Contrarians and consensus: The case of the midwife toad
I recently came across an old copy of Arthur Koestler’s “The Case of the Midwife Toad”. Originally published in 1971, it’s an exploration of a rather tragic footnote in the history of evolutionary science. Back in the early years of the 20th Century (prior to the understanding of DNA, but after Mendelian genetics had become well known), there was still a remnant of the biological community who preferred the Lamarckian idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics over the Darwinian idea of natural selection of random mutations. One of the vanguard for the Lamarckian idea was Paul Kammerer whose specialty was the breeding of amphibians that apparently few others could match. He claimed that he could get his toads and salamanders to acquire characteristics that were useful in the new environments in which he raised his specimens. This was touted loudly (in the New York Times for instance) as proof of Lamarckian inheritance and Kammerer was hailed as a ‘new Darwin’. It all ended very badly when one toad specimen was found to be faked (by who remains a mystery), and Kammerer killed himself shortly afterwards (though there may have been more involved than scientific disgrace).
The details of the experiments and controversy can be read online (with various slants) here and here, and a more modern non-replication of one of his experiments is described here. However, the reason I bring this up here is much more related to how the scientific community and Koestler dealt with this scientific maverick and the analogies that has for the climate science and its contrarians.
There are (at least) four points where the analogies with climate science are strong: First, there were clear philosophical motives for supporting Lamarckism (as there are for denying human effects on climate change) (see below). These are strongly articulated in Koestler’s book, and it is obvious that the author feels some sympathy with that argument. Second, there is idealization of the romantic notion of the scientist-as-hero, sacrificing their all (literally in Kammerer’s case) for the pursuit of truth in the teeth of establishment opposition (cf Svensmark). Third, there is the outrage at the apparent dirty tricks, rumours and persecution. Finally, there is the longing for a redemption - a time when the paradigm shift will occur and the hero will be proven right.
Enough time has passed and enough additional scientific evidence has been gathered however to show that Kammerer’s ideas are never going to be accepted into the mainstream. Therefore, we can use this episode to highlight how people’s misunderstanding of scientific process can lead them astray.
So let’s start with the non-scientific reasons why Kammerer’s ideas had resonance. Martin Gardner in Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1952) puts it well (p143):
Just as Lamarckianism combines easily with an idealism in which the entire creation is fulfilling God’s vast plan by constant upward striving, so also does it combine easily with political doctrines that emphasize the building of a better world.
The point is that without Lamarckianism, none of the striving and achievement of a parent impacts their progeny’s genetic material. That was a depressing thought for many people (what is the point of striving at all?), and hence there was a clear non-scientific yearning for Lamarckian inheritance to be correct. I use the past tense in referring to these almost 100 year-old arguments, but Koestler’s book and more recent attempts to rehabilitate these ideas tap into these same (misguided) romantic notions. (Odd aside, one of the most positive treatments of this “neo-Lamarckianism” is by Michael Duffy, a frequent climate contrarian Australian journalist). Note that I am distinguishing the classic ‘inheritance of acquired characteristics’ from the much more respectable study of epigenetics.
The scientist-as-hero meme is a very popular narrative device and is widespread in most discussions of progress in science. While it’s clearly true that some breakthroughs have happened through the work of a single person (special relativity is the classic case) and someone has to be the first to make a key observation (e.g. Watson and Crick), the vast majority of scientific progress occurs as the accumulation of small pieces of new information and their synthesis into a whole. While a focus on a single person makes for a good story, it is very rarely the whole or even a big part of the real story. Thus while Koestler can’t be uniquely faulted for thinking that Lamarckianism rose and fell with Kammerer, that perspective leads him to imbue certain events with much more significance than is really warranted.
For instance, one of the more subtle misconceptions in the book though is how Koestler thinks that scientific arguments get settled. He places enormous emphasis on a academic tour that Kammerer made to the UK which included a well-documented talk in Cambridge in which the subsequently-notorious specimen was also in attendance. In fact, Koestler devotes a large number of pages to first-hand recollections of the talk. Koestler also criticises heavily the arch-protagonist in this story (a Dr. Bateson) who did not attend Kammerer’s talk, even though he presumably could have, while continuing to criticise his conclusions. The talk is in fact held up to be the one missed opportunity for some academic mano-a-mano that Koestler presumably thinks would have settled things.
Except that this is not how controversial ideas get either accepted or rejected. Sure, publishing papers, giving talks and attending conferences are all useful in bringing ideas to a wider audience, but they are very rarely the occasion of some dramatic denouement and mass conversion of the skeptical. Instead, ideas get accepted because of the increasing weight of evidence that supports them - and that usually comes in dribs and drabs. A replication here, a theoretical insight there, a validated prediction etc. Only in hindsight does there appear to be a clean sequence of breakthroughs that can be seen to have led inexorably to the new conclusions. At the time, the landscape is far more ambiguous. Thus in focusing on one specific talk, and on its reception by one particularly outspoken opponent, Koestler misses the wider issue - which was that Kammerer’s ideas just didn’t have any independent support. The wider community thus saw his work (as far as I can tell) as a curiosity: possibly his findings were correct, but his interpretation was likely not, and maybe his findings weren’t all that reproducible in any case?
This remains the issue, if Lamarckian evolution were possible, it should have been viewable in hundreds of other systems that were much easier to replicate than Kammerer’s toads (nematodes perhaps?). Absent that replication, no amount of exciting talks will have persuaded scientists. In that, scientists are probably a little different from the public, or at least the public who went to Kammerer’s more public lectures where he was very warmly received.
In these circumstances, it is not surprising that Kammerer’s more vocal opponents would occasionally give vent to their true feelings. Koestler is particular critical of Bateson who, in retrospect, does appear to have gone a little far in his public critiques of Kammerer. However, Koestler perhaps doesn’t realise how common quite scathing criticism is in the halls of academe. This rarely gets written down explicitly, but it is nonetheless there, and forms a big part of how well some people’s ideas are received. If someone is perceived as an exaggerator, or an over-interpreter of their results, even their most careful work will not get a lot of support.
Koestler ends his book with the familiar refrain that since modern science is incomplete, alternative theories must continue to be pursued. He states that since “contemporary genetics has no answers to offer to the problem of the genesis of behaviour”, the replication the key experiments (which he clearly expected to vindicate Kammerer), would very likely make biologists ’sit up’ and have a long-lasting impact on the field. This notion fails to take into account the vast amount of knowledge that already exists and that makes certain kinds of ‘alternative’ theories very unlikely to be true. The link between this optimistic expectation and discussions of climate change is persuasively demonstrated in this pastiche.
There is one additional characteristic of this story that has some modern resonance, and that’s the idea that once someone starts accepting one class of illogical arguments, that leads them to accept others that aren’t really connected, but share some of the same characteristics. Some people have called this ‘crank magnetism‘. In Kammerer’s case, he was a great believer in the meaningfulness of coincidences and wrote a book trying to elucidate the ‘laws’ that might govern them. Koestler himself became a big proponent of parapsychology. And today there are examples of climate contrarians who are creationists or anti-vaccine campaigners. Though possibly this is just coincidence (or is it….?).
Of course, the true worth of any scientific idea is whether it leads to more successful predictions than other theories. So I’ll finish with a 1923 prediction that Kammerer made while he was on a speaking tour of the US: “Take a very pertinent case. The next generation of Americans will be born without any desire for liquor if the prohibition law is continued and strictly enforced” (NYT, Nov 28).
7 December 2008 at 12:30 PM
An excellent, and excellently written, essay. My compliments.
7 December 2008 at 12:48 PM
Very interesting article. Just one minor correction:
“While it’s clearly true that some breakthroughs have happened through the work of a single person (special relativity is the classic case)”
I think you mean general relativity, not special. Around 1905 there were quite a few people working along the same line as Einstein (and to some extent drawing insights from each other). If Einstein hadn’t published his ideas, someone else (Poincaré, perhaps) would have come up with something very similar to special relativity within a short timeframe (1906/1907?).
General relativity was a different matter though. That really came out of the blue and required an extraordinary out-of-the-box thinking on Einstein’s part.
7 December 2008 at 1:25 PM
Thank you for this. It’s an interesting read.
Although, I wonder — in response to “scientist-as-hero-against-establishment” (i.e. part of the Galileo Gambit), why is the counterexample of Einstein never brought up? He fits the bill of a lone scientists (well, accounts vary on the role of his first wife, but…) whose ideas were so contrary to the establishment that the establishment… turned them into the new consensus after they passed peer review and stood up to observational evidence. He even had a Nobel Prize, became the first modern scientific celebrity, and was so recent that many folk are only one or two generations removed from him. Seems the perfect counter to those who claim the heroic lone scientist is always suppressed.
7 December 2008 at 1:51 PM
There is something that needs to be made very explicit, very plain and very simple and must be repeated loudly and often. It is:
What scientists Believe is the following:
Nature isn’t just the final authority on truth, Nature is the Only authority. There are zero human authorities. Scientists do not vote on what is the truth. There is only one vote and Nature owns it. We find out what Nature’s vote is by doing Scientific [public and replicable] experiments. Scientific [public and replicable] experiments are the only source of truth. [To be public, it has to be visible to other people in the room. What goes on inside one person’s head isn’t public unless it can be seen on an X-ray or another instrument.] There are no conspiracies in Science. All scientists are the opposition to any idea, not just all other scientists.
Science is a simple faith in Scientific experiments and a simple absolute lack of faith in everything else. Why? Science works. You are reading this on a desktop computer, a product of engineering made possible by Quantum Mechanics. Religion doesn’t work.
BACKUP/BACKGROUND:
Science is the ultimate Protestant Reformation in which Religion is reformed out of existence. As I remember the Protestant Reformation, it happened because the invention of printing press enabled everybody to own and read and interpret the bible. Priests were no longer necessary when everybody could read the source of knowledge. Science takes the next step: Ancient text is not the source of knowledge when every person can find out the truth by carefully following a procedure called “Science” for him/herself. There is another implicit step here. The implicit step is realizing that ancient people did not have some source of knowledge that we do not. In fact, we have enormous knowledge and “The Ancients” did not. Even people in the middle ages had technology that the ancients did not, such as crossbows or even longbows. Yet there are still people who believe that “The Ancients” knew things that we don’t. I find that describing people as old stone age, new stone age, copper age, iron age, mideval, etc does not work. What works is describing “The Ancients” as “just a bunch of wild indians”. The description that works is inaccurate in the details, but it gets the correct message across. It is understood. This is said with apologies to stone age native Americans who were no more stone-age than stone age Europeans or stone age middle easterners or stone age anybody else.
If anything truthful HAD been told 2000 years ago, languages change so fast that the “second coming” would have been required in 25 years. If the language didn’t change, you know from the game of “telephone” that 6 re-tellings is enough to completely scramble the story. Nobody wrote any “gospel” down until 50 years had passed, and then it was in a different language, introducing translation errors.
