Will we ever be able to forget…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yossarian#Snowden
O crap?
Tom:
Good Knowledge. Another one of my top 10 movies of all time.
Howard
Nah. Let’s not do that. It’s silly.
Max
Max: It’s silly not to consider the good in the disagreeable. When you get lemons, make lemonade instead of only having a hammer and thinking everything is a nail. That is unless you are satisfied that the cuckoo clock is the penultimate technology, then by all means, join wagathon, girma and the rest of the addled nutters. Did I get the Alpine reference right, or are you still trying to convince the world Beethoven was Austrian?
Howard
Naw. Beethoven was what he was.
But, unlike Beethoven, these CCOs will achieve nothing (but maybe get themselves a slice of the taxpayer-funded AGW pie, as long as it still lasts).
Max
Try real science like Dr. Salby not socialogy.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/10/dr-murray-salby-on-model-world-vs-real-world/
Oooo, Salby high-sticks Mann with on the reverse–i.e., it’s global warming that causes CO2, not the reverse:
What Salby moved to this provocative thesis? The CO 2 measurements in Hawaii have shown that the annual CO 2-increase amount varies in the range 0.4 to 2.8 ppm. This remarkable variability is in complete contrast to the anthropogenic CO 2 emissions, which show a smooth, steady course. Obviously there must be a natural process that caused the variations. Salby looked for possible candidates for – and found it: The global temperature history was impressive synchronously with the curve of the annual CO 2 increase. Summing up the temperature with soil moisture in a common parameter together so nearly perfect synchronization is observed (Figure 2). During warm El Nino years (eg 1997/1998) came very much to CO 2, during cold years (eg after the Pinatubo eruption in 1991), the CO 2 rose hardly at. From the observed correlations Salby concluded that the evolution of CO 2 is very sensitive to temperature changes, and calculated empirically by how much the CO 2 concentration increases when the temperature rises. Salby concluded based on these values that almost all of the CO 2 increase could be a result of the warming since 1880.
Professor Murry Salby has rolled all his dice on a daring hypothesis. Unfortunately it is a flawed argument based on using signal processing to cherry-pick correlations. The other flaw is in his misreading of how the carbon cycle works.
In years to come, this will come to be known as Salby’s folly.
Murry’s worry is a fury signifying nothing.
Notice that he never models the seasonal oscillations of CO2. This would destroy his argument.
Salby fooled himself.
No mention nor back envelope calculation of CO2/Temp due to Henry’s Law. Also, no questions at the end of the lecture. Smells too much like cherry pie.
WHT- I haven’t had time to view the video yet. But nonetheless, could you detail the points where you believe he has cherry-picked or misinterpreted the carbon cycle? I have noted you specifically criticized his neglect of seasonal oscillations of CO2. I hope to have some time this weekend to dig into this.
Yes. I’d also like to know what are the issues with his presentation before I watch the video.
JC I think Salby has totally destroyed AGW science This is REAL climate science which gives it at least a prospect as a career.By showing how proxy data can be aligned to the current situation in 1 hour and 8 minutes this man may have redeemed the subject. Its a must watch for atmospheric physicists..
The analogy given in the article is a bit harsh–e.g., instead of driving the bus Salby believes CO2 is sitting in the back like a drunken lout.
Eliza, you write “JC I think Salby has totally destroyed AGW science”
I agree with you, but this is irrelevant, just as your remark is. Until,the likes of our hostess, the rest of the warmists, and all the learned scientific societies, go public, and state unreservedly that they agree with your statement, is is just empty rhetoric.
Speaking on behalf of all scientists I hereby renounce AGW theory as a hoax and a scare tactic. Not enough? Okay how about voters putting people in office that take on the serious job of defunding the government-education industry in America. That puts a stop to global warming PDQ.
As Salby understands, CO2 simply follows changes in water vapor which in turn is explained by solar activity–i.e., nominally, it’s the sun, stupid.
No, he says CO2 changes as the integral of temperature over time. An interesting hypothesis. I’d like to see it on paper.
I’m pretty sure I can see some holes in his presentation, but I suspect he has the numbers to fill them.
Judy, I don’t know why no one is talking about this maneuver. Surely an imposed “social cost of carbon” is an impact on everyone.
“The White House recently released an update of its Working Group’s estimates of the so-called “social cost of carbon” (SCC). The relevant figures, which will guide federal regulatory decisions, have in some cases more than doubled in just three years. In this post I’ll show just how dubious these moves are, and that there is little “science” behind the whopping numbers.”
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2013/06/06/white-house-revises-dubious-social-cost-of-carbon/
A ‘cost’ to you is ‘revenues’ to the government. It’s called cash-for-clunkers secular, socialist liberal Utopia.
Ron C
When a government speaks of the “social cost of carbon”, beware.
The long hand of the tax collector is about to slip into your pocket.
Max
A modest proposal.
I now propose a new government program. We have worried enough about the tragedy of the commons. How to monetize the external costs of CO2 emissions to…well..everybody. But this is only one side of the coin. (I am now channeling Bart R’s evil doppleganger.)
The real issue is the Windfall of the Commons.
A tax should be imposed on every gallon of gas, every lump of coal and every watt of electricity sold. This should be a revenue neutral tax, the proceeds of which are to be paid to the companies that extract, process, deliver and sell fossil fuels.
This will reimburse them for all the free riders in society. The people whose lives have been extended by years because of readily available, cheap heating and cooling. Everyone who has benefited by the enormous increases in productivity made possible by the copious use of cheap fossil fuels. All who have had their incomes increased by a functioning transportation economy. The total wealth of the west has been increased by the use of fossil fuels to an extent that far exceeds their purchase price, and this is theft plain and simple.
Third world people’s should also be taxed for their so far free beneficial use of western prosperity made possible by big oil, big coal, and my personal favorite, big gas. Without it, how would they receive so much food aid, and how would their dictators fill their bank accounts with transfer payments from progressive western governments?
We have to stop this communistic abuse of the Windfall of the Commons. We have to privatize the fossil fuel cycle – today!
Sort of like King Ethelred unable to defend his country agreeing to pay Danegeld to the Vikings. The productive agree to increase ‘revenues’ to the Left in exchange for the Left not destroying the American economy. Logical.
Gary M
Hey, I like your cockamamie “commons” proposal much better than the even more insane one of Bart R.
Drill, baby, drill!
Max
GaryM | June 10, 2013 at 6:56 pm |
More than a day late. More than a dollar short. Wrong on facts. Wrong on premises. Wrong on economic argument.
You’re simply describing the state of things as they’ve been for decades, under the ‘cheap energy’ argument. You could be in Congress.
GaryM should take his argument to Japan or any number of countries that ran out of their allotment of fossil fuel as of yesteryear.
The tax could be used to bankroll the Japanese attempt to extract methane clathrates out of the Pacific Ocean. This will be a much better investment than Solyndra, right?
The Japanese will be very thankful to Gary-san.
@WHUT
We in the US can afford to wait this one out. Japan has plenty of clever scientists and engineers. When they figure it out we copy the technology. Fair’s fair. God knows they copied enough of our technology to owe us this one. We’ve got the lead in synthetic biology which I believe will make all the others obsolete before 2050 anyhow. In other words, we don’t need no stinking methane ice. We got methane rocks coming out the wazoo, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.
GaryM,
Want to quantify the size of that benefit? Try this:
cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/humanity-unbound-how-fossil-fuels-saved-humanity-nature-nature-humanity
Sorry, here is the link:
http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/humanity-unbound-how-fossil-fuels-saved-humanity-nature-nature-humanity
Sort of goes along with the Rare Earth Hypothesis, a theory about the emergence of all life that largely is taken for granted by intelligent life here on Earth, may be an exceedingly more unique occurrence in all the galaxy than ruminations by Carl Sagan about ‘billions and billions’ would connote.
Thx fer link, Peter, will be useful fer second edition, hopefully )
of Serf Under_ground Journal on Food and Famine.
A serf.
You fossil fuel suck-ups have no appreciation for what’s really important to civilization. It’s not oil, it’s not coal, it’s not natural gas.
“What is it then?,” you may ask. Well, its a lot of things. I won’t name all of them, but I will say eight of the following ten things are more important than fossil fuels. Can you identify those eight?
1. Sex
2. Social media
3. Water
4. Wind
5. Dirt
6. Temperature
6. Iron
7. Seeds
8. Spelling
9. Condoms
10. Wood
… and here’s the Exec Summary. This should be at the head of all material in Australia’s “black-armband” history curriculum.
For most of its existence, mankind’s well-being was dictated by disease, the elements and other natural factors, and the occasional conflict. Virtually everything it needed—food, fuel, clothing, medicine, transport, mechanical power—was the direct or indirect product of living nature.
Good harvests reduced hunger, improved health, and increased life expectancy and population—until the next inevitable epidemic, crop failure, natural disaster, or conflict. These Malthusian checks ensured little or no sustained growth in population or well-being.
Then mankind began to develop technologies to augment or displace living nature’s uncertain bounty. Gradually food supplies and nutrition improved and population, living standards, and human well-being advanced haltingly. The Industrial Revolution accelerated these trends. Mankind broke its Malthusian bonds. Growth became the norm. Population exploded, along with living standards and well-being.
Technologies dependent on cheap fossil fuels enabled these improving trends. Nothing can be made, transported, or used without energy, and fossil fuels provide 80 percent of mankind’s energy and 60 percent of its food and clothing. Thus, absent fossil fuels, global cropland would have to increase by 150 percent to meet current food demand, but conversion of habitat to cropland is already the greatest threat to biodiversity. By lowering humanity’s reliance on living nature, fossil fuels not only saved humanity from nature’s whims, but nature from humanity’s demands.
Key to these developments was that these technologies accelerated the generation of ideas that spawned even better technologies through, among other things, greater accumulation of human capital (via greater populations, time-expanding illumination, and time-saving machinery) and faster exchange of ideas and knowledge (via greater and faster trade and communications).
Max_OK
Naw, Okie, you got that list wrong.
The message was “how fossil fuels saved humanity from nature”, and there is no doubt that they played a major role in freeing humanity from its total dependence on nature (as was the case in “pre-industrial” times).
But to get back to your list:
Obviously CO2/plants and oxygen/animals (both for food) came before humanity could have had a start. (Need to add them to your list).
Temperature was important (the Goldilocks “just right” kind, i.e. between around 15 and 30 degrees C for us humans)
Sex? No doubt.
Fire. Yep (need to add it to your list).
The wheel. (Add to your list).
Wood. Yep (needed for fire)
Dirt and seeds for the Agricultural Revolution came next.
Iron followed. (Helped folks develop weapons to kill each other and wipe out civilizations that did not have it – including all the American Indian tribes and nations.)
Then came the fossil fuels, without which there would have been no industrial Revolution or quality of life and life expectancy we all enjoy today..
Wind, condoms, social media and spelling haven’t made the “essentials” list yet. But they’re “nice to have”, of course.
Max_CH
Then there was water
sex, air, water
1. Sex
2. Social media
3. Water
4. Wind
5. Dirt
6. Temperature
6. Iron
7. Seeds
8. Spelling
9. Condoms
10. Wood
Max_OK
I overlooked “water” (right up there with CO2 and O2).
Max_CH
Max_CH, I’m surprised you think fossil fuels are more important than wind and spelling. I don’t.
Without wind, we wouldn’t have weather. Civilizations have existed without fossil fuels. What civilization has existed without weather?
Wind is beginning to replace fossil fuels as a source of power. While wind power will never totally replace fossil fuels, the more it does the better.
Spelling is essential to communication, and I believe communication is more important than fossil fuels. I also believe math is more important.
I agree with you on fossil fuels being more important than condoms. I also agree with you on fossil fuels being more important than social media, but I may be biased. I don’t like social media.
Max_OK
Yep. That’s right.
Fossil fuels have been a major factor in human development: the Industrial Revolution and the increase in quality of life and life expectancy that followed it (for a major part of the world) would have been impossible without fossil fuels. To deny the importance of fossil fuels in the development of humanity would be silly, so I’m sure that’s not what you are doing.
Wind? Yeah the natural movement of air currents is a part of weather, as is evaporation and condensation of water, precipitation, the movement of water currents, etc.. So maybe you should strike “wind” and put in “weather”. But, unlike fossil fuels, which were specifically beneficial for humanity, the weather has been important for all plants and animals long before humans existed (as I’m sure you will agree).
Max_CH
Max_OK
If wind power were economically competitive with fossil fuel based power, it would be replacing it. But it is not, and so it can only supply a tiny part of the power demand.
Wind turbines only work at best 25% of the time, so backup plants (using natural gas) are required to cover the other 75% of the time.
Combined cycle gas-fired plants can achieve thermal efficiencies of up to 60% when they are in continuous service (8000 hours per year).
When these plants are used as intermittent stand-by plants to cover periods when the wind turbines don’t work, their overall thermal efficiency drops by around 20% (to 48%), which means that they require 20% more natural gas per MWh generated than when they are in continuous service.
So figure it out for yourself.
A 100 MW gas-fired plant operating continuously (8000 hours/year) generates
100 * 8000 = 800,000 MWh
of electrical power. At 60% thermal efficiency it consumes 7000 cubic feet (or 200 cubic meters) of natural gas per MWh generated, so this equals
200 * 800,000 = 160 million cubic meters of natural gas.
A 100 MW plant operating as a standby plant for 75% of the time would require 20% more gas per MWh generated. So the natural gas used during standby operation is
200 * .75 * 1.2 * 800,000 = 144 million cubic meters of natural gas.
So the net annual savings from replacing 100MW natural gas power with wind turbines is 16 million cubic meters or only one-tenth of the amount used for generating the power from natural gas in the first place – and this at a significant premium capital investment.
