by Judith Curry
So . . . what do the U.S. presidential candidates have to say about climate change?
Until very recently, pretty much nothing. Here are some recent developments.
Sciencedebate.org
Sciencedebate.org asked both Obama and Romney to respond to 12 questions, including climate change. Here is what they had to say:
2. Climate Change. The Earth’s climate is changing and there is concern about the potentially adverse effects of these changes on life on the planet. What is your position on cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, and other policies proposed to address global climate change—and what steps can we take to improve our ability to tackle challenges like climate change that cross national boundaries?
Barack Obama:
Climate change is the one of the biggest issues of this generation, and we have to meet this challenge by driving smart policies that lead to greater growth in clean energy generation and result in a range of economic and social benefits. Since taking office I have established historic standards limiting greenhouse gas emissions from our vehicles for the first time in history. My administration has made unprecedented investments in clean energy, proposed the first-ever carbon pollution limits for new fossil-fuel-fired power plants and reduced carbon emissions within the Federal Government. Since I took office, the U.S. is importing an average of 3 million fewer barrels of oil every day, and our dependence on foreign oil is at a 20-year low. We are also showing international leadership on climate change, reaching historic agreements to set emission limits in unison with all major developed and developing nations. There is still more to be done to address this global problem. I will continue efforts to reduce our dependence on oil and lower our greenhouse gas emissions while creating an economy built to last.
Mitt Romney:
I am not a scientist myself, but my best assessment of the data is that the world is getting warmer, that human activity contributes to that warming, and that policymakers should therefore consider the risk of negative consequences. However, there remains a lack of scientific consensus on the issue — on the extent of the warming, the extent of the human contribution, and the severity of the risk — and I believe we must support continued debate and investigation within the scientific community.
Ultimately, the science is an input to the public policy decision; it does not dictate a particular policy response. President Obama has taken the view that if global warming is occurring, the American response must be to slash carbon dioxide emissions by imposing enormous costs on the U.S. economy. First he tried a massive cap-and-trade bill that would have devastated U.S. industry. When that approach was rejected by Congress, he declared his intention to pursue the same course on his own and proceeded through his EPA to impose rules that will bankrupt the coal industry.
Nowhere along the way has the President indicated what actual results his approach would achieve — and with good reason. The reality is that the problem is called Global Warming, not America Warming. China long ago passed America as the leading emitter of greenhouse gases. Developed world emissions have leveled off while developing world emissions continue to grow rapidly, and developing nations have no interest in accepting economic constraints to change that dynamic. In this context, the primary effect of unilateral action by the U.S. to impose costs on its own emissions will be to shift industrial activity overseas to nations whose industrial processes are more emissions-intensive and less environmentally friendly. That result may make environmentalists feel better, but it will not better the environment.
So I oppose steps like a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system that would handicap the American economy and drive manufacturing jobs away, all without actually addressing the underlying problem. Economic growth and technological innovation, not economy-suppressing regulation, is the key to environmental protection in the long run. So I believe we should pursue what I call a “No Regrets” policy — steps that will lead to lower emissions, but that will benefit America regardless of whether the risks of global warming materialize and regardless of whether other nations take effective action.
For instance, I support robust government funding for research on efficient, low-emissions technologies that will maintain American leadership in emerging industries. And I believe the federal government must significantly streamline the regulatory framework for the deployment of new energy technologies, including a new wave of investment in nuclear power. These steps will strengthen American industry, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and produce the economically-attractive technologies that developing nations must have access to if they are to achieve the reductions in their own emissions that will be necessary to address what is a global issue.
Dan Moutal of Planet 3.0 does not like Romney’s response, and has a point by point rebuttal.
“And yes, my plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet, because climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They’re a threat to our children’s future. And in this election, you can do something about it.”
I predict that not one single vote in the presidential election will be determined by the candidates’ positions on climate change. But
Party platforms
A summary of the respective party platforms is provided by The Observatory.
The presidential candidates are still treating it like a back-burner issue, but the Republican and Democratic national conventions incited a short round of climate-change coverage as reporters dug into the newly approved party platforms.
Republicans: That section devoted to climate change? Gone. Instead, the platform flatly opposes ”any and all cap and trade legislation” to curtail greenhouse gases. It demands that Congress “take quick action to prohibit the EPA from moving forward with new greenhouse gas regulations.” It criticizes the Obama administration’s National Security Strategy for ”elevat[ing] ‘climate change’ to the level of a ‘severe threat’ equivalent to foreign aggression.”
Grist and a number of other progressive, environmental bloggers also blasted Republican nominee Mitt Romney for treating climate change as a punchline during a convention speech in which he mocked what he termed the president’s desire to slow sea-level rise and “heal the planet.”
Treehugger has a description of the Democratic Party platform:
• We know that global climate change is one of the biggest threats of this generation – an economic, environmental, and national security catastrophe in the making. We affirm the science of climate change, commit to significantly reducing the pollution that causes climate change, and know we have to meet this challenge by driving smart policies that lead to greater growth in clean energy generation and result in a range of economic and social benefits. Obama has been a leader on this issue. We have developed historic fuel efficiency standards that will limit greenhouse gas emissions from our vehicles for the first time in history, made unprecedented investments in clean energy, and proposed the first-ever carbon pollution limits for new fossil-fuel-fired power plants. As we move towards lower carbon emissions, we will continue to support smart, energy efficient manufacturing. Democrats pledge to continue showing international leadership on climate change, working toward an agreement to set emission limits in unison with other emerging powers.
• Democrats will continue pursuing efforts to combat climate change at home as well, because reducing our emissions domestically – through regulation and market solutions – is necessary to continue being an international leader on this issue. We understand that global climate change may disproportionately affect the poor, and we are committed to environmental justice.
Convention speeches
Romney: “President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet.”
Obama: And yes, my plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet – because climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They’re a threat to our children’s future. And in this election, you can do something about it.
Obama’s track record
The NY Daily News does not speak kindly of Obama’s ‘empty climate change promises:’
Remember those long-ago days when Obama wanted a greenhouse “cap and trade” program? Remember when it died in the Democratic-controlled Senate without his support? Can you name what year it was the last time Obama attended a UN climate change conference? (Hint: it came before a famous “shellacking” in the polls).
You don’t have to take my word for it that Obama has failed to match his rhetoric to his deeds. Former Vice President Al Gore himself famously called out Obama for failing to take action on the climate, saying ““He has simply not made the case for action. He has not defended the science against the ongoing, withering and dishonest attacks. Nor has he provided a presidential venue for the scientific community — including our own National Academy — to bring the reality of the science before the public.”
After the failed Copenhagen climate change conference, Friends of the Earth said, “Obama has deeply disappointed not only those listening to his speech at the UN talks, he has disappointed the whole world.” And the World Wildlife Fund said Obama had let the world down by failing to push Congress for climate change legislation.”
So, I can understand a little liberal angst over Romney’s gentle mockery. Hitting the President for suggesting he could slow the rise of the world’s oceans hits a sore spot. The President’s climate change record is weak at best. And he’s still environmentalists’ best game in town. That has to be endlessly frustrating.
Rep. Todd Akin
While obviously not a presidential candidate, Rep. Todd Akin has been in the news owing to his bizarre comment about rape. Vaughan Pratt sent me a link to Akin’s website where he describes his stance on climate change and energy policy. Take a look. Surprised?
JC comments: While both party platforms are rather extreme on the topic of climate change, the comments made by each of the Presidential candidates are thoughtful and not at all unreasonable. It seems that Republicans are not ‘denying’ climate change and that humans are contributing. If this is truly the case, then the political debate can be about policies, values, and economics. And hopefully we can stop this silly anti-science, denier rhetoric to describe any disagreement with the consensus, which is way past its ‘use by’ date.
On election date in Nov, however, I suspect that not a single vote will be cast that is based primarily on either candidate’s stance on climate change.
I prefer Romneys’ statement
Obama – “Climate change is the one of the biggest issues of this generation”
Not according the World Economic Forum “Global Risks 2012”
http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2012/
Mitt Romney – “Ultimately, the science is an input to the public policy decision; it does not dictate a particular policy response. “
Correct!!
Peter Lang,
You can’t quantify every risk on the basis of what will happen next year.
For instance if you ignored scientific advice and regularly indulged in unsafe sex with strangers you could well pick up a virus which wouldn’t cause you the slightest problem in 2013. So would that be OK then?
Or, to put it in economic terms, you could run up a huge bill on your credit card, incur large debts, blow the rest of your pension etc and really have good time up until the end of 2013.
Which would be fine if that’s the limit of your life expectation. But, and as we are all hoping :-), what if it’s not?
US Presidential Politics is like the classical “Ship of Fools”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_fools
Ron Paul was shut out of the Republican Convention. Closing off the right to express discontent with consensus politicians in the election greatly increased the likelihood that current social discontent will
a.) Explode violently in this country, or
b.) Be contained by starting a war with Syria/Russia
Peter, it appears the global climate debate will be endless because:
Integrity will never be restored to government science
Unless constitutional limits are restored on government.
In Japan’s MSM are only few political pessimists who discount arctic ice restoration by rainbow rays from the light emitting spines of Baragon the Cryo-Cameleon. Will iron sun theory effect Baragon for President write-in vote ?
Obama:
Isn’t that because of a combination of Obama’s recession and George Bush and Dick Cheyney’s shale gas revolution?
There are lots of possible other reasons. It could be that Americans are using more fuel efficient cars, like in the rest of the world, which would be good.
Other possibilities would include like less use of oil for heating and in power stations. Which may be good but not if coal has been substituted.
It will take quite a bit of research to decide if Obama’s claim has any merit.
PS George Bush and Dick Cheyney’s shale gas revolution?? Like they were wondering what to do after finishing in politics, so Dick and George decided to create this revolution?
Section 322 of the energy act of 2005 created an exemption to EPA permitting requirements for fracking. Without that exemption the ‘frackers’ would still be waiting for permits.
At 11:25 AM on 8 September, harrywr2 had written:
Well, the technologies involved in “fracking” (dirigible deep-rock drilling, fractional perforation of concrete casings, and hydraulic fracturing of oil- and methane-bearing strata) were all well-established and in use all over the Oil Patch for about fifty years in one way or another before the Energy Act of 2005 was written. There was nothing controversial about them until managerial inertia was finally overcome and the extraction guys were allowed to go for the shale oil and natural gas they knew was down there, and could be gotten cost-efficiently in “Screw Hugo Chavez and them Ay-rabs!” abundance.
Which is when the Watermelons started shrieking their falsetto screams of rage.
Increases in U.S. domestic oil production may be another reason the U.S. is importing a smaller quantity of oil.
U.S. domestic production of crude oil has increased steadily since Obama has been in office. Below are the average numbers of barrels (in thousands) produced per day for years 2008 through 2011, and for the first 6 months of 2012:
2008 5,000
2009 5,363
2010 5,479
2011 5,685
2012 6,221 ( first 6 months)
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_crpdn_adc_mbblpd_a.htm
Yep. That shows the benefit of all that work George Bush and Dick Cheney did to remove the regulatory blockages and facilitate the oil industry so USA (and the world) are now reaping the benefits.
You should say well done and thank you to George Bush and Dick Cheney for that!
At 11:56 PM on 7 September, Max_OK had written:
That last clause in the sentence really ought to read:
The ability of the market to react, adapt, and overcome is the only thing that’s enabled the U.S. economy to survive the presidential administrations and the Congresses with which we’ve been stuck since Grover Cleveland left office.
Not that they’ll quit trying their best to drive us into a real-life Atlas Shrugged condition of utter collapse.
Max,
Surely you realise it takes a long time to develop and implement the policies such as Bush and Cheney introduced to free up the regulatory environment and encourage oil and gas production? Surely you must recognise it was the policies of oil guys Bush and Cheney that implemented the policies you are just starting to reap the benefits of now. Are you so ideologically blind that you cannot acknowledge that? Are you really trying to claim Obama gave you the oil and gas?
Its possible that there may be a short term increase in US oil production but it won’t last. Oil production peaked in about 1970 and has been on an overall downward trend since.
http://gator66.hostgator.com/~aspousa/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/history_of_us_oil_production_1900_2006_po202.jpg
As the following tabulation shows, domestic crude oil production declined every year Bush was in office, except 2005-2006 when there was no change. I was kind of surprised by the decrease. I wonder if the secret meeting Bush and Cheney had with the oil industry’s leaders had anything to do with this.
Year (000’s of barrels per day)
2001 5,801
2002 5,744
2003 5,644
2004 5,435
2005 5,186
2006 5,186
2007 5,089
2008 5,077
Source: same as my previous post.
So far, fans of Bush and Cheney have no comments on the decline of domestic oil production in the eight years these two were in charge.
“Obama:
Since I took office, the U.S. is importing an average of 3 million fewer barrels of oil every day
Isn’t that because of a combination of Obama’s recession and George Bush and Dick Cheyney’s shale gas revolution?”
Maybe. But it doesn’t have anything to do with CO2 emission. Oil barrel per day US import:
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTIMUS2&f=A
So imports were rising when Bill Clinton become President, and was at
8620 thousand barrels [8.6 million barrel per day]. When Bill left office
it was 11,871 thousand barrel [Bill Clinton increased it by 3 million barrels]. Bush starting at 11,871 thousand barrel increase it to a peak of
13,714 in 2005 but then it decreased to 11,619 thousand barrel when he left. The graph above only goes to 2011 at 11,504 thousand barrels
per day.
If Obama had lower it by 3 million [for part of 2012] then it should be 11,619 minus 3,000
which is 8.6 million barrel a day- and making the same as when Bill Clinton began as President. It seems unlikely.
If it was true, still nothing to do with CO2 emissions.
Instead of spreading fears about burning oil we should have been burning the midnight oil across America. And now we have a declining middle class under the Obama regime because the economy is shrinking under The Left’s cash-for-clunker, anti-business, food stamp populism and insider bail-out philisophy (e.g., using public money to bailout of the Union that bankrupted GM with all of the good people who invested their savings in GM simply left holding the bag while Unions walked away with more money to fuel a bigger, badder and uglier government). We have more people everyday who simply leave the job market altogether with their hand out and looking for government to provide lifetime benefits.
George Bush’s economy inherited a recession from Clinton when he took office in 2001. If you remember, back then the Democrat party maligned every employer of every new worker by labeling every a rise of employment under Bush as more “hamburger flipper jobs.”
When I took office, our economy was beginning a recession. Then our economy was hit by terrorists. Then our economy was hit by corporate scandals. ~George Bush
“W” inherited all of Clinton corporate scandals; all of the chickens came home to roost in 2002–e.g., Enron, Tyco International, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson, Global Crossing… and then, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 simply shot in the head all of the horses in the country that were pulling the load. And, we’re not supposed to remember that the Democrat party blasted Bush for telling Americans to go shopping when Bush pleaded with American to carry on life as usual and not let the terrorists win in the aftermath of 9/11.
I guess it is not politically correct to remember that Clinton was actually impeached during his last term in office for lying under oath. And of course there was the Whitewater Scandal – both Bill and Hillary Clinton’s baby – ushering in all of the 2002 corporate scandals and the big “dot.com” boom which became a big “dot.com” bust of 2001, which brought on unemployment and abandoned Porsches in parking lots across the Silicon Valley. And, even with all of the heightened public scrutiny, Illinois Democrat operatives still very nearly stole the election in Florida for C02-fighter, Al Gore.
Bill Clinton was a great president.
The UAW is a great union.
Bush was not so good as a President.
Anyone who puts their entire bond allocation in one firm’s bonds is an idiot.
GM is back thanks to Obama. The name of the company should be changed to Government Motors just to spite right-wingers who wanted GM to fail. On second thought, Obama Motors would be a better name, GM owes him, just like Ford owed Lincoln.
GM is back?
It is going to be unable to repay about $25 billions of the tax payer money Obama delivered before stealing the equity of the bond holders and giving it to the UAW. It is losing market share. And to the extent it is showing a profit (ignoring its actual balance sheet), it is due to over seas operations.
You know, outsourcing.
Oh yeah, and it is pretty much headed for bankruptcy again. But those of you who rely on filtered media for your news won’t have heard any of that.
Stealing GM’s bonds and giving the money to the UAW was original. I wish I could be so creative.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/06/02/politics-trumps-seniority-for-bondholders-in-gm-chrysler-bankru/
You don’t need to be more creative. Just better informed. Hard to know much about what’s actually going on in the world when all you know comes from filtered media,
GM should have tanked and it eventually will tank. It’s already on the verge of bankruptcy again. Consolidation within industries is a natural process. It’s Darwinian in fact. Survival of the fittest. Ford Motor Company is doing very well and FoMoCo didn’t take a dime in government bailouts. In fact Ford was harmed by one of their competitors getting a great giant helping of government cheese yet they are still kicking ass. You’re an imbecile, Max, and so are all your like-minded friends.
Ja, Volt!
======
Four years ago, back when Obama was comparing himself to Lincoln, my friend Peter Bocking noted his touch of Euro-Socialism and commented that Obama was a Lincoln Continental.
========================
kim –
Now he is a Y[o]ugo !?
Reminds me more of President Peugeot.
“Survival of the fittest.”
This is a tautology.
Andrew
Mmmm ….. government cheese. Yummy !
I will have to buy another Caddy. It’s the patriotic thing to do.
RE: video…spewing coals?
George Bush’s economy inherited a recession from Clinton when he took office in 2001. If you remember, back then the Democrat party maligned every employer of every new worker by labeling every rise of employment under Bush as more “hamburger flipper jobs.”
When I took office, our economy was beginning a recession. Then our economy was hit by terrorists. Then our economy was hit by corporate scandals. ~George Bush
“W” inherited all of Clinton’s corporate scandals; all of the chickens came home to roost in 2002–e.g., Enron, Tyco International, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson, Global Crossing… and then, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 simply shot in the head all of the horses in the country that were pulling the load. And, we’re not supposed to remember that the Democrat party blasted Bush for telling Americans to go shopping when Bush was actually pleading with Americans fight against the fear tactics of Osama bin Laden and to carry on life as usual and not let the terrorists win in the aftermath of 9/11.
Bill Clinton was an excellent President, whom history may elevate to great. A little too early to make the claim for greatness. It is rather ironic that Clinton’s Presidency basically resembled that of a moderate Republican platform.
George Bush was a good Presidetn whom history may rate even higher. He is probably one of the most inaccurately and fasley maligned Presidents in recent generations. I am still amazed that so many intelligent people characterise him as lacking in intelligence, just because of how he speaks. For me, associating great intellect with great oratory abilities is the mark of an easily fooled person.
I’ll keep my opinion of unions to myself, as I’ve been biased growing up. My grandfather and Uncles were coal miners, which helped form my dad’s views, which he rather successfully passed on to all of his sons.
tim, I grew up on Tyneside NE England), the cradle of unionism and still left-wing, and my grandfather founded the UK’s first public service union. But I form my own views. Unions may have served the community well 100-odd years ago, but in recent decades in the UK and Australia they’ve been highly damaging. I’ve worked in areas where union membership was compulsory. In all cases, the leaders were intent on pursuing their own political agenda and were not interested in issues affecting their members.
That said, some unionists who’ve gone into politics, such as Bob Hawke and Martin (Mar’n) Ferguson, have served the broader community well.
Max_OK | September 8, 2012 at 12:14 am | says:
“GM is back thanks to Obama.”
Hey Max, when exactly did GM receive the first $s of governemtn money that kept them afloat? Do you know?
Hint: it was before Jan 20, 2009.
PS: GM in 2011 had $5b in NI on $150b sales (3.3%)
Ford had $20b in NI on $136b sales (14.7%)
So Ford is 4x more profitable than GM. Yup, GM is doing so well.
Besides most of the US motor industry having being nationalised, haven’t most of the US banks been put under Government control too? And wasn’t that all done in a bit of a panic by George Bush in his final days as president? Is that why he’s not mentioned much in Republican circles these days?
So its all been left for the “socialist” Obama to make the new United Socialist States of America work, has it? I suppose that makes sense.
Actually George Bush is still quite popular in Republican circles. He has never been very popular in conservative circles though. Progressive Republicans never are.
FYI:
DSA USA. “Toward An Economic Justice Agenda.” Political. Democratic Left, May 2008. http://www.dsausa.org/pdf/eja_may2008.pdf
Garrett, Major, and AP. “Administration Warns of ‘Command-and-Control’ Regulation Over Emissions.” News. FOXNews.com, December 9, 2009. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/09/administration-warns-command-control-regulation-emissions/
Anonymous. “A Bleak Future (Oil Nationalization).” Opinion. IBD Editorials, May 30, 2008. http://news.investors.com/article/465358/200805301513/a-bleak-future.htm?Ntt=bleak-future
PS Do you have to call each other ‘comrade’, over there?
Who do you prefer Mao Tse-Tung George Washington then Ward Churchill is more inspiring than Winston Churchill, the mass murderer Mao and Bush-haters Castro and Chavez are your comrades.
The recent small increase in US oil production is DESPITE Obama’s REDUCTION in drilling permits on federal lands – and primarily due to growth in private drilling. US oil production on Federal land is DOWN 13%, while being similar to 2004 on private land.
Obama’s touted “All of the above” policy – is to effectively FORBID all future coal power plant via the EPA’s regulations. A Bloomberg’s The Twilight of Coal-Fired Power?”notes:
Obama has been borrowing 40% of federal spending and loading our children with $5 trillion in debt. Adding carbon sequestration subsidies is both foolish and immoral.
From an engineering perspective Obama/EPA’s coal power regulations are incredibly naïve and driven by extreme environmentalists. He does not realize the severe harm it is doing to the future stability of our power grid. Europe’s renewable energy leader Germany finally recognized the severe threat to power grid stability of large increases in highly variable solar and wind power after having committed to closing down nuclear power. Consequently Germany’s environment minister just authorized 23 new coal fired power plants.
Media ignore German coal plants, tout propaganda film ‘Fuel’
Merkel’s Other Crisis Spurs German Quest for Energy Holy Grail with a detailed discussion at
Germany rethinks path to green future
With his engineering training, Rep. Tod Akin has a remarkably accurate understanding of energy and climate facts for a politician. He gives a prudent pragmatic perspective on policies needed to go forward.
Romney’s energy plan similarly has a clear understanding of the issues and challenges. He understands the severe harm to our economy from importing $350 billion/year of oil. His policies to free up production and fuel generation will have give a major boost to us production while generating jobs.
We need statesmen, businessmen, and engineers like Romney, Ryan and Akin to get the USA back on track to increasing jobs, and developing ethical fuels while improving our environment, not destroying all three.
Todd Aken has a staff member with a good understanding of energy problems and policy. Given what the douchebag said about a woman’s body preventing fertilization in a “legitimate rape” he’s a retard and can’t possibly have any sound thinking that originates in his own pointy little head. What engineer worth a f*ck becomes a politician anyway? Non-sequitur.
David Springer
I strongly recommend recovering your composure and address the facts rather than descend to emotional ad hom rants.
Todd Akin
Todd Akin has practical engineering management expertise and experience:
where “he was responsible for 2,000 employees and the maintenance of seven mills.”
Akin has explicitly asked forgiveness for his statement. Akin was relying on statistics he had received from doctors. Jane Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, writes: Akin not far off base in rape comment
Crime and punishment
Todd Akin advocated:
That upholds the founding principles in USC The Declaration of Independence-1776.
Rapists
Akin was never accused of rape – unlike Clinton The Democrats rewarded serial rapist Bill Clinton with their key note speech.
Infanticide
Obama lambasted Akin on his rape comment. Yet Obama voted for killing babies that survived abortion. Why did the media
Dave,
I second David Hagen’s suggestion.
Congressman Akin’s statement was stupid. Really stupid in fact. But can you – or anybody claim it was the first time a politician said something really stupid?
What I found rather discusting was how so many Republicans flashed their lack of balls and a spine by jumping on the bandwagon of folks calling for Akin’s head. Exactly what did he do by saying something stupid? He offended people? So what? If you or anyone else can point to statute which guarantees us the right not to be offended then maybe you have something to complain about. Otherwise I suggest you keep your opinion to yourself and not look like all the other idiots out there acting like Congressman Akin is some perverted spawn from hell who needs to be tarred and feathered before he’s run out of office.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Association_of_American_Physicians_and_Surgeons
Robert,
I looked at your link to SourceWatch.
Is that an authoritative, objective site? Is that an example of a site you would trust to get reliable, balanced information on which to base your opinions and beliefs?
Is your trust in sites like this a fair indication of your lack of objectivity?
Given you trust sites like SourceWatch, what does that say about your beliefs in everything the IPCC says? What does it say about whether we should believe anything you say?
I searched for “Real Climate” under “Front Groups” in SourceWatch. It doesn’t seem to consider ‘Real Climate’ to be a front group. What does that say about SourceWatch’s bias?
I get the impression Source Watch is just an extremist organisation pandering to Left extremist views.
Are those your ideological beliefs, too?
David L. Hagen,
Akin did indeed apologize for his mistake and ask for forgiveness. You outlined his strengths as candidate, and make a case that he might have the wherewithal to recover his candidacy and win the election.
However, the main point Akin was trying to make was that his opposition to late-term abortions is “legitimate”, to take his word. It may well be the case that few rapes result in pregnancy, but the public policy question is: if the rape resulted in pregnancy, can the state still intervene to prohibit a late term abortion? I think that there can be few people who fail to understand that Akin would like to use whatever federal power he can assemble to prohibit late-term abortions, even in case of rape. If he has clearly repudiated that straightforward and obvious interpretation of what he said, I have not heard it.
This takes us far away from CO2 and fossil fuels. I would guess that, unless he repudiates his support for absolute bans on late term abortions, his senate candidacy will never be about anything else except his stand on abortion. Politically, Americans favor the abstract idea of restricting abortions, but every actual proposal comes short of majority support. He raised this losing issue to great prominence in his campaign. He’s got work to do to undo the damage.
Really? Do tell. How does a woman control ovulation, fertilization, or implantation of a fertilized egg because she was raped? Surely, you must have some evidence of a causal mechanism to make such a statement?
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-08/rape-results-more-pregnancies-not-less
“It may well be the case that few rapes result in pregnancy, but the public policy question is: if the rape resulted in pregnancy, can the state still intervene to prohibit a late term abortion? I think that there can be few people who fail to understand that Akin would like to use whatever federal power he can assemble to prohibit late-term abortions, even in case of rape.”
It seems to me the federal power shouldn’t used to force anyone to live, but that federal power should tend favor in direction that anyone should allowed to live.
Forcing women to have children seems like a bad idea- a particularly at a federal level. Forcing a woman to care for a two year old doesn’t seem like a good idea. Or the federal government forcing anyone to care for anyone seems generally like a bad idea.
The federal government shouldn’t be involved.
But nor should federal govt granting rights to have have abortions.
If anything the federal govt *could become* involved because it involves natural rights: a person right to life. And we tend to think a baby has a right to life, just as 8 year old.
So if one had a simple yes or no to life as the question, the federal government should be on side of saying yes to life.
But the question is how much responsibility does federal government have in this regard, to what degree does the Federal State involve itself in ensuring that people live- such as being well fed, have someplace to live, having nice parents, etc.
And according to US constitution [which can be amended, btw], not much if any.
Instead this is less a federal matter and if more of an individual State or at even more local level matter all the way down to family level.
The nature rights of humans is that government power does not deprive someone of life, rather ensure [spends money] to ensure life is maintained. So power of federal should not be to cause the death of it’s citizens.
Does federal law result in more abortions? Would the mother have abortion if not for federal laws which *may* seem to make this the best path for mother to take?
Wouldn’t it be following the US federal constitution if women were permitted more options regarding choice of having an abortion?