In the book: “Revolutionary Wealth” by Alvin & Heidi Toffler 2006 Chapter 19, FILTERING TRUTH, page 123 lists six commonly used filters people use to find the “truth”. They are:
1. Consensus
2. Consistency
3. Authority
4. Mystical revelation or religion [another name for several forms of mental illness]
5. Durability
6. Science
7. I would add a seventh that our legal system uses: Combat. A trial is nothing more than a ceremonial name-calling contest. That the legal system is nonsense is proven by the fact that the Governor of Illinois had to commute all of the death sentences in his state because so many of the convicted were proven by evidence based on Science to be innocent. No court of law ever proved anything.
8. I would add an eighth that we call Democracy: Voting. This is not the same as consensus because consensus requires unanimity. Voting is applicable when Science is not yet ready to make a determination, as in politics.
9. I would add a ninth. Human/Ape Instinct. We all behave as dictated by instincts and drives that were created over the 400 Million years of chordate evolution that preceeded the invention of Science. These instincts and drives are no longer appropriate most of the time now, but they are hard-wired programs in our brains and stomachs that we cannot over-ride without severe training, if at all.
As the Tofflers say: “Science is different from all the other truth-test criteria. It is the only one that itself depends on rigorous testing.” They go on to say: “In the time of Galileo . . . the most effective method of discovery was itself discovered.” [Namely Science.] The Tofflers also say that: “The invention of scientific method was the gift to humanity of a new truth filter or test, a powerful meta-tool for probing the unknown and—it turned out—for spurring technological change and economic progress.” All of the difference in the way we live now compared to the way people lived and died 500 years ago is due to Science. The other truth filters have contributed misery, confusion, war, fanaticism, persecution, terrorism, inquisitions, suicide bombings, false imprisonments, obesity, diabetes and other atrocities.
Reference: “Science and Immortality” by Charles B. Paul 1980 University of California Press. In this book on the Eloges of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1699-1791) page 99 says: “Science is not so much a natural as a moral philosophy”. [That means drylabbing [fudging data] will get you fired.]
Page 106 says: “Nature isn’t just the final authority, Nature is the Only authority.”
7 December 2008 at 2:00 PM
Good insights. Even Watson and Crick had Barbara McClintock and a brilliant Linus Pauling saying that it was impossible for DNA to have such a conformation. I, myself know several people who are well educated (non scientists) who cling to the idea of Lamarckian acquired characteristics.
7 December 2008 at 2:00 PM
Gavin on the one hand kudos for cleverly connecting this mini-milestone in biology thinking with climate skeptics. However like so much of the dialog here this is too much of a straw man argument.
Unlike Lamarckians, most critics of the prevailing concensus on climate change agree with the overwhelming data that supports global warming and many agree most of that warming is caused by human activity. What worries responsible critics is how most media and most of the political interpretations have distorted the message to suggest we are at the brink of environmental collapse/catastrophe.
This is of concern because we face many extraordinary challenges and wise allocation of resources suggests that massive CO2 reduction is massively expensive and will have minimal impact for decades and perhaps centuries.
7 December 2008 at 2:01 PM
This is all about politics, not science.
Our society is simply too dependant on carbon combustion in all its various forms. There is no way around it. As such it is unlikely that there will be a meaningful near term reduction in CO2 emissions and projected atmospheric concentrations. Forget about stabilization, CO2 concentrations are accelerating.
Currently, politicians can either accept or deny that CO2 causes global warming. There are pros and cons to each position with very little that anybody can do about it no matter which tact they take. However, since climate change is so slow, either position is totally viable politically because neither position can really do anything to control CO2 levels.
Unfortunately some people have resorted to exaggeration in an attempt to advance their position. This is true for both sides of the debate. So although the science is technically settled for the most part, the political turmoil will continue for a very long time.
7 December 2008 at 2:04 PM
The parallel goes even further. When Kammerer says:
“Take a very pertinent case. The next generation of Americans will be born without any desire for liquor if the prohibition law is continued and strictly enforced”
he uses the same impossible to falsify language of the climate contrarians. That prediction doesn’t count, Lamarckians would say, because, prohibition wasn’t strictly enough enforced. We hear similar language today
7 December 2008 at 2:07 PM
Mendelevian genetics? You probably mean Mendelian genetics, or do I miss something?
[Response: whoops. fixed. - gavin]
7 December 2008 at 2:13 PM
A good book on methods for changing minds and behavior:
Reference: “Influencer” by Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan and Switzler.:
Step 1: Set an example that is observable. The “Mad” scientist idea is untenable once they see that you are a nice person.
Step 2: Tell stories. People react negatively to being told that they are wrong. Tell a long [but not tall] story instead. Soap operas on radio have helped slow the spread of AIDS.
Step 3: Demonstrations work better than instructions. Vicarious experiences cause brain neurons to light up as if the viewer were performing the same action. Instructions are not understood. Simple experiments are good. They may not know what the words you use mean.
Step 4: Make sure they have a way out of whatever their problem is. If you don’t solve their problem, they just give up and continue their old ways. They DO have some sort of problem. What is it? Observe the opposition carefully to determine what their problem is.
That book says: Change 1 or 2 vital behaviors. They may seem like very minor things, but the result can be major.
I am on page 84, so I have just started reading this book.
Not from the book: The best deal would be to get science into the public schools. Make science a laboratory course in elementary school. Require 4 years of physics, 4 years of chemistry, 4 years of biology and 8 years of math of all students in high school.
7 December 2008 at 2:20 PM
“And today there are examples of climate contrarians who are creationists or anti-vaccine campaigners.”
Is this sentence worthy of a true scientist? And what is the message?
[Response: It’s an observation, nothing more. - gavin]
7 December 2008 at 2:37 PM
“The point is that without Lamarckianism, none of the striving and achievement of a parent impacts their progeny’s genetic material. That was a depressing thought for many people (what is the point of striving at all?)”
So strange; did they never expect to inherit money, infrastructure, scientific and technological advancements? (link to climate - do they never expect ‘green-tech’?, etc.)
7 December 2008 at 2:39 PM
These are very good points. In the first paragraph, however, it should read Mendelian genetics and not Mendelevian genetics.
7 December 2008 at 3:00 PM
Gavin:
Your recount of the infamous Kammerer story and its possible relevance to the motivation of many deniers may be on the mark. But you must also allow, that some skeptics that you lump with deniers, may occasionally have valid points to make. And maybe they deserve more attention here – than analysis of the ‘philosophical’ beliefs of deniers.
I’m definitely not a ‘denier’. However, from my naive frame of reference – a biologist who is more expert on Kammerer and Watson/Crick than on realclimate – I would much prefer seeing what you have to say about Pat Keating’s latest article “Simple radiative models for surface warming and upper-troposphere cooling” in the Int. J. Climatol. (2008), just published online. I find it quite compelling, as an ‘explanation’ for the probable significance of the differences between the radiosonde data and GCM’s predictions of tropical environmental lapse rates – as effectively ‘poo pooed’ in your recent Santer et al. article. (My acute interest is mostly on the possibility that GISS Model E may regularly underestimate tropical precipitation – just because it neglects the radiative ’subtleties’ that Keating addresses?)
[Response: Actually most models overestimate tropical precipitation (by around 10%) compared to the satellite climatologies (which may be underestimates in any case). I don’t know where the ‘overestimate’ idea comes from. I haven’t read Keating (2008), but I will at some point and possibly address it then. -gavin]
7 December 2008 at 3:14 PM
Instead, ideas get accepted because of the increasing weight of evidence that supports them - and that usually comes in dribs and drabs. A replication here, a theoretical insight there, a validated prediction etc. Only in hindsight does there appear to be a clean sequence of breakthroughs that can be seen to have led inexorably to the new conclusions
A common meme amongst the contrarians is that the IPCC et al came to the conclusion of GHG-forced warming faute de mieux or by elimination - it cannot be anything else therefore it must be CO2. Leaving aside the question of the literature on detection and attribution, what I would find useful when fighting the good fight would be some examples of succesfully validated predictions from the theory, preferably that are unambiguously due to GHGs and with supporting peer-reviewed evidence. It is an article of faith among the target audience that models are tweaked or trained to reproduce past trends (I know I know, let’s not repoen that one) so any model-free examples would be useful additions to the toolkit.
I can think of Hansen’s Scenario B, the IPCC model projections published in the TAR (which showed a projected midrange surface temperature gain of c0.35c from 1990-2010, a good agreement with the observed trend so far, sorry Lucia), ditto the accelerating sea level rise, Arctic ice loss, stratospheric cooling (does this effectively rule out solar forcing?), SSTs and ocean heat content, the observed increase in atmospheric water vapour as reported recently in GRL.
Any other low-hanging fruit? Hurricane intensity seems controversial, what about the DTR?
cheers,
JP.
7 December 2008 at 3:24 PM
“today there are examples of climate contrarians who are creationists or anti-vaccine campaigners. Though possibly this is just coincidence (or is it….?).”
There are examples indeed. But the majority of “contrarians” are in fact scientists, including climate scientists. And “there are examples” of climate alarmists who are lawyers, politicians and other professional spin doctors. It is not a coincidence.
Thankfully, as for Darwinism vs Lamarckism, we are talking about a scientific issue. Given enough time, the sum of good objective data will convince (most) everyone.
7 December 2008 at 3:49 PM
Not relavent to the post…
I wonder if the next generation of space observatories:
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/TPF/tpf_earths.cfm
…could be useful in establishing the bounds of Milankovitch orbital cycles?
We should find many rocky planets orbiting Sol-sized suns, at various orbital eccentricacies. Id think some of these brainstormed telescopes should be able to tell if a planet has liquid water, ice, or some combo. Maybe the phase states for other substances too. So if a planet is found that has a certain orbital eccentricacy, yet has more or less water than expected, it may be because there are holes in existing Milankovitch theory that could be plugged by exoplanet observations. There are many other factors including geology that won’t be observable. If the observatories are powerful enough to tell atmospheric compositions, it could rule out many factors. Just an idea that maybe hasn’t been considered, and maybe should be considered in the suite of instruments that will be used by these fantastic spacecraft.
7 December 2008 at 4:14 PM
I’m not sure how changing the subject advances any understanding of the climate science “from climate scientists” that realclimate purports to promote. The proprietors of this site have been admirable in their impatience for the non sequitur, and I look forward to their returning to the topic. This straw man’s legs are wobbling before he can even stand.
7 December 2008 at 4:25 PM
Hansen et al 1988 had a baseline starting point of 1960 at O. (You could perhaps use 1985 as the starting point as well since the temp was very close to the same 0 that year (0.1C) and that was the last official annual temperature data available at the time of the model predictions.
Scenario B projected a temperature increase of 0.85C by 2008.