So the only way this works is when taxpayer money is pumped in to subsidize the wind farms.
If you like the looks of the (mostly idle) turbines out there across the landscape so much that you even want to help pay for them, fine for you. Go right ahead. If it makes you feel all warm and tingly, great.
But I do not believe that wind turbines will ever be a major factor in the overall scheme of things, because of their inherent limitations.
Max_CH
Max_CH, wind intermittency places a limitation on wind power, but you exaggerate that problem, and you forget modern wind-power technology is in it’s infancy. IMO, you are stuck in a “can’t do” frame of mind when it comes to alternative energy development. Please try to be more positive.
In the years ahead we are going to see more and more wind farms around the world. For projects scheduled for the immediate future, see the tabulation in the linked source.
http://www.windpowermonthly.com/news
Max_OK,
As usual you are talking absolute nonsense. You haven’t a clue what you are talking about, yet try to pretend you do.
Since you prattle on in ignorance about things likes wind power, without admitting you know nothing about the subject, it is fair to assume you know nothing about the other subjects you prattle on about and try to imply you are knowledgeable about.
And you are a hypocrite as well – ref. your comment here (and many others): http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/07/soil-carbon-permanent-pasture-as-an-approach-to-co2-sequestration/#comment-330262
Peter “Nukey” Lang says
“Since you prattle on in ignorance about things likes wind power, without admitting you know nothing about the subject…”
_____
Peter, I know you are a anemophobic windbag.
I also know it’s past my bedtime.
Goodnight
Max_OK,
How old are you? I am wondering because many of your comments are like those of a child, and most of the remainder are just plain silly.
Max_OK,
You are a classic example of the Loony Left. You are scared spitless of catastrophic climate change. And scared spitless of nuclear power. It seems you hate nuclear power so much you’d you’d prefer to have higher GHG emissions than have nuclear power.
You have not suggested any realistic alternative to nuclear power for substantially cutting global GHG emissions (your big fear) from burning fossil fuels. Yet you prattle on against it. How irrational is that? You are an example of the sort off loony that has been involved in the anti-nuke protest movement blocking progress for the past 50 years.
Your fears are irrational as has been pointed out to you over and over again. Yet you seem incapable of getting past your irrational fears.
I find it surprising that you continue to make what I see as the most stupid comments.
Manacker continually, and patiently, points out to you – and for the benefit of other readers – how irrational are your comments. Yet you never seem to learn. You just keep repeating the same nonsense. What does that say about your intellectual capacity and your capacity to handle complexity?
Max,
I see you are channeling your 15 yr old personna with this one.
BTW – do you kmow the definition for dirt?
It is soil in a place you don’t want it. That’s not very important at all. Had you listed soil, rather than dirt, you may have given people at least some reason to think you knew what you were talking about. At least until they read some of the other things on your list.
Max,
The company I work for has the 2nd largest wind generation capacity in the country. Want to guess on availability? 29% That means 29% of the time our wind turbines are delivering electricity to the grid. That doesn’t mean we are always doing so at full rated capacity.
We have developed wind generation for one reason only. State mandates for “renewables” which do not count hydro power as renewable. We also have the highest rates in the region. Granted, only a portion of that is due to us having to have wind in our energy mix. But it certainly doesn’t help reduce our costs.
Are you aware that even ardent supporters of wind energy estimate the maximum percentage of generation wind can hope to achieve is 20% of US demand. And that’s for today’s demand. It doesn’t take into account future growth. One has to hope for great success in conservation and efficiency measures.
So Max, where is the remaining 80% going to come from?
Good luck developing alternatives to inexorably depleting sources of fossil fuels to ting56 and his company.
Everyone in the world is in the same boat on this one, some in more dire and pending predicaments than others.
Peter Lang said on June 11, 2013 at 5:49 am
“Max_OK,
You are a classic example of the Loony Left. You are scared spitless of catastrophic climate change. And scared spitless of nuclear power.”
______
Peter, you are a classic example of what I hope to never be, an old fuddy-duddy windbag.
I ain’t scared of global warming. The catastrophy is too far in the future to scare me.
I ain’t scared of nuclear power plants, but I wouldn’t want one built close to me and cause the value of my property to go down.
Re comments by timg56 on June 11, 2013 at 11:41 am and 12:14 pm
timg56, when I was a “dirt farmer” I would have laughed if you had called me a “soil farmer.”
timg56, like Max_CH and Peter Lang, you seem too stuck in the past to recognize wind-power can be revolutionized by technological developments in energy storage. Seeing the enormous potential of wind power, GE and other innovators are developing greater energy storage capability. Below are a few excerpts from an article on GE newest work.
“After premiering its 2.5-megawatt, 120-meter rotor Brilliant wind turbine in February, GE is now announcing the commercial installation of the first three models that will integrate energy storage capability.”
“GE has also announced that three Brilliant turbines will be installed by Invenergy at a Texas wind project by the end of 2013. Each will integrate 50 kilowatt-hours of battery storage, allowing the individual turbines to add a set of three possible functions.”
“The Invenergy turbines’ storage will be used for the first of the apps, labeled “predictable power” by GE. That is short-term storage to “sure” the delivery of committed output, explained GE Wind Product Line General Manager Keith Longtin. Increased certainty that a wind project will meet contractual obligations makes it more competitive with generation sources that face fewer intermittency challenges.”
“Stored electricity can also be sold to grid operators like PJM, ERCOT and the California ISO to regulate frequency variations that can disrupt service. Selling into frequency regulation markets adds a revenue stream for a wind developer, Longtin said.”
http://theenergycollective.com/hermantrabish/221471/ge-energy-storage-wind-turbine
Maxok
On the local news this evening was a piece about replacement wind farm in Cornwall with 100 metre high towers built despite local protests , juxtaposed with a piece that to augment wind and solar power installations in the same area when they don’t work, diesel generators will be installed
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-22845487
The protestors see this as proof that grown up power stations are needed in the first place instead of despoiling beautiful countryside with 100 metre high turbines and solar farms that spread over 50 acres as they are so inefficient in our latitude.
Any comments?
Tonyb
Okie is right about storage. I had the good fortune of recently taking a course on HEVs and applied some of my expertise on characterizing the electrochemistry of batteries.
The analysis is the top post of my blog
http://theoilconundrum.blogspot.com
Science makes progress by building on the work of others. Creative engineering is the application of science in new ways.
If we have enough alternative energy technologies and can make incremental progress across the board, we will eventually get somewhere. Sounds trite but it is true.
tony, if there are protestors, they are ill informed. I don’t know why it would be necessary to run diesel engines when they are on standby, and when needed these engines could be run on natural gas which burns cleaner than oil. Of course, better energy storage technology could eventually reduce or eliminate the need for additional back-up.
Max_OK
I’m all for “thinking positive” (for example, I’m not all bent out of shape because of a few hundred extra ppmv of CO2 and possibly a few tenths of degrees of resulting added warmth, like you appear to be).
But I am also realistic.
The wind only blows about 25% of the time in most geographical locations where people live.
And this is an inherent weakness of wind power generation – it requires backup for the other 75% of the time.
And with current technology, this backup requires 90% of the fossil fuel of generating all the power from fossil fuel in the first place, so the fossil fuel (and CO2) savings is only 10%. And that at a considerable capital investment premium.
Them’s the facts, Okie.
So until you come up with a way to inexpensively and reliably store the energy produced for when it’s needed rather than when the wind decides to blow, wind remains a loser (as policy makers in the UK and northern Europe are beginning to realize).
Just that simple.
Max
Webby
You’re dream scheming.
To date there is no practical solution for inexpensively and reliably storing large amounts of electrical energy between periods of peak production (when the wind decides to blow) and peak consumption (when it is needed). This is the inherent weakness of wind power, and the principal reason that it will never represent a major portion of the total power supply until this inherent weakness can be overcome.
To simply deny this (as Okie is doing) is silly.
Sure, there are partial solutions like pumping water back into hydroelectric power water reservoirs when there is supply but no demand (done in Switzerland, for example), but these are “one on”, spot solutions.
The key point (that anyone who has ever been in or around the electrical power business knows) is that the peak power demand level must always be guaranteed (or you get blackouts and outages); as a result off-peak power that comes when it “wants to” (rather than when the customers demand it) has a much lower inherent value than peak load power. And that’s what you’re getting with wind power.
Max
Max_OK
Before you cite an article, read it fer Chrissakes.
And
Figure it out for yourself, Okie.
2.5 MW turbine with 50 kWh storage.
50 / 2500 = 0.02 hours of storage = 1.2 minutes of storage.
Ouch!
Max_CH
timg56 @ June 11, 2013 at 12:14 pm
Thank you for that interesting info.
I’d be very interested in your comments on the first chart here: http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/voices/michael-shellenberger-and-ted-nordhaus/no-solar-way-around-it/
The chart plots ‘relative cost of impact’ versus ‘% annual generation from indicated source’. The caption begins ‘ Costs of adding intermittent generation are likely to scale super-linearly with penetration, creating a deployment barrier. Some examples (various bases) in the figure: “Wind A” is the marginal cost per MWh of wind in ERCOT relative to the same index at 0% wind penetration. … ’
My take away message:
Max_OK,
This comment demonstrates your irrational fear of nuclear power. Your comment is purely emotive, not based on any rational or objective analysis. If you did objective research you’d find that real estate values near nuclear power plants are not devalued by having such a plant nearby. There is plenty of research showing this over many decades.
There have been many authoritative surveys showing that people who live near nuclear power plants are much more aware, better informed and positive about nuclear power plants in their area than those who do not live near them and have had little exposure to them, other than the usual Greenpeace type scaremongering that appears regularly in the MSM. Why don’t you research the subject a bit, instead of repeating the usual anti-nuke doomsday nonsense?
There have been many studies of residential real estate values and for the level of support for nuclear power in countries that have nuclear versus those that don’t, in cities that have nuclear versus don’t and in suburbs near nuclear power plants versus suburbs further away from nuclear power plants. I’ve seen such studies for France, UK, Sweden, Canada and USA (from memory and from some time ago). The support for nuclear power in the suburbs surrounding the Australian Lucas Height’s reactor (in Sydney) is much higher than anywhere else in Sydney or Australia.
An example I recall from Canada in the 1980’s showed that British Columbia (with plenty of nice, clean, hydro-electricity and enormous expertise in hydro was strongly opposed to nuclear power. However, Ontario with lots of successful CANDU nuclear power is strongly supportive.
Not only that, but the survey showed that real estate prices near the nuclear power plants were higher than near fossil fuel power stations and near industrial areas.
This picture shows the eight unit Pickering nuclear power plant nestled in the suburbs of Toronto, Canada’s largest city. Looks like a nice area doesn’t it? http://www.world-nuclear.org/Gallery/?galleryId=676%20&ImageId=10584
More views here: http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://nuclearstreet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-00-34/2330.Pickering.jpg&imgrefurl=http://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nuclear_power_news/archive/2013/01/07/opg-reports-jan.-1-fire-in-pickering-nuclear-plant-turbine-hall-010702.aspx&h=600&w=540&sz=122&tbnid=Hiy__dknpvrfDM:&tbnh=93&tbnw=84&zoom=1&usg=__x9MQGQaZ2Quk_KHu7EqknsAAvYM=&docid=zVIY4rrXBihoTM&sa=X&ei=hdi3UZe4EamBiQfpjoCgBQ&ved=0CDMQ9QEwAQ&dur=5412
Max_OK, why don’t you challenge your beliefs? Why don’t you do some objective, research and try to get past your irrational phobia about nuclear power? If you didn’t you might than be able to make a more valuable contribution to the energy policy debate than you are doing.
I spent part of my misspent youth growing up near a nuke plant on the southern tip of Lake Michigan in Michigan City, Indiana. It was great fishing near the water discharge pipes, where the water was warmer, particularly in fall and early winter.
And the fish only glowed a little bit.
manacker said on June 11, 2013 at 5:10 pm
“I’m all for “thinking positive” (for example, I’m not all bent out of shape because of a few hundred extra ppmv of CO2 and possibly a few tenths of degrees of resulting added warmth, like you appear to be).
But I am also realistic.”
________
Max_CH, I see you differently than you see yourself. I see little “can do” and a lot of “can’t do” in your attitude toward problem solving and progressing, and I’m afraid you confuse negative thinking with being realistic. I see the same in many who post here, and I suspect it’s related to the aging process.
manacker said on June 11, 2013 at 5:10 pm
“The wind only blows about 25% of the time in most geographical locations where people live.
And this is an inherent weakness of wind power generation – it requires backup for the other 75% of the time.
And with current technology, this backup requires 90% of the fossil fuel of generating all the power from fossil fuel in the first place, so the fossil fuel (and CO2) savings is only 10%. And that at a considerable capital investment premium.
Them’s the facts, Okie.”
___________
And the sources of those “facts” are?
Max_CH, if the source is your noggin, please excuse me for asking. HA HA !
manacker said on June 11, 2013 at 5:39 pm
“Max_OK
Before you cite an article, read it fer Chrissakes.”
_____
Max_CH, before you comment, carefully read both my post and the article I cited, and don’t jump to conclusions about what either says.
The purpose of the storage feature in the GE turbines in the cited article is to smooth out the effects of short-term intermittence in wind speed, not replace backup power, but it is a step in that direction. Perhaps that wasn’t clear in the quote from GE Wind Product Line General Manager Keith Longtin, but he did say “short-term storage.“
Peter Lang said on June 11, 2013 at 10:19 pm
“Max_OK,
This picture shows the eight unit Pickering nuclear power plant nestled in the suburbs of Toronto, Canada’s largest city. Looks like a nice area doesn’t it.”
http://www.world-nuclear.org/Gallery/galleryId=676%20&ImageId=10584
__________
Peter, that Pickering nuke power plant is butt-ugly, and I would never by property near anything like that.
