by Judith Curry
I am just about to head to London, to make my presentation in the House of Lords: State of the Climate Debate in the U.S.
My power point slides are here [GWPF curry seminar], and the accompany text is here [ GWPF notes]. Below are excerpts from talk, the excerpts not including technical bits that require a diagram:
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Good evening everyone, it’s a great pleasure to be here, and I would like to thank the GWPF for inviting me. Tonite I will be talking about the state of the climate debate in the U.S. This is a story of a sharp partisan divide between the Democrats and Republicans regarding what, if anything, we should do about climate change. Unfortunately, climate science is caught in the crossfire.
President Obama and climate change
President Obama has made very strong statements about climate change.
“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”
“No challenge–no challenge–poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.”
“There’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate.”
The basis for these strong statements has evolved from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Treaty, which established a goal of stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gases to prevent dangerous climate change.
For the past 25 years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been conducting comprehensive assessments, that have successively increased in confidence that
- Human caused climate change is real
- Human caused climate change is dangerous, and
- Action is needed to prevent dangerous human-caused climate change
In its current round of negotiations, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is seeking to limit emission through voluntary Intended National Determined Contributions, or INDCs. The key elements of the U.S. INDC are
- Reduce emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025
- Economy-wide emission reductions of 80% by 2050
President Obama is coordinating the U.S. response through the Environmental Protection Agency, or the EPA. The Clean Power Plan has the following elements:
By 2030, the U.S. will:
- Cut carbon power sector emission by 30% nationwide below 2005 levels
- Cut particle pollution, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxide by more than 25%
- Avoid asthma attacks in children;
- Shrink electricity bills 8% by increasing energy efficiency and reducing demand.
The basis for these actions under the EPA is the Endangerment finding, which found that greenhouse gas pollution endangers public health. In 2007 the U.S. Supreme Court, held that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
Now President Obama can’t accomplish all this on his own, he needs the cooperation of the states. This figure from ClimateProgress illustrates the commitment to acting on climate change from various states. The green states are on board with President Obama’s plan, and already making significant headway with emissions reductions. The yellow states have a mixed record, and the red states are not making progress, with the black striped states characterized as ‘denier’ states. My home state of Georgia is in the middle of denier land.
So President Obama clearly has his work cut out for him, he needs to build political support to actually implement his plan and realize emissions reductions. President Obama has tried several different arguments for building political and public support for his plan.
The first argument was the Social Cost of Carbon, which is an economic argument that assesses the cost-benefit of regulatory actions that impact CO2 emissions.
This argument has been challenged because the costs and benefits, estimated over 300 years, are highly uncertain and contested. High costs now will damage the economy and development, and make us more vulnerable to climate surprises. At the heart of this debate is the social discount rate: how much should we value potential damages to future people?
The second argument that President Obama has been using relates to extreme weather. Particularly following Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, the U.S. public was more concerned about climate change if it was making storms worse or more frequent.
At the start of this year’s hurricane season, President Obama made the following statement:
“The best climate scientists in the world are telling us that extreme weather events like hurricanes are likely to become more powerful. Climate change didn’t cause Hurricane Sandy, but it might have made it stronger.”
Chris Landsea, a hurricane expert at the National Hurricane Center, retorted with the following statement:
“How is it that the White House links changes in hurricanes today to global warming when WMO, NOAA, and IPCC cannot?”
While extreme weather is an argument that seems to work in terms of influencing public opinion on climate change, however it isn’t supported by research and the main assessment reports.
The 3rd argument that President Obama has been using is the public health benefits of reducing carbon pollution. President Obama recently stated:
“Carbon pollution causing climate change is contributing to health risks for many children. Over the past 3 decades, the % of Americans with asthma has more than doubled and climate change is putting those Americans at greater risk of landing in the hospital”.
However, the fact of the matter is that carbon dioxide does not impact air quality and breathing. U.S. air quality (ozone and particulates) has improved substantially over the past 3 decades.
President Obama made this issue personal, since his daughter suffers from asthma. However, this rather backfired on President Obama, who is a smoker, since 2nd hand smoke is more likely to exacerbate asthma than is carbon dioxide.
The 4th argument that President Obama has been using is related to national security. President Obama recently stated:
”Climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country.”
The challenge to this argument is that the main security issue is the impact of extreme weather events, which is better addressed by adaptation. CO2 mitigation is an ineffective national security tool. And more significantly, President Obama’s opponents criticize him for focusing on climate change while ISIS is on the march.
One argument that President Obama HASN’T tried to make explicitly is that theU.S. commitments to emissions reductions will actually slow down warming in a meaningful way. If you believe the climate models, the U.S. emissions reductions would reduce the warming by a fairly trivial amount, that would get lost among the natural variability of climate.
President Obama’s opponents
So President Obama has been rather frustrated in his attempts to build political and public support for his Climate Action Plan. He has taken to labeling his opponents as ‘deniers’, and earlier this year, his website barackobama.com organized the Climate Change Fantasy Tournament: Who will be crowned the worst climate change denier? A bit unseemly, particularly since the candidates for this are his opponents in Congress.
The award for worst climate change denier goes to Senator James Inhofe, Chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Senator Inhofe is author of the book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. Senator Inhofe’s main concern is over regulation of business. Last year the Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee issued a report on climate change, subtitled ‘Empirical Evidence to Consider Before Taking Regulatory Action and Implementing Economic Policies.’ This is actually a pretty good report.
The most influential of President Obama’s foes in the House of Representatives on the climate change issue is Representative Lamar Smith, Chair of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee. He has recently written two influential op-eds:
- Overheated rhetoric on climate change hurts the economy
- The climate-change religion
His main point:
Climate change is an issue that needs to be discussed thoughtfully and objectively. Unfortunately, claims that distort the facts hinder the legitimate evaluation of policy options.
What the Senate thinks about climate change and the proposed polices is of great relevance to the fate of President Obama’s efforts, particularly in context of the United Nations. The U.S. Constitution includes the Treaty Clause:
“The President shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur . . . “
What the Senate thinks about climate change was clarified last January by the Sense of the Senate Resolution. The first resolution was “Climate change is real and not a hoax”, which received only one no vote. The second resolution “Climate change is real; and human activity contributes significantly to climate change” received a split vote – where the vote was almost, but not quite, strictly along party lines.
The media portrayed this as a schizophrenic, anti-science vote. Actually, the Senate resolutions highlighted the differences and confusion between the scientific and political definitions of climate change. The scientific definition emphasizes that climate change can be due to natural processes, or persistent human caused changes. The political definition of climate change is that it is human caused climate change. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change established the political definition in the 1990’s, which is the definition that also seems to have been adopted by the Obama administration.
The political definition effectively defines naturally caused climate change out of existence. However, natural climate change versus human caused climate change is at the heart of the scientific and policy debate surrounding climate change.
Recall that approving a treaty requires a supermajority of 66%. It is clear from the recent Senate Resolution that there is no supermajority in the Senate in support of climate change policies.
So President Obama apparently intends to sign a UN climate agreement without Senate approval. This lack of Congressional support is influencing the strategies being undertaken by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The issue was succinctly stated at the recent G7 meeting in Bonn by the French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius:
“We must find a formula which is valuable for everybody and valuable for the U.S. without going to the Congress”
The key concern of the UNFCCC is to what extent is President Obama’s climate commitment enforceable.
In the absence of state and Congressional support, the Plan is being enforced through the Executive Branch via the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Challenges:
- Ongoing legal challenges, but so far the Supreme Court has supported President Obama
- The next President may choose not to enforce, or even to abolish the EPA. During the recent Bush administration, the Enforcement Division of the EPA was largely unfunded.
President Obama has about 18 months remaining in his term as President.
The Democratic Party candidates, dominated by Hillary Clinton, are expected to generally support President Obama’s strategies regarding climate change.
The Republican candidates for President are quite a different story. There are currently 14 candidates that are expected to run and the number may rise to 20. Several of the candidates have recently made statements about climate change, these excerpts illustrate the range of positions among the candidates on climate change.
Jeb Bush: “I don’t think the science is clear of what % is man-made and what % is natural. It’s convoluted. For the people to say the science is decided on this is really arrogant. The climate is changing. We need to adapt to that reality.”
Ted Cruz: “Specifically, satellite data demonstrate there has been no warming over the past 17 years. And I would note whenever anyone makes that point, you immediately get vilified as a ‘denier’ without anyone actually refuting the facts.”
Marco Rubio: “The question is, what percentage of that is due to human activity? If we do the things they want us to do, cap-and-trade, you name it, how much will that change the pace of climate change versus how much will that cost to our economy? “
Carly Fiorina: “The only answer to this is innovation, and in that America could be the best in the world.”
Chris Christie: “when you have over 90% of the world’s scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role, it’s time to defer to the experts.”
John Kasich: “I am just saying that I am concerned about it, but I am not laying awake at night worrying the sky is falling.”
Rick Santorum: “I for one never bought the hoax. To suggest that man’s contribution is the determining ingredient in the sauce that affects the entire global warming and cooling is just absurd on its face.”
I don’t think any of the Republican candidates would support the extent of President Obama’s climate change agenda, with the possible exception of Lindsay Graham, a longshot candidate.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is correct to be concerned about whether the U.S. commitment to reduce emissions will be met.
The Republican candidates are all portrayed as ‘deniers’ by the Democrats and by the liberal media. But this portrayal of the Republicans as deniers is a cartoonish one.
Science in the crossfire
There is widespread agreement on these basic tenets:
- Surface temperatures have increased since 1880
- Humans are adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere
- Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have a warming effect on the planet
However, There is disagreement about the most consequential issues:
- Whether the warming since 1950 has been dominated by human causes
- How much the planet will warm in the 21st century
- Whether warming is ‘dangerous’
- Whether we can afford to radically reduce CO2 emissions, and whether reduction will improve the climate
In the midst of all this disagreement among policy makers, U.S. climate research has been caught in the crossfire. Congressional Republicans have been pushing for substantial reductions to funding for climate research. President Obama and the Democrats are not much better. The President’s Climate Action Plan is pushing for more research on climate impact assessments and new energy technologies. Since they regard climate dynamics as essentially settled science, the funding is not very good for basic research in climate dynamics and data set building and quality assessment. Funding goes into climate modeling to better understand human caused climate change; there is very little funding for understanding natural climate variability.
I am very concerned that climate science is becoming biased owing to biases in federal funding priorities and the institutionalization by professional societies of a particular ideology related to climate change.
Many scientists, and institutions that support science, are becoming advocates for UN climate policies, which is leading scientists into overconfidence in their assessments and public statements and into failures to respond to genuine criticisms of the scientific consensus. In short, the climate science establishment has become intolerant to disagreement and debate, and is attempting to marginalize and de-legitimized dissent as corrupt or ignorant.
Uncertainty and disagreement drive scientific progress. Stifling uncertainty and disagreement stifles scientific progress.
A majority of climate scientists seem to support the IPCC perspective, with recent surveys of scientists suggesting 52-85% of climate scientists agree with the IPCC. Nevertheless, a great deal of uncertainty remains, and there is plenty of room for disagreement. So why do scientists disagree?
- Insufficient observational evidence
- Disagreement about the value of different classes of evidence
- Disagreement about the appropriate logical framework for linking and assessing the evidence
- Assessments of areas of ambiguity & ignorance
- And finally, the politicization of the science can torque the science in politically desired directions.
None of the most consequential scientific uncertainties are going to be resolved any time soon; there is a great deal of work still to do to understand climate change. And there is a growing realization that unpredictable natural climate variability is important.
Is climate change dangerous?
I think most important looming issue in the climate debate is understanding to what extent climate change is ‘dangerous’.
Whether or not something is dangerous is a value issue, not a scientific issue. But depending on how you define ‘dangerous’, different scientific analyses come into play, and also different decision-analytic frameworks.
In 2010, the UN negotiators determined that an increase of 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial temperatures was the danger threshold, beyond which there was the possibility of consequences that are largely uncontrollable and beyond our management. The 2 degree threshold remains very controversial, and there is a movement afoot to drop the threshold to 1.5 degrees.
So how should we respond to the threat of climate change, given the uncertainties?
- There is increasing evidence that the threat from global warming is overstated
- However, if the threat is not overstated, there are major shortfalls in current and proposed solutions.
My concern is that we have oversimplified by the climate change problem and its solutions. This oversimplification has
- undercut the political process and dialog necessary for real solutions in a highly complex world
- torqued scientific research through politicization and funding priorities
I’m seeking to open up the dialogue on climate science and solutions to the perceived threat of climate change. I encourage you to join the dialogue at my blog Climate Etc., which provides a form for technical experts and the interested public to engage in a discussion on topics related to climate science, its impacts and policy options.
I greatly appreciate the opportunity afforded to me by the GWPF to give this lecture, and I look forward to your questions.
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JC reflections
I will certainly write in regarding the event, discussion, etc, either in the comments or in a subsequent post. Stay tuned for more on this tomorrow.
I enjoyed your common sense comments in the John Stossel report last night. It is a hard battle when the President of the United States makes such idiotic statements like linking COs and asthma, which the mainstream media refuses to challenge in any significant way.
that should be CO2… obviously
But, but . . . Every asthmatic exhales CO2. Obviously the two are linked. Since Asthma = CO2, obviously CO2 = Asthma. After all, if A= B, then B=A.
Who could possibly doubt such scientific proof! It’s as easy as CO2 and global warming, isn’t it?
Human breath averages 40,000 PPM of CO2.
Since an asthmatic exhales over 100 times the CO2 they inhale, asthma must be an autoimmune disease (you are allergic to yourself).
I hear your meeting Andrew Neil, he’s the best political interviewer in the UK, charming but deadly.
Actually my interview with Andrew Neil has been cancelled, not sure why, but it sure makes my afternoon saner.
That is a great shame. I was looking forward to seeing it. And Andrew is one of the few UK interviewers who would give a sceptic a fair (but tough) hearing.
Judith,
You are the equivalent of the Bride of Satan in the eyes of the Holy Church of Climate Alarmism (the BBC), such is the state of science.
broadcasting.
Politicians (97% at least) are beyond reach, but the voting public had the last word over the 3 Ed’s (Milliband, Balls and Davey) who were the worst examples of non-scientific experts on climate change. Alas, their political careers are over.
I hope you enjoy your visit and gain suitable media attention. We already know your value. Other Britons have yet to be enlightened.
“Insufficient observational evidence”
Too true. The greenhouse effect has never actually been observed. Pity.
That is only because people can’t see in the infrared range.
There seems to be an aversion to pointing watt meters skyward and recording the trend in the down dwelling infrared.
There are plenty of satellite eyes of all varieties looking downward PA, they see the entire world and all levels of the atmosphere and all wavelengths necessary.
“Sigh”.
Satellites are great for some things. Measuring values at the bottom of the atmosphere (weather station height) with a satellite is going to have a much greater error range than walking outside and pointing a probe skyward.
The spotty and err prone nature of surface measurement may make the satellite the better choice for gauging trends.
Trend measurements are one of those cases where it is better to be consistent than to be right.
It is my understanding that infrared downwelling has been and is being measured:
Atmospheric downwelling longwave radiation at the surface during…
(cloudless and cloudy conditions)
Viudez Mora 2011
pdf:
dugi-doc.udg.edu/bitstream/handle/10256/4632/tavm.pdf?sequence=1
ordvic,
Of course, as long as the atmosphere, and all that is suspended within it, is above 0 K, it will radiate EMR in line with its temperature.
Obviously, as the EMR is radiated in all directions, the surface will receive radiation from the atmosphere. I’m not sure why this is not apparent to anyone.
However, if the surface is hotter than the atmosphere, of course it cannot be warmed by a colder body, any more than your naked body would be warmed by the large amount of LWIR being emitted by a large iceberg.
Suffice it to say, if the surface absorbs more energy than it emits, it will warm, in general. Emitting more than it absorbs results in cooling.
Should be as clear as night and day, if I might permit myself a fairly awful play on words.
All matter in the universe emits EMR. All. It can be measured. It may be useful to measure it, or it may not. Its effect will depend on the proximity of other matter, and the radiation emitted therefrom.
No magic. Quite simple.
Mike, I read what you said several times but it is not obvious to me. I guess you think the surface is warming? This is caused by the atmophere emitting in all directions and some goes earthward? So you think nitrogen and oxygen causes this? It seems rather more obvious to me that it’s caused by CO2?
Good luck with that, Professor Curry. Climate change is not such a politically partisan issue in the UK as in the US – but only because the two largest parties (and most of the smaller ones) take a warmist line even more extreme than the Democrat/Obama position in the US.
The climate change act of 2008 says “It is the duty of the Secretary of State to ensure that the net UK carbon account for the year 2050 is at least 80% lower than the 1990 baseline”. And it has cross-party support.
Despite their being a few well-informed skeptics/luke-warmers in the House of Lords (Nigel Lawson, Matt Ridley), I think many others would be surprised to hear a climate scientist suggesting the science is not ‘settled’. I fear those who need to hear it will not be present.
I really don’t understand the panic over CO2.
If it wasn’t for more CO2, malnutrition would be increasing not decreasing.
We would be facing the ugly choice of no biofuel, converting all arable animal habitat to farmland, or mass starvation.
If we really are going to do something as boneheaded as limit CO2 emissions we might as well shoot the wild animals and convert the wilderness now, and get it over with.
… In 2010, UN negotiators determined that an increase of
2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial temperatures was the
danger threshold …there is a move afoot to drop the
threshold to 1.5 degrees.
Echoes of ‘Get Smart?’
Maxwell Smart: I think it’s only fair to warn you, this facility is surrounded by a highly trained team of 130 Black Op Snipers.
Siegfried: I don’t believe you.
Maxwell Smart: Would you believe two dozen Delta Force Commandos?
+ Al Gore’s BMI or Hillary’s
Whichever is more believable.
Andrew
Publically point out that the Venus/Earth temperature ratio, over the full range of Earth tropospheric pressures, is essentially a constant that is precisely determined by the two planets’ distances from the Sun, and nothing else, despite Venus’s atmosphere having 2400 times the concentration of CO2 as Earth’s (so there is no greenhouse effect due to “greenhouse gases” at all)…or you are a denier, of the definitive fact that disproves the consensus, and an incompetent climate scientist. The bottom line is that the stable Standard Atmosphere rules in Earth’s atmosphere, on the global scale, and that will be the obituary for this generation of failed climate scientists, whose consensus opinion is worthless and the real culprit–given the gargantuan political misuse of it and the subornation of all of our supposedly authoritative institutions by it. Climate science is NOT caught in the middle of the Left-Right political divide over “climate change”; its absolute, complete incompetence both started and maintains it. You are all a joke, and your climate science has no business on the all-too-serious stage of public discourse. I used to say I am a denier of it, not just a skeptic; now, given the runaway political machinery, I am a defier. So get your burning stakes ready; you will be needing them.
Too late Harry the presentation is already written. Also Judith is addressing the House of Lords. Few of them can grasp difficult concepts such as “ratio” and “constant”. Attempts to explain the Adiabatic lapse Rate will act faster than Nitrazepam. The presentation deals with the POLITICAL perspective of the issue which, as you eloquently acknowledge, is all that there is left, indeed for us “defiers” all there ever was.