GISS temperature increase from 1960 to 2008ytd: 0.412C
[Response: This is off topic - but also a great example of cherry picking. The trends in annual temperature anomaly in scenario B from 1984-2007 (which is when the projections started) are 0.25+/-0.05 deg C/dec (95%, OLS). That is equivalent to 0.57 deg C over 23 years - not 0.85!. The changes in the annual GISTEMP indices over the same period are 0.24 +/- 0.07 and 0.21+/-0.06 deg C/dec. Thus despite the slight over-estimate of the forcings in scenario B (by about 10%), the long term trends are well matched and certainly within the respective uncertainties. Analyses that don’t take into account the differences that short term weather makes are bogus. - gavin]
7 December 2008 at 4:38 PM
Re: post #10.
Considering the nature of the overall problem we’re discussing (Earth’s climate), I’d add a few years of Earth Science to the list of high school courses. In fact, part of the AGW awareness problem may be rooted in the fact that Earth Science is usually not taught as a serious course in high school. Earth Science is no more an applied area of science than is Life Science, and it’s as important in the long run.
7 December 2008 at 5:36 PM
Joe (#6), people who “agree with the overwhelming data that supports global warming and … agree most of that warming is caused by human activity” are not climate skeptics/deniers/delayers/contrarians. Quite the reverse, that is the consensus view.
There seem to be plenty (or at least a loud minority) of people who do not accept the consensus view despite the weight of evidence behind it or, as Naomi Oreske puts it the “multiple, independent lines of evidence converging on a single coherent account.” See: http://www.ametsoc.org/atmospolicy/Presentations/Oreskes%20Presentation%20for%20Web.pdf
7 December 2008 at 6:22 PM
#6 Joe Hunkins,
I do not quite follow you, if these critics ‘agree with the overwhelming data that supports global warming’, then they are part of the consensus, right? In that case Gavin’s article was not meant for them and there is no straw man. What Gavin had in mind is the group of loud and irresponsible scientists, journalists and bloggers that categorically reject any notion of human-caused climate change and get more attention than quality of their arguments warrants. (See ‘Why don’t op-eds get fact checked?’)
But you’ve made me curious, who are your responsible critics?
7 December 2008 at 8:01 PM
Joe #6 says
“This is of concern because we face many extraordinary challenges and wise allocation of resources suggests that massive CO2 reduction is massively expensive and will have minimal impact for decades and perhaps centuries.”
Your point being ?
Scientific American (October) presents evidence for an extinction event at 1000ppm (CO2). That’s beyond our lifetimes, what 100+ years, so lets ignore it …
7 December 2008 at 8:21 PM
Your article brings this analogy to mind: You are to skeptics of AGW as the Cathlolic Church was to Galileo. Luckily, the facts will eventually win over models.
[Response: More likely that you are as Harold Jeffery was to plate tectonics, or Fred Hoyle to the Big Bang. But as you imply, Nature is the only judge worth worrying about. - gavin]
7 December 2008 at 8:30 PM
Joseph Hunkins, The fact is that we cannot preclude catastrophic consequences if we allow business as usual to continue. Indeed, we can show that such consequences are quite plausible and that some are an inevitable consequence of warming. What is more, not all ghg reduction strategies are costly–many actually save money. Certainly, the cost of many measures pales in comparison to the trillions of dollars the American taxpayer is on the hook for wrt the Wall Street bailout, and the consequences of climate change could be more dire than a financial meltdown.
The fact of the matter is that we need to do what makes sense to mitigate risk, while at the same time improving the science to better estimate risk and developing strategies to ameliorate adverse consequences of a changing climate. I do risk reduction as part of my day job. It is simply irresponsible to ignore an unbounded risk.
7 December 2008 at 8:33 PM
The point is that without Lamarckianism, none of the striving and achievement of a parent impacts their progeny’s genetic material. That was a depressing thought for many people (what is the point of striving at all?), and hence there was a clear non-scientific yearning for Lamarckian inheritance to be correct.
This is absurd - obviously Darwinian evolution rewards success: if a parent is successful in raising their young, their young have a better chance of survival. The only difference is that Lamarkism allows the parent any ideological definition of “success”, where Darwinism restricts that to raising the child well - this is obviously offensive to the sensibilities of numerous old-school oligarchs, who simply believe having shite loads of money should make their children good people, while conveniently ignoring the need to nurture.
Which makes this a perfect analogy for climate science - the fundamental reason that climate science isn’t already widely accepted with large sections of the non-scientific public is that it conflicts with their world view. The economic fallacy of an infinitely expanding economy within a finite ecological system is being harshly tested, and it will take excessive amounts of evidence to overcome the world view that holds it.
7 December 2008 at 8:35 PM
As a geochemist with many \denialist\ colleagues, I find the topic of this post fascinating. At least in Kammerer’s case he did not have evidence such as DNA to blatantly ignore. But what I find strange in the current climate are academics/ scientists who want potificate on AGW from a point of ignorance. Just one example - why does a geologist such as Prof Ian Plimmer steadfastly refuse to understand that his model for CO2 from mid-oceanic ridges is just plain wrong when the carbon isotopic data is considered. Surely his geology department has an isotopic expert who could explain it all to him. Personally I just challenge my denialist colleagues to publish their ideas with the promise that if they can prove AGW is all wrong then great fame will follow. Do others have different approaches to this problems, noting that telling people that they are \off-the-planet\ does not help relationships.
7 December 2008 at 8:47 PM
Watson and Crick — I remember reading something about them in Newsweek a few years back, about how it was actually a woman scientist who made the discovery, and they stole the idea from her. The unrecognized lone woman science heroine
But I’m not sure if that’s the same theory you’re referring to here.
Anyway, when I was drawing water from a well in India some years back I made the comment it must have been a woman who invented the pulley, since women traditionally have drawn and carried the water. My sister-in-law said it was a man, So&So Pulley. To which I replied, Mrs. Pulley must have actually invented it, then her husband got the credit.
Captcha: Savannah honored
7 December 2008 at 8:49 PM
> Scenario B
Not just cherry _picking_, cherry _cloning_.
http://www.google.com/search?num=50&q=%22Scenario+B%22+projected+%22increase+of+0.85C%22&btnG=Search
7 December 2008 at 9:26 PM
“First, there were clear philosophical motives for supporting Lamarckism (as there are for denying human effects on climate change)”
That point can work on the other side also.
There are clear philosophical motives for supporting AGW as well. I think it’s clear the majority of contributors to this site have philosophical positions (before considering climate effects) objecting to modern high consumption lifestyles.
Is if fair to apply this argument to denialists and not to alarmists?
[Response: I don’t know who you talking about. I have never expressed any dislike of modern lifestyles, and my opinion of the radiative impact of increasing GHGs is (maybe surprisingly to you) not correlated with any supposed consequence. This is the difference between science and wishful thinking. If CO2 was not a greenhouse gas and did not make the oceans more acidic there would be no need to worry about it, or the energy that is derived from releasing it. - gavin]
7 December 2008 at 9:55 PM
RE #16 & “And ‘there are examples’ of climate alarmists who are lawyers, politicians and other professional spin doctors. It is not a coincidence. Thankfully, as for Darwinism vs Lamarckism, we are talking about a scientific issue. Given enough time, the sum of good objective data will convince (most) everyone” (emphasis mine).
The problem, it seems to me IS time, plus the false-positive avoiding, conservative nature of science.
Environmentalists, policy-makers, and persons concerned about life on planet earth would be more interested in avoiding a false negative (assuming AGW is not happening & doing nothing about it, when in fact it is happening).
Now, since the purported harms from AGW are enoromous (esp those from tipping into climate hysteresis), AND mitigating AGW is quite beneficial to one’s finances and the economy, without lowering living standards or productivity — at least down to a 3/4 reduction in GHGs for rich nations — then we don’t really need much scientific confidence that AGW is happening. Any decent person would have started mitigating at least by 1990, well before the first studies reached .05 alpha-level significance in 1995. We should have already reduced our GHG emissions here in the U.S. at least by 50% cost-effectively. We’ve had 20 yrs to do so.
I think contrarians are the alarmists — they’re alarming people that AGW mitigation will harm us economically and bring on totalitarian dictatorship. Where is their evidence for this at .05 significance? And their evidence that AGW is NOT happening (with the null hypothesis that it is happening)?
A person who informs people there is fire in a theater when there really is a fire, and does so in a calm manner that allows them to exit peacably is not an alarmist.
7 December 2008 at 9:58 PM
Straw man argument is a perfect description of this article. The genetic arguments of Darwinism vs Lamarckism which is now a hard science is as far as you can get from the ’soft science’ of global warming alarmists vs skeptics as you can get. It’s not like you could just stick to the data and make your arguments from there. Currently 2008 is turning out to be the coldest year since 2000, ok, normal variations in a trend if the trend was indeed upward, but then again ‘depends on whose data you believe’. Some say temps are up or stable or downward, and that is the problem with all these theories on it warming. There is definitely climate change, but climate change is the norm. What is the perfect temp? Who decides what the perfect temperature is? I personally like the 1400’s but my Inuit friends like the 1810’s.
7 December 2008 at 11:40 PM
# 27 Barbara McClintock.
8 December 2008 at 12:14 AM
Joseph Hunkins, we wish you were right.
8 December 2008 at 1:22 AM
Re:#31. Do you not understand what a trend is? Just more cherry-picking…
Cheers
8 December 2008 at 1:22 AM
RE #4 & “Science is the ultimate Protestant Reformation in which Religion is reformed out of existence.”
That’s assuming religion & science are (in our era) iso-mor-phic. They are not. In the ancient past “science,” religion, philosophy, ethics, history, art, and such were all rolled into one. I teach mythology and suggest the ancients in their myths used the best “science” (observations, theories) of their day. They could observe the sun rising in the east and heading westward. Their theory of the “elements” and nature was anthro-po-mor-phic (based on what they knew about themselves and human relationships — opposite today’s mechanistic view of the human body and society). Think of the in-cest-uous gods and goddess of ancient Egypt involved in human intrigues, who were the “elements” (the sun, earth, air, etc), as being sort of like their periodic table of the elements and “chemistry.”
But ancient religion is more than ancient “science,” it is also a guide to living one’s life and healing society, moral lessons; it’s art, poetry, drama, and ritual; it’s their entertainment center.
Today these are separated into different spheres. Science is a belief system that deals with the empirical material world & is quite powerful in its realm; religion is both a belief and value system that deals with the known & unknown/unknowable (by science).
Believing God is truth (among other things), I would say that religious persons of today who do not accept science (changeable tho it be) are committing sin. Those who hold to creationism or intelligent design, refusing to accept (non-Lamarckian) evolution, are perhaps committing sin — maybe a minor one like lying. Those who don’t accept what the climate scientists say about AGW & refuse to mitigate it perhaps committing a serious sin.