I don’t want to live near a nuke, coal, or natural gas power plant. I don’t want to live downstream from a large damn. I don’t want to live near an airport or a next to a freeway or railroad track. I don’t want to live next to a hospital or fire station.
BTW, is the Pickering plant the one that had the accident back in 2011, and dumped a lot of contaminated water into the Lake?
Max_OK,
Poor Max_OK. You’re just raving.
I would be happy to live near a nuke plant. It brings lots of high tech jobs, professionals and intelligent people to live in my neighbour hood. But I guess you prefer to be a dirt farmer (i.e. a propagating dirt about everything that doesn’t fit with your doomsday beliefs).
What does “a lot” mean, please? Please quantify and put in context. It seems these Canadian’s aren’t to concerned – swimming in the warm waters beside the power station!!! http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://nuclearstreet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-00-34/2330.Pickering.jpg&imgrefurl=http://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nuclear_power_news/archive/2013/01/07/opg-reports-jan.-1-fire-in-pickering-nuclear-plant-turbine-hall-010702.aspx&h=600&w=540&sz=122&tbnid=Hiy__dknpvrfDM:&tbnh=93&tbnw=84&zoom=1&usg=__x9MQGQaZ2Quk_KHu7EqknsAAvYM=&docid=zVIY4rrXBihoTM&sa=X&ei=hdi3UZe4EamBiQfpjoCgBQ&ved=0CDMQ9QEwAQ&dur=5412
Or do you think they are too dumb to know, while you – a dirt farmer – knows so much better than the people living in the nice suburbs nearby (probably intelligent, educated, mostly professionals judging by the look of the suburbs) enjoying the benefits of the warm water.
Max_OK, as I said before, you are clearly a member of the loony Left and you reveal all their worst characteristics – characteristics that believe in every doomsday scenario that becomes popular and protest and do all you can to block real progress.
Don’t miss the photos of the people swimming in the warm water beside the power station.
Peter, I’m afraid you are looking at a telephoto image and I suspect a staged one at that. That beach in the photo is in the Lake Ontario Frenchman Bay area. I have been there several times in July and August, and I don’t recall ever seeing many people swimming although I do remember lots of sun bathers and walkers. On a clear night you can see the lights of Buffalo, N.Y. across the lake.
Anyway, if you want to swim there before the Pickering nuclear plant is shut down, you better not wait too long. The plant is seeking to renew its license this year, and the renewal may be denied (see link). Even if the license is renewed, the plan is to shut the plant down by 2020. I’ll be glad when that eye-sore is gone.
http://www.thestar.com/business/2013/05/27/pickering_nuclear_seeks_to_extend_its_life.html
Max_OK,
Staged, eh? I’ll check. I recall discussion of people swimming in the cooling water exiting from Pickering back in the 1980’s so I suspect that this picture is not doctored, but as I say, I’ll check.
Max_OK,
All power stations reach the end of their lives eventually. Pickering started operating in 1971, so the first units are already more than 4o years old, their original design life. At various times they had the world’s best life time capacity factor. As with all technologies there are some faults and problems but the CANDU’s have been fantastic electricity plants. Last time I looked the CANDU’s at Wolsung, Korea, held the record for the best life time capacity factor for their age (first unit on line about 1982).
By the way, regarding your comment about eyesore, I don’t agree. You clearly are not considering what size coal, gas or renewable energy plants would have to be to produce the same amount of electricity over 40 years, let alone what they would look like. If you want to eyesore, I’d be interested in your defence of this mess of abandoned renewable energy plants: http://webecoist.momtastic.com/2009/05/04/10-abandoned-renewable-energy-plants/
Peter,
Interesting article.
Unlike some folks, I am not anti wind or solar generation. I do not object to government investments, tax breaks and subsidies for new energy technologies. If for no other reason than it being hypocritical. Commercial nuclear generation in the US was heavily supported by the government.
What I do object to are people who can’t do sinple arithmatic. Whether you are discussing CO2, coal, or the national generation system, airthmatic leads you to certain unavoidable conclusions. Ignoring that airthmatic because you don’t like the conclusions is equivilant to sticking your head under a pillow and yelling la, la, la, la. And perhaps the clearest conclusion of all is that if you are serious about weaning off coal, nuclear power has to be a significant percentage of your portfolio.
timg56 @June 12, 2013 at 1:11 pm
I agree with all you said in that comment.
I agree with your comments about the subsidies for nuclear power in the past and for renewable energy in the past and now. The big difference of course is that the subsidies for nuclear gave an enormous return on investment bu for renewables have not and IMO probably never will. Renewables are enormously subsidised in production (per MWh of energy supplied); that is not the case for nuclear.
My main concern is, like you, the costs and the money we are wasting on renewables. And the religious like belief in renewables and irrational hatred of nuclear. This has meant that too much money has been spent on renewables and the cost of nuclear has been ramped up by regulatory ratcheting and b y protests making it a high risk for investors, so that, now, the safest way to generate electricity is not competitive. That makes no sense. It is ridiculous and irresponsible. That is what I am trying to address. I am trying to rebalance.
Max_OK,
Regarding your comment that this photo: http://images.ctv.ca/archives/CTVNews/img2/20070706/450_cp_nuclear_070706.jpg is probably “staged”, I’ve been advised that people do swim in the slightly warmed cooling water at the outlet from the Pickering nuclear plant. As one person responded: “Why not?”
He also gave me this link https://www.theswimguide.org/beach/43. Look at the 10th photo (of 15) https://static.panoramio.com.storage.googleapis.com/photos/large/16632371.jpg . It is called “Beach and Pickering Nuclear”. There is no barricade to stop or even discourage people swimming in the warmed water exiting the plant.
I believe the picture I first posted is genuine and not a fake. If it was fake it would have been revealed as a fake long ago and removed from the WNA picture gallery.
So, I’ve done my bit, but you haven’t responded to the questions I put to you:
1. You say Pickering is an eyesore. I asked would you prefer a fossil fuel or renewable energy plant that produced the same energy over 40 years? How big and ugly would such plants be? If coal, what would it look like after 40 years? How big would the ash pile be now (at 400,000 tonnes per GW-year)? Or would you suggest the ash be dumped in the lake, out of sight? How much heavy metals and other toxic chemicals would have leaked into the lake over 40 years? How many ships of coal would be delivered each year? I expect you’ll avoid answering these questions. If you do it demonstrates, again, you are not motivated by an interested in the environment. Your motivation, like most other CAGW doomsayers, is about progressing your ideological agenda, right?
2. You said: “ BTW, is the Pickering plant the one that had the accident back in 2011, and dumped a lot of contaminated water into the Lake?
I asked you: “ What does “a lot” mean, please? Please quantify and put in context. You haven’t answered that question yet.
3. You called Pickering an eyesore but did not respond to my comment asking whether you’d prefer the eyesores of renewable energy plants (large enough to give the same energy as Pickering over 40 years) I gave links to these photos of the eyesores of the abandoned renewable energy plants: http://webecoist.momtastic.com/2009/05/04/10-abandoned-renewable-energy-plants/
4. You haven’t acknowledged that having a nuclear plant nearby does not reduce real estate values. In fact, it probably increases them because more highly qualified and educated professionals and technical people are attracted to the area.
Max_OK,
@ June 12, 2013 at 3:08 am
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/10/climate-change-officers/#comment-331275
I said I’d find out. Now I have a response which came from a friend of a friend who works in Nuclear Waste Management Organisation (NWMO) http://www.nwmo.ca/home?language=en_CA. The response says:
So, Max_OK, over to you now to answer the questions I asked you.
For others reading this, the photo under discussion is this: http://images.ctv.ca/archives/CTVNews/img2/20070706/450_cp_nuclear_070706.jpg
And to get the perspective see: http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://nuclearstreet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-00-34/2330.Pickering.jpg&imgrefurl=http://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nuclear_power_news/archive/2013/01/07/opg-reports-jan.-1-fire-in-pickering-nuclear-plant-turbine-hall-010702.aspx&h=600&w=540&sz=122&tbnid=Hiy__dknpvrfDM:&tbnh=93&tbnw=84&zoom=1&usg=__x9MQGQaZ2Quk_KHu7EqknsAAvYM=&docid=zVIY4rrXBihoTM&sa=X&ei=hdi3UZe4EamBiQfpjoCgBQ&ved=0CDMQ9QEwAQ&dur
The denizens have dealt with this well, little to add except that in the first skill requirement – possess an understanding of anthropogenic climate change – the “anthropogenic” is surely redundant, if you want a CC expert then they’d need to be conversant with all of its sources and manifestations.
Re: “Ensure that the organization takes into account the economics and future prices of energy, water, air, and other natural resources in its strategies, plans, and decision-making,” anyone who could accurately determine those future prices could make a fortune, they wouldn’t need climate change knowledge to be employed.
This is very much a job-creation bandwagon, yet more unACCOuntable money-wasting.
And, yes, I did get out of the bed on the wrong side, while I was dreaming at 5.30 this morning, a cat plunged eight claws into my arm, not good when you are on blood-thinners! Or in need of sleep.
Although no doubt it’s less effective, I prefer an alarm clock. How do you teach a cat to do that at precisely 5:30 ?
Disadvantage: No snooze button on a cat.
Heh. I had a cat once that, despite having the pick of any of the many comfy spots in the house to sleep on, insisted on sleeping on my bed (which I hated, being a bed-imperialist who uses the entire space). I tried numerous non-progressive deterrent measures – you don’t want to know – and finally thought I had the damn thing trained.
One morning, I awoke a couple of minutes before the alarm was due to go off. It was a pre-digital contraption that made a slight click and whirring noise before it let loose the hammers of hell. Lying there in a semi conscious state, I heard the click-whir, followed by THUD! Pad, pad pad, pad. By the time I got out to the kitchen, the cat was sitting in its usual spot by the fridge door, innocently washing its paws.
There is a lot of truth in the saying that dogs have owners, while cats have staff.
Nice letter, Faustino. Although, the short-lived McMahon government was close in terms of political ineptitude, I reckon.
Johanna,
Yes, McMahon was politically inept, but they didn’t have a long list of attrociously bad policies like the past 5 years of Labor:
– government debt run up from $0 to $300 billion in 5 1/2 years and wil be $350 billion next year
– National Broadband Network (i.e. nationalised our communications systems under control of a Minister) – way behind schedule and would be many times the original budget if allowed to continue
– Attempted to remove freedom of the press (but failed, luckily)
– removed a demonstratably successful policy for controlling our borders
– Grocery watch
– petrol watch
– green loans
– green car subsidies
– solar subsidies
– renewable energy targets
– renewable energy certificates
– ‘Pink Bats’ resididential insulation fiasco
– Building Education Revolution – an enormous waste of tax payers money wasted on the pretext of stimulating the economy
– carbon tax
– mining tax
– pillored the miners, business (all business from small and large) retirees, (the ‘fabulously wealthy’ according to the Treasurer), the miners,
– the list goes on
Billy McMahon was politically inept but he didn’t do the damage this mob has done.
+100
Peter, FYA (for your amusement), here’s a letter I sent to the Oz today on the ALP’s leadership trauma:
Bill Shorten’s “one shot at redemption” (Peter van Onselen, 11/6) does not lie in resurrecting Kevin Rudd. It lies in allowing the Australian people the catharsis of expressing their contempt for the two worst governments in Australia’s history, and the incompetents that headed them. It lies in accepting the demise of the union-dominated ALP in its present form, and allowing its rebuilding as a party which, in the Hawke tradition, serves the people of Australia rather than damaging their interests to favour a selfish and misguided few.
Faustino
Nail meet hammer.
BC
Faustino,
I agree 100%. I’ve been saying the 5 1/2 years of Labor has the been the worst government on over 60 years. I don’t know enough ab out before that.
I notices you said “lies” twice in your letter to the Oz. Was that accidental? :)
GaryM, thanks for the great video.
Follow the money…
not the logic.
This shows that the real world out there moves on, while the ‘skeptics’ and their opinions are now only seen in blogs, the occasional newspaper article, and sometimes on congressional panels. The US military has been planning for Arctic changes for years already, and even oil companies are thinking of the ramifications of sea-ice changes on accessing new resources showing that they haven’t bought into their own hype.
Jim D
Yeah.
The “real world” does move on.
But this group of nincompoops is out of step with the “real world”.
Max
Warming stops, the CAGW bandwagon keeps rolling.
Sales.
Yes.
But the wheels are beginning to wobble and it looks like it is headed for the ditch, despite all the momentum of a multibillion dollar big business.
The CCOs will not change anything (except they might get a slice of the taxpayer-funded pie, as long as it lasts).
(My prognosis.)
Max
Manacker,
Empirical evidence to support your prognosis: http://climatechange.carboncapturereport.org/cgi-bin/topic?
Look at the Activity Timeline. Pretty clear trend, eh?
Even the Eurocommies are bailing. Soon, even France will be waiving the white flag. Again.
Some “skeptics” need to get out more. See what the corporations are planning regarding climate change, local governments, national governments. It is happening now. They are not waiting, and this is what makes mankind strong, a collective integration of knowledge. It gives us hope that this thing will be solved.
Yeah, and their preparations for Y2K were just awesome too. Not nearly as expensive as CAGW, but a few hundred billions here and a few hundred billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money. Even if it is somebody else’s.
Y2K was also solved by forward thinking. Case in point.
Forward thinking made Y2K a non-event.
Ahh now we have it. When the predicted disaster fails to materialize, the CAGWers will just declare victory and move on to the next chicken little excuse for expanding government.
Well, seems like most of those who call themselves AGW skeptics also are anti-goverment, so I doubt they agree with what government is doing about AGW, and they probably think what corporations are doing about AGW is just to please government.