You might mention your conclusions at the beginning. Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them. I would not mention destroying EPA as that is a big hook and virtually impossible. Finally, you are just talking about the state of the top level political debate, Obama versus Congress, not the public debate. Perhaps your title should reflect this, or your intro.
==> “I would not mention destroying EPA as that is a big hook and virtually impossible.”
???
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/23/2012-republicans-take-aim-at-epa_n_883182.html
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/joni-ernst-bruce-braley-clash-over-epa-in-debate-111810.html
It’s part of the landscape in the “climate debate” in the U.S.
It sounds awful (the polarised debate I mean, not your talk). As Gareth says, things are a bit less politically polarised here in the UK. In the House of Lords where you are speaking, one of the prominent sceptics who asks awkward questions is Lord Donoughue who is on the Labour side. In the other house there is Labour climate sceptic Graham Stringer who is on the Science and Technology Committee. But these people are in a very small minority.
I hope your UK trip goes well and look forward to seeing you on the discussion panel at the Circling the Square conference in Nottingham next week.
“It sounds awful (the polarised debate I mean, not your talk)”
Freedom of expression, diversity and differences in opinion strongly expressed are awful?
Gosh no.
What would be awful would be living in a society where the ‘one truth’ was believed by everyone blindly and without thinking. It would be awful to be in such a totalitarian state.
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Of course Obama lies about climate science. He lies about everything. The more closely global warming activism is associated with Obama and Algore, the more difficult it will be for alarmists to convince the American people.
The only way President Obama’s ambitious GHG reduction goals can be met is if the US government puts a price on all carbon fuels and acts directly to constrain their supply and availability.
However, the Congress, whether it is controlled by Republicans or Democrats, will never put a price on carbon fuels or take legislative action to restrict their supply and availability.
Since Congress won’t act, the job falls to President Obama and the EPA. Here is a strategy for how the President and the EPA can get the job done, assuming of course they are truly serious about greatly reducing America’s GHG emissions:
— Make full use of the Clean Air Act to its maximum legal authority, using the 2009 Endangerment Finding for carbon as the EPA’s regulatory basis.
— Set a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for carbon pollution at 400 ppm CO2 equivalent.
— Develop a regulatory framework for carbon pollution which directly constrains emissions of GHGs and which imposes a corresponding system of EPA-administered carbon pollution fines which is the functional equivalent of a legislated carbon tax.
— Design the EPA’s regulatory framework so as to equitably distribute the economic and social burdens of making the necessary GHG reductions as evenly and as fairly as possible among all classes of GHG emitters.
— Assign all revenues collected through the EPA’s system of carbon pollution fines to the individual states, thus giving each state a strong incentive to voluntarily adopt the EPA’s standardized GHG regulatory framework.
Those in this country who belong to the Progressive Left and who are concerned about climate change already have all the tools they need to enforce the carbon pollution reductions they say are vitally necessary. They don’t need another word of new legislation from the US Congress to get the job done.
But the Progressive Left isn’t using those tools to their maximum possible effectiveness. And so the question must be asked, if the Progressive left is so confident that climate change is a very serious problem for all of mankind, and that America must do its fair share in helping the world to solve the problem, then why isn’t the Progressive Left using the EPA to its maximum possible effectiveness in reducing America’s own GHG emissions?
Could it be that the Progressive Lefties don’t want to commit political suicide?
A serious public debate concerning the reliability of the IPCC’s temperature projections has not yet taken place. The debate that has occurred so far — such that it is — has been mere Kibbuke Theater compared to what it would be if the voting public was ever asked to make serious economic and lifestyle sacrifices in pursuit of the kinds of ambitious GHG reduction goals President Obama is now advocating.
Be that as it may, all roads to achieving serious GHG reductions here in America pass directly through the EPA. If the Progressive Left isn’t using the EPA to its maximum possible effectiveness in reducing GHG emissions, then the left can be justifiably accused of playing politics with the issue of climate change.
I will have to help you, BB. The answer to my question is: Yes
BB,
The “Progresive Left” wants everyone to believe that all roads pass through the EPA. But then the Progressive Left also likes to believe that the Constitution is a “living” document that can be ignored whenever it suits their purpose.
Obama’s plan is toast. DOA. The current EPA regs on CO2 are not going to survive on their journey through the courts. So why would any reasonable person think they would go further and follow the plan you outlined?
The Supremes are hiding behind fuzzy wording in legislation enabling the EPA. That should be clarified, removing the ability to regulate natural components of the atmosphere.
BB,
You don’t foresee any unfortunate consequences from … “if the US government puts a price on all carbon fuels and acts directly to constrain their supply and availability” ?
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timg56: BB, The “Progressive Left” wants everyone to believe that all roads pass through the EPA. But then the Progressive Left also likes to believe that the Constitution is a “living” document that can be ignored whenever it suits their purpose.
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The EPA is designated by law to be the lead agency of government in regulating emissions of substances determined to be dangerous to human health and the environment. The 2009 Endangerment Finding for carbon, which identifies excessive concentrations of carbon-based GHGs in the atmosphere as being dangerous to human health and the environment, has been upheld by the courts.
Because an EPA endangerment finding has been successfully published under the Clean Air Act, all roads to achieving significant GHG reductions here in America do in fact now pass directly through the EPA. The upshot is this: Not another word of new legislation from the Congress is needed to get the job done, because the EPA’s enabling authority is already on the legislative books.
When it comes to regulating emissions of GHGs on a national scale, simplicity in the design of the EPA’s regulatory framework for carbon must be the guiding principle. If the objective is to successfully reduce America’s GHG emissions 28% by 2025 and 80% by 2050, there is no other practical way to do it but to enforce measures which directly constrain the supply and availability of carbon fuels and which have the direct or indirect effect of making carbon fuels greatly less competitive in the energy marketplace.
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timg56: Obama’s plan is toast. DOA. The current EPA regs on CO2 are not going to survive on their journey through the courts. So why would any reasonable person think they would go further and follow the plan you outlined?
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I too believe the Clean Power Plan as it is now conceived will not survive its journey through the courts. The existing plan bundles regulation of GHG emissions with regulation of other kinds of pollutants in ways that unfairly assign responsibility for the majority of America’s GHG emission reduction goals to just one industrial sector, the coal industry.
The difference between the plan I outline and the president’s Clean Power Plan is that mine explicitly recognizes the fact that all economic and social activities which occur in America generate carbon emissions to some greater or lesser extent, and so my plan assigns responsibility for making significant GHG reductions more or less equally to every American citizen and every US economic sector.
With enough attention to the details, a regulatory framework for carbon pollution which directly constrains GHG emissions and which imposes a corresponding system of EPA-administered carbon pollution fines which is the functional equivalent of a legislated carbon tax can be made very simple in concept and execution, while avoiding the legal problems inherent in the president’s Clean Power Plan.
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timg56: BB, You don’t foresee any unfortunate consequences from … “if the US government puts a price on all carbon fuels and acts directly to constrain their supply and availability” ?
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The hard reality which must be squarely acknowledged by the Progressive Left is this …. if America’s GHG emissions are to be reduced 28% by 2025 and 80% by 2050, there will be a variety of unavoidable economic dislocations to be dealt with, ones which result in significant changes to personal lifestyles, changes which will in turn result in some number of further adverse economic impacts.
To claim otherwise is to deliberately mislead the public as to what it will take to get from here to there in reducing America’s GHG emissions as quickly as the President wants to reduce them.
Beta,
There are constitutional law scholars who disagree with just how much the EPA is enabled. Not to mention members of Congress. And let us not forget that the sole determinate for the endangement finding was the IPCC. No other investigation or research was done. Even the Agency’s own Inspector General reported that the Agency failed to follow its own protocols in reaching their finding. Depending on how the climate does play out the next several years, I suspect the EPA may find they have stepped way out of bounds in support of a political agenda and ultimately will have compromised the integrity of the Agency.
FYI – I do appreciate your honesty is calling out what will be required – ie the impacts – of following an emissions reduction policy sufficient to make a difference. Most supporting that response never do so.
Beta wrote:
“— Set a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for carbon pollution at 400 ppm CO2 equivalent.”
Well, the EPA could set a US CO2 output limit of zero for 2016 and send jackboots out to slaughter every man woman and child in the nation and halt all human activity within all 50 states and it is unlikely that CO2 levels will remain below 400 ppm.
As far as I can tell, that would be “using the EPA to its maximum possible effectiveness in reducing America’s own GHG emissions”, but it would not be enough to meet your goals. Does the “Progressive Left” have top secret CO2 eating unicorns which can be deployed at the borders to consume the CO2 which blows over the borders?
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sciguy54: Beta wrote: “— Set a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for carbon pollution at 400 ppm CO2 equivalent.”
Well, the EPA could set a US CO2 output limit of zero for 2016 and send jackboots out to slaughter every man woman and child in the nation and halt all human activity within all 50 states and it is unlikely that CO2 levels will remain below 400 ppm.
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The EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding for carbon cites IPCC 2007 AR4 as its scientific basis. For all intents and purposes, the climate science contained in IPCC AR4 is now the regulatory law of the land, in a manner of speaking, as it affects the EPA’s basic authority to regulate GHG emissions in the United States.
As “timg56” has noted above, it is almost a certainty that the Clean Power Plan will be struck down in a series of lawsuits brought by the carbon fuel interests. The plan I propose has the EPA setting a NAAQS for carbon, something which the EPA has so far declined to do. In my view, the EPA ignores this requirement at the peril of seeing their Clean Power Plan (CPP) fail in the courts.
Under the plan I propose, the EPA sets a NAAQS for carbon of 400 ppm CO2 equivalent. But the EPA could also set a NAAQS of 450 ppm, 500 ppm, 550 ppm, whatever the EPA’s political appointees might decide to choose as their standard.
In making a choice for a NAAQS, the EPA would in effect be making an explicit policy choice as to how much global warming America is willing to live with, accepting that on a worldwide basis, CO2 is a well-mixed gas whose atmospheric concentration can be controlled only through concerted worldwide action among all major carbon emitting nations.
In justifying their choice for a NAAQS, the EPA would have to build a well-argued case which integrates the climate science contained in IPCC AR4 with an analysis of how much global warming America and the world should be willing to accept between now and 2100. The EPA would also have to justify how much contribution America’s own GHG-reduction efforts should be making to the world’s combined total effort in reducing carbon emissions.
These are very messy questions to address. So far, the Obama Administration has declined to address them, preferring instead to adopt the Clean Power Plan, a plan which is clearly designed to avoid the messy business of setting a NAAQS for carbon and then defending that standard both in the courts of law; and ultimately, in the court of public opinion.
———————————
sciguy54: As far as I can tell, that would be “using the EPA to its maximum possible effectiveness in reducing America’s own GHG emissions”, but it would not be enough to meet your goals. Does the “Progressive Left” have top secret CO2 eating unicorns which can be deployed at the borders to consume the CO2 which blows over the borders?
———————————
Setting a NAAQS for carbon here in the United States is a means to an end, it is not an end in itself. See my discussion above for the reasons why this is so.
To avoid setting a NAAQS for carbon — which if one were chosen, would in turn set the snowball rolling in forcing the EPA to regulate GHG’s on their own unique characteristics as substances potentially harmful to human health and the environment — Obama’s Clean Power Plan bundles regulation of GHG emissions with regulation of other kinds of pollutants. But it does so in ways that unfairly assign responsibility for the majority of America’s GHG emission reduction goals to just one industrial sector, the coal industry.
The President’s stated goal is to successfully reduce America’s GHG emissions 28% by 2025 and 80% by 2050. He gets many kudos from the Progressive Left for setting that kind of ambitious goal.
Unfortunately, the Clean Power Plan won’t do the job of reducing America’s GHG emissions 28% by 2025 and 80% by 2050. In terms of the GHG emission classes it regulates, the plan falls well short of covering the ground it needs to cover; and it will probably be struck down in the courts as being highly unfair in its regulatory application.
So ….. what is the purpose of the Clean Power Plan?
In my view, the plan is a means for the President and the EPA to appear committed to the goal of fighting global warming, while at the same time avoiding the messy but necessary business of justifying their proposed GHG reductions to the American voting public in the court of public opinion, which is where things matter most if the President’s stated goals are ever to be met.
Beta Blocker | June 16, 2015 at 2:42 pm |
…
In my view, the plan is a means for the President and the EPA to appear committed to the goal of fighting global warming, while at the same time avoiding the messy but necessary business of justifying their proposed GHG reductions to the American voting public in the court of public opinion, which is where things matter most if the President’s stated goals are ever to be met.
No sane person capable of logical thought believes that reducing CO2 is a good idea. It makes as much sense as banning fertilizer. Yes the lakes and rivers would be a little cleaner, but most people would find the cries of the starving billions somewhat disconcerting. Reducing CO2 emissions increases the risk of future starvation.
Your opinion that the future CO2 limitations will be ineffective would be reason for cheer – if they hadn’t partially achieved their objective of making electric power more expensive.
——————–
PA: “Your opinion that the future CO2 limitations will be ineffective would be reason for cheer – if they hadn’t partially achieved their objective of making electric power more expensive.”
——————–
PA, I take it from comments you make on other Climate Etc. threads that you support an aggressive expansion of nuclear power here in the United States.
As someone who has spent thirty-five years in nuclear construction and operations here in the US, I can only offer the opinion that as things stand today, new-build nuclear projects are not economically competitive with new-build gas-fired projects in those electricity markets which have ready access to adequate supplies of natural gas.
This situation will not change unless government intervenes in the energy marketplace to artificially raise the price of natural gas to levels which will erase its competitive advantage over nuclear.
I don’t buy the argument that the cost of nuclear power can be substantially reduced by eliminating strong regulatory oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC has already gone as far as public policy will allow it to go in reducing the burdens of its regulatory oversight functions, and eliminating the NRC altogether would be the end of nuclear power in the United States.
The only practical way a stillborn Nuclear Renaissance can be revived here in America is for the US Government to put a price on carbon, thus making the long-term cost of gas-fired generation less competitive in comparison with nuclear.
Since the Congress will never act to put a legislated price on carbon, regardless of which political party controls it, this leaves the Executive Branch and the EPA as the only remaining organs of government which have the necessary legal authority and the necessary procedural tools required to legally and constitutionally raise the price of carbon. If the President and the EPA don’t do it, it won’t be done; and the stillborn Nuclear Renaissance will not be revived.
Beta
The EPA can set a NAAQS for CO2 at any ppm level it wishes. The fact remains that there is no mechanism in its possession which will allow it to significantly affect global atmospheric CO2 levels
You therefore propose that elected officials and the courts place virtually unlimited power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, knowing that any regulations created will have almost zero effectiveness toward reaching a given CO2 concentration. This would allow the EPA to issue endless regulations in pursuit of its unattainable goal.
You seem to understand that unwise regulations can almost instantly destroy vast quantities of wealth. But do you understand that such a concentration of power which you propose is an incredible magnet for corruption, intimidation and abuse by politicians, NGOs, and the rich and powerful?
This is exactly the kind of situation which our founders sought to avoid by distributing power among three branches of governance in the first place, not passing it off to an agency of unimpeachable bureaucrats.
But, but . . .
What about all the evil H2O being released into the atmosphere? Whenever hydrocarbons are burnt, H2O is formed. You can drown in excess H2O, or actually die from drinking too much. It causes floods, and boats sink if too much H2O gets in.
If it gets too hot, you can die painfully from scalding. If it gets too cold, you can trip on it, or freeze if you get too much on you.
The Titanic ran into a big piece of cold H2O. We know how many deaths resulted.
You breathe out evil H2O with every breath, just as you do with CO2.
No use saying H2O is necessary for Man to survive. So is CO2.
You’ll really have to come up with something more logical.
Give it a try!
———————————–
Brian H: “The Supremes are hiding behind fuzzy wording in legislation enabling the EPA. That should be clarified, removing the ability to regulate natural components of the atmosphere.”
sciguy54: “The EPA can set a NAAQS for CO2 at any ppm level it wishes. The fact remains that there is no mechanism in its possession which will allow it to significantly affect global atmospheric CO2 levels ……… “
Mike Flynn: “But, but . . . What about all the evil H2O ….. The Titanic ran into a big piece of cold H2O. …… You’ll really have to come up with something more logical. ….. Give it a try!”
———————————–
Brian H, sciguy54, and Mike Flynn, the climate science contained in IPCC 2007 AR4 is now part of the environmental regulatory landscape. Regardless of what you think of AR4’s science, a foundation has been laid which would allow for very aggressive action to be taken against America’s carbon emissions, if the Obama Administration and the EPA chose to do so.
Regardless of how many issues you might have concerning the validity of the IPCC’s climate science, and about the EPA’s use of IPCC 2007 AR4 as its primary source of scientific evidence in supporting its position on the need for carbon emission reductions, the EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding has been upheld by the courts.
The EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding for carbon is a done deal. The use of IPCC 2007 AR4 as the scientific basis for regulating carbon emissions is a done deal. Make all the arguments you want to against IPCC climate science, a foundation for taking strong action against America’s GHG emissions has now been put in place,
But is the Obama Administration making full use of the authority it now has in its hands to aggressively regulate America’s GHG emissions?
The answer here is a resounding ‘No!’
If past precedent had been followed when the Endangerment Finding for carbon was issued, the next major step the EPA should have taken in creating a regulatory framework for GHG emissions should have been to set a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for some specified target CO2-equivalent concentration. (See my discussion above.) After that, an implementing regulatory framework should have been created which was designed from the ground up to be efficient and effective across the board in regulating all classes of GHG emissions.
As it concerns GHG emissions, the EPA has not followed its standard practice for creating a regulatory framework once an Endangerment Finding has been published. Rather, the administration is pushing their Clean Power Plan which bundles GHG emissions with other types of pollutants and which focuses on the coal industry as the primary regulatory target in meeting America’s GHG reduction commitments — ignoring the many other industrial and socio-economic activities which contribute to carbon pollution.
And so while the Progressive Left is constantly harping on a theme that it is only the opposition of right-wing global warming deniers which prevents strong action from being taken against climate change, the fact remains that the President’s own climate action plan falls well short of meeting his stated goal of a 28% reduction in carbon emissions by 2025 and an 80% reduction by 2050.
Once again, here is a strategy for how the President and the EPA can get the job done, assuming of course they are truly serious about greatly reducing America’s GHG emissions:
1) Make full use of the Clean Air Act to its maximum legal authority, using the 2009 Endangerment Finding for carbon as the EPA’s regulatory basis.
2) Set a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for carbon pollution at either 400 ppm CO2 equivalent, or at some larger concentration which is consistent with some specified acceptable rise in global mean temperature between 2015 and 2100.
3) Develop a regulatory framework for carbon pollution which directly constrains emissions of GHGs and which imposes a corresponding system of EPA-administered carbon pollution fines which is the functional equivalent of a legislated carbon tax.
4) Design the EPA’s regulatory framework so as to equitably distribute the economic and social burdens of making the necessary GHG reductions as evenly and as fairly as possible among all classes of GHG emitters.