It’s really counterproductive to viciously attack religion and religious persons. We should instead all be working together, religious and atheist alike, in mitigating global warming.
8 December 2008 at 2:46 AM
Lynn, you have a very evolved point of view on religion and science. It was quite a pleasure to read your post. Pity that so many have to perpetuate the false dichotomy.
8 December 2008 at 6:15 AM
#26 naught101:
It is not absurd, it is correct. What is important are the words: “genetic material”. Good parents can make their offspring stronger, healthier, smarter, whatever, but it can not alter them genetically.
8 December 2008 at 6:52 AM
#32 Doc Sief:
I think you can not used the ‘hardness’ of a science as a criterium for it usefulness. The first problem is that there is no formal method to assess the ‘hardness’ of a science. I would argue that medical science is as soft as climate science, yet we all reap the benefits of it.
The issue about climate change is NOT to get some optimal temperature. Nobody ever said that. You are creating a straw man here.
The issue is preventing unforseen and nasty consequences that come from tinkering with something you don’t understand thoroughly. We are a bit like a 7-year old messing around with daddy’s car to make it go faster.
The message from the AGW camp is stopping the tinkering, not trying to get a desired result.
8 December 2008 at 8:03 AM
Edward Greisch, in his never-ending quest to make friends and influence people, writes:
Al the gospels were very likely written down before 70 AD, which would put them within 37 years or less of Jesus’s death, and Thiede and Ancona think they have a fragment of Matthew which they can date to 66 AD. And it wasn’t in a different language. Greek was the lingua franca, the trade language, of the whole Mediterranean basin area, and Jesus very likely spoke Greek in the street and Aramaic at home, the way a modern-day Moroccan might speak French in the street and Arabic at home.
The human evolutionary specialization is flexibility of behavior. The whole point of human beings are that we are programmable. Very little human behavior is hardwired. Blaming human social problems on our “animal instincts” is pseudoscience, not science.
8 December 2008 at 8:19 AM
My understanding (and clearly limited since I am not a biologist) of Lamarckism is that biological evolution is driven by inheritance of acquired characteristics (giraffe getting a longer and longer neck). So I guess I am confused about how that supports “intelligent design.” If a mother with a torn limb will have children with torn limbs, does this really create the “perfect species” as “intelligent design” intended?
Also, while Darwinism is the stronger basis for the theory of evolution, we now know that some acquired characterisitics can be passed onto offspring if the acquired changes affect the parent’s genetic material. So Lamarck’s idea wasn’t 100% wrong. He just didn’t have good data to back it up and it only explains some special cases, not the general mechanism of evolution.
8 December 2008 at 8:57 AM
#40 Barton Paul Levenson:
I know this is OT, but couldn’t resist to react.
You should study human behaviour in war. How quickly all civilization (programmable behaviour) is abandoned and humans revert to their hardwired behaviour. Take for instance Germany in the 2nd World War. This was a nation that produced people like Goethe, Bach, Nietzsche, Einstein and Schweitzer!
Much of our day-to-day behaviour may be programmed, but it is not more than skin deep.
8 December 2008 at 8:57 AM
Regarding Hansen’s Scenario A,B,C - one can do their own math with these two links from GISTemp
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/GTCh_Fig2.pdf
2008 ytd temps are here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.txt
8 December 2008 at 10:43 AM
I actually think the dinosaurs = bird controversy is a little more typical of the way scientific consensus develops and the way scientists treat their dissenters. For one thing it relies less on dramatic events like the exposure of scientific fraud. Also, Feduccia and his followers are still bonafide scientists with real accomplishments (like, perhaps, Lindzen). Their views on this particular issue, however, have become incresasingly marginalized.
http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com/search?q=feduccia
8 December 2008 at 10:57 AM
John Lang, you can’t do even your own math with a picture.
Did you make up numbers you thought fit the picture to get your result?
Share your numbers. Show your work.
8 December 2008 at 11:14 AM
In Response 22 Ann van der Bom asks of Joe Hunkins (response 6): “…who are your responsible critics?”
Joe doesn’t seem to have replied yet, but he may have been thinking of people such as meteorologist Roger Pielke Snr. and his colleagues at Univ of Colorado and elsewhere.
Pielke Snr’s view of the climate change consensus is summarised by the following extract from a 2008 article in Physics Today:
“The 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I presents a narrow view of the state of climate science. Attempts to significantly influence regional and local-scale climate based on controlling carbon dioxide emissions alone cannot succeed since humans are significantly altering the global climate in a variety of diverse ways beyond the radiative effect of CO2.”
That certainly reads to me like a criticism, although whether it counts as responsible or not is perhaps a subjective judgment.
For more from the Pielke Snr. stable see his blog at climatesci.org
8 December 2008 at 11:24 AM
And then along comes Joel (@24) to wrap himself in Galileo.
Priceless.
Captcha: Almighty dull
8 December 2008 at 11:25 AM
John Lang, Thanks for the weather report, but perhaps it escaped your attention that the name of this site is realCLIMATE.
8 December 2008 at 11:38 AM
Doc Sief asks @32 “What is the perfect temp?”
Ahh, a rhetorical question AGW deniers/obstructionists are currently so fond of asking.
Why, the temperature range to which your species and all of the species it depends on for survival are adapted to.
The temperature range that its technology and infrastructure are designed to withstand and function in.
The temperature range that human civilization developed to cope with.
Exceed that range at your species’ peril.
8 December 2008 at 1:36 PM
gavin wrote: “… once someone starts accepting one class of illogical arguments, that leads them to accept others that aren’t really connected, but share some of the same characteristics … Koestler himself became a big proponent of parapsychology.”
Parapsychology has nothing to do with “logic” and everything to do with empirical evidence.
In his very interesting essay, Gavin mentions non-scientific or “philosophical” tendencies to embrace or reject certain scientific notions.
I have noted in previous comments on this site what I see as a parallel between the pseudo-skeptical rejection of climate science and the equally pseudo-skeptical rejection of parapsychology.
In both cases, what is purported to be “skepticism” is actually dogmatic, obstinate denialism that is (1) driven by a priori, non-scientific beliefs that certain phenomena cannot possibly be real, hence no amount of evidence can ever be sufficient to establish their reality; and (2) more often than not comes from people who are unfamiliar with the science at issue.
How many people who reject parapsychology as “illogical” are familiar, in detail, with the parapsychological research documented by Dean Radin in his books The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds? How many of them reject parapsychology because they have studied this information in detail, understand it, and have specific and substantive objections to it?
How many of them reject parapsychology because they know hardly anything about it but already know that it is “illogical”, “superstition”, etc. and will therefore never, ever read any such book as Radin’s? How many of them believe that the only opinions about parapsychology that can be trusted and have validity are those of non-parapsychologists who know little about the details and substance of psi research?
8 December 2008 at 1:54 PM
re: 49. And the question should be “what are the disaster temperatures”. That’s what we want to miss out.
8 December 2008 at 1:58 PM
Anne, 42, that required reprogramming (much like all modern armies do): they must make “anyone else” “not human”.
Religion is really good at that. There are others, but that’s the corker.
Then you keep pounding “The Big Lie” that all their problems are the fault of “these others”. Then you use salami tactics.
Then when they get to war, they aren’t killing *humans*, they’re removing the trash that shouldn’t be there.
Moder armies do this too: it is VERY difficult to get people to really shoot at other people.
Gangs make “us and them” and make out they aren’t really human, they’re animals. Helps ensure the gang shoots first.
And the media do that too (often at the behest of the government). See, terrorism, paedophiles and mass murderers. Oh, and pirates.
8 December 2008 at 2:00 PM
Figen, 41. It doesn’t. But it DOES make for good copy for the more fundamentalist religious nut: we aren’t animals, we’re ***special***.
It also requires a huge amount of ignorance (deliberately) against anything that would shake that assumption.
Common with the IDers.
8 December 2008 at 2:00 PM
#49:
The temperature range human civilzation can cope with is very wide.
According to the IPCC, agriculture productivity is expected to increase with rising temperatures.
[Response:Not true. You should read the IPCC AR4 WGII report more closely In the tropics, there is a projected decline in cereal crop productivity for even very moderate warming. Only in the extratropics, does productivity of certain crops increase (due to longer growing seasons), and this is for only moderate warming, for higher-end warming scenarios, even here productivity decreases. And a caveat to all of the above it neglects potential decreases in water availability and soil moisture in many of these regions, i.e. even the above may be a best case scenario. -mike]
A good thing since CO2 levels are not just rising, but accelerating!
8 December 2008 at 2:03 PM
Hugh R., I think everyone here is aware of Rp Sr./Jr.. I am not sure that they are elements in the set that Gavin is targeting. They do accept that adding CO2 has to warm things. They just seem focused on casting doubt on how much. It would be one thing if they took a consistent position, but one month they’re tackling land use. The next, they’re trying to cast doubt on models (while not quite understanding them, it seems). I’ve never seen them address the physics and present an alternative explanation that sheds light on how climate works–paleoclimate, perturbations like volcanic eruptions, etc.–without significant CO2 forcing. I have to say, I don’t find his arguments particularly cogent or deep. It’s as if he’s saying: “Well, we probably shouldn’t treat this cancer, since you have a family history of heart disease that will probably kill you anyway.”
8 December 2008 at 3:19 PM
Andrew 53: However, the expanding desserts and the removal of much of the summer growing season from the Mid West breadbasket and the uncounted leagues of the Russian grasslands mean that although productivity has gone up, that won’t last long and will have less land to work with anyway.
8 December 2008 at 4:02 PM
“The temperature range human civilzation can cope with is very wide.”
We can’t possibly know that for sure. We like to be optimistic, sure, but I for one don’t think that food and water shortages (which ARE predicted by the IPCC reports) are going to be all that beneficial for civilized society.
And what exactly is “very wide”? Two degrees C? Four? Six? More?
What is “cope”? Flourishing, or status quo, or just having homo sapiens survive?
But perhaps I’m wrong, and a temperature rise that leads to great difficulties will bring out the best in humans, and we’ll be learn to be cooperative, generous, and think of long-term consequences of our actions. Given our history, however …. mmmm, probably not.
I’m reminded of one of my favorite sayings: In nature there are no rewards or punishments, only consequences.
8 December 2008 at 4:11 PM
The confidence level of the impact to tropical regions and for further warming is between medium to low.
So, while there may be a negative impact, we can also build good irrigation systems.
Besides that, the biggest threat to food supplies is not global warming.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-ts.pdf
Page 36:
In mid- to high-latitude regions, moderate warming benefits
cereal crop and pasture yields, but even slight warming
decreases yields in seasonally dry and tropical regions(medium confidence).