IMO, most of these so-called skeptics are old fools. As the saying goes “there’s no fool like an old fool.”
Being a non-event made y2k a non-event. There was never any ‘there’ there. The vast majority of the equipment that was audited (I was there) didn’t even have real time clocks!
Too many morons don’t seem to get the concept that most embedded processors aren’t Pentiums running Windows. And the same geniuses are now howling about how Chinese hackers are going to attack embedded PLCs that don’t run operating systems and don’t have disks.
Will the dilettante geniuses please go take a vacation?
Jim D
I agree with you that the “this thing [the threat from CAGW] will be solved”
It’s already starting with the current “pause” in global warming.
Then there is the general realization that our climate of today is no worse for humanity than the slightly cooler climate of 150 years ago – in fact, it is very likely somewhat better for humanity.
It “will be solved” by Nature (as it was most likely “caused by Nature”, to a great extent).
It will NOT be solved by “local governments, national governments” (how could it be – has a “government” ever changed our planet’s global climate?)
These “governments” cannot even agree that they want to “solve” the problem.
But, apparently like you, I’m an optimist. “This thing will be solved”.
Max
So what sort of “forward thinking” are we seeing with CAGW?
Oh yes, taxes! Can’t get any more forward thinking than that.
How about protesting a pipeline. Well, I believe reliving the 60’s doesn’t really qualify as forward.
I know, lawsuits! There is some really innovative thinking.
As the CCO item shows, mankind has been quietly planning ahead. The people who matter, care. Many “skeptics” haven’t noticed yet, perhaps because they are retired and live on blogs, but that is what is happening among those youngsters doing the work these days.
I bet you believe ISO standards lead to improved quality.
Jim,
What is your point?
The point is that the “skeptics” have failed to stop anyone planning for climate change in the corporations, or reducing their carbon footprint. This is happening, and the “skeptic” voice is somewhere in the distant background, barely heard. They get the wrong impression from this blog, because their voice has been neither loud nor persuasive in the business world and is more often ignored in planning. At this point, it is like trying to stop a tide for them. What do they do now to avoid sliding further into obscurity?
Jim,
I’ll wager a good percentage of “corporations reducing their carbon footprint” are doing so as PR or window dressing.
Yesterday some talking jackass from Sierra Club was bad mouthing the company I work for because we are not divesting our 1/3 share in Coalstrip, a multi-unit coal plant in Montana – which, God forbid, is suppossedly the largest single point source of those deadly GHG’s west of the Mississippi.
Forget that we are the 2nd largest owner of wind generation capacity in the country (this is due to state mandates). For that the largest percentage in our generation portfolio is hydro. Forget about us giving away over a million CFL and LED lights each year, or other aspects of our energy conservation & efficiency programs (all of which is in large part a function of utility commissions allowing utility companies to maintain rates and recoup the costs of such programs – ie the rate payer pays for them, not the corporation).
We are demons and bad corporate citizens in the eyes of Sierra Club due to us continuing to make use of a generation asset that is both the lowest cost to our customers and the most reliable. If you think they have a reasonable position, then keep drinking that koolaid. Because to date you haven’t anything to hang your hat on regarding hard evidence that CO2 is a deadly pollutant.
“If the oceans warm for any reason they will release CO2 into the atmosphere because water holds less CO2 at higher temperatures.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/10/dr-murray-salby-on-model-world-vs-real-world/#more-87921
The Left figures all they have to do is turn the ‘hockey stick’ upside down and proclaim they were right all along…
The Clausius-Clapeyron relation and Henry’s Law generates a moderate positive feedback on the global-warming signal, for each of the CO2, H2O, and CH4 partial pressures.
The deniers open mouth and insert foot.
‘positive feedback’ …
–i.e., runaway global warming. Nuts.
WebHubTelescope (@WHUT) | June 10, 2013 at 10:46 pm said: ” Henry’s Law generates a moderate positive feedback on the global-warming signal, for each of the CO2, H2O, and CH4 partial pressures.The deniers open mouth and insert foot”
it’s ”positive starve-back”, not feedback; there isn’t any GLOBAL warming; to your disappointment….
Crackpot, you can tell lies even with your mouth closed
Waggie makes a common error. Did any of the other “skeptics” spot it?
Is that clouds don’t really reflect solar energy back into space, which is why water vapor is really a positive feedback as the GCMs correctly assume and why we’re all doomed?
Wagathon has no real business commenting on a science blog except as a modern day court jester.
Real scientists have more to offer than ad hom attacks.
The real question has always been pretty simple. The question is not whether our understanding of the world based on the scientific method has established the fact that changes in CO2 follows changes in temperature. The question is whether global warming alarmists know the difference between fact and fiction.
Waggie, no, the 11:34pm comment was a teachable moment, but it only works if one of the other “skeptics” notices what was wrong with it. I think the moment has now passed, sadly.
Waiting for a “skeptic” response to Waggie, I feel like the Ferris Bueller teacher. Classic scene.
“The resulting CO2 signal exhibits no systematic correspondence with the geologic record of climate variations at tectonic time scales.” (Daniel H. Rothman, Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels for the last 500 million years)
Webby
Clausius Clapeyron doesn’t “generate” anything, Webby, even if it might “explain” some things.
But it takes a giant leap of faith to believe that the climate will move in lockstep with Clausius-Clapeyron.
And, as the observations over the tropics by Minschwaner & Dessler 2004 showed, it doesn’t.
The increase in water vapor content with warming was less that one-fourth the amount which would have been predicted by Clausius -Clapeyron (at constant relative humidity).
(Remove foot from mouth…)
Max
Web
The even bigger canard is the IPCC position (based on model predictions) that the net cloud feedback was strongly positive.
In fact, IPCC predicted that this would increase the 2xCO2 ECS from 1.9C (without cloud feedback) to 3.2C (with feedback).
Of course, we know subsequently from Spencer & Braswell 2007 that in actual fact the cloud feedback over the tropics with warming is strongly negative instead of positive.
A model-based study by Wyant et al. using superparameterization to better simulate the behavior of clouds, also concluded that the net overall feedback from clouds at all latitudes is strongly negative.
So, correcting the 2xCO2 ECS estimate of IPCC AR4 for this, we end up with a value of 1.5C or less.
And this happens to also agree with the conclusion of several independent studies on 2xCO2 ECS that have been published since AR4, which are at least partially based on actual physical observations instead of simply model simulations.
Interesting times, Webby.
Max.
Manacker said:
Manacker always throws out the laws of physics whenever it is convenient for him. Perhaps he got horrible training as a chemical engineer where they must have taught him that raising water temperature to 100 degrees C would NOT turn it all into steam. Apparently in Manacker’s water world, he thinks that only 1/4 of the amount of water would eventually turn to steam at standard atmosphere.
And what is with that parenthetical statement? Is Manacker a weasel?
I could also claim all sorts of things won;t change if I parenthetically state that the conditions were constrained to where they won’t change. You understand how uneducated and phony you sound Manacker?
You do understand that ad home attacks are not an art form, right?
WEB,
If you are correct, why is it we are not seeing your name as the preminent one in climate science. Because if you understand how clouds work in the climatic system, you’d be the first to do so.
From what I’ve been able to tell, our knowledge on clouds has moved forward only a small degree from what was understood when I was in grad school 16 years ago. But if you know the answers, don’t be modest.
Without water vapor as a positive feedback academia’s GCMs don’t work –that is, they don’t give the results that climatists want –that is, the GCMs do not help facilitate the global warming hoax and scare tactics that Leftists indulge for political purposes. Climatists refuse to admit the role of clouds in the same way they refuse to admit that Mann’s hockey stick nothing more than a mathematical construct with no relationship to reality that has been promoted by the UN-IPCC in concert with the Eurocommies as a tool to help loot the productive.
Hybritically arrogant of Nature, the nemesis.
=============
Hyundaisandnites are never ending.
Webby
Predictably, you attack the persona rather than addressing the message (when you have no arguments to offer).
Observations have shown that:
– WV does NOT increase in lockstep with Clausius-Clapeyron to maintain constant relative humidity as ASS-U-MEd by IPCC, but at less than one-fourth this amount (Minschwaner & Dessler 2004)
– Net overall cloud feedback with warming is strongly negative, rather strongly positive as ASS-U-MEd by IPCC (Spencer & Braswell 2007)
The latter study has been confirmed by model studies using superparameterization to better simulate the behavior of clouds (Wyant et al. 2005).
Address the message, rather than simply posting your toxic drivel.
Max
Proof of what has come to be known as the Yadda-Yadda-Yadda Hypothesis (YYY), global warming alarmists conclusively demonstrate that that toxic drivel and cognitive dissonance are very highly related.
I am saving the real invective for this clinically insane Murry Salby dude. You guys from the peanut gallery are insignificant, as it is these professors such as QP Lu and Murry Salby that are acting as the real drama queens.
Catch the video of Salby giving a presentation in Hamburg. His performance is flawless but the entire content has as many holes as a brick of Swiss cheese. Cripes, Salby wrote an impressive textbook on the physics of atmospheres and climate, but has now gone off the deep end to join Claes Johnson. Fascinating to watch someone losing grip with reality as they create an artifice so tenuous that some neighbor kids could tear it down.
But, Al Gore breaks open a fortune cookie with a hockey stick graph on a slip of paper and the Leftists swoon.
Webby
I’d agree that in the overall scheme of things you are insignificant when compared to the likes of Dr. Salby.
His theories on the carbon cycle run contrary to the conventional ones – could well be that the “truth” lies somewhere in the middle.
I would personally be surprised if the human CO2 emissions have not contributed at all to the rise in atmospheric concentrations.
However, there are some unanswered questions such as:
– why does the year-to-year increase in atmospheric CO2 bear no direct relation to the amount emitted by humans (amount “remaining” in atmosphere swings from under 15% to 90% on an annual basis)
– why is only around half of the CO2 emitted by humans “remaining” in the atmosphere over the longer term?
– where is the “missing CO2” going?
– why has this percentage decreased by around 1% per decade since Mauna Loa measurements started in 1958?
– what is absorbing this increasing CO2?
– will this percentage continue to decrease in future decades?
– if so, will it continue to do so at the rate of 1% per decade, as observed over the past five decades?
Max
Max,
The missing CO2 is shacked up in a flea bag hotel with Trenberth’s missing heat. They’re going to star in Pachauri’s next novel.
Gary M
Wow!
We’ve got the plot for another cli-fi thriller!
The notorious gangster, C.O. Two, and his moll (and getaway driver) Miss Sing Heet are hiding out in a fleabag near Chihuahua, Mexico and counting their ill-gained loot after a major heist on a private bank owned by a greedy and unscrupulous El Paso banker, named Fawcell Fyoole.
EPPD detective Kevvie Trainbarf knows deep in his heart that that C.O. Two is the perp and that he and Miss Sing Heat are in hiding “in the pipeline” somewhere.
But the question is where?
Determined to find the two at all cost, the detective starts his grueling footwork.
Over several episodes with many twists and turns (like the TV smash series, “The Killing”) his relentless pursuit continues, until he finally corners the pair in their shabby hideout.
A shootout ensues and C.O. Two is killed.
But here the plot takes an unexpected twist.
Kevvie is instantaneously smitten by Sing – it is truly love at first sight.
After all this time “hiding in the pipeline”, Miss Sing Heat is also ready for a change and she does find Kevvie kind of cute.
So they ride off into the sunset together with the loot.
The End
.
Get this — Manacker is puzzling over why there is noise on top of a differential signal.
Sequestration of CO2 is a diffusional process and the fact that it can’t diffuse fast enough to keep up with growing yearly emissions means that the excess CO2 is a continually integrating value (or more accurately, a continuous convolution). To see the minor changes in the yearly fraction that is sequestered means that we have to take differences in the Mauna Loa signal. What do all engineers understand when it comes to differencing a signal? Yes Max, one can’t help but get noise on top of the signal. The differencing acts as a high pass filter and it accentuates changes in levels.
We also have the problem of trying to compensate the CO2 with the yearly fluctuations in temperature. I have done this with the high resolution SST measurements from the equatorial waters. This generates a 3 PPM/degreeC gain due to Henry’s law as the SST temperature changes seasonally.
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/223/maunaloacorrected.gif
Wow, isn’t that neat how the seasonal CO2 fluctuations are completely compensated by the SST correction? That’s called outgassing, son.
Unfortunately, the equatorial SST data only goes back to 1985. So we make do with global temperature anomaly values and do the correction on CO2 with that set:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oHjHbVUKDi4/UY_hVNlos-I/AAAAAAAADjw/r-qdzQAUnbY/s640/co2_fraction.gif
Wow! Look at the right hand side where I add the correction for outgassing of CO2 due to temperature changes. Notice how the CO2 fraction is locked in between 55 and 60% airborne fraction, and the fluctuations are reduced in size when the CO2 levels are compensated for by slight amounts consistent with the slight changes in the IPWP equatorial SST with the seasons. The rest is noise due to the inability to get accurate differential measurements.
Finally, consider the misguided Salby. In the video, he claims that the integral of temperature matches the CO2 levels, as he thinks that ALL of the excess CO2 is due to elevated temperature through some latent release of CO2 with increasing temperatures.
Well, that integration is easy enough to check. Take the HadCrut4 data since 1850 and integrate that temperature along with a simple model of temperature increase; the latter applies a log(CO2) T sensitivity over a monotonic increase in CO2. See how well this works:
http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/104/integralco2snipimage.jpg
Well, I’ll be darned, Salby was wrong. The integration of temperature does not match the absolute change in CO2 but it does match a model of AGW assuming that ln(CO2) drives temperature. Integration is a low pass filter and it really starts to converge near the end. Salby can’t model that dip in the integral curve, but Hansen’s model does!