5) Assign all revenues collected through the EPA’s system of carbon pollution fines to the individual states, thus giving each state a strong incentive to voluntarily adopt the EPA’s standardized GHG regulatory framework.
The basic point to be made here is this: A clear pathway towards achieving the President’s GHG reduction goals exists, one which is legal and constitutional and which does not require further legislation from the Congress — but one which is not being pursued by the Obama Administration.
If the Progressive Left is concerned that strong action isn’t being taken in reducing America’s GHG emissions, they should be pointing the finger at President Obama rather than at right-wing politicians in the US Congress.
I think you have described a “Progressive” dictatorship.
Dr. Curry,
in your presentation I hope you clearly will define the pejorative ‘denier’ and explain the way its used to marginalize arguments. It not only is a despicable tactic, it’s symptomatic of the politicization of the issue to the detriment of the science.
Me, I think of “deniers” as those that deny the uncertainty.
The recent Heartland Climate Conference framed the state of the climate debate very well exposing AGW fraud and telling the truth about the real reasons as to why the climate changes.
A little known fact outside the world of theoretical physics is that some things can be predicted with astonishing accuracy (e.g. landing on a comet), whereas other things are very uncertain (e.g. climate predictions). Surely much of the so-called consensus on climate comes from the non-physics based scientists who simply don’t have this insight.
The climate science uses what we may call theatrical physics. They just pretend to know.
A funny that is strangely accurate
surely?
what is it with these skeptics.. did they forget their job is to question.
Here’s a clue: physics based scientists can tell you why landing on a comet is easy ( its just ENGINEERING not science) and why predicting the weather is hard.
“Here’s a clue: physics based scientists can tell you why landing on a comet is easy ( its just ENGINEERING not science) and why predicting the weather is hard.”
In that case Steven, perhaps you ought to get some ENGINEERS to have a go at predicting the weather, they’re good at doing hard stuff, perhaps because unlike you lot, they’re generally held accountable for their success or failure.
Steven Mosher,
Don’t call me Shirley!
Here’s a suggestion : Tell Elon Musk he needs to find some real engineers to help him out.
“SpaceX has failed to land a reusable rocket booster back on to its platform barge in the Atlantic, its third failed landing in as many attempts . . . ”
Maybe he’s employing non physics based scientists – maybe climate scientists? – what do you think?
Maybe you could have looked into the future for him, and told him he was going to fail. I believe he’s a billionaire, and would no doubt have paid you handsomely. Surely he has your phone number? Why didn’t he ask you to tell him what to do?
You seem exceptionally qualified in this area.
“Here’s a clue: physics based scientists can tell you why landing on a comet is easy .. and why predicting the weather is hard.”
And hence they are not part of the consensus.
The problem is as far as I can see it is the lack of forcefulness by many who do not really believe in AGW. This theory needs to be met head on in order to get rid of it although future climatic trends will accomplish the job but it may take longer.
Salvatore/All – I think this really just comes down to CAGW funding.
When you throw $ billions of dollars at 1,000’s of scientists and ask them to find proof of something, with the implication that their funding will dry up if they don’t, what do you think the outcome will be?
Ask any 5 year old what they would do if they were paid $50,000 to find something. How hard and how long would they look?
This is not difficult.
Now offer the dis-incentive to that scientist that if you open your mouth in criticism of CAGW that your funding will be pulled, you will be disgraced and discredited, you’ll never work in your chosen field again, and you’ll be audited by the IRS for the next ten years running.
It’s amazing that they only got 97%, eh?
Few are talking about how CO2 mitigation efforts, if successful, would put civiliation onto an unsustainable path.
Fortunately, Matt Ridley is shining some light in this direction:
Until now, green thinking has wanted us to go back to nature: to reject innovations such as genetically modified food, give up commerce and consumption and energy and materials and live simpler lives so that nature is not abused and the climate is not wrecked. The eco-modernists, who include the veteran Californian green pioneer Stewart Brand and the British green campaigner Mark Lynas, say this is a mistake. “Absent a massive human die-off, any large-scale attempt at recoupling human societies to nature using these [ancestral] technologies would result in an unmitigated ecological and human disaster.”
The Ecomodernist Manifesto promises a much needed reformation in the green movement. Its 95 theses should be nailed to the door of the Vatican when the pope’s green-tinged encyclical comes out next month, because unlike the typical eco-wail, it contains good news for the poor. It says: no, we are not going to stop you getting rich and adopting new technologies and leaving behind the misery of cooking over wood fires in smoky huts with no artificial light. No, we do not want you to stay as subsistence farmers. Indeed, the quicker we can get you into a city apartment with a car, a phone, a fridge and a laptop, the better. Because then you won’t be taking wood and bushmeat from the forest.
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/eco-modernism-and-sustainable-intensification.aspx
Constrained transport fuels >>> climate change
Political and geological constraints on transport fuels have orders of magnitude greater impact on our global economy than whatever is the human contribution to climate change. See the catastrophic impact on North Korea’s economy and resultant major famine due to losing its subsidized oil from the USSR.
The Political Ecology of Famine ADB
Obama’s efforts to control climate will have about as much impact as King Canute’s parable to his foolish courtiers of commanding the waves.
How do you know the costs will be high enough to “damage” the economy? What “climate surprises” might be in store for us and wouldn’t mitigation potentially head off some of those “climate surprises?”
“What “climate surprises” might be in store for us and wouldn’t mitigation potentially head off some of those “climate surprises?”
It is “possible’ that CO2 mitigation might head off climate surprises. There is as much reliable evidence to support that belief as there is that an CO2 mitigation action will increase your odds of winning the lottery. VIRTUALLY NONE
Since there is very limited funds–shouldn’t they be spent more wisely????
How do you know, Rob?
Joseph– in the words of Mosher–you should read more and comment less and then you would know.
I read your response and still don’t see an answer to my question. Just hand waving about “reliable evidence.”
Joseph– what do you dispute??
a) that funds are limited or
b) that there is any reliable evidence that CO2 mitigation will improve the weather.
Joseph, if we knew what ‘climate surprises’ might be in store, they wouldn’t be surprises. Now if you meant what ‘climate speculations might be in store’, CAGW has already provided a long list (from children won’t know snow to malaria in NYC and Spain), all debunked in my newest ebook.
Clueless as always Joseph.
Do you understand what is meant by folks who say “We need to put a price on carbon”?
Can you grasp the meaning of the word constrain in this partial sentence from Beta Blocker …. “acts directly to constrain their supply and availability” ?
Transportation networks run on fossil fuels. If the cost of those fuels is artificially driven up and at the same time their supply and availability is restricted (i.e. constrained), then not only does the cost of moving goods skyrocket, but (more importantly) the amount of goods goes down.
Joseph, please explain how increasing the price of fuel to such an extent that pensioners are obliged to choose between heating their houses or being able to afford to eat is going to affect the climate one way or the other.
That experiment has been tried in the UK. Some pensioners die (previously posted). That benefits Die Stadt. Fewer people to remember the last cold decades. Reduced pension expense. Reduced National Health Care expense. What is not to like?
It is also on television (“Naked and Afraid”).
Joseph,
I actually think your questions are perfectly legitimate, but science cannot answer those questions. It is plausible that adding CO2 will cause either a destruction of the existing response surface or an escape from the existing attractor basin. I personally am not worried about it but it is plausible. There is a limit to what the state of the science can tell us. The scientists need to be honest, they have done a poor job of honesty to this point. All of the important decisions are normative and belong in the political arena.
“It is plausible that adding CO2 will cause either a destruction of the existing response surface or an escape from the existing attractor basin.”
I am unfamiliar with your terminology. I am guessing that you are saying that CO2 might be protecting the Earth from slipping back to its glacial state. I have heard it speculated the Little Ice Age put us dangerously close to the edge of falling back to geologic normal, (ice age), had not the industrial revolution CO2 come to the rescue. Undoubtedly, the next 20,000 years provide a near certainty of falling back to glacial mode unless the Earth is engineered not to. I wonder what the religious greens’ response would be to a hypothetical finding that AGW was in fact necessary to stave off natural global disaster.
Good introduction to nonlinear science with lots of references for further reading here:
http://amath.colorado.edu/faculty/jdm/faq-%5B2%5D.html
What “reliable evidence” (your term) says that it won’t?
Every IPCC report (and the research) indicates that risk of extreme weather events increases as the temperature increases.
But the observational evidence does not support the claims. Repeatedly making claims does not makes them true.
Well Rob since the impacts are most predicted for the future it make sense that you wouldn’t see them now.
Joseph—You are funny. In your world then we should not have documented the evidence over the last 70 years or so, but should only believe it will occur in the future
It’s not my world there, Rob. You can choose to dismiss (deny) what the science says if you want.
Joseph–You are being untruthful about the science– please stop.
The actual science does NOT show that there has been any increase in extreme weather tied to an increase in CO2 levels.
Cite?
Here is a good place to start..
http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WG2AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf
That’s the “Summary for Policymakers” from Working Group II.
Nothing to do with research. Cite me something from the body of WGI. If you can.
However NOAA disagrees:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/10/09/noaa-destroys-global-warming-link-to-extreme-weather/
No I think they found no link between climate and particular events, but I didn’t see where they said that climate change does not or will not in the future lead to extreme weather events
Judy may be referring to this:
http:// judithcurry.com/2014/01/06/ipcc-ar5-weakens-the-case-for-agw/
scroll down to:
Extreme Events
AR5: less confident
http://judithcurry.com/2014/01/06/ipcc-ar5-weakens-the-case-for-agw/
Ordvic, I believe she is referring to current and past events, not the future.
I think I mentioned that the impacts were predicted for the future, not now.
Please read the IPCC report link that I offered to Ordvic.
http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WG2AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf
Joseph
I am quite familiar with the IPCC report(s). They do not explain why there would not have been an impact between 280 ppm and 400 ppm but there will be at higher levels.
So they must be wrong and therefore ignored?
That’s the “Summary for Policymakers” from Working Group II.
Nothing to do with research. Cite something from the body of WGI. If you can.
Joseph
I did not write that they should be ignored, but they also should not be considered reliable assessments unless or until there is additional observed evidence to confirm the theorized result.
Joseph, there is something fundamentally wrong with the warmer thought process.
Warmers brainstorm all the possible ways that warming and more CO2 can cause problems – then assert that the worst case will happen.
This is crazy.
What should happen is that all the grants since 1988 should be audited to determined the total outlay for identifying harm from warming or CO2.
This total should be applied to a new series of grant whose purpose is to to assign dollar values to past benefits from more warming and CO2, and future benefits from more warming and more CO2. They can make empirical measurements, use theory and models, or just dream up hypothetical benefits without any proof or measurement. They can include benefits such as calming weather, improving precipitation distribution, etc. etc. which are unproven but hypothetically possible. In other words they can approach estimating benefit the same way that global warmers’s approach estimating harm.
Whoever comes up with the highest benefit numbers in their studies goes to the front of the line in the next round of grants – just global warmers. Given that there is at least $1 trillion per per of easily identified benefit – they should be able to identify $ 1 to 5 trillion/year of benefit.
Since global warmers inflate their numbers by 3 to 10 times, the final benefit amount should be multiplied by 3 to 10 times so an apples and apples comparison can be made to global warming harm numbers.
About $10 billion or more from now we will have established the total benefit from more warming and more CO2. If the total benefit from more warming and more CO2 is greater than estimated harm, the executive branch should be forbidden by law from taking any action to reduce CO2 emissions or promote renewables.
AK, WG2 is the one that looks into impacts. Why would I need to go to WG1?
Again that is going to be hard since most severe impact are supposed to occur in the future. So I guess you won’t ever be satisfied.
@Joseph…
Because it’s WG1 that looks into the “scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change.” That would include projections of “any increase in extreme weather tied to an increase in CO2 levels.” From the IPCC Organizational Structure:
WG2, OTOH, looks into vulnerability;
If by “warmer” you mean scientists, every study I have seen discusses risks and range of outcomes with various probabilities.
So, AK, you are saying that WG2 is not based on a review of the scientific literature on the impacts of climate change?
@Joseph…
Everybody knows the “Summary for Policymakers” bears only a passing resemblance to any “science” within the body of the report. It’s the result of a political negotiation among sponsors.
As for any “review of the scientific literature on the impacts of climate change” in WGII, based on the policy I blockquoted, it would be on the “impacts” of increased “risk of extreme weather events”, not whether it actually “increases as the temperature increases.” The latter, if any, would be in WGI.
Basically, invoking WGII to “prove” that “that risk of extreme weather events increases as the temperature increases” is tantamount to begging the question.
Like Ehrlich the IPCC wants you to believe that the failure of all their past predictions doesn’t negate any of their future ones.
AK, It states in several places in the link I provided that the various risks increase as the temperature increases. Are they making that up??
Joseph: “Are they making that up??”
In a word – YES!
“Global aggregate impacts: Risks of global aggregate impacts are moderate for additional warming between 1–2°C,”
There is great benefit and not a lot of potential risk for the expected warming levels (0-2°C).
The IPCC doesn’t really foresee problems until temperatures increase 3-4°C.
“Risks associated with such tipping points become moderate between 0–1°C additional warming, due to early warning signs that both warm-water coral reef and Arctic ecosystems are already experiencing irreversible regime shifts (medium confidence).”
The IPCC examples of things affected by 0-1°C warming are corals and arctic ecosystems. I hate to tell you – but 0°C isn’t a change. The corals are recovering and polar bears have increased to 5 times their minimum population so the IPCC concerns may be unfounded. Further – if the IPCC was required to hold conferences in “dry” cities, tipping points might not be such a problem.
Probably, if it’s in the “Summary for Policymakers”. Such a statement could only be believed if you can find it in the body, and then only if it properly uses its references.
If such a statement were found in WGI, it might have more credibility, but even then I wouldn’t believe it without checking ref’s. But if it was there, I might actually consider wasting the time to do it. In WGII, or any “Summary for Policymakers”, I discount it as politics, not science. Track down the references themselves (if any) if you want, and cite them. IPCC has no credibility.
Well you obviously haven’t read the report. So I why should I find your opinion credible when you don’t even know what is in it?
Joseph,
Who do we believe?
The IPCC, or Svante Arrhenius (chemist, physicist, Nobel Laureate), who wrote –
“By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind.”
I prefer Arrhenius’ prediction. The IPCC seems to comprise a mixed bunch – maybe there’s a first class mind or two there, but science by committee doesn’t seem all that clever to me.
Are two people with IQs of 75 collectively more intelligent than one person with an IQ of 120? Is the collective intelligence of the IPCC meaningful?
Over to you.
Mike Flynn,
+100
And every ad for male enhancement produces indicate increased amounts of sex as you consume their product.
I bet the people running phone scams asking for money love you Joseph.
“Every IPCC report (and the research) indicates that risk of extreme weather events increases as the temperature increases.”
So, as out here in the real world there is absolutely zero evidence of that -in fact, rather the opposite, in fact – every IPCC report appears to be wrong, doesn’t it?
Joseph, Yes and that is what the statement you snipped refers to that is the past and present. Sure past and present events do not necessarily indicate future results but they can be a guide. I read a paper that indicated a warming stratosphere could change the jet stream north and south wise causing weather disruptions and events that would indicate you could be right but still it’s a little early for tests of that hypothesis.
re the hiatus… I hoped to see in the presentation a cross plot of global mean temperature vs. CO2 to further make the point such as shown here. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/22/a-statistical-definition-of-the-hiatus-in-global-warming-using-nasa-giss-and-mlo-data/ The IPCC make a robust claim that climate change is “caused” by anthropomorphic / greenhouse gas causes – with high levels of certainty and the politicos take it a step further to claim we are “on track” (talking point for tipping point ) for a temperature rise of 2oC, range of 1.5-4.5oC … obvious leap of inference is AGW is doing the “causing” of temperature to rise above the critical point that will lead to catastrophic damage to mother earth and all humankind.
The actual data in the cross plot of temperature vs. CO2 during the hiatus is a shotgun scatter plot, except flatter. Conclusion is that “the accepted (by the consensus) hypothesis that global mean temperature variation is predominately caused by a single variable, CO2” is patently false during the 18+ year hiatus. We can also say that all of the variability (scatter) in the data is due to “not CO2.
Judith you seem unable to escape from the IPCC forecasting paradigm when discussing climate change, Here is an exchange with Freeman Dyson .You might at least mention this approach and forecast at some point in your comments and lecture.
Climate and CO2- Exchange with Freeman Dyson
e-mail 4/7/15
Dr Norman Page
Houston
Professor Dyson
Saw your Vancouver Sun interview.
I agree that CO2 is beneficial. This will be even more so in future because it is more likely than not that the earth has already entered a long term cooling trend following the recent temperature peak in the quasi-millennial solar driven periodicity .
The climate models on which the entire Catastrophic Global Warming delusion rests are built without regard to the natural 60 and more importantly 1000 year periodicities so obvious in the temperature record. The modelers approach is simply a scientific disaster and lacks even average commonsense .It is exactly like taking the temperature trend from say Feb – July and projecting it ahead linearly for 20 years or so. They back tune their models for less than 100 years when the relevant time scale is millennial. This is scientific malfeasance on a grand scale. The temperature projections of the IPCC – UK Met office models and all the impact studies which derive from them have no solid foundation in empirical science being derived from inherently useless and specifically structurally flawed models. They provide no basis for the discussion of future climate trends and represent an enormous waste of time and money. As a foundation for Governmental climate and energy policy their forecasts are already seen to be grossly in error and are therefore worse than useless. A new forecasting paradigm needs to be adopted. For forecasts of the timing and extent of the coming cooling based on the natural solar activity cycles – most importantly the millennial cycle – and using the neutron count and 10Be record as the most useful proxy for solar activity check my blog-post at http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
The most important factor in climate forecasting is where earth is in regard to the quasi- millennial natural solar activity cycle which has a period in the 960 – 1020 year range. For evidence of this cycle see Figs 5-9. From Fig 9 it is obvious that the earth is just approaching ,just at or just past a peak in the millennial cycle. I suggest that more likely than not the general trends from 1000- 2000 seen in Fig 9 will likely generally repeat from 2000-3000 with the depths of the next LIA at about 2650. The best proxy for solar activity is the neutron monitor count and 10 Be data. My view ,based on the Oulu neutron count – Fig 14 is that the solar activity millennial maximum peaked in Cycle 22 in about 1991. There is a varying lag between the change in the in solar activity and the change in the different temperature metrics. There is a 12 year delay between the neutron peak and the probable millennial cyclic temperature peak seen in the RSS data in 2003. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980.1/plot/rss/from:1980.1/to:2003.6/trend/plot/rss/from:2003.6/trend
There has been a cooling temperature trend since then (Usually interpreted as a “pause”) There is likely to be a steepening of the cooling trend in 2017- 2018 corresponding to the very important Ap index break below all recent base values in 2005-6. Fig 13.
The Polar excursions of the last few winters in North America are harbingers of even more extreme winters to come more frequently in the near future.
I would be very happy to discuss this with you by E-mail or phone .It is important that you use your position and visibility to influence United States government policy and also change the perceptions of the MSM and U.S public in this matter. If my forecast cooling actually occurs the policy of CO2 emission reduction will add to the increasing stress on global food production caused by a cooling and generally more arid climate.