If a person wants to kill puppies, I don’t see a federal role in stopping this or prohibiting it. Whereas the killing of human life [rather than puppies] has more of *a possible* federal interest- but if should be clear that the federal interest should not be to cause more abortions [it should to cause less if anything].
The federal government has no business involving itself the idea that if women generally can get more abortions it improves the life of women. Or in the idea that poor people would better with less children- or the nation would be better off if poor people had less children. Or even that mentally impaired freaks should have less children, or hideous and evil people should have less children. Etc.
Nor should federal policy should be bias that children that are somehow deformed should be aborted.
Or even if one could know that it is nearly certain an unborn destiny will be to be unhappy, criminal hideous persons when they grow up.
The only role of federal government should have in causing death, should/could be if the person has committed some crime which has a possible punishment of death.
And btw, the federal government should keep in mind the more debt it creates for next generation is to some degree a death sentence for some unknown number of people and/or a restriction upon their future freedom- who have committed no crime [though resulting mountain of debt may result in inciting future criminal or immoral behavior, perhaps playing part in causing wars, and who knows what, but very unlikely to cause any good result].
gbaikie and Joshua, my comment was directed toward understanding Akin’s actual position, not in defending it or criticizing it. Is it a fair inference that he would work for an absolute prohibition on late-term abortion without exceptions for rape or incest? I think so, I think that was why Republicans asked him to abandon his candidacy, and his apology did not dispute that (as far as I could tell); I think that’s why he lost his lead in the polls, and it was the point overlooked in the post that I was responding to.
At 12:59 PM on 9 September, MattStat/MatthewRMarler stated:
Insofar as I’ve been able to determine from examination of that East Missouri religious whackjob’s campaign Web site (I come at the “Show Me” state by way of Jackson County, and consider everything beyond the sunrise side of Jeff City to be Enemy Territory), he’s in favor of criminalizing all voluntary termination of pregnancy, including those undertaken to extirpate the uterine products of incest or rape.
Which is the only logical and morally defensible position to take, when you think on it. If the products of conception do include a genetically unique specimen of Homo sapiens, just how the hell much moral responsibility for a crime can that lump of tissue have for the way in which its initiating meiosis was accomplished?
As an aside, I have to wonder precisely how much of the very low incidence of pregnancy due to forcible rape (see the quote above from Comprehensive Gynecology [6th edition, 2012]) was the result of considering only those female victims of rape who were in their childbearing years and unprotected by hormonal or intrauterine means of contraception.
I haven’t studied the epidemiological data for many years, but any physician who’s ever worked the Emergency Department knows very well that a great many female rape victims present with histories of prior sterilization procedures or illnesses impairing fertility, are protected by passive contraception mechanisms, are too young to have begun ovulation, or are postmenopausal. Did Lentz, Lobo, Gershenson, and Katz (the authors of Comprehensive Gynecology cite source information making this critically important differentiation?
It’s not a book you’ll find in the average GP’s office, and it’s sure as hell not in mine. Should I head over to the local community hospital to hit the medical staff library just to see if we’ve got a copy of Lentz et al (which we probably don’t) to determine their references, which must inevitably oblige a trip to one of the local medical schools for access to paywalled periodicals in order to check through those original publications?
Oh, yeah, I’m gonna do that Real Soon Now, you betcha.
tucci78,
Here is what Akin has on his web page: http://www.akin.org/issues/life-0
“A government that doesn’t protect innocent life fails at one of its most basic roles. I believe that life begins at conception and I’m appalled that we do not protect the innocent lives of our unborn children.”
Government power to intervene during pregnancy will be abused as every other government power is sometimes abused. Protecting the civil rights of placentas and spontaneously aborted fetuses makes no sense (that is a literal interpretation of “life begins at conception”.) Akin does not seem to have even considered the problem of balancing harm against good.
If Todd Akin is ready to sacrifice his political career and all his other policy preferences to defend his belief about abortion, then it seems from the polls that the voters of Missouri are willing to oblige him. Maybe he can still win, but the Democrats funded his campaign in the primaries thinking he would be the easiest to defeat in November, and that bet seems to be paying off for them so far.
Continuing the discussion of religious whackjob Todd Akin (a valuable proxy for the “social conservative” aspect of the big tent under which the hypocritical Republican kakistocracy strives for electoral success), at 2:38 PM on 9 September we have MattStat/MatthewRMarler observing:
Hrm? Why should he? Mr. Akin operates on the basis of his peculiar ghostly beliefs, not natural rights theory, though neither is necessarily meglioristic (“the problem of balancing harm against good”) in any case.
There being no arguable moral “downside” whatsoever in the dispassionately objective consideration of using “placentas and spontaneously aborted fetuses” (more precisely, the products of pregnancies inadvertently rather than deliberately terminated) to conduct research into subjects such as stem cell therapeutic potentials, I’m dismissive of Mr. Akin’s political opposition to such activities, which he has predicated not on the basis of the federal government’s undeniably limited remand (see the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, and find something therein which specifies the Congress’ lawful authority to fund such pure or applied research) but rather upon some sort of revealed word handed down magically by Mr. Akin’s version of the Great Sky Pixie.
Continues MattStat/MatthewRMarler:
No argument. Bear in mind that the dedicated religious whackjob isn’t preponderantly a pragmatist (though plenty of poseur types in their ranks are cynically of the “go along to get along” disposition behind their façades of sanctimony).
As for the National Socialists’ scheming to float Mr. Akin to the top of the cesspool in the Red Faction sorting farce, there’s a side to the Citizens United case – the use of opposition money to “ratf-ck” a party’s primary elections – that doesn’t get much mention in the lamestream media clowns’ gibbering and capering, does it?
The socio-economics of the US changed from Clinton forward. t was under Clinton that the country’s debt was remonitized into short term obligations.
Money essentially has no value except to buy something now. But, the Left demonizes those — people and corporations — who actually have money to consume because the Left hates capitalism. Those who delayed gratification for future rewards now have savings that earn no interest at all.
It is the government’s jiggering of interet rates and the money supply that fueled inflation fars and speculation in everything from houses to gold, which led to booms and busts.
Wagathon
See research by economist James Hamilton, especially Historical Oil Shocks.
True, true and it was amazing that the economy continued to grow during Bush’s term despite the spike in gasoline prices. If you remember, business from FedEx to Airlines had passed along increased costs through energy surcharges — just like in ’79 — and for the same reason: an energy starved economy which has been the direct result of hypocritical government policies that interfere with the invisible hand of capitalism..
I like jiggering.
I like booms.
I like busts.
What are “inflation fars” ?
If you are a new entrant to the job market busts are not good. Inflation is a silent tax in everyone. And, jiggering of the costs the factors of production by no-nothing government bureaucrats is never productive especially when it creates booms that distort markets and result in crashes.
“no-nothing” government is a new one on me. I guess that would be a something government.
The U.S. has had very little inflation in recent years, but I doubt this will continue far into the future. I have no idea when the rate of inflation will start to rise or how high it will go. If I did, I would know when to get out of long- and medium- term bonds.
A high rate of Inflation can be bad for people who rely on fixed-income assets (bonds, CD’s, savings accounts), as many of the elderly do. For bond buyers, TIPS can give some hedge against inflation.
Historically, buying gold has been a good hedge but the price of gold is volatile and the downside risk is great. I have made money on inflation in the past by being leveraged in real estate, and real estate might be a good bet now with interest rates being so low. However, no matter what you do, your capital will be at risk.
Betting with your own money is your business. Taking from the productive to buy votes and then printing money to keep the ponzi scheme going is what the Left does. Everyone knows what inflation is and that it not new and worse than ever when they see a taco go from 25¢ to $3.50…
Wag, perhaps you missed my point. Our capital is always at risk (your’s, mine, everyone’s) , no matter what we do.
If you think you know of a way to keep assets risk-free, please don’t keep it a secret.
The effective ‘real’ interest rate is less than zero. That annot exist except for government doing the wrong thing and knowingly so. How many years have we heard that Americans didn’t save enough? But in the end, the Left is screwing anyone who did save enough. No one can ever save enough when we live in a economy that is essentially the government versus the people.
WAG, the effective or “real” interest rate is the return on an investment after adjustment for inflation, and if all your fixed-income investments have been in short-term securities (e.g, 1-year maturity), you are correct in saying the real return has been negative, and it certainly has been recently for owners of money market and savings accounts.
While the real return on short-term investment has been negative, the real return on medium-term and long-term securities has been positive. Look at returns for the past 10 years on medium- and long- term Treasury bond funds at the following cite.
https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/vanguard/all?reset=true&sort=name&sortorder=asc&assetclass=bond
If your savings have lost value because you invested entirely in short-term securities, you made a bad investment decision, and should blame yourself, not the government.
You also need to adjust for the risk. After doing that capital moves elsewhere where the real rate is commensurate with the level of risk. America is no longer a good investment.
Lefties like capitalism, but they don’t worship it. They believe capitalism is supposed to serve the people, not the people are supposed to serve capitalism.
Real doers in society don’t worship . They believe government is supposed to serve the people, not the people are supposed to serve government.
“The socio-economics of the US changed from Clinton forward. It was under Clinton that the country’s debt was remonitized into short term obligations.”
An excellent point that few realize. The current average interest rate on our 16 trillion in public debt is about 2.6%. When interest rates rise and these obligations are rolled over at these higher interest rates we will be in a world of hurt. Slightly higher rates on longer obligations would protect us from at least some of this repricing risk.
Max_OK | September 8, 2012 at 3:03 pm |
Lefties like capitalism, but they don’t worship it. They believe capitalism is supposed to serve the people, not the people are supposed to serve capitalism.
================
What does it even mean for people to serve capitalism? Or for that matter, to worship capitalism?
Seriously, where do you get this stuff? In a fortune cookie??
k scott denison said on September 8, 2012 at 5:13 pm
What does it even mean for people to serve capitalism? Or for that matter, to worship capitalism?
Seriously, where do you get this stuff? In a fortune cookie??
___________
k scott, ” the purpose of capitalism is to serve people, not the purpose of people is to serve capitalism” would be an excellent saying for a fortune cookie it weren’t so long.
You asked what it means, so I will tell you what it means
But first, let’s look at Webster’s definition of capitalism:
“an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market”
Now, F Scott, suppose we look at an example, Medicare, a health insurance program for the elderly that’s run by the federal government rather than private insurance companies. Obviously, Medicare is not capitalistic, and some right-wingers dislike the program for that reason. Paul Ryan, Romey’s VP, wants to privatize Medicare, make it capitalistic, but he has little support for his plan, because too many Americans don’t believe the purpose of people is to serve capitalism.
Maybe it’s just me Max, but your reply makes absolutely no sense.
As for Medicare, perhaps it is part of the problem, not the solution. The problem being that the lack of market forces on healthcare drives inefficiency, high prices and poor quality care.
Yes, Scott, it is just you. You need to put your thinking cap on.
OK, it’s worth saying again, but I’ll make it shorter, so it will fit in a fortune cookie:
“Capitalism is supposed to serve people, not the other way around.”
Now, here’s a simple quiz:
What should come first when considering government policy?
a. What’s best for the public
b. What’s most capitalistic
c. What’s best for Max_OK
answer: c
So, government policy dictating that the coal-powered Chevy Volt shall be the peoples’ car is good for Max_Ok. Good to know.
I think there are some valid arguments that a “lack of market forces” have helped drive up healthcare costs to some extent.
But it is one of myriad factors, and the bottom line is that with our relatively free market system, your costs are very high on a comparative basis w/r/t the return on the dollar as well as w/r/t % of GDP. (And somewhat related by not really directly on point – don’t forget that while the existance of Medicare may have helped drive overall healthcare across the nation up in cost, actually the most cost efficient healthcare delivery systems we have are Medicare and other state supported insurance and healthcare delivery services).
Thus – this statement:
obliterates any ability to dig into the ways that Medicare may have helped to increase costs because it makes a simplistic assumption — proven to be a weak assumption because of the solid evidence we have from looking at other countries.
You may be right, no votes will be cast based primarily on a candidates stance on climage. However, many votes will be cast on climate change policies and how they might affect the economy. So the proper question to ask is, which party’s climate change policy will have the greatest near term impact on the economy, positive or negative. Given the state of the economy, the desire to “first do no harm” will have a broader appeal among many voters, particularly rust belt blue collar types in energy intensive industries.
… as is the case in Australia, where “feel good” support for emissions’ reduction policies has give way to realism as the costs are incurred.
You bet, Faustino,. Take a look at what is going on on ClimateSpectator here:
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/australian-blown-away-co2
Look at the indefensible defense of wind generation here:
http://www.wattclarity.com.au/2012/09/high-wind-production-in-south-australia/comment-page-1/#comment-4751
“China long ago passed America as the leading emitter of greenhouse gases.”
Yes, way back in the mists of history . . . in 2006.
What a mendacious pile of excrement.
“I guess it is not politically correct to remember that Clinton was actually impeached during his last term in office for lying under oath.”
It may be a tad harsh to remember that right-wingers have a long history of failed attempts to take down enemies with trumpeted-up charges, but it’s not politically incorrect.
Remember that “impeached” means House Republicans had a vote. There’s no probable cause needed to impeach a president; there is no standard of proof. And of course they totally failed to remove Clinton from office. That they impeached him is about as meaningful as some mining consultant or deconstructionist screaming “Fraud!” at scientists.
But I forgot, you probably think those failed charges are meaningful too?
Robert
See: China v USA CO2 to see the trends.
Re impeachment trial:
If at your trial jurors opposing your political views voted “Guilty”, or if you took someone to court and all jurors opposing your political views voted “Not Guilty”, would that be impartial justice?
If 90% of the party of the prosecution voted “guilty” and 100% of the party of the defense voted “not guilty” would that be “impartial justice”?
The failure was by Senators failing to uphold their oath to “do impartial justice, so help me God”.
Come on Robert,
Even you know that 6 years is an eternity in political time keeping.
“The United States remains one of the largest emitters of CO2, with 17.3 tonnes per capita, despite a decline due to the recession in 2008-2009, high oil prices and an increased use of natural gas as an energy source, the report says.
According to the report, the top emitters contributing to the 34 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted globally in 2011 are:
China (29 percent)
The United States (16 percent)
The European Union (11 percent)
India (6 percent)
The Russian Federation (5 percent)
Japan (4 percent)”
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2012/07/23/global-co2-emissions-jumped-3-in-2011/
Hmm coal use by country. This looks outdated [doesn’t have date].:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_coa_con-energy-coal-consumption
Here one for 2009, unfortunately it’s “Million tonnes oil equivalent in 2009” :
http://www.energy.eu/stats/energy-coal-consumption.html
One can see in graph China is 1540.5 and
US is 492.0
And click 2008 one gets:
2008: China: 1406.3
And US: 565.0
This tell whole story. China is using more than 3 times US in 2009 in coal comsumption. And US reduction is mostly reduction in Coal use- which is related to increase in supply of natural gas in US.
So therefore if want to know future global CO2 emission, the obvious thing to check is China natural gas production.
So google it and get this story:
By News Desk on May 21, 2012 9:18 AM :
“China has had to cut domestic gas production to make space for imports amid a seasonal dip in demand over the second and third quarters of the year.
The country produced 8.5 billion cu m (10 Bcf/d) of gas in April, up 8.6% year on year but down 25% from March, official government data showed. Production last year similarly tapered off after a strong first quarter — output in April 2011 fell 25% from March to 7.8 Bcm.
This seasonal drop in production began only after piped gas imports from Turkmenistan ramped up in the second half of 2010, according to analysts. The decline in 2010 was narrower with April output down just 4% from March at 8 Bcm. ”
http://www.platts.com/weblog/oilblog/2012/05/21/at_the_wellhead_14.html
And article goes on to explain the typical incompetency of any socialist government. Bottom line since currently importing too much natural gas, government might not be eager to increase domestic production in near term.
Or expect China emission to continue to rise until such time as they can get more natural gas electrical power plants built and online.
hmm:
By Jacob Adelman – Jun 7, 2012 11:32 PM PT
“China’s and India’s plans to build more coal-fired power plants to meet electricity needs aren’t feasible because of a lack of water needed to cool the plants, General Electric Co. (GE)’s global strategy director said. ”
…
GE, which produces gas-fired and wind-powered turbines, solar equipment and other projects that would benefit from a shift away from coal, was not immediately able to provide comparable water-use figures for India.
….
China’ natural gas demand is forecast to increase more than five-fold to 502 billion cubic meters in 2035 from 93 billion cubic meters under an IEA scenario where fossil fuel subsidies are cut, according to the 2011 World Energy Outlook. ”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-08/china-india-lack-water-for-coal-plant-plans-ge-director-says.html
Loving the linguistic ambiguity.
Obazma:
Yes. At a cost of $21 billion per year just for EPA’s cost to to administer the scheme if it was implemented as legislated. This is a pointer towards how the compliance costs will trend higher and higher if carbon pricing is implemented (carbon pricing will require accurate measurement of emission eventually).
“What a mendacious pile of excrement.”
TRying to understand your outrage. 6 going on 7 years in this particular context can quite reasonably be said to be a long time. Long time or not, the important point it that the U.S. can’t do a thing to meaningfully reduce global co2 without China and India playing ball. Why does that fill you with such outrage?
Understanding Roberts outrage is easy…. Robert is a black/white decision maker. Republican bad denier, Democrat good environmentalist. It’s simple thinking for a simple mind. His ignorance is not a superpower.
Yep, GOP = Go On Polluting.
One more reason to vote for Obama.
The president must manage both national and domestic security. One of the greatest uncertainties in climate models is future economic development. That in turn will ride on global oil, and in turn on domestic production and the available oil imports. National economies, especially of oil importing countries like China and the USA, are closely tied to availability of oil imports. The sea change of constrained crude oil production since 2004 with the attendant 1000% increase in crude oil prices ($10 in 1998 to ~$100 since 2008) precipitated the mortgage crisis, the economic crisis and now the Euro crisis. That major drain on the economy prevented the expected reduction in unemployment. Consequently, our economic trajectory will depend strongly on the rate at which we can transition to alternative transport fuels and more efficient vehicles
Rapidly rising demand in developing countries with constrained conventional oil production since 2005 makes for a “Case for Sustained $100 Oil” In oil importing countries:
(Apparently assuming constant total oil production, )
That will create rapidly growing competition for fuel resources.
With rapidly rising Chinese and Indian oil consumption, the resulting Available Net Exports (ANE) of conventional oil are projected to rapidly decline as explained by Jeff Brown (Westexas). See
Available Net Exports (GNE less Chindia’s net imports)
1.0%/year Production Decline (2010 to 2020), Top 33 Net Oil Exporters
Obama published his energy plan in 2011. Obama committed to:
from 11 million bbl/day. The legislation increasing vehicle fuel efficiency helped that goal. However, while Obama mouths reduction of oil imports, his other politically driven actions directly disrupt his own goal by making it more difficult to produce oil on federal lands and offshore. Obama’s canceling the Keystone XL pipeline requires US refineries to import oil from socialist Chavez rather than from friendly Canada, and forces Canada to ship more of its crude oil to China. Instead, Obama promised:
That diffuse focus trying to redress anthropogenic global warming has dissipated our efforts and resources away from the most pressing issue of transport fuel – which could easily and rapidly drive the US into severe increasing depression – to an “energy” issue that at most will have a minor economic impact. Cap and Trade squandered precious political capital on an issue that is inconsequential compared to crude oil that is driving global economies with “demand destruction” and massive wealth transfer.
Romney appears to have a pragmatic focus on achievable steps in each of his energy plan steps to redress current constraints. e.g. the US pushed through a transcontinental railway in six years. Today it takes 8-10 years to obtain approval just to open a mine. Approval on federal lands often take five to ten times longer than on State lands. Etc.
Nice explanation of the alternate take regarding energy economics.
My own recent analysis is on flows from marginal fossil fuel sources such as the Bakken formation. No doubt that there is a significant amount of crude oil locked into shale interstitials, but it is not clear how the rate of flow can be sustained at current costs.
The current evidence shows that the rate of flow from individual Bakken wells shows diminishing returns from the outset. This is not the typical production profile of conventional wells that can produce substantial flat amounts for years.
These are different times that we are dealing with, and the state of NoDak will be littered with hundreds of thousands of hydrofracturing sites before all is said in done. That is simply the result of the energy economy that we have built our society around.
I suppose I can say “it is what it is” to thwart further debate. :)
WebHubTelescope
Thanks for link on Bakken wells.
Estimated Ultimate Recoveries (EUR) for shale gas wells are critical to whether the shale gas is really a revolution or a hugely unsustainable enterprise. See: USGS Releases Damning EUR’s For Shale Deborah Rogers, Sept. 2, 2012, citing:
Variability of Distributions of Well-Scale Estimated Ultimate Recovery for Continuous (Unconventional)Oil and Gas Resources in the United States
USGS Open-File Report 2012–1118
Tad Patzek has a number of papers on unconventional gas. Some presentations giving very worrying actual shale gas well production curves, evaluations, and comparisons. e.g. See Unconventional Resources in US: Potential & Lessons Learned Tad Patzek 2011. Most shale gas production curves show major depletion within one year – requiring repeated fracking. Most worryingly:
And that is at a price about double today’s glutted market prices.
It is not at all clear that shale gas is sustainable or economic. For Obama/EPA to pin the future of all future US power generation on a complete shift from coal to gas is highly imprudent to say the least, considering this actual shale gas well production data. Obama’s actions also destroy the checks and balances between executive, legislative and judicial branches.
Romney at least lays out the challenges , giving specific prudent steps to break through current bottle necks and barriers.
I would say removal of all reference to climate policy in the party platform is a form of denial.
No…it just doesn’t sell on our side of the aisle.
Democrats – CO2 emissions = bad
Republicans – Affordable Clean Energy = good
If you actually read the energy acts of 2005 and 2007 there were plenty of ‘goodies’ to encourage R&D and the production of ‘Affordable Clean Energy’.
If we don’t crack the ‘affordable part’ then global reductions in CO2 are impossible because the developing world is going to go with whatever is cheapest.
So why focus on the problem being climate change, when the only solution to climate change is affordable clean energy.
Energy would not be the only adaptation required for climate change, but they have ignored all the others. I think most would agree that fuel efficiency is a good target to have for energy adaptation, but I don’t see the Republicans promoting that either. Their policy is just lacking in this whole area in general.
Jim D,
If CO2 is the identified culprit behind the warming, what area other than energy should be the focus?
You seem to be talking about mitigation where CO2 would be the focus, but adaptation requires adjusting to the changing climate. Energy can’t do much about that except slow it down a little, and mitigate some energy costs. I would argue that realistically adaptation is the much more important thing to focus on, but from the Republicans, nada.
JimD,
I can find room for agreement with that. A lot in fact.
As for the Republican Party – sometimes I feel they get my support simply because the alternative – The Democrats – is so much worse.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/03/09/week-in-review-3912/#comment-184573
I find the discussions of the 14 science questions by the candidates to be one of the more promising developments of this campaign. Maybe written answers to questions after thinking about them would induce more nuanced positions more in line with some sense of reality and more persuasive to their point of view.
At 11:47 PM on 7 September, Charles Jordan writes:
I find in any such questions addressed to “mainstream” party political candidates nothing ever except an opportunity for weaseling.
Which is the proper translation of “nuanced.”
Where the rubber meets the road – or, rather, where the blood spatters the pavement – in all government action, it’s a matter of armed thugs on the public payroll threatening the private citizen with death.
(A popular truism is that “The relationship between the federal government and the average American is fundamentally sadomasochistic. The Second Amendment is the safeword.”)
Find me something “nuanced” in a government goon’s “Do what I say or I kill you.”
Find me something “nuanced” in a government goon’s “Do what I say or I kill you.”
________
Probably a good time to drop your gun or knife.
At 1:13 AM on 8 September, Max_OK responds to honest acknowledgement that the armed employees of government are in the business of breaking things and killing people by recommending to me:
For pyrotechnics or explosives?
Tucci78 | September 8, 2012 at 2:00 am |
“For pyrotechnics or explosives?”
My first thought as well. You’re okay, Tucci. I dont’ care what everyone else says about you. ;-)
Max,
Perhaps you should recall what the people who gave us our form of government had to say about it:
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
George Washington
“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government – lest it come to dominate our lives and interests”.
– Patrick Henry –
A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.
……..Thomas Jefferson
If you truly doubt that government does not ultimately rely on force, try not paying your taxes.
I’m sure glad the government relies on force to deal with tax cheats. But these criminals go to prisons that are too plush. They should be busting rocks and living on gruel.
Might as well quote Akin’s take on global warming from his campaign Web site. It’s no more than a few paragraphs:
Where I take issue with Mr. Akins is that there is no evidence of any need whatsoever to take any “steps to reduce CO2 emissions” or to spend a goddam dime on “research into carbon neutral technologies.”
The Keeling curve is what it is. The rebound global warming since the end of the Little Ice Age (circa 1850) is also what it is. There’s not even coincidence to imply causation, and therefore any advocacy of government funding for “research” or of government meddling in the economy to get at “balancing economic and environmental outcomes” on the matter of anthropogenic atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide is a hideous waste not to be countenanced in our republic.
Screw the alarmists. Every time one of ’em shows his face in public, I shouldn’t grieve too much if that face is met by a rapidly-moving brick.
Tucci –
I don’t remember seeing you around in these here parts. In case no one’s told you, Judith has a spot waiting for you under bus #112, left side, window seat.
Smallpox is what it is.
Fascism is what it is.
Yea, we can keep on playing that game for a long time.
Tucci78 is a sockpuppet for that one doctor dude commenter who would go overboard with the bolding and italicizing. Can’t remember his other handle, and don’t really care. Ploink.
At 1:12 AM on 8 September, WebHubTelescope pointlessly whines:
No, jerkwad. “Tucci78” is the handle I use most often in online fora. My name is Rich Matarese, which gets into those fora where I log in under my Google registration, and you’re a pitiful schmuck who can’t say anything pertinent about the subject under discussion without leaving cleat marks on your frenulum, so you’ve got to fixate on what you suppose to be the person of another poster.
It’d be precisely argumentum ad hominem if anything you post were to resemble argument at all.
i am trying to be more than any of my usual sockpuppets – Chief Hydrologist, Captain Kangaroo or Diogenes in search of an honest man – but heck – :lol:
Welcome back Rich
Top 3 sockpuppets:
Chief Hydrologist/Captain Kangaroo etc
Latimer Alder/Latimer Alert etc
Tucci/Matarese etc
Nasty dudes all. Sockpuppetry is a devious political tactic of portraying greater consensus than actually exists.
There is that consensus term again. Hypocrites.
@webbie
Who TF is ‘Latimer Alert’?
New one to me.
Where can I read their writings?
@webbie
And on further thought, since I regularly search on ‘Latimer’ to check for any replies to my wit and wisdom posted here and elsewhere, and have not, to my recollection, ever seen anybody posting as ‘Latimer Alert’, I hope you have some good evidence that they exist at all.
Lattie – you trying to claim you don’t post under different sockpuppet names? WHT may have the wrong sockpuppet name but he doesn’t have the wrong poster.
Oh yeah, I got one of his sockpuppet names wrong. It may be spelled Stirling English. Latie also uses “Your Average Joe” and “Joe Sixpack” and sometimes will use a variant of my name in his comments.
Sockpuppets are marginalized on other blogs, and always treated with disdain. On this blog, they are celebrated. Because this is a blog about quantifying uncertainty, when someone uses a sockpuppet name like “A fan of more dischord” to fool people into thinking that “A fan of more discourse” is commenting, that does raise the level of certainty. Don’t ya think? /sarcasm
Or is this a blog about raising FUD?
@Latimer Alder and others
Dear All
I really must apologise on my Webster’s behalf for being so rude to you all. He tells me that because his mind is always on higher things and down an oilwell, he sometimes forgets his manners and makes false allegations.
