Open thread

Posted on May 17, 2014 by | 269 Comments

By Judith Curry

It’s your turn to introduce topics for discussion.

This entry was posted in Open thread. Bookmark the permalink.

269 responses to “Open thread”

  1. Maggie Lephale (@Mag_Starrr) | May 17, 2014 at 4:20 pm |

    Hi Judy,

    I am reading up on Resilience and Sustainability

    My question are: What are the implications of resilience thinking for urban development and planning?
    Does urban resilience theory address the limitations of and strengthen sustainability theory?

    Your response would be highly appreciated.

    Maggie

    • John Plodinec | May 17, 2014 at 5:11 pm |

      Maggie:-
      A lot depends on the definitions you use. Personally, I see resilience as a differential property while sustainability is an integral one, in terms of time. If you go to http://www.resilientus.org, and put “sustainability” in the search box, you’ll find a three-part series that discusses the relationship between sustainability and resilience.

      Sustainability is about making efficient use of resources over time. Resilience really is less about efficiency and much more about the work that the resources “do.” The overlap comes in mitigation – changing the environment (built or natural) to either avoid, or limit the damage of, disruptive events. As Sun Tzu said over two millenia ago, “the best battle is the one not fought.” And we would echo that the best disaster is the one never experienced. Mitigating actions can avoid perhaps 10X their cost (cost here can be financial, temporal, labor …); hence they can provide an inherent resource efficiency compared to doing nothing. This is where enhancing resilience can make a city more sustainable.

      Can, but won’t necessarily will. If we look at NYC, they can expect to experience a major hurricane every 75 years, on average. It is an open question whether the $20B or so they have proposed spending on “Sandy-proofing” the city is the most efficient use of resources.

    • jim2 | May 17, 2014 at 6:23 pm |

      NYC should probably begin inching West. Get off the coast. Even if it takes 100 years.

    • curryja | May 17, 2014 at 6:29 pm |

      Hi Maggie, the question you ask is an extremely good one. I haven’t focused personally much on urban issues, but I am very interested in this topic. Here are links to my previous posts on resilience thinking:
      http://judithcurry.com/2013/05/29/forget-sustainability-its-about-resilience/
      http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/04/bouncing-forward-not-back/

    • Tonyb | May 17, 2014 at 6:46 pm |

      Maglie

      Look no further than Galveston for examples of resilience.

      It was the scene of Americas greatest natural disaster in 1900 as a hurricane overwhelmed the city. It’s defences we’re minimal as settlers had removed the large sand dunes that protected this coast.

      A large sea wall was subsequently built which was raised Several times as further hurricanes struck.

      http://www.texasalmanac.com/topics/history/galvestons-response-hurricane-1900

      Without this wall further development of the city would be impossible.

      Thirty years ago London built a barrage on the Thames that could be raised and lowered to protect it against storm surges.

      Arguably new York has been very slow off the mark in protecting itself against natural disasters
      Tonyb

    • Joshua | May 17, 2014 at 8:31 pm |

      Hey tony –

      I saw that you’re still curious about the source of that quote from Bengtsson, and I guess you have some kind of aversion to visiting Rabett’s warren? So here’s the source:

      http://www.klimatupplysningen.se/2014/01/23/grona-moten/#comment-361068

      How’s your Swedish?

    • Tom Fuller | May 17, 2014 at 8:36 pm |

      Hi Maggie

      I think resilience is an important, if underdeveloped, topic that those interested in climate consequences should keep in mind. Perhaps I can defuse the climate component by using an example like malaria/HIV AIDS. It can look like prevention (bed nets and DDT) or recovery (fighting for access to medicines in poorer countries).That doesn’t exactly explain the difference between sustainability and resilience but it points in their general direction.

      For urban planners in the developed world, climate change impacts can be as simple or as difficult as we allow them to be.

      Sea level rise is not hard to prepare for, with the right mix of building use, infrastructure changes and zoning. The EPA in 1992 thought America’s coasts could be protected from a 1 meter sea level rise with an investment of $492 billion.That’s sustainability. Building in the ability to recover from storm surge and stronger storms is more difficult and that’s resilience–the ability to bounce back or resist deformation.

      Countries like America have adopted a brute force approach to resilience. They just say ‘we’ll spend whatever it takes to return a locale to its original state.’ (Not always, of course. But there’s no shortage of cash to rebuild Malibu after a wildfire, for example.)

      Minimizing the effects of climate change in advance is one of the tasks of those building sustainable communities. Building in the ability to recover from what can’t be minimized is different. A lot of that is creating the governance structure that is not grudgingly willing but eager to help those affected by environmental events recover.

      FEMA has by turns been fantastic and sluggish in the United States–but on the whole it has outperformed its equivalents in other countries. But it wouldn’t have done as well as it has without volunteer organizations to precede its arrival and supplement its efforts.

      Building this level of capability into the international community is not easy–the U.N. has tried but more work needs to be done.

      It is the belief of many that resilience is best built up by the overrall development of a region or community or society. Better wealth and health leading to quicker recovery from disaster or permanently changing conditions.

      I think there is truth in that–but forgive me if I add a somewhat cynical note. In the U.S. better wealth and health has enabled communities such as Malibu and Miami to exert claims on resources from outside their community to assist them.

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 17, 2014 at 8:55 pm |

      There are potentially a wide array of adaptation options that can be employed in response to actual climate change threats. The IPCC presents a simple set of three strategy options, namely retreat, accommodate or protect, which serve to illustrate the basic range of possible responses:

      Retreat

      Emphasis is on abandonment of land and structures in highly vulnerable areas and resettlement of inhabitants, e.g.:

      • Preventing development in areas near threatened coastal areas
      • Conditional approvals and phasing-out of development
      • Withdrawal of government subsidies

      Accommodate

      Emphasis is on conservation of ecosystems harmonised with the continued occupancy and use of vulnerable areas and adaptive management responses, e.g.:

      • Advanced planning to avoid worst impacts
      • Modification of land use, building codes
      • Protection of threatened ecosystems
      • Strict regulation of hazard zones
      • Hazard insurance

      Protect

      Emphasis is on defense of vulnerable areas, population centres, economic activities, infrastructure and natural resources, e.g.:

      • Hard structural options such as dykes, levees, flood barriers, sea walls, revetments, groynes saltwater intrusion barriers
      • Soft structural options such as beach nourishment, dune restoration,
      wetland creation, littoral drift make-up, afforestation

      http://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/sites/default/files/shado/Learned%20Groups/National%20Committees%20and%20Panels/Coastal%20and%20Ocean%20Engineering/guidelines_coastal.pdf

      The first is the principle of if you are in a hole stop digging. The second involves evacuation routes and centres, placing critical infrastructure such as hospitals and fire services out of harms way, communications strategies and public education. The third is obvious but usually only economic for high value infrastructure. It all requires detailed hazard mapping, risk assessment, land use planning and regulation.

      e.g. http://www.dsdip.qld.gov.au/resources/policy/spp-ifbl.pdf -http://www.ehp.qld.gov.au/coastalplan/pdf/qcp-web-coastal-protection.pdf

      Sustainability is much more difficult. It can be defined in broad terms in reference to future generations without much economic justification. I can only see it in terms of avoidable loss of biodiversity.

    • mosomoso | May 17, 2014 at 9:16 pm |

      Can somebody locate the person who thinks we should not plan and build for stresses? So we’re not arguing with the wall?

      Do we need a definition of “shoe” and “lace” to get our shoes on in the morning?

      But something tell me that Resilience and Sustainability, when capitalised, are just code for future white elephant purchases made on the basis of dogma-based assumptions about future climate. And making assumptions about future climate is how Australia ended up with bird-mincers along the ridges and rusting desals out on the coast, while essential facilities fall apart with age or don’t even get built.

      In the end, you just have to use your loaf about some things.

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 17, 2014 at 9:51 pm |

      Moso – for those south of the border we have diagrams as well – this is a shoe – this is a shoelace – this is how not to get your feet wet when a freakin’ big cyclone or flood hits. If you put your ambulance station here – it ends up under water which is not something you really want for your emergency services.

      Not really rocket science – unless you count partial differential equation (PDE) as sort of like rocket science. As I patiently explained once to a NSW cockroach – this is opposed to an ODE which is a type of lyrical verse classically consisting of three parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. His eyes rolled up in his head and he rolled over and played dead. I took this for typical behavior of the species and moved on.

      Engineering is about bang for the buck – unless you are working for the government. In the latter case mega projects give you that all important feeling that you re a very important man. Even then if you save a few bucks on concrete – you can spend it on party pies.

    • Faustino | May 17, 2014 at 10:10 pm |

      Hi, Maggie, I don’t know your purpose and the depth you seek, and you haven’t yet responded to several good posts here. So I’ll make some brief points. Expansion on request.

      First, nothing is sustainable. Everything changes – that is the nature of existence, from the scale of sub-atomic particles to the universe. There is no ideal state, no optimal state, we have to accept that the world will always change. If we have a particular view of how the world should be, we can never attain it. If we could attain it, we could not sustain it.

      The main thing we know about the future is that it will surprise us. No one in history who sought to predict the world 100 years hence would have been remotely right. That is still the case. Therefore, it is best to adopt policies which give us the best chance of dealing with whatever befalls.

      Tom Fuller wrote that “It is the belief of many that resilience is best built up by the overall development of a region or community or society. Better wealth and health leading to quicker recovery from disaster or permanently changing conditions.” If you look at the world, both historically and in recent decades, you will find that the countries with the most advanced economies – which, as a consequence of growth, have the best education, healthcare, infrastructure and general capacity – can best deal and recover from unforeseen detrimental events. In the less developed countries, the more development, the better their capacity to cope.

      This is primarily a climate science blog, driven initially by concerns raised about the impact of global warming, and I assume that potential global warming is a factor behind your questions. Given the uncertainties and limited evidence as to costs and benefits, I would say that anti-emissions policies have reduced our capacity to deal with adverse climate events, while pro-growth policies would, and will, increase that capacity. In general, pro-growth policies are also pro-resilience policies – they promote innovation, entrepreneurship, productivity and self-reliance, drawing on the strengths of individuals and diversity rather than seeking to impose centralised ideas.

      mosomoso, as always, makes more sense than most people who might advise you on these topics. I’m thinking of the wider world more than Climate Etc.

      Maggie, a general point, if you seek assistance on a topic, it is perhaps better to give more detail as to what you seek and in what context. That way you will get responses better related to your needs.

    • kim | May 17, 2014 at 10:18 pm |

      Besides their almost miraculous ability to mean many things, both words are also badly misused propaganda devices. I do not with to denigrate the magnificent discussion above.
      =======================

    • mosomoso | May 17, 2014 at 10:19 pm |

      Unsustainable geothermal projects built in the name of “sustainability”…Sustainable coal power downgraded in the name of “sustainability”…Unsustainable rustbucket desals and tidal generators that have never seen service, built for “sustainability”…Sustainable dam projects cancelled in the name of “sustainability”…

      Imagine what our what our Green Betters will inflict on us in the name of…Resilience! (At least that word has no yard-wide diphthongs to be rolled through the adenoids of some New Class lefty politician trying to sound more-Aussie-than-thou.)

    • kim | May 17, 2014 at 10:19 pm |

      er, ‘do not wish’. Usually my errors improve the text.
      ============

    • Faustino | May 17, 2014 at 11:43 pm |

      mosomoso, emphasising my commendation.

    • rmdobservations | May 18, 2014 at 2:54 am |

      Maggie, a really nice question. I appreciate the writer who mentioned Galveston. I enjoy concrete examples.

      I live in the Netherlands. Half of this country is below sea level which also happens to be where most of the population lives. The country is divided by the Rijn (Rheine in Germany) which has experienced severe flooding for as long as history here has been documented. There is no where to go.

      The Netherlands seems to have a more “can-do” attitude, in my opinion (others might disagree), than the US. Every developer has to have severe storms in the back of his or her mind for resilience to succeed. This is regardless of whether they believe the reports that say the climate is changing. A simple example.The little town where I live just repaved the center where the shops are. At this same time, they put drains in the center of the streets. This is a simple solution that will prevent water damage. No one asked me as a tax payer. I do not know if they needed permission from the government to do so. (The Netherlands has a lot of regulations) To me, it is just the logical thing to do.

    • John McClure | May 18, 2014 at 10:11 am |

      Maggie,
      “Does urban resilience theory address the limitations of and strengthen sustainability theory?”

      The worth spending some time to understand why sustainability has been getting a bad rap in the States.

      If you approach urban resilience from an economic standpoint, municipal services are essentially underwritten by property and State taxes. Redevelopment Corporations have floated bonds without the knowledge of property owners and tax payers which have undermined the normal revenue stream to municipalities. This in turn undermines resilience or the ability of a municipality to meet the needs of its residents.

      To credit Governor Brown, Redevelopment Corporations have been banned in the State of California but they are stuck with the bonds which will take decades to pay off.

      There’s a great deal of information about the implementation pitfalls of Sustainability in California on this site.

      Try to read beyond Rosa Koire’s flamboyant writing style for the details and you’ll find the reasons for the bad rap.
      http://www.democratsagainstunagenda21.com/

      This is also a good read on the Washington Post:
      http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/05/17/the-resurgence-of-eminent-domain-abuse/

    • John McClure | May 18, 2014 at 12:05 pm |

      H.R. 1944: Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2014
      https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr1944/text

      The Bill passed the House this year but the Senate is unlikely to pass it. The Senate has refused to bring any of the House Private Property Rights Protection bills before the Senate for the last 2 terms.

      This is likely to be an campaign issue in the coming Senate races.

    • climatereason | May 18, 2014 at 12:12 pm |

      Joshua

      If you remember it was ME that went over to Rabbett Run and pointed out that Bengtsson had upset the authors friend.

      here is the translation of the Bengtsson comment;

      ——– ———

      It’s a shame that the GDR disappeared otherwise would have been able to offer one-way tickets there for these vurmande socialists. Now there’s unfortunately not many orthodox countries left soon and I surely do not imagine our romantic green Communists want a one-way ticket to North Korea. But if interested I gladly contribute to the trip as long as there is an utresebiljett. Perhaps you could arrange a Gallup study, then it can not be ruled out that I underestimated utresebehovet.
      LennartB

      ——- ——

      Perhaps it has lost something in translation but I don’t see this passing comment as anything to get too excited about?

      tonyb

    • Bart R | May 19, 2014 at 6:08 pm |

      Maggie Lephale (@Mag_Starrr) | May 17, 2014 at 4:20 pm |

      http://thesolutionsproject.org/

      For actual thinking and planning.

  2. Bill Workman | May 17, 2014 at 4:25 pm |

    I read the referee report (linked to at Climate Audit) for the rejected paper by Bengtsson, et.al. I find it difficult to believe that Bengtsson’s comparison of observed temps and model simulated temps was improper. Hope someone who knows the details will provide clarification on this issue. Thanks

    • kim | May 17, 2014 at 4:52 pm |

      Bengtsson showed that the models are fantasy. The response seems to be ‘Of course, they’re fantasy, how dare you object’. So much for policy.
      ============

    • Jim D | May 17, 2014 at 6:32 pm |

      The observation ECS estimate from Otto et al. was 1.2-3.9 C per doubling while the model one was 2.2-4.7 C, so expressing a view that the models were not consistent with observations seemed unwarranted, because there is a large overlap where both could be right.

    • jim2 | May 17, 2014 at 6:34 pm |

      Do you have a link to that Otto et al paper, Jim D?

    • Jim D | May 17, 2014 at 6:37 pm |

      I found the Otto et al. paper was freely available here.
      http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/otto13nat.pdf

    • Jim D | May 17, 2014 at 6:41 pm |

      Also Otto et al. realized that their estimate was possibly low-biased because of the arguments of Armour et al. about longer term ocean responses.

    • Bill Workman | May 17, 2014 at 6:43 pm |

      Had Bengtsson’s paper (or some other similarly researched paper) purported to show close association between observed and model simulated temps, would the same reviewer have recommended rejection, claiming this was an error since, as he stated in the referee report, one wouldn’t expect this to happen?

    • jim2 | May 17, 2014 at 6:46 pm |

      So they use simulations (models) and modeling to confirm the models. They throw in a little real-world data, but still …

    • Jim D | May 17, 2014 at 6:50 pm |

      jim2, no, Otto et al. doesn’t use models. They have to use the same forcing as used for models because that is the best estimate. The change in ocean heat content is a tough observation too, so this is probably why the observation error bars are so wide.

    • jim2 | May 17, 2014 at 6:53 pm |

      From the paper:
      further assumes that the ratio of
      Δ
      Q
      to Δ
      T
      for the observed period is the
      same as that at year 70 of a simulation in
      which atmospheric CO
      2
      levels increase at
      1% per year
      6,12
      , which is approximately
      the case over the past few decades if we
      exclude periods strongly affected by
      volcanic eruptions (see Supplementary
      Fig. S2). Equation (
      1
      )

    • Jim D | May 17, 2014 at 6:55 pm |

      Bill, no other papers have shown that the models have warmed faster than observations, especially in the pause period, so there was nothing new here.

    • Jim D | May 17, 2014 at 6:56 pm |

      Bill, important missing comma. That should have said “no, other papers…”

    • Jim D | May 17, 2014 at 7:01 pm |

      jim2, yes, that would be how they get around not having long-term observed ocean heat contents. Perhaps these shouldn’t be called “observations” after all, in which case Bengtsson “observation” case is quite weak, and all the hype about rejecting the paper as an observation versus model paper falls apart too. Someone needs to tell all the skeptical sites what “observations” they are trusting before they make fools of themselves.

    • jim2 | May 17, 2014 at 7:31 pm |

      Jim D, while there are some quibbles with instrumental temperature series such as HADCRUT4, they should be fairly OK to use, I would think. In the case of this paper, they don’t have some of the data, so they use a model. Also, I didn’t see their value and how it was derived for Delta F. At any rate, it’s still not 100% observation based.

    • HAS | May 17, 2014 at 8:35 pm |

      While it is all largely conjecture in the absence of the draft paper, my reading of the reviewers comment is that the work undertook to “test the consistency between three recent ‘assessments’ [in AR4 & AR5] of radiative forcing and climate sensitivity” using the energy balance model of Otto et al.

      Presumably these showed internal inconsistencies between the three (and with nothing being said about Otto et al. apart presumably comparisons to expand on the inconsistencies). So I think some of the comments above might have the wrong end of the stick.

    • Jim D | May 17, 2014 at 10:47 pm |

      HAS, yes, I am not sure what period Bengtsson covered, but the lack of accurate forcing and ocean heat content would make any “observational” estimate very uncertain with Otto’s method requiring these. Apart from this their method obtains effective climate sensitivity which is sometimes wrongly conflated with equilibrium climate sensitivity because it doesn’t fully account for slower responses in the climate system.

  3. Bob Koss | May 17, 2014 at 4:37 pm |

    Thanks to Ross M. at CA for this link.
    http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/page/Highlights-of-2013

    ERL says in their 2013 brochure:
    “This paper has been awarded ERL’s ‘Best article of 2013’, voted for by members of the ERL Editorial Board”

    The paper is entitled: Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature. John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli et al

    At least now we have some insight into the quality standards ERL maintains. Don’t expect anything better from them unless it is accidental.

  4. Berényi Péter | May 17, 2014 at 4:39 pm |

    I have just found out the very definition of TCR is overblown.

    It is new to me, that hiding behind this flawed concept, the current IPCC report actually implies without ever mentioning it that even impossibly strict &. abrupt CO₂ emission reductions would only bring about ~0.6°C less warming in the next seven decades than a do-nothing policy.

    This result is entirely missing from the Summary for Policymakers and it is not communicated in any way to the public. Weird.

  5. Matthew R Marler | May 17, 2014 at 4:46 pm |

    For the record, here is the letter that Alan Leshner sent out to members of AAAS last week.

    Dear Colleague:

    Based on the evidence, about 97% of climate scientists agree that human-caused climate change is happening. Yet a large fraction of this country’s population and policymakers can’t seem to accept the fact that the climate is changing. It’s time to shift the debate from whether human-caused climate change is happening to what we can do about it.

    We need to make it clear that scientists believe that doing nothing now is extremely dangerous and could result in abrupt, unpredictable, and potentially irreversible changes with highly damaging impacts on future generations. And we need your help.