Best Regards
Norman Page
E-Mail 4/9/15
Dear Norman Page,
Thank you for your message and for the blog. That all makes sense.
I wish I knew how to get important people to listen to you. But there is
not much that I can do. I have zero credibility as an expert on climate.
I am just a theoretical physicist, 91 years old and obviously out of touch
with the real world. I do what I can, writing reviews and giving talks,
but important people are not listening to me. They will listen when the
glaciers start growing in Kentucky, but I will not be around then. With
all good wishes, yours ever, Freeman Dyson.
Email 4/9/15
Professor Dyson Would you have any objection to my posting our email exchange on my blog?
> Best Regards Norman Page
E-Mail 4/9/15
Yes, you are welcome to post this exchange any way you like. Thank you
for asking. Yours, Freeman Dyson
Dr. PAGE ,what does MCE stand for? Thanks.
all the Solar Activity data time series – e.g., Solar Magnetic Field strength, TSI, SSNs, GCRs, (effect on aerosols, clouds and albedo) CHs, MCEs, EUV variations, and associated ozone variations and Forbush events.
Salvatore Should be CMEs – coronal mass ejections.
thanks. Dr. Page.
Thanks for posting this Norman Page. One of the saddest aspects of climate fanaticism is the attempted marginalization of scientists such as Dyson and to some extent Lindzen as being to old to contribute.
Don’t forget Fred Singer and many others.
Judith, you looked young and Maaavolous last night on Stossel.
Great segment!
Must have been all that makeup they slathered on :)
Judith,
They used to slather it onto we males also. It gave us a rough time when our mates saw the broadcasts. Even rougher when our women friends saw the result and approached with lippies drawn.
One wonders what if anything the more intellectully serious members of the Upper House make of this sort of performance art?
Nature might invite Grey Gowrie to review Judy’s Hansard debut.
Regarding this quote: “Many scientists, and institutions that support science, are becoming advocates for UN climate policies, which is leading scientists into overconfidence in their assessments and public statements and into failures to respond to genuine criticisms of the scientific consensus.”
I object to this use of the term consensus, as there is no consensus. Calling the dangerous-warming position the consensus is a rhetorical trick on their behalf. At minimum the term should be capitalized, or scare quoted, to make clear that it is a political position, not an actual consensus.
+1
Dr. Curry: “My home state of Georgia is in the middle of denier land.”
Obama: “He has taken to labeling his opponents as ‘deniers’”,
Whew, good thing we re straight on the appropriate use of the term ‘denier.” Use it against progressive/moderate ‘lukewarmers’ and it’s a no-no. Use it to dismiss millions of conservative southerners, and…well…what’s not to like?
Might want to drop one of these, for consistency’s sake.
The first line got a good laugh at the event, quite rightly in my view. The malice in the hearts of others doesn’t need to stymie mockery of their ridiculousness.
GaryM, I think we all read the note of sarcasm in Dr. Curry’s sentence that you missed.
Denier is a group label. Progressives in US are so infatuated with political correctness that even absurdly innocuous words are “outed” as being a dog whistle for a group label to be condemned. Yet the very same progressives have no ethical standards for themselves when it comes to wholesale vilification on a Third Reich type scale. What were we taking about again? Oh ya, consistency.
Ron Graf.
I didn’t miss the sarcasm. It is the sarcasm that I criticized.
If what you mean is she was being ironic, I considered that. But she has dropped too many off-hand, dismissive remarks regarding conservatives over the years to get the benefit of the doubt. She has improved significantly. But old tribal habits die hard.
Excellent event. Very clear and apposite presentation from Judith, with quotes from some important political players from Obama upwards (sorted by intelligence there), and a number of excellent contributions/questions after, including from UK MPs Owen Paterson and David T Davies and the Aussie geologist Ian Plimer. One-sided it may have seemed – but I enjoyed talking to one intelligent non-sceptic afterwards who I’d met at a previous GWPF event. Nigel Lawson finished with an observation about political correctness: that the advantage of being PC is that you don’t need to know what you’re talking about but Professor Curry does know and has shown admirable integrity and courage to boot. Quite so.
Few are talking about how CO2 mitigation efforts, if successful, would put civiliation onto an unsustainable path.
Fortunately, Matt Ridley is shining some light in this direction:
Until now, green thinking has wanted us to go back to nature: to reject innovations such as genetically modified food, give up commerce and consumption and energy and materials and live simpler lives so that nature is not abused and the climate is not wrecked. The eco-modernists, who include the veteran Californian green pioneer Stewart Brand and the British green campaigner Mark Lynas, say this is a mistake. “Absent a massive human die-off, any large-scale attempt at recoupling human societies to nature using these [ancestral] technologies would result in an unmitigated ecological and human disaster.”
The Ecomodernist Manifesto promises a much needed reformation in the green movement. Its 95 theses should be nailed to the door of the Vatican when the pope’s green-tinged encyclical comes out next month, because unlike the typical eco-wail, it contains good news for the poor. It says: no, we are not going to stop you getting rich and adopting new technologies and leaving behind the misery of cooking over wood fires in smoky huts with no artificial light. No, we do not want you to stay as subsistence farmers. Indeed, the quicker we can get you into a city apartment with a car, a phone, a fridge and a laptop, the better. Because then you won’t be taking wood and bushmeat from the forest.
Help I’m stuck in moderation
Many argue that a state of moderation is preferable to one of excess or scarcity. Be happy!
What about a simple counter-challenge?
Since our epoch has consisted of nothing but fluctuations in sea levels, ice, temps etc, it’s hard for some like me to get interested in the latest blips. Maybe if we could track down the people who have been able to track down the period, however brief, of “stable” climate? So many imply this mythical era, but none will define or even describe it. Or is it only to be implied, since “every schoolboy” used to know that climate history is all wobble and no skate-surface, and “every schoolboy” would still know if allowed to know.
I ask this often around here because our naughty world is getting even naughtier. From the South China Sea, through Venezuela, the Falklands, Nigeria, Cyprus, Eastern Europe, Russia, Turkey, former Soviet Republics to the Middle East there is geopolitical tension and realignment to do with energy. And nobody’s fighting over valuable wind turbine space or a nice pitching spot for solar panels. Noticed?
Shame for the developed West and the Anglosphere to be sleepwalking toward energy dependence and energy poverty at such a time if there is really no reason for any of it, beyond a weird mal-de-siecle or yearning for Avatar.
Not having a strong right-wing gene I can easily grasp why people aspire to national health systems and the like, even what’s a touch impractical. I get that.
But, Tomorrowland achings aside, I need to know when was the climate stable and why are doing this green-zombie walk to no apparent end – as if there were no world and no geopolitics around us?
“I need to know when was the climate stable and why are doing this green-zombie walk to no apparent end – as if there were no world and no geopolitics around us?”
The goal is not a “stable” climate. That term is relatively meaningless any way. The goal is reducing our influence on the climate. If you want to focus on geopolitics then please just surrender in the climate war, quit trying to fight on two fronts and go comment on geopolitics at some other blog. Your, ahem, insights, won’t be missed..
Steve
You are mistaken when you write— “The goal is reducing our influence on the climate.”
The stated goal is to stop the negative human influence on the climate.
Now this makes sense if someone knew that the human influence was in fact negative, but we don’t do we??? Nobody would want to stop the human influence if it was positive would they?
No, I think I’ll keep bothering you. You are certainly bothered. Ahem.
Well, they invented the hockeystick myth to promote the idea that the climate had been stable for a long time, until the age of ACO2. They holler about the temperature rising, ice going missing, sea level rise, butterfly migration, severe weather, cats sleeping with dogs blah…blah…blah. They want to limit the temperature rise to under 2C, to forestall all the alleged bad effects of “climate change”. One might suspect they are advocating a “stable” climate, if one didn’t know that term is relatively meaningless.
“The goal is reducing our influence on the climate.”
Get back to us when you figure out what our influence on the climate is.
Andrew
Care to actually show where this is the stated goal? This doesn’t sound like any stated goal I’ve actually seen (well, apart from when someone is claiming it’s the stated goal).
Manipulating climate looks like a bit of a job. No wonder they want a “climate war” to do it. But I wonder how well that might work. When someone went seeding the Pacific with paltry amounts of iron in 2009, at that very same time El Nino did its thing and lifted millions of tons of iron-rich Australian dust and dumped it in the ocean for free. Did those climate warriors even notice? Or wasn’t it part of their climate war mission?
I was only reading yesterday about Roman port infrastructure near Antium which is now well inland. Of course, it’s not the only example of such changes, and the changes can be both ways due to subsidence, erosion, siltation etc. Not always a matter of a simple sea level rise or fall, but evidence of higher sea levels in pretty recent millennia is hard to dodge.
I’m assuming those Romans weren’t so silly as to build ports inland, and they must have had a reason to move Ostia three times to higher ground.
Where’s tonyb? I must ask him about that. (Hope it won’t make anybody hot under the collar.)
ATTP- “Someday, our children, and our children’s children, will look at us in the eye and they’ll ask us, did we do all that we could when we had the chance to deal with this problem and leave them a cleaner, safe, more stable world?” – President Barack Obama, June 25, 2013″
Looks like the US President seeks to stop the negative impacts doesn’t he??? Try using your sense and not playing word games. Do you claim there is a desire to want to stop net beneficial impacts?
‘ Hansen warned that the rise in sea levels was evidence
that humans were causing global climate instability.’
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5794
I wonder which is harder: getting a ship to where Mawson anchored or getting a canoe to Ephesus. Seems there are the theories about ice and sea levels…then there are actual ice and sea levels. Never the twain etc.
We have been waiting for you to come along and tell us what the stated goal is, kenny. But you just tease. Won’t you let us in on it, kenny? Please.
Lucia on Marotzke and Forster claim that the models
do not overesimate sclimate sensitivity to radiative
forcings from increased greenhouse gas concentrations.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2015/how-to-obscure-by-reducing-power-of-a-test-marotzke-and-forster/
Rob,
No, I’m trying to point out that the real issue is whether or not we want to risk the possibility of severe negative impacts. Absent technologies/advancements that can remove GHGs from the atmosphere, it is irreversible on human timescales. Is it worth risking finding out whether the net effect is overall negative, or positive?
“Is it worth risking finding out whether the net effect is overall negative, or positive?”
You are not up to speed, kenny. That ain’t the stated goal. That isn’t even close to being the issue, according to the consensus climate change dogma. I will help you. Your crowd is hollering that CAGW is a done deal, unless we change our evil ways. They are running around like Chicken Littles screaming that it’s already happening. You must have missed it, when they sent out the “debate is over” memo.
ATTP writes
1. “we want to risk the possibility of severe negative impacts.”
2. “Absent technologies/advancements that can remove GHGs from the atmosphere, it is irreversible on human timescales.”
Regarding #1- shouldn’t there be better evidence of net negative impacts today if these impacts will be increasing and so large in the future? It is difficult to take someone’s claims about a huge increase in the rate of sea level rise seriously (as an example) when the rate of rise has been fairly steady for close to 1000 years.
Regarding #2- I am skeptical about the claim that it is irreversible on human timescales. I have read several papers on the topic, but do not conclude the system is understood well enough to reach that conclusion.
Steven Mosher,
According to Svante Arrhenius –
” By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind.”
I presume you don’t want to see “more equable and better climates” or “much more abundant crops”.
I’m not sure why you want mankind to be miserable and hungry, but that’s the way it appears.
Or was Svante Arrhenius just dumb, in your opinion?
…and Then There’s Physics | June 15, 2015 at 6:07 pm |
…
No, I’m trying to point out that the real issue is whether or not we want to risk the possibility of severe negative impacts. Absent technologies/advancements that can remove GHGs from the atmosphere, it is irreversible on human timescales. Is it worth risking finding out whether the net effect is overall negative, or positive?
This so wrong it is hard to decide which point to attack first.
1. There is no proven harm. There is no future proven harm. The last interglacial was about 2°C warmer.
2. It is incredible that people are putting forth the inane argument that we can’t risk imaginary net harm from a change that has historically been beneficial – massively ($ trillions per year) beneficial.
3. “It is irreversible on human time scales”? Really. I wish people would repeating this silly statement that is proven untrue by two independent tests.
a. The C14 added by nuclear testing had a half-life of 11 years and a mean lifetime of 16 years.
b. If we stopped emitting CO2 today, the environmental absorption would reduce the atmospheric CO2 level by 2.44 PPM/Y. Even if we assume 480 PPM as the peak CO2 level – it will be back down to 400 PPM in under 32 years. That is about 1 generation in western countries and sounds pretty reversible to me.
4. We don’t want to reduce the CO2 level below 400 PPM. The 55% growth increase since 1900 is desperately needed given all the food currently being turned into fuel (40% of corn in the US). Throwing away this bounty and allowing the CO2 level to drop below 400 PPM is not the act of rational people who have the best interest of humans at heart. Even considering an attempt to return to 280 PPM is crazy.
5. “Is it worth risking finding out whether the net effect is overall negative, or positive?” Another really strange statement. The “amputate your hand to avoid a possible future papercut” philosophy of the global warmers is unbalanced. We know reducing CO2 will cause harm and cut yields significantly. All the threat from increasing CO2 is minor and speculative.
http://www.c3headlines.com/global-warming-quotes-climate-change-quotes.html
Quote by David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!: “My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
6. Why do global warmers want to effectively throw all that food (1/3 of current harvest) on the ground??? It would appear that genocide and mass starvation is viewed as a feature and not a problem by global warmers. Global warming is the most heinous and evil philosophy to emerge on this planet. There are some global warmers who want to eliminate 100 times more (10,000%) people than the most evil tyrants of the past. “Reducing” over 7 billion people is beyond genocide. These people have not been repudiated by their co-conspirators.
The global warmers will persist until we start trying them for attempted genocide. Planned future genocide is an odd crime but unless we start treating this as the crime it is, and start jailing the felons who advocate it (global warmers), sooner or later it is going to happen.
If you read through the quotes from environmentalist/socialist/progressive global warmers it is pretty clear these people are crazy and dangerous.
7. The voice of sanity has a much more reasonable and soothing tone:
http://www.c3headlines.com/quotes-from-global-warming-critics-skeptics-sceptics.html
8. The likely additional CO2 caused warming is going to in the range of 0.5 to 0.98 W/m2. Most reasonable people expect a 0.2 to 0.3 °C temperature increase in the 21st century. Yeah the change will probably be large enough to measure. However it is going to be significantly short of apocalyptic.
Reasonable people with common sense realize that just because we can measure a change doesn’t mean it is harmful. The past warming since 1900 was mostly natural and 3 times greater than the probable future warming. Given that we are still about 2°C below the last interglacial it is a little early to get concerned.
“Now this makes sense if someone knew that the human influence was in fact negative, but we don’t do we??? Nobody would want to stop the human influence if it was positive would they?”
We dont have to know. Simple fact is you dont know if the sun will come up but that doesnt stop you from taking action.
‘Hansen warned that the rise in sea levels was evidence
that humans were causing global climate instability.’
A steady rise is arguably stability. Say one was emptying a pool at a slow and steady rate. Or emptying an ice sheet into the oceans at a slow and steady rate. An acceleration of that now might prevent a greater acceleration and collapse later. The ice not melting in the face of rising temperatures would be instability. Systems can reorganize to prevent instability it seems to me.
“The goal is reducing our influence on the climate.”
That’s really, really stupid goal.
I vote for maximizing our influence!
Mosher writes- “We dont have to know. Simple fact is you dont know if the sun will come up but that doesnt stop you from taking action.”
Taking action less likely to be wasteful requires identification of the “problem”.
Steven Mosher,
You wrote –
“We dont have to know. Simple fact is you dont know if the sun will come up but that doesnt stop you from taking action.”
You are quite right. You might decide to commit suicide, become a climatologist or real scientist, swim the English Channel, or fight a grizzly bear. What’s your point?
I think you are being silly, and I presume you are doing it on purpose. I just don’t know why. Could you let us know?
Thanks.
“The goal is reducing our influence on the climate.” Surely, if there are any concerns about adverse climate shifts, the goal would be to increase our capacity to influence the climate? In fact, there are great efforts being made to influence the climate by those who accept CAGW, IMHO at disproportionate cost to the minor effects which might arise and at the cost of issues which many would consider priorities, cf the Copenhagen Consensus. Faustino
And why are we now supposed to stop the sun from coming up?
“Simple fact is you dont know if the sun will come up but that doesnt stop you from taking action.”
It does if the sun not coming up is your excuse for decarbonizing the global energy economy.
> I vote for maximizing our influence!
David Cameron agrees:
http://newsthump.com/2015/06/15/david-cameron-promises-referendum-on-magna-carta/
Willard,
Svante Arrhenius recommended increasing CO2 to ensure better and more equable climates, and to increase food supplies.
Why are you opposed to this Nobel Prize winning physicist and chemist?
Did he not understand climate change? Do you think he was stupid, maybe?
His thoughts seem reasonable to me. What’s the problem with a more equable or better climate? Do you really want less food?
All very strange.
ATTP
First, we have debated in the past how fast the oceans would take up the CO2 after the transition from fossil fuel was mostly complete. But we agreed that it would be fastest at first and progressively slower as new equilibrium was approached. I think we might also agree that some level above 300ppm might be beneficial, especially this late in an interglacial, not to mention crop yields.
The irreversible claim I think also sells short human technological acceleration. Taking your eye off GHG for a second, albedo engineering is certainly plausible. Covering the oceans with Mylar lilys, artificial spume or GMO reflective husk algae we would have a control knob we could attenuate to compensate for any circumstance, super volcano, cosmic impact, nuclear detonations, solar long-cycle minimum, etc…
Mike F
“You are quite right. You might decide to commit suicide, become a climatologist or real scientist, swim the English Channel, or fight a grizzly bear. What’s your point?”
The point is simple.
Rob made this comment
“Now this makes sense if someone knew that the human influence was in fact negative, but we don’t do we?”
In other words. Unless we KNOW the human influence will be negative it doesnt make sense to do anything. Thats clearly wrong.
My counter point is that we dont need knowledge to take action. In fact we decide and act all the time regardless of our knowledge state
we act all the time on reasonable belief’
we act all the time in the face of uncertainty
we act all the time on the basis of hunches and guesses and best estimates.
In short we dont need knowledge to act.
I dont need to prove that c02 will call harm. I dont need to know , to take action. In fact, we dont know it and we are already taking action.Knowledge isnt required for action.
if you want to argue that we SHOULD have knowledge of the future harm before we act, then I’d remind you that you’ve argued we cant have knowledge of the future. funny how that works. So, simple observation. we take action all the time based on our beliefs about the future. we dont need knowledge of the future to act and Flynn in fact has shown that we cant have knowledge of the future. yet we act.
Steven Mosher,
You haven’t explained why Svante Arrhenius is wrong, and you are right. But no matter.
You wrote –
“In other words. Unless we KNOW the human influence will be negative it doesnt make sense to do anything. Thats clearly wrong.”
Why is it clearly wrong? The climate has changed, presumably since the creation of the Earth. And yes, I can’t personally verify what happened even one hundred years ago. I wasn’t around then.