Modelling results for a range of sites find that, in temperate regions,
moderate to medium increases in local mean temperature (1 to
3°C), alongwith associated CO2 increase and rainfall changes, can
have small beneficial impacts on crop yields. At lower latitudes,
especially the seasonally dry tropics, even moderate temperature
increases (1 to 2°C) are likely to have negative yield impacts for
major cereals, which would increase the risk of hunger. Further
warming has increasingly negative impacts in all regions (medium
to low confidence)
8 December 2008 at 5:07 PM
Andrew: #57: Um. The medium confidence seems to apply both to the “even slight warming decreases yields in seasonally dry and tropical regions” and “In mid- to high-latitude regions, moderate warming benefits cereal crop and pasture yields”. You can’t selectively state “According to the IPCC, agriculture productivity is expected to increase with rising temperatures.” and then turn around and ignore statements with the same level of confidence that don’t agree with your hypothesis.
Also, irrigation depends on access to water. Water is already an issue in many places worldwide, and climate change will make water availability worse in many regions during key seasons. Increased use of dams may ameliorate the problem that snowmelt and mountain runoff keeps coming earlier, but those dams lead to increased evaporation and other environmental problems. Underground aquifers are being depleted unsustainably already, and use of desalinization is expensive and increases energy use dramatically which makes it even more likely that we will exceed “moderate” levels of warming.
Also, human civilization can survive a wide range of temperatures. However, all of our infrastructure is built with the current climate in mind, and significant changes to that climate will result in the need for expensive adaptation - and in many cases, that adaptation is likely to be reactive and not anticipatory (eg, we’ll see many heat wave deaths before more air conditioners are installed, or we’ll see intense storm and flood deaths before appropriate dikes are built or habitation moved away from flood zones, etc. etc.)
8 December 2008 at 5:23 PM
Also from page 36:
Semi-arid and arid areas are particularly exposed to the
impacts of climate change on freshwater (high confidence).
… and …
Climate change affects the function and operation of existing
water infrastructure as well as water management practices
(very high confidence).
… and on page 37 …
The negative impacts of climate change on freshwater
systems outweigh its benefits (high confidence).
I fail to see how the biggest threat to food supplies is not global warming. If it’s the rainfall pattern changes you’re talking about, those are directly attributable to climate change.
8 December 2008 at 5:35 PM
Andrew #57–
I wouldn’t place too much confidence in better irrigation systems. Part of the problem is evaporation loss– this is simply huge in California (if you fill a shallow basin with water and leave it in the sun you will see why). On top of that, there is demand. There is a reason that the LA river is now used for car-chase scenes — there is hardly any water in it anymore.
Transporting water, dealing with altered rainfall patterns — some of it may benefit some areas, but some may not. The best you can hope for is a wash, and that is not good enough for anything like sustainability.
If you want to see how a modern society can fall apart when there is any stress on the system, just look at the former USSR. In the center (Moscow and the old RSFSR) things sort of held together. In the wastern portions — the baltics, the old Warsaw Pact — most countries were connected to the infrastructure in neighboring countries. So people were able to go about their lives.
Go to Tajikstan and other parts of Central Asia and the situation was very different. THe infrastructure — regular shipments of goods and energy from the center — dried up. No money. No goods. Nothing anymore. All of those countries descended into civil unrest for years, and in the case of Tajikstan a brutal civil war.
Now, imagine the rain stops in Kansas. And in Nebraska. Imagine the farmers can’t grow anything but drought-resistant crops anymore — say, olives and dates. Fresno becomes a true desert. On top of that, the summer in the Dakotas — already pretty dry — gets even hotter.
Toss in a northward movement of rainfall patterns, just for fun. So you move all the productive land out of the midwest into Canada, and get a dust bowl again in Iowa and southern Illinois. How long you think we could keep much of the Midwest and Mountain West operating?
8 December 2008 at 6:02 PM
I have been having an email debate with a climate change skeptic, and he has offered to give me space in his newsletter to answer the following questions (see below). I am not a scientist, I work in environmental policy, and so I don’t have specific answers to these as I don’t directly use models in my work.
Can anyone help?
This is what he has written:
“From our research, we did not find a convincing case that the warming observed was due primarily to human activity, namely the burning of fossil fuels and other activities which contribute ‘excess’ carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. When we informed our readers of those results, we cautioned them that our findings should not be taken as conclusive. And, we urged them to conduct their own research. We invited them to share with us any of their findings which came to a different conclusion. And, we offered to publish their contrary findings so that our readers could see both sides of the question.
It’s that opportunity that I’m extending to you. I know our readers would be very interested to hear your case. If you would like to pursue this, please answer the following questions. For each answer, please provide the on-line source. If the source is a multi-page document, please provide the page reference so that our readers can easily look it up.
01. Which is your preferred data set for global mean temperature over time?
02. What are the 1st and last years in that data set?
03. What did that data set give as the global mean temperature for each of those 2 years?
04. What did that data set give as the global mean temperature for each of the last 10 years?
05. What is the formula used to calculate the global mean temperatures in that data set?
06. What is the confidence level for each of those calculations?
07. How are changes in the location of reporting stations handled in this data set?
08. How are changes in land use in the area of reporting stations handled in this data set?
09. Which is your preferred model for projecting global mean temperature in future years?
10. What are the 1st and last years in that model?
11. What did that model project as the global mean temperature for each of those 2 years?
12. What did that model project as the global mean temperature for each 5-year interval?
13. What is the formula used in that model to project the global mean temperatures?
14. What is the confidence level for each of those calculations?
15. How does that model account for changes in solar activity in projecting climate change?
16. How does that model account for changes in cloud cover in projecting climate change?
17. What percentage of greenhouse gases does that model assign to carbon dioxide?
18. What percentage of carbon dioxide does that model assign to human activity?
19. What is the confidence level for each of those calculations?
20. What is the mathematical relationship in that model between man-made carbon dioxide and temperature increase?”
8 December 2008 at 6:17 PM
re: #53
Anyone who wants to talk about CO2 fertilization’s great effects on widespread agriculture *really* needs to know Liebig’s Law of the Minimum. Farm kids learn this (if not the formal name) by the time they’re 10, at least, I did, so it’s hardly rocket science.
CO2 is quite useful in pressurized greenhouses adequately supplied with sunlight, water, nutrients, but that doesn’t much resemble most food production.
8 December 2008 at 6:35 PM
Actually humans are very adaptable, but the rise in global tempertaures will pose major problems.
8 December 2008 at 7:28 PM
Can we name names?
There are four categories of analogies mentioned:
1- Philosophical motives for denying human effects on climate change
A single reference to a journalist.
2- Idealization of the romantic notion of the scientist-as-hero
Link to Svensmark book review by Gavin.
3- Outrage at the apparent dirty tricks, rumours and persecution.
No names. No links. No quotes.
4- Longing for a redemption - a time when the paradigm shift will occur and the hero will be proven right.
No names. No links. No quotes.
This looks to be nothing more than an attack against Svensmark trying to cast him as a modern day Kammerer.
So why don’t we just label it as such and be done with it?
On another note, apparently Lamarckism is making something of a minor comeback. This article on Edward Steele mentions two recent papers on reverse transcription passing on to progeny.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_J._Steele
8 December 2008 at 8:32 PM
Paul: Your skeptic friend can’t spend a day to find these answers for himself?
One word: Lazy.
8 December 2008 at 8:44 PM
Two other interesting topics could be relevant to this thread: Velikovsky and Lysenko.
8 December 2008 at 8:59 PM
Paul (62) — I find HadCRUTv3, available via the Handley Centre link quite useful in that it begins in 1850 CE with CO2 at 288 ppm. The usual formula for CO2 forcing is found in
http://forecast.uchicago.edu/samples.html
wherein I use a climate sensitivity of 3 K. Several pages of IPCC AR4 WG1 are devoted to matters of various forcdings and some further information can be gleaned from
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11175&page=1
8 December 2008 at 9:22 PM
Paul, he’s scamming you.
> a convincing case that the warming observed was
> due primarily to human activity
They can throw out anything you suggest with “convincing … observed … primarily” as their criteria, because warming to date is a small signal emerging from natural variation; most of the warming predicted is in the future. As to specifics they can look them up as easily as you can, but don’t let them claim no single model has all the answers so none of them can help figure out the answer.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007JD009152.shtml
8 December 2008 at 9:36 PM
One more for Paul, and this makes the point about the signal only beginning to emerge:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n11/abs/ngeo346.html
Chris Colose does a good job on this, see his blog for the story behind this illustration:
http://chriscolose.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/meehl-attribution.gif
8 December 2008 at 9:47 PM
Paul (#62): For questions 9 to 14 I’d recommend going to Webster (2003) “Uncertainty Analysis of Climate Change and Policy Response” in Climatic Change (Google Scholar will find it for you, though it is becoming outdated, unfortunately). I recommend this over the other models because it treats economic and physical uncertainty in a single consistent fashion. Because it is an uncertainty analysis, it gives a nice answer to #14. Unfortunately, your skeptic friend leaves some important factors unspecified in his questions: eg, if you are trying to predict global temperature, you need to know something about the future scenario: do we assume that humans ignore climate change and just let the earth get warmer?
Question 15: To the best of my knowledge, no climate model tries to predict solar fluctuations (aside from perhaps a standard sunspot cycle). However, the magnitude of the human forcing increase in the BAU case in the next 100 years is probably at least an order of magnitude larger than any reliable estimates of solar fluctuation in the past 1000 years that we have estimates, so assuming that the sun is close to constant is not a bad assumption. You can probably point to the Lean solar reconstruction for this.
Question 16: Most models have parameterizations for clouds (the resolution to resolve them would lead to climate runs that would take years to solve). Webster (2003) actually uses this parameterization to handle the climate sensitivity uncertainty.
Question 17: Again, ill-posed. The percentage of current forcing attributed to CO2? The percentage of forcing change since preindustrial? The percentage of forcing change between present and the end of the future model run? If the question is percentage of current forcing, there isn’t even a single # answer to that: I’d point him at the “Water Vapour: feedback or forcing?” link under Highlights. If it is the 2nd question, then I’d point him at IPCC AR4 WGI Ch. 2. That has percentages for all the greenhouse gases (of course, given that there are negative forcings in there, the percentage might be “more than 1″). If it is the 3rd question, go look at Webster (2003).
Question 18: Um. Ill-posed. The percentage of CO2 emissions? Small. The percentage of CO2 increase attributable to human activity? 100%. Skeptics never seem to understand this, and keep recycling this “5 year lifetime” argument.
And finally, question 20: There’s the standard forcing approximation 5.3 ln (C/C0), though many models have more complex radiative forcing codes. Note that this is an _approximation_ that only holds around current concentrations: skeptics often try to do calculations assuming that C0 can be “1″ or something else. There is no direct CO2 to temperature equation - that’s the whole point of having a complex climate model. But, assuming that there are no exogenous forcings except for CO2 (eg, all other gases except water vapor held constant, and greenland and antarctica fixed) then the temperature change arising from a doubling of CO2 is equal to the climate sensitivity of the model, which usually ranges from 2 to 4.5 degrees (IPCC AR4 WGI).