    As you may know, AAAS recently launched a new initiative to expand the dialogue on the risks associated with climate change. At the heart of the initiative is the “What We Know” report, an assessment of current climate science and impacts that emphasizes the need to understand and recognize possible high-risk scenarios.

    But to have the greatest impact, we must do more than issue a report. We must continue to get the word out about the urgency of this issue. Will you join us?

    As members of the science community, we need to change the conversation from whether the earth is warming to just how we are going to work together to alter the course our planet is on. We have to reach out to the American people, to policymakers, and even to other countries about what science is showing about the dangers of climate change and the severe outcomes that could occur through inaction or continued resistance to change.

    We must prepare for the future. And, as the world’s largest multi-disciplinary science association, AAAS is uniquely positioned to mobilize the science community to lead this charge. Your gift will help us play a pivotal role in shifting the debate.

    This will be an ongoing, intensive effort in the weeks, months, and even years ahead. I hope you will lend your support and make a gift today.

    Alan I. Leshner
    Chief Executive Officer and
    Executive Publisher, Science

    • captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.2 | May 17, 2014 at 5:01 pm |

      Dear AAAS,

      Based on the most recent IPCC report up to 50% of the “climate change” since 1951 is due to natural, i.e. not man made causes. Some portion of the “man made” “climate change” is due to activities other than the release of “greenhouse” gases. Perhaps the AAAS should “do” something other than leap on a band wagon and determine what rewards will be noticeable after doing “something”.

      Until that “something” is defined and the rewards and risks of doing that “something” are determined, doing “nothing” is also known as accessing the situation. Perhaps that is the “something” the AAAS should do?

    • Berényi Péter | May 17, 2014 at 5:30 pm |

      As members of the science community, we need to change the conversation from whether the earth is warming to just how we are going to work together to alter the course our planet is on.

      CEO of a scientific journal addresses a scientific society, urges them quit doing science, submerge into political action instead.

      The only adequate response to that is to refrain publishing scientific papers in said journal and have scientific institutions unsubscribe.

    • Harold | May 17, 2014 at 6:24 pm |

      How many rhetorical errors can we find in just the first paragraph?

    • DaveW | May 17, 2014 at 9:55 pm |

      Would this be the same Alan Leshner whose expertise is in psychology and endocrinology and who previously cheered on a since retracted paper (Ricaurte 2002 Science 297:2260-63) that strongly influenced the passing of the RAVE Act? A man who wants to save the world, through service as a high-end government bureaucrat and the use of the AAAS for political goals. I think that speaks for itself, but also note that both GW and Obama found him acceptable for the NSB.

    • beththeserf | May 18, 2014 at 12:35 am |

      Doggeral on the littoral.

      Plans go awry,
      the centre (usually)
      does not hold.
      Just when you
      think you might
      seize the day,
      turns out something
      (usually) gets in the way.
      Oh well, keep saying
      ‘you live to fight
      another day,’ whatever
      catch phrase that
      suffices to ward off
      melancholy or
      despair, don’t
      go there.

      beth the serf.

    • Faustino | May 18, 2014 at 2:05 am |

      beth, it seems that you have let your doggerel off the Leshner. Woof woof!

    • beththeserf | May 18, 2014 at 3:46 am |

      Faustino.
      Though not me wish ter hound me betters, bein’ jest a serf.

    • lolwot | May 18, 2014 at 5:05 am |

      “The only adequate response to that is to refrain publishing scientific papers in said journal and have scientific institutions unsubscribe.”

      Surely that would be McCarthyism, bullying.

      If scientists want to become political advocates, by joining the GWPF for example, then that should be allowed.

      That’s what this blog has always stood for.

      Didn’t you learn nothing from the last 48 hours?

  6. A fan of *MORE* discourse | May 17, 2014 at 4:48 pm |

    FOMD posted:

    Bart R brags [childishly] “I only need know as a Capitalist whether there is evidence for Scarcity, Capitalizability, Rivalry, Excludability, Administrability and Marketability (SCREAM) of a currently unpriced resource to know a price is mandated by the principles of Capitalism.”

    The SCREAM axioms of Capitalism depart notably from the SPICES testimony of Quakerism, eh Climate Etc readers?

    • Simplicity  Value the spirit over material objects.

    • Peace  See conflict as a springboard to moral growth.

    • Integrity  Let your life speak: your outer life reflects your inner life.

    • Community  Connect with all members of the community.

    • Equality  Respect different people and different ideas.

    • Stewardship  Protect and care for the Earth in a sacred trust.

    Conclusion Notably absent from Bart R’s SCREAM list are sustainability and responsibility testimonies.

    No wonder that Bart R’s juvenile faux-conservative SCREAM principles are the object of universal ridicule.

    Which values can/should climate-change science speak to?

    • SCREAM values  (of Capitalism/Libertarianism/Big Carbonism) versus

    • SPICES values  (of Catholicism/Quakerism/Environmentalism)?

    The world ponders!

    \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

    • Bart R | May 17, 2014 at 5:21 pm |

      A fan of *MORE* discourse | May 17, 2014 at 4:48 pm |

      Hey, if someone wants to practice their religion, I’m all for that. I’m childlike that way, in my simplicity.

      I just don’t think it’s a sound foundation for Economics, or Science, to require everyone to share the same religion. Call it juvenile respect for different people of divergent ideas.

      Though you are mistaken.

      SCREAM isn’t a values system, and isn’t a testimony.

      It’s a criterion; not a principle in and of itself, but a metric for determining which principles hold for a given circumstance of a good or service: Commons, Commerce, or otherwise.

      Where SCREAM does not apply, for example to voting or religion, Capitalism has no application. You do wrong to seek to overload it as representative of something else.

      Worrying about SPICES absence from SCREAM is like worrying about lithium’s absence from the score of Hard Day’s Night.

      Even Quakers do commerce, and the rules of commerce are Capitalism.

      Burning carbon for lucrative ends is commercial. If some Quaker fellow wants to sustainably, peacefully, simply, communally, honestly burn carbon, then he is due an equal fee for rivalrously, excludably, administrably, marketably, capitalizably using the scarce carbon cycle, just as he is due an equal share of the revenues to spend as he wishes. The two systems do not conflict, and there is no contradiction.

      Now, if your Quaker fellow wants to be a cashless anarchist and never touch filthy lucre, we might have a complication. But that’s not my experience of Quakers. Some of them are some of the finest and most conservative capitalists I know.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse | May 17, 2014 at 5:40 pm |

      Bart R affirms  “My experience of Quakers [is] some of them are some of the finest and most conservative capitalists I know.”

      Testimony by Bart R, affirmations by FOMD!

      \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 17, 2014 at 5:46 pm |

      Oh God – the clash of the fundamentalist acronyms.

      In the real world of classic liberalism – CO2 is just part of the equation that extends to population, development and conservation that works through governments and the private sector. Governments actually meeting aid commitments, conserving environments and providing the services actually needed by their populations – including management of the commons to maintain public goods.

      Pretty insidious secure solicitude of fundamentalist fruition.

    • Berényi Péter | May 17, 2014 at 5:53 pm |

      Which values can/should climate-change science speak to?

      1. There is no such thing as “climate-change science”.
      2. Even if there were, no science is supposed to “speak to” any other value set than scientific values.

    • Skiphil | May 17, 2014 at 6:23 pm |

      a huge ROFL

      How does FOMT spout stuff like the “SPICES” list with a straight face??

      Here we have the troll who daily demonstrates severe deficiencies wrt values such as simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality….. I’ll grant him some twisted concern with “stewardship” but in all the other listed categories his bilious bombastic rants and streams of insults give the lie to his professed values.

      I know many Quakers (Society of Friends), I have attended many Quaker meetings as a guest, I have many friends and family involved with or alumni/ae of Friends’ schools and colleges. FOMT, you wouldn’t know the values of the Society of Friends to save your life. (and in the spirit of Lloyd Bentsen, you are no Jack Kennedy, either)

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse | May 17, 2014 at 6:33 pm |

      Whoops! Such great words *DESERVE* to get the indentation right!

      Berényi Péter claims [utterly anhistorically] “no science is supposed to ‘speak to’ any other value-set than scientific values.”

      Four centuries (and more!) of the Enlightenment have conclusively demonstrated that the scientific deconstruction of willful ignorance necessarily is destructive of power that originates in political ideology, theology, oligarchy, and capital.

      Inference  Advances in scientific knowledge always have, and always will, posed severe challenges to power. The great optician/philosopher Spinoza spoke to this reality plainly:

      Spinoza’s Theological and Political Discourses

      Preface: The Translator to the Reader

      Religion and Government being the Subject Matter of the Book, ’tis easy to guess what Sort of Men are like to decry it; but let those who are angry with it and find fault with it answer it; in the mean time the Crape Gown and the Long Robe are both defied to prove that there are any Tenets in the Whole Treati\se, half so dangerous or destructive to the Peace and Welfare of human Society, as those Doctrines and Maxims are, which have of late years been broached by timeserving Churchmen and Mercenary Lawyers; for which they justly deserve the hatred and contempt of all mankind.

      Nothing more needs be said to any Reader, than to desire he will deliberately read the Book twice over, before he condemn or commend it.

      Conclusion  That the practice of science never has been, and never will be, entirely separated from the larger concerns of politics, economics, and morality, is both the plain lesson of history *AND* plain common sense, eh Berényi Péter?

      \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

      morediscourse@tradermail.info
      A fan of *MORE* discourse

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 17, 2014 at 7:00 pm |

      Spinoza on politics and theology has any relevance for science? What the quote says is that he challenges academics to dispute that his secular humanism was more disturbing to the civil peace than religion.

      You have to wonder what new level of incoherence FOMBS can rise to.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse | May 17, 2014 at 7:02 pm |

      Bart R affirms  “My experience of Quakers [is] some of them are some of the finest and most conservative capitalists I know.”

      Testimony by Bart R, affirmations by FOMD!

      Skiphil avers “FOMD, you wouldn’t know the values of the Society of Friends to save your life.”

      Fact-free denialist FUD & abuse by Skiphil … see-for-yourself/think-for-yourself testimonies by FOMD.

      As usual … eh Climate Etc readers?

      \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

    • Bart R | May 17, 2014 at 7:31 pm |

      A fan of *MORE* discourse | May 17, 2014 at 7:02 pm |

      Possible they’re Mormons. Or Methodists. Whatever. They’re fine folks, and I’ve never really checked on their creeds.

      It’s not really my thing.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse | May 17, 2014 at 7:51 pm |

      Bart R avers “Possible they [Quakers] are Mormons. Or Methodists. Whatever. They’re fine folks, and I’ve never really checked on their creeds.”

      LOL … the sanitized versons of history that are taught to adolescents commonly redact the role(s) of Quakers, Spinozists, FreeMasons, Deists … omit every variety of freethinker in general … to keep from upsetting those parents to whom ignorance is precious!

      It’s surprising how many adults never repair this lack, eh Bart R?

      And even are unconscious of it?

      And even are proud of their ignorance?

      And become angry when reminded of it?

      And thus practice a neutered, anhistorial, pallid variety of science?

      \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

    • Faustino | May 17, 2014 at 10:45 pm |

      Fan, I know you enjoy posting here and enjoy dealing with the often very extended responses. I don’t wish to detract from your enjoyment, but nor do I wish to foster it. So I usually pass by the sub-threads in which you so conspicuously appear. In this case, I will make an exception. Yes, fan, I know that is gracious of me, no need to fuss over it.

      You have contrasted your SPICES with Bart’s SCREAM. Your error is in seeing them as in conflict, when they can be, and ideally are, in harmony. Regarding your reference to sustainability, see my response to Maggie in the top post.

      I’ll put this in a personal context. I am an economist and former policy adviser who has had a broad focus on drivers of economic growth, requiring me to cover many aspects of economic life. I am also someone who sees spiritual development, based on developing wisdom and compassion through an understanding of reality at the deepest levels, as the highest goal of life, and who has done voluntary work for over 40 years to help other people to pursue that goal. Bart’s comment on pricing is in no way incompatible with this, understanding it helps one to understand how to promote economic growth, and economic growth takes people from a life which is “nasty, brutish and short,” to one where life is not dominated by the problems of day-to-day survival for themselves and their families, and gives them the opportunity to pursue other things, including, if they so choose, spiritual growth.

      In terms of my life and your spices: I “value spiritual development over material objects,” while accepting the value and importance of some level of material well-being. I do not, as you perhaps do, see “the spirit” as a continuing entity with which I can identify. I see conflict as something to eschew, I wouldn’t give it the value that you do. Conflict is surely driven by ego, by a failure to understand the impermanent, essenceless nature of existence. Integrity has been one of my most-cherished values since early childhood. As for community and equality, I’ve been a bit reclusive since long illness 2000-2009, but I treat people as people, not on the basis of their status, ethnicity or whatever (this attitude seems to be welcomed by all but those who are “full of themselves” and expect deference); and I’ve always been much more open to ideas than the great majority of people I’ve come across. But I differ from you on treating the Earth as a “sacred trust.” If you follow my values, you will tend to “tread lightly on the Earth” and respect all life, but you wouldn’t make a big deal of it and place “the Earth” above, say, the well-being of its inhabitants, particularly those of its most advanced species.

      And that well-being, at a material level and in terms of personal freedom, which in turn allow scope for devotion to spiritual growth, is best fostered by the capitalist, free market, free trade economics which I advocate. While that is consistent with SCREAM, I won’t go so far as to add “which Bart espouses,” in case I misunderstand him or give him a too-narrow label. I will say that an harmonious society, one brought about by values such as mine, will tend to be a prosperous one. The values I follow are conducive to a society based on trust, which underpins commerce and effort.

    • Bart R | May 18, 2014 at 1:10 am |

      A fan of *MORE* discourse | May 17, 2014 at 7:51 pm |

      Please tell us more about the Knights of Labor, the Haymarket Massacre, and the largest unconstitutional mass deportation of US citizens from America in history.

      Is that what all this is about?

      You’re mad about Chicago’s history of dirty politics?

      All the worst science papers I’ve ever read have injected ignorant half-baked politics, economics, and morality claims by authors who think their little bundle of data makes them an authority on one thing, and authority in one tiny niche is transferable to cover some greater truth. It’s one of the hallmarks of awful research.

    • Bart R | May 18, 2014 at 1:16 am |

      Faustino | May 17, 2014 at 10:45 pm |

      Close enough, only you make it sound so much more respectable and dull.

    • Berényi Péter | May 18, 2014 at 3:46 am |

      @A fan of *MORE* discourse

      Conclusion That the practice of science never has been, and never will be, entirely separated from the larger concerns of politics, economics, and morality, is both the plain lesson of history *AND* plain common sense

      I see you are the kind of guy who is loath to embrace principles like checks and balances, rule of law, due process, etc. for they can never be implemented perfectly. Therefore you hold it self-evident that they only serve as smoke screens to class power, so their proper place is at the garbage heap of history, to be replaced by unabated tyranny as soon as practicable in the interest of masses, eh fan?

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse | May 18, 2014 at 8:53 am |

      Faustino avers “Well-being, at a material level and in terms of personal freedom, which in turn allow scope for devotion to spiritual growth, is best fostered by the capitalist, free market, free trade economics.”

      Times change and circumstances change, Faustino.

      Prior to (about) 1600, all that you praise in “capitalism”, could have been praised too in “monarchy.” Monarchy being not a perfect governing system, but (at its best!) better than any other that humanity had known. Or so the pro-monarchy conservatives of those centuries argued!

      But the Enlightened reversed the pro-monarchy lessons of history, eh Climate Etc readers? Reversed them via the printing press, universal literacy, the scientific and industrial revolutions, public-health socialism, and the abolition of slavery.

      Now you ought to ask, are the lessons of history being reversed again? Reversed by the 21st century practices of computer-trading, privacy-invading data-scraping, globalized manufacturing, environment destruction, genomic medicine, and (now) the onset of global warming?

      In this new-to-history 21st century human environment, unregulated globalized state-scale capitalism now is fostering tyrannies as bad as monarchies.

      That’s why 20th century Ayn Rand capitalism doesn’t work any more. Which is *obvious* to *everyone*, eh Climate Etc readers?

      Conclusion  Un the 20th century, local-market family-farming small-corporation capitalism did an outstanding job of fostering Jeffersonian/Enlightened civic virtues and individual enterprise. But now in the 21st century, global-market, corporate-farming, state-oligarchy, computer-mediated, carbon-burning corporate capitalism has become tyrannically destructive of Jeffersonian/Enlightened civic virtues and individual enterprise.

      That’s common-sense and the everyday reality of ordinary citizens — young people especially — eh Climate Etc readers?

      \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

    • markx | May 18, 2014 at 11:39 am |

      There is usually little that FOMD says that I can agree with; however, without entering the discussion of who has the best acronyms, here I do think he is on to something:

      The wonderful capitalism which has brought us oh so far, is now becoming ‘super-capitalism’ and with international corporations making their own rules, we are on a path to being exploited and rent extracted like never before … but with no recourse to the usual revolutions or other overturning of the those running the show ….

      FOMD says … Conclusion Un the 20th century, local-market family-farming small-corporation capitalism did an outstanding job of fostering Jeffersonian/Enlightened civic virtues and individual enterprise. But now in the 21st century, global-market, corporate-farming, state-oligarchy, computer-mediated, carbon-burning corporate capitalism has become tyrannically destructive of Jeffersonian/Enlightened civic virtues and individual enterprise.

    • Bart R | May 18, 2014 at 11:48 am |

      A fan of *MORE* discourse | May 17, 2014 at 7:51 pm |

      You can mix history with science, if you like.

      Because that’s one recipe for half truth, a mainstay of propaganda.

      And who am I to object to improving your aptitude at propaganda?

      Look how far Dr. Curry’s come along.

      You don’t see her attempting to draw attention with abusive html, a very dated and amateurish move. No, the proficient (and most professional) propagandists these days blend in, work by tiny imperceptible nudges, don’t seek gaudy display.. well, except when they do.

      It’s a matter of judgment.

      Oddly, once upon a time when someone said “common sense”, they meant judgment; now, it seems they mostly mean intolerance for divergent ideas. Which is why the last time “common sense” was historically very useful to a propagandist was in the hands of Thomas Paine.

      So be more like Dr. Curry. Learn modern techniques of propaganda, and practice them frequently; avoid dated and obvious modes, in favor of plain and effective techniques. Subtlety is the trend.

    • jim2 | May 18, 2014 at 12:12 pm |

      Thanks for that example of propaganda, Bart R.

  7. pokerguy (aka al neipris) | May 17, 2014 at 4:59 pm |

    Addressing my fellow skeptics here, though of course the usual nasty, disparaging comments from the climate cultists are welcome too.

    So here’s the thing. The very crux of the alarmist argument, the sine qua non of every alarmist screed I’ve ever read, is the supposed “overwhelming consensus.” They often cite Cook’s 97 percent number, which in their minds effectively slams the door on all contrary arguments.

    If this could be effectively countered, the notion that there really is an overwhelming consensus….or even any consensus….it’s my opinion that the climate debate would be altered dramatically, almost literally overnight..

    The question of course is how could this be done. Here’s my idea: hire a nationally known, widely respected polling firm to conduct a survey of scientists, asking a range of questions such as “do you agree that it’s more than 50 percent likely that anthro Co2 is altering the climate in a harmful way?” “Do you agree that we’re currently seeing more ‘extreme weather’ as a result of global warming?”

    I have no idea what something like this would cost. A lot I’m sure. Mid 6 figures? But just for a moment supposing it could be done, do you guys agree or disagree that it would be an effective strategy? I’ve raised this issue before and usually get ignored or laughed at. And yet I can’t think of a more devastating blow to the warmist movement, barring Michael Mann issuing a tearful confession that he and his fellow climateers really don’t know what they’re talking about.

    • Joshua | May 17, 2014 at 8:37 pm |

      Hey PG –

      Well, I see that yet another one of your profound comments has stimulated a beehive of activity, eh? Well, just so that you won’t feel left out, I’ve got something for ya’ my friend.

      The very crux of the alarmist argument, the sine qua non of every alarmist screed I’ve ever read, is the supposed “overwhelming consensus.”