Deep in his heart he knows he has done wrong and regrets it terribly. But, I guess this unassuaged pain at is just the penalty he has to pay for being an unrecognised genius.
I’ve sent him to his room without any lunch and hope that he will be in a better frame of mind when he comes out at teatime.
Thank you
Wilma Hub Telescope (Webster’s Mother)
It is a remarkable sensation to be lectured on the netiquette of identities by the clearly false
‘Web Hub Telescope’
and also by the unidentifiable
‘Louise’.
I am not acception any apology from Wilma becasue she failed to teach him the basics of civilised, mature discourse. Generally I find the warmist trolls to be lacking in humour, to have a habit of dropping smelly and content less piles of snarks around the place, to be pompous and superior and to not have 2 ideas to rub together.
The bravado and pomposity of those hidding behind anonymity is stunning.
WHT
“The Keeling curve is what it is.”
Smallpox is what it is.
Fascism is what it is.
Yea, we can keep on playing that game for a long time
Agree that’s a silly game and the analogies are downright absurd.
Fascism (and its related German version, National Socialism) existed as a political force over the period 1920-1945 and was directly responsible for the death of at least 10 million people, including an estimated 6 million Jews.(Wiki and other sources) Communism (often called the “other side of the same coin”) lasted a bit longer as a political force and, hence, did a better job of exterminating its opponents, murdering an estimated 20 to 30 million.(Le Livre Noir du Communisme, Wiki)
Smallpox has existed an estimated 12,000 years, lasting well into the 20th century, with world wide mortality estimated between 300 and 500 million.(Wiki)
“The Keeling Curve is a graph which plots the ongoing change in concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere since 1958. It is based on continuous measurements taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaiiunder the supervision of Charles David Keeling. No one has died as a result of the increasing atmospheric CO2 levels” (also Wiki)
I’d agree with you that the comparison of “fascism”, “smallpox” and the Keeling curve are totally absurd.
Max
No, the statement “it is what it is” is completely empty and meaningless.
The character Manacker is what it is. There is no point in proceeding. See, I just marginalized your opinions to insignificance.
WEB,
Did your mother not love you? Perhaps you were the only one of your siblings who wasn’t breast fed. Or is it having to grow up looking more like the egg man than the guy you called dad?
Whatever the case, you sure have one nasty disposition.
Team Skeptic can dish it out but they can’t take it, eh?
That’s always the case with cowards and bullies.
WEB,
It was an observation. You are rather minor league when it comes to giving someone sh*t. You are simply nasty about it. For me, it’s all water off a duck’s back.
You’re pretty whiny today, eh?
You project it outwards, but seem to be the one crying for mommy.
The cracked logic of these people astounds.. So someone giving another guy major league trash-talk is somehow not nasty? That’s the way Rethugs think, a mean paternalistic SOB is considered a kindly leader.
Again, the USA owes the world an apology for the twisting of words, logic, reasoning, rhetoric, framing of discourse, discourse itself, politics, science, jargon, catchphrases, soundbites, implications, innuendo, prediction, projection, religion, philosophy, law, trade, treaties, rights, progress, process, conservativism, ism itself, for the sake of shaving a few fractions of points off the other party’s vote by catching those not skeptical enough of the lipflapping of politics.
Which I’m sure the rest of the world will understand is not going to be forthcoming. Suck it up.
November’s not all that far away. (Though I know other nations can conduct democracy at a pace measured in weeks of campaigning, not years.) Just watch cricket or soccer or something foreign until America’s done.
Then the USA will only be twisting words, logic, reasoning, rhetoric, framing of discourse, discourse itself, politics, science, jargon, catchphrases, soundbites, implications, innuendo, prediction, projection, religion, philosophy, law, trade, treaties, rights, progress, process, conservativism, ism itself, for the sake of money or out of gullibility.
Don’t hold your breath for that apology from lipflappers either.
Bart R | September 7, 2012 at 11:52 pm | Reply
“Again, the USA owes the world an apology”
Wrong. The free world owes the USA a tremendous debt of gratitude.
David Springer | September 8, 2012 at 10:07 am |
In 1776 the USA showed the world how to found a nation on democratic principles of law and freedom, with neither welcome for armed external interference nor taste for foreign military adventure, in brilliant pattern of heroism and righteousness.
The world’s pretty much caught up on that debt, and the USA ought mark it paid in full.
Everything else, on balance, the world’s no better for US opportunism, exploitation and subversion, by the standards the Founders of the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence themselves set.
Do you think the world got more out of the USA from anything significant since 1776 than it lost in the bargain? That US traders are so poor at extracting the best end of the deal?
Mexico has such a great neighbor to the north, between annex of half its territories and building chain link fences and funding drug cartels and running guns and corrupting politicians and demanding involvement in wars — one of them in the entire wrong country, and based on manufactured evidence fraudulently presented — on the other side of the world that Mexicans have zero plausible interest in?
Canada? Well, maybe Canada.
Not like the rest of the world would even bother to think about a Canadian if it weren’t for fear they were really American. Still, from the Auto Pact to Zebra mussels, dumping draft dodgers and dumping Love Canal sewage, you can’t imagine Canada thinks it owes the USA a debt of diddly squat. In case there’s any doubt left in your mind about the Canadian attitude to the USA, remember they were the staging area for the burning of the White House, and haven’t supported the USA in any military action since Korea, except Afghanistan — and Canadians died in 9/11 too, so they had skin in that game. Plus, they trade with and support Cuba.
And that Cuban debt owed the USA? Think that flies outside Jeb Bush’s Florida?
The British? Sure, the USA bailed them out of WWII.. after every other country in the then free world (plus not a few from elsewhere) had been allied with them against the Axis for two full years. That debt’s been pretty much exhausted by the time what didn’t stay in Vegas leaked out.
Though sometime in the past five years China’s begun to export more CO2E than the USA, each US citizen outstrips each Chinese citizen per capita by an order of magnitude; the same can be said of the US relationship in almost every nation for almost every form of pollution, and of almost every moral vice communicable by commerce or trade or example pushed through every channel of distribution and vector of transmission available.
As friends and neighbors go, the USA’s been a freakishly, boorishly, loudly, obnoxiously, arrogantly, insipidly, stupidly terrible one.
So a debt of gratitude to the USA?
What a monumentally deludedly shameless claim.
The ideals the USA represents?
Yes.
The world so long as it upholds democracy, justice and freedom in any corner, any individual who has felt hope or comfort from those ideals as realized in America, they can be grateful. And every US citizen can be humbled by that awful burden of upholding the forefathers’ dream by paying the price of eternal vigilance.
But there are two hundred nations extant in the globe, and nine of ten of them have claims as great and dire as the USA on some exemplary virtue, so nothing special there either.
After draining the glass to its bitterest dreg, Bart R is full of hope that it is half empty.
=========
Bart,
Care to name a nation that has sent it’s young men and women overseas to fight and die for the sake of others? The fact our country has a far from perfect record does not change the fact that it has done more for the world than any other nation in history.
This country was not founded on the simplistic belief that democracy was a cure for all evils. India is 50 years of proof that democracy is no cure for socialism.
kim | September 8, 2012 at 10:48 am |
When surrounded by poets, propagandists, marketers and other hypocrits, one gets used to bitter truth.
If they’re mendaciously emptying my glass, though, they ought be aware that I’m not above kicking them under the table for it.
Eugh. That sounds truly pathetic. I keep forgetting, I’m no kim when it comes to metaphors and flowery antirational images that sound nice but mean absolutely squat.
Don’t sell yourself short Bart. You are perhaps a little short in the elequence department – but it still means absolutely squat.
timg56 | September 8, 2012 at 3:25 pm |
Sending other people’s children to die in foreign wars has been done by every colonizer, tyrant, goose-stepper and merchant prince in history. It was one of the worst crimes the Founding Fathers named in their writing and speeches, and fiercely opposed in their principles.
But since you clearly aren’t fond of the values the USA was created upon, let’s list a few places that have sent men and women overseas to fight and die for the sake of others recently:
Countries of birth of WTC planners, attackers and co-conspirators: Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, USA, Yemen; countries travelled through from their homelands include Afghanistan, Germany, Pakistan and the UK to their staging area in Florida.
Number of willing allies of the USA who sent sonse and daughters to fight in Afghanistan: forty. Order in which the nation identified Afghanistan as the place of origin of the 9/11 attack and declared for military action: the USA was seventh chronologically.
The USA is not first, nor more effectual, to shed blood on foreign soil for the sake of warlord friends of politicians: the former Soviet Union was in Afghanistan for many years fighting religious extremists; that George H.W. Bush personally selected Osama bin Laden to back, develop an organization for, train, finance and support against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan is a matter of historical record, so we can say the USA sent that particular Saudi oil billionaire’s son to foreign war, too.
So if you take pride in the lives thrown away of US sons and daughters, brothers and sisters as a man who has served and who like me has family who serve with honor and integrity, then I can only say you are misled, though you are admirable in your loyalty to deceptive and immoral men.
By all means Bart, please name all the other countries who sent their young men and women to liberate Europe. Twice.
Bart,
Apparently this touches a nerve for you. As someone level headed most of the time, these are quite the rants.
If you want to hate on the US, that’s your right. And you are free to denigrate anyone who doesn’t hold the same opinion as you. I don’t care really. As a history major I learned a long time ago that there has never been a place like the Unitesd States before. I thought about going point by point – as with your trying to equate the 9/11 hijackers with the men and women who served in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan – but as I said, I really don’t care that much. I’m better off using that time to pray for those members of my family currently in Afghanistan (well technically one is in Italy, recovering from wounds recieved a couple weeks ago. But he’ll be returning shortly to take command of his company). They know it isn’t about the politics. Politicians come and go. It is about the mission and then getting home. It is also about the people serving next to you. And its about trying to help those who want your help.
General Malaise | September 8, 2012 at 4:27 pm |
From a sockpuppet, the authenticity of the charge of meaninglessness is only exceeded by the irony.
The menace of sockpuppetry is exceeded only by the overuse of the term irony. There is no irony in the statement that whatever you say is metaphorically a fairy floss castle complete with minarets, domes and draw bridges but with negligible substance. Therefore the statement that you have squat credibility is resonant with meaning regardless of the identity of the speaker. That you lack elequence is attested to by the semantic confusion of your response. That you might think it an adequate, rational or reasoned response would be a monstrous fallacy.
Any irony was in fact situational and deliberate in responding to your accusations of squatness levelled against the poetical Kim. I know it is none of my business – I just don’t like blowhard wannabes who think they are amusing when in fact they are witless.
I gotta admit, that conclusion, to that post – which discusses the overuse of the term irony- is one of the most beautiful comments I’ve ever read in the blogophsere.
Talking about general malaise of talking through your arse – few do it like Joshua.
k scott denison | September 8, 2012 at 5:35 pm |
Australia – ahead of the USA. Twice.
Canada – ahead of the USA. Twice.
China sided against Japan* (largely external to the European theater, mentioned only for reference) 5 years prior to Pearl Harbor. USA did nothing to quell Japanese aggression, seen by scholars as encouragement of Japanese adventurism.
Great Britain was invited to join the neutrals (Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, *Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Switzerland and the USA) but declined and threw itself against the aggressors in WWII in 1939. The European neutrals in the main regretted it deeply, when Stalin marched on most of them before turning against the Axis.
India – ahead of the USA. Twice.
New Zealand – ahead of the USA. Twice.
South Africa. Twice.
But because the list gets cumbersome, here’s a starting point for you to read up on: http://www.cwgc.org/
And really, relevance?
WWII ended almost seven decades ago. Or as we might say here, two climate regimes have come and gone globally since then.
Oh, and in the Panama Agreement of 1939, the USA arm-twisted most of the Americas to stay out of the war, against sometimes vigorous protest by countries that felt the Axis was a danger. Thus the US kept the young men and women of Latin America from being sent to liberate Europe.
Gee, guess Europe didn’t need any help then. Shouldn’t have gone to war I guess.
Seriously, Australia, Canada and the US all should be very proud of what they have committed in the name of freedom. Europe owes all three a debt of gratitude.
k scott denison | September 8, 2012 at 7:45 pm |
You forgot to mention India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the gratitude owed them over WWI & WWII.
Doug Badgero | September 8, 2012 at 10:01 pm |
Good to know we can count on you for non sequitur when we’re running short.
It’s hard to stay “sequitur” with your ramblings.
Doug Badgero | September 9, 2012 at 12:06 am |
I’ve noticed that.
The evidence backs what you say.
Numerous commentators attach notes with the most elusive or illusory connection to anything in what has been said before.
What’s needed is a brief lesson in how to be relevant.
Perish the thought that I’m the best teacher of such a lesson, but it seems you’ve nominated me.
So, first step in being relevant to a topic is to first read it, and understand it. Which does not mean clicking reply as soon as you get to a word you respond to emotionally. That’s what children and untrained animals do. Well, not click reply, but if they were blogging, untrained animals would do it just that way, we can be sure. Or not. It’s a figure of speech.
Second step to being relevant is, if you’re using a figure of speech, know how. Also applies to words and their meanings.
The remedy for those incapable of steps one and two is to take the time to research your opinion or your facts before you commit them to text. That’d be steps 1. b) and 2. b).
Step three is the major failing — pick not just something vaguely related to the comment to speak to in your reply, but do the reader and the original author the courtesy of also responding on some main point or points from the original. See, the rambling comments furnish wide-ranging and diverse such touchstones for remarking upon, making my rambling writings easier than most to be ‘sequitur’ about.
If you’re reading with understanding. And writing with it.
Here endeth the lesson.
timg56 | September 9, 2012 at 3:47 pm |
Hate the USA?
You haven’t read or haven’t understood a single thing I’ve written.
The USA is not the insanity of the two years of campaigning leading up to a Presidential election. The USA is not the lies, distortions, contortions, games or manipulations of its politicians and politically active extremists. The USA is not what the rest of the world sees on FoxNews or CNN or in the conventions or in the campaign websites.
I hate that the USA went to Iraq, squandering precious resources and a strategic advantage that should have made victory in Afghanistan certain and pull out sooner because of frankly criminal incompetency in the Executive. I
hate that the USA has the stains of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo and extreme rendition forever etched in the history books.
I hate that the USA is seen as a hater by the rest of the world, and I have zero ammunition to fight that appraisal when I go to fact and evidence for my sources on any level to balance the contumny. Either what the USA has to argue for loving it if one doesn’t know it is out-of-date, or inadequate in the face of the stupidity of vile politickers and bilious talking heads, or obscured under a patriotic fervor that cannot enunciate the reason for that fervency.
If you love America and its servicemen even a little for any reason, you have to hate at least some of what I hate at least a little for some reason.
Thank you for reminding us all to pray for those in wars on foreign shores.
Thank god we have leaders like Akin on issues that require technical knowledge. Without engineer types like him to take a careful look at the science, we’d be left with nothing but those lousy academics who do nothing but create fake studies so they can keep that grant money gravy train rolling.
Why just think how w/o folks that understand engineering quality standards like Akin with his engineering training, we’d still be thinking that women can’t prevent pregnancy if they get illegitimately raped.
And just watch – I will predict that before this thread is done, some “warmist” type will try to claim that there is no such thing as a legitimate rape. Those progressives will say anything to achieve their one-world Government!!!1!!1!!!!!!!!111 intentions.
Guess which one wrote this passage?
“In recent years, there’s been a view in Washington that we should simply “let the market work” by taking a hands-off approach, rather than adopt a proactive and comprehensive set of energy policies. That prescription is exactly the right one in most economic sectors, but it falls short when it comes to energy. And it ignores the fact that we have policies in place right now that distort how the energy markets function.”
“Our own policies interfere with free-market mechanisms. We subsidize domestic oil and gas production with generous tax breaks, penalize sugar-based ethanol from Brazil, and block investment in nuclear energy. Our navy assumes the prime responsibility for securing the oil routes from the Middle East, effectively subsidizing its cost. Thus, we don’t pay the full cost of Middle East oil, either at the oil-company level or at the pump.”
“Market economists also identify a number of externalities – real costs that aren’t captured in the price of fuel – the most frequently cited of which are the health-care costs of pollution and the climate costs of greenhouse gases. There is a further externality: potentially leaving the next generation in the lurch by using so much oil and energy ourselves – domestic and imported – that our children face severe oil shortages, prohibitively expensive fuel, a crippeld economy, and dominion of energy by Russia and other oil-rich states. No matter how you price it, oil is expensive to use; we should be encouraging our citizens to use less of it, our scientists to find alternatives for it, and our producers to find more of it here at home.”
“Many analysts predict that the world’s production of oil will peak in the next ten to twenty years, but oil expert Matt Simmons, author of Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, presents a compelling case that Middle Eastern oil production may have already reached its peak. Simmons bases his contention on his investigation into the highly secretive matter of the level of reserves in the Saudi oil fields. But whether the peak is already past or will be reached within a few years, world oil supply will decline at some point, and no one predicts a corresponding decline in demand. If we want America to remain strong and wish to ensure that future generations have secure and prosperous lives, we must consider our current energy policies in the light of how these policies will affect our grandchidren.”
It was Mitt Romney in his 2010 book, “No Apology; The Case for American Greatness.” pp 232-233.
Guess which one wrote this passage?
“In recent years, there’s been a view in Washington that we should simply “let the market work” by taking a hands-off approach, rather than adopt a proactive and comprehensive set of energy policies. That pre scription is exactly the right one in most economic sectors, but it falls short when it comes to energy. And it ignores the fact that we have policies in place right now that distort how the energy markets function.”
“Our own policies interfere with free-market mechanisms. We subsidize domestic oil and gas production with generous tax breaks, penalize sugar-based ethanol from Brazil, and block investment in nuclear energy. Our navy assumes the prime responsibility for securing the oil routes from the Middle East, effectively subsidizing its cost. Thus, we don’t pay the full cost of Middle East oil, either at the oil-company level or at the pump.”
“Market economists also identify a number of externalities – real costs that aren’t captured in the price of fuel – the most frequently cited of which are the health-care costs of pollution and the climate costs of greenhouse gases. There is a further externality: potentially leaving the next generation in the lurch by using so much oil and energy ourselves – domestic and imported – that our children face severe oil shortages, prohibitively expensive fuel, a crippled economy, and dominion of energy by Russia and other oil-rich states. No matter how you price it, oil is expensive to use; we should be encouraging our citizens to use less of it, our scientists to find alternatives for it, and our producers to find more of it here at home.”
“Many analysts predict that the world’s production of oil will peak in the next ten to twenty years, but oil expert Matt Simmons, author of Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, presents a compelling case that Middle Eastern oil production may have already reached its peak. Simmons bases his contention on his investigation into the highly secretive matter of the level of reserves in the Saudi oil fields. But whether the peak is already past or will be reached within a few years, world oil supply will decline at some point, and no one predicts a corresponding decline in demand. If we want America to remain strong and wish to ensure that future generations have secure and prosperous lives, we must consider our current energy policies in the light of how these policies will affect our grandchidren.”
It was Mitt Romney in his 2010 book, “No Apology; The Case for American Greatness.” pp 232-233.
Market worshippers don’t like hearing about the externalities. Romney better avoid the subject, or say he’s changed his mind.
Oh yeah. He has backpedaled for sure. It would be political suicide for Mitt to publicly discuss what he believes.
It is also possible that his book was ghost-written and he has no actual idea of the contents.
Accusing Romney of back pedaling is like accusing the Titanic of taking on a little water. He’s the most progressive Republican candidate for president since Nixon (who gave us the EPA, wage and price controls…).
Doesn’t matter. This is your guy, and it won’t get any better dear conservatoads.
Romney either believes in peak oil or he is at the mercy of ghost writers.
Or he is either a flip-flopper or a man with no convictions.
At 8:49 AM on 8 September, the execrable WebHubTelescope had his twice-a-day purely coincidental encounter with factual reality when he observed that:
Why not both?
Admittedly, the Romnhoid is owned by people who want the “peak oil” boojum bruited about, but to argue that there’s any possibility that he actually “believes” anything he spouts is patent idiocy.
Fuhgeddabout “ghost writers,” though. The more precise expression is “puppeteers.”
At 1:19 AM on 8 September, Max_OK writes:
Well, us “Market worshippers” (as opposed to the folks who believe with all their hearts that career bureaucrats and arrogant clowns who specialize in winning popularity contests are qualified as infallible, omniscient, and omnibenevolent Masters of the Universe to make all decisions in our division-of-labor society) prefer that “the externalities” be proven HARMFUL before swarms of government thugs are set upon innocent people to cause their electricity, food, heating, and transportation costs to “necessarily skyrocket.”
If anthropogenic atmospheric carbon dioxide is not proven to be the cause of adverse global warming (such trends since 1850 not indicating that we’re going to be getting global average temperatures anywhere near those enjoyed during the Medieval Warm climate optimum by the beginning of the 22nd Century no matter what’s causing it), then what the hell are the alarmists squealing about, and why shouldn’t we dismiss them with extreme prejudice?
The contention that carbon dioxide is pollution is friggin’ preposterous, and those who persist in this contention are either hateful little vermin or fatuous oafs.
In neither case are they to be received seriously.
You sure don’t know much about science. Why do you think your body tries to get rid of CO2 if it isn’t a pollutant?
The air you inhale is about 0.04 % CO2. The air you exhale is about 4% to 5.3%. Did you ever think of what might happen to you if it were the other way around?
Max,
By this statement “Why do you think your body tries to get rid of CO2 if it isn’t a pollutant? ”
You indicate your own level of science literacy is rather low.
The fact CO2 is a byproduct of our metabolic process does not make it a polluntent.
Oy vey.
Max_OK, you demean the Plant Kingdom. Some Entwives are starting to mumble amongst themselves. Reconsider while you can.
===============
timg56 said on September 8, 2012 at 3:31 pm |
“You indicate your own level of science literacy is rather low.
“The fact CO2 is a byproduct of our metabolic process does not make it a polluntent.”
_____
Ha Ha, excuse me, but I gotta laugh.
So I suppose since doo doo is a byproduct of our digestive process, it’s not a pollutant. Tell me that one if you are knee-deep in doo doo.
Too much CO2 is a pollutant. Too much doo doo is a pollutant. That’s just common horse sense.
Kim, I appreciate your fondness for plants.
In many parts of the country crops have suffered from the drought. Perhaps it would be helpful if you and other CO2 fans went to fields and exhaled on the plants.
Max,
You didn’t say “too much”. You said CO2 was a pollutent simply due to the fact the body exhales more than it takes in.
Too much of anything can be considered a pollutnent. Too much oxygen can be hazardous. I recall some Apollo astronauts who died because of it.
As for doo doo – there are cultures who have been using it to fertilize their crops for centuries. Still doing so in some places. Hell, I recall seeing bags of manure for sale at Home Depot. Someone better call the EPA and inform them of this. Can you believe the gall of a corporation selling bags of pollutents to unsuspecting people, just to make a buck.
timg56 said on September 8, 2012 at 4:36 pm |
‘Max,
You didn’t say “too much”. You said CO2 was a pollutent simply due to the fact the body exhales more than it takes in’
_____
Well, you should have known I was doing that just to get your attention.
Doo doo makes good fertilizer if you don’t use “too much.”
CO2 is a pollutant because it harms both the environment as a whole and human welfare specifically.
It has nothing to do with humans exhaling CO2, which is necessary to the cycle of aerobic metabolism.
No compound is intrinsically a pollutant or not a pollutant. Ozone, for example, is a pollutant in the lower atmosphere and a critical and necessary part of the upper atmosphere. It’s the specific circumstances that determine, always. Sola dosis facit venenum.
Please Robert, enlighten us as to how CO2 is harming the environment and human welfare.
CO2 is an ESSENTIAL plant food. Without it we would die.
Increasing CO2 will increase agricultural production, which is critically important to help sustain population growth in the developing world. Converting corn to ethanol directly increases food prices and harms the poor. See CO2Science.org and the Cornwall Alliance.
Max,
Getting my attention is just the starting point. If you want to keep it, you have to do better than simpleton statements like the CO2 pollution one.
Just as soon as your check clears, Scotty. Remedial tutoring isn’t free.
“(such trends since 1850 not indicating that we’re going to be getting global average temperatures anywhere near those enjoyed during the Medieval Warm climate optimum by the beginning of the 22nd Century no matter what’s causing it)”
The Earth is likely already warmer than the medieval warm period. Wonder what reconstruction you are using.
Since this post about the position of the presidential contenders somehow necessitated a mention of the pea brained statement by an obscure Republican congressman on rape, maybe we could include the president’s own support of infanticide? While in the Illinois Senate, Barack Obama opposed a bill that would have required doctors to assist any child born alive after a failed abortion. Our hope-and-changer-in-chief preferred to allow the babies to just be left to lie there and die.
Don’t…stop…thinkin’ about tomorrow…
Unless of course you are one of the most helpless members of society.
Dude – your “obscure” Republican congressman is the chair of the House committee of Science, Technoloy and Space -who spouted totally. unsupported gibberish about medical processes in women.
For once I have to agree with you. Akins’ brain-fart was inexcusable. He needs to take a long walk on a short pier, politically speaking of course.
Josh,
3 words – wah, f…ing wah.
Unless you can can show that you’ve never said something stupid – which all of us here can arttest you can’t prove – quit with the false outrage.
Not outraged, Tim. Not in the least. I think that the Republican head of a House science committee spouting complete gibberish about women’s health is entirely expected, instructive, and useful.
Josh,
It may not have been “complete gibberish” if he was relying on a research paper as the basis for the comment. Misconstruing something is different from uttering some utterly baseless statement based on personal belief.
And if you believe that the head of a committee on science should be expert and completely a knowledgable in every field or endevor that can be tied to “science”, then good luck with that.
tim – please.
If I read some “research paper” that says that a women has control over ovulation, fertilization or implantation of a fertilized egg, I’m thinking that the paper is wacko. If for some reason I felt that it wasn’t totally wacko, I would do a modicum of research and indeed, find that such a claim is completely wacko. Anyone politician wit a smidgeon of respect for science, medicine, women, fetuses, or his constituency would do that minimal amount of follow-up research.
Of course there are all kinds of idiots in Congress and/or cynics who will ignore basic principles of ethics and science to make completely ignorant statements on TV about women’s health. There is no surprise there. That such an idiot/cynic would be the chair of a House science committee is a national embarrassment. That people would offer weak non-defense defenses for someone like that is a shame, IMO. It wasn’t a “brain fart” – it was very much consistent with how politicians exploit religious fundamentalism with no regard for science in for political expediency.
I have no “false outrage” about the issue. Not in the least. As I said – it is entirely to be expected and useful information.
Diminish it all you want by believing that I’m feigning “outrage.” Knock yourself out.
Akin is right to be baffled. He only did what deniers do every day — find some fringe pseudo-expert to spout some ridiculous fact-free babble that he found it politically convenient to believe.
Rape denial and climate denial — two peas in a pod. Why is one socially acceptable and the other not? I’ve taken a stab at analyzing that paradox here:
http://theidiottracker.blogspot.com/2012/08/fighting-climate-denial-akin-line.html
Joshua
Rather than caricature, evaluate what he actually said. See
Jane Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, who writes: Akin not far off base in rape comment
See post above.
David –
Sorry, but anyone who writes something like this:
Is a nutter making plausibly deniable statements for the purpose of political expediency. “Some radical feminists appear to believe……” That’s dreck, David. Garbage. Pure, unadulterated nonsense.
And the concept of non-forcible rape is an embarrassment. Trying to say that statutory rape is not “forced” ignores the entire legal mechanism that protects an adult from excusing rape by arguing that the child wanted to have sex with them.
When someone tries to make a case that correlation = causation without having any scientific evidence of a causal mechanism, then they are engaging in motivated reasoning.
Remember, the number of pirates has decreased as the Earth has warmed. Therefore, should we have head of Congressional science committees speculating on television about a causal mechanism there?