Of course, the entire set-up of the questions is designed to be misleading, but hopefully at least you can set straight a few common misconceptions.
ReCaptcha: Pay Nature. *Yeah, I’m worried that our bill with Nature will come due one day…*
8 December 2008 at 11:45 PM
#36 Lynne Vincent Nathan: thank you for defending the true role of emotion and religion in the human species. While scientific method is a great tool, and the most humbling of truth-tests, its amoral application got us to where we are today (in part). Which is to say, application without regard to consequences creates monumental disaster. No matter what, we are stuck with our evolutionarily-logical human structure, and pure logic won’t save us from ourselves. Attacking religion and emotion is a bogus solution to the conundrum of human existence. mritz@acd.net
9 December 2008 at 1:00 AM
#41 misinterpretation on your part, epigenetic changes were already mentioned by Gavin. That is not the same thing as acquired characteristics.
9 December 2008 at 5:25 AM
“He states that since “contemporary genetics has no answers to offer to the problem of the genesis of behaviour”, the replication [?] the key experiments (which he clearly expected to vindicate Kammerer), would very likely make biologists ’sit up’ and have a long-lasting impact on the field.”
Is this a typo?
“And today there are examples of climate contrarians who are creationists or anti-vaccine campaigners. Though possibly this is just coincidence (or is it….?).”
Well creationists also believe in the second coming, when God will sort out all the problems on the earth. The belief among such Christians seems to be that the earth was given by God to be exploited until such time. I think it’s unlikely that people who expect their children to be meeting Jesus in 2050 will be worried too much about a bit of global warming.
9 December 2008 at 7:49 AM
Lyn Vincentnathan:
You say that mitigation is ‘beneficial to one’s finances’, but I’d like to know how it can be, as Obama said that electricity prices would have to rise enormously with the phasing out of coal-fired power.
How could it be that products and services would not also become enormously more expensive, since everything has electricity costs as an input—leading to higher inflation, higher interest rates, loss of jobs etc?
Which renewables would you expect to provide base load power before the phase-out time for coal-fired power, and how could they possibly be cheaper for domestic users anyway—-especially in countries where neither sun nor wind are reliable?
We’ve already had the debacle of world-wide food shortages due to one of the mitigation measures—the ill-thought-out biofuel option—the damage done by that continues, and is irreversible in some areas , but little is heard from AGW proponents on that—even though some of the world’s most efficient carbon sinks are disappearing at an alarming rate. Don’t they care about that?
Even worse could ensue, if a great many countries take the nuclear option.
How can we be sure proliferation of nuclear power facilities around the world in seismically and politically unstable countries, won’t produce infinitely worse consequences than fossil fuel?
I’m not religious at all, and accept the theory of evolution, but I think you’re absolutely over the top in your claim that people who believe in creationism and intelligent design are committing a sin—and that people who don’t buy the AGW ‘consensus’ , or who question it, or refuse to mitigate, are committing a serious sin.[ Our family has been mitigating for years, by the way, so I’m all for sensible , but not panicked mitigation.]
I’m really surprised that you are allowed to say that, yet I’m canned for just asking a few questions that AGW proponents should be willing to answer, if they’re at all serious about doing what’s right for the future.
You attacked religious and other people who don’t toe your line, and then in the next sentence say they shouldn’t be viciously attacked—there’s something wrong there.
9 December 2008 at 7:49 AM
Lest anyone has the slightest doubt that Lamarkian inheritance is no more than non-scientific fancy, consider the hundreds of generations of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim boys and men who have been separated from their foreskins.
If Lamarkian inheritance had even the slightest influence on the phenotype of the decendants of a ‘modified’ organism, foreskins for one would not be so persistently stubborn in their appearance on every baby boy…
9 December 2008 at 10:46 AM
The ironically named “truth” asks how we won’t break the bank if energy costs increase. Well, don’t know about you, but I like to look at analogous historical events. In the 1970s, the price of petroleum and other fossil fuels increased dramatically. After the initial shock to the economy, what happened? Prices of goods and services did not increase commensurately because people found ways of manufacturing them in a more energy efficient manner. This increased efficiency was one of the reasons we didn’t see dramatic inflation during the latest energy price spike. In any case, you are missing the point: energy prices are going to rise significantly in any case due to the advent of peak oil. Now perhaps if we exploit coal, we can limit the shock somewhat, only to be confronted with the same problem–and no good options–100 years later. Or we can solve the problem once and for all now and develop a sustainable economy based on renewables. And in the bargain, we also confront the threat due to climate change–now which of these sounds responsible to you?
ReCAPTCHA goes all full-metal jacket on me: enjoyment war
9 December 2008 at 10:48 AM
#75 & “You say that mitigation is ‘beneficial to one’s finances’, but I’d like to know how it can be, as Obama said that electricity prices would have to rise enormously with the phasing out of coal-fired power.”
REDUCE, REUSE — that will get us down 1/3 to 1/2 our CO2 emissions without doing anything with our energy source. My husband & I did it, before going on to Green Mountain 100% wind (& we could have done much more to reduce — there are a myriad of ways).
Since the 70s oil crunch & my awareness of entropy, I’ve been making sure we live within a mile or so of work…so I’m not even counting that in my GHG reductions. But that would be a good move for others that on their next move find a home (acc to their specs) as close as possible to work/schools/shops.
STEP 2 - take away the massive subsidies & tax breaks from oil & coal, and put them into wind, solar, geothermal, & other alt energy. Let people then decide whether or not to stick with expensive, polluting energy or cheap, clean energy. And hopefully electric and plug-in hybrids will be available on mass scale within a few years, so I can plug into the wind (which is cheaper now than polluting electricity).
It’s really a no-brainer.
RE sticking to creationism, I’m only saying that may be a sin, akin to lying. I’m no theologian. And, of course, it would not be a sin for my grandmother (1887-1973) or earlier peoples, or others who never got the chance to learn about evolution.
It may also be an insult to God, conceiving of God on our own terms/images as some David Cooperfield magician. What evolutionary thinking has done for me since 1950s, when I was a child, is greatly increase my awe of God, and my appreciation that God is truly beyond our finite knowing & imagery. Many saints would agree with this latter idea. Also there are beautiful parallels re God coming to us as a tiny, seemingly insignificant being (think big bang, evolutionary slime soup to…us, baby Jesus in a stable, the Eucharist).
RE AGW as a sin - as long as killing people & harming their subsistence remain sins in the good books, AGW would be a sin. That’s a no-brainer.
9 December 2008 at 11:22 AM
OK; I surrender.
Suppose global warming has already reduced agricultural output, despite the IPCC’s confusing statements. Does anybody really think farmers will enhance output without increasing carbon emission? Farm equipment and irrigation systems run most economically on carbon based fuels. Same for transportation, and don’t forget about slash and burn agriculture. That’s very popular in the tropics where agriculture is most at risk.
Face it; the opposition to Global Warming is not based in science. Rather it’s an economic problem and I don’t believe a lot of people realize this. The best science can do it to properly characterize the problem. Solutions need to factor in economics and human behaviors. The economics of carbon are so compelling and vital, that seriously limiting CO2 emissions is not a practical solution.
Humans can exist self sufficiently in every climate on earth if they burn carbon. Restrict carbon emissions and viable areas are greatly reduced. A self sufficient community could even exist on an ice cap if there was oil underneath.
If there is going to be a global catastrophe, then it will be when carbon based fuels run out because then the cost of energy is going to rise dramatically. That is economics. We can push for improved efficiency when using carbon based fuels, but if people can afford to, then will even circumvent that.
9 December 2008 at 11:22 AM
“We’ve already had the debacle of world-wide food shortages due to one of the mitigation measures—the ill-thought-out biofuel option—the damage done by that continues …” - truth
Droughts? Floods? Insects? Overpopulation? Suburban growth? Highest demand for petroleum in the age of oil?
9 December 2008 at 11:33 AM
truth (75)
In most cases on the internet, AGW “skepticism” and “asking questions” actually means creating lots of noise and posting clearly erroneous or misleading claims (of course, under the disguise of an objective quest for the truth). To my knowledge, no one who asks serious questions is attacked at RC or other serious academic venues.
Creationism and ID is not the same thing as “religion” or “the existence of God(s)”, etc. I hardly think any religion’s deity would condone using similar tactics of quote-mining and misrepresenting scientific evidence to get a certain viewpoint out the public. Really, the goal of leading creationist establishments is to undermine the mainstream scientific community and create their own science (such as saying how radiometric dating is invalid, the ice ages were caused by big floods, etc). I have yet to see an example of someone who got up to undermine AGW for solely scientific reasons.
9 December 2008 at 11:41 AM
Paul, many of these questions are loaded and will be set up (and there answers set up) to do something shady. For instance, the groups who put out temperature products report temperature anomalies, not the global mean temperature at a particular instance. Anomalies tend to be well-correlated over large areas(and the final product involves averaging and spatially weighting) and the techniques to account for urban heat islands, etc are described in various publications in GISS, Hadley, etc…the Realclimate post “Man is not an urban heat island” I believe gave some links which you may find useful. I am not sure what value the “first and last year” in a data set or a model is supposed to have…you’re evaluating a climate trend/change, not particular information of a handful of data points.
9 December 2008 at 12:00 PM
Re so-called “truth” @75: “We’ve already had the debacle of world-wide food shortages due to one of the mitigation measures—the ill-thought-out biofuel option….but little is heard from AGW proponents on that…Don’t they care about that?”
More stock and trade AGW denialist bull plop talking points.
The chorus of AGW realists who warned that corn to ethanol and canola or palm oil to biodiesel schemes would be worse than a financial boondoggle with serious and potentially devastating impacts on food prices and supply, and land and forest degradation was legion. Yet AGW denialists continue to push this dishonest meme, hoping no one who was actually paying attention will call them on it.
“Truth” pedals anything but.
9 December 2008 at 12:40 PM
Re Andrew @79: “If there is going to be a global catastrophe, then it will be when carbon based fuels run out because then the cost of energy is going to rise dramatically.”
No, that would be a catastrophe for the human species only. So, given the magnitude of your pessimism, we humans might as well all lie down and die now?
Or, we can 1) work to dramatically reduce the amount of energy that we use, 2) strive to increase the efficiency with which we use energy, 3) rapidly develop renewable non-carbon sources of energy, energy storage and transmission.
As has been pointed out here before, since it currently requires fossil fuel energy to manufacture its replacement, it makes no sense what so ever to wait until we run out of fossil fuels to manufacture its replacement. That would indeed lead to the catastrophe that you fear.
9 December 2008 at 1:09 PM
Paul, wow, you could write an entire BOOK trying to answer and explain those questions. As others here pointed out, they’re ill-posed; I would says simplistic. Each question gives rise to multiple others.