      Yes, indeed. Here’s just one of millions of examples:

      @Wotts
      “Published papers that seek to test what caused the climate change over the last century and half, almost unanimously find that humans played a dominant role. ”

      What a screed from that nasty climate cultist, eh?

      Richard Tol (@RichardTol) says:
      May 11, 2014 at 7:55 am

    • Tom Fuller | May 17, 2014 at 8:44 pm |

      Pokerguy, I doubt if you will see a large research organization tackle this in the way you suggest unless there is a sponsor that pays for it. Von Storch did a creditable job on a smaller scale I think in 2010, or maybe 2008. He showed to my satisfaction that there is a consensus that climate change is real and in part caused by humans, but that it is nothing like 97% (it looked like 81% at the time) and that the real consensus was on our inability to gather accurate data and build good models.

    • Tom Fuller | May 17, 2014 at 8:49 pm |

      Pokerguy, if you were to structure a survey and asked a company to help you, it probably would cost about $100,000 (USD). I could develop a proposal and quote that you could use as a benchmark to approach companies with if you think a tipjar on a website could gather the funds.

    • Don Monfort | May 17, 2014 at 9:42 pm |

      Hey joshie, those guys over at CA don’t seem to find you as entertaining as we do. You really made a joke of yourself, in an unfunny way. Will you be going back there, joshie?

      (Little joshie’s greatest asset is his total lack of self-awareness. He doesn’t feel shame or embarrassment. Just keeps bouncing back like a punching bag clown.)

    • kim | May 17, 2014 at 9:51 pm |

      I once saw an old sparring partner of Joe Louis. He had cauliflower ears. He was a pro.
      ==========

    • michael hart | May 17, 2014 at 10:15 pm |

      “The question of course is how could this be done.”

      In my mind it was done a long time ago, Pokerguy, but I’m not sure you should try too hard. The theme always was a train running out of track even before the moment it left the station. I also think that it has more impact on the undecided if people are allowed to spot the worst excesses for themselves without undue pressure (or to at least think that they do it that way). Evangelical approaches rarely work on me.

      Also, as soon as I see someone getting the-you-know-what-number in, I usually know that I can just scroll down to the next comment without missing anything. And I think a lot more people in the wider world may ultimately come to see it the same way.
      (I expect some people do the same with my comments.)

      So it saves me time, and is actually quite a useful marker for me because I might still read a reply to such a comment on this blog, There are a few people here who I actually just enjoy reading. (I won’t embarrass them by naming them.)

    • pokerguy (aka al neipris) | May 17, 2014 at 10:21 pm |

      Thanks, Tom, that’s generous. 80 percent doesn’t sound too off the mark, depending on questions asked and population sampled. Seems clear that the broader the population…say including scientists outside the field of climatology, which is to say scientists whose livelihoods do not depend upon CAGW, the lower the number in the alarmist camp. Also, questions such as “do you think man has affected the climate?” and “do you believe the earth has warmed?” are of course tailor made to create the illusion of a consensus.

      I’m wild guessing that a representative sampling of phd’s across various sciences, would yield something like 60-65 percent who would fit the label “alarmist.” Throw in meteorologists and it would likely be lower.

      100K begins to sound in the doable range. Trouble is, I’m not sure there’d be enough interest. As I said, I usually get mostly ignored when I bring this up. Also, I’m not the guy too organize it. I don’t have the expertise to even know where to begin.

    • Tom Fuller | May 18, 2014 at 4:06 am |

      Pokerguy, I should have said (but thought it obvious) that I would not be willing to do this as anything with my name on it would be characterized as denieralist progaganda by the usual gang of idiots.

  8. Generalissimo Skippy | May 17, 2014 at 5:06 pm |

    14 May 2014 – The top United Nations official in Geneva has urged bold action by diplomats at the start of the world body’s first ever meeting on Lethal Autonomous Weapons (LAWS), better known as “killer robots,” telling them: “You have the opportunity to take pre-emptive action and ensure that the ultimate decision to end life remains firmly under human control.”

    The remarks were made yesterday by Michael Møller, Acting Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, at the opening session of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) Meeting of Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems taking place this week at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

    Ambassador Jean-Hugues Simon-Michel of France, who is chairing the four-day expert meeting, noted: “Lethal autonomous weapons systems are a challenging emerging issue on the disarmament agenda right now,”

    http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=47794#.U3fKtSF-8Zw

    I don’t think we should be too hasty on the definitive killer ap.

    More seriously – I don’t know why this seems to appear only on Fox News.

    http://www.foxnews.com/world/interactive/2014/05/13/un-proposed-strategic-framework-for-period-2016-2017/

    A leak?

    There is nothing too fundamentally objectionable in it – more perhaps characterized by ineptitude in execution (that’s where you need the killer robots) and irrelevance. What the UN does with bells on after all.

    • michael hart | May 18, 2014 at 2:07 am |

      Won’t be so bad if they can make them look like Kristanna Loken.

  9. David L. Hagen | May 17, 2014 at 5:12 pm |

    Which kills more? Global warming or cooking?
    Bjorn Lomborg asks:

    Is climate change the “the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction” (John Kerry)?
    Actually, the biggest environmental killer we face is indoor air pollution. Estimates from the WHO and others suggest that between 30 and 150 times more people are killed due to indoor air pollution than global warming. . . .
    In the 20th century alone, 260 million people were killed by indoor air pollution, which is more than the losses of the century’s many wars. . . . Instead of helping the 2.9 billion people gain access to cheap and plentiful electricity, . . .the U.S. has decided to no longer support the building of coal-fired power plants in developing countries. Besides being hypocritical. . .we deliberately end up choosing to leave about 70 million people in darkness and poverty.

    Read more at: The World’s Biggest Environmental Killer: Indoor Air Pollution
    Air Pollution Bjørn Larsen and Bjørn Lomborg

    Air pollution – in the form of outdoor urban pollution and of ‘indoor’ pollution caused by old-fashioned cooking methods – kills nearly 2.5 million people each year; ninety percent of the fatalities happen in developing nations.

    Why are we not addressing this most pressing environmental problem?
    Is climate alarmism driven by the lure of grant funding and reelection biasing our science and policies?

    • Ragnaar | May 17, 2014 at 5:18 pm |

      A indirect effect is that since we will burning less coal, coal will be cheaper in other places including poor countries helping them afford energy. It seems at times the more you try to restrict a market, the more the market tries to run around you.

    • David L. Hagen | May 17, 2014 at 5:22 pm |

      Contrast Nick Cunningham asserting Coal: The World’s Deadliest Source Of Energy – without examining indoor cooking on wood. See the greatest impact:

      a study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS), researchers found that coal use shaves off 5.5 years of the average lifespan of a person living in northern China compared to the someone in the south.

    • Bart R | May 17, 2014 at 5:31 pm |

      David L. Hagen | May 17, 2014 at 5:12 pm |

      False dichotomy. Look it up.

      Lomborg’s abuse of people who never met him, never voted for him to speak for them, never had a chance to express to him their views, to claim to support his causes is abominable.

      Indoor air pollution is also a killer everywhere people live in the world, through smoke inhalation in fires, carbon monoxide exposure, dead air in low-lying and enclosed spots, in many industries and types of mines. But it is also not a cipher in the CO2E equation, not an either-or, not a single hole in a dike easily plugged with a single finger.

      Carbon burning is not equal to energy. More energy does not equal more carbon burning. Cheaper energy does not equal more carbon burning.

      You want to resolve indoor air quality issues in less developed countries, the easiest steps are to educate women from as early an age as you can start and for so much of their lives as they choose; to lift up communities and individuals out of extreme poverty; to allow enterprising individuals in every community to grow healthy businesses that offer their goods on a fair market without undue obstacles to entry, to prevent theft of resources belonging to these people such as their share of the air, and to let better technologies market themselves to this educated, enabled populace.

      And oh, look. It happens to coincide with how you reduce CO2E emissions.

    • David L. Hagen | May 17, 2014 at 5:52 pm |

      Go talk to women & girls carrying firewood – often for 1-4 hours/day.
      Explain to them why you prevent them from lighting and cooking with electricity because you fear a few inches of rising sea level – when higher CO2 is strongly benefiting growing food.

    • jim2 | May 17, 2014 at 6:25 pm |

      Raagnar hits the nail on the head.

    • mosomoso | May 17, 2014 at 6:40 pm |

      I live in the bush. Gas is too hard to deliver here. I’ve had solar but I find that it’s ultimately wasteful: a handy niche tech which fetishists have made into an expensive bourgeois toy.

      When I flick a switch I can get cooking heat, light and movement without smoke or fire. Delivery is instant by wire, not by truck bumping along a dirt track. I owe it all to the marvel of the grid and Aussie black coal. A nice blend of local dead eucalypts for warmth in winter and for the bbq fills out the energy mix.

      Not being terribly libertarian or anti-government, I often wonder how to describe my conservatism. The best way, I think, is to call me a serial appreciator. Every time I flick a switch and things happen there’s a smidgin of gratitude. And when I think of people burning dung, twigs (and fossil fuels off-grid) there’s a healthy mix of pity and disgust.

    • Faustino | May 17, 2014 at 7:12 pm |

      Ragnaar @ 5.18: “It seems at times the more you try to restrict a market, the more the market tries to run around you.”

      The essence of a market is providing buyers with a good or service they value more than alternative uses of their funds. The essence of entrepreneurship is finding ways to get an edge on your competition. Of course, if you artificially reduce demand for a good, prices will fall and sellers and buyers will take advantage of the changed relative prices. No surprises there.

    • RiHo08 | May 17, 2014 at 10:02 pm |

      Faustino

      Just as getting consensus climate warmers to discard a linear approach to their projections of catastrophe and embrace a non equilibrium and dynamically complex approach to understanding climate, so too it is difficult for well-intentioned British charities to alter the traditional cooking situations and the associated tribal cultures from Africa to New Guinea. Providing more efficient stoves, less charcoal, more heat for the meal also means altering the tribal culture in place that has existed for at least hundreds of years.

      What you or I may see as a environmental and practical advantage in a broad picture, may be viewed only as a difference, a preference rather than a substantive improvement in the tribe’s lives.

      Altering culture in the wood stove world is a lot more challenging. Market forces may play some role for those whose job it is to guide energy usage, altering the end user’s behavior, I content, is a lot different issue.

      Here in the West, we view education of the individual as an important route to making daily behavior changes. In tribal cultures, altering the soothsayers and chiefs seems to mean more to getting changes implemented. What’s in it for them (soothsayers & chiefs) seems to me to be the question, and the answer.

    • Faustino | May 17, 2014 at 10:53 pm |

      RiHo, I don’t disagree. Culturally-embedded practices are hard to change, I was merely making a comment on markets.

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 17, 2014 at 11:11 pm |

      This seems more realistic – and charges phones and lights.

      http://shop.biolitestove.com/campstove.html#.U3gj8yF–QZ

    • Ragnaar | May 18, 2014 at 12:26 am |

      RiHo08 | May 17, 2014 at 10:02 pm |
      Here in the West, we view education of the individual as an important route to making daily behavior changes. In tribal cultures, altering the soothsayers and chiefs seems to mean more to getting changes implemented. What’s in it for them (soothsayers & chiefs) seems to me to be the question, and the answer.

      Pretty good. Change at the individual level.

    • Bart R | May 18, 2014 at 1:14 am |

      David L. Hagen | May 17, 2014 at 5:52 pm |

      I have carried firewood as a child, and know well the tending of wood fire. Pedal your crocodile tears somewhere else.

    • David L. Hagen | May 18, 2014 at 8:30 am |

      Bart R.
      Check out some Sobering Facts in remote Philippines.
      Main Problems Affecting Families
      32% Financial Problem
      15% Unemployment
      17% Lack of food
      13% Poverty
      8% Sickness/Illness

      Education
      59% of parents have no more than a 6th grade education.
      20% of fathers and 28% of mothers finished High School.
      2% of fathers and 3% of mothers finish more than High School

      Health
      94% experience food shortages for at least 1 month/year
      49% for 3 months or more
      31% of children have had diarrhea in last 2 weeks

      Housing
      63% do not have latrine
      42% houses have one room (studio style) bamboo hut, 41% have two rooms/parts to their home

      Income
      84% families make less than $110/month
      23% rely on planting/farming and 28% on fishing as their main source of income

      Financial
      60% have loans
      95% have no savings for the future (i.e. children’s schooling, illness, etc.)
      3% have bank accounts
      If they had more money, 36% say they would put it into a business
      ———————————————-
      It is these people in dire need that global warming alarmists deny the cheapest available electricity – coal fired-in the name of “saving the planet” – from a few degrees of warming – when most New Englanders migrate to Florida to retire!
      PS ” It happens to coincide with how you reduce CO2E emissions.” That is a non-sequitur.

    • lolwot | May 18, 2014 at 8:38 am |

      “It is these people in dire need that global warming alarmists deny the cheapest available electricity – coal fired”

      Yet coal fired has clearly not helped them or else why the statistics you mention?

      No what they need is political stability, not cheap electricity.

    • lolwot | May 18, 2014 at 8:40 am |

      Once political stability is in place developing countries have a duty to support the Philippine energy infrastructure. As a result finding the “cheapest” source of energy is no longer a requirement.

      • AK | May 18, 2014 at 9:19 am |

        As a result finding the “cheapest” source of energy is no longer a requirement.

        As best I can find out about the “Philippine energy infrastructure” it introduces actual market competition for the retail market:

        The slow process for approval of power projects under a single buyer Power Purchase Agreement-based (PPA) regime may be a thing of the past as the market is expected to send the signals for capacity addition. While the journey towards Retail Competition and Open Access (RCOA) has not been smooth and not without delays, its start date has been set for middle of 2013. On 26 December 2012, a six-month transition period began, and at the end of this period, customers are now able to choose their electricity provider.

        None of this rules out the use of taxes, “fees”, and other methods to make coal too expensive for customers to use.

    • kakatoa | May 18, 2014 at 9:52 am |

      Faustino says-“ Culturally-embedded practices are hard to change,” +1^1000!

      It will be interesting to see how well the policies embedded in CA’s plan to change how folks in the state live works out. An update to our plan(s) on how we are going to reduce C02 levels was just published:

      http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/scopingplan/2013_update/first_update_climate_change_scoping_plan.pdf

      For the life of me I can’t figure out how my transportation costs to travel a mile are going to be less in 2020 than they are today, but from a macro perspective this is stated in the plan; B. Foster Resilient Economic Growth pg 27:

      “ The combination of California’s vehicle GHG and Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) standards and policies adopted under AB 32—including the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, SB 375, and Cap-and-Trade—will reduce per-capita fuel costs and GHG emissions from light-duty vehicles and fuel use by about 30 percent from current levels in 2020, and by about 50 percent in 2035 (see Figure 5). Additional measures to reduce emissions could further reduce fuel costs, as well.”

      By 2050 I am likely going to be dead, but I was wondering how the next owner, or renter, of the property I live on will address their mobility needs and somehow manage to do this while also having reduced fuel costs. Oh well, that will be their problem. I guess the new resident at my place could always upgrade the electrical service to a higher Amperage service to allow for charging of an EV. As to what it will cost ($/kWh) to charge that EV the plan doesn’t cover. This does seem a bit odd as a lot of modeling and real world data is available………

    • Bart R | May 18, 2014 at 11:40 am |

      David L. Hagen | May 18, 2014 at 8:30 am |

      Are you Pinoy? Filipino?

      Been there?

      Do business there?

      Read their business papers?

      http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/index.php/en/news/top-news/32239-climate-change-to-affect-phl-future-credit-ratings

      Been elected to speak for the people there?

      Have you even read the website you link to?

      We are aggressive with our environmental stewardship. We care about not only protecting the planet, but actively enhancing it and correcting existing problems through modeling sustainability and a passion for the environment.

      In short, the opposite of everything you have ever argued for anywhere.

      Give me some “sobering facts” from where you are, about your own people. Maybe start with some sobering facts about how much CO2E you’re responsible for spilling into the carbon cycle compared to how much you pay for CO2E dumping fees?

      Do you feel no remorse whatsoever for this theft?

    • kcom1 | May 18, 2014 at 3:53 pm |

      “It seems at times the more you try to restrict a market, the more the market tries to run around you.”

      Not only does, but it has to. You can restrict supply through a law but that’s not going to eliminate demand. Forces will always attempt to fill that demand. There’s opportunity there. That’s as much a fact of life on our planet as the force of gravity. Or perhaps a better comparison is Newton’s Third Law. If something changes, something else will change in opposition to it. If you restrict a market far enough, that market turns into a black market but it’s not simply going to disappear. Because demand is still the driver and demand is still there and forces always exist that will take actions to meet that demand (say hello Mafia). Suppressing demand legally only shifts the supply chain to other avenues. It’s hard to believe some people don’t understand this and think you can just make a law to change reality. They should try to make a law to change gravity and then see how that goes.

    • jim2 | May 18, 2014 at 4:05 pm |

      It’s 2023. President Obama issues an Executive Order banning the importation of cow dung into the US.

    • David L. Hagen | May 18, 2014 at 11:32 pm |

      Bart R
      What a remarkable amount you share about yourself!
      Yes, I have traveled or worked internationally for 21 years in 41 countries, including the Philippines. I have friends who worked on rural coconut processing as well as others who helped install coal power plants. You claim remarkable omniscience on my writings! Have you read any of my 70+ publications or 26 US patent applications or looked at my> my LinkedIn profile? Have you studied:

      Concentrating Solar Energy: “Review of Solar Thermal Technologies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions” 330 p
      Renewable Fuels: “Methanol: Its Synthesis, Use as a Fuel, Economics and Hazards” 180 p

      Have you digested my UNDP review on Coconut Timber and Biomass Resource covering 11 million ha (24 million acres) in 84 countries? Do you understand how rural coconut farmers could generate more electricity per capita than used in the big cities?
      I have tested coconut oil in diesel engines, prepared coconut processing feasibility/-environmental plans, evaluated how to restore the coconut industry in Mozambique, Chaired a standards task force to establish international coconut food nomenclature and hygienic practice.
      I have walked, ridden ox carts and bicycles. I have also been privileged to drive from London to Kathmandua and have flown jumbo jets. Any knowledge of linguistics would indicate my Scandanavian background.

      I live to wisely steward what has been entrusted to me by God. I am thankful for God given health, and living under His blessings in a land of plenty. (I reject your false guilt for “theft”.) I am thankful that my energy use is helping to increase the plant food (aka CO2) that is essential to farmers in both 1st and 3rd world countries. I recommend you further study and try to DignityCoco and the Cornwall Alliance.

      How does that change anything of what I have written?
      Can you rise above ad hominem rhetorical attack, denigration and guilt trips?

    • Bart R | May 19, 2014 at 12:53 am |

      David L. Hagen | May 18, 2014 at 11:32 pm |

      As a matter of fact, yes, I’ve read your published patent information.

      You seem really selective about the questions you choose to answer.

      How much money do you stand to lose if people have to pay for the CO2E they emit?

    • David L. Hagen | May 19, 2014 at 8:49 am |

      Bart R
      What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
      I have given a lot of information.
      1) Now it is your turn to be open and transparent on each of the questions you asked.

      Compliments on reading my patent information.
      Comprehension Quiz:
      2) What is the efficiency improvement from Brayton to VAST cycles? -for generating electricity, and for Combined Heat and Power (CHP)?
      3) What catalysts are required to reduce the emissions of a VAST progressive combustor to below California’s legislated limits?
      4) What is the reduction in capital for a VAST system to recover hydrocarbons compared to conventional SAGD?

      Re: How much money do you stand to lose if people have to pay for the CO2E they emit?
      First what do you understand of the market?
      5) How much are current CO2 taxes – in the US? – in the EU? in the Philippines?
      6) How much electricity is generated by gas turbines?
      7) If we can generate electricity for 20% less fuel what is the CO2 impact.
      8) What is the market for fuel to replace depleting oil and growing economies over the next 40 years?
      9) How much are people willing to pay to get to work?
      10) From those, will I lose? or gain $ on carbon taxes.

      Bonus 11) What are in US patent applications 25 and 26?

    • Bart R | May 19, 2014 at 1:01 pm |

      David L. Hagen | May 19, 2014 at 8:49 am |

      Are you crying fowl?

      Among those countries, why pick on the Philippines, and coconuts?