If the climate has always changed, why interfere? It’s going to keep changing, isn’t it? You can’t change the past, you can’t foresee the future consequences of any actions you take relating to CO2, you can’t define the effect your proposed course of action will have, and you can’t say who, if anyone, will benefit from your undefined proposed course of action.
Your logic seems to consist of saying CO2 is somehow essentially evil, and will have detrimental effects on mankind.
You cannot come up with a cogent reason why this should be so, so you attempt to divert the conversation away from your real agenda, which seems to be to prevent the burning of carbon based compounds.
Don’t be silly. People are starting to realise the essential foolishnes of your actions.
Steven Mosher,
You wrote –
“In short we dont need knowledge to act.
I dont need to prove that c02 will call harm. I dont need to know , to take action. In fact, we dont know it and we are already taking action.Knowledge isnt required for action.”
Do think that taking random action without any reasonable idea of the consequences is a good idea? Most people wouldn’t, but to someone of your superior intelligence, it no doubt seems like the grandest plan in the world!
At this point I could give you many examples of the disastrous consequences of your theory, or endless irrelevant and nonsensical analogies, but this would be acting like a Warmist.
I will leave you take all sorts of action about all sorts of things that exist only in your imagination. Please don’t ask me to contribute money. I won’t.
Ron,
Rather than going through this again, maybe just play around with this carbon cycle calculator. If we get to 600ppm and stop all emissions, it would take around 250 years to return to 400ppm. If you vary the outgassing rate, then even a small amount of emissions would slow that considerably.
That’s why I said “absent technologies/advancements”. However, most accept that any form of geo-engineering carries it’s own risks. The question then becomes do we both want to risk the possibility of severe negative impacts from anthropogenically-driven climate change and the possibility that if those risks do occur, that we’d be forced into using strategies that could have their own very negative and severe impacts?
…and Then There’s Physics: “If we get to 600ppm and stop all emissions, it would take around 250 years to return to 400ppm.”
No it wouldn’t, not even close.
Stop making stuff up.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Someone had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
===================
Knowledge has never been required for action.
Steven Mosher said “My counter point is that we dont need knowledge to take action.”
I actually agree with you on this point.
But that is different than saying we HAVE to take action.
We CAN take action without knowledge.
But we dont have to.
It is the HAVE TO TAKE ACTION crowd I disagree with.
It is ok to say we SHOULD take action as a precautionary principle. Make your case – persuade – that is all ok.
It is not ok to say (in my opinion) that we HAVE to take action as a precuationary principle.
Before I agree we HAVE to do something I want to see some proof and a good cost benefit – otherwise we could be harming not helping or wasting money.
The proof of harm is very lacking and the harm is always in the future were you cannot see it, never in the past where you can see it. 120 meters of sea level rise over the last 20,000 years – no visible harm. 8 inches of future sea level rise (or 16 or 24 inches maybe) by 2100 and this is supposed to be very damaging. I am not convinced.
I am not convinced that making all food, fuel and energy more expensive for everybody in the world is necessarily for the greater good. It may even be a net harm, even taking the extra CO2 emitted into consideration.
But hopefully all of these issues will be taken into consideration by decision makers as they make decisions.
We will see.
The stated goal is socialism. Even the few who try to hide this let it slip from time to time.
…and Then There’s Physics | June 16, 2015 at 3:55 am |
Ron,
But we agreed that it would be fastest at first and progressively slower as new equilibrium was approached.
Rather than going through this again, maybe just play around with this carbon cycle calculator. If we get to 600ppm and stop all emissions, it would take around 250 years to return to 400ppm. If you vary the outgassing rate, then even a small amount of emissions would slow that considerably.
“If we get to 600ppm and stop all emissions, it would take around 250 years to return to 400ppm.”
This is bullsh*t.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html
Emissions are 9.8 GT. Last year NOAA says the CO2 level increased 2.13 PPM. CDIAC says 2.13 GT = 1 PPM. 2.13 **2 = 4.5369 or 4.54 GT.
Net environmental absorption is 9.8-4.54 = 5.26 GT. The environmental absorption is sharply increasing and the ocean absorption appears to be increasing linearly with the difference between the CO2 level and 285 PPM. So 5.26 is a low ball number for absorption. At 600 PPM the environmental absorption would be expected to be 3+ times greater (15+ GT/Y).
600 -400 =200 PPM.
200 PPM / 5.26 GT/Y = 38 years.
200 PPM / 15 GT/Y = 13.3 years.
There isn’t a chance in hell that it is going to take 250 years to return to 400 PPM (barring supervolcano or large asteroid impact). And the studies of weapons byproduct C14 in the atmosphere yield yield a CO2 lifetime of 12-16 years. IPCC’s 100 year plus lifetime is an outlier (or is that spelled out-liar?) and inconsistent with the majority of the studies.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Carbon-dioxide-residence-time.jpg
Please do not repeat claims that are misinformation and provably wrong.
PA,
No it is not. However, I doubt that it would be worth the effort trying to explain to you why it is not. Maybe consider that the natural sinks have been taking up an approximately constant fraction of our emissions.
Maybe consider that the natural sinks have been taking up an approximately constant fraction of our emissions.
Kinda makes you wonder how the natural sinks know how much to take up.
Do they wait for the numbers to come out before calibrating?
Much more likely, natural sinks respond to absolute levels and not to emissions at all, and would roughly mirror the rates leading up to a given moment of cessation.
From Ken Rice,
“No, I’m trying to point out that the real issue is whether or not we want to risk the possibility of severe negative impacts. Absent technologies/advancements that can remove GHGs from the atmosphere, it is irreversible on human timescales. Is it worth risking finding out whether the net effect is overall negative, or positive?”
Ken, in case you are unaware of it, there is the possibility of severe negative impacts to much of what humans do day to day. Every time we get in a car, ski down the side of a mountain, go boating, parachute from a plane, engage in a contact sport (or for that matter even non-contact sports – having had knees reconstructed after baseball and basketball injuries). In other words people every day risk finding out the hard way whether their decisions are worth it. Risk is a part of life (even though the nanny state finds that appalling). So in answer to your question, it is not a matter of simply stating there is the possibility of risk and therefore we should do whatever it takes to avoid it. You first need to define the risk and then provide the probabilities of each of those risks. You can’t do that. To date, no one has been able to. All they can do is play fancy computer doomsday games and report back the outcome.
TE,
Oh come on, surely you can get this, even if others can’t. Consider having 3 containers with a fluid/gas flowing constantly between all 3. Now add more to one of those containers. It will eventually go up in all 3, and the amount that it goes up by will depend on whatever equilibrium conditions apply. It’s going up because there is more of the fluid/gas, not because one or two of those containers have suddenly magically increased the amount they can absorb.
timg56,
Huh?
PA,
You are wasting your time. When I first heard claims that the residence time for a molecule of CO2 was “thousands of years” I dug up my text books from Atmos Physics. Unless they have made some breakthrough in the 15+ years since i was in grad school, the known residence time is 6 years.
So if they can make claims of thousands of years in the face of basic physical knowledge, they can also ignore basic arithmatic. In fact they do it all the time.
Well, that’s clearly nonsense. The residence time for a molecule of CO2 is clearly much shorter than “thousands of years”. Who would say something this ridiculous? Are you sure you were concentrating when it was said and heard what was actually said, rather than what you think was said?
Ken Rice,
Huh what?
You are the one asking the question is it worth the risk to find out if impacts are severely negative or not.
I’m asking for you to define those risks and the probability of them occuring. Once you do that I’m predicting that most folks will evalute and proceed with business as usual.
But first you have to do your part. We are waiting.
because one or two of those containers have suddenly magically increased the amount they can absorb.
???
That implies the that the uptake mechanisms were ‘saturated’ to begin with.
That’s not the case.
Plants grow more with additional CO2 ( and don’t have to hold their stomates open to do it ).
Phytoplankton the same, little fishies eat the phytoplankton, big fishies eat the little fishies and all deposit their bones and poop to the ocean depths.
And the oceans are not saturated, are they? Of course not.
More of the CO2 goes into the colder polar waters and more of the colder polar waters go to the abyssal depths, which explains why CO2 increases with depth in the oceans:
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/30/12235/F2.large.jpg
So the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more than can be taken up.
The GEOCARB is interesting but I think you need to remember the GEO part of the name – the hydrosphere and biosphere obviously act a lot faster than the geologic scale processes encoded in GEOCARB:
http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/files/2014/12/Fig.-2.jpg
Ken,
What do I get if I go back and find you examples of people claiming anywhere from hundreds to thousands of years?
I nice bottle of scotch?
I don’t think scotch helps confusion.
Since the very first time I read about it, the residence time for a molecule is mere years.
From my first reading on the subject, 115 ppm (400 minus 285) will take a vastly larger amount of time to completely go away.
I have also read a few people dispute this. One, I believe, is Vaughn Pratt.
TE,
Come on, we’ve discussed this before. Geocarb contains the oceans and plants. The ocean uptake is also largely constrained by Henry’s Law. For a given DIC, there is a well-defined pCO2 (ppm) in the atmosphere. If we stop adding CO2, the oceans can’t continue taking up atmospheric CO2 because that would imply the DIC would go up, and if the DIC goes up, pCO2 has to go up too, which is logically inconsistent.
If we get to something like 600ppm by the late 2100s, then if you’re suggesting that this could decay back to 280ppm on the same timescale as our emissions, then that can only occur through the biosphere. 600ppm to 280ppm is around 640GtC. The entire biosphere is only around 2000GtC. You’re therefore suggesting the biosphere could increase in mass by around 25% in 100 – 200 years? Not only does this seem implausible, how can it do so without also increasing how much CO2 it returns to the atmosphere via its carbon cycle?
Furthermore, as atmospheric CO2 dropped, the oceans would outgas to remain in balance through Henry’s Law. So, you’re suggesting that the biosphere could increase in mass by more than 25% in only 100 – 200 years. Those who work in this field disagree. Going from 600ppm to 280ppm would takes thousands of years (and, yes, timg56, the thousands of years refers to the time it would take for the atmospheric concentration to drop, not the time it would take for an individual molecule to be removed from the atmosphere – that is indeed around 6 years).
No, but I might be willing to sponsor a lesson in reading comprehension, as I can’t imagine you’ll find anyone (well, anyone credible, that is) who would have said that it takes thousands of years to remove a molecule.
…and Then There’s Physics | June 16, 2015 at 3:23 pm |
PA,
This is bullsh*t.
No it is not. However, I doubt that it would be worth the effort trying to explain to you why it is not. Maybe consider that the natural sinks have been taking up an approximately constant fraction of our emissions.
1. The fraction isn’t constant.
2. The absorption isn’t driven by emissions but by atmospheric CO2 level.
http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/14/files/Global_Carbon_Budget_2014_v1.0_final21Sept2014.xlsx
In 1959 emissions were 2.45 GT and environmental absorption was 1.89 GT. The mean CO2 level was 315. 2.04 GT of carbon was added to the atmosphere.
In 1980 emissions were 5.32 GT and environmental absorption was 2.91 GT. The mean CO2 level was 338. 3.65 GT of carbon was added to the atmosphere.
In 2013 emissions were 9.86 GT and environmental absorption was 5.38 GT. The mean CO2 level was 397 PPM. 5.36 GT of carbon was added to the atmosphere.
It is kind of interesting. Not a lot of “new” (post 1980) emissions are going into the atmosphere. Emissions doubled since 1980. In 1980 3.65 GT of carbon was added to the atmosphere, 3.65×2 = 7.30, 7.30/2.13 = 3.42 PPM. Pretty clearly the CO2 level isn’t going up 3.4 PPM per year. In fact the average yearly atmospheric increase was 1.7 PPM/Y in 1980 and is now around 2.2 PPM/Y – only about a 30% increase for twice (100%) more emissions.
Hard to put together a scenario to get us to 500 PPM let alone 600 PPM by 2100. If you increase the emissions to keep the CO2 increase above 2 PPM/Y fossil fuel runs out long before 2100. If emissions don’t increase somewhere in the 460-480 range the absorption balances the emissions.
The global warmers are whistling past the graveyard. Positing CO2 levels above 500 PPM is irrational, illogical, or misinformed.
http://actionwidgets.org/en/e/co2-m/600-keeling.png
So,
annual accumulation May 2014: 1.88ppm per year
annual accumulation May 2015: 1.82ppm per year
Assuming emissions were no lower than ~4.75ppm of 2013,
(and it’s possible emissions have been falling so far in 2015 ),
then uptake is now more than 60% of emissions.
Check that:
annual accumulation May 2014: 1.98ppm CO2 year-over-year
annual accumulation May 2015: 1.82ppm CO2 year-over-year
At the same time of an El Nino and high temperature anomalies.
2013 may well have been the year of peak emissions.
…and Then There’s Physics | June 16, 2015 at 4:08 pm |
TE,
Come on, we’ve discussed this before. Geocarb contains the oceans and plants. The ocean uptake is also largely constrained by Henry’s Law.
More globull warming.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-49MvmvmEG_U/UlYSAjYXEfI/AAAAAAAATiM/32yOTQFDWSs/s1600/NL73-carbonate_hirez.gif
It isn’t surprising that this is yet another topic that global warmers lie about.
Global warmers that invoke Henry’s law either don’t know Henry or don’t know what a law is. Invoking Henry’s law makes sense if the pCO2 of the seawater is increasing. Since 1998 the seawater pCO2 (and PH) plateaued fossil fuel emissions have increased 50%. The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has increased 34 PPM or 40% of the post 1940s increase in atmospheric CO2. Hence the steady relentless increase in ocean absorption.
It kind of is what it is. More sea plant growth is going to limit the ocean pCO2. This is going to make Henry a supporter of the skeptics.
Steve Mosher writes- “Rob made this comment
“Now this makes sense if someone knew that the human influence was in fact negative, but we don’t do we?”
In other words. Unless we KNOW the human influence will be negative it doesnt make sense to do anything. “
Steve– You completely misrepresent my comment. I have never written do nothing about CO2. I have written that actions need to make cost effective sense. If you do not understand the magnitude of the issue/problem, how can you determine the amount of resources to allocate to resolving that “problem”
ATTP: “… most accept that any form of geo-engineering carries it’s own risks. The question then becomes do we both want to risk the possibility of severe negative impacts from anthropogenically-driven climate change and the possibility that if those risks do occur, that we’d be forced into using strategies that could have their own very negative and severe impacts?”
You’ve nailed it. We need to make management judgments based on what we can do now and what we could likely do in the future. It’s like looking at the chess board and looking at all the combinations of likely futures. I am for this approach too. But all I hear from the leaders of your side is that they outcome is clear. Al Gore points to a chart and says its clear as the nose on your face. Then on investigation one finds that his temperature chart is bogus (see MM03 on MBH98) and the CO2 chart is old science, before we learned that temperature leads CO2. That is a very very important oversight for an expert like Mr. Gore. Don’t-cha think?
So I see dishonesty. And, one gets to wonder why. So I have have found a couple online enclaves where honest debate is allowed. The 99% of the rest of the world, including media and policy makers, are misinformed. Yet they are saying “follow me we’ll kill the planet.”
I am for conservation, renewable technology, mitigation engineering research and further debate. I am not for giving up liberty, sovereignty, civility and transparency in the name of emergency powers.
ATTP, I forgot to address your claim that CO2 at 600ppm would take 250 years to reach 400ppm. I see others are already doing so but I would like to add that your U of Chicago calculator will give one any answer one wants depending on assumptions. Using common sense math though, with an equilibrium zero point of 300ppm, one can see that 250 years to go from (600-300) to (400-300), or 300 to 100 would assume an absorption rate of less than 1% per year (compounding). I think we know that 1% absorption rate is a very poor assumption. I’ve heard numbers thrown out for the rate at 20-30%/yr.
Mike
“Do think that taking random action without any reasonable idea of the consequences is a good idea? ”
1. On occassion, an interesting life is better than a boring life
2. We are randomly dumping C02 in the air. Do you KNOW the consequences?
3. our best science suggests there may be a problem with YOU
dumping co2 into my air. stop it until you prove its safe
“At this point I could give you many examples of the disastrous consequences of your theory, ”
Its not my theory. Its an observation. We act without knowledge all the time. Stubborn things those facts
Technology doesn’t exist for mitigation-research needed. Adaptaptation is what’s left. Not the here’s a check, now promise you’ll spend it on building a levy. Rather build a levy and send us the bill.
Well done and happy landing.
The slide on sensitivity is crucial and optimistic.
Solar brightening thanks to less aerosols due to clean air act might also be of importance to mention. 10% more sun hours in the Nordic countries since 1980.
Reblogged this on CraigM350.
JC says: My concern is that we have oversimplified by the climate change problem and its solutions. This oversimplification has
undercut the political process and dialog necessary for real solutions in a highly complex world
II think you’ve not clearly made the important point that attempts are underway to engineer the climate without the models to judge the engineering trade-offs. That is just awful from an engineering perspective.
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
Excellent and measured summary of the current political, economic and scientific state of the climate.
A must read for those interested in sifting through the increased climate alarmism and political rhetoric associated with the lead up to the next United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP21 or CMP11 (or gabfest) held in Paris, in November/December 2015
Judith Curry
The tone of you presentation is measured and explicit, illuminating the dragons that need slaying. I presume that your love for the science restrains you from outing those within the English Establishment who espouse a corrupted religion titled: Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. You have dispelled the myth of inclement weather and New Orleans. You have exposed the entanglements of Obama’s executive decree and the reality of Congressional public scrutiny and consent. Now, now is the time to pivot from your path of finding commonality and cohesion, to one of skewering those minions of climate babble, using mockery and jest, whose disregard for natural variability is met with derision time and time again by the observable changes in weather. I only worry, that you are within the English jurisdiction, and liable to be sentenced in the press as a heretic. And we all know what happens after that.
Swift speed to your journey.
Dr. Curry. Saw you on Stossel. You have a very assured and engaging “stage presence.” Confident, but not overly so. Very nice job.
Here’s the program:
Oops! Wrong Green Tyranny!
All Green Tyrannies are wrong.
Spencer preceded and followed Schmidt. The two generally did not share the stage. Both were polite in my opinion.
Good presentation. You were great on Stossl but he should have done MORE about you.
There is a disconnect in the slides. In one slide she accuses anyone with a mainstream view of being an ideologue, and three slides later wonders why we can’t have “a civil conversation”. Hmmm… with words like “ideologue” being thrown at the mainstream centrists, I wonder why. Maybe some bridges need to be built first rather than burned with indiscriminate labeling. Is anyone who thinks that the sensitivity has a significant possibility of being towards the center of the IPCC range a de facto ideologue? Or can you have a “civil conversation” with such a person? What distinguishes an ideologue who has this view from any other scientist who does? Overly generalized accusations and smearing don’t lead to a civil conversation, or at least are a bad first step.
You know that Judith has been shunned by the consensus creeps, yimmy. You expect her to build bridges. Get real.
Why you always hanging around here preaching at us, yimmy? Why don’t you haunt the Team echo chamber blogs and tell them they need to build bridges?
There are only about 7 billion people who are not losing sleep over climate change, or whatever you all are calling it these days.