Good luck! You’re fighting the good fight!
9 December 2008 at 1:21 PM
“Does anybody really think farmers will enhance output without increasing carbon emission?”
I think it’s possible, actually. If and how that will be done remains to be seen.
Here’s a really good place to start. It’s a little long, but a fascinating and (I thought) well-thought-out treatise. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?hp=&pagewanted=all
9 December 2008 at 1:43 PM
Andrew, you hit the nail on the head when you said: “Face it; the opposition to Global Warming is not based in science. Rather it’s an economic problem and I don’t believe a lot of people realize this.”
EXCEPT that the scientists all realize that the opposition is economically/politically/philosophically motivated. The problem: they keep attacking the science–and they do so in lay venues where people will not see through the lies. If people would merely let the science play out, the scientists would be more than happy to simply tell the decision makers, “Hey, you might want to look at doing something about this,” and get back to the business of science and actually quantifying the risks we face. Meanwhile the debate of what to do about climate change–the only place where legitimate debate remains–could get started. Instead, we have people utterly ignorant of the most basic science charging in with Congressional subpoenas for climate scientists, cancelling satellites that would answer our questions about climate change definitively and “auditing” the science. And best of all, when you diagnose their ignorance–an invitation to avail themselves of the resources presented by this website–they accuse you of ad hominem attack, genocide and kicking dogs. While they teach us nothing about climate, they do give us a refresher course on abnormal psychology.
9 December 2008 at 1:50 PM
“Does anybody really think farmers will enhance output without increasing carbon emission?”
Farmers are already enhancing output, not only without increasing carbon emissions, but sequestering atmospheric carbon into soils — using organic agricultural techniques.
9 December 2008 at 1:58 PM
> enhance output without increasing carbon emission
I’ve known this guy a long time; he’s been doing it for a long time: http://winwinecology.com/Badgersett.html
9 December 2008 at 2:58 PM
I find the discussion on this entire string diametrically opposed to the stated description of this blog site. How about skeptics and proponents discuss some relevant topics like, recent water vapor studies, lack of sunspot activity, shrinking sea levels, La Nina and Enso events, how to improve temperature records and how to pursue alternative energy sources? Please find the stated blog purpose below:
“RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream commentary. The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science.”
[Response: I write about things that interest me, and this did. You are under no obligation to read it. Nor do I have an obligation to address every random thought that the blogosphere gets excited about. Sorry. - gavin]
9 December 2008 at 3:23 PM
#89–Great link, Hank. Thank you.
9 December 2008 at 4:21 PM
Ray #87 Remember the encounter between Churchill and Bohr? Let’s hope you can benefit constructively from your “refresher course on abnormal psychology”.
9 December 2008 at 4:30 PM
Ray, I fear that if the engineers and political process do not catch up in practical applications with the science we will be in trouble over the next two decades. (even with being more conservative than Hansen)
Also, the green movements are even more dangerous than the denialists at times. Do you, Ray think we have some practical means of both cutting through red tape and reducing GHG’s? As always I look forward and respect your replies.
9 December 2008 at 4:31 PM
Ray,
if people would merely let the science play out, the scientists would be more than happy to simply tell the decision makers, “Hey, you might want to look at doing something about this,” and get back to the business of science and actually quantifying the risks we face
That comment makes no sense in view of the prognostications of Hansen over the last few years.
9 December 2008 at 4:36 PM
Gavin,
I found this article similar to but less convincing than an article that Michael Crichton wrote a few years ago. In that article, Crichton compared the modern AGW movement to the Eugenics movement among scientists and other intelligentsia during the early to mid part of the 20th century. The list of names of those who subscribed is astounding.
I also think that you did not quite succeed in your attempt to paint all AGW skeptics with the Lamarckian brush. I think that is because the skeptics are not monolithic, they are many and varied. Further, no one set out to disbelieve that human behavior affects climate, I think that most would agree that human behavior does have some effect on climate, but skeptics find that the AGW hypothesis has failed to pass several objective tests. Insofar as I am aware, none thinks that they have found an alternative model that fully describes the physics of the climate warming that occurred during the past century. Personally, I think that the search for alternative hypotheses has received short shrift.
Svensmark may believe that he has all of the answers, or he may not. His work has attracted attention but I have seen no bandwagon full of skeptics beating the drum. It is merely another possibility, perhaps a good one. The possibility surely deserves investigation. We know that a couple of Israeli scientists (I forget their names, but am sure that you are familiar with the papers) tracked the onset of Ice Ages with cosmic ray flux as modified by the position of the galaxy relative to the universe of supernovae. So, the idea of CRF effects on climate is not new with Svensmark.
I also would like to point out (as did Crichton) that there seems to be a need among many humans to blame humanity for anything that goes wrong in the world. The attractiveness of this belief (hubris?) seems as strong as the need to feel that it is possible to pass better behavior along to future generations. I recognize that the term “better behavior” is emotional and that its definition is cultural.
[Response: You are misreading the piece. I don’t think all sceptics are Lamarckian’s (though Crichton’s equating of the mainstream climate science with Eugenics was much more direct). I read the book and I saw many similarities with how climate science deals with its contrarians, that’s all. I recommend reading the New York Times coverage of Kammerer’s work to find plenty of examples of how not to report science. - gavin]
9 December 2008 at 5:04 PM
to “truth” and some others:
People forget that much of our carbon infrastructure is heavily subsidized, usually indirectly. In addition, traditional economics takes infinite resources/energy as a given, on the premise that technology will allow for more efficient use.
But the more efficient use doesn’t always increase asymptotically, nor does it do so without incentives. One reason SUVs exist(ed) at all as a viable sale was that gas is actually cheaper than it was in 1980, inflation - adjusted. Oil would have to hit $100 per barrel and stay there to reach the 1980s peak.
Why did it get cheaper? Some of it was reduced demand from the huge recessions that hit the US in 1981-82 or so and the rest of the world a decade or so later. Some of it was opening up the Russian market. And some was the downward price pressure from rich countries essentially outsourcing all the labor-intensive stuff to poor ones.
But whateve rthe price fluctuations in energy prices, the amount of oil in the world is finite. No matter how efficiently you use it, the amount left goes to zero eventually. This is true of every resource. The question then, is how we use the non-renewable ones as little as possible (recycling when we can) and the renewable ones as efficiently as possible. It’s not all that complicated.
There isn’t any need for people to live in McMansions. There is no conceivable need for most people to drive SUVs. Just as we got along without slaves (though they were a great labor-saver for the owners), we can learn to live without SUVs. We aren’t going to get all the goodies we want. Tough. We can’t own people anymore either.
Now, is it possible that all the people talking about AGW are wrong? I suppose it is. But it’s also possible that all the people who said smoking causes cancer were wrong, and have been all this time. It’s possible that DDT really doesn’t have any effect at all. It’s just possible that lead paint isn’t a problem either. After all, you can’t prove any of it the way you can a mathematical theorem.
Anything is possible, but I don’t see anyone recommending smoking on that basis.
9 December 2008 at 5:45 PM
snorbert zangox wrote: “… there seems to be a need among many humans to blame humanity for anything that goes wrong in the world.”
Perhaps there is such a need. That’s an appropriate and interesting question for social psychology or anthropology or some such discipline to address.
However, it has absolutely nothing to do with the empirically observed facts:
(1) that human activities, principally the burning of fossil fuels, but also agriculture, forestry and other practices, have for over a century been releasing increasingly large amounts of previously sequestered carbon into the atmosphere in the form of CO2;
(2) that the resulting rapid and extreme anthropogenic increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 and other so-called “greenhouse gases” is causing the Earth system to retain more of the Sun’s energy; and
(3) that the resulting rapid and extreme anthropogenic “warming” of the Earth system is already having rapid and extreme effects on the Earth’s climate, hydrosphere and biosphere.
Taken together these effects constitute a grave threat to the well-being, and even the survival, not only of the human species but of the rich, diverse Holocene biosphere in which the human species and human civilization have evolved and upon which we are utterly dependent.
Of all the varieties of pseudo-skeptics who obstinately deny the reality of anthropogenic global warming and consequent climate change, those like Crichton who claim that acceptance of that reality is an irrational belief driven by some conjectured psychological “need”, or that it is a “hoax” driven by some malicious desire to “destroy capitalism” or a hatred of technological modernity, are probably the least credible.
9 December 2008 at 5:51 PM
I still do not get the basic analogy. Paul Kammerer did an experiment where he “proved” adaptation, either he cheated or he was “helped” by associates. Yes, he clearly was a speculative scientist who had temporary views, but he did an experiment which unfortunately did not falsify his theory. We do not know if he was duped or not, but the analogy with crackpot deniers puzzles me.
Gavin, you quote Martin Gardner:
“Just as Lamarckianism combines easily with an idealism in which the entire creation is fulfilling God’s vast plan by constant upward striving, so also does it combine easily with political doctrines that emphasize the building of a better world.”
My take is that the doctrine of homo politicus is an emphasis on building a better (CO2 free) world.( a nit but Gardner’s book was issued in 1952 as In The Name Of Science, the revised and expanded 1957 edition had the better prefix Fads And Fallacies.)
I am glad you write about things that interest you, but Edward surely has a point about the blog policy.
[Response: But no-one would care about CO2 if it wasn’t a greenhouse gas or didn’t make the oceans more acidic - what possible motive is there for reducing CO2 emissions otherwise? There is no constituency for ‘a CO2 free’ world (even if you just mean the anthropogenic component). And as for Kammerer, you are missing the point as well. The issue is how people see science and how that colours their interpretation of what happened. Koestler’s views on the process are very similar to Crichton’s in some respects in that they miss the context in which ‘contrary’ ideas are placed and this leads them to focus on issues that are not germane (a single talk in Cambridge, or suspicions of establishment malfeasance). The point is not to say that Kammerer was a crackpot nor a fraud. But to see how how contrarians fare battling a consensus in another context. - gavin]
9 December 2008 at 5:55 PM
Snorbert says “I also would like to point out (as did Crichton) that there seems to be a need among many humans to blame humanity for anything that goes wrong in the world.”
Um, who else is to blame for: overfishing, arable land degradation, habitat destruction, deforestation, ocean eutrophication, persistent organic pollutants, freshwater depletion, ozone destruction, acid rain…?
God? Satan? Elves? Aliens?
9 December 2008 at 6:13 PM
Simon Abingdon, I’m afraid I don’t understand your point about Bohr and Churchill. Yes, Bohr was probably naive, but so was Churchill. For that matter, so was everyone at the beginning of the nuclear age. It was a new world. What is more, Bohr’s approach would have led at worst to failure followed by reassessment, while Churchill’s would have led to war, and probably nuclear war.