      Certainly, more proximate, topical and timely would be the examples of the aboriginals of North America, where the bulk of your patents are making all of their money dependent on pipelines to transport dilbit across contested treaty lands.

      Why try to lead the discussion with meretricious quizzes?

      And the Cornwall Alliance? Really? There are people who haven’t developed a sense of shame about that abomination yet?

      It’s great that you have a Green resume to present on how to make plantations more profitable; how the plight of plantation owners weighs on all our consciousness. As soon as they get rid of all those troublesome inhabitants of land for expanding their enterprises to make fuel, following that inspirational ethanol example of food to fuel by the corn giants in the USA, they’ll no doubt be far less poor.

      You’re in this for personal gain that could never happen if CO2E waste disposal were charged a fair scarcity fee by the Law of Supply and Demand. Everything you’ve written suggests only the motive of protecting your interests by avoiding paying what is right.

    • David L. Hagen | May 19, 2014 at 1:41 pm |

      Bart R.
      Yes I am “crying fowl” [sic.]
      Q1) Now it is your turn to be open and transparent on each of the questions you asked.
      You make logically falacious rhetorical ad hominem attacks against me, demanding disclosure. Yet when I provide information, you hypocritically refuse to give any information about yourself.

      Q2) The efficiency improvement can be from 42% to 52% electrical or 70% to > 80% total.
      That would reduce CO2 generation – consequently I would benefit from CO2 tax.
      Q3) NO catalysts are required to meet California’s regulations. That gives a 5% capital benefit and an operating benefit.
      Q4) ~ >40% capital reduction. That would benefit more than CO2 taxes.
      Q5) No US CO2 Taxes. California has Cap & Trade. EU CO2 trading may have negligible reduction in emissions.
      Why promote what is ineffective?
      Q7) 20% lower fuel use gives 20% lower CO2. Ie a earning a major benefit from CO2 taxes.
      Q8) 40 year market for replacement fuel ~ $200 trillion.
      Q9) The price of fuel rose ~ 10x to ~ $100/bbl or $4/gallon – limiting discretionary travel. People will pay more for required travel.
      Q10) These issues suggest major gains from CO2 taxes, not losses.
      Q11) Patents 25 and 26 have not been published. You could not have read them.

      You accuse of distorting scientific fact for profiteering
      Yet you refuse to answer questions directly relating to your question of how much I would lose by CO2 taxes.
      You show no comprehension of the market place or willingness to address it. Nor do you appear sufficiently knowledgeable to evaluate technological improvements and their economic impact.
      Philippines – is the largest coconut producer in the world.
      The Cornwall Alliance are godly scientists, scholars and pastors seeking to act ethically from a biblical world view. By your denegration you appear to actively oppose the foundations of the Western Judeo-Christian civilization and seek to replace it by nature worship.

      You fail to comprehend my focus on benefitting coconut small holders, not plantation copra producers. You accuse of only acting for “personal gain” and “avoiding paying what is right.”
      You appear to bcontrolled by and acting on behalf of the chief liar. Are you not acting the troll?

    • Bart R | May 19, 2014 at 2:45 pm |

      David L. Hagen | May 19, 2014 at 1:41 pm |

      It’s only a fallacious ad hominem attack if it’s all three of fallacious, ad hominem, and attack.

      If you truly are arguing against your own interests where carbon pricing is concerned, that is an interesting development. Risible on the math in the short term, but plausible enough that we ought consider the question: how much would you benefit if carbon prices by the Law of Supply and Demand came to be?

      And yay for godly pastors. There ought be more, and they ought be godlier. Which would let them out of the Cornwall Alliance.

      But let’s have a look.

      WHAT WE BELIEVE
      We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.

      Tempting God?

      Blaming God?

      Really, there’s theological foundation for shirking the responsibility of Free Will by appeal to Providence?

      You might be comfortable bearing false witness against God by pointing the finger for AGW at nature, but I would not call that a godly act.

      We believe abundant, affordable energy is indispensable to human flourishing, particularly to societies which are rising out of abject poverty and the high rates of disease and premature death that accompany it. With present technologies, fossil and nuclear fuels are indispensable if energy is to be abundant and affordable.

      Energy is not carbon is not energy. Affordability by theft is not a theologically supportable position, and stealing the price of CO2E disposal from the poor is not affordability for the victims.

      And what of those societies rising out of abject poverty imposed often at the hands of the godly?

      Missionary schools across the globe, in particular in Canada, where the government has admitted it conspired with religious institutions to commit acts of genocide against aboriginal children to obtain those lands now used for tarsand extraction and pipelines, have much to answer for. So, really, where is the fair trade in tar?

      We believe mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, achievable mainly by greatly reduced use of fossil fuels, will greatly increase the price of energy and harm economies.
      We believe such policies will harm the poor more than others because the poor spend a higher percentage of their income on energy and desperately need economic growth to rise out of poverty and overcome its miseries.

      Well, that’s a convenient belief, only obtainable if carbon equals energy; in analyses of technology shifts and economies of scale, the belief that shifting from carbon to alternatives will increase prices and do harm in the long run — even allowing carbon burners to steal unlimited dumping of CO2E — is demonstrably false. Given that the premise is backwards, the conclusion demands rather the opposite of what is given; people of good faith must based on the best evidence sustain every form of CO2E emission.

      WHAT WE DENY
      We deny that Earth and its ecosystems are the fragile and unstable products of chance, and particularly that Earth’s climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry. Recent warming was neither abnormally large nor abnormally rapid. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.
      We deny that alternative, renewable fuels can, with present or near-term technology, replace fossil and nuclear fuels, either wholly or in significant part, to provide the abundant, affordable energy necessary to sustain prosperous economies or overcome poverty.

      Nowhere in climate science is the origin of the climate relevant. Denying something no one ever claimed is specious. The words fragile, unstable, minuscule.. all relative terms, nowhere competently defined. The rest of this Credo of Denial heightens the shame of the document. The most parsimonious, simple, universal inference from all available data requires acceptance of everything this passage denies as accurate or very nearly true. Saying a Scientist can subscribe to it and remain godly in their pursuit of truth is simply false.

      We deny that carbon dioxide—essential to all plant growth—is a pollutant. Reducing greenhouse gases cannot achieve significant reductions in future global temperatures, and the costs of the policies would far exceed the benefits.

      Three assertions in no means supported by law — which defines pollutants — or Physics or economics.

      We deny that such policies, which amount to a regressive tax, comply with the Biblical requirement of protecting the poor from harm and oppression.

      And a flat out lie about regressive taxation, as Dr. Ross McKitrick quite eloquently and clearly demonstrated in his own PhD thesis on the Double Dividend effect. Carbon taxes are always less regressive than alternatives, per Dr. McKitrick’s paper.

      A CALL TO ACTION
      In light of these facts,

      So, how did these ‘beliefs’ become facts?

      We call on our fellow Christians to practice creation stewardship out of Biblical conviction, adoration for our Creator, and love for our fellow man—especially the poor.

      The principle of biblical stewardship is the passing on of what one has inherited to one’s posterity undiminished. Can you really claim this is what the Cornwall Alliance represents?

      I see in this Alliance no adoration of anything but Mammon; it is lipservice of Pharisees, a whited sepulchre, faithless and soulless.

      We call on Christian leaders to understand the truth about climate change and embrace Biblical thinking, sound science, and careful economic analysis in creation stewardship.

      Hey! A line I can get behind. Omitting the word “leaders”, if only it were the only line in the Cornwall Alliance Creed.

      We call on political leaders to adopt policies that protect human liberty, make energy more affordable, and free the poor to rise out of poverty, while abandoning fruitless, indeed harmful policies to control global temperature.

      And.. we’re back to false argument in the end.

      Notice this is not ad hominem, not an attack, and not fallacious. It is simply demonstration of how the hypocrisy of the Cornwall Alliance reveals its moral bankruptcy.

  10. Tonyb | May 17, 2014 at 5:22 pm |

    Rgates

    As a new thread has started I am posting my comment to you again here concerning the climate conference I attended

    http://judithcurry.com/2014/05/16/reflections-on-bengtsson-and-the-gwpf/#comment-558243

    Tonyb

  11. Postman1 | May 17, 2014 at 5:30 pm |

    How about this: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/16/climategate-ii-scientific-community-accused-muzzling-dissent-on-global-warming/
    Although I think it should be Climategate III instead of two. Maybe this will be equivalent to Striiiik three!! Yer out of there!

  12. David L. Hagen | May 17, 2014 at 5:44 pm |

    President Obama’s big carbon crackdown readies for launch

    The EPA will launch the most dramatic anti-pollution regulation in a generation early next month, a sweeping crackdown on carbon . . .
    The move could produce a dramatic makeover of the power industry, shifting it away from coal-burning plants toward natural gas, solar and wind. While this is the big move environmentalists have been yearning for, it also has major political implications in November for a president already under fire for what the GOP is branding a job-killing “War on Coal,” and promises to be an election issue in energy-producing states such as West Virginia, Kentucky and Louisiana.

    Should this be implemented, it will have far greater impact on the economy than any global warming.
    In finding “endangerment” the EPA skewed the review process to ignore/reject objective internal review etc. See Arlan Carlin

    • Tonyb | May 17, 2014 at 6:04 pm |

      David

      This is great news for Americas competitors. Over here in the UK our energy is some three times more expensive than that for your industry and consumers and our petrol prices are at least double thereby adding to distribution costs.

      It will be great for us if you shackle your industry and I am sure the various green commenters on this blog will not mind their energy costs rising dramatically.

      Tonyb

    • mosomoso | May 17, 2014 at 6:53 pm |

      A free translation: “natural gas, solar and wind” means “old oil lobby”. They’ve always been better at shilling than the opposition, now they look set for a big win against their viable competitors, coal and nukes.

      Don’t get me wrong: I like me some oil and gas, but please don’t play me for a dope. Enough with this masquerading in green drag.

    • David L. Hagen | May 17, 2014 at 6:58 pm |

      TonyB
      That reminds me of how much we can learn from your “Iron Lady” Thatcher – she used global warming-to break the coal miners coercion. She warned that “climate change . . .provides a marvelous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism” (449)” – and then insisted that:

      “Whatever international action we agree upon to deal with environmental problems, we must enable our economies to grow and develop, because without growth you cannot generate the wealth required to pay for the protection of the environment” (452)

      See more at: Margaret Thatcher: A Free Market Environmentalist

  13. Peter Lang | May 17, 2014 at 6:04 pm |

    I’ve had a long discussion on ‘The Conversation’ on a thread: “Renewable energy target can go all the way to 100% – if we let it” By Andrew Blakers, Andrew Blakers, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems and the ARC Centre for Solar Energy Systems at the Australian National University.

    I summarised my main comments at the end of the thread in seven separate comments. I’ll post them here in case they are of interest to others here, The comments that follow cover:

    1. Policy relevant climate questions

    2. Energy supply requirements

    3. Nuclear better than renewables

    4. Nuclear cheaper and lower emissions than renewables

    5. Responses to comments on “Nuclear better than renewables”

  14. Peter Lang | May 17, 2014 at 6:05 pm |

    Policy relevant climate questions

    These are some of the questions we need answers to. Climate scientists and CAGW believers continually avoid tackling them.

    The most important things we don’t know about human induced climate change are:

    1. What is the value of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) and Transient Climate Response (TCR)? [see expansion appended below]

    2. Is ECS and TCR relevant given that climate changes suddenly, not as portrayed by IPCC’s smooth projections?

    3. What effect will increasing atmospheric CO2-e concentration have on the climate – will it make the next sudden change happen sooner or later?

    • Will it make the next sudden cooling happen sooner or later?

    • Or will it cause a sudden warming event?

    • What are the probability density functions for each?

    4. Will it make the next sudden climate change less or more severe? (e.g. delay the onset of the next cooling and/or reduce its severity OR make the next sudden warming happen sooner and make it more severe)? What is the probability density function?

    5. What would be the consequences of warming? What would be the consequences of cooling? What are the probability density functions?

    6. What is the probability that the advocated mitigation policies would succeed in delivering the claimed benefits (climate damages avoided), given real world issues with implementing and maintaining such policies (e.g. carbon pricing)?

    • To answer this question we need to understand the short- and medium-term economic impacts of the proposed policies for each nation state, and consider how each will respond so as to maximise its advantage (game theory) through the situations that could occur over the next century or so.

    7. What is the probability that alternative polices are more likely to succeed (such as removing the political and regulatory impediments that are preventing the world from having low cost nuclear energy and allowing lightly regulated markets to deliver the benefits at least cost)?

    • Peter Lang | May 17, 2014 at 6:06 pm |

      Wopps, Left the end of the last comment out:

      Further explanation of Q1 “What is the value of ECS and TCR”

      James Amman: ECS & TCR are a value, not a pdf
      http://www.climatedialogue.org/

      “One rather fundamental point need[s] to be clearly understood at the outset of the discussion: there is no “correct” pdf for the equilibrium sensitivity. Such a pdf is not a property of the climate system at all. Rather, the climate sensitivity is a value (ignoring quibbles over the details and precision of the definition) and a pdf is merely a device for summarising our uncertainty over this value.”

    • RiHo08 | May 17, 2014 at 6:23 pm |

      I submit that there is no such thing as Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity as equilibrium is an arbitrary construct to aid in the use of classical physics. Without equilibrium physics, there is no current calculation that can be invoked to plug into equations used by General Circulation Climate models. Without equilibrium assumptions, there is no prediction of the future. What might happen in the future then is really a conjecture. My guess is as good as your guess.

      Now, did I get that right?

    • nottawa rafter | May 17, 2014 at 6:54 pm |

      ” My guess is as good as your guess”
      That pretty much sums up the entirety of climate science.

  15. Peter Lang | May 17, 2014 at 6:07 pm |

    Energy supply requirements

    The most important requirements for energy supply are:

    1. Energy security (refers to the long term and especially important for periods of economic or military disruptions that could threaten energy supply, e.g. 1970’s oil crises [1], world wars).

    2. Reliability of supply (over periods of minutes, hours, days, weeks – e.g. NE USA and Canada 1965 and 2003[2])

    3. Low cost energy – energy is a fundamental input to everything we have; if we increase the cost of energy we reduce the rate of improvement of human well-being.

    Policies must deliver the above three essential requirements.

    Second order requirements are:

    4. Health and safety – nuclear is the safest of all electricity generation technologies and would avoid about 2-3 million fatalities per year by 2050 if it replaced coal world wide, so it should be a no-brainer to strongly support nuclear on health and safety grounds.

    5. Nuclear is relatively environmentally benign compared with other alternatives.

    [1] Oil crisis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_crisis

    [2] ‘List of major power outages’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outages

  16. Peter Lang | May 17, 2014 at 6:07 pm |

    Nuclear better than renewables

    Nuclear power is better than renewable energy in all the important criteria. Renewable energy cannot be justified, on a rational basis, to be a major component of the electricity system. Here are some reasons why:

    1. Nuclear power has proven it can supply over 75% of the electricity in a large modern industrial economy, i.e. France, and has been doing so for over 30 years.

    2. Nuclear power is substantially cheaper than renewables

    3. Nuclear power is the safest way to generate electricity; it causes the least fatalities per unit of electricity supplied.

    4. Nuclear power is more environmentally benign than renewables.

    5. Material requirements per unit of electricity supplied through life for nuclear power are about 1/10th those of renewables

    6. Land area required for nuclear power is very much smaller than renewables per unit of electricity supplied through life

    7. Nuclear power requires far less expensive transmission (much shorter distances and much smaller capacity in total because the capacity needs to be sufficient for maximum output but intermittent renewables average around 10% to 40% capacity factor whereas nuclear averages around 80% to 90%.

    8. Nuclear fuel is effectively unlimited.

    9. Nuclear fuel requires a minimal amount of space for storage. Many years of nuclear fuel supply can be stored in a warehouse. This has two major benefits:

    • Energy security – it means that countries can store many years or decades of fuel at little cost, so it gives independence from fuel imports. This gives energy security from economic disruptions or military conflicts.

    • Reduced transport – nuclear fuel requires 20,000 to 2 million times less ships, trains etc per unit of energy transported. This reduces shipping costs, the quantities of oil used for the transport, and the environmental impacts of the shipping and the fuel used for transport by 4 to 6 orders of magnitude.

    There is no rational justification for renewable energy to be mandated and favoured by legislation and regulations.

  17. Peter Lang | May 17, 2014 at 6:10 pm |

    Nuclear cheaper and lower emissions than renewables
    Renewables v Nuclear: Electricity Bills and Emissions reductions by technology proportions to 2050

    The CSIRO ‘MyPower’ calculator shows that, even in Australia where we have cheap, high quality coal close to the main population centres and where nuclear power is strongly opposed, nuclear power would be the cheapest way to reduce emissions: http://www.csiro.au/Outcomes/Energy/MyPower.aspx

    Below is a comparison of options with different proportions of electricity generation technologies (move the sliders to change the proportions of each technology). The results below show the change in real electricity prices and CO2 emissions in 2050 compared with now.

    1. 80% coal, 10%gas, 10% renewables, 0% nuclear:
    electricity bills increase = 15% and emissions increase = 21%

    2. 0% coal, 50%gas, 50% renewables, 0% nuclear:
    electricity bills increase = 19% and emissions decrease = 62%.

    3. 0% coal, 30%gas, 10% renewables, 60% nuclear:
    electricity bills increase = 15% and emissions decrease = 77%.

    4. 0% coal, 20%gas, 10% renewables, 70% nuclear:
    electricity bills increase = 17% and emissions decrease = 84%.

    5. 0% coal, 10%gas, 10% renewables, 80% nuclear:
    electricity bills increase = 20% and emissions decrease = 91%.

    Conclusion: nuclear is the least cost way to make significant reductions in the emissions intensity of electricity.

    But progress to reduce emissions at least cost is being thwarted by the anti-nuclear activists.

    Source: CSIRO ‘MyPower’ calculator, http://www.csiro.au/Outcomes/Energy/MyPower.aspx

    “MyPower is an online tool created by CSIRO that allows you to see the effect of changing the national ‘electricity mix’ (technologies that generate Australia’s electricity) on future electricity costs and Australia’s carbon emissions.”

  18. Peter Lang | May 17, 2014 at 6:12 pm |

    Responses to comments on “Nuclear better than renewables”

    The responses to comments and questions on “Nuclear better than renewables”, are below with references where requested.

    Nuclear power is superior to renewable energy in all the important criteria. Renewable energy cannot be justified, on a rational basis, to be a major component of the electricity system. Here are some reasons why:

    1. Nuclear power has proven it can supply over 75% of the electricity in a large modern industrial economy, i.e. France, and has been doing so for over 30 years.

    [AS] – “Agree”

    2. Nuclear power is much cheaper than renewables

    [AS] – “2. evidence? LRMC? be specific pls”

    http://www.csiro.au/Outcomes/Energy/MyPower.aspx

    http://www.bree.gov.au/sites/default/files/files//publications/aeta/AETA-Update-Dec-13.pdf

    http://oznucforum.customer.netspace.net.au/TP4PLang.pdf
    The last is a simple analysis basically for education purposes. The analysis is similar to what the CSIRO calculator does but makes a rough estimate of the additional transmission and distribution costs as well. These costs are admittedly too high. It was not possible or practicable to do Loss of Load Probability analyses with the data available. AEMO has done it better but admits they have not included all the costs and the actual costs would be higher. The conclusion is that a system with largely renewable generation is much more expensive than nuclear and delivers about the same reduction in GHG emissions (90%). See Figure 6 for a summary of costs and Figure 5 for the CO2 emissions abatement cost.

    You can download a simple spreadsheet from here to see how the simple analysis is done and change the inputs:
    http://bravenewclimate.com/2012/02/09/100-renewable-electricity-for-australia-the-cost/

    3. Nuclear power is the safest way to generate electricity; it causes the least fatalities per unit of electricity supplied.

    [AS] – “3. big call, sure versus coal, gas, solar, wind? A bit of evidence would help.”

    I am somewhat surprised a person who reckons they know so much about energy policy analysis, renewables and nuclear doesn’t know all this.

