by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
Politics/policy
Global warming might be real, but the Democrat’s solutions are not [link]
Republicans demand “greater transparency and government accountability” for social cost of carbon figure. [link]
How Obama plans to bypass the Constitution again by not calling Paris climate agreement a treaty [link]
What if states just say ‘no’ to climate rule? [link]
Serious Doubts Over Europe’s Decarbonisation Pledge[link]
Twist on carbon footprinting ‘could unblock’ UN climate talks [link]
Pollution is changing the way China does politics: [link]
China: When Pollution Solutions Can Actually Damage the Environment [link]
China takes down documentary on pollution [link]
Bjorn Lomborg warns Bangladesh about ‘climate politics’ [link]
Greg Laden: Bjorn Lomborg Is Wrong About Bangladesh And Sea Level Rise [link]
The Hindu: ‘Indian Ocean sea-level is rising faster, but it is not alarming’ [link]
Mark Lynas: We must reclaim the climate debate from the political extremes [link]
“John Kerry Says Climate Science is as Settled as Gravity” [link]
Interesting guest post by Prof Halvard Buhaug for @CarbonBrief on linking climate change and conflict [link]
Naomi Klein thinks we need to “change pretty much everything about our economy” to avoid CO2-induced bad weather [link]
Nigel Farage on consensus, conformism and the virtue of dissent [link]
approximately 60 million metric tons of food is wasted a year in the US, with an estimated value of $162 billion [link]
We need regenerative farming, not geoengineering [link]
Scientific advice versus public opinion. How do politicians make their decisions? [link]
Energy
Global carbon dioxide emissions stopped rising between 2013 and 2014, according to IEA: [link] …
Global emissions remained static in 2014 – for the first time in 40 years #CarbonBrief [link]
‘Getting to net-zero emissions’ by David Hone, chief climate advisor to @Shell [link]
“Obama’s War On Fossil Fuels Takes Toll On Energy Producers” [link]
Misguided biofuel mandates will cost American drivers some $10 billion this year [link]
Steven Chu slides from energy/climate presentation have some great elements: [link]
Science and research
New paper finds large calculation errors of solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere in climate models [link]
Willie Soon’s latest paper on natural climate variability published in Nature Geoscience [link]
How do high-latitude volcanic eruptions affect climate? [link]
The ‘science’ of tree rings [link]
Link between Cosmic Ray Flux and Global Temperature found [link]
A link between hiatus in global warming and North American drought [link]
New paper finds Chinese climate dominated by natural ocean oscillations, shifting from PDO to AMO [link]
New paper suggests “a cooling trend in the deep ocean.”Trenberth’s “missing heat” still AWOL [link]
Sea ice cover may be more stable than idealised modelling studies imply, says new research [link]
NSIDC: A month of simultaneous polar sea ice extremes: potentially record winter low Arctic max w/unusually high min in SH. [link]
“Eastern & High Arctic has regained (sea ice) coverage & thickness at near-normal levels” [link]
“Physics of clouds: Long-held ideas about turbulence disproven” [link]
Clive Best: Explaining the Pause: the IPCC scientists’ dilemma [link]
El Niño is here, but is unlikely to have a big global impact [link]
Interesting debates over the start of the #anthropocene. 1610? or 1964? [link]
Nice introductory article on entropy and the arrow of time. [link]
Here’s One Way to Reach Scientific Consensus [link]
Climate and science wars
Good article: Congressional climate inquisition threatens academic freedom [link]
Willie Soon’s Funding Sources & Disclosure Practices Unusual in #Climate Research [link]
Michael Mann: Slouching towards disaster [link]
(tweet) Sad news. World’s greatest climatologist [Jim Hansen] says Obama has run out of time to save the planet. [link]
Reiner Grundman on political polarization: This changes nothing – The Guardian campaign on climate change [link]
John Cook: Not too shabby for scholarly paper: over 300,000 downloads for @skepticscience 97% consensus paper [link]
Climate Audit: “even Andrew Weaver was tricked by @MichaelEMann’s IPCC 2001 hide-the-decline” [link]
Pachauri Talks Ethics in Gender Justice Book [link]
The anti-GM lobby appears to be taking a page out of the Climategate playbook [link]
Brilliant NYT column on inconvenient science ignored by nutrition establishment [link]
Harvard historian of science on collapse of expert consensus over diet — “fat wars” as a wicked problem [link]
How to manage someone who can’t handle ambiguity [link]
A disease of sciency-ness: how misguided science fandom actually hurts scientists. [link]
JC note: I am working on a post related to ‘Merchants of Doubt’, so you might want to hold your comments on that topic until my post early next week.
curryja
Bad link:
New paper finds ocean heat uptake is non-linear & thus past changes “not reliable for making future projections” [ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1002%2F2014GL062807%20 ]
thx for catching this. unfortunately i can’t find the correct link, so i’ve deleted from the main post
Judith,
This looks like the paper…
Non-linearity of ocean heat uptake …
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL062807/abstract
I came to post the same link JustinWonder did, but he beat me to it. The URL in the post was almost correct. There was just a minor error (possibly due to encoding) in it.
dang fame was so close
What are you doing here, Brandon? Who is watching McIntyre?
Global energy budget is also likely non-linear and chaotic.
Praise Gaia and pass the salt.
=========
That link was amusing, in a twisted way. It was clearly a hyperlink, labeled [link] and yet it DIDN’T link to anything!! Should be good for half a dozen blog posts, BS.
A bird in the band is worth two salty tales, beat up the bush, turnip the talks.
======================
When I read this heading, “Scientific advice versus public opinion. How do politicians make their decisions? “, I immediately knew this wasn’t going to be about America (and it isn’t), where, of course, the wishes of the major donors rule what the politicians decide. The question posed would be a false choice in the American context.
Do we want government employees to make decisions about the future on our behalf based on a plausible belief that global warming is caused by aliens? Is it likely that aliens cause global warming? I’m skeptical. Because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, AGW theory appears at first blush to be a more logical explanation than, aliens. Even so, it certainly is no longer conceivable that CO2 is the only cause of global warming. Given the evidence it’s likely that CO2 is not even a major cause: perhaps a minor player. It certainly is more plausible than aliens that CO2 plays some role but as the cause of global warming, CO2 is far less plausible an explanation than are changes in solar activity and other natural causes such as changes in the Earth’s albedo.
Aliens? As in ET?
You nevah, nevah know…
We don’t want government employees deciding which day is trash day, let alone something remotely relevant.
…unless of course they’re using a Ouija board or some other sophisticated method of reasoning to make decisions.
I like the Shell article. Net zero doesn’t have to mean zero emissions. Not enough people have realized that. Getting down to 10 GtCO2 per year would be a sufficient goal that would stabilize the climate at levels that may then stabilize sea levels.
Well… currently 5.6 Gt of carbon (20.6 Gt CO2) per year is absorbed by the environment.
So to stabilize at today’s CO2 level would require limiting emissions to 20.6 Gt CO2. That number is gradually rising, so just slowing the increase in emissions would be beneficial.
The exponential increase in Chinese coal driven emissions is what has kept the CO2 level rising. Reducing the rate of CO2 emissions increase would be a good first step.
Relying on gas or nuclear for new power plant construction would go a long way toward stabilizing the atmospheric CO2 level.
But why would we want to reduce emissions?
I can see wanting to improve efficiency, and improving efficiency often reduces emissions. However, reducing emissions often reduces efficiency (eg coal powered CO2 sequestration).
“So to stabilize at today’s CO2 level would require limiting emissions to 20.6 Gt CO2…”
We agree with you!
The exponential increase in Chinese coal driven emissions is what has kept the CO2 level rising.
And it appears that China’s coal consumption may actually have fallen in 2014..
“The exponential increase in Chinese coal driven emissions is what has kept the CO2 level rising.”
______
Even with flat emissions, CO2 levels will keep rising– they just might not rise as fast. Carbon sinks are still not able to keep up with the current rate of emissions. Only with declining emissions (or active carbon sequestration) will atmospheric CO2 levels eventually start to decline.
The plants have gotten active and are sequestering expeditiously. We didn’t even have to breed giant trees.
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Even with flat emissions, CO2 levels will keep rising– they just might not rise as fast. Carbon sinks are still not able to keep up with the current rate of emissions. Only with declining emissions (or active carbon sequestration) will atmospheric CO2 levels eventually start to decline.
You are confusing rate and rate of change.
If emission rates were at the ‘removal rate’, then CO2 would not accumulate and no further ( theoretical ) forcing would be imposed.
Carbon sinks are still not able to keep up with the current rate of emissions.
Wrong.
Removal rates increase as the absolute amount of CO2 increases:
http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/files/2014/12/Fig.-2.jpg
CFCs are a tracer in the deep ocean from deep water formation at the poles – why would you think CO2 is not going where CFS are going?
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/fromthefield/files/2014/04/figure.jpg
https://www.hydrofarm.com/resources/articles/co2.jpg
Observations of plant growth match the greenhouse chart above not the claims of AGW advocates and their studies.
So 500 PPM = 30% more plant growth.
The current 5.6 Gt carbon is absorbed 50/50 by land and ocean or close enough it isn’t worth quibbling. So what will going from 400 PPM to 500 PPM do?
2.8 GT * 220/120 = 5.13 Gt. Ocean.
2.6 GT * 80/50 = 4.5 Gt land.
The land number is low – if you compute based on 120 Gt plant atmospheric exchange the result is somewhere around 12 Gt. We’ll stipulate that the two effects are going to stay roughly equal or about 10.2 Gt of carbon. The increased warmth is going to boost planet growth above the simple CO2 increase anyway. So 500 PPM is going to absorb slightly more than the current emissions levels.
Since the news is that emissions are leveling off, and at current emissions levels the atmospheric CO2 will top out at under 500 PPM, DISASTER AVERTED.
The AGW advocates should declare mission accomplished and go off to perform another good deed.
Something about the predator/prey relationship, rang a thought, what if increasing Co2 boosts plant growth, to the point where they basically suck enough Co2 out, the level crashes, before rotting vegetation in the other hemisphere can replenish it fast enough that any slight disturbance doesn’t trigger the next ice age. If most of the available bicarbon is frozen, it’s not keeping it warm enough to keep the water cycle running.
Actually no, they would not stabilize sea levels. The dirty little secret is that most of the sea level rise that’s touted as due to global warming is actually due to subsidence, i.e., not related to climate at all.
Only in the models. In the real world, it makes no difference one way or the other.
When an author says there will be an 8 meters rise in sea level, don’t they owe the reader a source, or at a minimum a time frame. The Greg Laden article about Bangladesh being threatened by sea level rise loses credibility when an off the wall projection is used. No source. No time frame.
Writing hysterical fear mongering pieces won’t cut it any longer. In the next few decades as one prediction after another is falsified, these tactics will become an even bigger target for ridicule.
Chu’s slides also offer hope for the future. Lots is already being done, and all the trends are promising. Its all about technological advancement just continuing at its current pace.
Chu came and talked to my organization a few years ago, it seems he isn’t pushing bio fuels as much as he was then. Reality has tempered that enthusiasm. I worry a little bit that he sometimes comes across like a marketing guy trying to hype a new energy start-up looking to attract capital. Toward the end he is talking about using excess electricity to split water and combine with captured CO2 as a way to balance energy load variability. This is a little far fetched for logistical reasons. But overall, there are lots of very talented scientists and engineers out there slowly moving things in the right direction, but as Bill Gates has suggested, we need to make a few energy miracles happen.
> … as Bill Gates has suggested, we need to make a few energy miracles happen
Ho hum …
I only wish Gates had solved the “legacy” memory hangups from DOS
From the John Kerry Article
“Kerry spoke for nearly an hour at the Atlantic Council, and insisted that the science behind climate change is settled”
– I wonder if anyone was able to stay awake. An hour of John Kerry is rather brief, but there would be concern that some might be in danger of being bored to death.
“It’s not particularly complicated,” he added. “I don’t mean to sound, you know, haughty about it, but think about it for a minute.”
-John Kerry? Haughty? No
Kerry also said the solution is simple as well.
-We’d all love to see the plan
“If we make the switch to a global clean energy economy … if we think more creatively about how we power our cars, heat our homes, operate our businesses, then we still have time to prevent the worst consequences of climate change,” he said. “It really is as simple as that.”
-Well duh, we just need to think creatively, easy peasy. I know, If we could somehow harness the power of John Kerry’s haughtyness and get it to turn a generator, problem solved.
A hour of John Kerry is not a danger of boredom but an actual threat.
Renewable energy looks like a plan to stimulate the Chinese economy. I can’t for the life of me tell how that would be beneficial for the US.
It’s not difficult to see to whom both Kerry and Obama kowtow on climate.
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And energy. Seemingly governance, too.
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But PA:”“The science is and has and long been crystal clear when it comes to climate change.” (Kerry).
I’m guessing some of us just haven’t been paying attention! At least I missed that.
Crystal clear is only an impressive claim until you see the crystal they have been using.
http://www.madagascarminerals.com/prod_images_large/Girasol_Spheres_AAA_40mm3.JPG
From “Pauchari talks ethics…”
“Over the years, Pachauri has talked rather a lot about ethics and morality. He has shaken his sanctimonious finger at people who see the world differently than he does, insisting that they’re morally deficient, irresponsible, perhaps even criminal.
And yet, a mere six years after he delivered this lecture, it now appears that it is his moral compass that’s broken.”
Pingback: Week in review | Enjeux énergies et environnement
If I remember right, the last prediction of looming El Nino did not have the support of the BOM model. BOM is still show El Nino watch, but this time the BOM model is showing an El Nino in July 2015 with ONI at about 1.5.
Meanwhile, the anomaly for the 12 months March 2014 through February 2015 is .71C,.
It’s the warmest 12 months in the GISS record, and there is no end in sight as the land component is taking off, and the SST will be back shortly.
The negative phase of the AMO. It’s a delicate flower.
An odd sort of “hiatus” eh, with the past 12 calendar months being the warmest ever recorded? With at least a weak El Nino (Modoki) to ENSO neutral state the rest of the year, 2015 might give 2014 a run for its money as warmest calendar year on record. When was the last time we had successive record setting years? Oh yeah…never. Again, an odd sort of “hiatus”. Temperatures are flat in a rising sort of way.
I think it is interesting that Australia’s BoM is not yet calling it an El Nino. Their model shows a weak El Nino developing in April, and an ONI in July of 1.5 is no longer weak.
Of course, it’s just an ENSO model, but it never predicted an El Nino last year.
With brilliant minds in Australia like chef hydro’s, maybe their model actually works!
A .79C anomaly for February is very hot. .86C is the hottest. But that was back when the “pause” still had a breath of life and hint of a pulse.
The skeptical warmist wriets “An odd sort of “hiatus” eh, with the past 12 calendar months being the warmest ever recorded? ”
Ludicrous, Gates, Just ludicrous. You remind of a Hillary Clinton advocate insisting she followed all the rules WRT to her emails. There’s so much wrong with your reasoning that there’s no point in engaging with your nonsense. But I’ll feel better pointing out what should be clear to a 5th grader, that we’re talking about tiny fractions of a degree well within the margin of error. Something else that should be clear to a 5th grader is that the models on which this whole dog and pony show is based have failed abysmally. If this is global warming, a barely discernible warming trend over many decades, then I think it’s safe to say we can all go home and fine something else to worry about.
Well, I expect they’ll certainly fine the next thing to worry about. They may call it a tax, but it is as inevitable as death.
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The last 12 months on GISS is .709C, and it is the warmest 12 months in the GISS record. The warmest prior to that is calendar year 2014, which is .673C.
That is a .036C increase in just 59 days.
But yeah, we’re cooling folks, and not even kimbat know how much. It’s so alarming. We could slide all the way back to my 1960s boyhood in the frigid Dakotas, where my parents and neighbors fed the world with bountiful agricultural products.
Watching the pause come to be, and then watching it go paws up.
The problem is: the amount of warming – even at the numbers you push – are way, way below what the models project.
And if the models are wrong, then we’re only looking at 1 degree of temperature increase by 2100. So what?
Plus, it’s nearly a dead certainty that a degree of warming will be net beneficial. Haven’t all of the last one degree warmings been net beneficial?
And the greening, oh the green green greening. Wouldn’t it be nice to have spring in the young.
==============
kim, “a degree” but not three or four of them.
In the eyes of the beholder a pause or weaker trend:
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/images/temperature_trends_1979.png
Weaker trends come and go. Right now it’s going. The pause has fooled a lot of people. The AMO is a pansy. It plays thermodynamics like Liberace.
Pause deniers like the skapical warmist aka the “salivating warmist blind to everything but hysterical alarmism,” really slay me. Can’t you pry your closed minds open just wide enough to ask yourself, if the heat isn’t missing, why is Trenberth and co. looking for it? How many papers have we seen by now investigating possible causes of the pause? Guess they should have called you, Gates. You could have set them straight.
Gates, if a rise is followed by a 100 yr plateau, with no slope, is it all “the hottest ever”?
Ans: Yeah, but we don’t give a rat’s.
Well, that is interesting.
I guess we will find out if BOM predictions are “the bomb”.
https://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/01-global-ssta.png
Unless the El Nino develops stronger than expected it wouldn’t appear that 2015 will be as warm as 2014.
2015 can easily be warmer than 2014 if February and July, which were very low in 2014, rock out. February 2014 was .44C. February 2015 is .79C.
So the first chance for 2015 to make up ground, it knocked it out of the park.
March looks like it’s heading for an anomaly in the .80C range.
Well, 20th century warming hasn’t been fully incorporated in the ocean so in theory slightly warmer years should occur for a while CO2 or no CO2.
Too early to early to stake out a position on 2015.
The BoM put their name & reputation to this failed, 90% confidence,
2014/15 El Niño report:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/11/-sp-el-nino-weather-2014
The BoM predicted in 2009 that El Niño drought was our new normal:
“David Jones, the head of the bureau’s National Climate Centre, said there was some risk of a worsening El Nino event this year, but it was more likely to arrive in 2010 or 2011.”
http://www.theage.com.au/national/drought-and-fire-here-to-stay-with-el-ninos-return-20090216-899u.html#ixzz1nrZUq1ik
2011 brought the Brisbane floods, 38 dead.
Sea levels dropped:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/aug/23/australian-floods-global-sea-level
If the BoM can not get basic atmospheric processes correct now, how is it going to get the future climate correct?
I actually hope there is not an El Nino. Because then we can continue roasting during our prolonged ENSO neutral.
The ONI (Ocean notion index) wasn’t ENSO neutral for the last three sessions 2014 and isn’t ENSO neutral now. Saying it is ENSO neutral is factually incorrect. It appears inevitable that El Nino will be declared.