Go team Pastarfarians!
Joshua, “And the concept of non-forcible rape is an embarrassment. ”
If it wasn’t for beer, wine and cocktails, most guys would never get any, especially the married ones.
Why stop there, Gary? Why not just go ahead an tell the whole truth. Someone has to do it.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-help-us-destroy-jesus-and-start-a-new-age-of,29478/?ref=auto
The truth about Obama is more bizarre than anything the Onion could come up with. As shown by his virulent opposition to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.
Joshua
If making a stupid statement meant that someone would no longer be allowed to stay in a position of influence, Joe Biden would have been retired decades ago
Joshua
For the real whole truth, see crimnologist Mike Adams on rape and abortion issues.
Legitimate rape arguments
Romney and the Rapist
Problems Solutions and Tradeoffs
Listen to the audio of Obama supporting infanticide. He also supported partial birth abortion.
President Infanticide: Dem Abortion Platform Does Not Exclude Partial-Birth Abortion
Obama Gives Pro-Abortion Supreme Court Judge Medal of Freedom
Why Obama really voted for infanticide.
Contrast the principles of USC The Declaration of Independence – 1776, mutually required by all States for equal standing in the Union by enabling acts.
Climate and the US election.
Romney seems to have a more flexible approach than Obama. Both are aware of the conflicting scientific advice, but Romney is better prepared prepared to change policies as required. For example, Romney would boost nuclear power. Remember that it was the unexpectedly large tsunami that caused the problems in Japan, when the earthquake struck, the reactor closed down immediately and all would have been ok if the tsunami had not followed. Better design or location would have made it tsunami proof. China has demonstrated that pebble-bed reactors are safer and work well, so the US needs to explore their use. Perhaps joint work with China would have other advantages as well.
From a disinterested party – Romney’s comment have some detail and Obama relies on rhetorical flourishes. As for Romney’s book quoted by webby the unmagnificient…
America is not listed by the international Energy Agency as having subsidies on oil. Tax treatments are a different thing entirely and up to individual countries. Protecting trade routes are why you have a navy for God’s sake. Times move on – liquid fuels are projected to increase through 2035 as alternative sources continue to come on line as this graph from the Economist blog shows. I would bring the rhetoric up to date – something about the traditional innovation of the American entrepeneur
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=Aamericnoiluse.png
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/01/american-energy-trends
Other than that it seems entirely reasonable. Wouldn’t mention ‘externalities’ though. A bit over the heads of most of the electorate including webby and max.
They object when I call them pissant progressives or cult of AGW space cadets – but the logic seems to be free of cognitive check points. This is where you do a bit of research and check the numbers, you then ask yourself if it passes the internal consistency check, you then do a meta check on epistemic, stochastic and moral uncertainty. If all else fails you go with your gut and check the language – is it right for the audience – and spelling. All this for a blog comment. I usually get a bit bored by this stage and indulge in high falutin’ and convoluted syntax and big words – just cause it’s fun.
They just seem to speak whatever comes into their squeaky little pinheads. I really think they are space cadets.
‘The exact origins of a space cadet are unknown but rumor has it that their home planet was destroyed due to pollution caused by poor house keeping. Following this disaster they proceeded to disperse themselves throughout the universe and litter the gene pool. Space cadets are known for their poor skills in common sense areas such as coordination, food preparation, basic cleaning and processing simultaneous coherent thoughts.’ Urban Dictionary
For all you sinophilic fans of China’s “state run capitalistic” system (you know, fascism)…
http://thediplomat.com/2012/09/07/are-chinese-banks-hiding-the-mother-of-all-debt-bombs/
It’s only a matter of time before the Chinese economic paper tiger collapses under the weight of its centrally planned debt and housing bubbles, ghost cities, and wide spread civil unrest.
I agree, and it won’t be pretty for anyone, either inside or outside China. This kind of thing is the habit of China.
I thought that the habit of China was the Mao (or Zhongshan) suit.
Global Warming Hype a Toga Worn by Leftists and Crooks
This struck me:
>> On election date in Nov, however, I suspect that not a single vote will be cast that is based primarily on either candidate’s stance on climate change.
Say what? You may think that it’s not the primary issue for most voters, and that would be entirely reasonable.
But to think that there NO-ONE AT ALL who considers climate to be the primary issue is bizarre; heck (excuse me) it’s downright delusional.
Significant numbers of people are driven by one particular issue. It might be gun control, or drug laws, or health, or science education, or climate. Given the number of people with extremely strong views on climate (including both those who think it is the single most important issue facing humanity today, and those who think it is a grand hoax concealing some major conspiracy or hidden agenda; to pick two extremes), it’s a dead certainty that there will be people who make this the primary issue for deciding their vote. Not to even see the existence of people who will choose to make this the primacy issue for their vote is just weird.
I am pretty sure that a significant number of people will make it one of the major considerations, and that some small but non-trivial number will make it the primary consideration above anything else; and that this will include both those who accept and those who reject the proposition that human activity is directly causing the planet to heat up.
I do agree that most people are likely to have other issues as being more important. But not all, not by any means.
The presidential candidates are still treating it like a back-burner issue
My take on this is neither of them wishes to go there; it can only hurt them by alienating part of their support, no matter what they say.
If you were a presidential candidate, what would you say? If you say CAGW is a hoax, you will get lots of boos and be shouted down. If you say it is a real problem, what are you going to propose as a solution that won’t upset a lot of people (a realistic solution, not a symbolic one)?
Both candidates would be better off saying “we are looking into it” and leave it at that. Neither is going to use the Bjørn Lomborg approach, but that would also be a reasonable way to finesse it, although still risky for the candidate.
Even the Lomborg approach would still fail. The Climate change topic is political poison, neither will go there. When the televised presidential dabate happens, I’ll bet the moderator will ask the climate question but it will be interesting to watch how both candidates skirt the question. Its a no win for either of them.
At 3:12 AM on 8 September, Diag had asked:
If I were a presidential candidate, I’d stick to my best appreciation of the AGW boondoggle, and call it the bletcherous fraud it’s been since at least the mid-1980s.
if the candidate of the Red Faction were Ron Paul – as it well might have been had the “establishment” not schemed him out of the nomination – his opinion is on record (Fox Business, Nov. 4, 2009) as follows:
But neither the Etch-A-Sketch nor the Kenyan Keynesian will be that opinion about the matter, because a “carbon tax” could raise $1.5 trillion for our federal government.(see the report [PDF] uttered by Rausch and Reilly this past August).
Republican or National Socialist, Red or Blue, salt water or fresh….
Well, “it” floats.
bletcherous and frenulum
That’s twice today I learned a new word. Neither were contained in my local copy of the Princeton Wordnet database. That doesn’t happen frequently and usually not twice in one day. Thank you.
Centrally planned policies failed in the past in China, China’s 5 year plans to develop heavy industry at the expense of light industry were one failure, the next, the spectacular failure of ‘The Great Leap Forward,’ Mao’s utopean, ideological experiment to develop agriculture without investing much capital. This was done by setting up communes and uniting leaders and mass participation, increasing central control and eliminating bourgeois thinking or technological knowledge. Yer know the result of that. Of course China today does exploit technical know how but maybe the Abeline syndome …?
It’s funny that, not so long ago, liberal watermelons in the US were pointing to China as THE model of government. Government run by a committee of engineers. (Well, I guess it’s better than a government run by a committee of academics, but I digress.) So what do the watermelons think of China’s “planned” economy now? If it weren’t for the introduction of some capitalism there, the serf rebellion would already be under way. Funny, that.
If you think that no votes will rest on climate change policy you are blind to the power of Green politics. The environment movement is large and lound. Why do you imagine they won’t vote according to their values?
Green parties have emerged worldwide precisely because the major political parties thought like you. Green parties proved them wrong.
I know a number of people who will vote for Obama largely because his climate policy is about deployment, whereas the Repubs are about procastination. The Dem’s policy is smart because it is just enough to get the environmental vote but probably not enough to deter the middle ground. It doesn’t matter what Repubs think ‘cos they weren’t going to vote for Obama anyway.
The Republican policy leaves environmental voters nowhere to go but Obama.
Environmental voters are not a tiny minority. A March Gallup poll found that the majority of Americans (65%) want mandatory controls on greenhouse gas emissions. There’s a partison divide with 82% of Democrats favor it, cf only 50% of Republicans.
At 4:15 AM on 8 September, Beekin had written:
Even were this issue left unmentioned by either wing of the great Boot On Your Neck Party, the ‘viros would vote the straight National Socialist Democrat American Party (NSDAP) ticket in every election.
They’re not accurately characterized as Watermelons (“green on the outside, but red to the core”) for nothing.
Watermelons ! Oh boy, I love watermelon. Just give me a big watermelon, a shaker of salt, and a fork, and I’m in heaven. My favorite is the Black Diamond, but it may be a heritage melon now.
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party, NSDAP).
At 3:27 PM on 8 September, Pooh, Dixie posted (in total):
…which gives me to recall that in the years of their growth in the 1920s and ’30s, the German NSDAP’s Sturmabtielung (SA) recruited heavily from among the many Communist Party bully boys prowling the streets of Deutschland‘s cities.
Minor political rivalries aside, they were all good socialists, right?
Those ex-Communist stalwarts were referred to as “beefsteaks.”
Y’know. Brown on the outside, red on the inside.
And perhaps a little fatty ’round the edges.
Reminds me of some of the posters here who seem brown all the way through.
The commies must have been shocked when those “beef steaks” started attacking them.
I was once struck by a flying pork chop.
In the same poll 65% favored opening federally owned land to oil exploration.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/153803/Americans-Endorse-Various-Energy-Environment-Proposals.aspx
Moreover, Gallup stated that public support is moving in the direction away from concern about these issues:
If you want to see how much less the historical answers to the poll questions going back to 2001 are here:
http://www.gallup.com/file/poll/153815/Environmental%20Proposals.pdf
For instance favoring CO2 emission regs in 2001 was 74%, peaked at 79% in 2007, and is down to 65% today. Until the economy is repaired you’re losing hearts and minds. People are willing to trade economic output for environmental protection (even misguided protection) only so far as they feel there’s an economic surplus not critically needed elsewhere.
Last I’d point out this is a random survey of about 1000 adults 18 or more years old rather than registered voters or likely voters. Likely voters are the only ones that really matter if you’re interested in policy direction.
The question isn’t presented properly which expains why the polls and the actions politicians are willing to take are so distinct. The question should be presented as: do you want mandatory controls on CO2 and are you willing to pay $2.00 more per gallon of gasoline in order to force you to use less.
You don’t understand the US system. See comment ^^^. The greens are already welded to the Democrats. Nobody’s going to pulled in that direction who’s not already there.
Loud they might be but I suspect greens are doomed for sociological reasons. They are inherently an extreme fringe – not to mention spectacularly incompetent at understanding let alone achieving environmental outcomes. The world is not warming for a decade or 2 more at least – so this will doom them for a start.
But there seem to be other social undercurrents. I heard an ‘educator’ on the radio today talking about declining environmental science enrollments. She said the students talked about doom courses and courses where you might actually get a job and a future. There are actually plenty of jobs because of government green tape. I run a team of young environmental scientists. Believe me – none of them approve very much of greenies.
I was vice-president of the Jervis Bay Protection Committee long ago. When I told my team they were a bit incredulous and asked me if I had chained myself to a bulldozer. Well no – but we did stop an Australian/US navy exercise by sending the greenies onto the bombing range. It was a win/win situation. Heads we win – tails we win.
Greens are currently at about 8% of the vote in the latest polls. It must be pretty similar in the US.
JFI
In the last UK General Election , the Green Party recorded 1.0% of the total vote and won 1 parliamentary seat out of 650.
My feeling is that that number would not increase if there were another election today. Greenness is no longer on the national political agenda. Stopping wind farms is where the rising tide of local activism is nowadays.
Latimer,
Readers not from the UK may be interested to know that the single parliamentary seat won by the Greens at the last election, which you offer as evidence of declining interest in green issues, was the first parliamentary seat the Green Party has ever won and that given our electoral system it was a remarkable achievement.
And readers not from the UK might also reflect that achieving a grand total of only 1% of the national vote does not suggest a substantial political force.
@andrew adams
And to complete the perspective of teh UK 2010 general election.
Aside from the three major poliltical parties. the avowedly envirosceptical UKIP achieved 3.1% and increased its vote by about as many as the total Green party vote, the neofacsist BNP achieved 1.9% and the Scottish Nationalists polled 1.7%.
The Greens were seventh with their 1.0%. The Greens are not a major political force in UK.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2010#Results
US is not even close to Austrailia in Green Party members. The US Green Party rarely has enough members to get on the ballot. I was initially going to write that a Green Party in the US doesn’t even exist but, unlike many commenters here, I check my assumptions first. Somewhat to my surprise there is a US Green Party. There are 133 Green Party members holding elected office in the United States out of nearly 500,000 elected officials at all levels of government. That’s 0.03% of all elected office holders.
GO GREEN !
Max,
That’s a sentiment that will make you popular in Oregon. Elsewhere it make get you labeled as a looney.
Robert Ellison,
Leads me to wonder:
Were you an activist at Jervis Bay in about 1971?
Are you responsible for Australia’s CO2 emissions being higher than they would have been?
…
Did you stop nuclear power in Australia?
:)
Peter
About 10 years later and the issue was a navy base in Jervis Bay. The committee was a hangover from the old days – moribund and dominated by hippies when we did a coup. My joke with the greenies on the bombing range was either the exercise is stopped or they bomb hell out of the greenies. Too subtle? Never mind.
The dinosaur nuclear designs of the 1970’s had intrinsic risks and very low fuel efficiency. Decommissioning and waste management are still problems that are unsolved without a new generation of technology.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html
http://www.ga.com/energy/em2/
The EM2 proposal from General Atomics is another advancement smaller, much simpler and efficient, intrinsically safe designs under development for decades. It can use waste, uranium, thorium, weapons materials. Drop it in a concrete bunker of and run it for 20 to 30 years – then pull out the entire unit and take it back to the factory.
Cheers
Whoops – I am not very good at this sockpuppet thing.
Robert Ellison
I’ve responded to your comment but it has been caught in moderation. I posted it at the end of the thread (top level of the comment structure) so there is more room for responses. It should appear here when it is released from moderation:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/09/07/climate-change-and-u-s-presidential-politics/#comment-237400
Robert Ellison,
@ September 8, 2012 at 5:20 pm
Thank you for your reply. Yes. Too subtle. Sorry, I misinterpreted your comment. I was thinking you were probably one of the many who were ‘Socialist’ when young and gullible and became ‘Conservative’ when older and wiser. Winston Churchill is reported to have said:
I thought you might have been one of them.
Chief
In the last US presidential election, Green candidates finished with 0.56% of the votes.
This time, Green Party candidates, Jill Stein (President) and Cheri Honkala (VP) are on the ballot in 35 states.
http://www.jillstein.org/
Whether the Greens will do much better than last time is anyone’s guess, but IMO it appears unlikely that they will get much more than 1% of the votes.
The US Green Party has a far left platform, which is not very attractive to US voters. Besides, the US two-party system makes it hard for any “splinter” parties to do very ell in elections.
Tiny Switzerland has a multi-party system, with “left”, “center” and “right” parties. The Greens are doing so well that they have split up into two parties:
The “Green Party” (left of the Social Democrats and against all industry, motor transportation, nuclear or fossil fuel power generation, etc.) with roughly 7% of the popular vote in the last parliamentary elections.
The “Green Liberal Party” (more for a free market economy, generally pro-industry, but against nuclear or fossil fuel power generation) with roughly 6% of the vote.
So “green” ain’t necessarily “red” in Switzerland, as it is in the USA (and many other places).
Max
I did not know that about Jill Stein. I think her campaign should get some help from Matt Drudge and Fox News. Marginalized warmists, sore from being thrown under the bus so many times, would probably like an alternative when they go into the booth in November.
Europeans need to understand that the non-parliamentary nature of the US system makes third parties all but impossible. It’s built into the mechanics of the system. The two major parties aren’t really parties, they’re permanent coalitions.
The real measure of how strong a movement is how much power they wield in the respective party. The greens represent the wealthy demographic of the Democrat party. I would guesstimate that maybe 30% of Democrats consider the environment to be top priority, but there’s no good way to accurately measure this.
Nice to see Instapundit got my email…
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/?s=jill+stein
“I predict that not one single vote in the presidential election will be determined by the candidates’ positions on climate change.”
Massive fail! Here’s one (of thousands, I predict!) Obama voter who will be holding his nose at election time and voting Republican for the first time.
What’s the single reason for this switch? Climate change policies wrestling the Western world into a command economy.
You’re not the only one. I’m not a big fan of Romney but I plan to vote for him. Obama is too full of air headed promises to win my vote again, like suggesting his being elected will begin to slow ocean rise and heal the planet, OMG!
That’s space cadet talk.
“That’s space cadet talk.”
Or Moses megalomania.
or his being smart enough to recognize that such a meager bone is all he has to throw earth loving, green, enviroloonies to get them to vote for him.
But do you classify that as a vote based on climate change, or a vote based on the economy? The economy is the top priority, the environment is the bottom according to polls. I suspect that many Democrats are going to cross over like you for economic reasons, not environmental reasons. OTOH, practically nobody is going to cross over the other way, because that implies placing the environment above the economy in priority.
This is a climate change stance switch. I am an engineer, for god’s sake. And I thought four years ago that a man with Obama’s intelligence would never let the greenies on the bridge to steer the ship. Silly me.
I highly doubt that. I am estimating it to be millions, if not tens of millions.
As a lifelong Democrat – I can’t help but tell you how deeply concerned I am about Obama’s view on climate change. I agree with him on every single other issue. I disagree with Romney’s policies on every other issue. But this single issue will have me going for Mittens on election day.
Josh,
There’s a saying about how one Oh sh*t equals ten atta boys. In this case I have to say you have turned that equation on it’s head. Atta boy Josh.
The filter on this blog is bonkers
I can’t agree. I think it is more likely to be millions, if not tens of millions.
As a life long Democrat, am very “concerned” about Obama’s policies on climate change. I agree with him on every other issue and disagree with Romney on every other issue; but climate change policy will have me voting for Mittens on election day. All my friends, family, and acquaintances feel the same way.
We are all very “concerned.”
Dear Joshua: For a guy who has never heard of Al Gore’s passion for corn ethanol, I find you very thoughtful. But we will both lose on this issue. The only way Obama can get reelected is Romney’s support, and he has it.
Since the question referred to climate change only, not anthropogenic climate change, the question was loaded from the outset. So much for ‘science debate.org’ as an unbiased organization.
I did an undergrad in science, my profs drove pure old style science into our heads month after month. And they were correct to do so. There would have been no way for me to arrive at an anthropogenic driven cause for climate change based on a marginal increase in CO2, at least not by using the old style of science I was taught.
What has happened to science since then?
It breaks my heart, it truly does.
“There would have been no way for me to arrive at an anthropogenic driven cause for climate change based on a marginal increase in CO2, at least not by using the old style of science I was taught.”
The evidence for the anthropocentric driver of climate is quite overwhelming. The forcing from the CO2 increase, as calculated from empirical measures such as atmospheric/lab experiments and observations is larger than any other known forcing.
For example the solar forcing of the Sun and it’s 11 year cycle is relatively tiny compared to that of the human caused CO2 forcing.
lolwot
Bravo!
You have recited the CAGW dogma, like reading it out of a catechism .
But you have not cited the specific empirical scientific evidence to support the dogma (this empirical evidence does not exist to date).
Then, to make matters worse, you have equated total “solar forcing” with measurable “solar irradiance”. How silly!
In doing so, you appear to have totally overlooked past periods of extreme cold (during the LIA) which concurred with periods of very low solar activity (Dalton and Maunder minima).
Face it, lolwot, your “belief” in your statements of faith is more dogmatic than rational, in the scientific sense..
Max
Cite your data.
Ray G
Lolwot has not done so to date ((i.e. he has not cited empirical scientific data supporting the CAGW premise).
It is doubtful that he ever will (simply because these data do not exist).
So he will continue to dodge, weave and side-step.
One of his favorite side-steps is to bloviate on about Arctic sea ice extent.
But this evasion of the basic question is becoming apparent to everyone here.
Max
lolwot | September 8, 2012 at 6:41 am | Reply
“The evidence for the anthropocentric driver of climate is quite overwhelming.”
Some people’s children are easily overwhelmed.
lolwot you write “The evidence for the anthropocentric driver of climate is quite overwhelming. The forcing from the CO2 increase, as calculated from empirical measures such as atmospheric/lab experiments and observations is larger than any other known forcing.”
I am not sure how much of this is weasel wording. Yes, there is empirical data for the increase in FORCING but the physics of how much this forcing increases global temperatures is purely hypothetical. There is absolutely no empirical data whatsoever that proves that when CO2 is added to the atmosphere from recent levels, it causes global temperatures to rise. Zero, nada, zilch. I have asked over and over again from the proponents of CAGw who are denizens of Climate Etc. to provide the peer reviewed reference which proves, empirically, that adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes global temperatures to rise. No-one has provided one. All the data we have from the 20th and 21st centuries, and there isn’t very much, indicates that exactly the opposite is true. And there is other data which goes further back in time, which gives the same indication. That adding CO2 to the atmosphere has a negligible effect on global temperatures, and that, therefore, the total climate sensitivity of CO2 is indistinguishable from zero.
I am sorry, lolwot, your apparent claim, when we remove the weasel wording, has no basis in any empirical data whatsoever.
I agree. Injecting “overwhelming” into your presentation (or non-presentation in this case) of evidence just means the evidence doesn’t speak for itself, and needs to be dressed up with yet more poetry.
Yes The View From Here is “breathtaking” and the Home Run was “unbelieveable” and Your Girlfriend looks “fantastic” tonight…
Andrew
lolwot, do you have a link to the lab experiments that prove that adding a few hundred ppm of carbon dioxide to a replica of the earth’s atmosphere causes it to warm?
I know that these experiments must have been done, but I just can’t find them.
Surely the results of these experiments are a first step in understanding CAGW (if they do show warming). But not conclusive evidence because of all the positive and negative feedbacks that occur in the real world.
However, if they showed no warming (despite the addition of CO2), then it would eliminate CO2 from the equation and we would have nothing to worry about.
Thanks in advance
Mark
You can find them yourself with a google search, easily.
Remember that carbon dioxide behaves as certain way as determined by the laws of physics whether it is in the lab or in the atmosphere.
As shown by your use of the fake straw man “CAGW,” you have already realized that the real theory of AGW is proven. If you would like help in advancing your “understanding” of AGW, much is available. But of course your ignorance of the science does not imply scientists’ ignorance
Why don’t you trust the radiative transfer models developed by physicists, verified by observations, and used by engineers?
Jim D, you write “Why don’t you trust the radiative transfer models developed by physicists, verified by observations, and used by engineers?”
Speakimg personally, I do trust radiative transfer models, and when you double the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, a figure of around 3.7 Wm-2, even though it cannot be actually measured, seems to be a reasonable figure. However, the ways in which it is claimed that a change in global temperatures can be obtained from this change in forcing are purely hypothetical, and can never be measured. So there is absolutely no empirical data to prove that as you add CO2 to the atmopshere, it causes global temperatures to rise. Such little actual empirical data as we have, and it is not very much, gives a strong indication that the total climate sensitivity of CO2 is indistinguishable from zero
So nobody can provide me with a link to the experiments that lolwot is talking about?
Speaking of old style science it occured to me that the post-modern shift from empirical evidence to hypothetical model outputs might trace its beginning back to when the use of electronic calculators began to be allowed during math exams.
What has happened to science since then?
It got better?
andrew adams
define “better”
Max
JC – posted a link to Todd Akin’s web page. Interesting. Who could disagree with any of that?
http://akin.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=20&Itemid=16
An article on the decline in Arctic sea ice appeared on the BBC yesterday. Before comments were closed it rapidly attained 850 comments. It’s interesting sorting the comments by highest and lowest rated. It looks like in the UK at least the population is largely able to understand the threat of CAGW and vote down those who deny it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19508906
Wot ?!! … LOL !!
There’s his evidence … comments on a BBC programme
I have despaired long ago
lolwot,
Arctic ice is melting. So far so good.
Understanding the “threat” – help me out here. Exactly what is the threat? Who is the threatened party by all of this melted ice? W Which islands or low lying coast areas have gone missing? Disappeared under water? Were are the the climate refugees (doesn’t have to be 50 million – 50,000 will do. Hell, show me 50). Let’s not limit the question to human threats, how about identifying any of the species which have disappeared or are threatened with extinction?
Our hostess writes “And hopefully we can stop this silly anti-science, denier rhetoric which is way past its ‘use by’ date.”
Would someone like to translate this for me into a clear statement. I am a denier of CAGW. Am I being accused by our hostess of “silly anti-science, denier rhetoric”, in the posts I have made on Climate Etc with regard to the complete lack of empirical data to support the hypothesis of CAGW?
I think she’s saying the use of the label “anti-science/denier” is rhetoric that isn’t useful, not that anti-science deniers aren’t useful.
Thanks, lolwot.
IMS sea ice has broken it’s record low. Some climate deniers were clinging to this obscure IMS product when they found it in an effort to deny the arctic sea ice decline, pushing it as the one “true” product that showed what they wanted to believe.
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/09/record-dominoes-10-ims-sea-ice-extent.html
lolwot, See http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ Antarctic sea ice extent is well above the same sort of average that is used to claim that Arctic sea ice is, somehow, at unprecedented levels. I have asked this question many times, and no-one seems to know the answer. How do CO2 molecules know the difference between the North and South Poles? I know I frame this question in a facetious way, but it has a very real science behind it. Why is the Antarctic not being affected by CAGW the way the Arctic is supposed to be?
Jim Cripwell
lolwot is talking about “regional” warming (Arctic) rather than “global” warming.
Then he uses his “regional” example to make claims of rampant “global” warming.
It’s the old shell and pea game.
Max
Max, you write “It’s the old shell and pea game.”
I agree with you Max. But here we come to a much more important issue. lolwot, with nothing to do with the subject of this thread, brings up the irrelevance to CAGW of the large melting of Arctic sea ice this year. We point out to her/him that there is no science to connect this with CAGW. Will she/he apologise for this unwarranted initial posting? None of the proponents of CAGW EVER seem to acknowledge that there might just have been something a little wrong in what they wrote.
lolwot should explain how this is causing Arctic ice to melt:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_Aug_2012.png
Jim,
The Antarctic is a huge land mass, the Arctic is open sea. Why would they be expected to be affected in the same way?
I’m waiting for him to explain what the threat is. The fact it is melting may be evidence of a warming planet – I’m ready to accept that – but it is insufficient to support claims of a threat existing.
lolwot – that is a regional phenomenon. The AMSU lower trop temp is not extraordinary.
Romney’s statement appears to me to be more reasoned and less dogmatic that that of Obama. Both are in favor of government-supported basic research programs.
It boils down to “let’s make sure we have all the information before we rush into actions whose efficacy in solving the postulated problem as well as unintended consequences we cannot yet foresee” (Romney) versus “the science is settled – my administration will make sure that we act now with major government initiatives before it’s too late” (Obama).
As I said, as a rational skeptic of the CAGW premise, I favor Romney’s approach. I also think it makes more sense for the US voter.
My opinion, of course.
Max
At 7:11 AM on 8 September, manacker had correctly observed:
The Romnhoid’s statement is Red Faction weaseling typical of the “progressive” RINO (back in 1964, we used to call such critters “Rockefeller Republicans”). They’re every bit as much inclined to “big government” and violation of the Constitution as are their good buddies on the other side of the aisle.
Gives cause to consider why there’s any kind of “government-supported basic research programs” in any way at all.