    This is a summary of authoritative studies:
    http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/deaths-by-energy-source-in-forbes.html

    ExternE is one of the most authoritative studies:
    http://www.externe.info/externe_d7/ Go to projects, ‘New Ext’
    http://www.ier.uni-stuttgart.de/forschung/projektwebsites/newext/

    UK Parliament Nuclear white paper:
    https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/228944/7296.pdf

    4. Nuclear power is more environmentally benign than renewables.

    [AS] – “4. just an opinion, no evidence”

    A statement demonstrating your ignorance of the issues and probably also what you read and what you don’t choose to read. I expect it demonstrates an ideological basis for much of this.

    Here is one source that provides very simple explanations for non specialists:
    http://bravenewclimate.com/renewable-limits/

    5. Material requirements per unit of electricity supplied through life for nuclear power are about 1/10th those of renewables

    [AS] – “5. no evidence”

    One of the articles included in the list linked above:
    ‘TCASE 4 – Energy System build rates and material quantities’
    http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/10/18/tcase4/

    NEEDS (2007) http://www.externe.info/externe_d7/?q=node/56 go to Projects / NEEDS / Project Reports and pick Nuclear and then whichever renewables you want to analyse.

    David Mackay “Sustainable Energy – without the hot air”
    http://www.withouthotair.com/

    6. Land area required for nuclear power is very much smaller than renewables per unit of electricity supplied through life

    [AS] – “probably correct, but may not be relevant.”

    It’s very relevant. See the estimates of global power demand by 2050 and 2100. Renewables simply cannot do the job. Not even in the ball park.

    7. Nuclear power requires far less expensive transmission (much shorter distances and much smaller capacity in total because the capacity needs to be sufficient for maximum output but intermittent renewables average around 10% to 40% capacity factor whereas nuclear averages around 80% to 90%.

    [AS] – “7. true, but economically not too relevant as transmission may be a small part of the costs. In any case each project has to get up on its own economics, including transmission.”

    It’s very relevant. The additional cost is a cost that should to be added to the cost of renewables. There are many hidden costs that you may not be aware of. These should be added to the cost of renewables, not inappropriately shifted to the dispatchable generators to pay. Read the two Palmer references I cited earlier.

    Although admittedly an over-estimate, see Appendix 2 here: http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/lang_renewable_energy_australia_cost.pdf
    For comparison of the estimated additional cost of transmission and distribution for Renewables v Nuclear, see Figure 7: http://oznucforum.customer.netspace.net.au/TP4PLang.pdf

    8. Nuclear fuel is effectively unlimited.

    [AS] “8. effectively so”

    9. Nuclear fuel requires a minimal amount of space for storage. Many years of nuclear fuel supply can be stored in a warehouse. This has two major benefits:

    • Energy security – it means that countries can store many years or decades of fuel at little cost, so it gives independence from fuel imports. This gives energy security from trade wars and military conflicts

    • Reduced transport – nuclear fuel requires 20,000 to 2 million times less ships, trains etc per unit of energy transported. This reduces shipping costs, the quantities of oil used for the transport, and the environmental impacts of the shipping and the fuel used for transport by 4 to 6 orders of magnitude.

    [AS] – “9. irrelevant, the fuel will generally be stored underground as ore generally”

    It’s very relevant. It seems you’ve missed the point. Read it again. And no, rarely will the fuel be stored underground. The rods simply hang in a warehouse. The relevance is that countries can store years or decades of their total electricity energy needs in warehouses requiring negligible space. But you can’t do that with coal, oil or gas. And one ship of nuclear fuel going out of Darwin replaces 20,000 to 2 million ships of same weight of coal passing through the Great Barrier Reef. Get the point now? Yes, this is a comparison with fossil fuels, rather than with renewables. But renewables also need about 10 times more mining, processing, manufacturing, fabricating, assembly, construction, shipping, transport (between every stage in the process), and decommissioning than nuclear.

    There is no rational justification for renewable energy to be mandated and favoured by legislation and regulations.

    I’ve given you answers to all your questions. I provided plenty of research for you to follow up.

    Please do me the courtesy of reading it all, since you asked for it, before asking any more questions.

  19. Wagathon | May 17, 2014 at 6:15 pm |

    What can we do to prevent public-funded academics from dragging society down their hypocritical global warming rabbit hole like a stone and standing on the neck of individual liberty and creativity as emerging capitalism in Brazil, Russia, India and China eats the future of the our young?

    • jim2 | May 17, 2014 at 6:31 pm |

      Voting out Obama and the Dimowits would be a start. But we would also have to vote out the Stealth Dimowits – like McCain, Boehner, Graham, Rubio, etc.

    • HR | May 18, 2014 at 2:09 am |

      So let me get this straight. American capitalism, liberty and creativity are all so weak they can be brought to their knees by a handful of academics?

      Wagathon there’s a whiff of Bond-villainy about the way you seem to understand the world.

    • HR | May 18, 2014 at 10:36 am |

      jim2

      I don’t buy your preferred version of history. But even if we take it at face value it makes my point for me. The US won the Cold War, beat the “evil empire” and The Wall was torn down.. Now it’s going to be crushed by a mann wielding a hockey stick! Some perspective is required here.

    • jim2 | May 18, 2014 at 10:46 am |

      HR – I disagree. If you really took Soviet infiltration of the US even at face value, you would have to agree that the forces that have been arrayed against us since WWII are considerably more potent than the hockey stick. I get emails frequently from the League of Women Voters. These advocacy campaigns always align with Demowit goals. Just about every major organization that isn’t organized explicitly to promote (US) conservative issues leans to the left. Look at how far to the left society has moved since WWII. McCarthy DID root out Soviet spies, but their propaganda campaign permeated society, not just the government.

      I know you won’t agree. But as they say, the truth is out there.

      • Wagathon | May 18, 2014 at 11:02 am |

        We’re not going to hell in a handcart because of some tiny increase in atmospheric CO2 levels, but hell is certainly where we’ll end up if we insist on spending hundreds of billions of unaffordable pounds trying to correct a problem that is grossly over-stated.

        “It’s time to get back to the real science and the real sums. It’s time to get back to the future which, if we adopt the right policies, will be brighter than we can yet imagine. ~Johnny Ball (Daily Mail, “Beware the global warming fascists…, 22-Feb-2011)

  20. jim2 | May 17, 2014 at 6:29 pm |

    From the article:
    …

    Summary

    Look at the recent news surrounding WTI Crude and the gasoline market.
    Discuss the latest regarding the TMS play and the three names looking to profit from the shale play.
    Highlight the continued political support from both parties to use LNG as both an economic and political tool.

    WTI Crude continues to move higher after recent numbers have come in stronger than expected, meaning that supplies are lower than expected. We are also looking at the refiners opening back up from maintenance programs and that will drive up the demand for oil. The main reason prices continue to trade at elevated levels is due to Russia though and until there is some type of resolution in that area of the world, traders shall continue to place a price premium on crude.
    …
    Although the quarterly report from Encana (ECA) yesterday were not all about the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale, or TMS, they might as well have been. Readers know that we have been interested in the TMS for some time as it is one of the last frontiers in the shale race and there are a few large acreage holders in the play which have caught our attention. Encana is certainly one of those names, holding roughly 200,000 net acres. The other names we like are of course Halcon Resources (HK) and Goodrich Petroleum (GDP).

    With the success that these companies have been having recently we think it is safe to say that the TMS play is about to hit the mainstream and that this might be the last opportunity to move in before the start of the big move we are expecting.
    …
    There continues to be a strong movement among politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, to export excess US natural gas to allies and others in Europe who depend on expensive natural gas imports from Russia. The latest news is generated by an op-ed from former Energy Secretaries Spencer Abraham and Bill Richardson which can be read here.
    …
    http://seekingalpha.com/article/2217593-commodities-today-good-news-for-shale-and-lng-companies

  21. jim2 | May 17, 2014 at 6:32 pm |

    From the article:
    …

    Summary

    In the first quarter of 2014, 80% of all new horizontal, oil-directed drilling that occurred in the Permian Basin was in five counties.
    The Energy Information Agency has increased its estimates of production in the Eagle Ford as well.
    Shale oil is a key driver of U.S. higher case production scenarios.
    The lion’s share of new Permian drilling occurred in the Delaware Basin.
    Drivers of firm performance vary by play, acreage locations within plays and price.

    A new inflection point in U.S. oil production has been reached. The expected production increases in the Permian Basin are officially established. And U.S. oil is still tracking record production. “Crude output will average 8.46 million barrels a day this year and 9.24 million in 2015, up from 7.45 million last year,” the EIA said May 6th. The capital allocations projected and plans by the many exploration and production firms operating particularly in the Delaware and Midland Basins are affirmed by the near six-month period of December 27, 2013, to May 9, 2014. The Energy Information Agency notes the following:
    …
    http://seekingalpha.com/article/2220283-parsing-the-permian-basin-as-a-u-s-oil-market-proxy

  22. Peter Lang | May 17, 2014 at 6:47 pm |

    RiHo08 | May 17, 2014 at 6:23 pm

    Thank you Hillary. My main purpose here was to discuss policy and the things we need to know to inform policy. And also to refute the belief that renewable energy is a viable way to reduce global emissions (if that is required). We don’rt know if reducing emissions would be beneficial or not, because we don’t have the answers to the questions. If Robert Ellision is correct – i.e climate changes are abrupt, rapid and “the climate is wild”, is ECS relevant at all. However, I hope this can focus on policy issues not climate science. ECS is being debated on Climate Dialogue: know.http://www.climatedialogue.org/

    BTW, Hillary, Access IPCC that you had so much to do with, is a fantastic tool. IMO.
    http://accessipcc.wordpress.com/about-accessipcc/
    For those interested, drill down into the IPCC AR4 Work Groups, Chapters and Sections and see the stats on the citations, etc. here:http://accessipcc.com/

    And look at an excellent summary of what the IAC report really says about IPCC and AR4, and drioll down to see where the qotes were lifted from in the full IAC report text: http://tome22.info/IAC-Report/IAC-Report-Overview-Short.html

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 17, 2014 at 7:51 pm |

      I did twice have an original thought. You know how some conversations seem to emerge fully formed from an alternate reality? Think FOMBS, bart, webby, gates. My thought was that not only did quantum decoherence result in alternate universes but that we were constantly shifting between adjacent realities. I had to give this up when I decided that the probability distribution function for wave/particle duality was a mathematical convenience rather than a description of reality. The other idea had to do with Jean-Paul Sartre, Douglas Adams and an ontological proof of the existence of God.

      Climate is wild – however – should be attributed to the father of global warming Wally Broecker. This was before he realized that global wasn’t necessarily warming but was in fact – well – wild. This is a heavy burden for someone who founded a new religion and then realized he’d stuffed it up.

      • Peter Lang | May 17, 2014 at 10:11 pm |

        Robert Ellison,

        Thank you for that. Interesting.

        If you have posted some excellent comments and quotes arguing that climate changes suddenly, rapidly and “climate is wild”. Would you mind posting a few of the best quotes you frequently post. Could you also please include the web link and the page number for the quoted sections. My reason for asking is so I can refer to them in the future, such as in this recent discussion on ‘The Conversation’

        From memory some of them are: the Ghil paper, a PNAS paper, Wally Broecker, and I don’t remember which others. Another I seem to recall from long ago explained that sudden changes were caused by merging of Hadley cells.

    • Hilary Ostrov (aka hro001) | May 17, 2014 at 8:25 pm |

      Thank you Hillary. […]
      […]
      BTW, Hillary, Access IPCC that you had so much to do with, is a fantastic tool. IMO.

      Uh, Peter … I think you were responding to RiHo08 not to a comment of mine (at least not on this thread!)

      Although I will readily concede that we do share some common initials – as well as some views, come to think of it; although my guess would be that RiHo08 is probably far more scientifically oriented than I am.

      But I totally agree with your “assessment” regarding the value of http://accessipcc.com/ ;-)

      Hilary (with one “L”, if you don’t mind!)

      • Peter Lang | May 17, 2014 at 10:13 pm |

        Oh, My mistakes sorry to both you and hro001.

      • Peter Lang | May 17, 2014 at 10:15 pm |

        Oh dear, I got that wrong too. My apologies to both Hilary and RiHo08. The changing climate must be getting at my brain :(

    • Faustino | May 17, 2014 at 8:33 pm |

      Chief, it’s actually very liberating when the scales fall from your eyes, and you realise that the world is not as you thought it was. That’s a necessary step in understanding reality as it really is.

    • Faustino | May 17, 2014 at 8:34 pm |

      Hilary, that’s an ell of a request!

    • R. Gates | May 17, 2014 at 8:56 pm |

      “That’s a necessary step in understanding reality as it really is.”
      —-/
      But of course, no one does understand reality as it really is. It is all looking at shadows on the cave wall and science and religion are both paradigms for describing what causes those shadows or what it all “means”. In short, everything is a model, though some are more useful than others.

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 17, 2014 at 10:38 pm |

      The wow I got that totally wrong and vast new vistas opening up effect Michael?

      Science proceeds by way of deduction from observations. If you can then make predictions based on the deductions – and they eventuate – science is complete and close enough to true.

    • Faustino | May 17, 2014 at 11:05 pm |

      Sorry, Gates, with a modest amount of training and a degree of application, you can train yourself to observe the nature of the sensations that constantly arise and pass away throughout our body. You will know from direct experience of these sensations that you, and by extension the universe of which you are a microcosm, have no enduring substance, no solidity, that you consist of sub-atomic particles which arise and pass away with great rapidity; that the nature of reality is impermanence, essenceless. You won’t know this as a concept, an idea, you will know it through direct experience. As saints and sages have long said, know thyself, the kingdom of heaven is within you, etc. This detailed self-observation is the only way that you can directly understand reality. Everything you experience, you experience within yourself. You know the external world only through its impact on your various sense doors, eyes, ears etc, you can never know it directly. But you can know the nature of the sensations which arise through contact with these sense doors.

    • Faustino | May 17, 2014 at 11:20 pm |

      No, Chief/Gen/Rob, that is not what I meant. I grew up very honest and trusting, my perception of the world was based on external input, education, the mores of society, etc. My response to a family break-up around my second birthday, loss of one parent and the affection of another, was to seek love and affection by being “good” (which of course doesn’t work). Yet, seeking to be good, having great honesty and integrity, I constantly got into trouble. In hindsight, that was partly because I was, as others perceived, different, but it was also because of the way I understood the world.

      I first got stoned in Turkey when I was 25 (in an hotel room overlooking the Blue Mosque, Haigha Sofia and straits of Marmara. Magic). I realised on that first occasion that there were thousands of ways of looking at the world, that the way I had been shown, the framework in which I tried to live, was wrong. That meant that the elders of my society, from whom I had derived my view, were either ignorant or were lying. Either way, I had to understand the world for myself. This set me on a quest for understanding, what I would say in hindsight – though it was many years before I thought of it in this way – was a spiritual quest; because the spiritual is not separate from the world, it is part of it and depends on an understanding of the world as it is, not only as it seems to be – cf my response to Gates. The practice I do is scientific – it involves direct observation of the world as it is, at very subtle levels, without reaction – but is the key to spiritual growth, freeing oneself from the past conditionings and reactions which normally drive us.

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 18, 2014 at 12:29 am |

      Not a threshold concept then?

      My childhood was horrendous – violence, abuse, neglect – and I grew up angry and alienated. But behind it all I was devouring shelf after shelf of books in libraries. At 16 I discovered Henry Miller in a railway station bookstall and began my real education.

      “In the days to come, when it will seem as if I were entombed, when the very firmament threatens to come crashing down upon my head, I shall be forced to abandon everything except what these spirits implanted in me. I shall be crushed, debased, humiliated. I shall be frustrated in every fiber of my being. I shall even take to howling like a dog. But I shall not be utterly lost! Eventually a day is to dawn when, glancing over my own life as though it were a story or history, I can detect in it a form, a pattern, a meaning. From then on the word defeat becomes meaningless. It will be impossible ever to relapse.

      For on that day I become and I remain one with my creation.

      On another day, in a foreign land, there will appear before me a young man who, unaware of the change which has come over me, will dub me “The Happy Rock.” That is the moniker I shall tender when the great Cosmocrator demands-” Who art thou?”

      Yes, beyond a doubt, I shall answer “The Happy Rock!”

      And, if it be asked-“Didst thou enjoy thy stay on earth?”-I shall reply: “My life was one long rosy crucifixion.”

      As to the meaning of this, if it is not already clear, it shall be elucidated. If I fail then I am but a dog in the manger.

      Once I thought I had been wounded as no man ever had. Because I felt thus I vowed to write this book. But long before I began the book the wound had healed. Since I had sworn to fulfill my task I reopened the horrible wound.

      Let me put it another way. Perhaps in opening my own wound, I closed other wounds.. Something dies, something blossoms. To suffer in ignorance is horrible. To suffer deliberately, in order to understand the nature of suffering and abolish it forever, is quite another matter. The Buddha had one fixed thought in mind all his life, as we know it. It was to eliminate human suffering.

      Suffering is unnecessary. But, one has to suffer before he is able to realize that this is so. It is only then, moreover, that the true significance of human suffering becomes clear. At the last desperate moment-when one can suffer no more!-something happens which is the nature of a miracle. The great wound which was draining the blood of life closes up, the organism blossoms like a rose. One is free at last, and not “with a yearning for Russia,” but with a yearning for ever more freedom, ever more bliss. The tree of life is kept alive not by tears but the knowledge that freedom is real and everlasting. ”

      Debris

      Forget the passionate and visionary in your poetry.
      Take a still photo of your ontological evolution.
      Where do you stand now?
      Myself I live amongst the debris of experience.

      The undone washing, the unclean toilet,
      Coffee grounds loitering the kitchen nook.
      Is this a time for poetry?
      Poetry would subsume the past and future
      into the evolving moment.

      Glacial ice would grind away the coffee on my kitchen floor.
      Hot suns would volatise the inconsequential
      Detritus of my existence.
      A bubble in the limitless expresso of the cosmos I float.

      Practical question intervene.
      Can I afford to wait for the next
      Glacial for the washing up to be done?
      O should I sort and organize
      Amongst the rubble for the clues
      As to the meaning of my life?

      How shall we marshal meaning out of chaos. I have an idea it is
      by love. The mind may traverse the universe. Create monster and
      demons – but that is a lost universe. Loving and being loved are
      The twin poles around which my being revolves.

    • R. Gates | May 18, 2014 at 12:47 am |

      Skippy intimated:

      “…and I grew up angry and alienated.”

      —
      They say early life experiences leave a lifetime impression.

    • kim | May 18, 2014 at 12:53 am |

      RGates gets the kernel of the comment. Oh, to be such a critic.
      ===========

    • R. Gates | May 18, 2014 at 12:57 am |

      Faustino,

      I was unaware you were such a deep thinking spiritual person. Of course this is all a finger pointing at the moon:

      http://www.myrkothum.com/the-meaning-of-the-finger-pointing-to-the-moon/

      Words are two-edge swords, both hiding and revealing.

      Nuff said…

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 18, 2014 at 1:26 am |

      I suggested that the happy rock was the higher ideal and Randy mistakes openness for vulnerability and sinks a boot in. He is a vindictive and petty man – a serial pest such as is all too common in this climate circus. One moreover seemingly desperately trying to maintain an errant psychological construct covering deep seated inadequacies.

      Science has an ineluctable gravitas. It explains and predicts observations. Language in it’s highest use is packed with existential truths – nebulous as smoke. It is a little more than grabbing at your arse and giggling like a loon.

    • Faustino | May 18, 2014 at 2:13 am |

      GS @ 12.28, thanks for lifting the standard and tone of the blog.

      Gates @ 12.57, I’ll take that response as having positive intent.

      Still waiting for fan to respond to my earlier spiritual post, perhaps he/she (has that ever been resolved?) is stunned by its profundity.

    • Peter Lang | May 18, 2014 at 2:53 am |

      GS

      I’ve just realised I made a typo in the my earlier comment addressed to you. I’d changed the wording in the first sentence but hadn’t deleted the first word. The first two sentences should have said:

      “Robert Ellison,

      Thank you for that. Interesting.

      You have posted some excellent comments and quotes arguing that climate changes suddenly, rapidly and “climate is wild”. Would you mind posting a few of the best quotes you frequently post.

      I’ve searched for “Wally Broker climate is wild” and cant find the reference you’ve been using. Can you please give the quote you’ve been posting and the reference.

      I’d also appreciate a few of the other best quotes and references you have on rapid climate change.