The failure of El Nino in 2014 was due to it being “Al Nino” his uncle (El Nino conditions without wind participation).
We will see how the wind blows. But it doesn’t look at the current time like the 2014 temperature “record” is threatened.
I’ve acknowledged that NOAA has declared it, though it doesn’t look like one.
It’s ENSO neutral until it’s El Nino or La Nina.
The heatwave started with ENSO neutral that was leaning La Nina. The majority of ONI periods since the 2012 La Nina ended have been negative or ZERO.
JCH,
Wait! You’re skeptical of NOAA? Hmmm, now that I think of it I am too w/r/t 2014 being hottest year ever…………please proceed.
In the abnormal sense of the word (skepticism based upon political agendas)?
No.
ONI usually takes the stairs straight into an El Nino. This time there were two .7s, and then it stepped back to .6. A step back is not unheard of, but it’s unusual.
JCH,
Thank you for the recognition of the varieties. I appreciate your skepticism about the El Nino and hope you can appreciate mine in other areas. (all while seeing warming) :)
Bad link: Hansen’s lament that Obama has run out of time. Not sure which tweet is being referred to but the original January 2009 Guardian article was this one.
The link to the IEA announcement does not work for me. A visit to their site does not find the article. Can someone find a better link?
Never mind, found it. http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2015/march/global-energy-related-emissions-of-carbon-dioxide-stalled-in-2014.html
It is not, however, the first time emissions have stopped while the world economy grew.
Did the world economy grow? I thought gasoline prices were low because outside the US the economy was bleak.
Except a quick check at scripps.ucsd.edu of the Keeling curve shows that the IEA’s calculations are wrong. CO2 increased in 2014 by the usual amount.
Mr. Istvan, the Keeling curve measures concentrations rather than emissions, no?
In light of Clive Best’s post, I am truly beginning to wonder if Michael Mann is beginning the long trek to skepticism?
O
Only Nixon can go to China—–first time poster, sorry about the zero
“Global warming might be real…”
Who on earth, after all this time, would be persisting with the slack, sloppy, manipulative term “global warming”.
The WaPo, that’s who. Even as it tries to tippy-toe away from the hard core of the climatariat (as many others, in this early spring of NH discontent).
I also note the continued use of the flaccid and unscientific term “climate change”. A “science of climate change” is a bit like a “human air breathing”, isn’t it? There may be climates somewhere in the universe which are not subject to constant change, both cyclical and linear. There may be people who breathe something other than air. Unlikely though.
Actual climate change is never quite what they mean when they say “climate change”, is it? Except in debate emergencies. It never has its common meaning till they want it to have its common meaning.
You might say I’m being pedantic. But it’s amazing how unwilling these people are to define the problem they proclaim so loudly. They could always come up with something a bit tighter, like (off the top of my head) Substantial Anthropogenic Climate Disruption. But they always prefer to hijack common expressions.
Now why is that? Why the deliberate fogging of the matter when tighter definitions are available?
Maybe they’re just “communicating” with us. “Communication” is behind a lot of manipulation and bewilderment these days. In fact, I don’t know why they don’t just call it manipulation and bewilderment.
Orwell’s ” Politics and the English Language” describes the use of language to obscure rather than illuminate. Politicians have refined the art through much practice. I especially find infuriating the use of the passive tense, as in “mistakes were made”. I bet!
The style that does not illuminate. Sam Johnson
on the Bugbear Style.
http://grammar.about.com/od/essaysonstyle/a/sjohnsonstyle.htm
You mean the passive voice I suppose.
Yes, I meant the passive voice. A mistake was made.
I thought this was really important;
Bill H.R. 1030, dubbed the Secret Science Reform Act of 2015, If passed, it will prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from making assessments or passing regulation “based on science that is not transparent or reproducible”.
http://theweekincongress.com/2015/03/05/h-r-1030-secret-science-reform-act-2015/
Here’s what bothers me about these Republicans and their myopic fixation on the EPA. If this is such a great idea for climate science why not apply it to the entire government. You don’t suppose the OSHA, Department of Defense or the Food and Drug Admin. would mind having to meet the same criteria?
I realize that Democrats would rather have the EPA make judgments based on science that is opaque and wrong, but that just isn’t good policy. The EPA has been allowed to make bad policy with bad science long enough.
For the record – the executive branch executes the laws, congress is supposed to write them.
Well, they could call it the Bureaucracy Self-Preservation Act, because limiting ‘secret science’ might make it more difficult for a large branch or a small twig of the Government to be captured by a narrative not chorused by nature, and thus not succored by sap(s).
=================
PA,
Take off your partisan hat and answer this question:
What’s wrong with making all government agencies follow the same rules?
You think the FDA would approve more drugs and treatments if they had to prove that every application was “based on science that is transparent or reproducible”? Who gets to judge what is transparent or reproducible, a politician?
Jack Smith, TX
What’s wrong with making all government agencies follow the same rules?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/us-science-cancer-idUSBRE82R12P20120328
A former researcher at Amgen Inc has found that many basic studies on cancer — a high proportion of them from university labs — are unreliable, with grim consequences for producing new medicines in the future.
…
“We went through the paper line by line, figure by figure,” said Begley. “I explained that we re-did their experiment 50 times and never got their result. He said they’d done it six times and got this result once, but put it in the paper because it made the best story. It’s very disillusioning.”
It frankly scares me that government uses scientific studies as the basis for anything.
Anything out of a University should be regarded with suspicion. They are under pressure to publish and it seems should be regarded as amateur scientists. The government researchers are under bureaucratic pressure and aren’t much better. GONGO or UN organizations are advocacy groups and should be regarded as equivalent to Greenpeace publications.
If the local water company only supplied safe drinkable water 11% of time action would be taken, yet we let “science” get away with this kind of performance.
There are a number of solutions, the top three:
1. Absolutely prohibit using scientific studies as the basis for government decisions (or data “adjusted” by scientists).
2. Establish a team of statisticians and engineers (with professional engineers) to perform hostile reviews of studies that might be used as a basis for government decisions. “Approved” studies that were replicated twice could be used as a basis for decisions.
3. Establish a credential “professional scientist” that, like a professional engineer, can be sued when they are wrong. Only the work of “professional scientists” could be used as the basis for decisions because you can sue them and recover damages if they are wrong.
PA, if something is published and no one can repeat the result, it doesn’t stand, and goes down as a mistake at best. It is not something a scientist would want to happen, and no government bases a policy on one paper. Skeptics on the other hand of base whole arguments against the mainstream on one paper. Single-paper syndrome is to be avoided if you are following the science, especially if you want to use it for something. The whole vaccine issue is an example of this where individuals make poor decisions based on one unrepeatable “study” that was later retracted.
Jim D | March 14, 2015 at 8:51 pm |
PA, if something is published and no one can repeat the result, it doesn’t stand, and goes down as a mistake at best.
You are incorrect.
The AmGen review was of landmark papers they were using as a basis for business decisions. These weren’t fly-by-night journal articles from a grad student.
“During a decade as head of global cancer research at Amgen, C. Glenn Begley identified 53 “landmark” publications — papers in top journals, from reputable labs.”
If reproducing a study is expensive and no one desperately needs to confirm it – it won’t get replicated.
And the problem seems to be getting worse:
“On Tuesday, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences heard testimony that the number of scientific papers that had to be retracted increased more than tenfold over the last decade; the number of journal articles published rose only 44 percent.”
The Lynas article was a good example of the lack of self awareness on the left.
“We need to pour vastly more resources into R&D, and put a significant international price on carbon.
But to make any of this happen we will need to recapture the climate debate from the political extremes.”
He accepts the underlying politics dressed up as science, and adopts the central (extreme) public policy of the CAGW dogma, global decarbonization, as gospel. Then claims we have to “recapture the climate debate from the political extremes.”
Priceless.
Oh, and his introductory sentence that he says should alienate people on both sides of the debate:
“Climate change is real, caused almost entirely by humans, and presents a potentially existential threat to human civilisation. Solving climate change does not mean rolling back capitalism, suspending the free market or stopping economic growth.”
Both are central tenets of the progressive CAGW movement. The first is their (and his) genuine belief. The second is part of their standard PR defense of their agenda. With the exception of the occasional faux pas of honesty like Naomi Klein, warmists routinely deny that decarbonization is just a stalking horse for the progressive agenda. So no warmist should be offended by either statement, and no skeptic would find either acceptable.
I get a kick out of rabid partisans who pretend to be objective middle of the roaders.
As Lynas called Soon and Lindzen fossil fuel funded climate deniers a decade ago.. he certainly played his part in the polarization..
I once had more hope for Mark Lynas than I do now. He’s demonstrated at least once that he can change his mind on a topic in a major way.
There is an interesting phenomenon going on, which I do not understand. Many of our most analytical thinkers, who’ve developed reputations for critique, have a most pronounced blind spot with respect to climate science, and are only a little less blind toward energy policy.
I dunno. A madness of the herd seems the most appropriate metaphor. Sure there are those who have bellowed in panic and error, but why aren’t the usual suspects mooing doubtfully?
===========
Kim, did you read the When Pollution Solutions Can Actually Damage the Environment article. People are nut. Totally f’ing nuts.
I try not to read Judy’s links. I prefer to comment from a mind completely uncontaminated with facts or ideas.
But yes to the ‘nuts’ part. See why I defend as I do?
===============
Kim,
Not surprisingly, I have an opinion on why people can take their revelations so far. Most people who are pro global decarbonization at any point are progressives who believe central planning is fundamentally better than a free market. The ‘elite’ should run the economy (or design the social structure0 because they are innately superior to the stupid voters,
But they believe this only because that is all they have ever been taught, and all they have ever heard from their friends, family and colleagues. Default progressives is my term for them.
They know what they know, and they know they are right, but they can’t articulate the underlying philosophy that leads them there, because they have never been taught that either. Theirs is a world of assumption, based on their acceptance of appeals to authority. They also cannot defend their belief system, for the same reason – so they avoid debate like the plague.
Once they get a glimmer of the way a given progressive policy is a house of cards, ala CAGW, they have a choice: look for the same tactics and weaknesses underlying the rest of their system of belief; or ignore what they have seen, and scurry back to safe belief in the ‘authorities’ they have followed their entire lives. When your sense of self is based on belonging to a self-described elite, can you really risk looking too closely into the rationality of their arguments?
Mosher, Keith Kloor, and for a long time Dr. Curry fit into this pattern. Dr. Curry seems to be moving beyond it, at least in the area of ‘climate science’. The others just surrender their intellectual independence (again) and re-join the tribe.
If only some day those elitist “progressives” could wake up and pay attention to Gary’s understanding of how they think, how they were educated, etc.
But being such poorly educated elitists, they don’t have the capacity for understanding Gary’s humble, yet superior insights into why they think the way they do.
GaryM,
I find great fault with your characterizations above.
I am all for clean energy – if it is unsubsidized cost comparable to existing energy sources.
Thus what you’re really attacking is the means why which a perfectly admirable goal is to be achieved: the demagogues want to do something now, but this doesn’t inherently mean the goal is unworthy.
c1ue,
“Thus what you’re really attacking is the means why which a perfectly admirable goal is to be achieved.”
I am not sure what your comment is. My comment above to which you responded is not an “attack” on any “means” at all. It is an attack on the mind set and lack of critical analysis by those who support that means, decarbonization.
I am also unsure what you mean by “I am all for clean energy – if it is unsubsidized cost comparable to existing energy sources.”
Who is against “clean energy?” And what does that have to do with my comment? Global decabonization has nothing to do with clean vs. dirty energy, except in the PR releases of the decarbonizationists. It has to do with lowering CO2 emissions based on weak, sparse, interpolated, highly manipulated data about both the catastrophe to come and its certainty, as an excuse for implementing policies that progressives would want to implement even if there were no green house effect at all..
And the question is not just the cost of subsidies, it is the impact on development for the billions the warmists are willing to keep in poverty.
In short, my comment was not a critique of decarbonization itself, but an answer to Kim’s (probably rhetorical) question?
Speaking of bad solar policy, this piece describes trouble in a Georgia county who “invested” in solar, http://www.georgiapolicy.org/as-sunshine-week-approaches-cloud-hangs-over-solar-financing-in-georgia/
I was having a little trouble believing what I was reading as regards the solar arrangements, But yes the school planned to rent the solar array for $300,000 a year hoping to get $100,000 a year in energy savings (which turned out to be only $87,000 in 2014).
http://gapundit.com/2013/06/20/dublin-solar-less-savings-more-solyndra-2/
This is the type thing that makes me suspect that solar is not an underutilized technology, but rather is over utilized based on its current capabilities. I’m afraid this case Is not an aberration as subsidies, cost shifting,funding and incentives are so muddled. Besides making no sense on the front end, the savings (not sure if they are actual or estimated) are more than 10% below projections.
The whole point of Smartgrid seems to be to absorb and bury renewable integration costs so that any attempt to compute the fully loaded system cost produces a lowball number.
Whenever I hear ‘smart’ anything, I feel the crack of the whip.
=========================
“…smart anything…”
Just wait until you start hearing “micro-grids” and “community based energy generation”. They want to throw out economies of scale and divide the grid into mini fiefdoms. Think local chiefs and village strongmen.
PE, thanks for the link, I had lost it
“The problem was how to convert an operating expense into a capital expenditure so they could spend E-SPLOST money on their electric bill and free-up property tax money for teacher salaries to reduce the number of furlough days.”
Government distortion of the market place is responsible for some renewable installation. A friend of mine installed solar on his house because the various levels for government rebated over 2/3rds of the cost of the project. He paid about $15k for $50K of solar plus he got to sell mostly unusable (by the power company) surplus power back to the power company at a markup.
The renewables in the Georgia case were “justified” because the government wanted to do an end run around the tax payers. No sane person spends 3 times what something is worth. Government is a different story.
The problem is bureaucrats feel insulated from being held accountable. If actions like this are unpunished it is the taxpayers’ fault. When my local school board passed a millage that had been rejected by the taxpayers, the entire school board was recalled. The governor had to appoint a temporary school board. Something similar should happen here.
PA – as you say, “No sane person spends three times what something is worth” but the combined impact of taxes and subsidies makes this example much worse than just three times. The amount spent by the school on the solar cells was likely not the full cost of what they leased as the manufacture and supporting business processes for solar were likely subsidized as well. The target value that was supposed to be realized in energy savings was not met making the cost disparity even greater. Further the value of the energy credit is a subsidized number as well. The amount credit d to the solar installation likely ignored the grid costs or the time of production value difference between intermittent solar production and actual hourly costs, such that the energy credit likely includes a further subsidy. Instead of this solar resources having a value of one third of its cost, the number could be much lower (not a stretch to think it’s one eighth).
But yes PA, it is a huge problem that policy makers seem insulated from poor decision making. It seems like perceived good intentions are far more important than honestly grappling with policy issues.
PE …
The fact that dispatchable nuclear is being ignored in favor of nondispatchable renewables that quite arguably are more damaging to the environment is disturbing.. The rare earths required for wind, let alone the steel make “clean” energy claim for wind sort of laughable. PV is about as bad for different reasons. The 20 year 1/2 trillion dollar smartgrid program would appear to be a huge Federal intrusion into the power sector funded by dollars ripped from the hides of the taxpayers.
What this says is that the advocates prefer empty symbolism with maximum government involvement over more realistic approaches.
A partial solution might be a bill requiring that all Federal regulatory activities be justified on a cost/benefit basis (using transparent and reproducible science) The bill should include criminal penalties and automatic termination for bureaucrats who promulgate regulations that violate the statute. This would certainly benefit the nuclear industry.
OK, Gavin Schmidt and Naomi Oreskes, in the article about the manufactured Willie Soon funding imbroglio, make Lynas’ clueless article look like a model of critical analysis.
“Conflict of interest becomes relevant when .people might be perceived to be skewing their research to come up with pleasing responses for their funders, and there’s no real equivalent to the fossil fuel industry on the other side,. Schmidt said.
Climate scientists are funded by the government, and their goal is to find scientific truth, said Naomi Oreskes….”
I guess expecting progressive, post-normal scientists to see the problem demonstrated by these statements is a lost cause.
SMUG ALERT!!
There’s no real equivalent to the fossil fuel industry on the other side, Schmidt said, then he let off a huge fart and bent over to inhale the sweet smell of his own gas.
Climate scientists are funded by the government, and their goal is to find scientific truth, said Naomi Oreskes, she then farted into a wine glass and held it to her nose to drink in the delicious scent that can only be produced by and intellectually superior mind.
“Dendrochronologists see the correct tree-rings thanks to the trust relations they establish with colleagues, which constrain what they perceive on the wood samples.”
In the real sciences they call that groupthink-confirmation bias.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Gravity!
How good are our projections for gravitational field changes?
Man’s contribution to the earth’s gravitational field must end!
Even the slightest change in mass distribution could have unknown, profound effects.
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About decarbonisation of Europe: last I checked, Germany’s primary energy consumption was still 80% fossil fuel despite massive deployment of wind and solar electricity ( getting close to 80 GW of capacity).
About global carbon dioxide emissions rise stopping: In the end of February China revised their coal production numbers for 2013, from almost 3.7 billion tonnes to almost 4 billion tonnes. I wonder what that means for 2014 stats?
From the John Kerry Article
Anybody even remotely familiar with the dynamics of convective precipitation (both thunderstorms and frontal snow) will wince at that analogy.
I do.
Not at a pressure of 1 Pa it doesn’t.
;-)
Deep convective clouds with
sustained supercooled
liquid water down to -37.5°C
Supercooling
Radiative consequences of low-temperature infrared refractive indices for supercooled water clouds
Snowflake Formation
http://earthsci.org/processes/weather/weaimages/icefrze.gif
So, you see, the fact that “when the water temperature drops below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, it doesn’t turn to ice” is essential to both precipitation and our understanding and modelling of weather and climate.
From: Greg Laden: Bjorn Lomborg Is Wrong About Bangladesh And Sea Level Rise…
“Human caused greenhouse gas pollution is heating the Earth and causing the planet’s polar ice caps and other glacial ice to melt.”
It doesn’t add up. Greenland melt, like we saw in summer 2012, is dependent on negative North Atlantic Oscillation episodes, increased forcing of the climate increases positive NAO.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-3-5-6.html
If one looks at any of the IPCC documents, none of his article makes any sense. It makes you wonder if the warmists bother reading the IPCC work. Maybe he just reads frightening headlines.
If you look carefully at his blog, you’ll find the phrase “Culture as Science”. IOW, he’s dedicated to pushing his socialist political agenda as “science”.