Climate scientists such as Hansen, Trenberth, Pierrehumbert, Archer, etc know what they are talking about. I can audit all day long and really can’t find much to complain about the mainstream science. On the other hand, Salby completely messed things up. That’s too bad for Murry Salby.
Hope that helps to answer your questions Manacker.
…not to mention the problem that CO2 can fluctuate daily by as much as 600 ppm which is not unusual considering the site chosen (Mauna Loa) by the UN-IPCC-approved scientist who took the measurements and participated in the global warming alarmism from very early-on (and now his son who has carried on the business of the climate familia) is the site of an active volcano.
Max,
Sounds like an ack-shun packed movie and that Miss
Sing Heat should be a box-office-draw. I understand
that she’s a fatal attrac-shun fer the AGW cli-fi coterie.
Beth-the-serf.
…and, as it turns out, C.O. Two actually is ‘The One’ who arises and uses his mystical powers not previously observed in nature to evoke everlasting fear in the hearts of all humanity.
Max,
The plot thickens when the audience learns that C.O. Two may have been killed by a jealous Clora Flor O’Carbon who came to the hotel room and found C.O. in flagrante climatico with Miss Sing Heet.
I have dibs on being the casting director. I’m thinking Cameron Diaz for Miss Sing and Uma Thurman as Clora.
Little known fact is that the actor was originally chosen to play the role C.O. Two got gas and had to dropped out with the vapors.
Girma | June 10, 2013 at 9:17 pm said: ”“If the oceans warm for any reason they will release CO2 into the atmosphere because water holds less CO2 at higher temperatures.”
Girma, freshwater holds most of CO2, Saltwater neutralizes it. put some salt in your beer and see that it gets instantly flat.
CO2 is getting cemented on the bottom in a form of algae and dead coral; stop worrying, CO2 is needed for everything living. go to bed and stop worrying with your empty tallk
…and, don’t forget shellfish in the form of calcium carbonate.
Just another result of needless proliferation of societies organized by self-important non-entities.
+1
This country is going to the cats. MSN just reported that George Bush was responsible the damage suffered in the storm of 1936.
Let’s hope that US cats have learned about retractable claws, a feature which my 17-year-old tabby has yet to discover.
Is it a ::cheshire cat :: Faustino?
Maybe they meant the storm of 1935. Need to blame someone for that brute. The Labor Day Hurricane is not the most intense Atlantic hurricane, but it remains the most intense at landfall in the US (892 mbar!). As far as I know, Carla in 1961 still tops the charts for overall severity, but you would not want to be in Labor Day’s track. Terrifying to think of something that strong hitting a modern city with a particularly dopey mayor.
It was followed by one of the country’s coldest winters and then the legendary heatwave of 1936. Let’s hope our climate adjusters and normalisers don’t dial us back to the 1930s. I’d request the cooler, damper seventies again for my part of Oz – but I’m justly scared of another Typhoon Tip coming further south. Tip! Now there’s an extreme/unnatural/disruptive/whatever-we’re-supposed-to-call-it event!
Maybe I’ll just take what weather comes along. I’m sure it’ll be worse than we thought…it always is!
Yer hypher – ventilating there mosomoso. :^ )
mosomoso
Get in line there. No one is interested in all this highly inaccurate pre history stuff. In future stick to information post satellite in 1979. that’s all that matters, that’s when all the weird weather began.
History indeed. We’re watching you…
tonyb
If you want ventilation, Tip was a real ventilator:
http://www.hurricanescience.org/history/storms/1970s/tip/
On that page there’s a graphic of Tip compared to Tracy – which wiped out Darwin in 1973 – both superimposed on a US map. You have to look hard to see Tracy. Sandy, by comparison, was very big in area – Tip was super-intense and huge.
Just as well it happened in 1979 and not 1980. Otherwise it would actually have existed!
Comparative studies can be such an inconvenient truth
can’t they? Tsk.
Down the memory hole they go!
Judging by more recent events like Wilma, Katrina, Yasi our past is likely to become our future. We will eventually have storms which will be “worst ever”, just as surely as there will eventually be a worse song than Achy Breaky Heart. Let’s hope we’re not mucking about trying to dial better weather with carbon taxes when those storms come along. A repeat of 1899’s Mahina in Oz or of the Great Colonial Hurricane which ravaged New England in 1635 might be great for climate officers’ business – but I’d rather live in a world where we don’t act all surprised and wag the finger when things go wrong. Eventually, everything goes wrong, which is why God endowed most of us with horse sense as well as computers.
As it turns out, it was the catastrophically deadly and debilitating Los Angeles flood of 1938 that back then was known as a 50-year flood event and became known as a 100-year flood but currently we know that when it happens again it’s what global warming alarmists of academia have been predicting.
Ah, the LA flood of 1938. Came after the Great Ohio River Flood and preceded the Long Island Express of 1938. After 1893’s hurricane there was a long period when the new and expanding population of the Eastern Seaboard could forget about hurricanes. (Maybe the climate changed!) Then, in 1938, came a Cat 3 at landfall. I tell ya, when they weren’t having cold waves and dustbowls back then…
Climate normalisers! Do not dial us back to the 1930s, under any circumstances. While nothing was as bad in most of history as the Chinese flooding of 1931 (curiously preceded by an almighty drought) the 30s were also miserable in Oz, mainly through drought and heat. (The fact that it’s our only El Nino-free decade didn’t dawn on willful old Gaia, who just does not understand the proper use of climate “mechanisms” like ENSO.)
Jobsworths to a man and woman. No doubt the public are/will end up paying their ridiculous salaries directly when they work for the bloated public sector and indirectly when they work with the misguided private sector.
Maybe this new association should ally itself with the Worlds Governing Body for boxing as after all they are punching at shadows of AGW
When it comes to the effect of mitigating against the possible effects of natural disasters the professions are already in place.
The are called engineers?
tonyb
Everybody knows it’s tree ring data and modelling
that counts. Conn -centrate on yr tomato-stem-ring
-modelling-study and fuchur-pro – ject-shun, tony,
so much easier ter predict than that murky old past.
Beth
It’s amazing how close the predictions have been. Take the plight of polar bears for example: turns out they didn’t all drown — in fact, there’s never been more of’m. But, that’s a problem… for seals. Sort of like global warming. That didn’t happen either but not having it is a problem. An extended global cooling event is no hayride. But, climatists are so, so close and just a few more billions of dollars for more research and donuts… “There’s no limit to how much you’ll know, depending how far beyond zebra you go.” (Dr. Seuss)
Beth
it has been a promising start to my research in as much the tomatoes are actually rowing and as they are currently unaffected by slugs there may be stem rings to examine. still, its early days and the slugs have just made a move on the adjacent sun flower plants and are eyeing up the runner bean plants…
tonyb
Tony,
Wall ’em in with kitty litter spread abundently
Yer’ll beat those dang slugs yet. ‘N take care
of them tomatoes with their precious stems
espesh-ally. A grant is on its way by snail male.
Beth
Slugs? Tried the beer can traps? Slugs are lushes.
Judith Curry:
”As far as I can tell, Climate Change Officers are focused solely on anthropogenic climate change.”
Because one can not know any evidence of antropogenic global warming by empirical observations, any debate on an influence of anthropogenic warming can be regarded as useless.
As an advice I appreciate the comment of Mike Kenny June 10, 2013 at 2:51 pm:
”Try real science like Dr. Salby not socialogy”; http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/10/dr-murray-salby-on-model-world-vs-real-world .
As I have stated in comment http://judithcurry.com/2011/08/04/carbon-cycle-questions/#comment-198992 I Agree with Salby, according to which:
”The strong dependence on internal properties indicates that emission of CO2 from natural sources, which accounts for 96 per cent of its overall emission, plays a major role in observed changes of CO2. Independent of human emission, this contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide is only marginally predictable and not controllable.”
As far as I am aware he has not yet stated what kind of mechanism is needed to understand properly the recent CO2 increase in atmosphere. In the comment of mine above I have stated my own position on the mechanism; here some excerpts of that:
1) – – – any due finding in reality seems to be the only way to proceed to solve the problem of the mechanism.
2) – – – the CO2 content in the atmosphere is controlled together by both all CO2 emissions from sources to atmosphere and by all CO2 absorptions from atmosphere to sinks. After any change of CO2 emissions from sources or of CO2 absorptions to sinks makes the atmospheric CO2 content strive for a new level in order to reach a new dynamic balance between the CO2 emissions and the absorptions. As to the influence of human CO2 emissions on the atmospheric CO2 content it is determined by the proportion of the human CO2 emissions to the total CO2 emissions. Nowadays when the yearly total CO2 emissions are little over 200 GtC (CO2 as carbon) and the yearly human CO2 emissions are about 8 GtC, the influence of the human CO2 emissions on the CO2 content in atmosphere is approaching 4 % at the most.
3) – – – the global mean sea surface temperature mainly controls the CO2 content in the atmosphere; when the mean sea surface temperature is rising, the CO2 content in the atmosphere is increasing.
4) – – – the global mean sea surface temperature mainly controls the CO2 content in the atmosphere; when the mean sea surface temperature is rising, the CO2 content in the atmosphere is increasing.
5) When interpreting Tisdale’s claim on Global SST anomalies and on NINO3,4 SST anomalies during 1976-2009 you can find that during the same time periode there has been no essential rising or sinking trend on the tropical sea surface temperatures. Instead, the global mean sea surface temperature has had a continuous trend of warming. What is the meaning of this? It means that the global sea surface temperatures used by Endersbee in his calculations have been controlled by warming of the sea surface waters outside the tropical sea surface i.e. mainly the warming of the sea surface waters of higher latitudes where the sea surface CO2 sinks are. As a consequence, the partial pressure of CO2 has been rising in these as sinks acting surface waters, which has been making CO2 absorption from the atmosphere to the sea surface sinks become slower. Because of that, the CO2 content in the atmosphere has been increasing. It means that more CO2 from the total CO2 emissions to the atmosphere has remained in the atmosphere to increase its CO2 content, in order to reach a new dynamic balance between CO2 emissions and absorptions. As the warming of oceans is the dominating reason for the increased content of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and as nowadays the human yearly portion ( about 8 GtC CO2) of the all yearly CO2 emissions ( little over 200 GtC CO2) to the atmosphere is about 4 %, the human role on the recent yearly increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is also about 4 %. For instance when CO2 content in the atmosphere increases 2 ppm per year, the human portion of that is only about 0.08 ppm.
You’ve conveniently ignored the ice core records of CO2.
And the fact CO2 rise is accelerating.
Finding solutions to non-problems is the work of government.
Wagathon
Finding imaginary problems to find unnecessary solutions to by increasing its power at the expense of the individual is the work of government.
Max
lolwot
lolwot
You write:
CO2 rise (the annual average increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations as measured at Mauna Loa) has increased at a fairly constant exponential rate of a bit less than 0.5% per year over the past two to three decades. Prior to this the rate of increase was slower.
This has occurred over a period of very rapid exponential population growth of up to 1.7% per year; UN projects that this growth rate will slow down sharply, to around one-fourth this level over the remainder of this century..
If CO2 continues at the recent exponential rate despite this sharp decrease in population growth, we could see atmospheric levels of around 600 to 640 ppmv by year 2100.
So much for CO2.
Global temperature has also risen, in 30-year fits and spurts, since the modern record started in 1850. The temperature increase has been characterized as a “random walk”. There is no statistically robust correlation between CO2 and temperature.
Most recently we have seen a period of no warming despite CO2 emissions continuing unabated and atmospheric concentrations reaching new record levels. Whether or not we are witnessing the start of another 30-year cooling cycle is unclear today.
If we consider CO2 as the ONLY “climate control knob”, ignoring the warming and cooling cycles, we had 0.7C warming with CO2 rising from an estimated 290 ppmv in 1850 to a measured 394 ppmv today.
This means that at 640 ppmv CO2 by 2100, we should see added warming of:
0.7C * ln (640 / 394) / ln (394 / 290) = 1.1C
I’m not going to get very excited about that, lolwot.
But, hey, if you want to get your knickers all twisted about it, be my guest. It’s a free world.
Max
Chef Hydro,
Can’t you see that we are talking about the 40% increase in excess atmospheric CO2 since the 1800’s ?
Murry Salby, an otherwise well-regarded climate scientist at one of your esteemed schools, apparently doesn’t believe any of this CO2 is anthropogenic. Is he a prankster like you? Or is he delusional? Or is he being lead by the nose by one of his grad students or postdocs? That has been known to happen.
Why is Murry Salby going down this rabbit hole? Why is QP Lu from U of Waterloo going down the rabbit hole with his halocarbon theory?
Webby, no the subject is the ~20% increase since ~1960. Everything else is speculation.
I notice Dr Salby has a very misleading graph in the last 10 minutes of his presentation in which he implies scientists expected 0.8C/decade warming between 1980 and 2010.
I always thought Dr Salby was a denier. This just proves it.
Don’t expect Michael Mann to admit he’s full of it… he’s got tenure.
Iolwot
Salby seems to be faithfully representing the views of scientific projections as this graph shows
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/2009Q4/111/Lecture_Slides/Summary_W2_1_2009.pdf
Now you know he is accurate you will no doubt want to dismiss your notion that Salby is a denier and concentrate on his science instead
Tonyb
Iolwot
Apologies, noted you said 0.8 c per decade not over the 30 year period. I will have to find the time to view the Salby presentation
Tonyb
Salby’s talk is really misleading. He spends very much time on various correlations in historical data. Some of that’s probably applicable to the study of natural processes, but the implication that the results would in any way change the interpretation of the rise seen in the Keeling curve is totally without merit.