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 18, 2014 at 3:58 am |

      The climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks!
      – Dr Wally Broecker

      This is Broecker’s 1995 paper – he was well ahead of the game. His 1975 (?) paper on global warming is quite presciently brilliant. If I insist that science is prediction – cant do much better.

      http://www.slc.ca.gov/division_pages/DEPM/Reports/BHP_Port/ERRATA_CSLC/Vol%20II/EDC%20Attachments%20Vol%20II-02.pdf

      This is a good intro.

      http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/pdf/pep/Rial2004.NonlinearitiesCC.pdf

      This is an NAS report from 2002 – with a climate who’s who.

      http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136

      This is the breakthrough paper.

      https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/kravtsov/www/downloads/GRL-Tsonis.pdf

      And here’s the update.

      https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/kswanson/www/publications/2008GL037022_all.pdf

      There is lots more – I will get around to it.

      • Peter Lang | May 18, 2014 at 6:22 pm |

        Robert, GS,

        Thank you very much for providing these links. I’ll study the links,and bookmark this comment for future reference and in links to others.

        Did you also sometimes reference a paper talking bout combining of Hadley cells causing rapid climate change. And a PNAS paper I though you sometimes link to but I don’t recall what it was about.

    • Angech | May 18, 2014 at 6:17 pm |

      Chief
      I read your poetry debris to my wife while she was doing the washing.
      When I reached the bit re the meaning of life
      She said “I’ve done a list”
      Proof re your original idea no 1
      FOMD and Gates is living incontravertible proof of living in multiple universes. The term when worlds collide comes to mind.

    • Peter Lang | May 18, 2014 at 8:30 pm |

      Robert / GS

      Thank you for those links. Excellent. I have some reading to do.

      I’s like to ask you a question about the Ghil paper. Figure 1.1 shows that the temperature difference is ~100 K between the ‘upper stable branch’ and the lower branch if we drop below the tipping point at Tc (~278K). That would result from a very small reduction in “insolation at the top of the atmosphere”. But a 100 K temperature drop is an order of magnitude more than temperature change that occurs between the glacial and the interglacial periods over the past 800,000 years and between the cold-house phases and hot-house phases over the past 2 billion years. This major discrepancy between their analysis and the real world has made me lack confidence in this paper. I expect this would have been discussed in critiques of it. Have you seen such critiques? Why do you think about this point?

    • Peter Lang | May 18, 2014 at 8:32 pm |

      Last sentence was supposed to say: “Why do you think about this point?”

  23. John McClure | May 17, 2014 at 7:23 pm |

    There is one single thing I fully understood this week, my babies need course work with Dr.Curry to become human and then seek understanding.

    Sincerely,
    Their Father

  24. Patrick Nolan | May 17, 2014 at 8:01 pm |

    What do you make of this most recent argument that the polar ice is collapsing irreversibly and will raise ocean levels 10 feet oir more over the next century?

    • curryja | May 17, 2014 at 8:13 pm |

      post on this coming tomorrow!

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse | May 17, 2014 at 8:21 pm |

      Patrick Nolan asks “What do you make of this most recent argument that the polar ice is collapsing irreversibly and will raise ocean levels 10 feet or more over the next century?”

      Uhhh … it means that TEPCO/Fukushima Corporation is gonna save a bundle on low-lying radioactivity clean-up liability!

      That’s mighty good news for all us planetary shareholders!

      \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse | May 17, 2014 at 8:36 pm |

      Judith Curry promises “Post on this [ice-sheet collapse] coming tomorrow!“

      Topic by Curry, libertarian analysis by FOMD!

      \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

    • R. Gates | May 17, 2014 at 9:17 pm |

      I look forward to reading Judith’s analysis. Given the huge amount of energy it takes to get ice sheets this big moving, an analysis of their behavior is incomplete unless it includes an analysis of the warming southern ocean, which is providing the energy for this melt.

    • maksimovich | May 17, 2014 at 9:55 pm |

      Given the huge amount of energy it takes to get ice sheets this big moving

      The bigger the ice sheet,the greater the basal heating and friction at the base.Accretion will lessen the base load not increase it.

      This is a well known example of a large ill posed problem( the heat equation) and “how we know that is not so.”

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 17, 2014 at 10:19 pm |

      Were they all to melt, the five Amundsen Sea glaciers studied by Rignot’s team contain enough water to raise global sea level by 1.2 metres. That process is likely to unfold slowly: at Thwaites alone, the other team found, melting over the next century will probably cause sea levels to rise by less than quarter of a millimetre per year, or just 2.5 centimetres in total.

      But it could speed up to more than 1 millimetre per year within 200–900 years, says Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the University of Washington in Seattle and co-author of the Thwaites paper, which is published today in Science1. “We are seeing the early stages of the collapse,” he says. http://www.nature.com/news/crucial-west-antarctic-glaciers-are-retreating-unstoppably-1.15202

      So basically unmeasurable as sea level rise. OMG – we are all going to die.

    • R. Gates | May 17, 2014 at 10:24 pm |

      Given that 40 years of data seem to show that warm circumpolar deep water is melting these glaciers from underneath in Antarctica, and that increasing sea ice is also related to the warming going on in the region, this all presents quite a problem for those who would posit that there is no net gain of energy in the climate system. Quite a problem indeed. Moreover, this is all quite consistent with the general warming of the global ocean being measured more accurately with each passing year.

    • R. Gates | May 17, 2014 at 10:27 pm |

      Skippy said:

      “OMG – we are all going to die.,
      —
      Yes, surely we all are and in a geologically short time frame. But nothing to fret over Skippy.

    • Steven Mosher | May 17, 2014 at 10:34 pm |

      Patrick that is NOT what the paper argued.

    • nottawa rafter | May 17, 2014 at 10:37 pm |

      No analysis would be complete without a review of the hysterical reaction by CA governor who said LAX would be submerged. When shown that at current rate of sea level rise it would take 45,000 years to submerge LAX, he correctly retracted his misguided statement.
      Misguided alarmism by CA governor. Attention to facts by skeptics.

    • Steven Mosher | May 17, 2014 at 10:39 pm |

      “http://www.ourenergypolicy.org/can-shale-gas-limit-air-pollution-2/”

      Muller

      “The “tipping point” you refer to for the Antarctic Ice sheet was published (Science, Vol 344, p375-378) with the following title: ”Marine Ice Sheet Collapse POTENTIALLY Under Way …” (emphasis added). It also said, “Simulated losses are moderate (<0.25 mm per year at sea level) over the 21st century, but generally increase thereafter.” Put those numbers together: 85 years at < 0.25 mm per year adds up to 2.1 cm in this century, a bit less than one inch. This is not what most people think of when you mention the words “tipping point”. The authors believe that the rate could increase in “200 to 900 years” to greater than 1 mm per year. Note that 1 mm per year adds up to one inch per 25 years, and according to their model, that increased rate is at least two centuries in the future. True, the newspaper reports failed to mention these less scary numbers and only emphasized the model results that the collapse is underway (they didn’t include the word “potentially”). I think it premature to worry that our society is doomed — at least, not from climate change. Personally, I worry more about the dangers of war triggered by shortages of oil."

      I can tell you more about the paper in science if you like.

      HINT: the reviewers did not worry about the ALARMIST press misrepresenting the findings

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 17, 2014 at 10:41 pm |

      OMG – we are we all are going to die and in a geologically short time frame.

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 17, 2014 at 10:47 pm |

      And there is zilch data from ARGO that doesn’t show the effects of different data treatment and natural variability.

      e.g. http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ARGOGRACE_Leuliette2012_zps9386d419.png.html?sort=3&o=5

    • R. Gates | May 17, 2014 at 10:52 pm |

      The focus on the Antarctic glaciers should be about what and why, not about catastrophic effects. The what is the likely unstoppable collapse of the ice sheets (with appropriate probabilities discussed), and the why is the warming of the deeper Antarctic polar water. Another level of why is why are these waters warming? There is some research indicating that the warming, increased precipitation, and actual resultant increase in sea ice is preventing heat from escaping from the deeper Antarctic water. This background of the actual research is what should be the basis of any meaningful discussion of the collapse of the ice sheets.

    • kim | May 17, 2014 at 11:00 pm |

      moshe, there are some people whose writings I will no longer refuse to read. Thank you for the thoughts from Muller.
      =============

    • jim2 | May 17, 2014 at 11:24 pm |

      Melting ice in the concave mirror is further than it appears.

    • R. Gates | May 18, 2014 at 12:44 am |

      Rushing to the goal, Skippy shoots, and scores!

      Oops! Own goal.

    • maksimovich | May 18, 2014 at 12:58 am |

      why is the warming of the deeper Antarctic polar water. Another level of why is why are these waters warming?

      Oh tell me, designer of desert,
      Geometrician of quicksand,
      Is that true that boundless lines
      Are stronger than blowing wind

      The planet rotates the wind blows.

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 18, 2014 at 1:00 am |

      ‘Comparisons of global steric height trends based on different gridded fields of Argo in situ measurements show a range of 0–1mm/yr which can be lead back to data handling and climatology uncertainties. Our results show that GOIs derived from the Argo measurements are ideally suitable to monitor the state of the global ocean, especially after November 2007, i.e. when Argo sampling was 100% complete. They also show that there is significant interannual global variability at global scale, especially for global OFC. Before the end of 2007, error bars are too large to deliver robust short-term trends of GOIs and thus an interpretation in terms of long-term climate signals are still questionable, especially since uncertainties due to interannual fluctuations are not included in our error estimation.’ http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/8/999/2011/osd-8-999-2011.pdf

      You need to understand the nature of TOA radian flux variability as well. But I am not surprised that Randy cannot accept or accommodate the scientific reality of ARGO. It would leave him with absolutely nothing left to rattle on about.

    • R. Gates | May 18, 2014 at 1:24 am |

      “…Before the end of 2007, error bars are too large.”

      —

      Skippy, you do realize it is 2014, yes?

    • Herman Alexander Pope | May 18, 2014 at 1:29 am |

      Given the huge amount of energy it takes to get ice sheets this big moving

      Look at the data. It snows more when oceans are warm. This piles snow on top of ice sheets. The energy that moves the big ice sheets is the weight of the new ice on top that pushes it down and swishes it out.

      Warm times is when the ice rebuilds.

      Cold times are when the ice volume is not rebuilding and there is not enough ice volume to push down and out enough to replace what melts every year.

      All of the Consensus People and Many or Most of the Skeptic People do not really understand the Polar Ice Cycles.

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 18, 2014 at 1:32 am |

      OMG. Before 2007 and 100% deployment – ARGO data is almost completely useless. Utterly and astonishingly stupid.

    • R. Gates | May 18, 2014 at 1:38 am |

      Generalissimo Skippy | May 18, 2014 at 1:32 am |
      Utterly and astonishingly stupid.
      —
      No self-loathing Skippy. Chin up dude!

    • R. Gates | May 18, 2014 at 1:40 am |

      “The energy that moves the big ice sheets is the weight of the new ice on top that pushes it down and swishes it out.”
      —
      Warmer water melting from underneath is what the data from Antarctica show.

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 18, 2014 at 1:42 am |

      Utterly and astonishingly misinterpreting von Schuckmann and Le Troan is not enough? You need to be a silly jackass as well?

    • R. Gates | May 18, 2014 at 1:50 am |

      Sadly, Skippy Ellison, your complete misstatement and mischaracterization of the body of evidence and the multiple means a being increasingly confident that the ocean are both warming and increasing in mass sadly puts you squarely on the wrong side of the science. What makes it doubly sad is your pompous certainty exemplified by your “discovery” in 2003 that latent heat flow from the ocean is related to surface temperatures. A fact known for at least 50 years prior to your “discovery”.

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 18, 2014 at 2:21 am |

      Sadly for you it seems you are incapable of more than making a silly misinterpretation and then belligerently trying to distract from the error.

      The von Schuckmann and Le Traon quote stands – I won’t repeat – it is just above and comprehensible to reasonably literate people it seems to me. .

      In 2003 I realized that multi-decadal surface temperatures were influenced by decadal patterns of SST. Your trivial and deliberate misrepresentations aside – this was of course bitterly denied by such as yourself. I went public in 2007 because the IPCC missed this aspect entirely.

      e.g. http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/enso_variation_and_global_warm.html

      Science explains observation and makes prediction – both are required and together easily trump consensus. The world is not warming for decades – and your part in circling the clown cars is just getting in the way of real depth or breadth of understanding.

    • R. Gates | May 18, 2014 at 2:30 am |

      Skippy, for the seemingly billionth time insists:

      “The world is not warming for decades ”

      —
      When exactly do you foresee this “not warming” to begin, since the climate system has been gaining energy for many decades without pause. Oh, and please define “world”, or do you simply mean troposphere? Even then if course, you are incorrect.

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 18, 2014 at 2:50 am |

      The non-warming started post 1998. The non-warming of the oceans as shown in the latest data seems plausible given cloud and radiant flux data.

      e.g. http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/cloud_palleandlaken2013_zps3c92a9fc.png.html?sort=3&o=106

      The troposphere is certainly not warming.

      Your endlessly repeating inanities, lies and smarmy innuendo does nothing at all for me. You have asked this silly question hundreds of times it seems – and the answer is always the same.

    • aaron | May 19, 2014 at 10:05 am |

      I wonder what Tamsin Edwards may be able to add to this. She did an analysis/modeling of Greenland ice last year.

    • aaron | May 19, 2014 at 10:22 am |

      No need to worry about Greenland’s waterslides

      We’ve had a new study published about the slippery slopes of Greenland. If we’re right they’re not as slippery – and therefore as worrying – as we first thought.

      Greenland’s ice sheet is not simply a giant ice cube, inert but for gradual erosion from climate change. It’s a dynamic, shifting landscape, a place of delicate balance between the forces that create ice and those that destroy it. Under its own immense weight, ice flows continuously towards the coasts and is lost whenever icebergs break off into the sea, or when the surface is warm enough to melt or sublimate. Ice is constantly replaced as falling snow compacts, or rain and meltwater freeze. These incomes and outgoings add up to an ice budget that changes with altitude (lower down the air is warmer, so there is more melting), the seasons, and long-term climate change. Future sea level depends on whether or not Greenland can balance its books or stays in the red.

      But it’s not only the surface and edges of the ice sheet we need to watch: it’s the bottom too. Ice at the base is under immense pressure from the hundreds of metres of ice above it, which allows it to melt at temperatures below zero degrees Celsius. The meltwater flows out to sea, sandwiched between the ice sheet and the rock on which it sits, creating a waterslide that helps the ice flow more quickly than it would under gravity alone.

      Ten years ago, Jay Zwally and others put forward an idea that had profound implications for sea level. They suggested acceleration of the waterslide – ‘enhanced basal lubrication’, a.k.a. the ‘Zwally effect’ – could be an alarming mechanism for rapid sea level rise. As the climate warmed, the melting would increase, and the ice would speed up towards the coast. Ice would then be lost more quickly, not only by creating more icebergs, but also by melting more rapidly at these lower altitudes. The extra meltwater would feed the cycle, resulting in faster and faster ice loss.

      We’re the first to test this idea using models of the Greenland ice sheet, comparing the effect on sea level with the usual baseline projections that don’t include the Zwally effect. What we found surprised us – it made very little difference. Even in our worst case scenario, enhanced basal lubrication by surface meltwater added only 8mm to sea level over two hundred years, less than five percent of the baseline sea level rise. In some of our tests, it even reduced it.

      Our study has three parts: finding out how ice speed is affected by surface meltwater using observations, predicting climate change and its effect on surface melting using climate models, and predicting how these would affect ice flow and sea level using ice sheet models.

  25. gbaikie | May 17, 2014 at 8:22 pm |

    The answer regarding future energy needs people living on Earth, is energy harvested from Space.
    This answer is global answer. It’s what one should consider if you looking at future beyond 50 or 100 years.
    If you have no interest in such distance future, and more concern about next couple decades, then you can ignore the idea of getting energy from space. Or trying to harvest energy from space within next couple decades
    would extremely problematic. Or it could be beyond the capability of any human society. But it’s possible this will not be the case
    within say 50 years and seems more probable if extend this 100 years into the future.

    The most significant things happening at moment regarding future possibility of harvesting energy from space is the satellite industry. The entire global activity related to launching and operating satellites is about 200 billion dollar per year activity. Or contrary to many people’s possible assumptions, NASA’s rather large less than 20 billion year budget is not the most important aspect related to this future of harvesting energy from space. One could say NASA has been engaged minor projects which related to the idea, but in terms studies and projects which in general have been minor, US military {not NASA] has devote more effort in this general direction. And in terms of satellites in Earth orbit the US military spends more effort and money and it’s regarding as completely essential to US and global security. So US military budget regarding satellites about same size as NASA entire budget, and NASA budget is largely spent on human spaceflight- and US military does not have this focus. One could say as analogy, that human spaceflight for US military is similar to NASA efforts related harvesting energy from space- it’s studied a bit and some things are done, but not what US military spends any significant amount of funding
    on. Or say, idea dropping marines into some distant country in less than a hour, is toyed with, but US Congress isn’t very enthusiastic about such wastes of funding. Or US military is not going to get 5 billion dollar from Congress to do things related to human spaceflight [unlike NASA]. Other things NASA spends money on are large telescope, robotic missions to Mars, Dawn spacecraft going to Ceres, New Horizon flying by Pluto, and etc.
    So NASA spends about 3 billion per year [or more] operating ISS [a human spaceflight] and about 3 billion on other human spaceflight related [at moment largely SLS- Space Launch System or what commonly called Senate Launch System, as the Senate, after Space Shuttle was grounded, forced NASA to build it. And like Space Shuttle it’s purpose is for human space flight]. And of course NASA launches earth satellites which include monitoring Earth climate- which is billion or so per year.
    So for US in terms of satellite related what one could the satellite market, US military is dominate actor. And in terms of global launch market the European space agency or spaceport in Guiana, dominates global space launches. Leading satellite launch site which has most launches to Geostationary orbit. So commercial Arianespace company launches Guiana, then Russians launching from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome. And from US Californian’s Vandenberg and Florida’s
    KSC [with Texas and other areas developing spaceports]. And China and India and other countries. Oh, and also Sea Launch. But Arianespace has been providing most of yearly commercial space launches.
    So entire industry is what is currently important in terms the future and it’s a growing and competitive industry which constantly lowering it’s costs, which includes the cost to launch something into space. Whereas NASA launch costs are not lowering- unless one counts the commercial launch vehicles
    that NASA uses to launch everything other than human crew. Or the Space Shuttle did not lower launch costs, and SLS also will not lower launch cost.
    Though the commercial crew launch to ISS is currently Russian and will include US {SpaceX and others]. And in terms sending crew to ISS, the Russian Soyuz is about 70 million a seat, [up from about 40 million per seat] and the 70 million a seat is still cheaper than the Shuttle.

    So it’s the Earth satellite market which important and will only increasingly become more important. And is only activity profitably using solar energy- solar energy is cheapest way to make electrical power in Earth orbit. And thousand satellites are currently doing this. And satellites are generally using more electrical power than residential homes, and each generation of satellite tend to want more electrical power, so they can provide more and better service.
    So cost per watt in space is very expensive but more watts allow better services- which results in higher profit.
    And simple answer to lower cost of electrical power in space is lower launch costs. Though the most money spent on satellite is not launch costs- rather it’s a significant portion of the entire cost to launch and operate satellites.
    So because there competitive market and costs are lowering and there will be continued need in the future [a far greater need] it’s path to lower energy cost in Earth orbit- if given time.

    But there other factors which could lower costs in a shorter time frame- and broadly these are related to creating different markets in space.

    • jim2 | May 17, 2014 at 8:26 pm |

      Maybe we could run a conductor to the Moon and harvest electricity that way.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tether

    • gbaikie | May 17, 2014 at 10:35 pm |

      “Maybe we could run a conductor to the Moon and harvest electricity that way. ”

      The Moon does get on average about 16 Kw per 24 hour, which is 8 times more than Germany, but for other better regions on Earth, it’s only about twice the amount solar energy in terms of average. Whereas high Earth orbit gets about twice as much as the Moon [as there is no night]. The polar regions on the Moon can get better than 1/2 time night and day, or say 80% of time it’s in sunlight. But this fairly limited region if one interested in energy needed on Earth.