NothingVery little he says makes sense as science; and what does is mostly related to his specialty (anthropology).Which melts faster, Greenland or ‘Culture as Science’?
==================
Related to Greenland and Antarctica glacial ice melt. While there is always natural variability, the longer-trend is down in regards to net glacial ice mass. Obviously there will be years of higher or lower rates of melt but the long-term trend tells the story and the most likely cause of the long-term decline is the climate forcing the rising GH gas concentrations. Concentrations are in the range now where the last time this occurred, both Greenland and Antarctica were ice free. It’s going to take a while (centuries) to melt all that ice but perhaps not as as long as some believe, and nonlinear accelerations are likely.
,
As far as
“..the long-term trend tells the story..”
I produced long range solar based forecasts for a relative increase in Arctic summer sea ice extent for the last two summers, indicating particular weeks where I expected the NAO to be positive and the sea ice extent to to see a relative increase. I am basing this on the apparent mechanics of it and not on stories. Now I agree with the IPCC that increased forcing of the climate will increase positive NAO, but I cannot see that warming the Arctic.
I would agree that the NAO, in and of itself, won’t warm the Arctic.
Negative NAO episodes increase warm ocean transport into the Arctic as well as weaken the polar vortex allowing an increase of warm humidity events into the Arctic. That’s why it warms.
R. Gates | March 14, 2015 at 9:06 am |
“…the long-term trend tells the story…”
The devil is in the details. Is long term 14 years, 150 years, 10,000 years?
Is trend 1st order LS, 2nd order, other?
The Arctic sea ice has been melting because of the Trenberth missing heat rising from out of the deep ocean abysses like a climate Godzilla, according to Liang, et al peer reviewed settled science.
In AR5 WGI Table 13.1 it shows current contribution of Antarctica to GMSLR is .27mm/yr which is about 22% of the thickness of a dime.
After all the handwringing about the collapse of the Antarctic glaciers etc, I was surprised to see in the same document that even at the highest RCP scenario, the total contribution to GMSLR by 2100 for Antarctica is .03 Meters.
Not surprisingly, Greenland is the bigger contributor recently.
http://imbie.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/imbie_fig5.png
“Sea ice cover may be more stable than idealised modelling studies imply, says new research..”
What strikes me is the scale of the rebound after summers with much less ice. As if the ocean is cooling more by being more exposed:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
“What strikes me is the scale of the rebound after summers with much less ice. As if the ocean is cooling more by being more exposed.”
___________
There is probably some physical truth to this as the Arctic waters do give up more latent and sensible heat to the atmosphere when not covered with ice. This is evidenced by the fact that there is a direct relationship between an increase in cloudiness over the Arctic in the late fall proportionate to lower amounts of sea ice in the summer.
But beyond these natural fluctuations in sea ice, it is longer-term forcing that matters and the longer-term trend that is a result of that forcing. Higher GH gas concentrations mean the long-term trend is heading for an ice-free summer Arctic this century.
Well, only if you assume higher GHG forcings are not counter-acted by natural forces. It’s not prudent to ignore Mother Nature.
=======================
Oh, there are “natural” forces, i.e. negative forcing that counters higher GH gas concentrations– problem is, they work on timescales far longer than the current spike in GH gas concentrations.
Yet another assumption. What do you call ‘far longer’?
==========
“Higher GH gas concentrations mean the long-term trend is heading for an ice-free summer Arctic this century.”
If you can prove that increased GHG’s will increase negative NAO, well good luck with that.
The Arctic is being warmed ultimately by the ongoing energy imbalance of the planet. That energy imbalance will undoubtedly have effects on various climate indices- but losing sight of the underlying energy imbalance leads to all sort of wild-goose chases.
Positive NAO reduces heat transport into the Arctic, oceanic and atmospheric. Losing sight of the underlying mechanisms as well as the obvious correlations in the observations leads to all sort of wild-goose chases.
Focussing on any CO2 caused change in energy flows causes one to lose resolution on natural changes in energy balance, on many time scales, and thus one is led on many gaseous goose carbon dioxychases.
===============
Oops, better is ‘many gaseous goose carbon wild dioxychases’.
=============
R. Gates makes a prediction: “… ice-free summer Arctic this century.”
You have until December 31, 2099 to prove you are correct. Sadly, we won’t be around to say you were wrong. ITMT, a lot of wealth can be transferred and economies destroyed.
Well, believe in the new Arctic Empire, sturdily constructed of the remnants of the EU, the USSR, and the USA, once province of Shield Lord Laurentian.
===============
Actually, it looks much less stable as of late (post 2006). It’s the long term trend that is more stable (flattening rather than increasing decline).
So, the regarded authority of ‘climate change’ is the IPCC.
The IPCC is part of the UN Environemental Program.
The UNEP was formed by Maurice Strong.
Maurice Strong was a fervent socialist and member of the Club of Rome.
The Club of Rome believe population was the root problem.
The Club of Rome believed they could use global warming to further an agenda:
“It would seem that humans need a common motivation, namely a common adversary, to organize and act together in the vacuum; such a motivation must be found to bring the divided nations together to face an outside enemy, either a real one or else one invented for the purpose.
New enemies therefore have to be identified. New strategies imagined, new weapons devised. The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
I am struck by three things.
1.) Global warming can be both real ( warming ) and a hoax ( of exaggeration of harms and impacts as outlined in the plan ).
2.) It is not surprising that there is a yawning political divide of opinion if indeed the campaign was from political origin. And pay for hypothesis science is at work in the IPCC.
3.) If the goal really was to reduce population growth ( through CO2 reduction ), the utter failure of ideology – it is the capitalist developed economies that have falling populations and reduced CO2 emissions ( as if emissions mattered ). It is the ( necessarily ) socialist undeveloped third world that still has rapid population growth. The ideas were wrong both economically and scientifically.
Does anyone have a link to the exact of the AMO and PDO data that Mann 2015 used?
New paper finds Chinese climate dominated by natural ocean oscillations, shifting from PDO to AMO..
From the Abstract:
“The increasing influence of the AMO on China drought since the early 1990s is further shown to be a consequence of global warming.”
That’s a very big issue as global warming as in the mean surface temperature since the mid 1990’s has been in a large part due to the warm AMO mode. And the warm AMO mode is associated with an increase of negative NAO, the wrong sign for increased forcing of the climate, but fits the trend in declining solar plasma density/pressure very well:
http://snag.gy/HxdKY.jpg
WTI oil moved from over $100 to less than $50, then bounced back to $50 (dead cat bounce?), and now is back to the level where it moved back to $50. The US economy is growing only tepidly. China is still growing, but using less energy. Europe is stagnant. WTI inventories continue to build and storage will fill sometime in the next few months. The contango in the futures market is a whopping $14, putting downward pressure on oil. $30s or even $20s is in sight.
11/27/14
OIL________68.92___-4.77
BRENT______72.49___-0.09
NAT GAS_____4.22___-0.1357
RBOB GAS____1.91
1/16/15
OIL_______48.69
BRENT_____49.90
NAT GAS____3.127
RBOB GAS___1.3588
1/30/15
OIL_______45.68
BRENT_____50.11
NAT GAS____2.684
RBOB GAS___1.3641
2/13/15
OIL_______53.17
BRENT_____61.53
NAT GAS____2.686
RBOB GAS___1.6192
3/7/15
OIL______49.61
BRENT____59.86
NAT GAS___2.839
RBOB GAS__1.8819
3/13/15
OIL______44.84
BRENT____54.60
NAT GAS___2.727
RBOB GAS__1.7623
Two can tow, two cantango.
====================
I saw Greenspan on Bloomberg yesterday. He calls lower prices. Talked about capacity to hold production in a Oklahoma depot ? filling up. You may know more about that.
Strategic Cheney
Reserved some petroleum;
Waste by Obama.
============
There is a lot of storage in Cushing, Oklahoma. It is filling up pretty quickly. It is the cheapest storage in the US. Tanker ships are the most expensive storage, and some of them are being utilized now.
Cushing:
http://www.energyindustryphotos.com/largest_oil_storage_facility_in.htm
Tanker ships:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/where-to-store-excess-oil-at-sea/
Cushion, Oklahoma? Baby got Black!
===============
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting front page article today on the resilience of U.S. oil production in the face of the price drop, “U.S. Producers Ready New Oil Wave” – http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-producers-ready-new-oil-wave-1426288890.
The WSJ article explores the report on Friday from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that “Declines in the US rig count have yet to dent North American output growth. Final December and preliminary current-quarter data show higher‐than‐expected US crude supply, raising the 2015 North American outlook.” (http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2015/march/iea-releases-oil-market-report-for-march.html).
The take-away point in the Wall Street Journal article is that U.S. shale oil left in the ground from wells being drilled is “poised to unleash a further flood”:
The ocean of oil from U.S. shale drove crude prices back toward six-year lows Friday, and American energy companies say they are poised to unleash a further flood that would keep prices from returning to lofty levels for a long time.
****
It was only last month that the IEA said a price recovery seemed inevitable because the U.S. production boom was likely to cool. Instead, “U.S. supply so far shows precious little sign of slowing down,” the agency said Friday. “Quite to the contrary, it continues to defy expectations.”
Independent shale-oil producers have slashed their planned 2015 spending on drilling by $50 billion, compared with last year’s, but have promised to increase production by focusing on their best oil fields. Total U.S. crude oil production hit a high of 9.4 million barrels a day in the week ended March 6, according to federal data.
The WSJ article focuses on the current oil producer strategy of drilling, but leaving significant oil in the ground by not yet finishing the oil well by fracking and starting production – a form of in-ground storage. The expense of finishing a well and putting it into active production, according to the WSJ, encompasses 60% of a well’s total costs.
Now many are adopting a new strategy that will allow them to pump even more crude as soon as oil prices begin to rise. They are drilling wells but holding off on hydraulic fracturing, or forcing in water and chemicals to free oil from shale formations. The delay in the start of fracking lets companies store oil in the ground in a way that enables them to tap it unusually quickly if they wish—and flood the market again.
****
For many, delaying oil production from drilled wells is a financial decision; finishing off a well and putting it into service accounts for 60% of the well’s total price.
By pushing off that expense, companies hope they can earn more from higher oil prices once they finally do pump and sell their crude. They also are expecting their costs will fall as oilfield-service providers vie for their business.
So, capital spending and rig count have dropped in the U.S. in response to the price drop. However, actual U.S. oil production has remained strong. The WSJ articles does note, however, that “North Dakota regulators said Thursday the state’s oil output declined 3% in January from the record level reached in December.”
Now, is this a longer-term phenomenon or is this short term adaptive conduct that will not survive continued lower prices?
Separately, the WSJ “Saturday Essay” by Matt Ridley argues that fossil fuels will continue to dominate energy consumption in the world for the future (“Fossil Fuels Will Save the World (Really),” – http://www.wsj.com/articles/fossil-fuels-will-save-the-world-really-1426282420?KEYWORDS=ridley). Regardless of whether one accepts overall Ridley’s thesis, he makes a very strong point about the impact of fracking and shale oil/gas in the U.S. and globally on future supplies:
The shale genie is now out of the bottle. Even if the current low price drives out some high-cost oil producers—in the North Sea, Canada, Russia, Iran and offshore, as well as in America—shale drillers can step back in whenever the price rebounds. As Mark Hill of Allegro Development Corporation argued last week, the frackers are currently experiencing their own version of Moore’s law: a rapid fall in the cost and time it takes to drill a well, along with a rapid rise in the volume of hydrocarbons they are able to extract .
And the shale revolution has yet to go global. When it does, oil and gas in tight rock formations will give the world ample supplies of hydrocarbons for decades, if not centuries. Lurking in the wings for later technological breakthroughs is methane hydrate, a seafloor source of gas that exceeds in quantity all the world’s coal, oil and gas put together.
I hope this is useful.
Regards,
MK
I wonder if Ken Rice, pretender to physics, then and there, might ponder the precipitation of methane hydrates. Would they be in ‘excess’ to precipitate? Any enzymatic wonders at work, mysteriously?
==============
There is also the increasing production in the Gulf of Mexico that will keep volumes moving higher.
http://www.oilprice.com/uploads/AE2.png
Another article on “fracklog.”
…
Oil drillers expecting prices to rebound after the biggest drop in six years have come up with an alternative to storing their crude in tanks: They’re keeping it in the ground.
It’s a new twist on an old oil-trading technique, known as a contango storage play, in which a trader buys cheap crude in an oversupplied market and saves it to lock in profits at higher future prices. Drillers who have spent millions boring holes through petroleum-rich shale rock are just waiting for prices to go up before turning on the spigot.
From North Dakota to Texas, there are more than 3,000 wells that have been drilled but not tapped, based on estimates from Wood Mackenzie Ltd. and RBC Capital Markets LLC. Waiting gives producers such as Apache Corp. and EOG Resources Inc. a better chance of receiving a higher price. It could also delay a recovery by attracting more supply every time prices rise.
“Effectively, the rock is the storage,” Troy Cook, an analyst with the Energy Information Administration in Washington D.C., said by phone. “If you can afford to hang on to it, you could certainly choose to wait until the price goes up.”
…
http://business.financialpost.com/2015/03/06/introducing-fracklog-the-new-fangled-oil-storage-system/?__lsa=7549-be1c
Soon’s Latest Paper: Dynamics of the intertropical convergence zone over the western Pacific during the Little Ice Age
Received 16 June 2014 Accepted 29 January 2015 Published online 09 March 2015
Interesting timing. I wonder if the attack on Soon was motivated more by acceptance of this paper than publication of the other.
Soon sun rise. The vulcan cock crows.
==========
==> “I wonder if the attack on Soon was motivated more by acceptance of this paper than publication of the other.”
Either way, I think a call to Lewandowski is in order.
Sure…
Anybody even suspecting the timing to be anything other than a coincidence must certainly be a conspiracy theorist.
http://www.livescience.com/49196-nasa-satellite-oco2-carbon-maps.html
Am I mistaken by believing that the accepted theory says that atmospheric CO2 is most heavily concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere? The global map from NASA that’s at this link indicates just the opposite.
Due to the annual vegetation cycle of 6 ppm, the largest concentrations are in the Spring, and that is in the SH at the time of that snapshot. It’s a common error to look at one month of CO2 and assume it is an annual pattern.
Has anyone seen a comprehensive analysis of the data from ” NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 Mission?” It have seen references to it but nothing more.
I’m really excited about the sequel. Anybody know when it’s coming out?
Data has shown that Arctic Sea Ice extent is correlated to the phase of the AMO, and has zero to do with GHG’S.
The near record extent of Antarctic Sea Ice validates this argument because if a decline of sea ice was due to CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the Arctic the same would be happening in the S.H.
“Data has shown that Arctic Sea Ice extent is correlated to the phase of the AMO, and has zero to do with GHG’S.”
______
Pseudoscience much?
Even if you’re just a novice at it, you’re pretty good.
Not quite, Antarctica prevents convective processes which could move ocean heat to the south pole.
Oops, apologies. You’re talking about sea ice, not atmos temp. Since there’s no sea ice inland…
It’s true, the north and south polar sea ice extent diverged in the mid 1990’s from when the solar wind weakened. The AMO functions as an amplified negative feedback and increases poleward heat transport, raising the mean global surface temperature faster than any forcing does.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Arctic_and_Antarctic.pdf
Data which AGW supporters always ignore.
That is the data which shows AGW theory has no leg to stand on when it comes to the decline in Arctic Sea Ice.
R. Gates you are a typical AGW enthusiast who ignores all of the data.
It is what you and your elk consistently do which is why everything you suggest has no credibility.
http://blog.merrell.com/us/en/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Elk.jpg
Smart elk ignore neither upstream nor downstream data let alone all of it. That’s a smart aleck(sp).
===============
http://i55.tinypic.com/33cte02.jpg
The real data on ocean heat content.
Here is the data ,now you need to reconcile your theory with the data. Good Luck.
http://www.c3headlines.com/are-todays-temperatures-unusual/
Reply
Okay I meant ILK. lol
re Bangladesh’s climate politics
I found Chu’s presentation to BASF disturbingly clueless. Some examples.
(1) He cites Borlaug’s development of dwarf rust resistant wheat, as if those kind of innovations could solve food capacity forever. He is apparently unaware of UG99, a wheat rust that has evolved around Borlaug’s resistance, against which CYMMIT has been struggling to develop equivalently yielding strains against for a decade (with Gates support). He is apparently unaware that thanks to improper planting practices in the US, corn root worm has evolved BT resistance, and 10 species of newly glyphosate resistant weeds now infest 10 million US acres, neutering ‘Roundup Ready’ corn, soy, and cotton as well as preventing no till soil conservation practices. BASF could be working on better pesticides and herbicides that are now required.
(2) He cites shale oil development in the US, then shows a world map (proclaiming decades of plenty) including California’s Monterey and China’s Sichuan (which cannot be horizontally drilled owing to folding and faulting), and Russia’s Bazhenov (which likely contains less TRR than the Bakken, essay Matryoshka Reserves illustrates the geological reasons why). He does not discuss exciting challenges and opportunities in catalysis like Kior [wood to syncrude] that Gates is now supporting, or Siluria [OCM and ETL] which is a vast improvement on Fischer-Tropf for converting natural gas to liquid fuels IF it scales commercially. Those are again the sorts of things BASF R&D could meaningfully contribute to.
(3) He discusses intermittent renewables and the energy storage challenge Planning Engineer highlights, then cites lithium sulfur research (power density and cycle life as yet unsolved except in the lab using non-commercializable nanotechnology techniques) and the EOS zinc hybrid cathode cell (which just got VC funding to come out of the lab) as if the grid energy storage problem is being solved. He doesn’t note the various flow battery chemistries that are probably the only grid scale potentially commercially feasible estorage alternative–IF they can be made reliable, again something BASF could perhaps contribute to.
(4) He cites growing energy efficiency (Boeing 787, appliances) without noting the law of diminishing marginal returns that also applies, or that this sort of progress follows logarithmic experience curves meaning annual progress steadily slows.
It is certainly true that improvements can and will be made in crop yields, oil recovery, energy storage, and energy efficiency. How much of a difference that eventually makes to a world bumping up against known resource limitations (oil, shale, arable land, irrigation groundwater in India…) given the pace of population expansion (Chu projects 9 billion by 2050, up from 7.3 billion today, UN is 9.1, US Census Bureau is 9.3) and economic development in the developing is very unclear. See Gaia’s Limits. Not even a decent overview of the present waterfront that BASF R&D might contribute to.
Clueless, or surrounded with moneybags of agenda.