As I’ve kept emphasizing in this and other online fora, government in our representative republic is an agency of sharply limited purpose, and it all reduces to the good old phrase “breaking things and killing people.”
Read the first few paragraphs of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776), in which he states:
To the extent that “basic research” might conduce to military advantage in achieving “security being the true design and end of government” pointed out by Paine, the allocation of government funds to some programs of research can be justified.
Maybe.
But consider the federal government’s intervention in the marketplace of higher education following World War II and throughout the Cold War. The “Boffin War” experiences of these conflicts demonstrated that numbers of STEM-trained college graduates and products of postgraduate education in these disciplines were of great military advantage in all senses – strategic, operational, and tactical.
Ergo, a program to support the education of people in the sciences, in technology, engineering, and mathematics, could be reasonably considered a “defense” function, and therefore a legitimate action undertaken on the part of our government goons-in-office to improve the security of our republic.
So why the hell is the federal Department of Education managing student loans and scholarships for vast numbers of students in other disciplines – English Literature and Sociology and “Education” and the various bafflegab politically correct “Studies” crap?
We’ve been watching the production of a generation of college graduates emerging with back-breaking debt who can’t find gainful employment in their academic specializations.
Baccalaureate burger flippers.
For decade after decade, “big science” in the academic setting has depended almost entirely upon government grant funding, which is the principle driver of all the politicization we’ve seen throughout, emphasis glaringly upon “climate science” since the catastrophic “We’re All Gonna Die!” caterwauling of the anthropogenic global warming fraud began to show third-rate academics “the way to promotion an’ pay.”
There needs to be a hellacious re-thinking of all “government-supported basic research programs,” and a massive de-funding of any such work that does not proximally and materially improve the U.S. federal government’s ability to successfully wage war “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Dr. Curry, I am shocked by your closing crack about “silly anti-science, denier rhetoric which is way past its ‘use by’ date,” which appears to refer to CAGW skepticism. Calling for a no regrets policy is the political way of expressing skepticism. It means nothing should be done that assumes CAGW is true. That is, there would be no regretful harm if it turns out to be false, which certainly implies that it may be false.
I for one intend to keep up my active resistence to CAGW mania. If you consider that to be silly anti-science, denier rhetoric, then I am simply sorry for you. I also plan to vote based on these climate policies, so that is at least one vote. Some people still care strongly about this issue, because the political threat of CAGW is still very real. If Romney wins I want to see the scientific debate finally carried out In the Federal Executive branch, especially within NSF.
JC comment: you misinterpret my statement. My gripe is about people that use terms ‘denier’ and ‘anti-science’ to label rational skepticism. Looks like I better clarify my post.
David Wojick
As I read Judith’s remark it is an expression of shock toward the use of the “silly” expressions “anti-science” and “denier” to categorize those who happen to be rationally skeptical of the CAGW premise.
And I fully agree with her that these categorizations are “silly and shocking” and way “past their use date”.
[But we still read blogs here by the “CAGW faithful” using this “silly rhetoric”].
Max
David
Just noticed that lolwot has cleared this point up above to Jim Cripwell.
It’s the use of the silly rhetoric that our hostess finds shocking, as I also interpreted it.
Max
Thanks Max and JC, my mistake. I apologise for it. Should have known better.
Wojick, considering how long you’ve been commenting here it’s a pretty sad testament to your ability to make objective observations that you’d think Curry was calling “deniers” silly. Clearly anyone with the least understanding of her position knew she meant that derisive rhetoric such as “denier” aimed at CAGW doubters is “silly” and counterproductive. Either you’re dense or paranoid or both.
That is why I was shocked. But mine was the plain reading of the original sentence which referred to denier rhetoric. The term “anti-science denier” should at least have been in quotation marks. Logicians have trouble reading between the lines, as it were. We tend to be a literal bunch.
And sometimes I don’t word things very well. This is the advantage of online dialogue, we can sort through all this and misinterpretations can easily be corrected.
I like it the way it is. I think the psychologists would term it a “Freudian slip.” ;)
The peposition and the subordinate clause makes the meaning evident. Did you scan only part of the sentence David?
The intention of Judith’s comment was clear to me.
Here in Canada, abortion in politics is known as a “third rail” issue. The “third rail” is the electrified one; touch it and you are dead. I wonder whether CAGW may be starting to have the status as a “third rail” issue in US politics.
One can only hope! Sadly that is not the status in California where I live.
Another third rail is peak oil. Substituting AGW as an issue for PO is actually a well-known strategy for talking around the implications.
Issue voters look at AGW as a problem to be solved and understand that potential solutions exist.
Issue voters look at peak oil and become reminded of their own mortality. Like discussing death, there is no solution to the problem. Non-renewable resources are a fact of life and there is no easy way out.
Just look at what happens when I mention the topic on this comment board. All the cornucopians come out of the woodwork and try to marginalize the message. Commenters from England will emerge and suggest that the British have long known about their own problem of rapidly declining crude oil production, and that I am just stating the obvious. Well, if it is so obvious and pre-ordained, why not consider it in discussions?
Just ask Stephen Chu. Ask Mitt Romney. Ask just about anybody that brings it up in a political context. The message is that of The Fight Club. One does not mention The Fight Club.
Web,
You wish peak oil were a third rail issue.
It’s more like a dirt road in the next county.
It is hard to take a bone from a dog.
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=4730
Marginalizing it’s significance won’t work. If it is not a highly charged topic, then it certainly is economically vital. Old people like you took what you wanted and you don’t care what’s left for the next generation.
As John Kenneth Galbraith once said:
How do you like them apples?
Web,
If your point was the issue of peak oil being economically vital, why didn’t you say that. Since the world still runs on oil last time I checked, that is a point I would not argue. But that isn’t what you said. I’ll stand by my analogy of the issue as being far more accurate than yours of it being a third rail – which is a political reference, not an economic one.
And “old people like …” me? man, that hurts. How old do you think I am? Though maybe the better question is what do you consider old.
As for the next generation, mankind’s entire history has shown that future generations tend to be better off than those that came before them. That is certainly true of the industrial age. You might agree with someone like David Arpell who apparently thinks Americans should copy the Chinese, with their carbon footprint that’s 37% of ours. My response – feel free. Just don’t try to force the rest of us to adopt the lifestyle of the average Chinese peasant.
Rapidly losing traction in UK.
Follow the link to read the FT’s latest thoughts
http://www.thegwpf.org/janan-ganesh-cameron-fells-green-politics/
People’s response to comments here suggest the opposite.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19508906
You seem determined that non-UK based posters here look to you to be the voice of the rest of us when it’s quite clear that you’re hugely biased. FFS, linking to GWPF? At least when I link to the BBC I am referring to comments to the website from all sides (BTW, note the ‘skeptics’ are heavily outnumbered. If they are really the only informed and active folk in the UK, why are those concerned about AGW so numerous?)
@louise
Grow up.
The FT is behind a paywall. You cannot read the article I suggested without buying a sub. I do not have that kind of money. Maybe you do. If so, mosey down to the newsagent and but today’s copy. Look for the article by Janan Ganesh.
But the GWPF helpfully provide free direct links to individual articles from the papers. Try it and see….you will not find yourself supping with the Devil Incarnate, nor even Nigel Lawson (ex UK Finance Minister) himself.
But if you are still too frightened to do so let me give you the money quote
from the Financial Times (not the GWPF)
‘It has not eluded the chancellor’s notice that the percentage of voters who rank the environment as an important issue has fallen to low single figures’
‘Low single figures’ suggests to me 5% or below. Not a big force to be reckoned with.
Get used to it. Greenery is dead in UK.
Latimer – would you expect GWPF to link to it if they didn’t support their position? Perhaps the FT also had an answering commentary but we’ll never know ‘cos GWPF wouldn’t post that would they?
However, the point is, you said that environmental concerns are “Rapidly losing traction in the UK” and posted one man’s opinion as proof of that. I posted a link to a BBC site where the comments from ‘Joe Public’ (remember him?) can be seen to be overwhelmingly concerned about environmental issues.
Yet you still claim to speak for the UK…
That was probably Latie commenting as “Joe Public” :) :)
About Cameron. the opinion piece quotes:
That is basically it. The UK is growing increasingly desperate in their search for energy sources. They were given a reprieve from 1980 to 2010 when all the North Sea crude sources came online. But now that those supplies have reached a peak and started a massive decline (just like British coal before that), the citizenry and the political establishment have started to look for easy shortcuts to keep BAU in place. Dropping fuel duties will increase the levels of imported oil while keeping priced down.
Of course jettisoning green environmental policies is an easy shortcut in desperate times. The sad fact is that they are cutting their own throat, because green thinking is tied to non-renewable energy strategies. Look to Scotland, where they actually have some thinkers with foresight.
@louise
As far as I can see, there is no poster called ‘Joe Public’ on the BBC website. So I can’t quite see the point of your remarks.
Sure, If I go to look at the comments on CiF in the Guardian, I will see plenty of pro-Green posts. But that, in part, is because all the sceptical commentators (like myself) have been banned for some unspecified transgression of the rules. And to comment at the BBC you are required not just to have an e-mail ID as here, but a special BBC ID. Which takes a bit more getting hold of. It is self-evident that thise who sign up are likely to be more activ(ist) than the general population since they are prepared to jump through that particular hoop.
I make no claim to ‘speak for the UK’. But merely point out what is going on. For example, the latest British Social Attitudes research from last year showed that interest in green issues had declined in the last decade:
• Since 2000 the number of people prepared to pay higher prices to safeguard the environment has fallen, from 43 to 26 per cent. So too has the proportion willing to pay much higher taxes to protect the environment, from 31 to 22 per cent.
• Support has fallen among all income groups. Just over a third (36 per cent) of those in the highest earning households (in 2010 defined as those with household income of over £44,000) would be willing to pay higher prices to protect the environment, down from 52 per cent in 2000.
The report also finds that people are more sceptical about the credibility of scientific research on global warming:
• Under half the population (43 per cent) currently considers rising temperatures caused by climate change to be very dangerous for the environment, down from 50 per cent in 2000.
Alison Park, lead editor of the report at NatCen Social Research, comments: “Climate change doubts and Britain’s recent economic difficulties have combined to downgrade people’s environmental concerns.
“Appetite for protecting the environment declines further where it involves lifestyle change and personal cost. ‘
And even my local favourite greenie – once a tub-thumping advocate of the Transition Towns movement which, according to him, was going to Save the World is in some despair as that misguided but well-meaning effort has degenerated into quilt weaving and pointless philosophical gabfests.
You may wish it were otherwise. You may be the last in the UK willing to man (or woman) the barricades of Militant Greendom. You may be driven bonkers that nobody in the street wishes to join you in living in an organic yurt and shivelling sh*t on your veggies. But to ignore that fact is even more misguided than to want to do it in the first place.
And shooting the messenger ain’t going to change anything. Get over it.
WHT on British coal: back in the 60s and 70s Britain produced lots of coal. But it cost five times the price of imported Polish coal, partly because mineworkers got five times the average male manual wage and because they went on strike frequently. The fall in production was largely by choice of Maggie Thatcher after the miners’ union tried to bring down the government by stopping coal and power production for months. It made no economic sense for Britain to mine so much coal, and there might still be plenty of uneconomic coal in the ground.
Louise,
Surely you don’t believe the BBC is objective and unbiased on CAGW, do you?
Surely you don’t think the contributers to and followers of the BBC are representative of the majority do you?
Louise,
Louise – would you expect BBC to link to reports that don’t support their position [on CAGW]?
Peter, if you were to read my actual words rather than what you think I said, you’ll see that I was talking about the commenters to a BBC article, not the article itself.
Or do you think only those that ‘approve’ of the BBC’s position comment on its articles?
From JC Comments: “…I suspect that not a single vote will be cast that is based primarily on either candidate’s stance on climate change.”
Aren’t we a bundle of enthusiasm … . How many people looking at climate change (from whatever perspective) hear a serious little inner voice saying walk away from this, life is too short?
“On election date in Nov, however, I suspect that not a single vote will be cast that is based primarily on either candidate’s stance on climate change.”
Perhaps, but is that really a surprise? The personal values and political inclinations which will lead to votes for one candidate or the other seem highly correlated with one’s views on the urgency of public action to reduce CO2 emissions. The candidates statements reflect more a different evaluation of risks and different priorities than a disagreement about science. Bringing a Senate candidate (who is arguably derranged) into the discussion is irrelevant and suggests an effort to cast doubt on Mr. Romney’s rather clear (for a politician) statement. More than a bit unfair to candidate Romney I think.
Message to Rich Matarese: It is (usually) entertaining to have you around, and even occasionally illuminating. But please remain mindful of blog rules: attack the arguments not the commenters personally, and avoid rhetoric that implicitly or explicitly uses words associated with physical threats.
Did you delete a post? I didn’t see anything from Rich.
It’s the guy’s sockpuppet Tucci78.
BTW, the guy is harmless and insignificant. As I recall he is a medical doctor. So he is threatening physical violence. What is he going to do, force medication down our throats? At least he has a pleasant bedside manner. Spare me.
tucci78. Even with the name change (tucci78 is his wordpress handle), his writing style is inimitable and easily recognizable :)
At 9:07 AM on 8 September, Steve Fitzpatrick asks of Dr. Curry:
As Dr. Curry had mentioned, “Tucci78” is the ekename I’ve registered for use on WordPress.com sites as well as in most other online fora. I’ve occasionally used my Google.com account, which shows me as “Rich Matarese.”
WebHub Telescope is a flaming idiot improperly using the expression “sockpuppet,” which most commonly connotes a practice entailing multiple registrations to appear on the same site (commonly in the same thread of exchanges) in multiple personae so as to create the impression of several posters endorsing each others’ contentions.
Regarding this practice, methinks this WebHub Telescope doofus doth protest too goddam much entirely, don’t you?
An effort to preserve one’s anonymity is a time-honored practice throughout the history of political discourse. Note that Dr. John Locke published Two Treatises of Government anonymously in 1689, having written them while practicing medicine in the Netherlands under the pseudonym “Dr. van der Linden.”
He’d fled from England in the wake of the failed Rye House plot to assassinate Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, and was – justifiably – worried about agents of the Stuart monarchy pursuing him to Amsterdam.
The essays read today as The Federalist Papers were written by three men – James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay – under the collective pseudonym of “Publius,” and there were many examples of American Prominenten publishing essays, pamphlets, and broadsides under a variety of similar pen names both before and after the Revolution.
In England during the 1720’s, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon published Cato’s Letters under the name of “Cato,” and their collected essays were part of just about every one of the American Founders’ personal libraries.
Were this WebHub Telescope specimen not an illiterate bloody ignoramus, he’d know about this and a helluva lot more, but, of course, he’s a leftie-luser jackanapes without a spark of electrical activity between his parietal knobs, so let’s not succumb to unreasonable expectations about the diseased lump.
Addendum: Any use of my Google.com account on any WordPress site – or anywhere else – had been inadvertent and unintended. I like my “Tucci78” handle, prefer it, and stick with it whenever and wherever my cruddy computer skills don’t cause me to screw up.
At 8:47 AM on 8 September, Dr. Curry had admonished me to:
When suppurating abscesses like this WebHub Telescope clown (sorry, I’m just being diagnostically precise) refuse to address argument and instead post nothing but idiotic attack upon me personally (“sockpuppet” my adipose ass), I will respond with merry contumely as suits my spleen. There’s no other kind of reply possible, is there?
As for “physical threats,” I’m reminded of a line attributed to Mrs. Capone’s little boy, Alphonse, who was purported to have said:
Me, though? Why, don’tcha know that all us libertarians are adherents to the non-aggression principle?
Even libertarians with a Sicilian heritage?
In response to my endorsement of the non-aggression principle, at 11:02 PM on 8 September, willard (@nevaudit) queries:
Of course. Remember, it’s a non-aggression principle. Not a non-retaliation principle.
Thank you for your candid answer.
But now what would prevent you from just keep patting on the back of a guy until small holes appear between my fingers?
In retaliation, of course.
Non-aggressively too.
Your fingers, not mine, of course.
I do not have the chance to be a non-aggressive libertarian Sicilian.
At 11:36 AM on 9 September, willard (@nevaudit) laments:
True, true. Heritage is everything, I suppose.
Pingback: Climate change and U.S. presidential politics | Climate Etc. | Definition Of Global Warming
“I predict that not one single vote in the presidential election will be determined by the candidates’ positions on climate change.”
Reparameterize a global circulation model to get that? :-)
I’d agree to an insignificant but non-zero number of votes. Santer, Hansen, Trenberth, Lacis, Gleick, and the rest of the usual suspects come to mind as possibilities. Surely at least one of them is unhinged enough.
But that really doesn’t represent the influence properly. Global warming skepticism is made into a proxy and poster child for being anti-science and anti-technology. Anyone who doesn’t make their obeisance to it are branded as knuckle-dragging young earth creationists. How many votes that influences may be significant in a time when a few votes in a single swing state can change the outcome of the race.
On the other hand there are those among us who believe anyone on the national stage who should know better accepting CAGW and willing to base costly policies on it is a proxy for being a blithering idiot who shouldn’t be in any policy-making position. On that score I think a great many votes are influenced including mine. In other words anyone who buys into this climate change narrative and associated non-solutions that are nothing more than feel-good measures which wouldn’t work to reduce the problem even if it were a problem are retards who don’t belong in decision making positions.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/realclimate-admits-doubling-co2-could.html
If true, how can they support any CO2 warming at all? Please check out. Did they just surrender?
I posted this a couple of other places. I fail to see how there can be any warming if co2 increase does not affect the ocean heat content.
And yes, the climate position of the candidates strongly affects my vote.
al in kansas
It’s arithmetic (and “circular logic”), al.
Hansen’s models tell him we should have seen 1.4°C greenhouse warming from 1880 to today, yet we only saw half that amount, or 0.7°C.
So Hansen does not conclude that his models may have been wrong, but rather that the missing warmth must be “hidden in the pipeline”; he concludes that the “pipeline” is the ocean.
Taking the model-based theoretical “hidden warming” of 0.7°C from 1880 to today, using the logarithmic CO2/temperature relationship and adjusting for a doubling of CO2, results in an atmospheric 2xCO2 “hidden in the pipeline” warming of around 1.6°C.
The mass of the troposphere is large.
But the mass of the oceans is 300 times as large.
The specific heat of sea water is also around 4 times as high as that of the atmosphere.
So you have 1.6 / (300*4) = 0.0013°C (which RC “rounds up” to 0.002°C).
Nobody could ever actually measure such an infinitesimal warming, so it is purely hypothetical (like a lot of the science behind the CAGW scare).
Max
Max, according to your theory Hansen dreamed up “warming in the pipeline” around 2005. Is that correct?
This thread is about US politics and AGW.
It’s pretty apparent that AGW is not a very important topic to US voters this fall.
Although Obama gave it luke-warm mention in his statement, it is not an important part of the Democratic Party Platform.
http://www.democrats.org/democratic-national-platform
This is a rambling “motherhood and apple pie” statement of over 26,000 words, with key headlines, such as
– Moving America forward
– Rebuilding middle class security
– Restoring the “American Dream”
– Same rules for everyone
– Stronger in the World, safer and more secure at home
There isn’t much in this document regarding the climate change issue except two paragraphs (149 words) buried near the end
The statement is also made:
Sounds like the “mantra” hasn’t been totally abandoned – but simply that the party “spinmeisters” recognize that it is not a “vote getter”, so it is being played down.
My bet is that it will play only a small role in the US Presidential vote – but that the net impact of the Democratic Party stand on policies related to “climate change” are detrimental.
Max
@manacker | September 8, 2012 at 8:23 am His/her constant arm waving with little to no supporting data is why I responded in as short a manner as possible. “Cite your data” uses as little band width as possible while making the point. Of course DNFTT is even shorter.
‘One important development since the TAR is the apparent unexpectedly large changes in tropical mean radiation flux reported by ERBS (Wielicki et al., 2002a,b). It appears to be related in part to changes in the nature of tropical clouds (Wielicki et al., 2002a), based on the smaller changes in the clear-sky component of the radiative fluxes (Wong et al., 2000; Allan and Slingo, 2002), and appears to be statistically distinct from the spatial signals associated with ENSO (Allan and Slingo, 2002; Chen et al., 2002). A recent reanalysis of the ERBS active-cavity broadband data corrects for a 20 km change in satellite altitude between 1985 and 1999 and changes in the SW filter dome (Wong et al., 2006). Based upon the revised (Edition 3_Rev1) ERBS record (Figure 3.23), outgoing LW radiation over the tropics appears to have increased by about 0.7 W m–2 while the reflected SW radiation decreased by roughly 2.1 W m–2 from the 1980s to 1990s (Table 3.5).’ IPCC AR4 s 3.4.4.1
It is data and agrees with ISCCP-FD data. It is what it is.
A hundred and seventeen comments in and no one’s mentioned Al Gore?
I rest my case.
Also, please see Josh’s dead on cartoon @ the Bish’s. Climate change is no joke, but climate science is.
==============
You mean “Al yer pal”, the “next president of the United States”?
Sic transit gloria.
“Republicans are not ‘denying’ climate change and that humans are contributing”
Not so fast. There are many ways to deny things. One way is to basically ignore it, and that is what the Republican platform does. Read it:
http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_home/
What’s more, this post highlights the politics of fluff by elevating a single comment from the Republican Party leader in which he merely criticizes Obama.
And there is no mention of the large number of Party candidates on record stating their rejection of the most basic facts of climate change; and claiming the science is ‘a fraud’ and climate change a ‘hoax’ (perpetrated variously by Obama, Third World economies, China, etc., depending on the imagination of the individual candidate) to ‘establish world government’. This is all documented in the Party’s promotion and coverage of its own candidates, so it’s hard to pretend it’s not there or that it’s not accurately reflecting beliefs within the Party.
Now let’s review:
Lacks familiarity with the actual platform. Check.
Focuses on a fluff comment from the leader. Check.
Ignores almost everything else. Check.
Denying that climate is changing reflects a scientific judgment. Agreeing that climate is changing and choosing to do nothing about it is a policy/political judgment.
With respect, Dr. Curry, the scientific literature on patterns of denialist cognition asserts the opposite.
(1) Skepticism [of effect <X>] reflects a rational, evidence-based, theory-grounded scientific assessment.
(2) Denial [of effect <X>] reflects non-rational cognition &mddash; commonly grounded in economic self-interest, political ideology, religious faith, or simple fear &mddash; that is inconstent with the scientific norms.
Please do not conflate the rational skepticism that is a normative element of scientific enterprise with non-rational denialist cognition that stands in opposition to scientific enterprise! :!: :!: :!:
To assert the non-existence of denialism, as a form of cognition that is imcompatible with normative scientific enterprise, is itself a manifestation of denialism, eh? :!: :!: :!:
(1) Skepticism [of effect ] reflects a rational, evidence-based, theory-grounded scientific assessment. Guilty until proven innocent.
The burden of proof in science is on the proposer, not on the opponent.
There is an interesting conceptual confusion in the issue of whether climate is changing, which complicates the scientific judgement. It is captured by the now familiar slogan that climate is always changing.
Consider the sine wave. If something exhibits a sine wave then that parameter is constantly changing but the sine wave need not change, not unless the frequency or amplitude changes. By the same token, if climate is a natural oscillator, which now seems certain, then even though the weather statistics constantly change the climate, viewed as an oscillator, need not be changing.
In this view it is far from clear that climate is changing. We will first have to know what the natural oscillator looks like, which we do not, not yet anyway.
If, of course, you actually “accept” what the science says, and have not simply moved your denial one step further down the line, towards a denial of the role of GHGs, or denial of the impacts.
Denial is a particular mindset, and what is being denied shifts — which would be surprising if denial were a scientific or philosophical stance, but is not surprising at all give the reality that denialism is rooted in a determined rejection of mitigation of AGW. There are a number of places deniers chose to draw the line in the sand:
1. Global warming isn’t happening.
2. Humans aren’t the cause.
3. Human-caused global warming isn’t going to be harmful.
4. Human-caused global warming may be harmful, but any attempt to mitigate it will destroy the world economy.
5. It’s too late to do anything about global warming.
Over time, some deniers have disregarded the earlier points in favor of the later ones. This is, perhaps, progress, as more deniers recognize that the world clearly is warming and humans clearly are the primary cause. But, using the conspiracy-theory rationalization that they are known for, the intrusion of these facts does not lead them to question the central conclusion that nothing should be done. So they simply exchange the old fantasies about why nothing should be done for the new fantasies. They are, still, for the most part, deniers.
When does someone stop being a denier? Obviously, they don’t have to agree with me. But they do have to step back from the extremes of motivated reasoning. Denialism is characterized not by a specific set of truth claims, but by an attitude of contempt towards the empirical facts. If you are willing to deal seriously with the facts, you can argue for a low climate sensitivity or a high cost of mitigation or whatever else. How you argue, not what you argue, determines whether you are a denier.
Some former deniers have moved to another camp which is that global warming is good. This is a denial of any bad consequences of much warmer temperatures (not only in their back yard but globally). In IPCC terms, they have accepted (or rather, given up denying) WG1, but not WG2.
Robert:
“…an attitude of contempt towards the empirical facts….”
Post-massage/manipulation, IPCC, Mann & ‘Team’ define contempt, de facto and attitudinally.
Judith Curry
Just a minor change to your statement to make it more accurate IMO.
“Denying that climate is changing” is ignoring the physical observations around us.
“Denying that climate is changing primarily as a result of human GHG emissions” reflects (as you write) “a scientific judgment”.
Likewise:
“Agreeing that climate is changing primarily as a result of human GHG emissions and choosing to do nothing about it is a policy/political judgment.”
Max
This is a poorly formed idea, but I’ve noticed that eliding the meaning of the words ‘climate’ and ‘climate change’ is used for sophistic advantage more by the alarmist than the skeptical side. Let’s go review the replay video.
====================
Martha
You begin by the rhetorical equivocation of “climate change” of refer to “majority anthropogenic global warming” in the latter half of the 20th century, compared with the scientific definition of a long term change weather average or variations – which have been happening for more than 500 million years.
Re: “basically ignore it,”
The alternative interpretation is that it has significance compare to the major issues that must be addressed such as the economy, and the major cause of sustained high unemployment – transport fuel.
Some climate scientists have committed scientific and/or legal fraud. See Climategate emails. Climate scientists need to redress that, not try to sweep it under the rug. Using and promoting statistically invalid methods to give desired “hockey stick” is another scientific failure.
Re: ‘establish world government’
Tyranny and central planning are statistically the greatest threats to citizens with more than 100 million killed by communist governments during the 20th century – and Mao’s Great Leap Forward causing some 45 million deaths and another 15 million or so fewer births. Deal with that fact. Central planning is systemically subject to bribery and corruption. Consequently it is critically important NOT to give the UN global taxing power over every aspect of every economy by “cap and trade”.
Romney provides explicit steps to redress the severe constraints on economic development imposed by Obama.
See above. Try directly addressing these hard issues of real world challenges.
Dr. Curry, with respect, the scientific study of the patterns and motivations associated to denialist cognition has a long and honorable history — encompassing many thousands of articles — that substantially predates the emergent denialism that nowadays is associated to climate-change.
In this regard, please let me commend, in Neven’s Arctic Sea Ice weblog, this week’s column titled Record dominoes 10: IMS sea ice extent.
Neven provides an in-depth analysis of the marked patterns of denialist cognition that are exhibited in WUWT/Anthony Watts. Neven’s well-supported conclusion is starkly specific:
Neven’s well-reasoned advice is applicable of course not only to WUWT/Anthony Watts, but to all denialists. On the plain connon-sense grounds that denialism is associated to patterns of cognition that are incompatible with the traditional values of science.