      The moon has the materials need to make solar panels or other means
      of harvesting solar energy and one could manufacture such on the Moon.
      Though one also get these resources from asteroids- which may to cheaper. The most valuable resource in space [as it is on Earth] is water.
      And the Moon has enough water for human near terms uses [centuries] but
      asteroids have far more water. The US uses something like 400 billion tons of water per year. If one needed billions of tons of water in space, you would get it from asteroids [which has more water than oceans of Earth]..
      But our near term need of water is largely related to making rocket fuel- rather watering lawns or growing crops. In terms earth use of rocket fuel
      total use of Hydrogen and oxygen used, it’s thousands of tons of water.
      On earth we get LOX from air, and LOX is what is mostly used for rocket fuel, and in terms splitting water we don’t split 1000 tons of water per year on Earth, but convert all rocket fuel used as though it was liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, we use around 10,000 tonnes in total per year. So near term [less than 100 years] it’s unlikely we would need 1 million tons of water in space for rocket fuel- so Moon has more than enough for this purpose.

      So if mining lunar water to make rocket fuel, 1000 tons of rocket fuel per year would require a lot of electrical power. And if there was this much demand for lunar rocket fuel, then lunar rocket fuel would relatively inexpensive.More than 100 hundred the price of rocket fuel on Earth- but rocket fuel on Earth is cheap [and unrelated to high launch cost from Earth].
      But with the Moon, rocket fuel costs [if more than 100 times earth] would be a significant part of cost.
      So LOX on Earth is 10 cents a kg- or say, 40 cents a gallon, and one uses about 6 times more LOX than LH. Liquid Hydrogen about $4 per kg,
      so about 65 cent per kg of rocket fuel. So on moon if $65 per kg then leaving Moon is cheaper than leaving earth. Or one can ship stuff off the Moon cheaper than you ship thing off of Earth. And solar panel were 100 times cost of Moon as Earth, one still ship them cheaper from the Moon.
      But if you going to provide Earth with solar panels so to provide a significant portion of Earth’s electrical energy needs by shipped from the Moon, such vast market, will drive electrical power on Moon to or lower than Earth electrical power and make lunar water almost as cheap as water is on Earth- not that price of water matters, as it will be about price of electrical power.
      So not just less than shipping from Earth, but about 1/100th the cost to ship from Earth. And that’s 1/100th from a launch market on Earth which 1/10th the cost of current cost to launch from Earth.
      Or even if current launch cost on Earth were 1/10th the costs as they are now, it’s difficult economically to ship solar panels to space from Earth- but at 1/100th of that cost, easy and one get electrical on Earth for about 5 cents per kW, anywhere.

  26. aaron | May 17, 2014 at 8:51 pm |

    What’s wrong with good old’ HTML.

    And, banners ruin everything. So does pagination. Auto-refresh…

    If we regulate the internet, pagination must go. And sites should be keyboard friendly.

  27. Stumbling Skeptic | May 18, 2014 at 12:29 am |

    Is there any effort by informed CAGW skeptics to edit/extend Wikipedia? As Wikipedia articles on controversial subjects tend to be vigorously “defended” by partisans, I suggest that this is an undertaking that would benefit from a number of well-informed people, well-armed with authoritative citations, acting in a collaborative manner. Here is an example of a Wikipedia article/citation that would benefit from a critical evaluation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#cite_note-Cook_etal_13-119 .

    I suggest that you google such phrases as “climate change” or “global warming”. You’ll notice that the Wikipedia entry shows up at/very close to the top of search-response. I’m not suggesting that *I* view Wikipedia as an authoritative source of information about controversial topics, but Google’s view of what is important is orders of magnitude more influential than my opinion, or the opinion of any other member of the teaming masses.

    If an incomplete, biased Wikipedia article is sufficiently “well-defended” then I suggest that inducing the Streisand Effect would serve an valuable educational purpose.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

  28. Alistair Riddoch | May 18, 2014 at 1:35 am |

    What is the factor that is supposed to be causing the 30 year fluctuations in global temperature trending? If not variations in solar radiation?

    • R. Gates | May 18, 2014 at 1:43 am |

      Are you talking about tropospheric sensible heat? Since the great majority of energy in the troposphere comes from the ocean, you probably would do best to look to the ocean.

    • Alistair Riddoch | May 18, 2014 at 1:44 am |

      I’ll try to be clearer. This is an excerpt from Wikipedia re: variations i nsolar radiation….Variations in total solar irradiance were too small to detect with technology available before the satellite era, although the small fraction in ultra-violet light has recently been found to vary significantly more than previously thought over the course of a solar cycle.[2] Total solar output is now measured to vary (over the last three 11-year sunspot cycles) by approximately 0.1%,[3][4][5] or about 1.3 Watts per square meter (W/m2) peak-to-trough from solar maximum to solar minimum during the 11-year sunspot cycle. The amount of solar radiation received at the outer limits of Earth’s atmosphere averages 1366 W/m2.[1][6][7] There are no direct measurements of the longer-term variation, and interpretations of proxy measures of variations differ. The intensity of solar radiation reaching Earth has been relatively constant through the last 2000 years, with variations estimated at around 0.1–0.2%.[8][9][10] Solar variation, together with volcanic activity are hypothesized to have contributed to climate change, for example during the Maunder Minimum. Changes in solar brightness are too weak to explain recent climate change

      So my question is, in the eyes of the IPCC and the climate experts, the consensus crowd, WHAT facilitates or causes the cooling in the 50’s and 60’s, and warming in 80’s, 90’s, and plateauing or cooling in the 2000’s, 2010’s?? What mechanisms CAN control, short term, our weather, to the extent it fluctuates?

    • R. Gates | May 18, 2014 at 1:59 am |

      “What mechanisms CAN control, short term, our weather, to the extent it fluctuates?”
      —-
      There is natural variability in the flow of latent and sensible heat from the ocean to the atmosphere, with the biggest single factor being ENSO. But, disregarding anthropogenic forcing for a moment, the natural external forcing factors on the climate that can affect weather include solar and volcanic forcing.

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 18, 2014 at 2:04 am |

      There is a fairly simple – conceptually – answer. Climate on these decadal scales is the result of emergent behavior of a deterministically chaotic Earth system. Every few decades the system resets itself into a new mode. What do I mean by this?

      Weather has been known to be chaotic since Edward Lorenz discovered the ‘butterfly effect’ in the 1960’s. Abrupt climate change on the other hand was thought to have happened only in the distant past and so climate was expected to evolve steadily over this century in response to ordered climate forcing.

      More recent work is identifying abrupt climate changes working through the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Southern Annular Mode, the Artic Oscillation, the Indian Ocean Dipole and other measures of ocean and atmospheric states. These are measurements of sea surface temperature and atmospheric pressure over more than 100 years which show evidence for abrupt change to new climate conditions that persist for up to a few decades before shifting again. Global rainfall and flood records likewise show evidence for abrupt shifts and regimes that persist for decades. In Australia, less frequent flooding from early last century to the mid 1940’s, more frequent flooding to the late 1970’s and again a low rainfall regime to recent times.

      Anastasios Tsonis, of the Atmospheric Sciences Group at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and colleagues used a mathematical network approach to analyse abrupt climate change on decadal timescales. Ocean and atmospheric indices – in this case the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the North Pacific Oscillation – can be thought of as chaotic oscillators that capture the major modes of climate variability. Tsonis and colleagues calculated the ‘distance’ between the indices. It was found that they would synchronise at certain times and then shift into a new state.

      It is no coincidence that shifts in ocean and atmospheric indices occur at the same time as changes in the trajectory of global surface temperature. Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.

      Four multi-decadal climate shifts were identified in the last century coinciding with changes in the surface temperature trajectory. Warming from 1909 to the mid 1940’s, cooling to the late 1970’s, warming to 1998 and declining since. The shifts are punctuated by extreme El Niño Southern Oscillation events. Fluctuations between La Niña and El Niño peak at these times and climate then settles into a damped oscillation. Until the next critical climate threshold – due perhaps in a decade or two if the recent past is any indication.

      James Hurrell and colleagues in a recent article in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society stated that the ‘global coupled atmosphere–ocean–land–cryosphere system exhibits a wide range of physical and dynamical phenomena with associated physical, biological, and chemical feedbacks that collectively result in a continuum of temporal and spatial variability. The traditional boundaries between weather and climate are, therefore, somewhat artificial.’ Somewhat artificial is somewhat of an understatement for a paradigm shift in climate science.

      The weight of evidence is such that modellers are frantically revising their strategies. They are asking for an international climate computing centre and $5 billion (for 2000 times more computing power) to solve this new problem in climate forecasting. The monumental size of the task they have set themselves cannot be exaggerated.

      James C. McWilliams of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of California discussed chaos and climate in a 2007 paper titled ‘Irreducible imprecision in atmospheric and oceanic simulations’. ‘Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable’. Sensitive dependence refers to qualitative shifts in climate and models that occur as a result of small changes in initial states, parametizations and boundary conditions. Structural instabilities are qualitative shifts in modeled outcomes as a result of plausible (within the limits of accuracy of measurements) changes in couplings.

      The bottom line for modeling is that the current generation of climate forecasting models cannot be relied on as accurate representations of future climate. It will be quite some time before the new models are good enough to model ‘sensitive dependence’ in climate. I doubt their chances at all; weather models are accurate, because of chaos theory in operation, over about 7 days at best.

      The bottom line for climate is non-warming for decades and non-predictability beyond that. The changes include changes in the partitioning of energy between the oceans and atmosphere and changes in cloud radiative effects. The driver for decadal shifts – and it absolutely needs one – is speculated to be top down forcing from UV/ozone interactions in the stratosphere.

    • R. Gates | May 18, 2014 at 2:19 am |

      First Skippy tells you climate is “unpredictable”, “chaotic” and “”wild” and that no model can possibly capture this and then with great certainty, he tells you:

      “The bottom line for climate is non-warming for decades.”

      Based apparently on his 2003 “discovery” that latent heat flux from the ocean is related to surface temperatures. Amazing!

    • climatereason | May 18, 2014 at 2:31 am |

      Rgates

      As this thread is more active I have brought my reply to you re ocean heat content over to this thread

      ——– ——-
      RGates

      Yes, I was interested in the relative uncertainty of actual heat content below the upper ocean and that the increase seems to have levelled off in recent years and perhaps wasn’t as great as in the previous decade.

      As the meeting broke up I asked why only data to 2010 (at the latest) was included and was told it was somewhat contradictory.

      ——– ——–
      The pause in the land temperatures whilst not being matched precisely by ocean heat content or sea level rise certainly seems to indicate that the effects of the HCV (trade mark) are tailing off. Who knows what will happen next. I suppose it partly depends on the next El Nino

      tonyb

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 18, 2014 at 2:38 am |

      I take it gatesy’s deliberate misrepresentations are abundantly clear?

      Ad they have been discussed before – it gets a lot tedious.

      Just once more.

      The decadal modes are 20 to 40 years long – and we entered a cool mode after 1998. It that not spelled out above?

      What hit me like a bus in 2003 was that these decadal shifts in ocean indices had a decadal influence on surface temperature. I am not quite clear on why Randy insists on bringing this back to latent heat flux – of which I have forgotten more than he ever will know.

      It is no coincidence that shifts in ocean and atmospheric indices occur at the same time as changes in the trajectory of global surface temperature. Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.

      Yes I was very excited as well – but gatesy is obviously having probs with the idea. Can’t quite comprehend or assimilate due to the groupthink I assume.

    • R. Gates | May 18, 2014 at 2:52 am |

      “What hit me like a bus in 2003 was that these decadal shifts in ocean indices had a decadal influence on surface temperature. I am not quite clear on why Randy insists on bringing this back to latent heat flux…”
      —–
      Well Skippy, the reason it comes back to latent heat flux is that latent heat flux from the ocean is the primary way the atmosphere is heated and ocean indices don’t matter at all to surface temperatures unless they result in changes in latent heat flux. Of course, ENSO does result in changes in latent heat flux (greater) and this exactly why tropospheric temperatures spike. Why this hit you like a bus in 2003 seems odd, unless you missed the lecture on latent heat flux and tropospheric temperatures back in your freshman college class.

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 18, 2014 at 3:01 am |

      multi-decadal – Randy – multi-decadal

      As I explained yesterday – this idea of multi-decadal regimes emerged in Australia in 1988.
      http://www.researchgate.net/publication/233871224_Geomorphic_Effects_of_Alternating_Flood-_and_Drought-Dominated_Regimes_on_NSW_Coastal_Rivers

      The PDO was described in 1996.

      I can assure you that the hydrological cycle came up in lecture no. 1 – with no suggestion of multi-decadal regimes.

      Do you tire of pontificating about things you know nothing about? No – of course not – obviously.

    • Alistair Riddoch | May 18, 2014 at 2:24 pm |

      hmmmm. Let’s try again.

      if the equation to back up the simplified form of the greenhouse concern is:

      earth internal heat plus absorbed solar heat plus absorbed trapped greenhouse heat = current global temperature at any given point in time.

      when we are warming, one potential is an increase in trapped heat.

      when we are cooling, in simple words, from a person who believes in anthropogenic CO2 related warming, why aren’t we warming when we are cooling. what is different during the cooling phase to facilitate or allow that cooling.

      Or would the CO2 side have us believe the earth never cools?

      In lay terms, that prove or suggest evidence. When it cools, HOW does it do so??

    • Jim D | May 18, 2014 at 2:45 pm |

      I think that the current solar cycle’s decline to sunspot values not seen in a century could be responsible for at least 0.1 C of the last decade’s lack of warming, which is a significant fraction of the expected decadal rise rate. The skeptics don’t want to talk about the solar role in the pause for some reason, but it is part of natural variation that is always there in the background, and, together with volcanoes, can add or subtract a tenth of a degree at various times during a typical century.

  29. Bob Goodwin | May 18, 2014 at 2:36 am |

    What efforts have been made to create open sourced climate data with public dialog threads and open analysis?

    I have twice downloaded large sets of data (once on tree rings, and once on temperature data) and always found it impossible to reconstruct any conclusions that had been made on either side of the debate.

    It seems that if the scientists can’t do falsifiable science, somebody else should.

    • climatereason | May 18, 2014 at 3:03 am |

      Bob

      The science of tree ring has been promoted way above their scientific value.

      Trees are highly susceptible to micro climates and only have a short growing season. That they are taken as a reliable measure of regional temperature on such unscientific data is remarkable. They can show moisture content during the growing season and are good for determining the age of a lump of wood, useful if trying to date beams in a Cathedral. AS a thermometer? I don’t think so

      tonyb

    • beththeserf | May 18, 2014 at 3:50 am |

      Tony,
      ‘Science’ of tree rings? May as well say ‘science’ of tea leaves.
      bts.

    • Faustino | May 18, 2014 at 4:28 am |

      There seems to be a bit of scope here: tree ring circus; séance of tree rings; “Leaf tree rings alone,” says Tony B; can’t see the temperature wood for the tree rings.

      Those claiming to assess viable temperature data from tree rings could adopt Eccles’ refrain:

      “I talk to the trees; That’s why they put me away.”

    • climatereason | May 18, 2014 at 5:09 am |

      Faustino

      Tree rings? Yes, Eccles had it just right. I put this over promotion of this aspect of science to circa 1998. When researching data at Exeter Cathedral I came across an interesting document from that date which usefully dated the cathedral timbers (plus or minus 50 years) It made no other claim.

      How that science has morphed into depicting accurate global temperatures to tenths of a degree warrants a paper in itself.

      Why the scientists of the day didn’t point out that the emperor had no clothes is one thing, why subsequent ones haven’t pointed out the unlikely temperature correlations is likely due to the celebrity of those promoting it and allows me to trot out my favourite Moroccan proverb again .

      if at noon he says it is night, will you say; behold, the stars?

      Tonyb

    • Alistair Riddoch | May 18, 2014 at 2:28 pm |

      having trouble remembering international problem with rings earlier this year…..sporting….foreign country….seemed like lots of pride was involved…..rings, everywhere problems with rings…what could it have been???

  30. R. Gates | May 18, 2014 at 2:42 am |

    Tony said:

    “The pause in the land temperatures whilst not being matched precisely by ocean heat content or sea level rise certainly seems to indicate that the effects of the HCV (trade mark) are tailing off. Who knows what will happen next. I suppose it partly depends on the next El Nino.”
    ——
    Of course I do disagree with this assessment. There is absolutely no indication the oceans have stopped warming, and in fact a much higher likelihood they continue to warm. This continued storage of heat in the ocean and all the related effects of that which are many, give very strong indication the forcing from the HCV continues quite strongly.

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 18, 2014 at 2:53 am |

      Randy neglects data for narrative. They all do. Of course he disagrees – what would you expect from the Borg collective.

    • R. Gates | May 18, 2014 at 2:56 am |

      Show me the data where the global ocean is currently cooling. And no fair using your made up charts from 2003!

    • climatereason | May 18, 2014 at 2:58 am |

      RGates

      No, that’s not what I said. I said that the rate of increase sees to be slowing which is a different thing. Ocean heat content this last decade is rising less fast (probably) than the previous decade and sea level rise is stumbling once again as per the Uni of Colorado.

      Also the data since 2010 seems to reinforce this slowing down but has not been included in figures.

      I find the sea level/ocean heat content/land temperature rise dating from at least 1870 to be interesting. The rise actually seems to date from around 1700. But whether 1700 or 1870 surely that a rise occurred BEFORE the HCV had any possible effect is at the very least interesting?

      Looking to write the second part of my ‘historic variations in sea level series’ I found to my surprise that the last high water stand was around 1600 or the last decades of the 1500’s. According to Russian based information I saw at the Scott Polar institute it is evident that the arctic was fairly open at that time and glaciers had melted back after an initial surge in the 1200’s.

      So something has been going on with sea levels and glaciers and land temperatures way before man had an impact How and why is a different question. (which is not to say that there might be a small man made impact on top of the natural variability)

      tonyb

    • Generalissimo Skippy | May 18, 2014 at 3:04 am |

      I have discussed 3 sources in detail – enough is enough.

    • R. Gates | May 18, 2014 at 3:09 am |

      Tony,

      Not really enough data to conclude the rate of increase is slowing. Our best data is only about 10 years old, and it is just good enough to have a reasonable level of confidence in robust warming of the ocean. To extrapolate to rates of change is unwarranted.

    • climatereason | May 18, 2014 at 4:58 am |

      Rgates

      I am merely quoting the IPCC summary plus conference with regards to the lack of robustness of the warming, the paucity of data and that we can not say that anything but the upper ocean is warming, and even that is slowing down.

      Put this together with an apparent slowing down of land and ocean temperatures , that the rate of increase in sea levels -according to Holgate -was greater in the first half of the twentieth century than the second half AND that the warming has been going on FAR longer than has the HCV, and the evidence for robust or alarming (my words) human caused warming is absent.

      tonyb

    • kim | May 18, 2014 at 9:01 am |

      RGates will see the worst. That’s why he calls the Human Carbon Cornucopia a Human Carbon Volcano.
      ==========

  31. Generalissimo Skippy | May 18, 2014 at 3:26 am |

    Here’s Fig 7 from Wong et al 2006 showing the ‘made up’ data on ocean heat from Willis 2004.

    http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=219

    It shows that ocean heat follows net radiant flux at TOA.

    Here’s CERES showing trends.

    http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES-BAMS-2008-with-trend-lines1.gif.html?sort=3&o=208

    It shows cloud cover changes dominating energy flux changes last decade. The ‘missing energy’.

    Here’s von Schuckmann and Le Troan (2011) showing steric sea level rise and – indirectly – salinity.

    http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/vonSchuckmannampLTroan2011-fig5PG_zpsee63b772.jpg.html?sort=3&o=130

    It shows a modest increase consistent with CERES SW changes and decreasing mass.

    Here’s one from Leuliette 2012. It shows steric rise of 0.2+/-0.8mm/year steric sea level rise and a millimeter or so from GRACE.

    http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ARGOGRACE_Leuliette2012_zps9386d419.png.html?sort=3&o=5

    Negligible heat content increase and mass tht is inconsistent with ARGO salinity data.

    Should I just copy this and paste it at will?