===========
It’s good we are now Chu-less.
On the subject if ‘rabid partisans who claim to be middle of the roaders’ (quote from Gary), an organisation calling itself ‘inside climate’ claims that Judith and several others are ‘climate denialists’, merely because they have received an email from Fred Singer.
This spectular and probably libellous piece of idiocy from their reporter Katherine Bagley even made it briefly into the wiki page on Judith Curry (mentioned at Stoat).
Link:
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/12032015/leaked-email-reveals-whos-who-list-climate-denialists-merchants-of-doubt-oreskes-fred-singer-marc-morano-steve-milloy
According to their expert team of reporters, Judith Curry is ‘relatively new to the denialist camp’
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7590/16802291851_6a6db3632c_o.png
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2015/03/13/currygate-and-wikipedia/
I don’t think Judy’s inclusion was any smoking gun, contrary to what may imply PaulM’s remark. It confirms common knowledge about Judy’s contrarian connections.
Paul –
==> “This spectular and probably libellous piece of idiocy… ”
The issue of what is and isn’t libelous and “probably libelous” is a very interesting one, that is an often-seen side skirmish in the climate wars.
So when you say that this “piece of idiocy” is “probably libelous,” do you mean from your own subjective evaluation – as a scientist that should be considered as a representative of the dispassionate analysis of “skeptics” – that the article is most likely libelous, or do you mean that you think that there will “probably” be a legal proceeding in Bagley’s piece?
Do you think that if Bagley does get sued, it will threaten there very foundation of free speech – as is the concern expressed by Judith and many other “skeptics” w/r/t Steyn vs. Mann?
Paul.
Its simple. Send a mail to know serial killers.
include Micheal Mann on the list a people who get the mail
Then you can say Mann’s name was among numerous serial killers who got the mail.
mosher –
==> “Joshua. Stop being stupid. your question about black flag was stupid ( note I didnt say bad faith ) i said stupid.”
Actually, you sad “bad question.”
What is a “bad question?”
That depends on my goal, IMO. How do you know if it was a bad question? I would suggest that if I had a good faith intent with the question, then it would be a “bad question.” But I’m not claiming good faith intent.
Now as for “stupid question.” There could be two ways (at least) to judge its stupidity. One would be whether the answer to the question was obvious to anyone of reasonable intelligence. Hmmm. Well, I don’t think that the answer was obvious. Draw your own conclusion there. :-) Looks like David has a clear opinion…
The other, IMO, would relate back to the question of intent. If I had a good faith intent, then maybe my question would be stupid if it engendered bad faith. I’m not claiming good faith intent.
==> “( note I didnt say bad faith ) i”
That’s a non-sequitur.
mosher –
So you think it was kind of black flag operation? In other words, Singer doesn’t really consider Judith to be a tribal ally, but instead, actually the idea was to include her name on the letter and then deliberately “leak” the letter (making it seem unintentional, of course) so that “realists” would be tricked into making libelous claims?
Singer used the ‘reply all’ button to respond to a message sent by Marc Morano. This particular email list originates from Marc Morano; on twitter he explained that he cc’ed people he thought might be interested in an article he wrote (people active on twitter/blogs/newsletters).
So you think it was kind of black flag operation?
Bad question. Stop asking bad questions. It makes you look stupid. Nothing indicates that I think this.
Singer recently included me on a mail. It was mistaken identity.
I think it is dangerous to read singer’s mind or guess about motivations.
hence my example.
A less slanted way to write the piece would be to say
“Singer recently wrote an email to a number of well known climate science skeptics. In addition, he included Judith Curry on the mail.”
It’s reasonable to conclude that Singer sees her as a potential ally in helping to thwart the distribution of the film. But that does not mean he sees her as an ally in regards to his scientific views.
So do you think that Singer just included everyone was on the original list by using “reply all – without any consideration of whether the recipients would be interested? Or do you think that he only left the names of those he felt would be more receptive to his efforts?
==> “Bad question. Stop asking bad questions. ”
Only a bad question if I then claim it was a good faith effort.
Joshua. Stop being stupid. your question about black flag was stupid ( note I didnt say bad faith ) i said stupid.
Here you continue the stupid questions.
“So do you think that Singer just included everyone was on the original list by using “reply all – without any consideration of whether the recipients would be interested?”
You would be surprised how many skeptical mailing lists include me on their distribution. In some cases it has been really embarassing for them.
If you want to know whether Singer considers her an Ally. ASK HIM STUPID! Next, It doesnt matter who he considers to be an ally. I disagree with Judith on some aspect of the science. I consider her an ally on transparency.
” Or do you think that he only left the names of those he felt would be more receptive to his efforts?”
Another stupid question that invites people to read minds and motivations. Your question is as stupid as skeptics asking random questions about GCMS. You want to know what singer thought, ask him nimrod.
back on your game today mosh
even joshua should deb able to understand your point.
mosher –
==> “But that does not mean he sees her as an ally in regards to his scientific views.”
So here there’s a bit of a problem, IMO. Although Judith spends quite a bit of her time criticizing “realist” scientists for tribalism (comparing them to McCarthy and jihadists, for example), from what I can see she has very little interest in criticizing “skeptic” scientists for their tribalism – even when asked directly as to whether she finds the latter phenomenon concerning.
Aside from, in my opinion, that such selectivity is a questionable approach to the engineering of “bridge building,” I think it creates a kind of cone of silence around her scientific views:
http://www.writeraccess.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/blog-cone-of-silence.jpg
In such a context, where she fails to adopt a scientific approach to defining “activism” and “advocacy,” when someone as politically aligned as Singer seems to view her as an ally, where she makes vague allusions to the work of someone like Salby without following up, and fails to engage in debate with someone like Gavin in the manner she has indicated previously, and when she tends to climb on a high horse w/r/t the political implications of her own input into the climate wars, then she is, IMO, not doing her best to minimize the kinds of fallacious arguments as represented in the view that her name on an email from Singer tells us something meaningful about the science of climate change.
OK. So that’s’ all sameolsameol. But it does then seem like a bit of drama-queening when she paints herself as some kind of a victim.
This line of argumentation (re my being on an recipient list to an email from Singer) is about as meaningful as Greg Laden freaking out about my ‘favoriting’ a post by Mark Steyn that criticized Mann (‘favorite’ serves as a bookmark on twitter, so that I can read when I have more time).
I’m not interested in playing anyone else’s ‘game’, especially the so-called ‘climateballers’. I use my time in the ways that I find most interesting and significant.
http://judithcurry.com/2015/03/13/week-in-review-48/#comment-683627
There’s a difference, Judith, between a “they do it too” justification and pointing out that regardless of the reasonableness of patterns, there’s some wisdom to the as ye sow, so shall ye reap way that the world works in politicized contexts.
Obviously, whether your name’s on an email is irrelevant to the science, any arguments otherwise are sameolsameol, IMO. But, IMO, you aren’t a victim if you harvest the bad crops that you sow.
==> “I’m not interested in playing anyone else’s ‘game’,”
Perhaps, then, you should consider switching-up the arena you play in?
http://jrockvideos.weebly.com/uploads/1/5/9/7/1597022/944368.jpg
Would Bobby Orr play in that arena?
Joshua:
“So here there’s a bit of a problem, IMO.”
Trying to insulate your claims by making them just your opinion is more of the same garbage. Stop being stupid. your humble opinion doesn’t matter. Your questions were stupid. Stop it.
> Would Bobby Orr play in that arena?
Ask John NG, who’s the Bobby Orr of ClimateBall.
What’s intriguing is that Singer emails Judy about the possibility of an action “structurally similar” (h/t the Bobby Clark of ClimateBall) to one she recently compared to a terrorist shooting.
Of course, it just so happens that Marc Morano has Judy in his mailing list.
mosher =
==> “Trying to insulate your claims by making them just your opinion is more of the same garbage.
Heh. Hey, “I’m only asking questions.”
==> “Stop being stupid. your humble opinion doesn’t matter. ”
I haven’t said my opinions matter, let along that they are humble. :-)
==> “Your questions were stupid. Stop it.””
Would you ask a leopard to change his spots?
I engaged you about your claim that my questions were stupid. The choice is obviously yours as to whether or not pick up on the discussion.
But if your goal is to ;get me to stop it, while I’d say that your chances either way are marginal at best, repeating the same failed techniques you’ve used in the past is likely more sub-optimal.
So what is your goal, mosher? Is your method towards achieving that goal a “stupid” method?
willard –
Hey, I’m from Philly. Either explain that comment about Clarkie, or prepare to drop your gloves and get introduced to the Dave (The Hammer) Shultz of Climate Etc.
Joshua, I didn’t think you peddled in conspiratorial thinking. Black flag operation? Really?
John Carpenter –
I was just asking a question. :-)
Check with Judith and 1000, and you’ll see that pointing out the sub-optimal nature of rhetorical questions is mere “sophistry.”
Morano’s job for Inhofe and in the Bush administration was to deliver talking points against climate science and climate scientists. I think that, now out of this job, he continues to maintain a mailing list and deliver talking points, political activist that he is. However, recently his job is to do damage control for himself and others on his side who have been humiliated by a couple of documentaries. What goes around comes around.
Jimd
The ipcc in ar5 chapter 13 said the abyssal depths were warming.
I was an ‘expert’ reviewer for it and asked them for the cited reference several times but they wouldn’t tell me. I suspect it was Trenberth, Hansen or Church.
Tonyb
tonyb, these papers were post-AR5 and would have been considered if on time. There is less certainty in the abyssal depths than you might think, and there may still be too little coverage to be sure because the rate of change is so slow and small there.
Jimd
Perhaps you had better tell your colleague Rgates all that as he is always quoting Purkiss as the paper that demonstrates the warming in the abyssal depths is going to come out and bite us.
I know very well the uncertainty involved and have mentioned here that I heard Thomas stocker confirm that we do not have the technology to measure the deep oceans. Which doesn’t get away from the fact that warming is what is usually claimed.
Tonyb
Little jimmy dee claims that Marano has been humiliated by a couple of documentaries that virtually nobody has seen. Very amusing, jimmy.
tonyb, the abyssal depths is a vague term, but presumably you mean below 2000 m beyond where we have Argo data telling us that it is warming. According to AR5, the sea floor may be warming in some areas due to new Antarctic bottom water (not good news, by the way), but this seems to be poorly sampled geographically or temporally. I don’t know the source of the new Liang and Wunsch data, but I wouldn’t discount them so easily. Remember that everyone, including these authors, agree that the ocean heat content is rising and the source is the forcing. This is because the energy change of the upper layers is so much faster and dwarfs anything the deep ocean might be doing. Even skeptics (Spencer) have shown ocean warming profiles that rapidly decrease with depth.
Don, both documentaries had skeptics talking in their own words, and it did not come out well for them, hence the need for damage control now. Perhaps he should have ignored it rather than making more news out of it. It’s a tough call.
The other documentary I refer to is series 3 episode 1 of Vice that aired last week on HBO and featured sea level and current research in Antarctica. Morano also appeared with his talking points, the new one being Antarctic sea ice.
jimmy, jimmy
Nobody cares about your obscure alleged documentaries, except rabid CAGW alarmists. The reality is that the alleged Merchants of Doubt must be doing a very effective job. The vast majority of the world’s 7 billions are not losing any sleep over climate change. That’s got to be very frustrating and frightening for you, jimmy. i almost feel sorry for you.
The term is false flag.
Jim D
Did that documentary on Vice mention by any chance the IPCC AR5 finding that Antarctic contribution to GMSLR was .27mm/yr? I checked it yesterday. There it is in a Table along with all the other sources. I bet that Vice propaganda piece never brought that up. Just imagine, Jim D how little that is. Doesn’t it all want to make you sing a little of Marvin Gaye’s classic “What’s Goin’ On?”
I hear him now.
“… we do not have the technology to measure the deep oceans.”
______
We have the technology, just not in sufficient deployment to consistently measure the deep ocean. However, the Deep Argo project is at least in the beginning stages where the plan is to consistently measure down to 6000m over large areas of the global ocean.
But all of this general discussion misses some critical dynamics of what is already occurring in the ocean.
1) The heat doesn’t “hide” and then come out at some future time. Energy is constantly being exchanged between ocean and atmosphere and ocean and cryopshere.
2) With the past 10 years of consistent ARGO measurements and additional abyssal measurements (though only spotty), latent heat of fusion in the global cryosphere, biosphere changes, tropospheric warming, etc. The “missing” energy issue Trenberth brought up has largely been solved, or at least the gap closed quite significantly. Estimates of the TOA imbalance at the time were about 0.9 w/m^2. More recent estimates from multiple sources are about 0.6 w/m^2. (see the recent paper on Earth’s albedo) This is in pretty close agreement with the net energy gains being seen in the the above listed areas, with of course the majority in the ocean AND affecting Earth’s weather and climate immediately – so sorry, no free pass from the oceans larger heat capacity. The super Typhoon Pam, one of the largest storms ever recorded is witness to the power of warmer oceans. Such Typhoons cannot form unless there is both warmer surface waters and warmer water down to 300m.
“Naomi Klein thinks we need to “change pretty much everything about our economy” to avoid CO2-induced bad weather”
I think Naomi Klein might benefit from the services of a good psychiatrist.
Regarding the North American drought article, linking the drought with the pause, this article says California has a year of water left due to unsustainable water usage rates.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-famiglietti-drought-california-20150313-story.html
To the extent true, a completely self inflicted wound. Dryish California knows it gets a 2-3 year drought every 20-30 years. Since 1970, its population increased 87%. Its water storage capacity increased 28% because environmentalists opposed more dams and reservoirs. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.
Rud,
Pretty much all the major rivers in CA are dammed. A big issue is the health of fish habitat, regulated by federal law, and the desire to preserve what little we have left. Big dams are butt ugly, especially when they are not full, nothing like the natural lakes east of the Miss.
However, we sit next to the largest body of water on earth, but many are worried about the “carbon footprint” of desal.
I love desal.
JustinWonder | March 14, 2015 at 11:27 pm |
“Pretty much all the major rivers in CA are dammed. A big issue is the health of fish habitat and the desire to preserve what little we have left.”
Just saying if there are lots of dams, therefore more water, which is fish habitat, sort of, That the fish have a lot more than they had, not a little bit left.
I am sure that they can build more dams on the little [few] rivers left or people would not be suggesting it.
Can they do it?
The Chinese built the 3 Gorges dam, 120 meters high and unpreserved a lot of their history but they get cheap renewable hydroelectric power and an ability to feed and water their people , irrigate their lands and improve their lifestyle.
Can California be this progressive? Nah.
Must be more fish in California though.
An…2014,
The fish in question are anadromous, and some are endangered. The key point is that the fish are regulated by federal law, which supercedes state law.
China is not a good model for dam building, pollution, public health, endangered species, or much else.
Why choose between having a few stretches of free-flowing streams with anadromous fish and abundant water when you can have both?
If we go take the desal option the water problem becomes an energy problem and here is where California is exceedingly dumb. Actually, here is where cynical special interests exploit the ignorance of the voters.
Full disclosure: I am a rabid environmentalist and a skeptic about most everything. I don’t really fit into the usual perception of the CAGWist/skeptic divide. My family is vaccinated and I love GMO foods, especially potato chips. I grow native plants organically but I love bigAg and traditional family farms using modern non-organic methods. I love beef, rare. I like my food to come from far away, better risk reduction, and I love American muscle cars. There is no replacement for displacement.
Long live long carbon chains! :)
“An anadromous fish, born in fresh water, spends most of its life in the sea and returns to fresh water to spawn”.
thanks for the new word.
Understand a bit better now.
“Brilliant NYT column on inconvenient science ignored by nutrition establishment”
The cholesterol story began much like the climate story. First there was a Berkeley scientist in the late 1940’s, using a new high speed centrifuge was able to separate out cholesterol in the blood. The analogous climatological assessment by Arrhenius around 1900 suggesting his “carbonic acid” as a contribution to atmospheric greenhouse gases. During the early 1950’s Korean “conflict”, soldiers dying, and in particular 18 year olds, having autopsies showed fatty streaks in their arterial blood vessels something not previously commented upon by the other war autopsies in the Army Institute of Medicine archives. In the Climate story, in the 1930’s Callander was measuring CO2 and recording atmospheric concentrations.
The finding of cholesterol in the arterial fatty streaks and the known spectral bands of CO2 lead to much speculation on cause and effect. Much infighting by scientists in both the medical world and weather forecast world seeking their fame and fortunes in predicting the future based upon their learned settled science.
The equivalent inconvenient science of the “pause/hiatus/plateau” (P/H/P) in the nutrition world, were the persistent cardiovascular deaths in people who had “normal “cholesterol levels. Indeed, half of all people dying of cardiovascular events and strokes, had normal cholesterol levels. In addition, infamous careerists: Dean O….,proved beyond a shred of doubt that reducing your fat intake to 10 grams of fat a day made your heart disease go away. People made pilgrimages to the USA West Coast to be dietarily tortured by D O.
Such is popular fiction. An entire egg industry almost disappeared. Bad Bad beef nearly followed. The coming of age of the Crunchy Granola Crowd and a host of nutritional fads. Searching amongst mountain dwellers who ate fruits and nuts having long lives became an NIH mini industry; until of course, autopsies of those blessed with longevity showed they had survived multiple heart attacks, mostly of the anterior coronary artery. Such confounding facts rarely made it through the media filter. Indeed, a 60 Minute documentary on longevity, diet and life style never made it to publication as it included people from one of the former Soviet “stans” region, many living to over 100 years whose diet and life style included a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka a day. Inconvenient truths from many aspects.
This re-awakening about dietary intake of cholesterol not being so bad, and mighty tasty as well, I predict will be followed by a series of learned academic papers saying: “Yes, but….” The climatological analogy about the “P/H/P” if not already, will be from our friends Trenberth, Mann, Schmidt also saying: “Yes, but….”
A science warning: “Those who seek the brass ring, the bauble of fame and fortune during their lifetime, are likely to nudge the truth in a convenient direction.”
Now that bauble flashes gaudily with one brilliant insight outshining the last.
====================
RiHo08 –
==> “An entire egg industry almost disappeared.”
Do you have evidence for this claim?
Most of the evidence that I’ve seen is that the hype about the harm of cholesterol and fat changing diets is in itself, hyped:
For example:
http://nutsci.org/2014/06/13/no-dietary-guidelines-are-not-making-us-sick/
Joshua
‘Do you have evidence for this claim?”
as you well know asking for evidence increases polarization and doesnt work.
mosher –
==> “as you well know asking for evidence increases polarization and doesnt work.”