Building up the impression of a scientific argument with a large number of formulas and graphs, and misusing then this data to “prove” something that it cannot prove at all is really unforgivable for a senior scientist.
The graph doesn’t show anything of the sort – numbnut has confused the CO2 curve with temperature.
Salby’s arguments about temperature and carbon dioxide are blindingly obvious as was shown in the recent soil carbon post for soil respiration. We expect from biokinetics that respiration will increase with temperature – changes in ocean solubility kinetics – btw – are a minor component.
Iolwot
I may have nodded off as I did not find Salby very inspiring as a speaker but I could not see this graph you referred to that you found misleading.
Could you give me the title and the timing of it as I watched the last twelve minute segment twice and did not see it
Thanks.
Tonyb
Well I am willing to give people one more chance, but Salby blew it with that graph. I gave Mann one more chance, difference is he hasn’t blown it yet.
Not blowing it is at a minimum getting the statistics right. In the chalkboard squeak heard ’round the world McShane and Wyner debunked MBH98/99/08 (aka, the `hockey stick’ graph), showing there is absolutely no ‘signal’ in Mann’s proxy data.
Manns proxy data shows no evidence of orbital forcing either
Case of the missing graph, lolwot
I saw a RSS graph in Professor Salby’s presentation that
shows, unequivocally, that after 1997, global temperature
does not correspond ter increasing CO2. A simulated
relationship in models by modellers in cloud towers is
not reality.
B-t-s
What would be more likely? A professor of atmospheric physics makes a bone headed error simple enough for numbnut to pick up on? Or that numbnut misread the graph in his eagerness to find any error at all?
It is all bollocks because numbnut misread the graph.
Feynman, whom Salby clearly worships, would have asked two simple questions.
1. Why did the temperature start rising in the last two centuries?
2. Since anthropogenic CO2 emission is twice the net change, how does he neglect that reason for the change based on any scaling arguments?
A third one relates to his hypothesis that there are missing high-frequency fluctuations of 1000ppm in the ice core.
3. How can you infer a missing high-frequncy amplitude from the low frequency amplitude? This is like undiffusing something. The high-frequency information is lost and can’t be restored from what is left. Even if there were no high frequencies present, you would end up with the same low-frequency shape. It’s entropy.
I hope somebody in the audience asked even one of these, but we saw no questions, unfortunately.
Jim D
Your “Feynman would’ve asked” postulation is interesting:
Re-posted with corrected formatting
Jim D
Your “Feynman would’ve asked” postulation is interesting:
The first question begs another question by Feynman, of course:
why did the temperature fall during the 17thC before starting this rise in the late 18th C?
and once the cause of the drop in temperature can be identified, could this not also have been the cause of the subsequent rise in temperature?
As to human emissions having been a significant cause for the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, I agree with you that this is a pretty hard argument to contradict, whether or not the human contribution is only a very small part of the overall CO2 cycle.
However, the CO2 / temperature causal argument could be countered with Feynman’s arguments:
Correlation, even if statistically robust, does not provide evidence of causation
And this one’s not robust:
The observed correlation between CO2 concentration (gradually increasing exponentially) and temperature (multi-decadal cycles of warming and slight cooling) is not statistically robust, in fact the temperature trend has been more of a random walk.
But we can all “guess” what Feynman “would’ve” said or asked.
All we know for sure is what Feynman did say.
And that’s good enough for me, Jim.
Max
If people agree that the CO2 rise is more than accounted for by emissions, Salby’s whole thesis falls apart. When he showed emissions, he didn’t show it on the same graph or even in the same units as the CO2 rise rate in ppm/yr. Perhaps he never thought to compare them, but if you put them on the same graph in the same units, the CO2 rise rate, which he showed several times increased from 1 to 2 ppm/yr, while emissions increased from 2 to 4 ppm/yr. I wonder why he didn’t show that. The other thing he doesn’t talk about is the cause of the temperature rise. Was it spontaneous, and why now? When will it stop, or will feedback lead to a runaway warming? The two questions I raised are obvious ones that he avoided even considering.
Why don’t you tell us what the global emission level is Jim D, and what the difference is in the SH and what the rate of change is ie has it changed in the 21st century.
maksimovich, it is about 4 ppm/yr rising slowly due mostly to China and developing countries. Salby showed this in different units.
Nope your guessing,There is a nh/sh asymmetry with a significant lag in the SH which is increasing
But, Dimsumnavich observed there’s been 16 years of a cooling trend while CO2 supposedly continued to rise at a monotonic rate.
maksimovich, are you talking about temperature or CO2? Of course the temperature would be asymmetric due to the distribution of continents. You also see a significant lag of ocean relative to land. Is it related to the SH lag? I should think so.
The rate of change in Co2 in the SH is lagging the NH by half a decade at present,a rate of change that has increased,with an accompanying cooling trend
maksimovich, but if that is true doesn’t it support the anthropogenic source since 90% of the world population is in the northern hemisphere? I still don’t know what point you are making. Cooling, if you can find it, is also mostly in ocean areas, while land continues to warm, and the Arctic.
The great thing about deniers like Salby who have some serious scientific credibility is that they usually try to coverup the weakest parts of their argument. In Salby’s case it’s that whole topic about dT ~ [CO2] in which he tries to pin all of the excess CO2 on the effects of long-term cumulative temperature rise. So Salby is suggesting to everyone to “don’t look there” because he has it all figured out. Yea sure.
Instead what he has done is dog-whistled his intentions, and that becomes a cue to audit in some detail the piece that he shows most confidence in.
Salby suggested that integrating the temperature anomaly was the final proof that excess CO2 was caused by temperature. So I did this integration myself and the integral of temperature and the integral of scaled log(t) merge, just like AGW theory predicts:
http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/104/integralco2snipimage.jpg
This is Salby’s Field-Hockey Stick signifying an epic fail on his part. I think that Salby made a crucial mistake in highlighting this piece because it provides an opening for the consensus science to throw it back in his face.
The last part of the video where he pontificates on defying authority is pure Aussie larrikinism, the only thing missing was mention of pissant progressives and space cadets. Which is kind of odd because I don’t think that Salby is a native Australian.
His theory has just a couple of small loose ends. Once he figures out where all the warming came from, and where the manmade CO2 went, he’ll have a real theory.
‘In the real world temperature is no controlled exclusively by C02 – as it is in the model world.
In significant part, however, CO2 is controlled by temperature – as it is in the proxy records.’
This is literally and demonstrably true – as seen in a recent soils post.
There seems to be the usual all or nothing nonsense from the usual AGW space cadets. Can’t walk and chew gum seems to be the problem with webby and Jim – as usual.
“In Salby’s case it’s that whole topic about dT ~ [CO2]…”
Webby misses the point again. It’s T ~ d[CO2].
Edim, No wonder you are a little failure. Salby is trying to explain the entirety of a 40% increase in excess atmospheric CO2 since pre-industrial times on a sustained positive temperature anomaly.
This is what Clausius-Clayperon should do to the CO2 partial pressure:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=exp%28-A%2F%28kT%29%29%2Fexp%28-A%2F%28k*%28T%2Bd%29%29%29+where+A%3D3.348%2C+k%3D8.6e-5%2C+T%3D279%2C+d%3D-1.6
It is a modest increase for changes of temperature.
iolwot said
‘Well I am willing to give people one more chance, but Salby blew it with that graph. I gave Mann one more chance, difference is he hasn’t blown it yet..’
I asked you for the timing and the title of that chart as I couldn’t find it in the last 12 minutes of the Salby lecture. You said it was 10 minutes in. Can you please identify it so I can examine it? Thank you
tonyb
Salby discusses correlations in detrended data. His conclusions on issues that can be studied with detrended data seem to make sense and may be largely correct.
The significant property of the Keeling curve is the trend, not the wiggles. Salby’s analysis cannot say anything – absolutely anything – about the trend, That he builds the trend from variable natural contributions is a cheap trick as he could build as easily build any positive and negative trend just by moving the zero level that’s a free parameter in his approach.
The trend is a well understood causal consequence of human influence, mostly of burning fossil fuels and producing cement, but also of changes in land use. The exact share of the land use changes is not known very well, but well enough to say that it much less than that of fossil fuels.
Pekka dogmatically attributes. Every time the dog rings the bell, Pekka salivates.
===========
Gad, I read ‘Dimsumnavich’ and I salivate. Such behaviour, and such a word!
===========
Chef Hydro said:
The problem is that there is more of this nonsense coming out of Australia, this time courtesy of Murry Salby. No wonder John Cook and the Skeptical Science crew is based down there. They have their hands full just dealing with misinformation coming out of the locals.
Salby is in the category with Claes Johnson, a well-cited scientist who has gone off the deep-end with wild theorizing. And there is no qualification to any of this, just emphatic declaration that what he says is correct. Jeez, when I go out on a limb, I have enough sense to point out questionable or curious aspects to the ideas. None of that from Salby I am afraid. He is truly a bizarre scientist, kind of like the Chef if he was actually practicing science.
‘Salby is trying to explain the entirety of a 40% increase in excess atmospheric CO2 since pre-industrial times on a sustained positive temperature anomaly.’
Not true at all. But to a substantial degree natural CO2 flux increases with
temperature. The increase seems to be about 20% of anthropogenic emissions from soils respiration alone.
‘This is what Clausius-Clayperon should do to the CO2 partial pressure:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=exp%28-A%2F%28kT%29%29%2Fexp%28-A%2F%28k*%28T%2Bd%29%29%29+where+A%3D3.348%2C+k%3D8.6e-5%2C+T%3D279%2C+d%3D-1.6
It is a modest increase for changes of temperature.’
This nonsense takes the smallest and simplest part of the problem and insists it explains all.
Chef Hydro, Son of Salby, what are you talking about? Salby is the one that is trying to explain it all as a temperature-driven increase.
On the other hand, the consensus view is that the rise in CO2 is mainly anthropogenic and a small amount caused by positive feedback as the temperature rises.
Eventually it gets larger as the paleo records show, but not yet at this stage. That is the modest feedback effect of reinforcing outgassing. That’s the effect that is used to explain the 33C temperature rise. If it wasn’t for that effect, this would be snowball Earth, as Lacis has described.
What are the CCOs going to do about Earth’s interior? Wiki tells us that, “Plate tectonics is dependent on chemical composition and a long-lasting source of heat in the form of radioactive decay occurring deep in the planet’s interior.” Some part of global warming and cooling trends may be the result from changes in Geothermal activity. “Miskkolczi’s argument,” according to Dr. Tim Ball, “means any variations in global temperature are almost all due to changes in solar and geothermal energy.” Ball observed that the failure of Climatists’ to include the “energy from within the earth, especially into the oceans is essentially… incorrectly ignored.” (see, Carbon is not causing global warming or climate change All life on planet depends on CO)
Just imagine — “Two billion years ago,” according to wiki, “one simple cell became incorporated in another one, and the cell within multiplied and evolved into mitochondria, supplying the vast increase in energy available which made the evolution of complex life possible. The fact that this occurred only once in four billion years suggests that it may be a freak occurrence which very rarely occurs, and life on most planets does not evolve beyond simple cells” — and voilà, a government bureaucrat CCO evolves to rule over us less complex CO2-producing humans. It’s a Leftist miracle.
The Summer Blockbuster Horror Movie Hit of the Year … “Eye of the Skydragon!!!”
(sinister music)
What’s going on in the Black Motel??!!
Visible photons check in, but they don’t check out!!
Will the Dragon Slayer solve the mystery of the missing Photons in time to SAVE THE WORLD???!!!
Brought to you by GHG Productions.
Alright all you Climate Kinetic Officer candidates, here’s a pop quiz:
Explain: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:101/mean:103/last:90/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:191/mean:193/plot/best/mean:191/mean:193/to:1867/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:29/mean:31/last:90/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:29/mean:31/from:1988/to:1994/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2006/to:2008 to your CEO, CFO, and shareholders in layman’s terms, noting the significance of each portion of the curve.
You have 500 words.
Spelling, punctuation, and technical correctness count.
Nice box of cherries?
Let me guess… the part of the reconstruction at the upper right was done by based by polling a group of idiots?
Ossifer, I was just trying to change my climate, and I dropped the climate pan plug, and that’s why the climate ran all over the ground and into the sewer. Honest, ossifer.
Harold, look I hesitate ter correct other peoples’ spellin’,
us serfs bein’ border-line illiterate and prone ter makin’
the odd spellin’ mistake ourselves. But, ahem, Harold,
yer spellin’ ‘ossifer’ is incorrect, it’s ‘ossifier.’ Comes from
the verb ter ossify.
B-t-s.
B-t-s
I’ll try the correct form the next time I’m pulled over. I’ll let you know what happens…maybe.
M-W-G
Er…do yer think that’s wise?
b-t-s.
How could it possibly go wrong? It will clearly demonstrate my bona fides to the ossifier.
Human control ossifiers, setting solid in a previously discarded, defective, cast.
=======
M-W-G
The long history of bond-age can show yer
when ossi-fiers hold you in their power’
no good thinkin’ they’re likely to offer
bon-homie-it’s-not-in-their-nay-chur.
B-t-s
They is faux bonhommes!!! Thanke! Thanke!
How long before someone blames this severe weather on ACO2?
http://www.ibtimes.com/solar-tornadoes-nasa-solar-dynamic-observatory-captures-footage-tornadoes-sun-video-1300615
Sarcasm aside, cool video.
Well I say global warming is a likely culprit in tornadoes. Like that whopper that cut a swathe through London – in 1091. They say it demolished the London Bridge of the time, and took a chunk out of the newly built Tower of London. Since many churches were damaged, the climate officers of the day were no doubt busy quantifying the sins which might have brought down such tribulation. Start with the lack of tithes, I always say!
mosomoso
Sorry-pre 1979 anecdotal material. I have no choice but to fine you. You had been warned. .
tonyb
Did someone jest mention Tower of London?