    • climatereason | May 18, 2014 at 12:07 pm |

      Fan

      Thanks for quoting me but it was out of context. Sea level hasn’t just ‘risen’ over the last 2000 years, as might be expected it has oscillated up and down a metre or more according to the long term climatic conditions.

      It reached a high point around 200AD another high point around 1600AD and I increasingly suspect a high point point around the 12th century before the glaciers advanced for a century. Please see the three graphs at the end of my extended article here.

      http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/document.pdf

      There is a huge complication with then adding in or subtracting sea level change relative to land levels. According to the region it might be falling or rising with tectonic plate activity further confusing the matter.

      tonyb

  32. lolwot | May 18, 2014 at 5:14 am |

    Ocean Heat, Still rising without pause according to the NOAA
    http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/

    But hey what do the NOAA know! Better to just not even mention them.

  33. Don B | May 18, 2014 at 9:18 am |

    The Mail On Sunday:

    “Revealed: How green zealots gagged professor who dared to question global warming.”

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2631477/Revealed-How-green-zealots-gagged-professor-dared-question-global-warming.html

  34. angech | May 18, 2014 at 10:29 am |

    How can one reverse the process of Climate Change belief?
    Set up a list of principles which as they come true are loudly publicized.
    Request scientists to put their views to paper if they support Skepticism.
    Push for free opinion and speech on the matter.
    Look for methods and ways of explaining the problems with the view.
    How did America overcome McCarthyism anyway?

  35. jim2 | May 18, 2014 at 11:02 am |

    @ AK | May 18, 2014 at 9:19 am |
    As best I can find out about the “Philippine energy infrastructure” it introduces actual market competition for the retail market:
    *****
    I note from the white paper that “new” renewable energy has leapt 450%!!
    It is now 0.72% of the energy mix. :)

  36. Wagathon | May 18, 2014 at 11:37 am |

    “…those who have been worshipping so ardently at the altar of reduced carbon emissions — and how quickly they adopted the messianic zeal and intolerance of a religion — may find that they have been deifying not just a false god but a ruinously expensive one, too.” ~Johnny Ball

  37. jim2 | May 18, 2014 at 11:45 am |

    This is interesting. I got yet another email from the League of Women Voters asking me to take a loaded, as in loaded dice, survey that is very one-sided. No matter how you answer the questions, you come out looking like you want contributers to political parties names revealed.

    So, out of curiosity, I did a whois on the Leagues domain name, lwv.org and got this:

    whois lvw.org
    Domain Name:LVW.ORG
    Domain ID: D87770777-LROR
    Creation Date: 2002-06-22T02:51:26Z
    Updated Date: 2014-03-27T21:29:03Z
    Registry Expiry Date: 2015-06-22T02:51:26Z
    Sponsoring Registrar:Moniker Online Services LLC (R145-LROR)
    Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 228
    WHOIS Server:
    Referral URL:
    Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited
    Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited
    Domain Status: clientUpdateProhibited
    Registrant ID:MONIKER365387
    Registrant Name:Freedom WhoIs Privacy Services
    Registrant Organization:EC Corporate Client Services
    Registrant Street: 1275 Fourth Street – Suite 276
    Registrant City:Santa Rosa
    Registrant State/Province:CA
    Registrant Postal Code:95404
    Registrant Country:US
    Registrant Phone:+1.7075361231
    Registrant Phone Ext:
    Registrant Fax:
    Registrant Fax Ext:
    Registrant Email:ClientPrivacy@FreedomWhoIs.com
    Admin ID:MONIKER365387
    Admin Name:Freedom WhoIs Privacy Services
    Admin Organization:EC Corporate Client Services
    Admin Street: 1275 Fourth Street – Suite 276
    Admin City:Santa Rosa
    Admin State/Province:CA
    Admin Postal Code:95404
    Admin Country:US
    Admin Phone:+1.7075361231
    Admin Phone Ext:

    If you look up FreedomWhoIs, it is an organization that prevents people from finding out who runs domain sites! What a crock! LWVs promotes openness except when it come to themselves. Hypocrites.

    http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/28155-blacknight-rolls-out-whois

    http://www.freedomwhois.com/

  38. Alistair Riddoch | May 18, 2014 at 2:33 pm |

    DOOMSDAY HOCKEY STICK – Recreate the graph for yourselves…

    look up doomsday predictions on wikipedia here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events

    then graph the number of predictions of global demise per century starting in 500 bc, to today,

    I guarantee you will find a much better, more truthful hockey stick, than anything a climate scientist can create with good conscience.

    • jim2 | May 18, 2014 at 4:02 pm |

      I predict the End of the World will be one week before today.

    • Alistair Riddoch | May 18, 2014 at 4:08 pm |

      Anyone know the most intuitive (simple) tool to use to create a visual graph from data of the above nature? To create the hockey stick by graphing number of predicted calamities per century.?? Please??

  39. Alistair Riddoch | May 18, 2014 at 3:17 pm |

    “NASA explains climate forcings: Changes in Earth’s climate system that affect the energy which enters or leaves the system alters Earth’s radiative equilibrium, thus can force temperatures to rise or fall, and are called climate forcings. Natural climate forcings include changes in the Sun’s brightness, Milankovitch cycles (small variations in the shape of Earth’s orbit and its axis of rotation that occur over thousands of years), and large volcanic eruptions that inject light-reflecting particles as high as the stratosphere. Manmade forcings include particle pollution (aerosols), which absorb and reflect incoming sunlight; deforestation, which changes how the surface reflects and absorbs sunlight; and the rising concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which decrease heat radiated to space. A forcing can trigger feedbacks that intensify or weaken the original forcing. The loss of ice at the poles, which makes them less reflective, is an example of a feedback.[14]”

    What I don’t see mentioned are magnetism, solar and earth magnetic field strengths, and associated plasma flow into ant out of the poles, the shifting of magnetic poles, the shifting of the mouth of the heliosphere in conjunction with the combined orbits of the planets orbits and the suns journey, and rotation and wobble (probably about an 11.5 year cycle), the shifting and shaping of the earths own magnetic field, and associated magnetic phenomena.

    And “changes in the sun’s brightness”, I would’ve expanded on a little, if I were them. :-)

    But I am still seeking in lay terms, where does the heat go, when we are cooling???

  40. jim2 | May 18, 2014 at 4:00 pm |

    From the article:
    Suspend your reality for Godzilla: It’s an anti-global-warming alarmism smash

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/17/review-godzilla-anti-global-warming-alarmism-block/

    • jim2 | May 18, 2014 at 4:25 pm |

      From the web site:

      Press Releases
      Joule Achieves ASTM Compliance for Sustainable Diesel, Jet Fuel
      05/15/2014
      BIO World Congress – Philadelphia, PA

      Marking another step towards commercial readiness of CO2-neutral fuels, Joule today announced that its Sunflow®-D and Sunflow®-J products meet the standards of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) for diesel and jet fuel, respectively. Joule products achieve all accepted standards for fuel performance, and they may also improve quality of the finished fuel blends, as demonstrated by the test results.

      “Today’s news marks an important milestone for our hydrocarbon fuel program,” said Dr. Dan Robertson, Chief Scientific Officer of Joule, who will discuss this and other Joule advancements today at the BIO World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology. “Joule has uniquely engineered pathways to produce pure alkane molecules, able to ‘drop in’ to finished blends in high concentrations without chemical upgrading. In demonstrating ASTM compliance, we have affirmed the value of these CO2-derived hydrocarbon fuels and paved the way for market adoption.”

      ASTM test regimes address a number of critical fuel requirements, such as performance (e.g. cetane or octane, aromaticity, viscosity, etc.), engine wear, transportability and post-combustion air quality. The C11 alkane molecule which comprises Joule Sunflow-D and Sunflow-J was tested with the following results:

      Joule Sunflow-D meets the ASTM D-975 standard for diesel in blend percentages of up to 50%. The product achieved a high cetane number of 80, improving with increased concentrations of the Joule molecule and indicating a positive trend for combustion quality. The finished blends demonstrated reduced sulfur oxide (SOx), nitrogen oxide (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), thus improving the quality of conventional diesel.

      Joule Sunflow-J meets the ASTM D-1655 standard for jet A/A1 fuel in blend percentages of up to 25%, complying with requirements for turbine performance, engine wear and air quality.

      Renewable oils and fatty esters, such as biodiesel, require chemical upgrading before they can be blended with fossil fuels, and then only in low concentrations. In contrast, Joule produces alkane molecules that are inherently “blendable” with fossil fuels in high concentrations (up to 50%) – thus displacing more fossil-derived oil with no chemical upgrading required.

      http://www.jouleunlimited.com/joule-achieves-astm-compliance-sustainable-diesel-jet-fuel

  43. Alistair Riddoch | May 18, 2014 at 5:35 pm |

    This is an open thread. Here to open cans of worms. Following some basic logic, relate the following pieces of information.

    The view of the gravity waves that pervade the universe shown in an article at Scientific American, here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/proof-that-the-universe-inflated-rapidly-after-the-big-bang/

    With the belief of a fractal geometrical way of thinking, that the shape of a structure will be a reflection of the shape of it’s tiniest components.

    Then relate Newton’s belief that the most minute workings of the universe would be found to be entirely mechanical, not “force” based.

    Then relate this Scientific American article about a crisis in physics. a breakdown in the search for confirmation that the current standard model is correct.

    Then relate that Einstein flipflopped on the idea that the speed of light may be related to gravity, and went instead with a speed of light is a constant, time is a variable hypothesis. This was not his initial belief.

    Then imagine an entire universe filled with tiny balls, corkscrew grooved. Creating Einstein’s missing Aether, answering Scientific Americans call for physics being in a crisis. Super Symmetry to the Super Extreme. Fractal geometry linking largest and smallest. Same as the “Shape of Gravity”. Imagine them touching and counter-rotating universally, Ready to destabilize and become matter, if interfered with by the right combination of waves. Imagine the Big Bang theory as a torsion destabilization in an ocean of calm, “stable” universal material. Imagine then each black hole is a growing new universe, or pending effort to create one, when it destabilizes due to external torsion constraint. Each (I think singularity is the right word), becoming a universe of perception and it’s “step” of speed of light, perhaps. That is why there is a cosmic microwave background noise. And an ability to detect the overall shape of the universal gravity wave. And a better understanding of how the universe is built.

    To the “forces” of strong and weak nuclear, and to the electromagnetic and gravitational forces, we can perhaps say goodnight. They are magical tales of attraction and repulsion as such we could hear in a Shakespearean play.

    What if the answer is SUPER symmetriCAL FRACTALISTIC MATH EXTRAPOLATIONS??? And not the magical forces that have been created to date??

    Maybe the forces are false magic, and the true answer to the universe is:

    SUPER-‘CAL FRACTAL-ISTIC MATH EXTRAPOLATION. Because THAT would just be toooooo funny!!!!!

    p.s. relating from this replacement of the standard model, it can be derived that magnetism is more important than previously known and that climate is in a locked balanced state that is pretty un-shakeable, but one too much writing spoils the message. :-)

  44. jim2 | May 18, 2014 at 8:39 pm |

    From the (stupid) article:
    The devastating wildfires scorching Southern California offer a glimpse of a warmer and more fiery future, according to scientists and federal and international reports.

    In the past three months, at least three different studies and reports have warned that wildfires are getting bigger, that man-made climate change is to blame, and it’s only going to get worse with more fires starting earlier in the year. While scientists are reluctant to blame global warming for any specific fire, they have been warning for years about how it will lead to more fires and earlier fire seasons.

    “The fires in California and here in Arizona are a clear example of what happens as the Earth warms, particularly as the West warms, and the warming caused by humans is making fire season longer and longer with each decade,” said University of Arizona geoscientist Jonathan Overpeck. “It’s certainly an example of what we’ll see more of in the future.”

    http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/studies-wildfires-worse-due-global-warming-23769002

  45. kim | May 18, 2014 at 9:02 pm |

    Heh, just got a name for the alarmist modelers: The Gang That Couldn’t Compute Straight. Probably stole it from someone years ago.
    ==============

  46. jim2 | May 18, 2014 at 9:28 pm |

    From the article:
    …
    France has under a year’s worth of oil gas and coal, while Italy has less than a year of gas and coal and only one year of oil, according to the most recent data on known reserves and current consumption.

    The UK has 5.2 years of oil, 4.5 years of coal and three years of gas remaining.

    But other European countries could come to prop up their counterparts.

    Germany many have less than a year of oil and only two years of gas left but it has over 500 years of coal. Bulgaria and Poland have 73 and 34 years of coal left respectively.

    Read MoreClimate changeto hit country credit ratings: S&P

    In contrast resource-rich Russia has over 50 years of oil, over 100 years of gas and over 500 years of coal, based on their current levels of internal consumption.

    But the crisis in Ukraine has drawn attention to Europe’s reliance on oil and gas from Russia. There are concerns it could use the threat of winter supply disruptions as a political weapon.
    …
    http://www.cnbc.com/id/101679941

  47. GaryM | May 19, 2014 at 1:26 am |

    Governor Moonbeam has decided that California Republicans are responsible for the wildfires in his state. Applying what must be Mannian statistics, Der Governor has determined that Republicans, who hold no state wide offices, and hold less than a third of both houses of the California legislature, have nevertheless prevented the state from achieving CAGW Nirvana.

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/378214/jerry-brown-slams-republicans-over-california-wildfires-tim-cavanaugh

    “’There’s virtually no Republican who accepts the science that is virtually unanimous,’ Brown said. ‘There is no scientific question. There’s just political denial for various reasons best known to those people who are in denial.’”

    Virtual unanimity that climate appears to be changing.

    And he leads the government of the largest state in the nation.

    • mosomoso | May 19, 2014 at 9:02 am |

      How is it possible for the governor not to know of his state’s climatic history, especially the Santiago Canyon Fire of 1889? And how can he be in ignorance of the extraordinary drought and wind conditions which prevailed in the lead-up? I suppose it’s like our Australian climate preachers, who manage to ignore such fire/heat/drought events as those of 1851, 1896, 1939 etc. when trying to establish modern climate exceptionalism.

      I suppose there’s a certain art in not knowing when it comes to dogma. Christian Turney’s apparent ignorance of recent Antarctic sea ice conditions approaches the supernatural.

    • JeffN | May 19, 2014 at 12:08 pm |

      “Denier”: Someone who is skeptical of the notion that a gas tax hike would put an end to fires in southern California.
      “Warmist” See also “Progressive”: Someone willing to use any headline, anywhere, anytime to justify any tax hike and any attack on Republicans (the more dishonest, the better).

  49. GaryM | May 19, 2014 at 4:21 pm |

    The Aussies are finally coming to their senses.

    http://dailycaller.com/2014/05/19/aussies-to-slash-90-of-global-warming-funding-from-budget/

    And the Indians (Asian, not American).

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/15/india-election-2014_n_5334988.html

    Yet the Obama administration marches on trying to shut down the coal power industry regardless of the futility, or impact on the poor, of his policy

    http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/04/obamas-epa-coal-regulations-increasing-natural-gas-prices-150/

    Ethanol raises the price of food (including bacon, the bast*rds). Eliminating coal will have the same effect on pretty much everything. And these geniuses are just getting started.

    The people who want to run the world economy have never heard of the law off supply and demand.

    • mosomoso | May 19, 2014 at 4:50 pm |

      So, the money those nasty coal sooties don’t make will instead be made by the wooly headed idealists of ExxonMobil, BP and Chevron. Who said nice guys come last? (Just ask the customers of Gazprom.)

      Nobody can lobby like oil guys, right? Still got that old magic.

  50. David L. Hagen | May 19, 2014 at 9:27 pm |

    Coal or Chaos
    Egypt Sets Clocks Forward Amid Crippling Energy Crisis Updated: 05/16/2014 1:59 pm EDT

    Unable to pay its steep energy bills, Egypt is struggling to provide enough energy to its 85 million people. The country owes foreign energy companies roughly $5.7 billion, and the interim government is scrambling for solutions. . . .With some neighborhoods in Cairo now experiencing three or four blackouts a day, businesses and embassies have taken extra measures by installing backup generators.

    In early April, Egypt’s cabinet approved the use of coal as fuel, despite anger from environmentalists, doctors and Egyptians working in the tourism industry. The move largely catered to Egypt’s cement industry, which has been operating at a lower capacity due to the energy shortage.

  51. Jim D | May 20, 2014 at 12:02 am |

    Another shout out for Showtime’s “Years of Living Dangerously” tonight which featured Heartland’s James Taylor and his national quest to get local governments to turn away from renewable energy alternatives or goals (largely failing it seems, even in Kansas which was featured). The other main theme this week was the leakage of methane from fracking which is much larger than people are admitting, but is now being shown by measurements. Some areas seem to leak about 10% of the methane that is extracted when the official accepted line is 1%. This makes shale gas somewhat dirtier than it claims to be.

  52. Tanya Aardman | May 20, 2014 at 1:36 am |

    Are the Maldives and the BIOT on the same landmass? Why did the Maldivans get to stay but the Chagossians get forcibly removed?

    • Faustino | May 20, 2014 at 3:53 am |

      No landmass for either, a series of small, low-lying islands.

      The RAF sent a friend of mine to Diego Garcia when he was about 18, in the early ’60s. At that time the population was entirely military, 4,000 men and one woman apparently – more than twice the previous Chagossian et al population. All too much for my friend, who’d joined up primarily to follow in the footsteps of his fatrher and brother, and he was invalided out. The Maldives are allegedly at risk from sea-level rise, although, as with Tuvalu, I think there has been no land loss to date. Presumably a similar story with the Chagos islands.

      The Chagossians were moved out because the US wanted an unfettered Indian Ocean air base, the BIOT was the only viable option. The Chagossians of course arrived there via the slave trade rather than being an indigenous population.

      But I don’t think that CE is the best place to discuss their fate.

  53. Peter Lang | May 22, 2014 at 12:19 am |

    But at what cost and for what benefit?

    A new report released yesterday says subsidies for clean energy in Australia will hit $21 billion per year by 2020 and opportunity cost of $36 billion per year. The $21 billion is equivalent to our entire Defence budget.

    Excerpts from the report in ‘The Australian’ today:

    “SUBSIDIES for renewable energy schemes such as rooftop solar panels and wind farms will cost electricity consumers up to $21.6 billion by 2020, a new analysis has found.

    …

    … more gas- and coal-fired power stations could be mothballed or permanently closed as the renewable energy target puts pressure on the electricity market and slashes their revenues.

    If this happens, retail electricity prices “can be expected to increase”,
    …

    The analysis also hits back at fresh claims by the clean energy sector that the RET will create up to 18,400 jobs by 2020, declaring “the most immediate effects” from subsidising the renewable sector are job losses as cheaper forms of energy are crowded out.

    “Additional job losses can be expected to arise from the drain on economic activity as a result of higher electricity prices,” it finds.

    … [it is] “plain crazy” to have schemes such as the RET, solar feed-in tariffs and carbon tax that were driving up power bills.

    …

    “But one of the biggest increases in cost has been the price of electricity … It’s the most fundamental of services to the Australian public … These kind of things just make some people feel good but don’t achieve anything.

    “They’ve got no place, I believe, in a modern economy.”

    … the RET scheme has an opportunity cost (money that could have been invested elsewhere) of more than $36bn by 2020-21.

    The analysis finds that subsidies that are recovered through the sale of renewable energy certificates, which are directly passed on to consumers, could reach between $19.3bn and $21.6bn by 2020-21, covering part of the cost to build the infrastructure.

    …

    In 2010, then federal minister Martin Ferguson said the RET was a “bonus to the renewable sector of the order of another $20bn to $30bn in commonwealth government support”.

    …

    The analysis draws on previous modelling. It quotes estimates by SKM MMA for the Climate Change Authority in December 2012 that put the cost for buying certificates for large-scale renewables at $15.9bn by 2020-21 and for small-scale renewables at $3.4bn — totalling $19.3bn.

    Like most of the figures cited in the new analysis, these are based on an assumption of no carbon price — which the analysis says is appropriate as the Abbott government has announced its plans to repeal it.

    To get to the $21.6bn figure, the analysis cites modelling by ACIL Tasman for TRUenergy (now EnergyAustralia) — which wants the RET scaled back — that puts the subsidy for the small-scale scheme at $5.7bn.

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/subsidies-for-clean-energy-to-hit-21bn/story-e6frg6xf-1226926300631