First, that depends on context. For example, I’ve asked RiHo08 for evidence in the past, to good effect. Sure, I was being rhetorical there, but I don’t think that would be much of an impediment for RiHo08.
Second, as you may have noticed, I’m not particularly conflict avoidant – so the definition of “work” comes into play. W/hat does or doesn’t “work” is in the eye of the beholder
Third, while I’ll cop to sub-optimal engagement, I doubt that anything I might or might not write in blog comments makes even a tiny bit of difference in the real world.. Nothing I do or don’t do in blogospheric comments causes a measurable increase (or decrease) level of polarization in any meaningful sense.
While your observation about asking for evidence might have some application, in a general sense, in the real world (in some contexts), if you were suggesting that my asking for evidence increases polarization to any measurable extent (in the real world), then I’d say that you’re being rhetorical rather than dealing with the content discussion; ironically, being rhetorical rather than content-based (n the real world, depending on context), increases polarization.
If I thought you really believed that, I’d suggest you learn some complexity theory. But since I’m almost certain you’re ly1ng, I won’t bother.
AK –
==> “But since I’m almost certain you’re ly1ng, I won’t bother.”
heh.
If I were inclined to think there would be any point in responding to your mention of complexity theory, I would point out that regardless, my engagement in these threads will have no meaningful impact in the real world (they’re read by only an outlier group, most of whom are already fixed in their views, and most of whom will only use whatever anyone says to confirm their biases – in other words, the specifics of what I say don’t matter).
But since I’m not inclined to think that there’s any point in explaining any of that, I won’t bother to do so.
It only takes one exception. As anybody familiar with complexity theory as applied to social interactions would be aware.
Of course, unlike the (intended) inspirational nature of my comments, I’m not sure what the nature of yours would inspire other than a sudden realization (cartoon light-bulb over head) that the whole CAGW thing has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with social manipulation.
Which is why I sometimes wonder if you‘re a “Black flag operation?”
> I’d suggest you learn some complexity theory.
Shaken, not stirred within the new paradigm.
Joshua
“First, that depends on context. For example, I’ve asked RiHo08 for evidence in the past, to good effect. Sure, I was being rhetorical there, but I don’t think that would be much of an impediment for RiHo08.”
citing anecdotes is not evidence. You know from controlled studies that asking for evidence intensifies polarization. There is no evidence I know of from controlled studies that indicates that context matters.
mosher –
==> “citing anecdotes is not evidence. You know from controlled studies that asking for evidence intensifies polarization. There is no evidence I know of from controlled studies that indicates that context matters.”
1. We are referencing a specific context: Me asking RH1o08 for evidence. Within that context, I have found the request for evidence in the past to have a positive outcome. Context absolutely matters there. Far more than some controlled study. My question wasn’t some general question to some unspecified individual or group. Which do you think is likely to be more informative for this particular context: some study of some generic controlled context, or the context of previous interactions between me and RH1o08>
2. Actually, I don’t know what controlled studies you’re referring to.
3. The reason to have controlled studies is, precisely to eliminate the influence of specific contexts. What does it even mean to have “controlled studies” if they aren’t controlling for context? As an example, the context that you might control for would be a discussion between two people where a request for evidence in previous interactions was shown to not intensify the polarization.
4. I am not disputing the general effect of asking for evidence. Even though I can’t recall studies w/r/t that particular speech act in polarized contexts, it absolutely makes sense to me that, in a generalized way, asking for evidence would be associated with increased polarization. But why do you keep referencing a generalized context, that I’m not disputing, as being more informative for this context?
5. One of the problems with the findings of controlled studies is that people are sometimes too facile when trying to apply implications from artificially controlled environments to real world contexts.
==> “Which is why I sometimes wonder if you‘re a “Black flag operation?””
Which is just one of the reasons why I suggest that Lewandowsky might find your comments of interest.
Well, Lewandowsky would make a very plausible “Black flag operation”. Sensible people will realize how silly and senseless his entire operation is, but if he’s deliberately trying to make the “Global Warming” crowd look silly, that would make sense.
Joshua.. go read all of kahan. and read the other work he refers to.
Your homework.
Your confirmation bias is showing
” I doubt that anything I might or might not write in blog comments makes even a tiny bit of difference in the real world”
Not in the set of worlds that include all possible worlds but in the subset of personal real worlds on this blog you have made a large, disproportionate bit of difference. The blog would not be the same without you.
Thank you, Joshua.
joshua
I concur with Angech. You can be (deliberately I suspect ) overly pedantic and read things into comments that aren’t there, but the blog needs all viewpoints and you provide an interesting counterpoint and the blog is better for it. Thank you for your participation.
I think your crowning achievement is to have elicited this comment from Mosh yesterday which explains much about his objecting to questions and dislike of historical ‘anecdotes’ as a means of providing context to today.
‘citing anecdotes is not evidence. You know from controlled studies that asking for evidence intensifies polarization. There is no evidence I know of from controlled studies that indicates that context matters.”
tonyb
This is a science blog, whats wrong with asking for evidence. A greater crime in such a circumstance might be to try to shut down such demands.
(FYI, if you are looking to avoid polarized debate then I would recommand you steer clear of the subject of climate.)
mosh writes:
“Citing anecdotes is not evidence. You know from controlled studies that asking for evidence intensifies polarization. There is no evidence I know of from controlled studies that indicates that context matters.”
Wrong.
Mosh, citing anecdotes IS presenting evidence…its called “anecdotal evidence”. It may not be the type of evidence you want, but it is evidence.
When one creates a web career centered on nice distinctions, this is what one gets….
Pissante corrections to one’s intemperate responses.
I suggest inspection of ‘controlled’ as in ‘controlled studies’.
===============
> citing anecdotes IS presenting evidence…its called “anecdotal evidence”.
Citing anecdotal evidence underplays its main rhetorical point: storytelling. Anecdotal evidence is judiciary evidence, not scientific evidence. This explains why TonyB’s deliverables have little scientific validity, and why TonyB handwave toward authority figures without being very explicit in their endorsements.
:
willard:
anecdotal evidence is, or can be, scientific evidence…it depends on what one wants to prove.
If one wishes to run an existentialist type of hypothesis, like something is possible, like heavier than air flight, then an example is pretty good. the wright brothers flew, thats a proof of concept.
It may not be the type of evidence one wishes, it might not be appropriate to prove a particular point, but IT IS EVIDENCE, willard.
> anecdotal evidence is, or can be, scientific evidence…it depends on what one wants to prove.
“Proof” is the wrong scientific concept. It is only valid in the judicial context. DavidE’s prejudice is showing.
Start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
davideisenstadt –
==> “Wrong.
Mosh, citing anecdotes IS presenting evidence…its called “anecdotal evidence”.”
Interesting concept that, “anecdotal evidence.”
What is “anecdotal evidence?” An observation? An opinion? Is a lie “anecdotal evidence?”
What are the criteria you’d use to determine what is or isn’t “anecdotal evidence?”
What mosher said is that citing anecdotes is not evidence. Well, it certainly isn’t scientific evidence.
That’s one of my frequent points her at Climate Etc, when “skeptics” who claim to be interested in “truth” and “science” make statements of fact that are merely opinions, like when they describe why public opinions about climate change are what they are, or how the public judges scientists, or why “skeptics” believe what they believe, or why I believe what I believe, or even what it is that I believe.
Yes, indeed, this notion of “anecdotal evidence” does serve us well to understand and perhaps explain much of what we read in these here threads.
willard:
Way to ignore the example I gave you…if one is arguing that particular phenomena are possible, an anecdote is all one needs.
Anecdotal evidence isn’t particularly strong, but it is evidence. Just take the time and energy to reread my prior post above, and respond to the example I gave you. Is not the example, the anecdote, if you will, of the Wright brothers’ flight…evidence that heavier than air flight is possible?
Is not the successful test of the nuclear bomb at alamogordo, a single event, an anecdote, if you will, proof of fission?
http://racingweight.com/blog/dont-blame-the-dentist-for-your-cavities/
Perhaps the claims about the harm caused by dietary recommendations are about as accurate as the claims made that we’re headed for “economic suicide” and millions of poor children in Africa are starving because of subsidies for solar energy?
Call it what you will…
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20150314/us–social_security-bad_records-09ec06b943.html
even good information can cause bad affects to other people.
Gomer –
I’m not understanding your point. Please explain.
I can see Joshua is busily mucking up the blog with endless replies and accusations. I we were on an island, I would be happy to vote him or her off.
So you ‘don’t know’ the affect?
Hi jim2 –
As always, thanks for reading. I can’t tell you how much it means to me!
==> “An entire egg industry almost disappeared. ”
Certainly nether an exhaustive nor conclusive examination of the evidence, but to paraphrase Mark Twain, perhaps the rumors of the almost disappearance of an industry are greatly exaggerated?
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/poulsci/tech_manuals/images/poultry_industry4.gif
==> “Bad Bad beef nearly followed.
http://www.earth-policy.org/images/uploads/graphs_tables/highlights25_meatpercap.PNG
Look up the word “marginal” as it pertains to microeconomics, joshie. We know that economics is a subject that you know as little about as climate, but you can learn. Those charts show very sizable declines in demand for those products. Producers at the margin will have been driven out of business. A lot of people will have lost their jobs. Don’t you care about the people, joshie? Or is it OK that people lost jobs, because Rihoo has engaged in a little hyperbole?
Joshua,
I can’t seem to get the image loaded but if you Google “egg consumption” you will find an image demonstrating a decline in US per capita egg consumption from a peek of @ 375 in 1950 to a nadir of 225/year in 1995 and then a plateau. As you know, the US population increased and the per capita had decreased based in large measure upon the recommendations of expert panels. I suggest you do the same for beef.
Where did some of the eggs and beef go? Off shore to more willing markets.
Hi Don –
==> “Those charts show very sizable declines in demand for those products”
Right. But my question is whether that supports a claim that the industry “almost disappeared?”
Further, even if it did (which remains unclear to me – although maybe RiHo08 will yet provide evidence for his/her claim), we’d need to know more about the causality behind the changes in per capita consumption to accept RiHo08’s implication of causality. Dietary/nutritional fads are not something new with the introduction of concerns about cholesterol and I suspect that the related mechanism of causality is easily over-simplified if people are viewing it through ideologically-colored glasses.
It’s interesting to watch the politicization of the emerging science related to dietary health. The exploitation of the issue by climate “skeptics” is one of the more interesting aspects. When “skeptics” make unskeptical arguments related to other issues (that, perhaps, are a bit less technical and thus easier for me to evaluate), I find that interesting. So shoot me.
It’s all interesting stuff, IMO, stuff that I think that Mr. Uncertainty T. Monster would also be interested in. So I”m asking him to make a reappearance in the week in review.
RiHo08 –
==> “As you know, the US population increased and the per capita had decreased based in large measure upon the recommendations of expert panels.”
Any comments on the links I provided w/r/t the association between dietary recommendations and dietary habits?
I’m a bit familiar with some of the data on guidelines for physical activity and prevalence rates of youth who meet those guidelines (about 20% or so). The causal linkage between expert recommendations and personal habits is complicated…in fact, that’s one of the more important aspects of what is revealed in the emerging evidence related to epidemiological studies of diet-related health outcomes.
Little joshie, with his usual opportunistic and trivial BS:
“Right. But my question is whether that supports a claim that the industry “almost disappeared?”
The scientists got the science wrong and promoted cholesterol alarmism that caused damaging economic dislocations, by discouraging the folks from taking advantage of a cheap and nutritious source of protein, lest their lives be shortened. You purposely dodged the point, joshie. We call that being dishonest.
Beef vs Chicken
http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/888912/dh_findings_fig09.png
Don, you seem to be assuming that its the anti-cholesterol campaign that is largely responsible for the change in egg consumption, dare I say, without any proof.
A quick look at some US consumption stats suggest that the US diet has changed in many ways and for many different, complex reasons. For example anti-cholesterol hasnt done anything to the growing popularity of fast food over the past decades. In fact it could be this very fact thats partly responsible for decline in eggs, who knows.
An old Italian saying, possibly originating in times of famine, is that an egg a day keeps the doctor away.
‘Struth.
=====
It’s the dentist that an apple a day keeps away.
==========
HR
Beware the Ides of March
“A quick look at some US consumption stats suggest that the US diet has changed in many ways and for many different, complex reasons.”
Indeed this is a statement with which many people will agree. It’s like the statement that climate is changing all the time.
OTOH, a statement like “CO2 is the control knob to climate” is both bold and assertive, something one can sink their teeth into. It may not be true, but it is startling. Grabs you attention.
Now the evidence for statements about “unhealthy” food in school cafeterias comes from non-other than our First Lady and her widely publicized pronouncements of such calamity in the school lunch program. It is true that the kids are dumping their lunches into the trash container and preferring to go hungry for part of the afternoon until they get out of school, passing McDonalds as they wend their way home.
“For example anti-cholesterol hasnt done anything to the growing popularity of fast food over the past decades.” And just how long has the anti-fat in the school lunch campaign been so widely publicized and steps taken to implement?
Again, the “facts” of a changing American diet is evident. The reasons why there is an ant-fat campaign has to do with decades of efforts, mostly by expert panels who pick and choose whichever data that fits their opinions gets pronounced as “facts.”
What I started out to say, that the current crop of climate scientists have been picking and choosing their set of facts to advance their opinions both scientifically and politically. No different than the “health” promoters coming from National Laboratories, Renowned Clinical Centers, and the ubiquitous participants to talking head shows. Remember Geritol: “feel stronger fast”, that is of course, if you are iron deficient, and if you are not, then… liver side effects; not many, just enough though.
Bad link at “Nice introductory article on entropy and the arrow of time.”
The URL looks right, but it has a blank at the very end.
I hesitate to click that link, for where I’ll read I know not where.
====================
There’s no turning back…
The Guardian is a bit confused, the e-mails were not private and the reputation damage was quite warranted.
Merchants of Doubt has taken in about $20K, since it’s big debut on March, 6. Mostly repeat business. Gatesy has been seven times and jimmy dee has been living on popcorn and M&Ms.
If they can manage to take in another 20 grand they are going to make a sequel:
Son of Merchants of Doubt: How Big Egg and Big Beef Thwarts the Settled Cholesterol Science
Predictably got high scores on Rotten Tomatoes. Of course the audience score was high, Who would see this movie but the most fevered alarmists. As to the critics, like most journalists the great majority have no clue. A.O. Scott from where else, the NYT’s, calls it “informative and infuriating.” At least he got the infuriating right. But they’ll be showing it in public schools soon, so real damage will be done.
The NYT’s critic is very helpful. How many people are going to pay to see a film that’s going to inform and infuriate them? Answer: about $20k worth. How many is that, at about ten bucks per coconut?
And don’t worry about the public school kids being exposed. They are already far gone.
My children attended inner-city public schools in Dallas and Houston – all grades. My son begins his residency in June at the perennial #-1 ranked training program for his chosen specialty in the world. Ten medical students world wide land a seat.
You’re as full of it as ever.
Well, you sure got me there jayceeH. I forgot that inner-city public schools were known for turning out top-ten-in-the-world med school grads. How many who started with your kids in grade school are in prison? I can find the stats for you, if you haven’t kept track of your kids classmates. I can also testify from my own experience having matriculated through the Detroit public school and criminal justice systems. Really, please tell me more about inner-city public schools.
The entire $20k most likely came from Manhattan’s West Side and at $20 a pop, it means a lot of empty seats even there.
Loved the title of this paper: “How Climate Model Complexity Influences Sea Ice Stability”
Change the model complexity and improve the ice stability. Simplez! We can all go home now.
The Reps claim of a lack of transparency on SCC is rather strange. There is a large scientific literature on these silly computations. A Google Scholar search on “social cost of carbon” gives over 4000 hits. The Feds are going out a preposterous 300 years for their damages from today’s emissions. There is no secret here, just starkly visible scientific absurdity.
A mini “global” set of oceans which are interesting to consider: http://research.noaa.gov/News/NewsArchive/LatestNews/TabId/684/ArtMID/1768/ArticleID/10944/NOAA-and-partners-document-surge-in-Great-Lakes-water-levels-.aspx
I worked with a fellow back in the 1970s, who had managed Great Lakes shoreland programs beginning in the 1950s. He explained to me the cyclical history of Great Lakes levels at the time we were seeking $6 million in funding in 1986 to mitigate record high levels. As I recall the all time low for Superior is 1926, while for Michigan-Huron it is 1964.
That natural variability thing just keeps popping up every time I turn around.
The Corps has a weekly update on the levels that is interesting.
Judith –
Related to energy:
A long, well-done, powerful, and apparently banned-in-China Ted-like video on externalities related to fossil fuel usage in China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6X2uwlQGQM
Perhaps you or a “denizen” would like to comment on the science in the video?
China needs to move away from coal to NG quickly.
the science is pretty firm on the potential hazard of pm25.
The estimates of shortened life expectancy are a bit wonky ( big uncertainty)
but PM25 aint a beauty product.
China really wants to be green. Not just the people–the top leadership as well.
Pity they can’t.
They don’t have the water to get the gas out of the ground:
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21587789-desperate-measures
They need more fearless activists over there to pressure the thugocracy to stop poisoning their people for the fun and profit of Communist Party apparatchiks and the brass hat pirates who run the lucrative enterprises of the People’s Army. Don’t hold your breath.
Did they mention CO2 in that thing, joshie? It’s probably the least of their worries:
http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/
Anyway, the Chinese thugocracy and the Obama Pen & Phone regime have an agreement to solve the alleged CO2 problem.
Tom the wide eyed idealistic socialist thinks the Chinese leadership wants to be green. They want the green, Tom.
Do you remember smog days in Los Angeles? They are rare now. Is it because LA moved away from cars?
Coal itself is not dirty. But you can burn it in a dirty way – cheaply. Or cleanly, at a cost. Scrubbers. No science. Technology.
Mosher, the net effects of greater energy availability are demonstrably longer and healthier lives. As with the UK’s Industrial Revolution, so with China’s rapid growth: there are costs such as pollution which are accepted until a particular level of economic development is reached, and which then become a source of concern, so that the trade-off between growth and pollution changes, with more attention given to amenities such as clean air. In Britain, this gained significant traction only after recovery from the devastation of WWII. The Clean Air Act was passed in 1956, but significant action to reduce pollution was first undertaken in the early ’60s.
Deep Sea Gas: China Follows Japan in Pursuit of New Energy Source
[…]
[…]
[…]
Faust:
“Mosher, the net effects of greater energy availability are demonstrably longer and healthier lives.”
utterly besides the point.