Can’t resist/ XTC ‘Towers of London.’ Somethin’
lost in the sound here but never-the-less …
I’ve already paid the fine, many times over. When I contemplate Sydney desal and NSW solar feed-in, I yearn for the good old days of sending every tenth bushel to the monastery.
Did you know Oz had a tornado that may have been an F5? Struck to the south of where I live, in the Bulahdelah State Forest, which has some of the most splendid timbers. A million trees destroyed after freak weather conditions similar to Oklahoma etc. It happened on New Years Day in 1970, ten years before the dawn of history, so it occurred without actually existing.
If you don’t know how that can be, ask your local climate officer. He’s a real smartie, guaranteed.
mosomoso
As you must know all climate officers must be born after 1979. it is a legal requirement to have only lived in the age of reason and to be untainted by the mythical past.
tonyb
COP18 Fallout Russia blocks UN Climate talks
Just about 6 months ago the latest UN Climate Circus meeting, COP18 in Doha finished, just like it’s predecessors from COP15 onwards, COP18 was an unmitigated failure.
From the start COP18 was doomed, the plummeting attendance levels seen at COP17 continued with COP18, the conference being less well attended then even COP17 was.
What really made COP18 a spectacular failure was the conduct of the COP18 President Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah during the closing stages of the conference, where desperate to find a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol that expired on December 31st 2012, Al-Attiyah effectively forced through new non binding Kyoto texts.
The Kyoto amendment was tabled by the grasping hands of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) who will stop at nothing to get their Climate Justice money, the money they were promised for playing along with the AGW scam and perpetuating the lie that their islands are under threat from sea levels that are not rising, naturally the amendment was backed by those strongholds of Green foolishness Europe and Australia.
When COP18 finished the Russians were far from happy about COP18 and Oleg Shamanov being ignored:
Read more of this post (just in) here:
http://toryaardvark.com/2013/06/12/cop18-fallout-russia-blocks-un-climate-talks/#more-23068
This is so important, I’ll post the whole article for the befit of those who can’t click or would prefer to not know. For those who can click and want to the article is here, together with picture, formatting and links: http://toryaardvark.com/2013/06/12/cop18-fallout-russia-blocks-un-climate-talks/
COP18 Fallout Russia Blocks UN Climate Talks
Jun 12 by Tory Aardvark
Just about 6 months ago the latest UN Climate Circus meeting, COP18 in Doha finished, just like it’s predecessors from COP15 onwards, COP18 was an unmitigated failure.
From the start COP18 was doomed, the plummeting attendance levels seen at COP17 continued with COP18, the conference being less well attended then even COP17 was.
What really made COP18 a spectacular failure was the conduct of the COP18 President Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah during the closing stages of the conference, where desperate to find a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol that expired on December 31st 2012, Al-Attiyah effectively forced through new non binding Kyoto texts.
The Kyoto amendment was tabled by the grasping hands of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) who will stop at nothing to get their Climate Justice money, the money they were promised for playing along with the AGW scam and perpetuating the lie that their islands are under threat from sea levels that are not rising, naturally the amendment was backed by those strongholds of Green foolishness Europe and Australia.
When COP18 finished the Russians were far from happy about COP18 and Oleg Shamanov being ignored:
The whole UN Climate boondoggle is doomed anyway, COP19 in December is being hosted by Poland, one of the few European countries where the Green cancer has not established a stranglehold over national government, a country less receptive to the Green Dream than even Qatar is.
Another UNFCCC event that has achieved absolutely nothing, another failure to join COP15, COP16, COP17, Rio+20, COP18, and shortly to be joined by COP19 which will be the daddy of all failures and will almost certainly see the end of the UNFCCC scam as we know it today.
It will be interesting to see how the UN Climate Scam mutates, 17 years of static global temperatures have not helped to underline the meme that we are all going to fry, the attempt to rehash Global Warming as Sustainable Development crashed and burned at Rio+20, every day brings new stories of the continuing decline of the Green Dream, all the successive COP failures alone dictate that a change of approach is needed.
If 2013 is the year of Green decline, then 2014 will be the year of Stalinist style Green purges, because with any left wing, socialist or liberal political agenda there always has to be accountability when it fails, the most high profile European casualty will likely be unelected EU Climate Commissar Connie Hedegaard, who could well be “spending more time with her family” or returning to hack journalism from whence she came.
Once upon a time Hedegaard could have expected a lucrative job from a profitable renewable energy company, but as Green subsidies are cut globally, there is no such beast anymore as a profitable Green energy company, a newly emerging trade war between the EU and China over solar panels will exacerbate the Green decline still further.
http://toryaardvark.com/2013/06/12/cop18-fallout-russia-blocks-un-climate-talks/
Oops, where are the control officers for the climate narrative?
=============
Meh, ‘for the narrative climate?’ is far better.
==============
Great article, Peter.
Gone are the heady days of unconditional press support.
Gone are the Oscars and Nobel Peace Prizes.
Ever worse, gone are the days of rising temperatures.
The AGW gravy train is grinding to a halt.
The wheels on the bandwagon are wobbling and it looks like it is headed for the ditch.
And it all sounded like such a good idea at the beginning.
Sic transit gloria.
Max
Any chance a daring CCO might step forward and admit to taking the necessary secret oath before being allowed to assume office that, all humanity is guilty until proven innocent?
Not just guilty but penitent and prostrate.
==========
…or rolled over and stepped on like a cockroach.
Awakened I at crow of cock,
Iconic stick in shards of crock
Hope of justice ever lost
All six legs, still and crossed.
=============
You are all talking as if there is no future for this professionalism. When I was working (for a top 5 company on the Fortune 500), my first assignment was in this exact position. I think the title was ” Environmental Engineer and Energy Conservation Engineer”. My formal background is a graduate BS Engineering (no speciality) and an MBA Finance. I utilized all of my skill in this position. I have since retired and am now working for my Wife.
As far as I know, such efforts are undertaken in all of the large companies. It will probably never go away.
As with peer review in climate science, the ‘professionalism’ of indoctrinated ‘climate control officers’ has been perverted in the ’cause’ of the narrative of human blame, shame, and guilt.
An error, if not a sin.
=================================
My post was done to shed a little light onto the subject, where large industrial organizations use the subject matter to help make them operate better. For instance, stopping the wasting of energy (in any form) can save the company operating expense.
As a trained Engineer, I know the Scientific Method very well. I agree with you that that excellent tool for getting at the “truth” (part of it is the peer review) has been perverted by some for their own gain. However, I think this is an extremely interesting subject and find that there is great opportunity for discovery. For instance, I have been studying the link between CO2 and Temp….I have found no empirical scientific study that concluded that increased CO2 caused and increase of temperature more than about 1 degree C for a doubling of CO2 concentration.
Jeffrey Eric Grant | June 13, 2013 at 6:08 pm said: ” I have been studying the link between CO2 and Temp….I have found no empirical scientific study that concluded that increased CO2 caused and increase of temperature more than about 1 degree C for a doubling of CO2 concentration”
it’s loaded comment…
Jeff, if you do the study yourself, instead of relaying on professional conmen; you would discover that: CO2 has NOTHING to do with the ”overall” global temp. Here are the proofs::: . http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/climate/
Stefan, I read your blog. I don’t want to respond to it in its entirety, however. All I want to do is attack the idea put forth by the AGW crowd that the main (or only) cause of global warming is the increased CO2. I do believe them that the atmospheric CO2 is increasing (+2 PPM/year). And, I’ll even accept their assertion that the “greenhouse effect” will increase temperatures at the earth’s surface 1 to 2 degrees C for a doubling of the CO2 concentration.
However, they say the temp will be greater than that because of all sorts of other, natural, feedbacks. This is, of course, all the result of their models — none of it is empirical! I only trust empirical evidence that has been thoroughly thought through.
So, if you agree with them that CO2 will increase surface temps by 2 degrees C in fifty years, and will increase another 2 degrees in the next 100 years — we have plenty of time to hash this out. In the meantime, ask them to keep analysing the “problem” and then prove their assertion using solid empirical science.
Jeffrey Eric Grant | June 14, 2013 at 1:51 pm |
Your attack seems to miss its targets a number of ways.
For instance, you say “idea” when you mean vast body of scientific evidence and analyses totalling at last count more than ten thousand peer-reviewed papers.
You say “AGW crowd” when you refer to all of science everywhere that produced observations and evidence and analyses you disagree with, including those whose analyses of the normalized trends began without bias or even with an opposite hypothesis.
You say “CO2”, when you apparently mean CO2E — all GHGs with CO2-like effect emitted by those few free riders for lucrative ends.
You say “assertion” when you clearly mean to refer to well-established, confident scientific proof based on observation, evidence and inference that has withstood all challenge. Well isn’t it a grand gesture on your part to “accept” that.
But the kicker is where you claim feedbacks are ‘all’ the result of models, and ‘none’ of empirical observation. Feedback is well-studied. The kinetics of climate is examined minutely in paleo and instrumental records. Albedo feedbacks of ice and snow loss is factual, observed, well-understood and well-documented. Albedo feedbacks of changing botanical cover, too, is well-documented and well-understood. Cloud feedback was dubious for a long, long time, and ridiculously overconfident fingoism such as the so-called “Cloud Iris” hypothesis were the result of that sad, yet now passing, era. Claiming only models echo-chamberistically is simply false.
Indeed, seeking to undermine models, when they are so thoroughly consilient with the mass of empirical evidence uncovered since the time of their original projections, that’s so intellectually bankrupt as to inspire awe.
If you only trusted empirical evidence that had been thoroughly thought through, and had been paying attention to those ten thousand peer reviewed papers and the twelve-hundred or so lesser works that at some point called their results into question, you would not have concluded there is plenty of time to hash anything. Because that’s not a plausible conclusion of well-thought out examination of the empirical evidence.
I am “sick and tired” of the AGW crowd (Bart, are you one of them?) using the arguement that there is substantial scientific evidence for the notion that increased atmospheric CO2 is causing the increased atmospheric temperatures, close to earth’s surface.
Really? Hey Bart — Really? Please send me a link to just one empirical scientific study that concludes that CO2(E) is the cause of changes of temperature. Vostock points the other way….hummm. And, when I ask for empirical evidence — conclusions based on models does not count.
Peer review isn’t too much help either, when the reviewers already know what is expected of them. If they are not careful, they may not be able to publish themselves.
You even state: “Indeed, seeking to undermine models, when they are so thoroughly consilient with the mass of empirical evidence uncovered since the time of their original projections, that’s so intellectually bankrupt as to inspire awe.” If the models are so good, please give me a link to any temperature forecast from any model in response to CO2 concentration. Tel me how they are doing. I don’t want to know after I’m dead – I want to know “short term” forecasting – like, say for the next thirty years, or so.
Hey, Bart, I’m just a citizen trying to understand the basics. I have asked some of the best – Mike Mann or Gavin Schmidt are just two of the scientists I have asked (are you another?). I have yet to receive as little as a link to an empirical scientific study supporting the theory of the causal link between CO2(E) and temperature. Can you provide such a link? Mann & Schmidt told me to go pound salt! Do my own study! As if I have the money to do such a thing. And, I don’t have governments fawning over me, funding my every move. It is easy to wave off the “concerned citizen” when you don’t have to pay attention to them. Pay attention to the hand that feeds you.
Until I find the causal link between CO2 and temperature, I’ll still be looking and, from time to time, talking about it. Even if all you can do is insult me — I can take it.
Bart
You seem to like to appeal to authority rather than dealing with reality. Referencing the vast number of peer reviewed papers is quite funny. If a person wrote a peer reviewed paper where the conclusions of the paper were based upon the outputs of climate models that have subsequently been demonstrated to be insufficiently accurate to support the conclusions, what is the value of the paper, or the peer review process.
Rob +1
Even if the models were “correct”, they are not empirical.The models are great at trying to determine where to look for supporting evidence, but they are not evidence by themselves. Interestingly, the models have been tweaked to replicate past atmospheric conditions, but they have not been good at predicting the future events. And, predicting what may happen in 50 or 100 years is not helpful to me.
Bart R
You have apparently fallen into several logic traps in your rebuttal to the comment made by Jeffrey Eric Grant.
Let me go through them for you, one by one.
1. You critique Jeffrey for having used the word “idea” in reference to the CAGW premise:
The CAGW premise, as outlined by IPCC in AR4 is, indeed, an “idea”.
“Ten thousand peer-reviewed papers?” Quantity does not ensure quality, Bart. Nor does
peerpal review.The “vast body of scientific evidence” is unfortunately tainted by the IPCC forced “consensus” process (see earlier posts), which acts as a gatekeeper to block out dissenting views and evidence. The “ten thousand peer reviewed papers” are likewise tainted by the corrupted peer review process resulting from the forced “consensus”.
2. You object to Jeffrey’s use of “AGW crowd” with your comment:
You ignore that this “science” was produced in context of the IPCC forced “consensus” process (see above), which has blocked, rejected or simply ignored all dissenting scientific views and findings. “Your words, “without bias” must be some sort of a joke in view of all the recent evidence to the contrary.
3. Your next comment is screwy:
Let’s forget the “free riders” sidetrack. CO2 is the principal anthropogenic GHG. IPCC has cited a forcing estimate of 1.66 W/m^2 since 1750 for CO2. According to IPCC, the forcing from all other GHGs plus other positive anthropogenic components is essentially cancelled out by negative anthropogenic forcings (aerosols, etc.). Total anthropogenic forcing is estimated at 1.6 W/m^2. So one can basically substitute CO2 forcing for total anthropogenic forcing.