Conclusion Denialist cognition is real, the scientific study of denialist cognition has a long history, the patterns of denialist cognition are inimical to science, and the consequences of denialist cognition are injurious economically and wrong morally.
So down with climate-change denialism! :!: :!: :!:
While we celebrate the scientific study of denialism! :grin: :lol: :!:
You know, really, Fan, you only de-humanize yourself. What’s the compulsion to be so transparent about it?
==================
Kim, scientific research regarding denialist cognition indicates that two factors that militate against climate-change denialism are (1) personal experience of the effects of climate-change, and (2) personal empowerment to forestall these effects.
Element (1) is coming whether we will or not because “Nature cannot be fooled”, eh? :shock: :cry: :!:
Element (2) is very largely a function of politics and enterprise, guided by vision, eh? :grin: :lol: :!:
Summary Mitigating denialist cognition is straightforward but not easy, Kim! :) :) :)
Fan
I have never heard of any rational sceptic denying that climate changes and that includes Antrhont Watts. Some of us like to point out that satellites are a very recent record and that we need to look far back before them in order to gain a proper idea of todays events and put them into a broader context.
We can see a 350 year plus warming and you need to explain how that started and at what point that became CAGW instead of natural variability
tonyb
ClimateReason, to answer your question it suffices to look back in time via paleoclimatology and forward in time via energy/entropy theory.
Please let may say, with all due respect for historical climate records — and especially with appreciation and sincere admiration of your passion for these records — climate-change science rest upon foundations that are much broader than the statistical features of the historical record of climate change.
An overly exclusive focus upon the historical record becomes a mode of denialist cognition, eh? This is why it would be good practice to broaden your questions, ClimateReason!
What are your next (broader) questions, ClimateReason? :) :) :)
Fan
You asked for a broader question than asking you (repeatedly, without a reply), as to why it has been warming for some 350 years and when did it transition from natural variability to CAGW.
Ok. You are right.
Why has it been warming for some 420 years and what DECADE did iit transition from natural variabilty to CAGW? I’ll even throw in a new one-.
in what decade is the ‘perfect’ temperature we are trying to continually get back to?
tonyb
ClimateReason, your questions have sensible answers when they are broadened as follows:
• Q Why is the earth getting hotter?
A Because we are dumping CO2 into the atmosphere.
The physics is plain, eh? :!: :!: :!:
• Q What bad events will come of this?
A One bad outcome is that Florida will submerge.
It’s not complicated, eh? :!: :!: :!:
LOL … it’s *denialism* that’s getting more-and-more complicated, eh? :) :grin: :lol:
What are your next broad & fore-sighted questions, ClimateReason?
fan,
RE Florida submerging – really?
You forgot NYC being underwater – I’d link to the photo if I had it saved somewhere, as that is all the evidence one needs, right? A photo is certainly proof.
I may have to drive across the lake to catch a class of yours. You can’t possible be this off the wall when teaching.
Fanny, I think that was Guam that was supposed to tip over.
Fan
Florida???
You have this curious knack of answering questions I haven’t asked.
Let’s rephrase it as I have asked it at least five times and you keep sidestepping.
Why has the earth been warming for hundreds of years before enhanced co2 could have had any effect?
Tonyb
fan,
You are drawn to your ignorant spew like a dog licking its own vomit.
LOL … heck, maybe we scientific traditionalists should adopt “De-Humanized Vomit-Spewing Butt-Bandits” as the name of our new band? :lol: :lol: :lol:
Kim and “Lurker” and Dave Springer, your joint exhibitions of denialist mentation are highly educational and much appreciated! :grin: :lol: :!:
So help me out fan – explain the seriousness of the Arctic ice melt.
The accelerating Arctic ice-melt is significant (in part) because it substantially increases the rational probability that James Hansen’s worldview is scientifically, economically, and morally correct.
How much has the Arctic ice-melt increased your personal, rational estimate of this probability, timg56? :?: :?: :?:
Nice non-answer.
To answer your question – none. The hansen paper you link to is more of his wailing that doom is upon us with no evidence provided. All one has to do is examine his precept – that mankind has to “stabilize the climate” to recognize Dr Hansen has transitioned from scientist to advocate. A person’s intense belief in something is not the only qualification needed to be a phrophet.
One reason the increase in summer ice melt doesn’t have me peeing in my shorts is that as yet, I haven’t seen any evidence it represents a disaster. I can envision some positive outcomes of the Arctic Ocean being ice free during the summer months. What I am having trouble finding from the folks telling me we have “TO DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW” are examples of the harm caused to date by this melting. I have seen acts by environmental groups to post fake video about a supposed Shell Oil reception and the Nature letter with the photoshopped polar bear. But that’s about it.
LOL … timg56, to assert with perfect confidence “Hansen’s worldview is wrong” makes reasonable sense as a statement of:
• strongly-believed religious faith, or
• strongly-held political conviction, or
•strongly-embraced economic ideology.
But as an assertion of scientific fact, it’s denialism pure-and-simple, eh?
And because “Nature cannot be fooled”, in the long-run neither religious faith, nor political conviction, nor economic ideology will count for much, eh timg56? :?: :?: :?:
fan,
imagine you are in a court of law.
Evidence.
Where is the evidence of all this bad stuff?
As for Hansen – are you really going to defend someone who claims we need to “stablize the climate”? mankind is capable of a lot of things, but stabilizing the climate of a planet ain’t yet one of them.
As for my opinion on Hansen’s paper having to come from:
• strongly-believed religious faith, or
• strongly-held political conviction, or
•strongly-embraced economic ideology.
A) I have yet to hear Father Dave talk about climate change or global warming even once at Mass. So that reason is out.
B) My political convictions certainly impact my opinion to some of the proposed solutions for saving us from climate change, but have no impact on my views of the science. A graduate science degree and courses on Atmospheric Physics and Chemestry provide that.
C) You might have something there, as I do tend to dislike pouring money down a rathole – which is a good description of a large number of the schemes to “decarbonize” our world. I guess I can blame that old education thing, as another graduate degree (a technology focused MBA) helps me understand factors such as cost – benefit analysis.
OK.
The Republican Party Platform is also wordy (although less so than the Democratic Party Platform).
http://www.gop.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/2012GOPPlatform.pdf
Reading through it, I see more specific proposals and less “motherhood and apple pie” platitudes. Obviously, a different set of “spinmeisters” were at work.
It has even fewer words relating to the climate change debate, to wit:
And further down
AGW “jest ain’t no big deal” for either party this year, it seems.
Max
That’s seriously mangled. The ‘science’ of economics, such as it is, may have something to offer in the way of guidance. Science in general doesn’t. It seems like the Romney crowd needs to be introduced to Mr. Uncertainty Monster.
Of course, the Obama crowd completely denies Mr. Uncertainty Monster, and if introduced, would refuse to acknowledge the monster in the room.
Stopping EPA will be a very big deal, unprecedented in fact.
“Climate change is the one of the biggest issues of this generation”
This first line tells a lot about how (non) important this issue has become. According to this statement, climate change has been dialed back to just another among many of the “biggest issues of this generation” – meaningless poetry/political jargon.
Andrew
I heard Al Gore is campaigning to end the electoral college instead of raising Global Warming awareness… evidently another more pressing “biggest issue of our generation” that needs immediate attention.
Andrew
Still not over 2000, it would appear.
I’m interested in parsing how global warming/climate change became a third rail issue. I remember the shock I felt at a meet-and-greet for our current Congressman here in West Michigan, Justin Amash. Justin was unknown at the time and after he spoke he took questions. The very first one was about his stance on global warming legislation. Being a small “l” libertarian/Tea Party kind of guy he was opposed to it of course, and from the nodding of heads and murmuring I could see a “preference cascade” happening before my eyes.
Personally, I believe that the current Republican position on “global warming” has evolved from the ground up. You can safely put this issue alongside opposition to gun control for aspiring politicians. Does this audience believe this is due to nefarious machinations of shadowy corporations or is it due to genuine voter antipathy? Thoughts?
Since I have yet to see a check from anyone – shadowy, corporate or other wise – I’m going to have to go with the latter reason Mike.
Now, if Mr Gore would be willing to share some of the millions he’s earned over this issue, I may be willing to yell from the rooftops about the impending disaster a warm world represents. Until then I am going to continue to say “Show me” whenever I hear someone tell me it is the gravest risk mankind has ever faced.
It is no longer amazing to hear Democrat politicians say the business of living is trashng the globe, that Bush is bad, capitalism is bad, oil companies are bad, Americans with savings are bad. Just look who it is that are their heros–Al Gore and the Clintons.
I guess it is not politically correct to remember that Clinton was actually impeached during his last term in office. The Clintons have a problem: they cannot tell the truth. Bill Clinton’s AK bar license was revoked because he lied under oath. And of course there was the Whitewater Scandal. Whitewater was Hillary’s only client in AK where she drew a salary as a figurehead partner of the largest law firm in AK. Hillary’s salary was the way connected insiders paid off Governor Bill Clinton for political favors–which was the only way to get anything done in the state.
The basis of the question asked, “The climate is changing” begs the question, “When did the climate not change?”. Stupid questions make it tough to provide serious answers, and Obama proves that abundantly.
His answer is an empty bag of one-liners, on the level of his implication that he cold lower sea levels.
To assert that climate change (as poorly defined as the fanatics make the term) is a great challenge talks more about Obama’s lack of informed perspective about real challenges.
The climate kooks that have dominated the public square with their apocalyptic idiocy and phony claims of world ending powers of CO2 have reduced the quality of policy dramatically.
Obama, in trying to kow tow to them makes himself look stupid and out of touch and has left us an easy mark for rent seekers promoting ‘green energy’ at great expense to tax payers and no benefit to anything other then the rent seeker’s wallets.
At least Romney points out that science is one input into policy. His is the only all option policy that has some hope of actually helping Americans.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the candidates didn’t write those. They were written by campaign staff, and may or may not have anything to do with what we can expect in the way of actual policy. The real issue has nothing to do with those written positions, and has everything to do with what’s going to emerge from the agencies, especially the EPA.
There’s a general rule in American politics that Republicans tend to be delegators, and Democrats tend to be micromanagers. Obama is a spectacular exception to this rule. He’s already shown that he’d rather be goofing, and will rubber stamp whatever comes out of the agencies. So his words are rather meaningless; to see what they’re going to do, look at what they’ve been doing. It’s going to be Lisa Jackson’s policy, not Barack Obama’s.
Romney is most likely to run the agencies the same way he ran Bain; give them enough slack to handle day-to-day activities, but exercise control on the big issues. He’ll also likely not have an extremist like Jackson in charge of the EPA, so a lot of these extreme policies will never see the light of day to begin with. And unlike Obama, he won’t allow the agencies to openly defy congress. So you can expect unremarkable policy coming from his administration.
Upshot; under Obama, we can expect the same at the past four years, and under Romney, more domestic production and less greendoggles. The rest is just rhetoric.
Err… that was supposed to be “golfing”, but “goofing” works, too.
I thought goofing was perfectly on target.
It is truly regtrettable that neither Obama nor Romney can see the simple fallacies of AGW – as I keep saying, simple observation and simple arithmetic prove incontrovertibly that human activity is an infinitesimal factor in CO2 activity, and CO2 is an infinitesimal factor in climate change.
As for oil production topping out, that’s nonsense. Recent discoveries by the shale gas insdustry (which of course the enviroNazis want to kill) show that the US and Canada sit atop reserves of oil and gas anywhere from twice to 20 times the amount under Saudi Arabia. And oilk production would be increasing much faster of it weren’t for the zealotry and insanity of EPA actions biwing and scraping before the enviroNazis.
Also, the estimates of mass murder by socialists in the 20th century, mentioned above, are grossly understated.
Between them, Lenin and Stalin killed at least 80 million people in Russia – half of them in the famine associated with collectivization of agriculture, the other half at various other times, with as many as 20 million done to death in the Gulag.
Hitler not only killed 6 million Jews, he killed 25 million Russian, 4 million other Polish, and at least 5 million others, or ~ 40 million.
And Mao’s cultural revolution alone killed at least 75 million, and another 50 million or so murdered at other times.
Also, the question was ill posed. They jumped straight from “climate change” to policy without saying anything about cause and consequence. It was an extremely bad question.
Obama just took it as is and ran with it, built-in assumptions and all. Romney at least made a lame attempt to unpack it, and address the unspoken assumptions.
Politics is bad theater as there are consequences to acting poorly.
The scenes prior to the conventions, particularly junk science by press release, declaring every weather occurrence reflecting the vicissitudes of man’s inhumanity over earth, should be viewed more as a comedy than tragedy. A light motif if you will.
The will to win environmental friends and influence policy makers is now imbedded in the party platforms, they,to be set aside until another Presidential election.
The Epilogue is that “drill baby drill” will occur regardless of which party is in power. Milage standards will escalate rapidly. The very existence of EPA will hinge on whether these regulators back track on coal as West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Wyoming & Montana may be important states to win in this and/or coming elections. Coal bashing has gone on long enough. New coal power plants and their 40 life cycle are as much a transitional fuel to new generation nuclear power as natural gas.
The curtain has closed on the conventions. And like nuclear waste, the parties will have to find a location to store their climate change platforms for 4 more years.
As far as Todd Akin goes, he reminds me of Fan. He repeats stuff that he hears, without any understanding of what he’s repeating, and figures that if x numbers of words didn’t get the desired effect, more words will fix everything.
At least he admits being wrong. Fan has yet to do so. Awhile back he did one of his usual linked references on the topic of the military supporting the concept of warming being a threat. I posted the DOD study on transitioning to green fuels, which showed he didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, and heard ….. nothing.
Some people are too smart for their own good. Fan strikes me as one of these.
By every measure the American population is far less intelligent than in the past. Public schools are nothing more than dropout factories. Want proof? There is no fear of global warming outside Western civilization. Only an idiot population votes for politicians that hate businesses that provide all of the goods and services that make life better.
Well, Obama loves businesses. He saved GM, at a time when the laissez faire loonies wanted GM to die.
That’s propaganda. GM delared bankruptcy. To say Obama is pro-business because he robbed the public purse to bailout the Union that drove GM into bankruptcy is like claiming to be a humitarian when you give contents of a victim’s wallet to the criminal who shot him in the back.
To bad you wanted GM to die.
Fyi–
Elizabeth Warren declares ‘corporations are not people’ at the DNC…
Max,
Saying people want GM to die is a bit over the top, isn’t it?
Companies go bankrupt all the time. It isn’t the end of the world. Had the government not bailed out GM, the outcomes for certain people would have been different, but not necessarily the overall impact to our economy.
Personally, I’m witholding my opinion on the bailout. If GM succeceeds and the government at least breaks even or even comes close, then I’m ok with it. If the end result is GM failing anyway, then I have to conclude it was a huge waste of taxpayer money, whose only result was to delay the inevitable. While there may be some positive impacts from this delay, I doubt highly they would offset the negative impact of wasting so much money.
timg56 said on September 8, 2012 at 4:15 pm | Reply
Max,
Saying people want GM to die is a bit over the top, isn’t it?
_____
I believe advocates of laissez-faire economics (government hands-off) want GM to fail because the bailout was against their philosophy.
Max,
So your belief covers what percentage of Republican voters?
It is possible to have a general belief in laissez-faire economics without accepting it as dogma. Just as there are valid reasons for not bailing out a GM that are distinct from a laissez-faire concept. I don’t find it that hard to believe Mitt Romney’s opinion of the bailout is based on solid economic and business reasons.
I blame LBJ for not bailing out Packard-Studebaker.
timg56 , “a general belief in laissez-faire” would cover a wide range of beliefs, ranging from a little government “hands-on” is OK to a lot of government “hands-on” is OK, as well as differences in opinions on specific measures.
If someone says no more than he has a ” general belief in laissez-faire,” he hasn’t told me much.
At 4:15 PM on 8 September, timg56 writes:
You should neither withhold your opinion nor be “ok with it” if the ravaged shell labeled “General Motors” survives as a corporate entity and reimburses the federal treasury for the subsidies received.
Which it’s not going to do.
The “Liberal” fascist (and that expression is precisely accurate in this case) simulacrum of a bailout did far more damage both to GM’s creditors – immediate emphasis on those who’d been left holding suddenly and absolutely worthless corporate bonds – and to the manufacturing sector generally than I think you’re presently capable of understanding.
Gee Max,
You expecting me to give it all up on the first date?
The bailout likely just prolongs GM agony. Bankruptcy is not death, it is more like reincarnation. Since the UAW knows how to run business, GM may have come back as a swan to inspire all automakers instead of slithering up to Capital Hill.
At 7:05 PM on 8 September, captdallas2 0.8 +0.2 or -0.4 had speculated:
Ouch. If it were possible that “the UAW knows how to run business,” why the hell has it destroyed the U.S. automobile industry?
Economist George Reisman published an essay on the subject of General Motors’ relationship to the UAW titled “Where Would General Motors Be Without the United Automobile Workers Union?” on 19 May 2006. By all means, read the whole thing. I abstract therefrom:
Tucci, I tend to avoid the /sarc to see reactions :)
I blame George W. Bush for not bailing out Enron.
(After all, they were big supporters of “cap and trade”.)
Is that why he didn’t bail them out?
Because they presented no systemic threat.
Actually that’s wrong. People are getting smarter to the tune of one to three IQ points per decade. It’s called the Flynn Effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
http://evilincandescentbulb.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/a-six-question-global-warming-iq-test/
Is Dr. Curry going to contribute to the Obama Campaign again?
Andrew
I have not yet contributed to either campaign.
I’ve never contributed to a campaign. These days the guys running all have more money than I do.
I do always vote. The one time I didn’t – I was in the middle of a Medditerrian cruise ; deluxe accommodations about a submarine – Jimmy Carter won. I hold myself personally responsible for that ever since.
These days I’m trying to get my kids to vote. They seem pretty apathetic. Of course since so many states are doing away with the voting booth and switching to mail in ballots, perhaps I should simply fill theirs out for them.
Well, remember, Jimmy Carter himself was a submariner, too…
Max,
Jimmy Carter called himself a Nuclear Engineer until the society of nuc eng. sent him a letter. He switched it to Nuclear Physicist. Can’t remember if he received a letter on that one.
My vote goes to the best policy in regards to climate change second only the any politician who will raise taxes, fancy that.
So it’s climate change as the most important.
Sounds about right. Action oriented with no consideration of results. You would probably be impressed with higher fuel efficiency but not higher tax efficiency. Getting more for what you pay for is never a bad thing.
Sounds to me like you are one of the brain dead zombies that thinks the US federal budget can be balanced just by cutting out waste and fraud.
So, I am voting for the best stance on climate change or against brain-dead zombies or against those who can’t do math.
Bob,
I don’t have a problem with a tax increase per se.
I have a huge problem with one without any good evidence things will change with Congress and government.
Then that’s that detail called the Laffer curve.
Where the Laffer curve peaks is a good question, but I think only brain dead zombies who can’t do math think it peaks below 35%.
The Bush tax cuts and their effect on revenue clearly show that we are currently to the left of the peak of the Laffer curve.
Returning the percentage of federal revenue to Gross Domestic Product to the same level as it was in 2001, before the Bush tax cuts would be the single largest thing that could possibly be done to balance the budget. It would put it close to where Clinton left it.
The Laffer curve is just an estimate on how much blood you can get from a turnip before you kill it. Managing debt to a lower percentage of gross domestic product lets you grow more turnips. Pushing the Laffer curve and mandating spending is a recipe for disaster. Governments have to be flexible or no more turnips.
Ironically, Ironically, John Maynard Keynes might not be a Keynesian if he were alive today. He certainly would not be a proponent of big government. In correspondence with another British economist, he agreed with the premise of “25 percent [of GDP] as the maximum tolerable proportion of taxation.”2 America is now well past that stage and a further expansion of government will make the United States more like a stagnant, European-style welfare state.
You have the wrong end of the stick as usual Bob – and then compounfd it by calling people brain dead zombies. The Laffer curve is irrelevant. What matters is economic growth and the only way you are going to get there is by reducing the size of government.
missing link – http://www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb_0209-53.pdf
At 7:52 PM on 8 September, Robert I Ellison responds to Bob, unfairly quoting from an Austrian School economist (Daniel J. Mitchell, “Spending Is Not Stimulus: Bigger Government Did Not Work for Bush, and It Will Not Work for Obama,” February 2009), and then stating the pikestaff plain fact of praxeological reality:
Doing this to an adherent of politically smarmed and irretrievably bogus “mainstream” economics is too doggone much like informing the average four-year-old that everything he’s been told about Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny has been an elaborate tissue of lies.
To quote Dr. Mitchell’s conclusion – a precisely predictive utterance in 2009 which is proven every month as even the carefully doctored numbers reluctantly offered by the Obama Administration demonstrate:
I saw the following In Robert I Ellison post of September 8, 2012 7:52 pm
“Ironically, Ironically, John Maynard Keynes might not be a Keynesian if he were alive today. He certainly would not be a proponent of big government. In correspondence with another British economist, he agreed with the premise of “25 percent [of GDP] as the maximum tolerable proportion of taxation.”2 America is now well past that stage and a further expansion of government will make the United States more like a stagnant, European-style welfare state.
_______
OH BOY, I can’t wait until the U.S. is like Denmark, which is supposed to have the world’s happiest people. I guess that means all the anti-government ideologues will flee the USA for some places that have hardly any tax, such as Afghanastan or Iran, if those countries will let them in.
The following table shows the ten developed nations with the highest ratios of tax revenues to GDP in 2012
Tax revenue as a percent of GDP
1. Denmark 49.0
2. Sweeden 47.9
3. Belgium 46.8
4. France 43.6
5. Finland 43.6
6. Norway 43.6
7. Austria 43.4
8. Italy 42.6
9. Germany 40.6
10.Iceland 40.4
For comparison, the rate for the U.S. was 26.9 percent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP
Max,
I’m guessing they have flights leaving for Denmark just about every day. Send us a postcard from time to time to let us know how happy you are.
bob droege
Welcome to 0.0000001% of the US voting population!
Max
Max, so I am one in ten million, but I already knew that!
The New York Daily News might not the best source of information. It is a tabloid and celebrity gossip gets more coverage than anything else.
For a more realistic take on the Republican stance:
http://www.progressivereform.org/CPRBlog.cfm?idBlog=9658E3AE-9DFC-4287-C5A83E169048A5CC
Wow, Joe. Those are great ideas concerning the EPA. These are exactly the type of changes we need. The EPA definitely needs reeling in – they are power-drunk bureaucrats, UNELECTED, who don’t have the right to make arbitrary rulings. It is absolutely correct to put them under the thumb of Congress.
The APA allows any affected party to challenge any agency action if it is “arbitrary, capricious or not in accordance with the law”. To say anything else is factually incorrect.
And CPR would cry that anyone objecting to EPA’s findings just want to poison the air and water and kill people and animals for profit. Blah, blah. Sorry, we’re sick of the left wing moralizing. It’s the same for any spending. Want to cut $5 million from Medicare? Oh, you just want old people to die.
I say cut EPA’s budget by 50% and give them a list of priorities. The list will not have co2 abatement anywhere on it. If you want co2 regulation, you’d better achieve it through the political process, not by bureaucratic fiat.
So far every APA challenge to EPA’s CO2 controls has lost because the Courts will not rule on the science. Only Congress can stop them and that will be hard. This can only happen if the Republicans win both Houses and the Presidency. Even then it will be tough going.
Wojick,
Winning congress will do the trick. House is a lock for Republicans and Senate quite likely. Todd Aikin was expendable.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/senate/2012_elections_senate_map_no_toss_ups.html
Obama could win but it looks like he made a deal with the devil (Bill Clinton) and Slick did a pretty good job in his second term with a Republican congress. I don’t really expect Romney to stay right of center. Obama has governed about exactly like Romney in Massachusetts. Not 2 degrees of difference between them. Ryan might be giving Tea Partiers a bit of warm feeling but vice presidents are about as useful as hood ornaments.
jim2
EPA is under the microscope precisely because of the Endangerment Finding and what that means for coal. Removing CO2 from the coal discussion/regulation and EPA can go on its merry way. CO2 environmentalists see EPA as their final club to batter their opponents and advance their agenda. Therefore EPA becomes a battleground and as far as the CO2 environmentalists are concerned, its all or nothing.
I think this is a case of baby out with the bathwater scenario, mores the pity.
Of course, then there is the endangered species act that rips away the right of land owners to use their land as they wish. There is a lot wrong that needs fixing here.
The old adage goes for the EPA:
“The fish always starts stinking at the head”
A new administration would urgently need to change EPA management, throughout the organization, but starting at the top.
Then delete CO2 from its brief.
Then make sure any operatives who want to “crucify” any industry are fired.
Then, as a longer term measure, get Paul Ryan involved in looking at ways the agency can be streamlined and its budget cut in half.
Max
At 10:32 AM on 9 September, manacker had observed of the EPA:
Better yet, go with Ron Paul’s proposal and abolish the EPA (yet another one of Richard Milhous Nixon’s hideous creations) to roll its very few legitimate functions over to other departments of the Executive Branch. I’d figure the Department of the Interior for almost all of it.
The adage about rotting fish puts proper emphasis on the costs of administration as well. The waste involved in the growth and preservation of bureaucratic empires is not to be dismissed, and is too commonly underestimated.
A clean scour of the EPA – a complete “zeroing out” – would serve both to debride the regulatory burden this ‘viro satrapy imposes upon the productive sector of American society and at the same time help to knock down federal expenditures generally.
My comment at CPRB: “If I were an American, after reading the above, I’d definitely vote Republican.” ;-)
RE Congressman Akin’s position on climate change – the guy gets it.
Blind squirrel. He’s still poison. He’s a poster boy for the “GOP war on science”. If he was as smart as Palin, he’d realize that there are other ways to help his causes than elected office. But he isn’t.
I never heard of the guy until this rape and pregnancy flap. My comment was directed only on his statement on climate change. That he stumbled upon it doesn’t mean it isn’t good.
Of Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin, at 4:26 PM on 8 September, timg56 had written:
That it’s on his campaign Web site doesn’t mean that Mr. Akin either wrote it or would go to the wall for it.
With one notable exception – an OB/GYN guy of my acquaintance – the only reason that any politician has for stipulating any kind of position on any subject is so that he can betray it in return for some kind of bribe or other advantage later.
There are good reasons and bad ones in bring an overtly political topic to this blog (supposedly about the science of the climate). The good: It reveals the political leanings of many of the stupid commentators — at least those commentators too dumb to regulate their comments to hide the bias revealed. The bad: It reduces the possibility that people will attempt a quiet discussion of issues of science since the political sides will be shouting their slogans.
I do appreciate some of the comments, though. Some are very witty.
What’s wrong about revealing political leanings? Honesty not good?
Did you not read the part “The good”?
If Romney wins, one of the biggest things he can do in the climate area is change the 20 year old Executive Branch policy that says CAGW is true. Every Department and Agency embraces this premature policy, and it has done a lot of harm. Romney can make it the new policy that the science is debatable, as he says in his answer. Much good would flow from this simple change.
David Wojick | September 8, 2012 at 3:16 pm | Reply
“If Romney wins, one of the biggest things he can do in the climate area is change the 20 year old Executive Branch policy that says CAGW is true.”
Nonsense. The Kyoto Protocol would have at least been submitted to congress for ratification if any executive was really worried about global warming. Clinton and Bush both ultimately gave it a thumbs down. Obama isn’t overly concerned either. He simply let Lisa Jackson do whatever she wanted so it didn’t interfere with golf. Contrary to hoped for change he didn’t slow the rising of the ocean or start healing the earth either.
David, I do not see how your comment relates to mine. But if you look you will find many Executive Branch departments and agencies invoking the CAGW policy to justify certain of their actions. The list is long.
The scientific debate is never acknowledged, so to do so would be a huge step forward. The Kyoto Protocl was never submitted because it would not pass, but that has nothing to do with my point.