PM25 is not a beauty product. when you can demonstrate that it leads to longer lives collect your nobel proze
Faustino,
“Mosher, the net effects of greater energy availability are demonstrably longer and healthier lives.”
Mosher,
“utterly besides the point.
PM25 is not a beauty product. when you can demonstrate that it leads to longer lives collect your nobel proze”
Another faux pas of honesty from the Church of CAGW.
The net effect is irrelevant. What matters is one isolated component of the issue which favors the warmist agenda.
So what if the admittedly negative effects of PM2.5 are far outweighed by the benefits of the use of the fuels that results in their emissions? This is not even a question anyone should ask. They should just shut up and do what they’re told – all 1.3 billion + of them.
I can’t show that car accident fatalities are a net good for mankind, therefore we should ban automobiles. Situational logic – Mosher style,
Which just goes to show that cost benefit is not the real issue here, power is. As it always is when dealing with progressives.
steven mosher, “PM25 is not a beauty product. when you can demonstrate that it leads to longer lives collect your nobel proze.
China’s plan to reduce PM10 and PM2.5 ran into an interesting snag. By their estimates about 50% of PM2.5 is naturally occurring in one of the most polluted nations in the world. You run into a situation where is costs more to get less improvement. Health wise, the impact needs to be based on realistic natural background estimates instead of SWAGs based on an environmentalist’s wonderland.
http://srv2.lemig.umontreal.ca/donnees/geo6143/lectures/6143_IIB.pdf
Greening the Sahel would likely do more than ultra low sulfur diesel to reduce PM in some areas and that “pine fresh” scent that many love is due to pm25. It would also reduce damage to those sensitive coral reefs you hear about all the time. Looks like there are a few confounding factors involved to me. So how about finding a laptop so you can outline your plans to save the world without the mis-spelled sound bites. .The US would be a nice place to start. You can show us just how much pm25 bang we can expect for the buck.
Joshua, pay attention. Judith linked to this last week. Perhaps you were too busy writing about the hypocrisy of humans who invade your proprietary space here.
There’s very little science in the video,although it is accurate as far as I can tell. Most of the numbers have been published outside of China (I have used them a lot at my place of business.)
There are around 100 cities in China with more than a million inhabitants. Most of them can be described best as London in 1951 and a half.
A doctor in Shanghai told me that if she could ban outdoor exercise she would. Sales of bottled water have gone through the roof. People used to send their children to universities abroad to get a better education. Now they do it to get them out of toxic China. (Oooh, I think I just named my next post…)
All of this has been public knowledge outside of China for a decade. The impact of this video is that it was allowed to circulate inside of China for a couple of weeks, which was enough for it to attract more than 200 million views. Which is an indication that the Chinese are quite concerned about this. More than one of every three Chinese with access to the internet watched the video.
Sadly, their political and economic system is set up to resist the changes they need most.
A friend of mine got a grant to buy a tank and convert it into a mobile lab, to sample East German waste dumps after the wall came down.
He specialized in kidney disease and looked a kidney damage in factory workers. His biggest problem was that he could not identify a control population, everyone who lived Ost had some degree of kidney damage, due to Communism.
> everyone who lived Ost had some degree of kidney damage, due to Communism.
Ideology goes deep.
Willard can’t accept the fact that communism causes a weak economy compared to capitalism. Only richer countries can afford to run a “clean” industrial economy, so the link to communism is well conceived.
jim2 can’t accept that communism doesn’t rush into the blood stream and that trade embargos by capitalist countries may be involved in the ideological warfare.
Wasn’t “Communism” supposed to be a superior economic system? Then why did they need trade with the west? The “embargos” certainly didn’t hurt the “inferior” capitalist countries.
The Soviet Union confiscated many factories from Eastern Germany:
They also rejected the Marshall Plan
All this makes it clear that, from the end of WWII, the Soviet Union considered itself prepared for a full economic competition with the West, not requiring the trade that was “embargoed” They wanted to compete on “equal” terms, and they lost.
As is always the case when socialist systems compete with (even semi-)free market capitalist systems. That’s why they’re so hot for world government: only by infiltrating and subverting an overarching world government can they “compete”, by using their control to put regulatory and other bureaucratic roadblocks in the way of free enterprise.
http://i58.tinypic.com/2vjwsg9.png
http://www.naturalgaseurope.com/images/screen%20shot%202013-02-11%20at%203_53_22%20pm%281%29.png
China’s methane hydrates hold frozen promise
> by using their control to put regulatory and other bureaucratic roadblocks in the way of free enterprise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embargo
So much the worse for the myth of capitalism as free enterprise.
IIRC I personally have never described
itthe system that won the Cold War as anything but “(semi-)free enterprise”. (Not here, anyway.) And I’ve also referenced the process by which Western European nation-states (led by England) developed capitalism, and the free market, as part of the process supporting military competition. Even Adam Smith accepted the need for certain types of boundaries, IIRC.“Mosher, I question your understanding of weighing downsides against upsides. In the engineering profession we call those tradeoffs. I’m not sure what english/philosophy majors with delusions of numeracy call it.”
weighing downsides against upsides is my day job.
In the case of China it involves considering all of the options.
Now if you believe in the wisdom of central planning, then you probably buy the argument that the upsides of building coal plants with scrubbers
and then turning the scrubbers off, out weigh the downsides.
If you believe in the wisdom of central planning then you probably believe that it makes sense for certain areas of china to give coal away to residents to burn for heating. The simple fact is that PM25 is not a beauty product and the sooner China moves away from it the better.
I’m sorry. I failed to look at the graph of life expectancy in China. I was wrong and now see with crystal clarity that the benefits of industrialization outweigh the hazards of air and water pollution with regard to health and welfare.
Please excuse my ignorance. I was drinking heavily last night and not thinking clearly this morning.
Steven Mosher at 4.56
Mmm. How did we know that was you David?
Tonyb
==> “Now if you believe in the wisdom of central planning,”
Classic libertarian binary thinking.
PS Note my use of the royal “we”. That’s because I’m a smarmy, smug Limey and bloody proud of it!
Tonyb
http://extension.usu.edu/plugins/work/blogger/436/Pm25.jpg
> I’ve also referenced the process by which Western European nation-states (led by England) developed capitalism, and the free market, as part of the process supporting military competition.
Let’s reference some more:
http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/E-N/Embargoes-and-Sanctions-Cold-war-sanctions.html
Damn socialists, who “use their control to put regulatory and other bureaucratic roadblocks.”
Not many real roadblocks there. Just pro forma flag waving. You’ll have to find another excuse for the failure of your clay-footed idol.
“The simple fact is that PM25 is not a beauty product and the sooner China moves away from it the better.”
+10
East Asian non-smokers have a high lung cancer morbidity when compared to other groups. Apparently they also respond better to treatment although in the case of lung cancer one might question what ‘better’ entails.
ban joshua…tradeoff’s? Somehow I think public health professionals have a different perspective.
Also get over your ‘English major’ hangup…and your big burly engineer cliche.
BTW did you notice that 2/3’s of the increase occurred between 1950 and 1975? In addition the Chinese improvement parallels the US improvement from 1980-2010.
From that same link
> You’ll have to find another excuse for the failure of your clay-footed idol.
That would be Doc’s, which now becomes AK’s ad hoc explanation based on the good old dichotomies between “regulatory and other bureaucratic roadblocks” and “free enterprise.” While there is merit in underlining the URSS’ inefficiency, it still remains a caricature to argue in favor of some kind of libertarian utopia. This caricature does not suffice to explain why:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2812%2960033-6/abstract
China, China, China.
***
Invisible hands wave flags like no one else. The bottom line is that the good old dichotomies between “regulatory and other bureaucratic roadblocks” and “free enterprise” have been used over and over again during the Cold War. Demonizing the Soviet Union helped justify interventionism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Z05xyGB0c
Let AK rationalize this as a “part of the process supporting military competition” and the “need for certain types of boundaries.” Such “boundaries” can easily become “occupying” hazards.
Auditors should note that we still have no audited numbers of the Irak intervention.
Depends on what you mean by “rationalize”. The “Western” system of (somewhat) free-market capitalism evolved, IMO as part of the same process in which nation-states evolved, during the collapse of the Roman Catholic Imperium (split Papacy, Reformation). This was roughly synchronous with, and IMO in a positive feedback relationship with, the military transition from armored aristocratic cavalry to infantry as the primary military arm. Beginning with the English longbow, with further progress depending on gunpowder, both of which the Papacy was unable to forbid because it was involved in wars too fundamental for such self-restriction.
AFAIK, the free-market system, as originally pioneered by the semi-autonomous city-states of the Hanseatic League, was adapted by the nascent nation-states for purposes of economic support as the cost of warfare escalated with the increasing need for gunpowder and gunpowder weapons. The British success in warfare was attributed (probably correctly IMO) to their (somewhat) more level economic playing field.
As such, tariffs and other economic boundaries with other nations evolved right along with the national (semi-)free market system, although perhaps in a different form than the Hanseatic League was used to. If there actually was a period when any major polity actually supported the ideals of free and open markets without any borders, I’m unaware of it.
Obviously, to actually back all the above opinion up with references would involve writing a book, which I don’t have time for, and anyway doubt that many people would be interested in reading. So I’ll jump right to the bottom line: I regard the (semi-)free market capitalism typical of the West as mostly a tool of national aspirations.
Britain became very successful using a form of it, and so did the US, especially after WWII. But both, just like China today, used it as a tool of national competition, in support (financial, industrial, and technical) of their warmaking capacity and control of their citizenry.
China has a vast population seeking to up their standard of living in a short time. Providing shelter, energy and material goods is a huge challenge. During my recent visit I was amazed at the number of cars and the lack of older cars. In the parts of China I was in, they just didn’t have many in years past. Construction of housing and others is booming (maintenance not so impressive). It was very surprising to see coal plants seemingly deliberately interspersed with major housing and commercial buildings.
Urban, energy, population, industrial and environmental planning efforts require a balance and many tradeoffs. It seems obvious to me the pressures of a large demanding population have things out of whack in much of China.
I believe every nation needs a balancing of factors. I don’t believe that utilities or environmentalists should be given unfettered power but rather all need to articulate and promote their values. In some western countries the balance is off due to excessive promotion of minor environmental concerns at times. In China the balance is off because of the unfettered value of growth. I appreciate greatly the environmental input that has kept the USA from looking like China, but when the balance tips so far that it cripples growth for questionable environmental gain, i say the environmental voices should be balanced against other concerns. We are so unlike China- there are ditches on both sides of the road.
+1.
What you see there is a measure of how much humans want to be warm and well fed. It takes a vibrant economy to get that done and a vibrant economy feeds on cheap energy. Even with the pollution, people still want creature comforts even more. It will sort itself out in time.
More thoughts on China (like much of the environmental discussion lacking in firm facts or experience). China is an environmental train wreck. The news appears grim, but I fearit will come out worse when we understand the environmental damage they are doing to produce “clean solar” technology for the world. A lot of their coal pollution (as least in parts of the nation) come from heating water for steam heat which is primitive in many cases.(With cheap coal and a disregard for the environment, you don’t need to be a genius to design a low cost local steam system. My observation was they were very tight in NE China with electric energy but the steam heat was cranked up quite high and I didn’t see any particular efforts to limit or conserve that.) The story on their manufacturing and waste disposal processes is likely equally grim. It is so much more than a problem of how they are producing electrical energy.
In producing electrical energy the cost of cleaner and cleaner production rises exponentially. Speaking roughly, filtering out the first 80% is easier, the next 10% harder and each percent after tougher still. China has a bunch of plants that would be rat ed D- to complete failures in the US. Replacing a few of these with ultra lean plants is not cost effective or even likely sensible. I suspect the most cost effective approach would be to replace and modify as much of their vast array of F and D- resources with technology that would maybe only be a C- in the US ( or maybe even the equivalent of some of our soon to be retired coal plants). Mixing in some limited expensive hi tech with their existing pool may make better PR, but practically they should go for the low hanging fruit. The economy and the environment would jointly benefit.
It’s not a peak, it’s a plateau:
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/voices/energetics/is-coal-really-peaking-in-china
Looks structurally similar to the paws thing, but in reverse.
Or maybe not. Who knows? I sure don’t.
> Or maybe not. Who knows? I sure don’t.
Beware your wishes, Big Dave.
Ask Slashdot: Why Does Science Appear To Be Getting Things Increasingly Wrong?
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/15/03/13/2053227/ask-slashdot-why-does-science-appear-to-be-getting-things-increasingly-wrong
Something on what coal-state politicians should be doing to plan ahead as coal becomes less competitive in the modern world.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-winston/what-senator-mcconnell-sh_b_6865092.html
> Nobody is going to read that crap
I just did, Don Don. It points to this:
http://there100.org/
There’s also an interesting study about grid parity.
Too bad you won’t read it.
Most states baccking away from renewable commitments ( too expensive ).
http://www.coca-colacompany.com/press-center/press-releases/epa-recognizes-coca-cola-refreshments-among-nations-top-green-energy-users
Capt. D.
Now this ought peak Joshua’s irony meter considering how they fizz up those sodas!
Meant this to go here:
Capt. D.
Now this ought peak Joshua’s irony meter considering how they fizz up those sodas!
Aw, never mind………..
A win for academic freedom:
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/21611/
And an example of an attempt by academia to stifle dissent.
The things people will build to give a better view.
“The project to ‘solve the climate change problem’ is a modern version of the biblical Tower of Babel. We do not know how much the project will cost, when it will have been completed, nor what success will look like.”
M. K.
The base of a tower stuck in an arid desert, falling into ruins.
From Judith’s twittered article, we learn that the RS is wisely ignoring the extremists typified by this Michael Kelly, and continuing with following the science. He seems disappointed.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2995239/Why-Royal-Society-wrong-climate-change-devastating-critique-world-s-leading-scientific-organisation-one-Fellows.html
Well, as long as you backhand the CAGW advocates as well, that’s ok.
Is it warming? Sure.
Is some of it due to CO2? Yeah probably.
Does that add up to CAGW? Not a chance.
1. 22 PPM CO2 = 0.2 W from a recent observational study. (Model studies have only the value of the paper they are written on).
2. Recent story that CO2 emissions may be plateauing.
3. At 500 PPM environmental absorption will be at least 5% greater than current emissions.
0.2*(100/22) = 0.9 W. That’s about 1/4°C no matter how you slice it.
Is 1/4°C going to make a tinker’s damn worth of difference? No.
JimD
Obviously I have missed something. Michael Kelly is highly regarded and one of the inner circle.
In what shape or form is he an extremist?
Don’t forget the RS motto from 1663 is ‘take nobody’s word for it ‘
https://royalsociety.org/about-us/history/
Their web site states the motto was ‘to withstand the domination of authority’ and ‘to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment’.
Surely Michael Kelly is adhering to the RS own requirements?
tonyb
jimD
This is Michael Kelly Fellow of the Royal Society and one of the panel who investigated the CRU email leak and found nothing untoward at CRU.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kelly_(physicist)
He is an insider. Please explain your extremist comment.
tonyb
tonyb, the Royal Society has 1600 highly regarded members. It is very presumptive of Michael Kelly to want to assert his personal view on their already very general statements on human-caused climate change. He is being the squeaky wheel, and trying to denigrate the rest of the membership in the process. That is not a way to get your opinion accepted. It is hard science that sways opinion with these independent academic societies (NAS, APS, etc.). This is the latest RS document on climate change.
https://royalsociety.org/~/media/policy/Publications/2015/02-03-2015-international-framework-statement-resilience.pdf
Heh, the wheel would not squeak were there not friction and impending heat. Nor, Jim D, is enforcing an authoritarian consensus a good way for science to poke its slow way forward.
==========================
Another more pertinent RS report from last year.
https://royalsociety.org/~/media/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/climate-change-q-and-a.pdf
The GWPF recently came up with a response that Kelly refers to.
http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/03/Shortguide.pdf
JimD
So is Michael Kelly to be less ‘highly regarded’ because he is doing exactly what he should be doing, querying the status quo?
You used the word ‘extremists’. How does he fit into that category please?
tonyb
In this environment, to squeak is to be extreme, making Jim D’s job of marginalizing easy enough for a camp guard.
==========================
tonyb, he can express his opinion against the RS publications as much as he likes. His views are probably not widely held in the RS, but that should not stop him. The only argument he puts forwards for his views are very selective on time scales, making a common mistake, and therefore looks cherry-picked, unfortunately. He needs to do better.
tonyb, “extremist” on the climate sensitivity scale. He probably has a narrow error bar that excludes the 3 C per doubling possibility. This would be an extremist by my definition. I suspect most RS members would allow for the IPCC central estimate to be correct with a non-negligible probability.
Science isn’t consensus driven. Never has been, never will be.
jim2, yes, science is only evidence driven. Consensus reviews of the science are just needed for politicians to make decisions. It is done all the time. Climate change isn’t the first time this has been done.
Jim D | March 15, 2015 at 12:34 pm |
..
It is hard science that sways opinion with these independent academic societies (NAS, APS, etc.).
When have global warmers done any hard science? Twiddling with models is not hard science.
The scarcity of studies to observationally measure TCS and ECS for CO2 and attempt to bound the forcing estimate to +/- 10% is dismaying.
The fact that this wasn’t done BEFORE making global warming claims is just depressing.
PA, these scientists from other disciplines, who have nothing to gain in terms of funding for AGW, have an independent opinion on the science itself. So far none of the independent societies disagree, and then you get tech companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google with climate statements. What do they gain? You need these opinions. The more the better. Not working out well for the skeptics so far, because their supporters most often seem vested in some way.
Micheal Kelly’s article fails on many key points, all of which he should clearly know better. The most important point of failure (and one that snags many) is the idea that the failure of the GCM’s to track the exact evolution of the climate since 1998 proves they are wrong, etc. He writes:
“…since 1998 there has been no statistically significant rise in global temperatures at all. This flies in the face of the confident predictions made by nearly all the climate computer models that the temperature would continue to rise as it did from 1975 to 1998.”
It is almost embarrassing to witness such a learned man writes such nonsense.
R Gates:
Would you care to point out exactly where he said that that proves the models wrong?
Then perhaps reconsider who it is who is writing nonsense here.
How so? The models clearly “project” a higher rate of warming than is evident in the observations and the “cause” of the discrepancy was not mentioned prior to the divergence. Now there are something like 60 after the fact explanations being proposed and the number will most likely increase as long as there is a significant difference between modeled and observed conditions.
If your stock broker sold you one a steady 20% return on your retirement fund but it flatlined, you would probably have a few questions for you broker. Questioning climate science though seems to be forbidden.
Kelly pretty much just stated the obvious.