She is the one asking for a civil conversation. We will see how civil she is with the Pope when he comes out with his long-considered opinion this week (a leaked version already out). I suspect she will just level the usual immediate accusations against him too as a reflexive form of damage control, but it will be a good test of civility.
Meanwhile, in the New York Times, the smear goes on
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/science/naomi-oreskes-a-lightning-rod-in-a-changing-climate.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
We will see how civil she is with the Pope when he comes out with his long-considered opinion this week (a leaked version already out)
It will also be interesting as to how many will adhere to the pronouncements of a religious authority figure, one representing an institution notorious for imprisoning Galileo and espousing intolerance, instead of science.
Jim D, is there a reason why the same weak arguments from the mouth of the Pope should be any more convincing than if you were making them?
Ha, the Pope is the biggest ideologue on the planet. Are we supposed to care what the Pope says, yimmy? Do you like his doctrine on abortion? Or do you go with the huffpo dogma? Do you think your incessant and annoying preaching here does the planet any good, yimmy?
Jim D | June 16, 2015 at 12:53 am |
She is the one asking for a civil conversation. We will see how civil she is with the Pope when he comes out with his long-considered opinion this week (a leaked version already out).
Gee. I searched for climate studies that listed “the Pope” as a co-author. Got zip.
What exactly are the Pope’s credentials on climate science?
Jim D,
Opinions are more numerous than bums. People usually have only one bum.
Opinions are worth precisely what you can sell them for.
That is the way it will go. The Pope will be accused of being just another commie/greenie and part of the great conspiracy, and maybe now even a leader in it. It doesn’t matter that he has nothing to gain from taking sides in the science, but his view of the world represents everything the skeptics hate at a deep level.
Jim D,
The Pope has an opinion. As the leader of a section of a minority religion, his opinion will no doubt be respected by some of his followers, and probably by people not even of his religious persuasion.
Is his opinion worth more than anybody else’s? I don’t know one way or the other. Do you?
I think his opinion is worth more than yours, for example. Millions of people listen to him, and will read his encyclical. He comes across as a modest, level headed, thoughtful and caring person in what he has done and said so far, so from that comes respect for his thinking.
Jim D: “I think his opinion is worth more than yours, for example.”
His opinion is worth no more and no less than anyone else’s.
As to “Millions of people listen to him”, you could say the same of Joseph Stalin too.
Jim D,
There you go. You have opinions, like everyone else. No doubt so does the Pope.
You don’t have to pay for opinions, so you can have as many as you like. I rarely pay someone for an opinion on the basis of their morals or “niceness”. I think I’m a little more fact oriented.
But that’s just my opinion.
Jim D, on that slide she clearly refers to IPCC ideologues as those with overconfidence and attempting to stifle disagreement, not simply someone who thinks sensitivity is in the center of the IPCC projections.
Surely you read this before posting your comment. If your truly interested in conversation why the obvious misdirection?
What makes someone an ideologue and another not if they have the same scientific view? JC complains about ideologues but doesn’t even talk about reasonable people that think the same way as them on the science. This makes me think that she considers all of them ideologues because there were no slides devoted to these other scientists, and those would be the ones she would want to debate. It’s a division she has made, so she needs to explain who she does and does not mean by ideologue.
It was exactly this kind of lumping everyone on the mainstream side together that Bjorn Stevens complained about rather vocally on another of Judith’s slide presentations. It really does look like a smear on everyone who disagrees with her every time she does this, but she clearly hasn’t stopped doing it.
Jim D,
Aren’t people entitled to their opinions? You say “she needs to explain who she does and does not mean by ideologue.” Why? Is your opinion more important than hers?
It all seems a bit egocentric to me – but that’s just my opinion.
So Bjorn Stevens complains about someone. So what?
The climate keeps changing, regardless of our opinions, but of course that’s just my opinion again. You have the option of ignoring my opinion.
People who make accusations need to make clear who is included in the list being accused. Bjorn Stevens felt many scientists were being unfairly characterized by Judith’s slides. He therefore asked for clarification. The slides were clearly only for Judith’s Team as it was a largely “skeptic” audience. She backed off a little here, but not enough, and it just looked like smear.
Hopefully the Pope will be able to make his case without accusing people. That would raise the conversation.
Jim D,
You wrote –
“People who make accusations need to make clear who is included in the list being accused.”
Well, that’s your opinion. Why should anyone take notice of what you think?
In one slide she accuses anyone with a mainstream view of being an ideologue, and three slides later wonders why we can’t have “a civil conversation”. Hmmm… with words like “ideologue” being thrown at the mainstream centrists, I wonder why.
The problem is the global warmers are proven liars and viciously attack anyone who forces them to defend or retract their falsehoods. This is why there is a lack of civil conversation.
1. CO2 is beneficial.
2. Warming is beneficial.
3. The atmospheric CO2 level isn’t likely to increase over 25% above current levels.
4. The TCR isn’t likely to be over 1°C
5. The 21st century forcing due to CO2 isn’t likely to be over 1 W/m2.
6, More warmth and more CO2 will be net beneficial. Past CO2 and warming increases caused a 55% increase in plant growth. There is no evidence future increases in CO2 and warming won’t be beneficial.
7. The 11% increase in plant growth from 1982 to 2010 shows that the benefits of more CO2 and more warmth are continuing if not accelerating.
8. The ECS is irrelevant because the CO2 level won’t be above 400 PPM for very long.
9. The fact that the 11% growth increase from 1982-2010 was greatest in desert areas proves more CO2 will help protect us from expected future water shortages – another benefit that may be worth more than the $1 triilion+ /year benefit from extra plant growth.
Global warmers deny all of the above because they are the original reality deniers.
Jim D: There is a disconnect in the slides. In one slide she accuses anyone with a mainstream view of being an ideologue, and three slides later wonders why we can’t have “a civil conversation”. Hmmm… with words like “ideologue” being thrown at the mainstream centrists, I wonder why.
That’s easily resolved: the ideologues promoting rapid CO2 reduction are preventing a civil discourse, by, among other things, calling for the criminalization of skepticism (and calling it “climate denial” or “climate change denial.) Naomi Oreskes did a signal disservice to civil conversation with “Merchants of Doubt”. As did Stephen Schneider with his advocacy of some degree (left up to each speaker) of dishonesty in presenting the science of CO2. As did Michael Mann calling Prof Curry a “serial disinformer” As did Gavin Schmidt with his denunciation of Prof. Bengtsson (for readers of a certain age, denunciation will strike a resonant chord). Those are all nominal scholars, not politicos or editorial writers for whom exaggerated insult is a part of everyday work.
Reading “tonite” in a formal presentation was quite jarring to this 61 year old’s eyes.
That word leapt right up at me.
tonyb
Pingback: Judith Curry: The State of the Climate Debate In The U.S. | The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)
Congratulations on very nice ppt! Clear, concise and as neutral as can be. Is it possible to use it (intact) clearly referring to you as the source?
My reflections are the following: my background is both in environmental science and medical physics (sic!) There are many issues connecting some key issues in medical physics and climate science. For instance; is the linear dose to risk curve really correct? This debate has been going on since the days of Rolf Sievert. Recent research shows it is probably not linear below a certain treshold. Radiatiuon could even be beneficial regarding risk according to some! My point? The debate is very lively but civil. Non-experts listen but do not interfere. When Greenpeace do a stunt on radiation everybody laughs at them nevermind which theory you currently support. This world is light years from the climate science field. (May I remind you that the uncertainty principle actually emerged and was practiced very early in radiation protection once upon a time).
Since I have my interest in both fields I am stunned at the reactions from some when you point out the Hiatus for instance (should really be “the Stasis” because we really don´t know if it is a “pause”, i.e implying that the warming rate will start ticking upwards again. “Hiatus” is alarmistic from my point of view and not really scientific). Of course there is a heated debate within the medical physics/radiation protection field, especially after Chernobyl when we would have expected 1000´s of cancers but they really never emerged above the population noise. But it is all done in good faith. Nobody look upon the french – who have adopted the treshold theory in practice – to be “deniers” or the like. They are entitled to do so because they have chosen this logical path based on science, admittely simplifying some conclusions. But, still, it is accepted by those not following the same path.
My personal conclusion is that the Medical Physics society don´t have the same direct political influences on the science itself. Another big difference are the various “stars” you find in Climate Science. You, Curry, being one of them as well as Mann, Tranbeth etc etc etc. Who have ever heared of similar “stars” within the radiation field? (except perhaps the IAEA head who is a non-scientist). Why this fixation on persons and not their work? Going back to the Medical Physics/Radiation Protectin field, activists are very few indeed and you will instead find them where they belong; Greenpeace, WWF etc etc to put it short: in the World Wide Threat Industry.
Hi Jan, thanks for your perspective, by all means feel free to use any of my .ppts or any material you find here.
Very interesting post. Thank you.
Are you aware the US Congress has asked NAS to investigate the allowable radiation limits for the public? If you are, can you tell readers here anything about it (I know nothing about it other than what I read here:
WNN 20/1/15. Radiation health effects http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Radiation-and-Health/Nuclear-Radiation-and-Health-Effects/
And this:
‘Changing Regulations and Radiation Guidance: What Does the Future Hold?’ http://www.ncrponline.org/Annual_Mtgs/2015_Ann_Mtg/Combine_2015_Presentations.pdf .
Thank you for the interesting links. To answer you properly would take far to much space but there are several important questions adressed in the texts you provided; one is the situation for nuclear energy. It could be a part of a global warming strategy and at any rate there are so many ageing reactors around so they have to be shut down, replaced or rebuilt. Another concern is the increase in coal around the world. Not very well known but coal contains a lot of radiation products making coal power plants a radiation health concern. Especially now when some are “cheating” and uisng coal as a back-up for renewables (Germany for instance) (my remark). The other path worth mentioning in the text is the concern about radiation used in medicine. Some questionable debates have occured in the US, mainly about CT-scans. The text brings up the need for clear directives on this because people tends to get scared and skip CT-exams due to dose concerns. This is a question of justification and optimization. If the users are not complying with regulations, there will be risk hazards. (But that´s why Medical Physicists like myself work inside the Healthcare).They also discuss in the paper how to get through to the public that the risk of omitting for instance a CT investigation is always much larger than getting cancer from doing it. In mammography screening for instance the ratio is about 10000:1. (For every 10000 women saved from breast cancer, one will die from the radiation induced cancer). So in radiology it is NOT about cancelling the risk alltogether but making it worthwhile. (Why is this rarely discussed regarding CO2?).
In energy production NO risk is acceptable and therefore the regulations are much harder and one is striving towards a zero risk limited only by economics and technology. Emissions must be kept at minimum levels to keep the risk to the public down. However, is this really based on best available science or is it public fear that guides the regulations? The linear dose to risk used also for low dose level risk estimates are known to overblow the risk. But it is very practical when you want to set limits, design work routines, write regulations and translates measured values to risk. So for many practical reasons, most institutes around the world use the linear theory (as opposed to the threshold theory) knowing that the margins are a bit wide (and costly) sometimes.
There is also a nice piece on how to get regulations to work in practice and I can´t help thinking about EPAs attempt to regulate CO2. Compare what the IPCC/EPA-equivalent bible of radiation protection says about regulation management. Maybe the climate science side could actually learn something about building trust:
“What Makes A Good Regulation?
• Protective Yet Flexible and Reasonable
– Weighing public health concerns, environmental protections, and economic impacts
• Clear Requirements– Promote compliance with clarity
• to whom the rules apply
• what entities must do
• whether they are doing it correctly
• Achievable and Enforceable
– Successful implementation with available resources (reduce complexity,
administrative burdens if appropriate)
– Effective incentives for requirements (when possible, for better-than-required performance or voluntary actions)
– Generates data needed to measure outcomes and evaluate effectiveness
• Sound Science; Peer-Reviewed As Appropriate
– The foundation for understanding the key considerations of public health, environment, and economy
• Forward-looking; Anticipate Future Challenges
– Regulations with 30, 40, 50+ year lifespans
– Process to revise regulations is complex and lengthy
• Coherent Risk Management Framework
– Other Pollutants / Contaminants– Radiation, Chemicals
• Statutory language
• Nature of the hazard
• Number of people affected
• Open and Transparent
– Must be able to explain reasoning, considerations, priorities, criteria and the myriad of elements involved in regulation
– Underlying rationale should be able to be scrutinized
– Documents available for public scrutiny
• Public Review and Input
– The spirit of democracy and republics”
There are som many other interesting aspects in the links you provided but I don´t think I can use much more space than this without hijacking the original topic. Hope I answered at least some of your questions.
Very interesting response. Thank you. Much to discuss. I’ll pick up on just a few points that I find particularly interesting.
From my perspective, consequence of increasing the cost of fossil fuels – e.g. with carbon pricing or regulation to what William Nordhaus estimates is the optimal carbon price is about $0.3 trillion economic loss per year to the global economy from 2010 to 2100. This would translate into avoidable lives lost per year (but I don’t know the figure).
Another figure: Regulations that are preventing nuclear from being cheaper then coal fired electricity are preventing nuclear replacing coal for electricity generation which would avoid about 1.3 million fatalities per year world wide. Therefore, the excessive regulation of nuclear power are, in effect, causing about 1.3 million avoidable fatalities per year.
Jan Lindström
I believe excessive regulation of nuclear power is extremely costly. I expect around 75% of the damage cost of the Fukushima accident could be attributed to unjustifiably low allowable radiation limits.
Bernard Cohen presents a persuasive case that regulatory ratcheting of nuclear power increased the cost by a factor of four up to 1990. I expect it has doubled that since.
Yes. But progress is effectively blocked. To make progress the cost has to become cheaper than fossil fuels. To achieve that we need to remove the impediments. I explain how I suggest that can be achieved. The trigger and catalyst to get started is to begin raising the allowable radiation limits for the population. If we started doing that, a snowball effect could follow. The cost of small nuclear power plants could reduce at the rate of 10% per doubling of global capacity (of small modular nuclear power plants). I explain this in a comment here: http://judithcurry.com/2015/05/23/week-in-review-policy-and-politics-edition-6/#comment-705879
Well… in the US.
About 17 people are killed by vending machines each year.
About 600 people die from autoerotic asphyxiation.
Nobody is devoting 10s of millions or billions per year to solving either problem. So somewhere in the 17-600 people per year range is an acceptable loss apparently.
Regulations that make the risk from radiation less than the risk from vending machines, are absurdly low and should be changed.
Hans Blix
Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (1981-1997)
Blix: Yeah. On big issues like war in Iraq, but in many other issues they simply must be multilateral. There’s no other way around. You have the instances like the global warming convention, the Kyoto protocol, when the U.S. went its own way. I regret it. To me the question of the environment is more ominous than that of peace and war. We will have regional conflicts and use of force, but world conflicts I do not believe will happen any longer. But the environment, that is a creeping danger. I’m more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict.
http://www.mtv.com/bands/i/iraq/news_feature_031203/index5.jhtml
Global warming more dangerous than nuclear weapons: Blix
CAIRO, Jan 25 (AFP) Jan 25, 2007
Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix warned on Thursday that global warming was a greater threat than weapons of mass destruction, and advocated promoting peaceful nuclear technology around the world.
“The threat against the global environment and global warming are a greater threat than weapons of mass destruction,” he told journalists on the final day of a visit to Egypt promoting his commission’s report on reducing weapons of mass destruction worldwide.
“It is of utmost imperative that the whole world reduces the emission of greenhouse gases,” Blix said. “Nuclear power can give the world enormous amounts of electricity without giving any greenhouse gases.”
http://www.spacedaily.com/2006/070125135116.s4zjs32e.html
I strongly agree with this quote on Slide 22
What a pity the ‘Progressives’ have been blocking progress for the past 50 years or so and still are.
Peter Lang,
I’m not disagreeing with you, but I tend to become cautious when I see the words ” . . . the only answer is . . . ”
Just a thought.
Fair comment, Mike.
I wasn’t being that picky. Having read through the various quotes from the Presidential hopefuls this one jumped out at me as the one I most agree with.
Yes, the progressives at the coal companies and the natural gas companies have been nasty to nukes.
A few comments about my House of Lords visit, overall an EXTREMELY memorable evening. GWPF did an excellent job of arranging this, and it was very nice to meet all of the GWPF principals, and especially nice to meet Bennie Peiser. Before my talk, Matt Ridley took us on a quick tour of the House of Lords, lots of history and bling. I think my talk went well (based on the feedback I got), and there were very interesting questions/disscussions afterwards.
Some notable people in attendance (in addition to GWPF folks; no attempt to use correct honorifics): Nigel Lawson, Matt Ridley, Martin Rees, Andrew Turnbull, Bernard Donoughue, Owen Paterson, David Davis, Ian Plimer.
Had drinks afterwards with Nigel Lawson, who gave me a copy of his 2008 book An appeal to reason: a cool look at global warming. Halfway through reading this; it is very good.
Dinner afterwards including Matt Ridley, Benny Peiser, Owen Paterson, David Davis, Ian Plimmer, David Whitehouse, Bernard Donoughue, extremely enjoyable.
Some interesting reflections to follow if I can scrape up the time.
My ancestors from the Shenandoah formed a regiment in the Continental Army and bayonetted the snot of those slimy limeys.
Your limey descendent ancestors from the Shenandoah also gave the United States a bad time, for a while. Do y’all still have a grudge against slimy Yankees?
Well, after the war five yankee bankers were murdered on a train just down yonder from the home place.
Trivia[edit]
A famous vigilante action occurred in Gunn City on April 23, 1872, that came to be called the “Gunn City Massacre.” Outraged by a swindle by certain officials of a company building a rail line to Santa Fe, local citizens reacted by trapping the perpetrators on a train and shooting them dead.[8]
Nobody was ever charged.
Missouri was a divided state. My father’s ancestors, the ones from the Shenandoah, mostly fought for the Union.
I have learned to never say a good thing about a yankee while in SW Missouri. Time apparently does not heal all wounds.
Glad you are reading Lawson’s “An Appeal to Reason”. It’s about the best book on Climate Change out there. I am somewhat surprised you hadn’t already read it.
It’s really good to hear Martin Rees was there. Someone this presentation should have caused to think.
I do wish that a longer timeframe would be looked at when analyzing something like climate impacts on human society and civilization.
The factor that always seems to be missing is a technology forecast that goes out 50, 100, 200 years. What energy sources are likely to emerge? How will changes in material sciences change production processes, reducing emissions dramatically? What is the state of geo-engineering likely to be in 150 years? How will our ability to adapt to our environment evolve over the next 100 years?
Humanity is highly adaptive. I’m most persuaded by the arguments which claim that we are doing so much other damage to our ecosystem which climate change has edged off the stage of public discussion wither warmist hysteria. Global fisheries and our oceans in general are a mess and are getting worse all the time. Seems to me that a global focus on these commons is job number 1. Other toxins in our environment like BPA etc are poorly understood and need more analysis. Water quality in poor nations – these issues seem to me to be more pressing.
I’m also convinced that we can’t do much about carbon emissions until the entire world is wealthier. We are generations from the state being possible. Why would China or India not first worry about it’s hundreds of millions of desperately poor people? Or the many other nations and peoples who are trying to work their way up from destitution.