The scientific debate is never acknowledged BECAUSE THERE ISN’T ONE.
You are a paid propogandist, funded by Heartland Institute, to try to claim there is such a debate. You are driven by political dogma not scientific evidence.
Departments will advance the Easter Bunny if they thought it would further their agenda. The fact remains that any official executive branch belief in CAGW is a figment of your imagination. If it isn’t go ahead and point me at the policy document which says otherwise. You’re not very competent. Of course Heartland isn’t well known for attracting the cream of the crop now is it?
My only connection to Heartland is that I am developing a K-12 curriculum on the scientific debate for them. But I have great respect for their people. In particular the NIPCC reports are a good counter to the IPCC reports. No one is paying me to post here, not that it matters, but Heartland is not responsible for what I say.
David, I don’t know how competent I am, but I have been tracking the rising role of CAGW in the US Govt for 20 years.
We can start with the massive USGCRP reports of a few years ago. This is the 14 or so Depts and Agencies that fund basic climate research at over $2 billion a year. These reports endorse CAGW far more than the IPCC does.
Louise
Huh?
Are you claiming “the science is settled”?
That would really be silly, Louise.
Max
Dr. Curry –
The more I read of our comments and answers to tohers’ comments on this blog, the greater my feeling that you are just sititng on the fence. Why is it that academics (I’m a former one myself) can’t simply come to grips with reality? There is no need to “debate” the causes of climate change. AGW is a political falsehood based on garbage data and corrupt models, with odious objectives. That is reality. The physical evidence is there to dismiss AGW out of hand, and I think you know that – why don’t you take a stand and dismiss it? By not doing so you are doing a disservice to the taxpayers who are already paying for the disinformation and waste of capital pursuant to AGW.
Chad
Try a constructive argument. What are the pros/cons of each candidate’s position. How realistic are the proposed actions? Do they address the real problems. What are the uncertainties they face. What are the real global trends that will impact the economy and national security? See above.
Chad Wozniak | September 8, 2012 at 4:12 pm | Reply
Dr. Curry –
“The physical evidence is there to dismiss AGW out of hand, and I think you know that – why don’t you take a stand and dismiss it?”
What’s the upside for her?
Follow the money.
“AGW is a political falsehood based on garbage data and corrupt models, with odious objectives. That is reality. The physical evidence is there to dismiss AGW out of hand”
Not at all, AGW is supported by overwhelming evidence in the form of empirical based data derived from experiments in the lab, and observational programs recording the state of the atmosphere and oceans.
What science tells us is that human activity through greenhouse gas emissions is sharply elevating atmospheric CO2 levels.
http://ieet.org/images/CO2.png
The science shows this increase is at a rate unprecedented for tens millions of years, perhaps even unprecedented in the entire history of the habitable Earth. CO2 levels have already breached levels unprecedented for millions of years and threaten to move much higher.
Empirical lab experiments and atmospheric research by the military has established CO2 is a strong greenhouse gas and that the projected human increase will drive a very large absorption of heat. This CO2 forcing is already larger than any other known forcing and stands to dominate the direction and magnitude 21st century global temperature trend.
http://atoc.colorado.edu/~seand/headinacloud/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/ar4forcing.PNG
All in all AGW rests on very solid empirical foundations and so you shouldn’t be terribly surprised if Dr Curry, or any other expert of the science of climate, accepts it.
Arsenic is poisonous does not mean that the arsenic in the potato will kill you.
Similarly CO2 is a greenhouse gas does not mean that it will cause dangerous global warming.
On earth we have convection, so heat is not trapped in one place to create greenhouse. You can test it in your car in a hot day wheatear opening the windows will make a difference to the temperature in the car.
Sorry, a greenhouse where heat is trapped in a car with its windows closed is not what is happening on earth.
Lolwot, you write “All in all AGW rests on very solid empirical foundations and so you shouldn’t be terribly surprised if Dr Curry, or any other expert of the science of climate, accepts it.”
Just because you keep on repeating this nonsense does not make it any more scientific than it was the last time you wrote it. It is true that there is empirical evidence that as CO2 is added to the atmosphere it changes the radiative forcing. But as I keep on pointing out, and you studiously keep on ignoring, the ways in which it is claimed that this change in forcing raises global temperatures are purely hypothetical. So there is absolutely no empirical data whatsoever that shows that as you add CO2 to the atmosphere it causes global temperatures to rise. Such little empirical data as we have strongly indicates that the total climate sensitivity of CO2 is indistinguishable from zero.
Chad
I do not believe that Dr. Curry is really “sitting on the fence” in the ongoing scientific and policy debate surrounding AGW.
She has pointed out that the IPCC “consensus process” has worked to the detriment of climate science.
She has questioned the IPCC stand on “uncertainty” in the attribution of late 20th century warming.
She has stated under oath that, in her opinion as a climate scientist, AGW is unlikely to become an existential threat to humanity over this century, even in its most extreme incarnation.
She has likewise stated that we should not rush into mitigation actions whose efficacy we cannot predict and whose unintended consequences we cannot foresee.
She has opened up the ongoing climate debate in the blogosphere – in the process, Climate Etc. has become very successful as a site where both sides of the arguments are expressed freely.
If she were to become an “anti-consensus” activist by openly attacking the “mainstream” climatologists, this would reduce her credibility.
Sure, we rational skeptics of the current CAGW hysteria would sometimes like to see her put on the “Jeanne d’Arc” armor and ride off to defeat the warmists, but it’s better IMO that she remain a well-respected climate scientists, who is unafraid to state her scientific opinions openly without becoming an activist for either side.
We have far too many activists in this field. (“Tipping points” and “coal death trains” come to mind.) These have ceased to be scientists IMO.
Max
Surprising in a discussion of US politics and Climate Change action no one mentions the Western Climate Initiative.
http://www.westernclimateinitiative.org/
Begun February 2007 by the Governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington, the WCI puts to shame anything done federally in the USA. That’d be Christine O. Gregoire, Theodore R. Kulongoski, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Janet Napolitano and Bill Richardson who have a track record of acting when it wasn’t popular more worth listening to on this issue far more than a pair of protectionists who will say anything to get elected.
Why not ask what these five have to say, rather than disinterested latecomers dragged to the table?
The governor also said Arizona can remain active with the Western coalition by exploring policies related to solar power and other renewable energy sources, growth policies that limit pollution or steps to adapt to the changing climate.
“It’s very important for the state to stay engaged, to be at the table, but it’s also important to convey clearly our position on how to make progress,” Grumbles said. “Right now, given the economic downturn, given the complexity of the cap-and-trade scheme being developed, we’re not going to be supportive of it.”
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/02/11/20100211climate-brewer0211.html#ixzz25v6Vz9Ds
That’s because it is almost totally irrelevant. Rational responses to greenhouse gas emmissions will be technological and global. But Bart has never been known to be rational.
The website is a ghost town. Few if any of those governors are still serving, btw.
David Springer | September 9, 2012 at 5:13 am |
That’d be the fallacy of argumentum ad numerum.
When the USA starts letting Policy be determined by the popularity of websites, we’ll see a nation run by porn stars and casino owners.
In other words, Italy.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGAvwSp86hY
The Newsroom is my favorite weekly hour of television but you do realize it’s fiction, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoqKdWY692k
Clint Eastwood is my favorite actor and director, but I also realize he’s just an actor and director.
Do you?
Politicians should take into account the best empirical based science that shows the anthropogenic CO2 forcing as calculated from lab and atmospheric experiments and observations is much larger than all other known forcings. The solar forcing is tiny in comparison.
http://atoc.colorado.edu/~seand/headinacloud/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/ar4forcing.PNG
In the longterm the CO2 forcing will grow and continue to dominate and drive the 21st century global temperature trend.
http://ieet.org/images/CO2.png
In the process the world could be ripped back to the early Miocene, or even the Eocene in short order, creating a mass-extinction style shock for life on the planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png
Politicians should take into account that this sort of exaggeration is the heart of the scare. They do.
David Hagen –
You make excellent points in the post you referred me to.
The only problem I have with what you’re saying is that I don’t see any real commitment by the Republicans to stop the AGW fraud – if you read Romney’s piece, he isn’t really even aware of it, of what it really is about. We’re not talking about a difference of opinion here – AGW IS a fraud and has the potential to do tremendous harm not only to the economy but to people worldwide. Someone has to step up decisively to stop it, and I don’t see Romney doing that.
My other concern, of course, it the growth of the kleptocracy, which will be further expanded pursuant to AGW. This is a threat to our fundamental freedoms. We are already in a position in this country where unelected bureeaucrats are really the ones making the law and governing us, while absolutely unaccountable to us for their actions – we can’t vote against them or prosecute them or sue them for the harm they do. At this point, in too many jurisdictions elected officials have become mere cat’s paws for the bureaucracy, since it is the bureaucracy who now elects them. The effect of this is that a tyranny is not so gradually being imposed by a small minority (government employees and entitlees), the few that are in a position to decide elections.
I foresee a day when those among us who want to keep our liberty will have to fight physically against those who are bent on destroying it. That won’t happen in my lifetime, I don’t think, as I’m 65 and in poor health and quite severly handicapped. But I know there will people who won’t accept the new tyranny lying down. I don’t want it to com to thatr, but there are political trends emergiung in this country that are all too reminiscent of the way the Nazis gained ground in Germany in the decade before Hitler came to power. with the spreading of disinformation and intimidation of opponents, and the clear conviction on their part that end justifies the means, no matter how destructive and ugly the means. And at the forefront of these trends and this mentality is the AGW crowd.
If anyone doesn’t think what I’ve just said is so, rjust ead the history of the Nazis in Germany and see the parallels.
Flagged for Godwin’s.
You are the weakest link — goodbye.
Yes, the Republicans should either stand behind Senators Inhofe and Santorum, etc., or cast their views out completely. Instead their platform just ignores them. They must double down in one direction or another, otherwise they leave these devoted party members with strong views on the subject hanging out on a limb to be ridiculed as extremists.
JimD, Just about anyone can have a rational thought and just about anyone can be an idiot at times.
“I am a big fan of bacon, as are most Americans. A vast majority of Americans eat bacon, love it, and will add it to their diet when they can. However, I don’t believe government policy should mandate the buying of it. In fact, bacon, as Santorum’s argument suggests, may not be that good for you. However, he doesn’t say it should be banned in the American diet. It shouldn’t be required either. ”
Now is that idiotic or rational? Sometimes scientists should just do their job as stay out of politics.
Maybe politicians should stay out of science. There are few that have done the homework required to make rational statements that they can defend rather than parrot.
There is a fine line there Jim. If politicians didn’t get into science, most science today would not get funded. lolwot showed a forcing estimate link above. That had the range of anthropgenic forcing from 0.6 to 2.6Wm-2. One of the forcings estimates was black carbon at ~.2Wm-2. That estimate is based mainly on tropical BC. What it didn’t include was high latitude BC from the start of the industrial revolution. 100s of years of no scrubbers or particle arrestors. It also had a negative ~.3Wm-2 for land use. 6% of the surface of the Earth transformed from wilderness to agriculture and cities, was a cooling impact?
Climate science hasn’t scratched the surface yet. It is not ready for prime time.
Oddly, the politicians who think AGW is a hoax are in debt to the fossil fuel industry for funding their elections. Coincidence? Why can’t they get the support of politicians who don’t have fossil fuel industries in their state? The NSF, NASA and DOE funded the climate science right through the Bush administration, so I don’t think these organizations were paying much attention to the politicians in power regarding science. Thankfully there is a disconnect there that doesn’t censor the science, as it might in more totalitarian countries.
I agree, Chad. “AGW IS a fraud and has the potential to do tremendous harm not only to the economy but to people worldwide.”
That is probably why NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco and Drs. Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows declined to answer my challenge last week:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/30/activate-your-science/#comment-237446
Ron Paul, the candidate pledged to restoring constitutional limits on government and to an open and transparent audit of the Federal Government was shut out of the Republican Convention.
Unless he successfully runs as an independent candidate,
Integrity will not be restored to government science
Without constitutional limits restored on government.
– Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/
Chad Wozniak
Most people are repulsed by sociopathic opportunists. Just remember that their fraudulent intentions do not determine the legitimacy of the co-opted issues.
———————-
re: NSDAP parallels in U.S. Who or what might become the targeted victims?
bi2hs
RE : MAX_OK
Last I heard, GM stock was about $21, for Uncle Sam to break even it has to hit about $51. Ain’t gonna happen. Taxpayers are on the hook.
Ray
Ray, I don’t know what it has to hit, but I also know you or no one else can tell me with certainty what a stock’s future price is going to be.
The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) sand castle was built by smoothing all the oscillations in Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) before 1970s, leaving the warming phase of this oscillation since then untouched and calling it man-made, as shown in the chart below:
IPCC Chart => http://bit.ly/OaemsT
As shown in the IPCC chart above, the climate models don’t represent the observed global cooling from 1880s to 1910s and the global warming from 1910s to 1940s. As IPCC models fail to properly represent the known climate of the past, they have zero chance of predicting the unknown climate of the future.
Robert Ellison,
@ September 8, 2012 at 5:20 pm
Thank you for your reply. Yes. Too subtle. Sorry, I misinterpreted your comment. I was thinking you were probably one of the many who were ‘Socialist’ when young and gullible and became ‘Conservative’ when older and wiser. Winston Churchill is reported to have said:
I thought you might have been one of them.
Regarding nuclear power, let me head off the charge that I am advocating nuclear power for Australia. I am not – unless and until it can provide cheaper electricity than coal in Australia. What I am saying is that, if the CAGW alarmists want to reduce CO2 emissions, there is a solution that will give them what they want and also give the economically rational people what they want. But the anti-nuke activists will have to lead the way. They will have to change their position on nuclear and lead the charge to change the beliefs of those who are opposed, or just ill informed but scared stiff and paranoid about it.
It seems you must have missed the discussion about this on the thread about a week ago: http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/24/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic/
I disagree with these points.
Compared with what? Nuclear power has proven to be about the safest way to generate electricity http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/deaths-by-energy-source-in-forbes.html. This has been demonstrated over a period of nearly 60 years and 15,000 reactor years of operational experience. Your statement is widely believed amongst the general public, but is not supported by objective analysis. The widely held beliefs about nuclear power is a result of 50 years of brain washing by anti-nuclear activists which has caused widespread radiation phobia and paranoia about all things nuclear.
So what? Nuclear fuel is an insignificant cost. It comprises just 3% to 5% of the cost of electricity from a nuclear power plant. You could halve the efficiency and double the fuel costs and it makes little difference to the cost of electricity. This is one of the major advantages of nuclear power.
Misleading statement. No context provided. See my reply to similar comment here:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/24/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic/#comment-235399
Yes. This is one of many possible future types of nuclear power plant. There are many small nuclear power plant designs. They are in different stages of concept and design maturity and at different stages of progression through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission processes. You must have missed the many comments discussing this on this thread:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/24/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic/#comment-235406 (This comment explains how we can get to low cost nuclear and why small modular nuclear power plants are essential to cut global emissions)
This http://bree.gov.au/publications/micro/index.html is the recently releases report from the Australian Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics on the projected costs of electricity generation technologies under Australian conditions. Notice that, for the first time since Labor came to power in 2007, they have included the costs of nuclear power (for Australia) in the report. They have provided costs for both the large Gen 3 power plants (>1 GW) and for small modular nuclear power plants (Table 4.37 and 4.38, p77). The cost of electricity from small modular nuclear power plants is projected to be about 15% higher than from the large reactors in 2020. However, as I say in my comments on the previous thread, that will come down rapidly once the shackles are thrown off, regulatory constraints are revamped, competition gets going and we, in the western democracies, get over our radiation phobia and paranoia about nuclear energy.
I hope you might look at my summary of the key points from the previous thread here:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/24/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic/#comment-234611
and
http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/24/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic/#comment-235399
Benefits of nuclear energy in short:
The case for nuclear is really quite simple
• can provide a large component of the global energy needs virtually indefinitely
• near emissions free
• about the safest of all electricity generation technologies
• potentially the cheapest source of energy
Case against:
• Irrational beliefs, radiation phobia, paranoia
• Currently, costs are higher than they could and should be
Those were the days my friend
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day
We’d live the life we choose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.
La la la la…
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days
Fuel efficiency is important for a number of reasons – primarily it reduces the amount of long lived actinides so that the waste is dangerous over manageable periods rather than hundreds of thousands of year. The cclosed fuel cycle the many working and planned 4th gen plants produces must less waste and can use existing waste for hundreds of years of energy.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=transmutations.png
All nuclear plants in the United States today are Light Water Reactors (LWRs), using ordinary water (as opposed to ‘heavy water’) to slow the neutrons and cool the reactor. Uranium is the fuel in all of these power plants. One basic problem with this approach is that more than 99% of the uranium fuel ends up ‘unburned’ (not fissioned). In addition to ‘throwing away’ most of the potential energy, the long-lived nuclear wastes (plutonium, americium, curium, etc.) require geologic isolation in repositories such as Yucca Mountain.
There are two compelling alternatives to address these issues, both of which will be needed in the future. The first is to build reactors that keep the neutrons ‘fast’ during the fission reactions. These fast reactors can completely burn the uranium. Moreover, they can burn existing long-lived nuclear waste, producing a small volume of waste with half-life of only several decades, thus largely solving the nuclear waste problem. The other compelling alternative is to use thorium as the fuel in thermal reactors. Thorium can be used in ways that practically eliminate buildup of long-lived nuclear waste.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/11/28/hansen-to-obama-pt-iii-fast-nuclear-reactors-are-integral/
It is a bit of hyperbole form James Hansen – who’d a thunk it – but close enough for government work. One of the great benefits of the smaller designs is that they can be installed without large scale distribution networks. This makes them very cost effective in many places.
There are no operating repositories for long lived waste – a critical security problem for current designs. The nuclear fuels cycle is certainly something that Australia should engage in in a big way.
Robert Ellison,
Great song. It says it all.
Thank you for your detailed reply regarding nuclear. It is clear you know a lot more about nuclear power than I’d realised from your previous comments. I agree with most of what you say, and possibly should leave it at that. However, for the sake of discussion and perhaps to help inform those who are not across this to the same extent, I’ll take issue with a couple of your points.
This is a ‘down-in-the-weeds’ issue. Nuclear ‘waste’ is miniscule in quantity and consequences compared with the toxic waste from other electricity generation technologies and from industry. The nuclear ‘waste’ is not only miniscule in quantity, it is contained, whereas the toxic waste from most other technologies and industries is not contained – it is released to the environment. Furthermore, whereas nuclear ‘waste’ decreases in quantity and toxicity over time, most of the chemical wastes do not. The argument about nuclear waste is a furphy.
I agree that the nuclear ‘waste’ – or better described as ‘once used nuclear fuel’ – from the light water reactors (LWR) and heavy water reactors will eventually be re used in some future technologies. The once used nuclear fuel still retains about 99% of its useable energy. The significance of this is that no one in their right mind would permanently dispose of this valuable resource. Green activist journalist, Monbiot, says:
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/12/05/a-waste-of-waste/
The difference in the amount of actinides from 1970s and the current generation of reactors is so small as to be irrelevant to this discussion. It is of negligible relevance in the overall context of the costs and benefits of nuclear power.
Here is a summary of the underground storage facilities, some of which have been in operation for over a decade: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository#The_current_situation_at_certain_sites
The longer the ‘waste’ is allowed to cool before being moved into long term storage, the less costly is the storage. 30 to 100 years of cooling before underground storage or disposal reduces the storage costs significantly.
Here are photos of the storage containers from the now decommissioned Yankee nuclear power plant. http://www.yankeerowe.com/fuel.html These 16 containers hold all the used fuel from 32 years of operation producing 44 TWh of electricity at 75% average capacity factor for the life of the plant. http://www.yankeerowe.com/
Coal is cheaper and safer. Natural gas is a LOT cheaper and still much safer. There is no reason to pursue nuclear except for the single attribute that it doesn’t emit CO2 and that’s a bogus reason. In the United States there is no problem generating electricity. The problem is in diesel, gasoline, and Jet-A. Electricity will not solve that problem. The ultimate solution, the nearest term solution, the cheapest and safest solution, are one and the same and its name is synthetic biology. With the right synthetic organism sunlight, air, and water are transformed cheaply and cleanly into hydrocarbon fuels that fit perfectly with existing infrastructure for storage, distribution, and consumption including transporation AND electrical generation for those electrical plants which burn coal and natural gas. It won’t provide for nuclear power plants but nuclear power will only be used for its original purpose – submarines and other warships.
Skeptic science cannot be peer reviewed because it is not quality Skeptic science is not quality because it is not peer reviewed.
From what we have seen of it posted freely on blogs, which is presumably the best of it, it certainly is not quality. Science isn’t missing anything there.
I see a lot of good technical discussions, which suggests that you lack a good understanding of the scientific issues. That may be the difference between us. You do not see the issues that I see. That is the ultimate difference between warmers and skeptics. Warmers dismiss what skeptics consider important. How is this good science?
Using a new measure of coupling strength, this update shows that these climate modes have recently synchronized, with synchronization peaking in the year 2001/02. This synchronization has been followed by an increase in coupling. This suggests that the climate system may well have shifted again, with a consequent break in the global mean temperature trend from the post 1976/77 warming to a new period (indeterminate length) of roughly
constant global mean temperature. Swanson et al 2009 – ‘Has the climate recently shifted’ There is an extensive literature on decadal variability and the proxies suggests much longer term variability in climate. Climate variability seems a fundamentally obvious observation.
There are clearly many influences on climate but it seems clear as well that the left are stuck in a cognitive loop that is increasingly difficult to reconcile with reality. More so as the planet continues not to warm for a decade or three more and Arctic amplification cools the northern polar region in the well known decadal pattern seen in the Arctic, Alaska and North America especially. More so and there is every reason to suspect from the satellite data that change in cloud cover resulted in a change in cloud radiative forcing of 2 W/m2 between the 1980’s and 1990’s and that changes in cloud radiative forcing are also showing up in CERES. The so-called missing energy was entirely in the short wave. It is clear that a broad appreciation of both the science and the limits of science is lacking.
I believe the loop starts from an ideological position – something that has come to be identified a perceived failure of democracy, the limits to growth, populations filling the planet like a plague, the need for ‘economic degrowth’. Thus AGW became a rallying cry for the ideology and it is something that can’t be modified to accommodate new information because of the nature of groupthink self censorship and the behaviour of the mindguards – the guardians of the groupthink consensus. The goals of the ideology can only be accomplished beyond democratic and free market institutions – hence the parallels between of the present day to the methods or Stalin and Hitler which we must keep in mind. Democracy and freedom are to be defended every day.
They have a solution of cap and trade and taxes that does very little for emissions but is an essential first to the domination of the ideology of the left. The end game would see the death camps return – and it matters little to the people in them the good intentions of the jailers.
My problem is that I am not a sceptic of simple radiative processes. We should reduce emissions. But the rational responses are those that build the wealth and resilience of human societies. It is social – health and education, safe water and sanitation, conservation and rehabilitation of our environments, better management of farmlands. It is technological innovation that will deliver desperately needed cheap and abundant energy. My fear is that – as AGW collapses under the weight of anomalies – it will be another generation before we get to these things.
I approved of Obama’s election as the first black President. I voted for the party of Julia Gillard. My vote meant very little being in a safe ‘sea change’ Labor electorate – so how could I miss voting for the first woman Prime Minister? Nonetheless – it is time for a different tack in both cases.
Robert Ellison,
This is well explained.
Robert Ellison,
@ September 8, 2012 at 5:20 pm
Regarding nuclear power, let me head off the charge that I am advocating nuclear power for Australia. I am not – unless and until it can provide cheaper electricity than coal in Australia. What I am saying is that, if the CAGW alarmists want to reduce CO2 emissions, there is a solution that will give them what they want and also give the economically rational people what they want. But the anti-nuke activists will have to lead the way. They will have to change their position on nuclear and lead the charge to change the beliefs of those who are opposed, or just ill informed but scared stiff and paranoid about it.
It seems you must have missed the discussion about this on the thread about a week ago: http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/24/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic/
I disagree with these points.
Compared with what? Nuclear power has proven to be about the safest way to generate electricity http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/deaths-by-energy-source-in-forbes.html. This has been demonstrated over a period of nearly 60 years and 15,000 reactor years of operational experience. Your statement is widely believed amongst the general public, but is not supported by objective analysis. The widely held beliefs about nuclear power is a result of 50 years of brain washing by anti-nuclear activists which has caused widespread radiation phobia and paranoia about all things nuclear.
So what? Nuclear fuel is an insignificant cost. It comprises just 3% to 5% of the cost of electricity from a nuclear power plant. You could halve the efficiency and double the fuel costs and it makes little difference to the cost of electricity. This is one of the major advantages of nuclear power.
Misleading statement. No context provided. See my reply to similar comment here:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/24/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic/#comment-235399
Slow down Peter
Fuel efficiency is important for a number of reasons – primarily it reduces the amount of long lived actinides so that the waste is dangerous over manageable periods rather than hundreds of thousands of year. The closed fuel cycle of the many working and planned 4th gen plants produce must less waste and can use existing waste for hundreds of years of energy.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/09/07/climate-change-and-u-s-presidential-politics/#comment-237440
I would happly have a new design in my backyard – but I’d suggest they put it higher above sea level.
Waste and decommissioning problems are unsolved with existing nuclear technologies – although if you assume that most of the waste can be used in 4th gen plants most of the problem goes away.
Robert Ellison
Sorry for duplicate post. My first attempt didn’t show, so I broke it up into separate posts. Thus duplicate.
Since you’ve posted your comment about nuclear waste being an unresolved problem in both places I’ll post my reply here too so your point does not appear to be left unanswered.
This is a ‘down-in-the-weeds’ issue. Nuclear ‘waste’ is miniscule in quantity and consequences compared with the toxic waste from other electricity generation technologies and from industry. The nuclear ‘waste’ is not only miniscule in quantity, it is contained, whereas the toxic waste from most other technologies and industries is not contained – it is released to the environment. Furthermore, whereas nuclear ‘waste’ decreases in quantity and toxicity over time, most of the chemical wastes do not. The argument about nuclear waste is a furphy.
I agree that the nuclear ‘waste’ – or better described as ‘once used nuclear fuel’ – from the light water reactors (LWR) and heavy water reactors will eventually be re used in some future technologies. The once used nuclear fuel still retains about 99% of its useable energy. The significance of this is that no one in their right mind would permanently dispose of this valuable resource. Green activist journalist, Monbiot, says:
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/12/05/a-waste-of-waste/
The difference in the amount of actinides from 1970s and the current generation of reactors is so small as to be irrelevant to this discussion. It is of negligible relevance in the overall context of the costs and benefits of nuclear power.
Here is a summary of the underground storage facilities, some of which have been in operation for over a decade: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository#The_current_situation_at_certain_sites
The longer the ‘waste’ is allowed to cool before being moved into long term storage, the less costly is the storage. 30 to 100 years of cooling before underground storage or disposal reduces the storage costs significantly.
Here are photos of the storage containers from the now decommissioned Yankee nuclear power plant. http://www.yankeerowe.com/fuel.html These 16 containers hold all the used fuel from 32 years of operation producing 44 TWh of electricity at 75% average capacity factor for the life of the plant. http://www.yankeerowe.com/
Peter,
I tink you’re pissing in my pocket. Much of what you said I or Jim Hansen in quotes had already said. What you say about other wastes is a furphy.
What matters for gen 1, 2 and 3 wastes is long term containment in engineered structures for hundreds of thousands of years. Here again is the relevant graph. – http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=transmutations.png –
What you point to in the wikepedia article are storage facilities that are reseach oriented, pilot projects or shallow storage facilities not suitable as long term (a million years) repositories. If indeed that is a viable proposition at all and not just wishfull thinking. Earlier facilities are already leaking. As well as some pictures of above ground stores.