Heh, we even know why ‘nearly all the climate computer models’ failed to predict the pause. Doesn’t R Gates know? Shocking.
===================
Michael Kelly is pointing out the failure of climate models to predict the “hiatus” period. Simply an incorrect criticism.
Here’s a good analogy about models:
Imagine you wanted to model the path of a simple leaf falling from the top of a hundred meter tower. To make it simple, assume absolutely no wind at all. Now from a physics standpoint, we know all the dynamics involved in that falling leaf. Gravity, turbulent flows across the leaf, etc. Thus, a model of the falling leaf has all the right dynamics. So, your model makes a simulation of the falling leaf and even predicts where it will land at the base of the tower. You drop the leaf, and what do you find? Uh oh, with just a few seconds the leaf is already of the predicted path to the ground, as it floats side to side in deterministic, yet chaotic patterns. In the end, the leaf lands close to where your model said it would, but close is only relative.
Next step, you take a bushel of leaves up to the top of the tower and drop them one by one. Again, there is no wind at all. Each of them takes a unique path, completely deterministic, yet completely off the path your model predicted. But, after dropping thousands of them to the ground, you look down, and what do you see? The leaves are scattered in a seemingly random pattern, centered around the spot your model said a single leaf would fall. Your model is validated.
Now, you gain some confidence in your model and you add a “forcing” to it. A 5 m/s wind from the north. Your model now predicts the target landing location for the leaf to shift because of this forcing. You wait for the perfect actual day in which a 5 m/s wind is blowing from the north and drop your first leaf. You know it won’t follow the exact path your model predicts, but you have confidence the dynamics are right. This single leaf represents the actual evolution of our real climate system. We only have one actual “leaf” to fall, and we know our models will never predict the exact path. The problem is that the wind or GH forcing is not static, but steadily increasing.
R Gates, you’ve explained at length why the models failed to predict the pause. The modelers didn’t expect heat to be so slippery and hide where we can’t find it.
==================
@cd: If your stock broker sold you one a steady 20% return on your retirement fund but it flatlined, you would probably have a few questions for you broker. Questioning climate science though seems to be forbidden.
So Cap’n, you’re saying that if your broker had put you in Berkshire Hathaway in say 1990, and it flatlined over the 5 years 2007-2012 (as it did), you’d have questions for your broker?
There is no such thing as a “steady” retirement fund that is remotely as aggressive as 20%. Such retirement funds are guaranteed to fluctuate. In the short term the fluctuations are hard to explain—whether Warren Buffet saw that 5-year flatline coming in 2005 is a good question. But in the long term when those fluctuations are averaged out a well-managed fund will show the sorts of gains we’ve seen in indexes like S&P—any better than that takes a combination of skill and a strong stomach for risk.
A glance at annual HadCRUT4 shows a similar pattern, namely that climate is not “steady”. If you filter out all fluctuations slower than 5 years, you’re left with considerable variations up and down that climate models couldn’t possibly predict because no one has a reliable theory of them.
The proper question is which fluctuations do global climate models claim to model. If they’re modeling 20-year climate, meaning a 20-year running mean of global mean surface temperature, which is the standard used in the IPCC definition of transient climate response (the WMO uses 30 years in its definition of climate), then that’s fine for predicting 20-year climate in 2100, which is all that’s needed. No one cares today whether the nearest El Nino to 2100 happens in 2098 or 2102 (though they’ll presumably care more in 2097).
But if you’re modeling 20-year climate then the pause doesn’t contradict the models because 20-year climate shows no sign of a pause.
Whether the pause will continue beyond 2010 is an excellent question. The very strong upwards trend that started in 2011 suggests not, but we should wait a few more years before jumping to any conclusions.
r. gates, that is an absolutely wonder explanation of complexity. Had that been published about 20 years ago by the modelers it would have been timely. “AFTER the FACT” though it doesn’t have as much credibility. 60 reasons for the pause after a decade of denial of the pause just isn’t all that credible, which is Kelly’s point.
You are an apologists for over confident bumblers who also have this over riding need to drive policy to save the world from their bumbling. A good deal of the “denialist” media is just pointing out how ridiculous the bumblers are in their desperation save their butts.
Well, fine except that you haven’t any idea of the natural forcings between now and 2100, so your models might as well be modeling fantasy.
There you go.
=======
But all that modeling of fantasy has proven useful, ironically, in the failure of the models. They have shown, so far, that modeled sensitivity is too high, or that heat is being shunted to where it can’t hurt us and may help us someday.
For that I am grateful. Now, can we get on with what must needs be done?
==========================
R.Gates,
like your analogy of the falling leaf.
To make it consistent though, you have to have a model that explains why that leaf just hangs there in the air – for 18 + years, without wind.
And no fair saying there is a hidden leaf elsewhere doing the falling for the one we are watching.
Remember, the GCMs have been sold to the public as predicting future Global Average Temperature. It’s on all the best IPCC graphs.
Now this PR choice was made for a number of reasons: because reported GAT was travellng inexorably upward at the time; the atmosphere reacts much more quickly to an increase in temperature/heat content (temporary or otherwise); and in the atmosphere is, after all, where we live.
None of which changes the fact that they have failed miserably at predicting what the modelers claimed for so long that they could predict, with laughable precision.
Now you can offer all sorts of rationalizations for why the models failed, and are failing, but you cannot say (honestly) that they predicted the climatus interruptus in the reported surface temps.
vaughan Pratt, “The very strong upwards trend that started in 2011 suggests not, but we should wait a few more years before jumping to any conclusions.”
And perhaps the alarmists should have waited a few years before sounding the alarm. If you were just getting into a retirement fund and had many years before retirement you should expect some short term variation. But when you are just a few years from retirement, that flatline is more painful. Climate science was busily selling the urgency all the while the pause lengthened. As it is now, the models aren’t out performing a simple linear regression. You have Michael Mann publishing his 2015 version of the stick with data ending in 1998. You have NOAA wtf NOAA publishing cartoons based on highly questionable research.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/comic_rollercoaster_610.jpg
While the younger generation of climate scientists publish papers questioning the validity of the more vocal climate activists research.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-hVnd1uOfaiQ/VKcIuuh2W_I/AAAAAAAAMD0/E7s1oqFYxok/w971-h515-no/lamb%2Bwith%2Boppo.png
Climate science is getting that retro look. Perhaps it is not quite a bad as it was “projected” to be.
Please, Gaia, tailfins again.
==========
R.Gates, you are too quick to judge Michael Kelly’s criticism as simply incorrect. In your falling leaf model analogy you describe a key step followed by the statement: “The model is validated.” This is the step and result that is missing from climate model development and it is the step that Michael Kelly and others want to see taken before they have confidence in model output. Michael Kelly is correct to point out that until climate models are validated, the failure of the models to predict the “hiatus” is evidence that the climate models may in fact be invalid.
BTW, I think your analogy highlights a problem with one climate science claim, that it is easier to predict the climate 100 years from now as opposed to ten years from now. Your falling leaf model will produce much more accurate results from a 10 meter tower as opposed to the 100 meter tower.
Models can produce the temperature rise of 0.7 C since 1950 only with GHGs increasing. They produce the right 60-year warming amounts, including the whole hiatus, because up to 1998, the global temperature was running ahead of the model average. The skeptics never address the broader issue about how much warming there has been since 1950 preferring to avoid talking about the 60-year period as a whole. Kelly has another example of this narrow-minded view in his writing, but we see the same thing all the time in their op-eds. You can predict that they won’t talk about how much warming there has been since 1950 because it is inconvenient to their message.
JImD
I will get it in the neck from Mosh for using historic context, but why look at warming only since 1950? We can go back much further;
‘The year 1740 is all the more remarkable (very cold) given the anomalous warmth of the 1730s. This decade was the warmest in three of the long temperature series (CET, De Bilt and Uppsala) until the 1990s occurred.
The mildness of the decade is confirmed by the early ice break-up dates for Lake Malaren and Tallinn Harbour. The rapid warming in the CET record from the 1690s to the 1730s and then the extreme cold year of 1740 are examples of the magnitude of natural changes which can
potentially be recorded in long series. Consideration of variability in these records from the early 19th century, therefore, may underestimate the range that is possible.
On an annual basis, mean temperatures for the period 1729–1738 are only 0.3 ◦C below the average for the last ten years (1995–2004, see Figure 1, top panel).
UNUSUAL CLIMATE IN NORTHWEST EUROPE DURING THE
PERIOD 1730 TO 1745 BASED ON INSTRUMENTAL AND
DOCUMENTARY DATA
P. D. JONES and K. R. BRIFFA (2006)
——- —— —–
Why has it been generally warming since 1700? Not 1950 or 1850 but 1700. Surely that merits investigation and explanation, as does the much longer roller coaster ride from the MWP through the LIA to today. Climate isn’t static.
tonyb
tonyb, 75% of all the CO2 emitted was emitted since 1950, and it is no coincidence that this 60-year period also exhibits the largest warming rate of any 60-year period in the global temperature record. This cannot be ignored as evidence.
JimD claims the current warming is “no coincidence,” but can’t prove it.
Jimd
But you had a much greater warming in the 40 year period from 1700 than the 60 year period from 1950 . Perhaps suggesting that natural variability is a major driver as jones seems to be suggesting.?
We are only slightly warmer than the 1730’s and possibly marginally cooler than the 1530’s as we continue our roller coaster climatic ride. The post 1950 period needs to be put in its historic context.
Why do we have this pre co2 effect roller coaster ride?
Tonyb
tonyb, I don’t think that there has ever been a global warming of 0.7 C in 60 years before, and this was on top of an already slightly warm state in 1950.
Models can produce the temperature rise of 0.7 C since 1950 only with GHGs increasing.
Models are theories, not evidence!
tonyb, 75% of all the CO2 emitted was emitted since 1950, and it is no coincidence that this 60-year period also exhibits the largest warming rate of any 60-year period in the global temperature record. This cannot be ignored as evidence.
The 60 year trend is LESS than the trend from 1910 through 1945.
A theory is a hypothesis that fits the evidence and therefore has explanatory power.
Warming since 1950 correlates with global temperature. If the hypothesis fits, wear it, eh JimD?
jim2, the bonus is that it fits the physics of the relative effect of GHGs and what is known from paleoclimate.
Jim D | March 15, 2015 at 3:21 pm |
jim2, the bonus is that it fits the physics of the relative effect of GHGs and what is known from paleoclimate.
What is known from paleoclimate isn’t a lot. The PETM preceded the CO2 rise by about 5K years. Claiming this “proves” CO2 warming is a bit dubious. This claim displays a failure to understand physics, and cause & effect.
The recent decade long observational study (0.2 W for 22 PPM CO2) gives us CO2 Total Forcing = 3.49 ln (C/C0).
Which is in-line with studies than indicate up to 50% negative feedback.
It sort of is what it is. CO2 causes some warming. At the expected peak of 500 PPM it will cause some more warming. But the net effect is going to be more green leafy things (beneficial) and little or no downside.
If CO2 emissions top out at near current levels we could blow smoke for centuries and not get over 500 PPM.
PA, I think that there are some skeptics that still don’t realize that the warm and cold periods in paleoclimate also correspond very well to high and low CO2 levels, and that this is not a coincidence, but explainable by the same physics as AGW uses.
PA, given your hope of topping out at 500 ppm, what do you think of the tar sands, potential Arctic Ocean resources, or China’s idea about tapping coastal methane hydrates? All of this will push us towards the 1000 ppm area. You should be opposed somewhat to finding more fossil fuels(?) Also, 500 ppm leaves a most of the remaining coal in the ground, but that alone is not sufficient.
Gates; would you be happy if the medical profession started to transform blood pressure by doing (systolic+diastolic)/2 ?
I vote him out also. All he does is put up false double standards and nag people.
Secret Science Reform Act of 2015
Apparently has an 11% chance of being enacted. Proposed by Lamar Smith, Representative for Texas’s 21st congressional district: Republican.
11%! There must be a lot of special interests who favor “secret science” in bureaucratic regulation. Or should I say regulatory bureaucracy?
Maybe if they drop the EPA language and let it apply to all federally sponsored research that will be use to form the basis of legislation more people would support it. If it’s good enough for the EPA why not every one else?
Good point, that.
I think of it as an opening wedge. And so, I suspect, do most of its opponents.
It would be prudent to adopt it as a matter of self-preservation, or as a guarantor of future credibility.
Is that too much to expect? I believe in evolution, or at least that evolving social structures must pay some heed to nature.
============================
From the article:
…
Vice President Biden painted skeptics of climate change as stupid in a recent interview.
“I think it’s close to mindless,” he said of skeptics on the HBO program “Vice.” “I think it’s like, you know, almost like denying gravity now.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) at a March meeting was surprised to see that EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy did not know the details of previous climate change models.
“This is a stunning development, that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who should know more than anybody else in the world, who’s proposing hundreds of billions of dollars in costs to prevent this climate and temperature increases, doesn’t know whether their projections have been right or wrong,” Sessions said.
…
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/235717-climate-debate-turns-nasty
I love the headline to the article.
“Climate Debate Turns Nasty”
Maybe we should take a poll of Steve McIntyre, Dr. Curry, Willie Soon, Mark Steyn and a host of others on whether the climate debate is only now turning nasty.
And Sessions should take some lessons in theatrics from the Church of CAGW. Leave the snowballs outside. Just turn down the thermostat and let the grandees experience globalclimatewarmingchange in the flesh.
And notice that for The Hill, the story is not the ignorance of the EPA administrator (which I strongly suspect was…shall we say…artifice), it is about Sessions having the audacity to point it out.
These unruly serfs. How dare they suspect us of being disingenuous when we want them to think we’re merely ignorant. It’s always the same question, McCarthy, McCarthy.
=====================
I’m always extremely busy but I wrote this up just for you. Here’s some witch hunts that should have been top shelf… off topic and late… but …
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-report-shows-how-many-warnings-about-bin-laden-were-ignored-by-the-bush-white-house-2012-9
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/may/12/john-garamendi/prior-benghazi-were-there-13-attacks-embassies-and/
January 2001 and January 2009— “39 attacks or attempted attacks on U.S. embassies and embassy personnel.
In the 20 incidents with at least one fatality, the total death toll was 87”
Do you remember Miguel Recarey, Orlando Bosch, Jose Dionisio Suarez and Virgilio Paz Romero among many others who were running around Florida toting bombs and such and killing hundreds of innocent folks? Google those names… Bosch was even caught towing a radio controlled torpedo behind his car. Jeb and his dad were treating them like Sheriff Andy Taylor and Deputy Barney were Otis, the town drunk.
https://youtu.be/aljgYENg–Y
You honestly feel safe with the Republicans? All they’re saying now is give war a chance, even before the GOP gets a POTUS! Peace doesn’t fund their campaigns, defense contractors and weapons makers dom They jump to send the Poorest in this Nation, the Victims of the Very System They Fight to Protect … to Go Fight Even Poorer Folks!
It is alleged that Ambassador Stevens was actually set up by the CIA. Some say in retaliation for another CIA agent who he caused to go to prison where the agent died. But deep allegations have widespread circumstances attached that now go directly to Syria. As the story goes on the Hill, Stevens was involved in arms dealing. He was selling arms to the Libyan rebels.
This is exactly what I mean about false double standards promulgated by Joshua and now you. Each incident needs to be examined individually to see how far any comparison goes. Was it US personnel killed? Did the US government fail in its duty to do all possible to protect those personnel, as DID NOT happen in the Benghazi incident? In fact, from your own link, we see hints of false equivalency already.
…
We should note that the vast majority of these deaths were not Americans. We counted 63 deaths that were either of non-Americans or of people whose nationality is unknown. Another three were U.S. civilians. Another 21 were workers at the U.S embassy or consulate, either of American or foreign nationality.
…
Joshua’s goal seems to be to dilute legitimate comments with crap, making it hard to follow arguments or find comments that actually contribute to making the blog informative.
jim2 | March 15, 2015 at 9:15 am
Joshua’s goal seems to be to dilute legitimate comments with crap…
As of 320 comments and 25,500 words, Joshua has 25 comments (8%) and 2,500 words (10%) most of which are OT or extraneous. Although, IMHO, Climate Etc. has the overall best content of all the climate blogs, it often is not worth wading thru several commenters who are verbose, OT, and obviously not interested in contribution anything constructive or positive. I would be supportive of a word and/or comment limit. Our Hostess obviously has more patience than I do.
PMH? Wading through? You do know about the scroll wheel, right? If I find certain commenters contributions to be consistently a waste of my time that’s what I do. Just Warwick them and scroll on by.
While I find Joshua’s persistent personal attacks on Dr. Curry irritating, he contributes a viewpoint that is valuable for several reasons. Firstly, on occasion he asserts weaknesses in others point of view that need to be considered, even if I ultimately discard them as lacking credibility or relevance.
Secondly, the positions he asserts in his comments frequently energize many commenters to state their opposing positions. When it is not ridiculous semantical nitpicking that seems to go nowhere, I often gain greater insight into the subject matter of these exchanges.
Joshua, Gates, and FOMD, just to name a few of the usual suspects, are an important reason why this blog is so informationally dense and entertaining. Whatever their motivations to come here and frequently irritate me, I am thankful they do. And when I’m overloaded with repetitive blah, blah, that scroll wheel makes them disappear. Truly a win-win circumstance.
I agree. Joshua plays mind games and when he sees hypocrisy in an argument, he is going to point it out sometimes by mimicking that argument technique to see if those using it complain about it when he does it. It can be too subtle for some to see. This forces people to think more about their arguments.
Joshua asserts double standards for significantly different scenarios. That’s not helpful. In fact, it mainly acts to instigate uncertainty, which is probably one of Joshua’s goals. Double standards and hypocrisy have to be judged on the details of the two situations, ideas, individual, etc. involved in the comparison. Joshua’s brush in conveniently broad.
==> “In fact, it mainly acts to instigate uncertainty, which is probably one of Joshua’s goals.”
What does “instigat[ing] uncertainty” mean?
My “goal” is to state my views, and to explore my own uncertainty (and to have a couple of laughs at the expense of fallacious arguments from “skeptics” while doing so). This notion that my “goal” is to “disrupt” or “divert” or “instigate uncertainty” in anyone else is rather hilarious:
(1) I don’t see anything here that I need to “disrupt” or “divert.”
(2) Even if I did, I don’t think that I have any such power.
(3) If by expressing my views I “instigate” you to reevaluate yours (which I highly doubt ever happens with you – although a few folks have now indicated that maybe that happens for them on occasion), and “instigate uncertainty,” I have no idea why you would find that “not helpful.” Why else are you here if not to explore your own uncertainty?