Given that line of thinking, ideas like sequestration and geo-engineering seem the only real solutions long term, if the warmists are correct. Sure, the U.S. should do things like ramp up nuclear power (breeder reactors look amazing to me, a rank amateur at all this) and even take some other precautionary steps. Even a small, gradually increasing C02 tax as a precautionary measure, or a reasonable C02 credit scheme would be fine.
What’s really going on here is political, in the end. And it’s not just the U.S. The left sees this as the ultimate lever for pushing global govt and their notion of “justice”. It’s pretty clear at this point. This same politics/morality is driving many social issues too – “social justice” is the rubric upon which much insanity in our society is sold to us.
To really understand where this ends up, look to the politics. Look to what the majority of the elites think. Look to what beliefs are held by those who run the major institutions of our society. They want authority to implement their vision for the world. And this is what it will look like, Orwell got it right:
“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” – George Orwell
“The factor that always seems to be missing is a technology forecast that goes out 50, 100, 200 years. What energy sources are likely to emerge?”
Let me respond to a prior comment making the point that nuclear power today is not economically competitive with nat gas power plants. True. Water reactors are pressurized and that creates costs and risks that could be avoided.
What’s needed are next generation nuclear power plants: flouride salt cooled reactors. These could be half the cost of PWRs.
Next-generation nuclear is the one energy technology that could completely change the game. And its the one technology NOT be supported by the warmists, or the US govt, at this time.
We will get to post fossil fuel technologies by 2060.
Given the explanations in this thread that Co2 absorption will increase as Co2 ppm goes up.
“I do wish that a longer timeframe would be looked at when analyzing something like climate impacts on human society and civilization. The factor that always seems to be missing is a technology forecast that goes out 50, 100, 200 years>”
We have no sensible capacity to use such time-frames or forecast technological change for 50+ years, it would be a waste of time and resources. What do we know? That the world will always surprise us, that long-term forecasts have always been wrong, that technological, economic, political, social etc developments have never been what was expected or forecast. Let’s concentrate on policies which are both worthwhile now and which will help us to deal with the future whatever it is, rather than being constrained by a sure-to-be-wrong forecast or long-term projection. Faustino.
Ridiculous and anti-intellectual. In fact, we know what’s coming in materials sciences and in biology etc. What you don’t like is that the paradigm of energy and material and life itself will change so utterly in the next 100-200 years that your concerns will be irrelevant. And this is crucial.
As far as culture, yeah, I don’t want the West to commit suicide over this so Western culture dominates in the new age that is coming. That is the cultural battle and the West had better realize it has the best answers for a good cultural future for the world.
So skeptics now join Galileo in the pantheon of those to feel the wrath of a misinformed Pope relying on the ‘consensus’ on a scientific issue for which he has no expertise whatsoever to make such a declaration.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope-warns-of-unprecedented-damage-from-climate-change-in-leaked-encyclical-document-10322156.html
Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. Render unto God that which is God’s, unless you want a seat at the progressive political power table.
Somehow it’s not as pithy as the original.
Most hysterical? The politics of how the response is playing out. It seems that for once the Roman Catholic church has some moral and scientific credibility to the left – lol. I mean, in what moral universe should what the freaking Catholic Pose has to say about science matter?
Answer: It’s because he’s part of the “social justice” cabal now too. Of course, that means crypto-Marxist. The opening lines of the encyclical make affirmative statements conflating justice with environmental concerns, and can be seen as a “social justice” litany of faith How sick.
“It’s because he’s part of the “social justice” cabal now too. ”
That’s exactly what’s going on. This has zero to do with science, but is mostly about what ’cause’ can be used as a vehicle by social justice (crypto-marxist) to engage in social engineering. The climate is a vehicle to agitate for global redistributive justice. JohnPaul II saw the dangers of communists in clerical robes in the 80s, even to the point of kicking some liberation theology folks out of the church, but this Pope seems to embrace them.
The Republican party is dead and that puts science in the same place it was back in the days of Copernicus and Galileo when the Roman Catholic Church determined what’s right.
If you look at most of Obama and Gina’s ‘rational’ arguments for climate, they are, in fact, always from a social justice point of view. Which, I am beginning to understand, comes exactly from the bowels of Critical Theory, where rationality is ‘mutable’, a construct.
” From all this, two notions of “rationality” result: the first attached to the dominant form of power and deprived of any normative force; the second characterized, on the contrary, by a liberating force based on a yet-to-come scenario.”
Its all Marxism and Utopianism in the end. Remember Orseske’s past, Scientific Objectivity as simply the ‘male heroic effort’ as opposed to actually a good way to find truth….? So it is with critical theory. Reality is to be molded such that it promotes ‘social justice’, i.e. Marxism.
Traditional theory:
“Traditional theory, whether deductive or analytical, has always focused on coherency and on the strict distinction between theory and praxis. Along Cartesian lines, knowledge was treated as being grounded upon self-evident propositions, or at least upon propositions derivable from self-evident truths. Traditional theory proceeded to explain facts through the application of universal laws, so that by the subsumption of a particular into the universal, law was either confirmed or disconfirmed. A verificationist procedure of this kind was what positivism has considered to be the best explicatory account for the notion of praxis in scientific investigation.”
Critical Theory:
“Under several aspects, what Critical Theory wants to reject in traditional theory is precisely this “picture theory” of language and knowledge widely presented originally in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. According to such view, later abandoned by Wittgenstein himself, the logical form of propositions consists in “showing” a possible fact and in “saying” whether this is true or false. For example, the proposition “it rains today”, shows both the possibility of the fact that “it rains today”, and says that it is actually the case that “it rains today.” In order to check whether something is or is not the case, I have to verify empirically whether it occurs or not. This implies that the condition of truth and falsehood presupposes an objective structure of the world.
Horkheimer and his followers rejected the notion of objectivity in knowledge by pointing, among other things, to the fact that the object of knowledge is itself embedded into an historical and social process: “The facts which our sense present to us are socially preformed in two ways: through the historical character of the object perceived and through the historical character of the perceiving organ”
Consensus.
How is this relevant? Universities have essentially become full on institutes of Critical Theory. Relativism of Gender, Economics, Race, and, finally, Science, Climate.
Anyway, I am beginning to see that the current state of the Climate debate is inextricably tied to this theory and the notion that reality is subordinate to ‘social justice’.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/frankfur/
this theory, work in progress….
I’m not crazy:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/political-theory-and-global-climate-change
Socialists are inherently dishonest since they have to justify steal from the hard working to give to the undeserving.
It takes a huge leap of immorality, self-deception, and dishonesty for an honest person to turn into a socialist. This conversion colors their politics and the way they approach debate and factual evidence (by lying).
Unfortunately the University has become a sort of ‘legitimizing’ force for this degeneracy.
Because, after all, ‘facts’ only exist as subordinate to…. well, I might as well just let the article on CT say it again:
“The facts which our sense present to us are socially preformed in two ways: through the historical character of the object perceived and through the historical character of the perceiving organ”
True, true, no one wants to be honest about it and yet, it is the government-funded education system that is the problem — not CO2 — and, if it’s not addressed soon it’ll drag us down like a stone. The universities don’t see it but Mao did, which is why the first thing the red shirts did in assuming power is send all of the teachers to the farms for a real education.
I’m kind of new to studying the whole Cultural Marxism/Political Correctness/Critical Theory angle, but it simply explains to much. And having noticed Oreske’s bizarre stance on objectivity it suddenly seemed all too relevant to the climate debate….
Judith,
A generally fair reading of the tea leaves, but you are holding your punches IMO. Examples:
1. “This [Social Cost of Carbon (SCC)] argument has been challenged because the costs and benefits, estimated over 300 years, are highly uncertain and contested.” I would say that the EPA’s decision to use a Monte Carlo process to compute SCC that assumes their Roe-Baker statistical distribution for ECS has a 20% probability of ECS > 4.5 C and allows ECS values as high as 10C, is a fraudulent interpretation of the current state of AGW science. They are arbitrarily “cooking the books” to get the SCC value they need to justify the regulations they want to impose on Americans. Moreover, why use the more highly uncertain ECS metric compared to get warming forecasts limited to the next 300 years? Is anyone in climate science actually challenging the EPA in open hearings or reviews? As a federal government employee in NASA’s manned space program, frequent internal and external independent, non-advocacy reviews of our significant projects were the norm. I don’t see this happening at EPA, DoE or other regulatory agencies with the power to do great harm to this nation.
2. “The basis for these actions under the EPA is the Endangerment finding, which found that greenhouse gas pollution endangers public health.” CO2 is a pollutant? How can a colorless, odorless, gas essential for existence of all plant, animal and human life on this planet, and without a substitute, be declared a pollutant? I don’t care what the EPA and the US Supreme Court have ruled. This doesn’t make the “pollution” claim scientifically true. There are many proven beneficial effects of higher atmospheric CO2 levels and no proven harmful effects of atmospheric CO2 concentrations until they approach the 5000 ppm breathing level allowed on the International Space Station or 8000 ppm level allowed on nuclear submarines. All plant life dies if the CO2 level drops below 150 ppm. What is the level at which the CO2 concentration becomes a pollutant? Why do climate scientists allow our government to establish such irrational, official positions on atmospheric CO2 levels? The rest of us are watching and we are not impressed with the common sense and rational thought processes of mainstream climate scientists.
3. “Funding goes into climate modeling to better understand human caused climate change; there is very little funding for understanding natural climate variability.” Look, let’s tell it like it is. In 35 years of research since the 1979 Charney Report and approaching $100 billion spent on climate research, the official position on ECS uncertainty has not changed one bit from the 1979 estimate that 1.5 < ECS < 4.5C. As one who experienced and succeeded in meeting President Kennedy's challenge to land astronauts on the moon and return them safely within the decade of the 1960's, this is unacceptable research performance to me and needs to be changed, big time!! Our R&D for the Apollo Program was focused on the big issues we needed resolved to ensure success and safety of the missions. Climate R&D has no such technical leadership nor management. Who can you name as the responsible person for leading our nation in resolving this most important threat facing our nation that President Obama talks about? Funding for climate research needs to be managed by some responsible person who will focus R&D priorities on two things:
a) an official GHG climate sensitivity metric for public policy decisions that doesn't have so much uncertainty.
b) a better researched and justified Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) than RCP8.5 for projecting GHG levels of the future based on unrestricted use of fossil fuels. Our own The Right Climate Stuff research team developed an RCP6.0 scenario based on a market driven transition from rising prices of depleting world-wide fossil fuel reserves to alternative fuels, necessary to meet the rising demand for world wide energy usage. The 2015 Exxon-Mobil 25 year forecast for energy usage and their estimate of the fraction that would be supplied by fossil fuels, confirmed our RCP6.0 trajectory through 2040. Who can defend RCP8.5 to our nation's policy makers? Our nation can do better, using all of its expert knowledge. These two issues need to be the focus of AGW research to ensure we make good public policy decisions going forward.
I could go on, but I think you get my drift. You have the scientific credibility and ethical reputation to lead our nation on this issue. But we do need leadership and we need to be critical where criticism is due! Otherwise, we are in danger of allowing climate scientists with no experience in dealing with issues of public safety, lead our politicians into wrecking our economy with irrational academic arguments that don't address all consequences of their proposals.
In item 1. above, I intended to write ” highly uncertain ECS metric compared to the less uncertain TCR metric to get warming forecasts”
Harold Doiron,
I strongly agree with you on this:
The SCC estimates are highly uncertain and strongly biased by cherry picking. Main issues are:
1. The SCC estimators have to accumulate projected costs and benefits for 300 years and discount them back to a present value to justify any SCC at all. The Nordhaus DICE model is the most used and cited model for estimating SCC, and for comparing costs and benefits of various GHG emissions mitigation policies. If you plot the net benefit-cost of optimal carbon pricing per period (as distinct from cumulative), it is clear that the proposed policies would be net damaging to the global economy for all this century (see red line in this chart:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/files/2014/10/Lang-3.jpg
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2014/10/27/cross-post-peter-lang-why-the-world-will-not-agree-to-pricing-carbon-ii/
2. The SCC estimates are highly sensitive to the discount rate chosen. The analysts have to use ridiculously low discount rates. These charts provide an example of how they justify their low discount rates (based on inputs of “social this” and “social that”.
http://www.rff.org/Publications/Resources/PublishingImages/183/Cropper-Fig1_1_small.png
http://www.rff.org/Publications/Resources/PublishingImages/183/Cropper-Fig1_2_small.png
http://www.rff.org/Publications/Resources/Pages/183-Benefits-and-Costs-in-Intergenerational-Context.aspx
3. The other inputs used in the models to estimate SCC are biased to give higher damage costs. For example, the default values used in Nordhaus DICE-2013:
• ECS = 3.2
• CO2 emissions rate = RCP8.5
• Damage function is too high, and then added an extra fudge factor of 25% as a sort of contingency for unknowns
• Participation rate = from 100% to the assumed ‘Copenhagen Agreement’ participation rate, which is so optimistic to be ridiculous; I believe even half that rate is highly unlikely to be achieved.
• Discount rates are unrealistically low
Well, the RCP8.5 emissions rates while not accurate year by year are on average pretty close to this point. Now that China has basically started converting to nuclear the emissions may fall to RCP4.5 by 2025 (10.4 GT/Y).
The rate of atmospheric increase was dropping before China started burning all the coal they could find. Now that their consumption is plateauing it is reasonable to expect the rate of CO2 increase to gradually decline.
What is the damage function if emissions follow RCP8.5 more or less but the atmospheric increase is only 1/2 as high (or less). Do we let global warmers charge us for virtual damage?
PA,
True. Burt that is not a reliable indication to the average rate for this century.
The DICE projections are for 300 years. From memory the default values are roughly RCP8.5 average for all this century. I understand that rate is unrealistic because of practical resource constraints. If interested, read about it here: http://www.econ.yale.edu/~nordhaus/homepage/documents/DICE_Manual_100413r1.pdf
The damage function is a function of the temperature change, not the emissions rate (see above link).
Well, the 2790 GT of fossil CO2 or 760 GT of carbon is a 76 year supply at current consumption rates (about 10 GT/Y).
If we steadily increase consumption to keep the CO2 yearly increase at 2 PPM/Y we run out in about 40-45 years.
Realistically there isn’t a way to get the CO2 level over 480 PPM.
And as noted by all sorts of people on this blog the cost of extraction is rising steadily and it isn’t clear if supply or price will end fossil fuel use.
Only heavy users of crystalline form of Brazilian Marching Powder or other thought enhancing agents believe we can drive the CO2 level over 500 PPM.
To project a 2100 atmospheric level of 940 PPM as per the IPCC implies zero knowledge of fossil fuel economics, mining engineering and geological engineering.
RCPs were written in 2011 and updated in 2013 and are already off by at least 0.5 GT in the atmospheric CO2 level. They predict a 2.6 PPM CO2 rise in 2015 and the real number is going be around 2.1 PPM. I don’t believe “consensus” climate scientists know a whole lot about the ocean/land/atmosphere carbon cycle. Salby seems to be at least half right.
PA,
Further clarification. My concern is that all the values I mentioned are much too high. I expect:
– ECS should be around 2 or less, rather than 3.2
– Emissions rate over the century will average well below RCP8.5
– Damage function will be much less that used in the model – it may even net beneficial for warming this century
– Participation rate in global GHG emissions mitigation policy will be nowhere near the ‘Copenhagen commitments’
– discount rate should be the long term discount rates the world had demonstrated in the past. I do not believe the discount rates we’ve experienced over the very long term will change to address: intergenerational issues and social fairness whatever
PA,
Can you give me a link for this:
Nordhaus uses 6000 Gt C for total fossil C
PA,
I think we are saying the same thing. My point was that RCP8.5 is on the high side of what is the likely (or even possible) average rate of emissions for all this century.
More important, this is just one of the main inputs, all of which I mentioned are on the high side of even the IPCC’s ‘central estimates’.
Peter Lang | June 17, 2015 at 3:12 am |
PA,
I think we are saying the same thing. My point was that RCP8.5 is on the high side of what is the likely (or even possible) average rate of emissions for all this century.
1. ECS is only valid (to my understanding) for CO2 levels that last over 100 years. The CO2 level will be above 400 PPM for less than a century so the ECS is irrelevant – the TCR is the correct measure to use.
2. RCP8.5 atmospheric levels are as realistic as the premise of SyFy channel disaster movies.
3. The high side of possible is 600 PPM. If we deliberately burned all the fossil fuel we could get our hands on we might be able to hit 600 PPM but it would likely take supplemental burning of some or most the remaining forests (rainforests will pretty much be gone by mid century so it will be too late to burn them)…
Since it isn’t a likely that anyone (except global warmers) would advocate the massive level of destruction necessary to hit 600 PPM, 460-480 is the sweet spot. 480 PPM would represent about 10 GT/Y of environmental absorption, a static atmospheric CO2 level in other words, if emissions don’t increase above the current 10 GT/Y level..
As to the CO2 lifetime, lets assume we run out of fuel when the CO2 level is at 480 PPM. The average absorption at 480 is over 10 GT/Y and the average at 400 is 5.3 GT/Y. If we assume a mean of 7.5 GT/Y absorption, when we stop burning fossil fuels, it will take about 23 years to return to 400 PPM from 480 PPM.
4. I am going through the numbers but lets assume that $10 billion was spent to .concoct CO2 harm estimates. Before we take action on CO2 the NSF should be forced by law to spend 5 years funding CO2 benefit studies, with money currently wasted on climate change, to make sure we identify and monetize every single CO2 and warming benefit including the imaginary and virtual ones – just like global warmers do with the CO2 harm studies. Until we have spent as much money researching the benefits of more CO2 as we have studying the harm, it is impossible to do a fair cost benefit analysis.
But if global warmers oppose the necessary research, we can just assume $10 trillion in annual benefit from more CO2 and force the warmers to find $10 trillion in annual harm before we take action.
Peter Lang | June 17, 2015 at 3:47 am |
PA,
Can you give me a link for this:
the 2790 GT of fossil CO2 or 760 GT of carbon
Nordhaus uses 6000 Gt C for total fossil C
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/19/carbon-reserves-held-by-top-fossil-fuel-companies-soar
http://fossilfreeindexes.com/research/the-carbon-underground/
http://www.carbonvisuals.com/work/do-the-math-supporting-a-350-dot-org-tour
Everybody uses 2790 GT more or less as the number. My understanding is that the last half of reserves aren’t likely to be economically recoverable – but I will defer to someone in the field who would know the rules of thumb for these estimates. Can’t comment on Nordhaus but he seems to be playing in the wrong ball field.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/01/stable-climate-demands-most-fossil-fuels-stay-in-the-ground-but-whose/
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/mcglade_and_ekins-640×532.png
3000 GT of CO2 divided by 3.67 is 817 GT of carbon.
2790 GT of CO2 divided by 3.67 is 760 GT of carbon.
Since about 10 GT per year are burned it is about an 80 year supply.
It doesn’t look likely that we are going to burn much more than about 10 GT per year so in theory we could burn fossil fuel until the cows come home since the CO2 level is just going to hang around in the 460-480 range.