4. You object to the word “assertion”:
Get used to it, Bart. CAGW (as outlined by IPCC in AR4) is an “assertion” (not an established and corroborated scientific truth). And it certainly hasn’t “withstood all challenge” (as you must know). It’s being challenged daily as we speak.
5. You then criticize Jeffrey for pointing out that the purported strongly positive feedbacks (from water vapor and clouds), plus the minor one from surface albedo are derived from model simulations rather than actual physical observations. (Read the IPCC AR4 report and you will see that this is, indeed, the case.)
One by one:
– “Feedback is well-studied” (yeah, by model studies, but NOT by empirical evidence derived from real-time physical observations)
– “Paleo and instrumental records” – almost all from the former, which are essentially worthless as they are simply subjective interpretations of dicey paleo proxy data from carefully selected (cherry picked?) periods of our planet’s geological history applying the “argument from ignorance” (“our models can only explain this if we assume…”). Forget that argument, Bart.
– NH Ice is receding, SH ice is growing. NH snow cover is not changing on average (growing in winter, receding in spring) (no data on SH snow cover as there is not much land mass).
– At the time of AR4, IPCC conceded: “cloud feedback remains the greatest source of uncertainty”
Yet IPCC estimated that it was strongly positive, increasing the 2xCO2 ECS by 1.3C (from 1.9C to 3.2C).
Recent physical observations over the tropics (Spencer & Braswell 2007) have shown that net overall cloud feedback over the tropics is strongly negative instead of positive as assumed by the IPCC models.
A model study by Wyant et al. (2005) using superparameterization to better simulate the behavior of clouds, also shows a strongly negative net overall feedback from clouds at all latitudes with warming, in the same order of magnitude as the net positive feedback predicted by the models without superparameterization cited by IPCC.
Correcting for this alone, would put 2xCO2 ECS at around 1.0 to 1.5C (rather than 3.2C, as previously estimated by IPCC)
– IPCC models estimate that water vapor increases with temperature to essentially maintain constant relative humidity, following the Clausius-Clapeyron equation. This is the basis for the strongly positive model-predicted water vapor feedback. Actual phusical observations over the tropics (Minschwaner & Dessler 2004) have shown that water vapor increases by less than one-fourth this amount. As a result, the water vapor feedback assumed by the IPCC models is also exaggerated.
Face it, Bart, the “feedback” story that was fed to us by IPCC in AR4 as part of its CAGW premise has more holes than a Swiss cheese. And it smells worse than an overripe Limburger cheese.
Several recent observation-based studies pointing to a much lower 2xCO2 ECS than previously estimated by the IPCC models seem to give independent support for no strong net positive feedbacks.
Jeffrey is “spot on” with his remarks, even though they may seem unpleasant to you.
6. Your next statement is:
This is pure balderdash, to put it politely.
Huh? What “”empirical evidence”? That’s precisely what is lacking here, Bart, as Jeffrey points out.
“Ten thousand” papers?” Quantity does not ensure quality (see above).
Get serious, Bart.
Jeffrey has presented a very well thought out argument against rushing into “action” based on the flimsy and doubtful justification for doing so that has been presented by IPCC so far.
Your rebuttal has done nothing to undermine his logic and conclusions.
The best thing to do now is to get better knowledge of all the many uncertainties regarding the human versus natural impact on our climate, before we rush off into any “actions” whose effectiveness we cannot predict with any certainty and whose unintended negative consequences we cannot foresee.
Max
Max +2
Thank you for the support. However, I do not wish to argue with Bart. I am just trying to get more information. I have been studying this ever since I read AR4; YES, I read it! Bart, did you?
Oh, just so you know — I am not funded by the dreaded energy sector. I am not funded at all.
manacker | June 14, 2013 at 4:59 pm |
tl;dr
Print!
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Jeffrey Eric Grant | June 17, 2013 at 8:22 am |
Hey folks, let’s see if we can count the fallacies (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/) and techniques of propaganda (http://library.thinkquest.org/C0111500/proptech.htm) in this comment:
I am “sick and tired” of the AGW crowd (Bart, are you one of them?)
Appeal to emotion, name-calling, devil words, tribalism, bandwagon, association.. that’s three fallacies and four techniques of propaganda in the first clause alone. We may lose count if this keeps up.
And no.. AGW isn’t my thing. AGW is just an example of Unnatural Normalized Trendology, due Unnatural Climate Kinetics due Forcing. Forcing and the effects on complexity and chaos are my issues. AGW’s just a red herring.. which would be another fallacy _and_ technique of propaganda.
using the arguement[sic] that there is substantial scientific evidence for the notion that increased atmospheric CO2 is causing the increased atmospheric temperatures, close to earth’s surface.
Wow.. that’s a straw mannish amount of restatement. And again, ‘notion’ for vast body of scientific evidence and analyses totalling at last count more than ten thousand peer-reviewed papers.
Why not quote what I actually said, if citing my own argument?
Oh. That’d be because I didn’t actually said any such thing in my observations of your comment. I said, “..all of science everywhere that produced observations and evidence and analyses you disagree with..”
Really? Hey Bart — Really? Please send me a link to just one empirical scientific study that concludes that CO2(E) is the cause of changes of temperature. Vostock points the other way….hummm. And, when I ask for empirical evidence — conclusions based on models does not count.
And here we see a demand for impossible perfection of a straw man.
Are there extra points for double fallacy?
And what the heck do you mean by “Vostock points the other way?”
That’s simple falsehood. Which is also propagandistic, but very shoddy technique.
Peer review isn’t too much help either, when the reviewers already know what is expected of them. If they are not careful, they may not be able to publish themselves.
Assumes bad faith. Argues facts not in evidence. Poisons the well. And a bit of tu quoque thrown in.
You even state: “Indeed, seeking to undermine models, when they are so thoroughly consilient with the mass of empirical evidence uncovered since the time of their original projections, that’s so intellectually bankrupt as to inspire awe.” If the models are so good, please give me a link to any temperature forecast from any model in response to CO2 concentration. Tel me how they are doing. I don’t want to know after I’m dead – I want to know “short term” forecasting – like, say for the next thirty years, or so.
Another demand for impossible perfection. Tch. Repeating the same technique over and over is hardly.. oh, wait, that’d be the Big Lie technique. +1 propaganda.
GCMs don’t forecast. Unpredictable influences on weather are unpredictable. Get over it.
Hey, Bart, I’m just a citizen trying to understand the basics. I have asked some of the best – Mike Mann or Gavin Schmidt are just two of the scientists I have asked (are you another?). I have yet to receive as little as a link to an empirical scientific study supporting the theory of the causal link between CO2(E) and temperature.
Oooh. One of my favorites, the “just a citizen” Plain Folks bit. And then Simplification and Testimonial.. in order. Are you going through the list of propaganda techniques alphabetically when you write methodically, or is it just so rote with you it ends up that way automatically? Of course, there’s another Association tossed in, so that weakens the case for mere alphabeticism.
Can you provide such a link? Mann & Schmidt told me to go pound salt! Do my own study! As if I have the money to do such a thing. And, I don’t have governments fawning over me, funding my every move. It is easy to wave off the “concerned citizen” when you don’t have to pay attention to them. Pay attention to the hand that feeds you.
One commends the IPCC reports as a decent place for any citizen to begin one’s inquiries into the case the IPCC makes. As I’m about a different case, the one about Unnatural Climate Kinetics due Forcing from tyrannical sources (the USA’s subsidized share of the global ‘cheap energy’ market, China’s state command and control coal fiasco, etc.), I’m a poor choice for the source material you claim to be looking for yet so spectacularly always fail to find. Might I suggest you carry a lamp?
Until I find the causal link between CO2 and temperature, I’ll still be looking and, from time to time, talking about it. Even if all you can do is insult me — I can take it.
Where have I insulted you? I’m talking about your arguments. All I’ve done is talk about what you talk about. I don’t know you. I do know you’re a fallacious propagandist. But if you find that insulting, look at the mass of empirical evidence, and tell me how any empiricist could dispute the fact?
Hey Bart
You refer to the 10,000 or so of empirical scientific studies as poof that AGW has it right. I am looking for 1 empirical study that supports the notion that CO2 causes the increased atmospheric temperature. Just one. So far, no one has the wherewithall to point me to it.
And, neither can you, otherwise, I’m sure you would have….
So, I keep on searching.
BTW, I must be smarter than I thought, to have you so excited to paint me as a “fallacious propagandist”.
Rob Starkey | June 14, 2013 at 2:21 pm |
A reference to a single paper might be an appeal to authority.
A reference to ten thousand is an appeal to popularity. Entirely different fallacy.
If that were what I did. Which, I didn’t.
I corrected the false impression left by Jeffrey Eric Grant | June 14, 2013 at 1:51 pm | in the repeated and bizarre use litotes to produce fallacy of ambiguity.
Your irrelevant supposition of a case that you do not demonstrate and its false application to the general is an error of composition/division. Which is another well known fallacy.
Manacker,
@June 11, 2013 at 8:02 pm
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/10/climate-change-officers/#comment-331213
I emailed a copy of your comment above to someone and received the reply below. Would you mind commenting on his points for my benefit.
Peter Lang
Thanks for comment
In my previous post to lolwot, I simply pointed out that the expected increase in atmospheric CO2 from today to 2100 lies somewhere between 600 and 640 ppmv.
At this level, based on past warming, and assuming that CO2 is the only “climate control knob”, we would arrive at 1.1C warming from today to 2100 resulting from CO2.
The person with whom you discussed this wrote:
Let’s go through it, one by one.
1. “CO2 is only influence” is obviously incorrect. Other anthropogenic influences can probably be discounted, as IPCC tells us they cancelled one another out over the time period 1750 to 2005, but there are natural factors.
IPCC has estimated these at 7% of the total past forcing (conceding a “low level of scientific understanding of natural forcing components”). Several other studies attribute 50% of the past warming to the unusually high level of 20th C solar activity (highest in several thousand years). So we have a range of 7 to 50% of the warming caused by natural forcing. I ignored this, so my estimate of future warming caused by CO2 is probably on the high side.
And there is the question regarding the current “pause” in warming, occurring despite unabated GHG emissions and CO2 concentrations reaching all-time record levels, which has been attributed to natural “variability”. If natural (negative) forcing factors / variability have been strong enough to overwhelm record human GHG levels today, could they not also have been strong enough to cause a significant portion of the past warming?
2. “CO2 effect is immediate”? No. I have simply said that the observed change over the past 150 years should be similar to a future change over 87 years, as far as time lag is concerned.
3. “Feedbacks are linear”? I have not addressed feedbacks at all. I have simply taken the observed past temperature change, attributed it all to CO2 (including any “feedbacks” that actually occurred) and estimated what temperature change would result from a future CO2 change (with the same feedbacks, if any at all).
4. ”There are no saturation effects”? I have assumed that within the atmospheric concentration levels cited, there will be no ameliorating impact of the CO2 saturation effect. If there is an impact beyond the simple logarithmic effect, this would again make my estimate of future warming on the high side.
5. ”A double log plot of CO2 conc. vs global T based on 2 data points is linear and can be safely extrapolated.” Yes. That was my assumption within the estimated concentration range.
6. ”The vast amount of scientific work that has gone into predicting temperature changes has got it completely wrong.” Could be. I haven’t seen all this “vast amount of scientific work” (only the IPCC summaries, which cite model simulations), and I have only used actual physical observations rather than model studies or dicey paleo-climate reconstructions as the basis.
Hope this addresses the questions.
Max
Manacker,
Thank you for your thoughtful, detailed reply. I drafted my own reply before I posted the question to you, but decided I’d get your response before I send my reply to him.
Jeffrey Eric Grant commented on Climate Change Officers. in response to stefanthedenier: said: ”Stefan, I read your blog. I don’t want to respond to it in its entirety, however. So, if you agree with them that CO2 will increase surface temps by 2 degrees C in fifty years, and will increase another 2 degrees in the next 100 years — we have plenty of time to hash this out”
Jeff, when is sunlight during the day; CO2 is lifted high up 5-6-7km altitude – cannot from there warm up the ground (look at the chimney what warmed CO2 does) = at night falls down when is cooling, not warming!!!
You are confusing me as with the ”Fake skeptics” – you can believe in ”GLOBAL” warming, can believe in Santa and Rudolf also; BUT the truth is: CO2 is a minuscule gas / has nothing to do with the global temperature!!!
Warmist & Fakes are ignoring the two elephants in the room; that oxygen & nitrogen are 998999ppm; they are regulating the overall global temp, CO2 is a trace gas in the atmosphere – if you read my blog, will prove the real factors
your believe as 1C warming is more misleading than the Warmist 3-4-5C; because YOU are presenting yourself as a Skeptik. it’s same as saying: ”Santa doesn’t bring the presents, Rudolf does…?” you are putting yourself into the Warmist mythology as a ”half believer in B/S”.
Stefan, thanks for your comment.
I was trying to make the point that I have not seen any empirical evidence that CO2 causes increased temps. I took away the arguement that there has been global warming; by doing that, I do not want to debate whether there has been global warming. The AGW crowd points to CO2 as being the only (or the main) cause for warming. That is the point I need more information on.
From my perspective, if CO2 is the culprit, then we can take action to limit its negative effects. If not, we can go on to something else. The AGW crowd is stuck on this point! I am looking for the “real world” evidence for the causal relationship.
Climate Change Officers are yet another bunch of useless free-loaders sucking from the teat of the public purse.
Sack the lot of them.
They function like political commissars in Soviet countries do, ensuring orthodoxy and reporting (ratting on) deviance. Informal power far exceeding their “nameplate” functions.
They have the little red button, concealed about their person, or maybe inna desk. Wait for it.
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