If you think that my commenting “instigate[s] uncertainty” and that it isn’t helpful, then it raises the interesting question of what is your goal here?
And since Springer has taken to sock-puppetry with my name, I will add a further comment as way to distinguish my posts from his sock puppet posts…..
Springer is a sock-puppeteer.
Here is an example of one of your tactics intended to muddy the water and my response illuminates why I said this.
http://judithcurry.com/2015/03/13/week-in-review-48/#comment-684017
lol!
Brilliant. So with a link to a comment from someone else, you provide an “example of one of [my] tactics.”
I guess I really can’t argue with that kind of logic, now can I?
Look up the word “analogy.”
Jim D,
For a bit of balance I should have mentioned, in my perception he is the most frequent user of the sophomoric and tired cliche “LOL.” Not only is it unnecessarily derisive, it is probably almost always a lie. Perhaps I’m wrong, but the idea of “Laughing out Loud” at somebody’s comment, outlandish or not, seems unlikely. I might have smiled, shaken my head in disbelief, or possibly snorted in derision on occasion , but LOL?
If you read this Joshua, could you clarify whether you are essentially lying to deride somebody else’s comments when you write that, or are you a person with an extremely low threshold of humor response? Or are there chemicals involved? If the first, I’d suggest you up your game. Try some new material. I might use my scroll wheel less. If the latter, are they available OTC? If so, IMJY.
John V, I have not noticed that, but I would expect that is usually in response to particularly obvious hypocrisy or an especially poor line of argument that cannot be taken as a seriously held view.
Sorry, this was meant to go here.
It’s a small letter “a” not a capital “A”. If you’re going to pretend to be me, at least get it right. Well, actually, ideally keep getting it wrong as I would genuinely hate for anyone to think that it’s me saying the atrocious things that you seem comfortable saying.
John –
Yeah. The lol is pretty dumb. But it’s only a figure of speech – as a way of saying, “what a ridiculous comment.” Just a shorthand. No, it is not meant to be taken literally – so I think that calling it “lying” is a bit of a stretch. Yes, it’s sophomoric and tired, no doubt. But keep in mind that I generally use the expression with people that have no actual interest in good faith exchange with me anyway.
OTC? IMJY?
lolrt?
Yep. Sometimes not a “sciency” as I’d like, some times off topic, sometimes…….oh wait………that may just be a mirror.
John Vonderlin | March 15, 2015 at 2:08 pm |
Let me commend your ability to assimilate large quantities of extraneous text in a short period of time and find relevant information that is pertinent to the issue. Perhaps I am the only one who reads this blog who is not so gifted. Many readers have busy lives and I assume most readers would prefer to read a blog where they don’t have to spend their time with the “scroll wheel” looking for intelligent thought. And to your points, nothing I have suggested would prohibit any commenter from continuing to express whatever opinion they may have in whatever fashion they choose. In any event this is Judith’s Curry’s blog and I am sure she will make her own decision.
==> “where they don’t have to spend their time with the “scroll wheel””
PMH makes a great point. The thought of the poor fellow/gal being forced at gun point to spend so much time scrolling past comments is just unbearable.
Think of all the valuable things he could accomplish were he not forced to scroll past my comments!
Oh. The humanity!!!!
John Vonderlin –
I think I agree with this. When does the ratio of frivolity to legitimate (though irritating) commentary become too large? I don’t know, but I’d rather err on the side of putting up with it. Part of the problem can be solved by people just not responding to remarks that are intentionally disruptive and are without any redeeming value (as Justice Potter Stewart put it, I can’t define it but I know it when I see it).
I suggested this before (ignore Joshua’s inflammatory comments), but some people just can’t leave it alone. Those sorts of threads turn into tit for tat name calling which burns up the space on the page with mindless blather.
The roll of a troll is to provoke, distract, hijack, and leave behind a trail of rotting and stinking red herrings.
Do not feed the trolls!
From the article:
…
Most scientific studies are wrong, and they are wrong because scientists are interested in funding and careers rather than truth.
That was the chilling message delivered by the smiling, brilliant, erudite, and cuddly John Ioannidis at the Seventh Peer Review Congress in Chicago this week. Listening to somebody as brilliant as Ioannidis is like listening to a great opera or watching a gripping football match: you feel inspired, uplifted, and privileged. And, although I would never describe a female speaker as cuddly (no matter how cuddly she might be), I write this about Ioannidis because it felt good to see such brilliance worn so lightly and attractively.
…
http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2013/09/09/richard-smith-time-for-science-to-be-about-truth-rather-than-careers/
More from that article, my emphasis:
…
Ioannidis illustrated his theme by describing a study in which colleagues randomly selected 50 ingredients from the Boston Cookbook and then searched PubMed to see which of the ingredients had been linked with either increasing or decreasing the risk of cancer. The answer was 40. Large numbers of studies had shown so, and no doubt hundreds of thousands of media reports will have spread the message to the public. In fact, said Ioannidis, a meta-meta-analysis shows that the scientific studies are “correct” in almost no cases. (The public may be smarter than the scientists in discounting and ignoring these reports, although an unfortunate result is a public scepticism about science that leads many to accept the assertion that there is no evidence for human activity causing climate change.)
…
http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2013/09/09/richard-smith-time-for-science-to-be-about-truth-rather-than-careers/
The public may be smarter than the author. :)
Well, poor fella, evidence is slowly accumulating, and old evidence being re-evaluated, that man’s effect of mild warming can only be net beneficial. It’s difficult to concede that’s man’s effect of great greening is anything but universally beneficial.
Sure we change climate, but how much, and is it for better or for worse?
==============
From the article:
…
Academic journal bans p-value significance test
Written by Web News Editor on 05 March 2015. Posted in News
An editorial published in the academic journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology (BASP) has declared that the null hypothesis significance testing procedure (NHSTP) is ‘invalid’, and have banned it from future papers submitted to the journal.
In significance testing, a null hypothesis typically posits that changing the input to a system does not change the resulting output. To determine whether a result is statistically significant, a researcher has to calculate a p-value, which is the probability of observing an apparent effect given that the null hypothesis is true. If the p-value is less than 0.05 it is conventionally deemed a statistically significant result.
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http://www.statslife.org.uk/news/2116-academic-journal-bans-p-value-significance-test
What is a person’s position on AGW better correlated with: their scientific background, or their political affiliation?
Starting from the premise that a majority of scientists expect future AGW to be harmful, the more scientists who can be found who reject the harmfulness of future AGW, the weaker the correlation with scientific background becomes, and hence the more likely that the correlation is instead with political affiliation. Such a trend would tend to make the future impact of AGW more a political question than a scientific one.
If that premise is false, i.e. a majority of scientists already expect future AGW to be harmless, then increasing that majority only improves the correlation with scientific background, making the question more a scientific one, i.e. the opposite trend.
My own impression is that whether future AGW is harmless is at present mainly a political question.
The IPCC was begun by a wealthy socialist ( nice contradictions ) Maurice Strong. It is not suprising that there is a political divide.
That doesn’t mean ‘global warming’ is false. But most hoaxes are based truths, just exaggerated.
Although obvious to many, most folks in academia 10 years ago were not admitting it was mainly a political question. Similarly, most folks in academia — like those who now concede its mainly about politics — are not admitting what AGW has now become. Sure, sure, it’s a Left vs. right issue but that’s not new. Most all of academia is mainly Leftist-thinking and has been, long before academia’s present-day addiction to AGW theory.
“It would seem that humans need a common motivation, namely a common adversary, to organize and act together in the vacuum; such a motivation must be found to bring the divided nations together to face an outside enemy, either a real one or else one invented for the purpose. New enemies therefore have to be identified. New strategies imagined, new weapons devised. The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”
– Club of Rome ( Limits to Growth ) including Maurice Strong, Founder of the IPCC.
I learned a new word today: ““iatrogenic government,” an iatrogenic ailment being one caused by a physician or medicine”, with clear extensions to climate science alarmists.
This is from an article by George Will with no references to climate at all:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415389/prescience-daniel-patrick-moynihan-george-will
The last two paragraphs are killers:
Hi Diag,
Regarding Naomi Klein’s screed:
Expanding on the comparison of climate alarmist’s “iatrogenic government” policies that might cause worse problems than the theorized climate change, it might be good to consider “iatrogenic’s” older sibling, “nosocomial.”
Nosocomial: Originating or taking place in a hospital, acquired in a hospital, especially in regards to an infection.
The term “nosocomial” comes from two Greek words: “nosus” meaning “disease” + “komeion” meaning “to take care of.” Hence, “nosocomial” should apply to any disease contracted by a patient while under medical care. However, common usage of the term “nosocomial” is now synonymous with hospital-acquired.
Reading Naomi Klein’s bleating about the need to radically restructure every aspect of our lives to banish the CO2 bogeyman I can’t help but see that as a demand to hospitalize the world. Based on history, the “nosocomial” unintended consequences of such a hypercentralization of power, may kill most of the patients while trying to save them. More than one radical Green has wished for an infection that greatly reduced the pestilence of humans. Naomi Klein may be the Judas Goat leading the way.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have leaders today who would even think of asking such a question. In a few generations, society will begin to appreciate how prescient the good Senator was.
He was instrumental in the major tax reforms of 1986. Perhaps someone could channel him for guidance.
George Will article, from : ‘Moynihan asked the chemist at what number of variables this problem begins. The chemist replied: “Three.” ‘
Like the n-body problem, nature seems to suffer from ODD – from our perspective.
Threading busted?
Joshua
If you look up the thread several of us said quite nice things about you.
Tonyb
tony –
I saw that, and responded.
And btw, that was Springer above – not me.
Around 7,000 years ago the Earth was enjoying a warm climate. Now glaciers and patches of perennial ice in the high mountains of Southern Norway have started to melt again, revealing ancient layers.
“Actually we should be slowly approaching a new ice age. But in the past 20 years we have witnessed artefacts turning up in summer from increasingly deeper layers of the glaciers,” says Lars Pilø.
He is an archaeologist working for Oppland County, and has for many years done fieldwork in glaciers and ice patches, finding things our ancestors discarded or lost.
The summer of 2014 was hectic in this respect. In Oppland County alone, Pilø and his colleagues found 400 objects, now emerged from the deepfreeze.
Among these were a horse skull and hiking staffs from the Viking Age. An arrow shaft found by the archaeologists is from the Stone Age.
An ancient route over the mountains once passed by the glacier where Lars Pilø and his colleagues conducted field work. People crossed the mountains with livestock, and went back and forth to their high summer farms – or simply travelled from one place to another. They have left a wide array of artefacts in their wake over the centuries, to the delight of 21st century archaeologists.
“We often find things associated with hunting. There are also ordinary objects such as mittens and shoes and the skeletons of horses that died on the trek across the mountains. This makes it a real thrill,” says Pilø.
http://sciencenordic.com/items-lost-stone-age-are-found-melting-glaciers
David –
I don’t capitalize lol. Please get it right.
Isn’t there some way for a blog administrator to ensure that a given username only has one associated email?
I don’t really mind Springer’s sock puppetry – it’s kind of funny, and I never have a problem when a “skeptic” displays his true colors (sunlight, disinfectant, and all of that), but I always assumed that there was some way that the software protects against impostor-type sock puppets.
Btw, Springer is a sock-puppeteer.
Judith can’t you do anything about Springer?
He is making a monkey out of you. Maybe that isn’t a great challenge but still… LOL
Springer is a sock-puppeteer.
Please please please, Judith. He’s using MY name! I am the one, the only, Joshua. My words are important!
btw Springer is a sock-puppeteer LOL
I’m working on sorting this out/deleting. It is David in TX, he is a slippery character
Why not at least set it up so that a given username can only be associated with one email address? Isn’t that a standard component of the blog software? It won’t prevent him from using any sock puppets at all, but at least he won’t be able to use other people’s usernames.
BTW – I’d say that Springer’s sock-puppet obsession gives you a pretty good idea of his notion of accountability.
Is his concept of accountability coincidental to his “skeptical” and right wing views? You make the call.
not standard. one thing to do is to only allow ‘registered’ users to comment, so someone changing their IP address would be in moderation. But someone could get ‘approved’ by writing a sensible comment, then restart the attacks. So there is no real cure for this, i will stay on top of it, eventually David in TX will get bored and disappear
p.s. this is not springer, it is David in TX
Judith – you do know that “David in TX” and David Springer are one and the same, don’t you?
David Springer’s notion of accountability = being a sock puppeteer.
ah I didn’t know that, could be
Judith
I had always assumed that the two David’s were the same person. It’s a shame, as when he posts sensibly he has some worthwhile and interesting things to say.
Tonyb
unfortunately no way to really verify this. you can apply for any number of ‘real’ email addresses
> unfortunately no way to really verify this.
This is false, Judy. There are people who could help you. I suggested Brandon yesterday. If you don’t have the know-how or the time, hire an admin.
The cheapest solution is to directly buy this at WordPress:
https://store.wordpress.com/plans/business/
As a token of appreciation for Big Dave who usurped my name, here would be a simple solution:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/avh-first-defense-against-spam/
It would leave Big Dave with such message:
With an anti-anonymizer and a guy to track Big Dave’s IP, Big Dave would stand no chance.
I am clueless about how to implement any of these and what they would do, and have no funds to hire an admin person. I will see if ‘user registration’ works.
Dr. Curry, see this for some user manager plugins:
http://judithcurry.com/2015/03/13/week-in-review-48/#comment-684011
He could not behave using his real name, and he cannot behave using his wide array of other names. Why? Because he cannot behave.
It doe not matter what name people use; what matters who whether or not they are stand-up people.
I think there is another sock puppet here with a new name who actually behaves about 100 times better under his new sock puppet name than he did under any of his prior names, including his own name. So well I doubt most people have picked up on who he is.
It takes some effort to create a new email address even with email providers like hotmail, gmail, and yahoo. The time involved tends to discourage serial trolls and sock puppets.
This is especially true if they have to gain approval of a first comment before coming out of automatic moderation. A 24-hour delay in approving that first comment works wonders. In a previous life when I moderated a controversial blog I would leave newbies in moderation for quite some time if there was any doubt in my mind they were authentic. Hotmail, gmail, yahoo, and aol.com email addresses are automatically suspect. Institutional addresses given by email providers such as .edu, .gov, at&t, time warner, corporations, and so forth are generally confined to one address per individual and can be safely approved on the first comment.
curryja | March 15, 2015 at 5:43 pm |
not standard. one thing to do is to only allow ‘registered’ users to comment, so someone changing their IP address would be in moderation. But someone could get ‘approved’ by writing a sensible comment, then restart the attacks. So there is no real cure for this, i will stay on top of it, eventually David in TX will get bored and disappear
Someone changing their IP address won’t be put in moderation in that case. Registered user accounts are distinguished one from another by email address. Upon registration a password is mailed to the email address used at time of registration. The combination of username and password is called a credential. Anyone, regardless of originating IP address (unless you have specific IP blocks set up), may login if they have a valid credential.
IP addresses routinely change for various reasons including going from a home computer to a computer at work, hooking up to a wi-fi at say Starbucks instead of your regular wi-fi, every time you switch from one cell tower to another, and etc.
I’m here to tell you from long experience that registration and requiring new users to establish good will by keeping them in moderation long enough to establish a history of good behavior is the only reliable way other than strict verification of real name or requiring a subscription fee.
Not that blog comments are wellsprings of truthiness in any case. On a science blog it’s a probablty a good idea to cut loose those who are too uninformed to speak on the topic yet insist on doing so and making up for the shortfall in quality with an excess of volume. Knowledgeable people get frustrated when continually contradicted by the unwashed and go elsewhere. I can certainly see why your colleagues by and large find your tolerance of scientific illiteracy abhorrent, tending to give the whole enterprise a bad name, and thus not want anything to do with either you or your blog.
Just sayin’
Ok I’ve just clicked on the box requiring users to register. Lets see how that works. I am less interested in keeping out the ‘unwashed’ than keeping out creepy spammers and sock puppets
I hereby test what is to be tested.
Test.
1-2 testing. Test. Testing.
I guess I am blog naive. It strikes me as bizarre that anyone would do this.
Michael Kelly of the Royal Society is backing away from the lock-step consensus science that brought us Climategate in 2009!
http://junkscience.com/2015/03/15/big-deal-mike-kelly-my-hero-fellow-of-royal-society-condemns-consensus-thinking-that-ignores-the-evidence/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2995239/Why-Royal-Society-wrong-climate-change-devastating-critique-world-s-leading-scientific-organisation-one-Fellows.html
From the link:
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User Access Manager
With the “User Access Manager”-plugin you can manage the access to your posts, pages and files.
Download Version 1.2.6.6
Description Installation FAQ Screenshots Changelog Stats Support Reviews Developers
With the “User Access Manager”-plugin you can manage the access to your posts, pages and files. You only create a user group, put registered users to this and set up the rights for this group. From now on the post/page is only accessible and writable for the specified group. This plugin is useful if you need a member area or a private section at your blog or you want that other people can write at your blog but not everywhere.
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https://wordpress.org/plugins/user-access-manager/
See also:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/restrict
Archeo-climatology affirms paleo-climatology
Glacier reveals 5,400-year-old Stone Age arrow
Climate Change Forces New Ecological States in Tropical Andean Lakes
These recent archeo- and paleo- findings are commended especially to TonyB!
Conclusion Archeo- and paleo- evidence in support of “the consensus” understanding of anthropogenic climate-change accumulates without pause.
It’s a step in the right direction.
So, the UN supports investment entities avoid fossil fuel companies. That’s a real shock.
From the article:
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The UN organisation in charge of global climate change negotiations is backing the fast-growing campaign persuading investors to sell off their fossil fuel assets. It said it was lending its “moral authority” to the divestment campaign because it shared the ambition to get a strong deal to tackle global warming at a crunch UN summit in Paris in December.
“We support divestment as it sends a signal to companies, especially coal companies, that the age of ‘burn what you like, when you like’ cannot continue,” said Nick Nuttall, the spokesman for the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC).
The move is likely to be controversial as the economies of many nations at the negotiating table heavily rely on coal, oil and gas. In 2013, coal-reliant Poland hosted the UNFCCC summit and was castigated for arranging a global coal industry summit alongside. Now, the World Coal Association has criticised the UNFCCC’s decision to back divestment, saying it threatened investment in cleaner coal technologies.
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http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/15/climate-change-un-backs-divestment-campaign-paris-summit-fossil-fuels
Wheee! A change is going to come. Civility shall rule the kingdom. Unicorns will mate with dragons. Prayers will be answered in the order asked.
.OTC =Over the Counter IMJY = I May Join You