But – as I said this is a useable resource in closed fuel cycle reactors so why try and put it out of sight at all. Using much more of the available energy and reducing both the toxicity and volume of waste makes nuclear energy viable and not otherwise.
The current volume of high level waste is about 270,000 cubic metres and increasing at 12,000 cubic metres a year. Miniscule hardly covers it.
So stop repeating what I say as if it is novel, refrain from referencing wikepedia and stop painting a contradictory picture of what you want to do with this waste. It cannot be disposed of – it must be recycled through a closed fuel cycle.
Cheers
Robert Ellison,
Yes, I was humouring you. I didn’t realise you were so arrogant.
I realise you have a cursory understanding of the subject matter. I expect this is a reflection that you have a cursory understanding of many matters you pontificate on.
You then tell me not to refer to Wikipedia, yet you refer me to some junk web site called “photobucket”.
If you want me to provide links to authotitive sites on nuclear waste repositories and you want in depth discussion of the topic on a site like this where we are attempting to bring people up from a level of no knowledge of the subject, then you must be joking.
I can see you have strong opinions. I can also see it is based on big ego and little knowledge.
You tell me not to repeat back to you what you’ve said. Yet you are repeating to me what I said in the comments on this thread and elsewhere: http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/24/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic/#comment-235399 Run Find “Peter Lang” on that thread and read and learn. Then come back and say “sorry Peter, I’ll put my arrogance away”.
Peter Lang to Robert Ellison
I didn’t realise you were so arrogant. I realise you have a cursory understanding of the subject matter. I expect this is a reflection that you have a cursory understanding of many matters you pontificate on.
You then tell me not to refer to Wikipedia, yet you refer me to some junk web site called “photobucket”………… from a level of no knowledge of the subject…………….can also see it is based on big ego and little knowledge.
Blimey! Peter Lang certainly is a grumpy old git! Not only with the opposition but with his own side too!
Taliking about the general malaise of talking through your arse.
Yes, I was humouring you. I didn’t realise you were so arrogant.
I realise you have a cursory understanding of the subject matter. I expect this is a reflection that you have a cursory understanding of many matters you pontificate on.
You then tell me not to refer to Wikipedia, yet you refer me to some junk web site called “photobucket”.
If you want me to provide links to authotitive sites on nuclear waste repositories and you want in depth discussion of the topic on a site like this where we are attempting to bring people up from a level of no knowledge of the subject, then you must be joking.
Really Peter? Humouring me? Pontification is a harsh accusation coming from you. But I can tell you that photobucket is merely a photo storage site. I use a snipping tool to make a collection of graphs I find interesting or useful and upload them to the site. Always from reputable sources. It makes it easy to convey points such as the reduction in toxicity from a more complete nuclear fuel burn. – http://s1114.photobucket.com/albums/k538/Chief_Hydrologist/?action=view¤t=transmutations.png – previously referred to. Twice.
There are no deep HLW repositories currently operating as more than research or pilot sites – so no I don’t need any information – especially wikepedia articles that don’t say what you claim.
So please take your humouring and umbrage do with it what you like because I’m a little bored with simplistic messages delivered in a long winded drone. Comprende?
Robert Ellison,
If you think Jim Hansen or yourself are authorities on nuclear waste management, it is a good indication of how little you know about the matter.
Regarding quoting you, that’s delusional. Look at what I’ve been saying on JC threads for a while and elsewhere for many years.
US DOE ‘Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’ has been in operation (storing nuclear waste) for over a decade.
http://www.wipp.energy.gov/general/general_information.htm
However, as I said, scaremongering about nuclear waste is just that: scaremongering. It is an emotional issue, but relatively trivial in the context of the overall benefits and costs of nuclear power.
I notice you avoided addressing these questions, which if you had, would have shown just how trivial is nuclear waste compared with other toxic wastes:
Pitch it all in Sydney Harbor, or some other deep sub-ducting oceanic trench.
========
Robert Ellison,
@ September 8, 2012 at 5:20 pm
Yes. This is one of many possible future types of nuclear power plant. There are many small nuclear power plant designs. They are in different stages of concept and design maturity and at different stages of progression through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission processes. You must have missed the many comments discussing this on this thread:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/24/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic/#comment-235406 (This comment explains how we can get to low cost nuclear and why small modular nuclear power plants are essential to cut global emissions)
This http://bree.gov.au/publications/micro/index.html is the recently releases report from the Australian Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics on the projected costs of electricity generation technologies under Australian conditions. Notice that, for the first time since Labor came to power in 2007, they have included the costs of nuclear power (for Australia) in the report. They have provided costs for both the large Gen 3 power plants (>1 GW) and for small modular nuclear power plants (Table 4.37 and 4.38, p77). The cost of electricity from small modular nuclear power plants is projected to be about 15% higher than from the large reactors in 2020. However, as I say in my comments on the previous thread, that will come down rapidly once the shackles are thrown off, regulatory constraints are revamped, competition gets going and we, in the western democracies, get over our radiation phobia and paranoia about nuclear energy.
I hope you might look at my summary of the key points from the previous thread here:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/24/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic/#comment-234611
and
http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/24/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic/#comment-235399
Benefits of nuclear energy in short:
The case for nuclear is really quite simple
• can provide a large component of the global energy needs virtually indefinitely
• near emissions free
• about the safest of all electricity generation technologies
• potentially the cheapest source of energy
Case against:
• Irrational beliefs, radiation phobia, paranoia
• Currently, costs are higher than they could and should be
At 9:37 PM on 8 September, Peter Lang had discussed some of the “Benefits of nuclear energy in short,“ including:
…to remind me of the long correspondence I had with Dr. Petr Beckmann from the early 1980s up until his final illness in 1993. Our exchanges were initiated upon my discovery of his superb book The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear (1976) and his excellent and acerbic newsletter Access to Energy.
His contention from the earliest days of our acquaintance was that of all modalities of electrical power generation practicable for the support of an industrialized civilization (which automatically left out wind and solar – unless we’re talking about orbital power satellites), nuclear fission technology available in the ’70s, as foreseeably further developed (and he was an emeritus professor of electrical engineering who knew the field well) was not only the most economically viable but throughout its fuel cycle and operation the safest available.
Safer, in fact, than wind or solar might be if scaled up insanely to offer even transient output equivalent to what was already being done with “nukes.”
As he pointed out, a major cause of industrial accidental deaths is falling from heights, and both those noisy endangered-species-mangling pinwheels and the ginormous solar panel arrays require people to clamber all over them in installation, maintenance, and even dusting the solar cells to keep their pitiful energy gathering ability from going completely to hell.
I’d heard, of course, that industrial engineers have reliable formulas to calculate the numbers of deaths and injuries that are likely to be involved in any endeavor, and “budget” for them. The insurance actuaries insist on it. Dr. Beckmann applied those formulas to all electricity generating technologies then available – including solar and wind – in The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear in order to prove his point.
He was also the individual who first drew to my attention the preposterous idiocy of the anthropogenic global warming conjecture and began collating skeptical critique of the feculent bogosity in the scientific literature.
I miss the tough old sonofabitch greatly.
Tucci78,
Thank you for that interesting and really well written comment.
I’d add this
It’s already safer than solar and wind Here are the stats (fatalities per TWh of electricity generated):
Coal = 60
Gas = 4
Solar (roof top) = 0.44
Wind = 0.15
Nuclear = 0.09
http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/deaths-by-energy-source-in-forbes.html
Peter Lang | September 9, 2012 at 12:19 am |
You do the good doctor far too little honor. His comments are exquisitely crafted; some of them are even less than two to five decades out-of-date.
People don’t fall from great heights maintaining kites or solar arrays of the types those industries appear to be moving towards; figures based on 2010 and earlier studies couldn’t be expected to account for this factor of technical innovation.
However, the real problem with such expert reports is that they attempt to capture knowledge that is simply impossible to accurately recover or portray. Do the deaths due particulates such as soil ascribed by the methods applied in the calculations more properly depend on the burning of fossil fuels which the droughts that made the soil blow up into the air, rather than to ‘Nature’?
And while ‘death’ is easily figured from mortality (some naively assume who know little about mortality), suffering and misery are incommensurables.
What really measures such things well is money.
Which only happens if you monetize, or privatize, the resources.
Some of these things it is unconscionable to monetize. Sophie’s Choice is not something you introduce to a marketplace. But others.. like pricing the bandwidth on cell phones, or the capacity of the Carbon Cycle.. that’s fair game. It’s not just fair game, but it’s the right and proper function of government to set standards and measures for the market to use to exploit these resources within the economy.
Which also pushes innovation. Which if it were not for regulatory interference, we might see a lower death rate on coal, an industry even more out-dated than one of the good doctor’s well-crafted comments.
As a true exemplar of the general malaise of talking through his arse – Bart has few peers. Although engineering types would generally recommend harnesses when working on roofs – where the majority of solar panels tend to be – this is no panacea against harness trauma that can kill within 5 minutes. This is no criticism of solar power. Sh_t happens as we say in Oz. The point is to have an effective rescue plan. Such as quick cut the rope – he may bounce.
But I rather think that the song and dance about cell phone bandwidth is the true message and the rest was merely a close to hand but nonsensical hook. Wouldn’t want to trivialise the millions of deaths from black carbon particulates in developing countries. I note however that Peter uses the world average and that in the USA (and other developed countries I presume) the rate is 15/TWh. Still as the US used about 6,000 TWh of coal energy last year that’s about 90,000 deaths.
Number of deaths for leading causes of death
•Heart disease: 599,413
•Cancer: 567,628
•Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 137,353
•Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,842
•Accidents (unintentional injuries): 118,021
•Alzheimer’s disease: 79,003
•Diabetes: 68,705
•Influenza and Pneumonia: 53,692
•Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 48,935
•Intentional self-harm (suicide): 36,909
Well it’s in the ball park if we consider that it is the majority cause of chronic lower respiratory disease. But it looks like smoking is in the clear then – so we can all go back to smoking stogies and reefers like the 70’s never ended.
Perhaps we should tax the Chinese, Indians, Africans and Asians for incommensurately adding to the particulate load and all retire to Minnesota. It’s quiet in Minnesota in February. Ho Ho Shibboleth.
Nuclear Power – would avoid 900 fatalities per year in NSW and provide the least cost way to reduce emissions;
Why the opposition to nuclear? Surely nuclear would provide everything most people want, e.g.:
– energy security
– reliable energy supply
– by far the least cost way to reduce CO2 emissions
– avoid about 900 fatalities per year
What more could we ask for?
Here is a very simple calculation of the number of fatalities that would be avoided by replacing coal with nuclear power in NSW (using USA figures for fatalities from coal and global average figures for nuclear power: http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/deaths-by-energy-source-in-forbes.html ).
NSW generates about 60 TWh of electricity from coal each year
USA rate of fatalities from coal fired electricity generation (mostly from air pollution) = 15 fatalities/TWh
= 900 fatalities from coal fired electricity generation in NSW each year
If nuclear replaced coal
Fatalities per year from nuclear electricity generation = 0.09 fatalities/TWh
= 5 fatalities from coal fired electricity generation in NSW each year
Therefore, fatalities avoided by substituting nuclear for coal generation = 900-5 = 895 fatalities avoided per year.
Who wants to argue against that?
Nuclear power is about the safest of all electricity generation technologies
According to “Deaths by energy source” http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/deaths-by-energy-source-in-forbes.html nuclear energy avoids about 60 fatalities (global average) per TWh of electricity consumption, 90 in China, and 15 in USA.
The benefit is even greater if we consider the case where electrification is advancing across the developing world and replaces coal, wood, dung, etc. for heating and cooking. Then, nuclear avoids about 100 fatalities per TWh (global average) and 170 in China (and probably even more in the less developed countries).
Nuclear avoided 162,000 fatalities globally in 2009 (on the assumption that nuclear has replaced coal and using the global average figures from the above link.
[Global fatalities from coal are 60 per TWh and from nuclear are 0.04 per TWh. Global electricity generation from nuclear energy in 2009 was 2,697 TWh: http://www.iea.org/stats/electricitydata.asp?COUNTRY_CODE=29%5D ]
If nuclear replaced all remaining coal fired electricity generation, the world would avoid a further 487,000 fatalities per year (total fatalities avoided by existing nuclear plus replacement of existing coal generation = 648,000 fatalities per year.).
Assuming coal consumption for electricity generation doubles by 2050 (in the absence of a cost competitive alternative), then the fatalities attributable to not replacing coal with nuclear would be over 1 million fatalities per year in 2050.
Table 1: Global fatalities avoided per year by replacing coal with nuclear for electricity generation
Global averages for electricity (per year) Fatalities avoided per year
by existing nuclear 161,563
if nuclear replaces existing coal 486,382
Total (nuclear replaces all coal) 647,946
Total if nuclear replaces 2x coal (by 2050) 1,134,328
The saving in fatalities per year would be much higher still if power was cheap so that electrification replaces coal, wood and dung-burning for cooking and heat in underdeveloped countries and replaces gas for heating and oil for some road transport in developed countries.
Cheap power from any fuel saves lives. Cheap nuclear power will save far more lives. Clearly, since carbon pricing would increase, not decrease energy prices, carbon pricing will cause more fatalities than would be the case with no carbon price but with cheap clean nuclear power.
Peter Lang | September 9, 2012 at 3:59 am |
Who wants to argue against that?
Well coal mining has a lot of blue collar jobs.
Let’s to that important source reference- sourcewatch:
“There are approximately 174,000 blue-collar, full-time, permanent jobs related to coal in the U.S.: mining (83,000), transportation (31,000), and power plant employment (60,000)”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Coal_and_jobs_in_the_United_States
It’s dimly possible that is correct.
So you have how many blue jobs in nuclear power industry?
I could find a sourcewatch reference or any easy ref, though here something:
* 15,000 — Number of jobs added to the U.S. nuclear power industry in the past three years
* 21,000 — Potential number of new jobs in the nuclear industry if all 26 reactor applications are approved and built
* 1,000 — Number of TVA nuclear employees eligible to retire in the next year
* 500 — Average number of employees at a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant, compared with 220 at a comparable coal plant and 60 at a comparable natural gas plant
Sources: Nuclear Energy Institute, Tennessee Valley Authority
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010/may/27/nuclear-jobs-begin-to-heat-up/
gbaikie,
I think the point you are making is that if nuclear replaces coal a lot of blue collar jobs will be lost.
However, that is not a valid argument for blocking progress. If it was a valid argument, then it would make sense to go back to earlier times where we used wood instead of coal, picked cotton by hand and dug potatoes by hand. That would create a lot of jobs.
What we want is to improve the world’s productivity. If we can get our electricity with less labour involved in producing it, that is a good thing. It means increasing productivity in the electricity industry.
Surely, that is what we want, yes? We want to give people better jobs in better and safer industries. We don’t want our children to work as coal miners if they could be in higher paid and healthier services industries.
If you are concerned about coal miners losing their jobs in the next few years or even a decade because of nuclear power, don’t be. It will take decades for nuclear to replace coal in USA.
“Well coal mining has a lot of blue collar jobs.
I think the point you are making is that if nuclear replaces coal a lot of blue collar jobs will be lost.”
Yes.
But there could be more to the argument. Who and where are those who losing the blue collar jobs- could have more to do with it.
There is sentimentally involved- and romance. And probably
most significantly a political power structure.
In country with 8.1 percentage unemployment- tens of millions unemployed and seeking work- the numbers lost jobs can not be
that important, instead, who loses jobs could be more important.
And one existing coal union job may be worth more than one future union
nuclear worker job. One has just the existing now vs existing in future
aspect. And comparison of jobs- how much romance and sentiment value is connected to working in nuclear industry?
Compared the adventure of huge machinery ripping up the land [strip mining], or traveling down the earth following seams of coal.
Then there were early union beginning wars over who got to work in coal mines- very romantic. And the general history of coal- it built America.
And since it built America there a lot old money still involved and family traditions. There is love/hate relationship and political players managing the conflict with of course no shortage of corruption.
What else explains why the obvious source of global human CO2 emission is related to coal and instead we endless concern ourselves with passenger car emissions?
CET data records a 350 year warming …say shouldn’t we be celebrating the 350th anniversary of coming out of The Little Ice Age? Waiter, drinks fer everyone!
Party time?
All I want to do is have a little fun before I die
Says the man next to me out of nowhere
It’s apropos of nothing he says his name is William
But I’m sure he’s Bill or Billy or Mac or buddy
And he’s plain ugly to me, and I wonder if he’s ever
Had a day of fun in his whole life
We are drinking beer at noon on Tuesday
In the bar that faces the giant car wash
And the good people of the world
Are washing their cars on their lunch breaks
Hosing and scrubbing as best they can
In skirts and suits
And they drive their shiny Datsuns and Buicks
Back to the phone company, the record stores, too
Well, they’re nothing like Billy and me
‘Cause
All I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I’m not the only one
All I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I’m not the only one
All I wanna do is have some fun
Until the sun comes up over
Santa Monica Boulevard
BTW – do they really think that 70% is good enough. In the Art of War, Sun Tzu says, The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.’ I tend to go with 10% – too many long lunches – and have a plan B. Plan B always works.
What’s the “plan B” to (another 4 years of) Obama?
On election date in Nov, however, I suspect that not a single vote will be cast that is based primarily on either candidate’s stance on climate change.
I think that in some of the battleground states, the positions on regulating fossil fuels and developing fossil fuels will be taken into account. The Obama administration has a record of restricting fossil fuel development whenever it can, citing AGW as a principal motivator. The EPA, for example, has announced regulations on coal emissions, and has a new set of regulations that it is ready to promulgate after the election. To the degree that Obama’s stifling regulatory record is based on his beliefs about CO2 causing warming, and to the degree that Romney’s unformed policy commitment leads him to support increased fossil fuel development, votes will be decided.
Obama takes credit for the expanded production of oil, coal and natural gas, while also promising more stifling regulations on production. It’s hard to believe that voters in the fossil fuel producing and fossil fuel consuming states will remain oblivious to that contradiction in Obama’s policy. Whether Romney will say anything to take advantage of that contradiction remains to be seen.
Thus I agree: climate change rhetoric per se will not influence a single vote; but how climate change belief is thought to influence energy development policy will decide a lot of votes.
Obama’s rhetoric is about choices: whether the US will continue to increase its coal, oil and natural gas production as it has under his administration; or whether the US will continue to increase the restrictions on coal, oil and natural gas as it has under his administration. Votes will depend on which of those two trends of Obama’s administration would be predominant under his second term. But I think the global warming issue is secondary to the fossil fuel issues.
Mitt Romney:
So I oppose steps like a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system that would handicap the American economy and drive manufacturing jobs away, all without actually addressing the underlying problem. Economic growth and technological innovation, not economy-suppressing regulation, is the key to environmental protection in the long run. So I believe we should pursue what I call a “No Regrets” policy — steps that will lead to lower emissions, but that will benefit America regardless of whether the risks of global warming materialize and regardless of whether other nations take effective action.
For instance, I support robust government funding for research on efficient, low-emissions technologies that will maintain American leadership in emerging industries. And I believe the federal government must significantly streamline the regulatory framework for the deployment of new energy technologies, including a new wave of investment in nuclear power.
Surely, all those who see CAGW as a really important issue should be supporting Romney!
Yes, climate is changing, always did, and always will. Human can deteriorate / improve the climate – because: the ‘climate” is controlled by the availability of H2O on land.
Presenting that: the phony GLOBAL warmings are changing the climate – is same as saying that:: CO2 is making the moon to spin around the earth – therefore, the universe is spinning around the earth also (that’s what the phony GLOBAL warming is – NOT REAL) Just fodder for the Fakes
By loaded comments, making connection between climatic changes and the phony GLOBAL warmings – is the mother of all crimes, in progress…
General Malaise ?
Is there a jester in the house?
Victory belongs to the side
That scores most
In the temple calculations
Before battle…
There are Five Fundamentals
For this deliberation…
(Sun-Tzu)
Send a cheque fer $50 ter
and I will tell yer what they are.
Knowledge of the enemy’s dispositions can only be obtained from other men.
Hence the use of spies, of whom there are five classes: (1) Local spies; (2) inward spies; (3) converted spies; (4) doomed spies; (5) surviving spies.
When these five kinds of spy are all at work, none can discover the secret system. This is called “divine manipulation of the threads.” It is the sovereign’s most precious faculty.
Lol The fake email contact was deleted.
David Springer , Sept * 11.35am on electronic calculators and post modern science. My father always carried his slide rule in his pocket – like the Chiefio,
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/concise-fun/
It was required that we purchase a slide rule for my trigonometry class in high school. I bought my first pocket calculator in 1975 while in military electronics school. I bought my second pocket calculator in 1977, a Sharp Elsi-Mate 500 Scientific, when I entered college. I still have the Sharp Elsi-Mate 500S to this day and use it often. I bought an HP-48 somewhere along the way but rarely used it as I had a smaller calculator that did hex arithmetic for my earlier days in computer design work. My slide rule from high school got very little if any use beyond high school although I seem to recall a math class or two in college where we could have slide rules in the examinations but not electronic calculators.
In striking an army
In attacking an individual,
It is necessary to knpw beforehand
The names of the general
And of his attendants’
His aides’
His doorkeepers.
His body guards.
Our spies must be instructed
To discover all of this In detail.
Sun-Tzu.
The candidates
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Romney: “President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet.” I am not a scientist myself, but my best assessment of the data is that the world is getting warmer, that human activity contributes to that warming, and that policymakers should therefore consider the risk of negative consequences. However, there remains a lack of scientific consensus on the issue — on the extent of the warming, the extent of the human contribution, and the severity of the risk — and I believe we must support continued debate and investigation within the scientific community.
Barack Obama:
Climate change is the one of the biggest issues of this generation, and we have to meet this challenge by driving smart policies that lead to greater growth in clean energy generation and result in a range of economic and social benefits And yes, my plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet – because climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They’re a threat to our children’s future. And in this election, you can do something about it.
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I find it totally depressing that their climate statements make no use of real climate science. Neither one gets it right but of the two Obama is worse. Let’s take Obama’s boast about slowing the rise of the oceans. Before you make such grandiose promises you should first find out what the ocean is actually doing. It so happens that we do know about the rise of the ocean for the last eighty years: it has been a linear rise at the rate of 2.46 millimeters a year. Anyone who deals with scientific measurements will tell you that something that has been linear for eighty years is not about to change anytime soon. This value comes from Chou, Yu, and Li who published it in 22 April issue of Science, a peer reviewed journal, in 2008. Satellites today clock the rise as approximately 3 mm per year, within a statistical error of the eighty year trend. In a century that gives 24.6 centimeters, not 20 feet as Al Gore pronounced in his Nobel Prize winning film. This should be easy enough for a competent technical adviser to figure out but competence in science does not seem to be a strong point here. The rest of his platform is equally void of any science content. He speaks of reducing “…the carbon pollution that is heating our planet….” First, to speak of “carbon pollution” is scientifically illiterate. It does not exist. What he means is adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere under a new name his administration is using because they pushed it through the Supreme Court. The other part of the sentence, about heating up the planet, is equally wrong. It can be demonstrated that this “pollution” is not doing any such thing. There has not been any warming of any kind since the start of the twenty-first century while atmospheric carbon dioxide relentlessly increased. The theory of greenhouse effect requires that such an increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause greenhouse warming but this is not what is happening. IPCC AR4 used the greenhouse theory of warming when they predicted that warming in the twenty-first century will proceed at the rate of 0.2 degrees per decade. We are now in the second decade of the century and there is no sign of this warming. In science, if a theory makes a demonstrably wrong prediction that theory itself is considered to be wrong. The greenhouse theory that IPCC used has made a wrong prediction about warming and must be considered a wrong theory. This is actually not the first time that the greenhouse theory has failed and yet it is still in use. Global temperature records show that there was no warming in the fifties, sixties and seventies while carbon dioxide steadily increased. No satisfactory explanation for its failure to produce warming exists. And there was no warming in the eighties and nineties either. Satellites show a series of El Nino peaks and La Nina valleys while the global mean temperature remains constant throughout this period. Starting with the second half of the twentieth century and later we now have 62 no-warming years and no greenhouse years. And yet Obama’s advisers allowed him to claim that “…climate change is no hoax.” I am sorry but to say this in the face of a total no-warming climate history I outlined is nothing more than the old story of the emperor’s new clothes. Romney is no better in his assessment of the existence of warming but advocates a more moderate action about steps to be taken to handle it. Where Obama advocates precipitate action of policies that lead to “…greater growth in green energy generation” Romney wants a continued debate and investigation within the scientific community. This is the wiser course because the non-existence of the claimed warming is more likely to come out of that then from Obama’s program to build expensive alternate energy systems at the expense of destroying the existent energy infrastructure that has been optimized for use by our civilization.
blueice2hotsea –
You ask who the victims of the Nazi-ization of the country through AGW and related regulatory extremism might be?
It could well be ethnically related, or regionally related (say if some states won’t go along with the program – witness the hard stance now being taken in Texas against Lisa Jackson and the other EPA extremists who are trying to force the shutdown of half of Texas’s electric generating capacity). Stalin had no problem persecuting minorities in Russia, so just because the AGW crowd are socialist doesn’t mean they won’t act out their race prejudices. In fact, because of their disregard for rights, they are just as likely as their fellow socialists, the Nazis, to commit atrocities if ever they gain enough power to do that.
In that connection, I cite previous posts of mine on this blog in which I reported on my (black) family’s subjection to prejudice from left-“liberal” – i.e., socialist – types. Therefore. would fully expect the AGW-socialist regime to target minorities, especially if those minorities recognize what is being done to them and become vocal about it. Because of their well-known work ethic, Asian-Americans could be their first target. Just because the Nazis manipulated the old rightwing in Germany into supporting them by playing on the old right’s territorial ambitions for Germany, doesn’t make the Nazis any less socialist. Not only that, but the REAL “old rightwing” here in the USA -the Al Gores – are certainly in the CRL camp.
Romney’s namby-pamby, weak-sister position on AGW is just too regrettable. Come on, man, take a stand and call the AGW bluff!
In Re Romney also-
Come on, man, show some leadership here, not such deeble-minded followership!
And you too, Dr. Curry – it’s long past time to call the AGW bluff.
Even if there was something any government could actually do to reverse the warming of the globe we should not trust the current administration. The best government was shown by the example George Bush who prevented government from acting.
Let’s get current. We all were appraised right after the DNC’s convention that employment statistics were a stonker. The current government will be motivated to use monetary policy to do something over the next ninety days because we have an election right around the corner.
But, the real interest rates are negative. Current government policy has made the interest rate zero. No one would dream of buying a long-term risk-free government bond that might pay at least enough interest to current inflation because what the government does in the future is unknown–i.e., there is too much risk given compared to the reward.
And now the future is here. If the government does act it cannot reduce the interest rate any further. All it can do is print and give away money to artificially stoke demand. That leads to even more inflation and it will never stop until the government stops printing money and spending money it does not have and until government stops making promises it cannot keep in exchange for votes from IQ-deficient population that has lost its values.
So far I have seen no objection to the premises implied to be good practice by this article.
1. Precautionary (pessimistic) forecasts are better than accurate probabilities, given the asymmetric balance of consequences.
2. If there is a risk of a catastrophe, it needs to be stated even if it is still uncertain.
oops wrong thread, will repost at forecaster thread
Beginning Saturday, it will be illegal to import or produce traditional incandescent light bulbs in EU member states…
It is amazing that America is incapable of learning from the most obvious mistakes of dead and dying Old Europe. But, that’s is what liberal fascism is all about: Epic Fail.