PA,
These figures are not comparable. They are reserves held by companies. Whereas the 600 Gt C (not CO2) is an estimate of the total amount of fossil fuel. It’s an upper limit. We don’t know how much of that could be economic with new technologies in 100, 200 or 300 years time.
PA,
I’m confused. You say:
“3000 GT of CO2 divided by 3.67 is 817 GT of carbon.”
However hard coal alone is 6000 Gt CO2, and the total is over 11,000 Gt CO2 – i.e. 3000 Gt C. And these are resources, not total fossil fuels. So, thise suggests Nordhaus’s 6000 Gt C is probably a reasonable estimate for the upper limit. His figures hasn’t changes since the 1990s’ so this suggests it is pretty robust.
Correction:
“Whereas the 6000 Gt C (not CO2) is an estimate of the total amount of fossil fuel.”
Peter Lang | June 17, 2015 at 6:33 am |
…
However hard coal alone is 6000 Gt CO2, and the total is over 11,000 Gt CO2 – i.e. 3000 Gt C. And these are resources, not total fossil fuels. So, thise suggests Nordhaus’s 6000 Gt C is probably a reasonable estimate for the upper limit. His figures hasn’t changes since the 1990s’ so this suggests it is pretty robust.
http://www.groundtruthtrekking.org/Issues/AlaskaCoal/CoalTerminology.html
“Additionally, in almost all these calculations coal is treated as a single entity, when in fact coal varies widely in quality, primarily heat content and in the presence of contaminants such as sulfur. Much of the world’s easily accessible and high-quality coal has already been mined, potentially leading to diminishing returns on energy output even if coal production continues at current levels.”
The best coal has been mined. The quality of coal is decreasing and the cost of production is steadily increasing. Given that our knowledge has changed since the 1990s the fact Nordhaus estimates haven’t changed isn’t reassuring.
http://www.postcarbon.org/the-end-of-cheap-coal/
It is what it is. There is a lot of coal out there. Most of it isn’t worth burning or has various extraction issues.
Any claim that there is an 80 or 160 year supply of hard coal at current prices and quality is an outright lie.
There is an 80-160 year supply of coal that produces enough energy to be worth mining that will sell at some price.
I would regard Nordhaus 6000 GT as the “if we are desperate and we don’t have a choice number”.
As long as we are burning fossil fuel at a 10 GT/Y rate we can basically burn fossil fuel forever without a lot of impact. By the time the CO2 level hits 480 PPM production will start declining. I personally favor subsidizing energy companies in the future so that we burn enough fossil fuel to keep the CO2 level at 460-480 PPM indefinitely.
PA,
I am fully aware of the enormous variability of coal quality and properties. I can give you links to many authoritative references on that subject.
However, your comments suggest you are not taking into account how resources and reserves change over time (increase) as new technologies develop. Look how they’ve changed over the past 200 and 200 years, and project forward.
Even better, consider how we have changed our exploration and extraction practices for oil and uranium. The estimated quantity of uranium in the upper continental crust is a good comparison with the Nordhaus number for the total amount of fossil fuel on Earth (6000 Gt C). The total amount of uranium in the upper continental crust is a large figure. But the amount at sufficient concentration and close enough to surface to be economically extracted is a small fraction of that. But the latter figure keeps changing as technology improves *. The quantity in the Earth’s upper continental crust does not. Similarly, the reserves and resources of fossil fuel keep changing, but the estimates of total amount of fossil carbon do not (at least not by much).
* For example, the depth at which we can find it and we can extract it is increasing as we change to remote, in situ-leaching instead of mining.
Peter Lang | June 17, 2015 at 6:36 pm |
PA,
I am fully aware of the enormous variability of coal quality and properties. I can give you links to many authoritative references on that subject.
However, your comments suggest you are not taking into account how resources and reserves change over time (increase) as new technologies develop. Look how they’ve changed over the past 200 and 200 years, and project forward.
“Sigh”.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/
Nordhaus is a global warming true believer. Global warmers are liars. It is just that simple.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7533/images/nature14016-f1.jpg
From the supply vs cost curves it is pretty obvious what is going on, Nordhaus is assuming a higher price of coal will be tolerated. It is what it is. The cost of competing power sources will determine if he is right or wrong.
The ecowackos are going to make fossil fuels ever more expensive to extract Coal is used for power generation and steel production. As soon as the cost of coal rises significantly its use in power generation declines. A cheap compact nuclear reactor or other competitive dispatchable power source would spell the end for the vast majority of coal consumption.
http://www.cejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/china-coal-projection.jpg
China is the major coal consumer and coal consumption is going to follow the Chinese usage trend. In fact the shape of the Chinese consumption curve is a reasonable proxy estimate for future global fossil fuel consumption.
The largest coal reserves are in the US and the US coal is simply too expensive for significant external use and the internal use is declining. Fossil fuel emissions is going to peak at something under 12 GT/Y. China coal consumption declined last year for the first time in 14 years so the peak might actually be the current 10 GT/Y.
At 10 GT/Y of carbon emissions (no growth) in 40 years the CO2 level stabilizes between 460 and 480 PPM and at that point we really don’t care how much fossil fuel is burned.
PA,
That’s not a very helpful response. It’s starts with an ad hominem about Nordhaus and the generalises with a hypocritical statement. The Global Warming believers are no worse than the extemists who deny any effect of humans on climate.
It seems you are making assumptions without having read the analyses that underpin the 6000 Gt (although I admit I may have forgotten because it was quite a few years ago when I read it).
I agree with you on this, as you know because I’ve wriiten probably hundreds of comments on CE on that very topic. However, progress is blocked by the ‘Progressives, the CAGW Alarmists and the RE advocates. Until they are prepared to advocate to remove the impediments that are blocking the world from having cheap nuclear power, there will be little progress.
But this has nothing to do with the Gt of fossil fuel on Earth. Nor does the price of fuel. So you arguments about price have nothing to do with whether or not Nordhaus’ s figure of 6000 Gt C is correct or not.
Let me know if you want to read the basis for the 6000 Gt C estimate (as I said, I don’t recall the details of the basis of estimate).
PA,
Here’s an example of of his figures I disagree with:
$500/ tonne C is ridiculous. Nuclear will be able to start replacin all fossil fuels electricity for <$0/tonne within 20 years of 'Progressives' allowing the regulatory the impediments to low-cost nuclear power to be removed. I know we agree on this. And you may be correct on the 6000 Gt, too – but please explain what is wrong with the analysis that was the basis for that figure.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/
The above article is a pretty unbalanced piece of naked advocacy. It makes a number of incorrect assumptions and untrue assertions.
http://www.econ.yale.edu/~nordhaus/homepage/documents/DICE_Manual_103113r2.pdf
i><Carbon fuels are limited in supply, with a total limit of 6000 billion tons of carbon content.
“6000 GT carbon content” is twice all known fossil fuel deposits (reserve+resources) and is not an estimate of recoverable reserves. That represents 22020 GT of carbon dioxide content. This is roughly twice the amount normally quoted as reserves+resources. It is a meaningless number since he is an economist and not a geological engineer or a mining engineer. He normally quotes 4000 GT as the fossil fuel reserves (or does in one of his articles) but again he isn’t a geologic engineer or mining engineer, so talk is cheap.
PA,
I am sorry, but continually trying to dismiss this without having read the basis for it does not work for me. In fact it’s worse. It give’s me concern that much of what you say may be equally baseless. I hope you will take the time to read it. If you find fault in the basis of estimate of 6000 Gt of fossil fuels (or fossil C or what ever it is), then please explain it and reference authoritative sources that have shown it is incorrect (in the way it was calculated and meant). I gave you a link to Nordhaus’s manual for DICE in an early comment on this sub-thread. That includes the link to the source documents. Also, on Nordhaus’s Home page are the calibrations for DICE2007. It’s included there too.
PA,
This sort of talsk is cheap, meaningless and frustrating
Not everyone has to be a mining engineer or geologist to quote figures from authoritative sources. You quote figures from sources that are outside your expertise and so does everyone. How could he apr anyone do anything if they only used figures they had developed them self or by others of their own discipline. Ad hominem arguments are a fallacy and a sign of intellectual dishonesty. If I am to be persuaded the 6000 Gt,c of total fossil C in the Earths Crust is incorrect, I need to have the flaw in the analysis explained. There is no point in quoting from other sources. Tat’s appeal to authority. I need to understand the flaw in the 6000 Gt figure. It could swell be wrong. I’ve found a lot else I disagree with that he has done. But I don’t know that this figure is wrong.
Peter Lang | June 18, 2015 at 5:26 am |
PA,
I am sorry, but continually trying to dismiss this without having read the basis for it does not work for me.
We have a problem here.
He is not a geological or mining engineer. He has created a computer model that has some basis using past data and some assumptions.
Lets look at his DICE flow chart:
Fossil fuel use generates CO2 emissions
|
Carbon cycle: redistributes around atmosphere, oceans, etc.
|
Climate system: change in radiative warming, precipitation, ocean currents, sea level rise,…
|
Impacts on ecosystems, agriculture, diseases, skiing, golfing, …
|
Measures to control emissions (limits, taxes, subsidies, …)
| back to top.
He is just making up numbers and inserting them in a computer program.
As far as his 6000 billion carbon tons it isn’t his number.
Environment Biotechnology By S.k.agarwal copyright 2007 contains the claim.
Geophysical and mining engineers generate different reserve estimates than economists and biotechnologists, and you want me to believe the economists and biotechnologists? Really?
No, thank you, I’ll pass.
PA,
I’ve already refuted this irrelevant and silly comment:
It’s frustrating that you keep going with such nonsense and continually avoid dealing with the basis of estimate of the 6000 Gt C. To me this is an insignificant point out of my original comment. However, you raised it, so you need to show it is in error. So far you haven’t even read the papers where the basis of estimate is explained.
I have lost a great deal of confidence in what you say as a result of this exchange.
I can’t find the paper I read way back ny Nordhaus and Yole. However, I see he says the figure comes from Rogner, 1997. I see Rogner 1997 is quoted in IPCC TAR, WG3 Section 383 which states the total as 16,500 Gt C including Clathrates.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg3/index.php?idp=125
Correction:
IPCC WG3, Section 3.8.3 gives the total as 4,959 GtC resources plus 16,521 GtC additional occurrences including Clathrates = total 21,500 GtC.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg3/index.php?idp=125
Peter Lang | June 18, 2015 at 10:05 am |
I can’t find the paper I read way back ny Nordhaus and Yole. However, I see he says the figure comes from Rogner, 1997. I see Rogner 1997 is quoted in IPCC TAR, WG3 Section 383 which states the total as 16,500 Gt C including Clathrates.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg3/index.php?idp=125
“Dr. H-Holger Rogner received a MSc in industrial engineering (1975) and a PhD in energy economics (1981). ”
Well, gee. We have improved a little from an economist and a biotechie.
There probably is more than 16,500 GT of hydrocarbons floating around the planet. There might be 30,000 GT of carbon locked up in hydrocarbons. However much like that magical battery innovations that get announced every few years and never hit the market, the physical existence of hydrocarbons doesn’t mean they are commercially extractable at a reasonable price.
https://climatecommercial.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/world-coal-consumption-by-country-2011-2035.jpg
This is much like the IPCC 940 PPM CO2 in 2100. The people who believe these hydrocarbons are commercially extractable believe we can hit 940 PPM CO2 in 2100 and be burning fossil fuel in 2300. The country with the greatest coal reserves (28% of the global total) has been steadily reducing consumption. The biggest consumer of coal – consuming about 2/3rd of the world total, cut its consumption last year. China does not appear to want to burn US coal.
https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/CoalMiningFig3.png
Coal is burned because it is half the price per BTU of other fuels. By mid-century the price of coal will double and we will quit using it. It is just that simple.
PA,
Well Gee, all you’ve got are ad hominem fallacy responses.
What is your background? And what qualifications do you have to write comments on the various subjects you write on here.
Your comment displays gross hypocrisy and ignorance.
When you start with such a sill comment, I don’t bother reading the rest. So you are wasting your time responding.
20,000 Gt C in fossil C deposits from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon#Occurrence
It seems like there is no constraint on the amount of C, and it does not seem as if Nordhaus’s limit is unreasonable in the way he uses it in DICE and RICE.
So, that figure is not one I would waste time taking issue with. There are far more significant inputs to be concerned about as I said in my original comment.
Gees,
I see now you can’t let go of the price of production as your way of estimating the Gt C available. I told you in one of the earliest comments to drop that. It’s not relevant for the estimate of C because technology improves. Nordhaus was not talking about C that can be extracted economically over the next few decades. It’s about what may be extractable of 300 years or so. We have not idea how technologies might develop in future. I’ts very frustrating that you kept going swith this like of argument and ignored what I’d already said and never bothered to read the source documents. And you have not read ‘A Question of Balance’ so all your ad hominem’s simply show your ignorance. You have no idea about the basis of the cost benefit analyses on DICE and RICE.
Even if you use known resources as the basis for your argument, you should find what the known resources were 1800, 1900, 2000 and project the rate of growth to 2100, 2200 and 2300 and see what the result is.
Well, gee.
1. The original 6300 gigatons seems to have originated with a WIC1998 document or information derived from a similar source.
http://user.iiasa.ac.at/~gruebler/Lectures/Graz-04/WECbook_1_4.pdf
Reserves 606 GT
Resources 2,794 GT
Resource base 3,400 (ultimately recoverable).
Additional Resources 3,000
Estimates for resources run as high as 17,700 GT or more.
Using technically recoverable resources as a measure of a resource is sort of silly. There is 160 metric tonnes of uranium in every 1 mile square by 10 foot deep piece of earth. The US has over 608 million metric tons of uranium resources (you can dig deeper than 10 feet).
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2011.09.02/WorldCoalReserves_p2.png
http://www.minerals.org.au/file_upload/images/coal/chart9.png
US production has remained flat for about 20 years. Only 53% of US reserves are accessible for mining (and the number is dropping) and the yield is only about 50% percent. So only about 1/4 of 28% of the global supply can actually be recovered.
Yeah there is a lot of coal or lignite out there. The amount of low ash, low sulfur, low residue coal that you would want to burn is pretty limited. And just because a resource exists doesn’t mean it can be recovered at a profit.
China and Indonesia are rapidly running out coal with 35 year or less supplies. If the optimists are right they won’t run out as predicted.
If they run out as predicted the optimists are wrong.
PA,
What on Earth is all this nonsense about. When you start with “well Gee” (as your comments frequently do – and I once mimicked to try to make the point – it’s a sign that you can’t be taken seriously. The fact you have continually dodged answering the direct question about the 6000 Gt C and instead used intellectually dishonest tactics to avoid addressing the direct question, means I no longer have much hope that your comments will be worth reading – at least not on this issue. But really, I’ve lost confidence in anything you say. Your diversionary waffle about uranium is irrelevant and just plain silly. We had about 15 years of oil resources in 1965. We’ve got more now.
I no longer expect you will deal with the issue. Oh, and by the way, you’ve made several false claims about the origin of the 6000 Gt, but still haven’t read the Nordhaus documents I linked and followed back to the sources referenced.
Sorry PA, I’ve lost confidence that anything you say can be relied on to be correct.
I agree with you Harold. I believe that Judith Curry has an opportunity to make a difference and her deference to the “system” may limit her impact.
Taking the step from follower to leader requires guts. I would hope that after cocktails with Nigel Lawson Judith is motivated to step up and lead.
Mark,
There is an excellent report about Ireland’s bank system failures in the GFC. It explains ‘herding’ and ‘groupthink’. See particularly Section 1.6, but also search for the terms elsewhere in the document.
http://www.bankinginquiry.gov.ie/Documents/Misjuding%20Risk%20-%20Causes%20of%20the%20Systemic%20Banking%20Crisis%20in%20Ireland.pdf
Thanks for the link Peter.
Herding and group think on “Boards” is very real and destructive to the mission/value of Boards. In particular on “not for profit” Boards it is devastating. People who serve on nfp Boards have no incentive to challenge the status quo. If they do they get isolated and marginalized.
Did anyone find a u tube or link to Dr. Curry on John Stossel last weekend?
The one up site was a different discussion.
Scott
http://www.cato.org/multimedia/media-highlights-tv/patrick-j-michaels-discusses-climate-change-movement-john-stossel
steve rein
Thanks very much. Worked great.
Scott
Gas price increases >> coal
NETL/DOE projects natural gas prices to double in 25 years from ~$3.7/million Btu to ~$7.8/million Btu compared to little for Coal $2.8 to $3.6/million Btu. See Gasification Systems Overview, 2015 slide 17.
Those gas costs increases are likely to far exceed alleged greenhouse costs, while CO2 benefits will continue to increase.
Similarly the UK expects coal power to remain the lowest costs even with sequestration.
UCG = underground coal combustion.
So why are we so eager to harm our US economy and move manufacturing offshore?
PS the UK prices from: NEWSLETTER of the Coal Research Forum #73 May 2015
Some grammar/typo suggestions:
While extreme weather is an argument that seems to work in terms of influencing public opinion on climate change, however (strike however) it isn’t supported by research and the main assessment reports.
My concern is that we have oversimplified by (strike by) the climate change problem and its solutions. This oversimplification has
which provides a form (forum) for technical experts and the interested public to engage in a discussion
Reblogged this on 4timesayear's Blog.
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Yet another super job on your “tour” Dr. Curry!
As an old engineer I especially appreciate how you remind policy makers that the bottom line is that any action taken must be purposeful and not harmful. This is where the rubber meets the road.
From our engineer-in-chief:
“Someday, our children, and our children’s children, will look at us in the eye and they’ll ask us, did we do all that we could when we had the chance to deal with this problem and leave them a cleaner, safe, more stable world?” – President Barack Obama, June 25, 2013″
To which I would suggest this more-likely alternate reality:
Someday, our children, and our children’s children, will look at us in the eye and they’ll ask us, “Why did you consume all of the wealth accumulated by your ancestors, and then borrow from our generations, and then destroy our means to re-create the destroyed wealth, all based on your unproven assumptions? Why did you choose to steal our freedom and future because you had an “educated guess?””
Well, they might say those words if they are still free enough to express themselves.
Sorry for the dup… not sure how it got there:(
I don’t think the US Supreme Court said that CO2 was a pollutant but rather that the EPA had jurisdiction to determine whether it was a pollutant or not. The EPA determined it was a pollutant, not the Supreme Court.
I suggest that the root cause is sloppy writing of the Clean Air Act. It specifies GHGs as pollutants. (Variously CO2, CH4, N2O, CFC, CO) + H20; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_list_of_greenhouse_gases ).
I don’t know whether or not Congress enumerated a list, but the EPA settled upon CO2 as the villain.
Clever politicos; they chose CO2, which is produced while supplying ~80% of our energy. Their advisers had a sense of history. In WWII, we denied energy to the Axis by raids on Ploesti and by sinking Japanese tankers. This led to the inability of the Axis to stop allied bombers. The Japanese battleship Yamoto had a one-way ticket to Midway.
Energy ‘policy’ is a means of controlling citizens. It ideal for rationing; it can be allocated to favorites; allocation can be used to induce the greasing of palms, Chicago-style.
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