9 December 2008 at 6:19 PM
Snorbert, Now I understand. The fact that you place any credibility in that second-rate, science-phobic, hack (God rest his soul) speaks volumes. There was not a single book he didn’t get the science seriously wrong.
9 December 2008 at 6:19 PM
Jim Galasyn wrote: “Um, who else is to blame … God? Satan? Elves? Aliens?”
I’ll go with aliens. They are exploiting our own technology to transform the Earth into a planet more suitable for them to inhabit, and to kill off much of the indigenous life (particularly humans), before they launch the large scale invasion.
This explanation is actually less ridiculous than the ones offered by some so-called “skeptics”.
9 December 2008 at 6:21 PM
RE #98 Jim
You are to blame for all of the evils you site. Everytime you go home to your coal fired electrically supplied home and turn on your big screen and log onto your laptop or turn on your natural gas furnace or stove or drive to work or live at a per capita level that exceeds that of a subsistance farmer in China you are causing all of the ill effects you site. The problem is that over a billion Chinese are striving to get what you have and they are going to emit a lot of CO2 getting there.
There has been a lot of discussion on this string but other than going on a crash program of building Nuclear Power plants I don’t see any solutions in the 10-20 year time frame. Anyone have some realistic solutions?
9 December 2008 at 6:56 PM
Paul. I would join with others and say dont go there with those questions. Its a loaded questionnaire focusing on the person perceives as the weaknesses in AGW. A better response might be:
All data sets are relevant. A model should account for the data available within the prediction limits of the model and the errors associated with each data set. Every data set has strengths/weaknesses and issues associated with methodology. They all point one way though at a climate level. The critical issue for CLIMATE models is that they must be long enough to make an estimate of trends. Ie around 30 year. Asking for model predictions in 2 year and 5 year intervals is asking about weather not climate.
Asking for formula used to project global mean temps, and the relationship between CO2 and temperature, indicates a profound misunderstanding of how models work. These plus the question about confidence limits seems to imply that they think GCM are statistical forecast models not physical models. Those formula dont exist and the CO2/temperature relationship is an output not an input.
I am similarly suspicious of 17. The models create prediction for different greenhouse projections. They are tools for answering questions like “if we dont reduce CO2, then what will we get” or “if everyone meets Kyoto targets, then what will we get”. For modelling the past, the percentages are exactly what was present.
The question about CO2% relevant to human activity is suspiciously like an attempt to ignore feedback - and I hope the questioner really mean CO2eq.
9 December 2008 at 7:32 PM
William observes: “You are to blame for all of the evils you site.”
Your point is well taken, but I do at least try to mitigate my impact on the cited evils, by: buying green electricity exclusively; buying locally grown, organic food; busing to work; avoiding pesticides and herbicides in my yard; and avoiding ocean-caught fish.
My carbon footprint is approximately one ton per year — I pay $12 for my offsets from NativeEnergy.
You?
9 December 2008 at 7:34 PM
Jim Eager:
I don’t know why you’re so quick to imply I’m lying.
Maybe you could explain where exactly.
Maybe some AGW proponents did warn about the problem with biodiesel, but they must have been very timid and muted.
It’s they who have been given all the credibility around the world on the CO2 issue, and it’s they , not the sceptics, who have the ear of governments , the IPCC and vocal environmental groups—it’s their certainty that moves governments and business to adopt such measures—-and it’s they who are promoted and deferred to by the media, which demonises and shuts out , almost completely, the sceptics.
It’s the AGW scientists and proponents who could have stopped it.
It’s the AGW proponents who had all the influence at the Bali Conference, number crunching re ratification of Kyoto targets etc, while the burning, felling of rainforests and destruction of peat lands continued just down the road in other parts of Indonesia, [ as well as the destruction of rain forests in the Amazon].
It’s AGW proponents, not sceptics who promote the ‘food miles’ issue, which could ruin budding food exporters in Africa, who have borrowed, worked and sacrificed their all, to grow crops for export to Europe, only to have their livelihoods threatened by European environmentalists and AGW adherents.
What would the ‘food miles’ issue do to world trade?
I’m sure most countries think they should continue to trade with countries distant from their own.
Our conservative former Prime Minister in Australia, put forward, and funded, a Global Forest Initiative, aimed at ending the deforestation and promoting reforestation, and helping developing nations to do both, but was either ignored or sneered at , by environmentalists and the AGW crowd.
You can ‘call me on’ anything you like, and cast any aspersions you like on my truthfulness—- but possible consequences, intended and otherwise, of the total uncritical adherence to AGW, and total silence on any doubts or questioning, that AGW adherents require of us all, are important matters for discussion.
Some of the ‘mitigation’ measures may be disastrous and irreversible.
This is why alternative scientific input on the science of AGW should be aired without vilification and retribution.
9 December 2008 at 7:47 PM
Secular: Hollywood occasionally does the “alien un-terraforming” story, e.g., The Arrival and They Live.
It explains so much.
Then there’s the “aliens are going to fix it, whether we like it or not” story, e.g., Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still
If only.
9 December 2008 at 8:11 PM
“Truth”, maybe you got here late, so let me explain. It’s called science, and it’s about evidence. We have lots and lots of evidence, including things called the laws of physics that suggest very, very strongly that human beings are warming the planet. That is what the evidence says. So that is what the scientists tell governments and whoever else will listen, because, oh, I don’t know, we thought maybe they’d want to know that the climate on which all human civilization depends is about to change drastically, and with it our ability to feed the 9 billion mouths we’ll have on Earth by 2050. So that’s science. Wanna play? Great. Go get some EVIDENCE!
9 December 2008 at 8:57 PM
Truth (in response to post 106),
I’m guessing that those in the vanguard of promoting an appropriate response to global warming would be surprised at your assessment of their influence (though maybe being in the US, the epicenter for climate denial, I underestimate this).
I’d say that economic interests still trump environmental in most jurisdictions. That’s certainly the case here in the US where the many critics of corn-based ethanol were swamped by the economic interests (that have been pushing ethanol for far longer than concerns about global warming were prominent). Sure, those economic interests adopted the language of climate change, but make no mistake that it was economic interests responsible for the surge in ethanol and profligate biofuel development. It appears to be the case in more climate-conscious Europe were industries have managed to reduce the strength of carbon-reducing regulations. I’d wager that most of the world works in much the same way.
Is limiting greenhouse gas emissions going to adversely impact some people more than others? Undoubtedly. Should we make every effort to mitigate the impact on the most vulnerable? Absolutely. Should we delay doing something to satisfy the remaining few who are grasping at tenuous threads of doubt? I think not. The impacts of global warming are likely to be FAR worse than the economic impacts of combating it, especially for the most economically vulnerable amongst us.
Cheers!
–Martin
9 December 2008 at 9:09 PM
‘truth’ there are wackos on all sides of any issue and they get nailed.
Just one example:
http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/301-350/00339_green_power_nitwits.html
9 December 2008 at 9:18 PM
truth (106) — The tropical rainforest in the Amazon basin is primarily at hazard due to logging, both legal and illegal. Secondarily it is at hazard from ranchers raising beef cattle on the newly cleared land.
Neither has much to do, directly, with the fact of AGW; for the former, avoid prodcuts made with topical hardwoods; for the latter don’t eat (very much) beef.
9 December 2008 at 10:01 PM
truth, you are being naive. Biofuel is politically and economically driven in USA (seen the posters? “Who you prefer to buy fuel from?” picture of Saudi man and picture of US farmer). AGW was simply an excuse. Ditto to “food miles”. There is some validity in arguments about flying strawberries around the world, but mostly is driven by agricultural protectionism.
You keep trying to cast this debate into a one political fairness. Its not - if you dont like the AGW hypothesis then you need solid scientific evidence to the contrary - not carbon-lobby misinformation. Show us the published papers not the delusions of media commentators.
9 December 2008 at 10:14 PM
William (#103),
Why go on crash course in expensive nuclear when we would get a lot more bang for our buck with a massive ramp up in the implementation of thin film solar voltaics, solar thermal, or deep dry rock geothermal?
Jim Galasyn (#105),
All the plant-a-tree offset programs I’ve seen so are a joke. You get to pay a few bucks for them to plant trees, that over the next hundred years will sequester your emissions from today. We need a system whereby everyone is able to invest in a sequestration portfolio, building it up until the total amount of CO2 sequestered per year by all the offsets in said portfolio equal the annual emissions of an individual, business, company or government department.
As a rule of thumb, if we assume that it takes a tree 100 years to do it’s job, then we should purchase upfront 100x the number of trees these companies claim is necessary, then augment it each year to account for attrition. So rather than $12, you need to fork out $1,200.
Or even better, do as I am doing, and plant your own trees. If you don’t have land, then join a ‘nature-care’ group (here in Australia we call them bushcare or landcare groups) and help them restore the local woods (we call it bush) forest or wetland.
9 December 2008 at 10:44 PM
Craig: NativeEnergy doesn’t plant trees, they finance renewable energy installations (wind turbines and methane digesters).
9 December 2008 at 10:56 PM
> restore
Here’s a good book to start with. Look for it used, the 2nd ed.:
Margolin, Malcolm (1985).
The Earth Manual: How to Work on Wild Land without Taming It
(rev. ed.). Berkeley: Heyday Books. ISBN 0-930588-18-5.
9 December 2008 at 11:23 PM
Oh, poor “truth” and all the long-suffering, put upon and persecuted “skeptics” being denied access to the media when every media outlet scrambles and bends over backwards to represent “both sides” of the “story,” no matter how far removed from scientific reality one of the “sides” is.
Cry us a river, I hear Australia can use the water.
Your naivete in attributing overwhelming power over governments and international corporations alike to climate scientists and AGW realists, and blaming them for advocating massively publicly subsidized agribusiness ethanol and palm oil schemes and unscrupulous commodity traders driving up food prices is laughable, if not ludicrous.
10 December 2008 at 1:18 AM
Ray,
I am still waiting on your thoughts. Technically we can feed the world, but economically and with warlords stealing supplies and politicians and corporate greed combined with inaccurate understanding of genetic modification we are held back, but in reference to global warming, dimming, and agricultural changes etc.. what are some of your ideas on how to deal with this issue, let us get out of the lab and the classroom and discuss what might actually work to counteract these ramifications of fossil fuel burning, not just lowering emissions.
10 December 2008 at 4:13 AM
Craig, #113. A bushland that was tree covered until humans turned up.
Always nice to keep that in mind when people go on about how the natives live in harmony with nature. They have to since they stuffed it up big time when they arrived and now have the two options of live with nature or die.
A bit like climate change and our production of CO2.
10 December 2008 at 8:39 AM
jcbmack, If we had stated a couple of decades ago when climate scientists first started sounding the alarm about climate change–or even 8 years ago, we would have had much better mitigation options and a much better outcome. Transistion to renewable energy could have been much more gradual, solutions to transport needs, etc. could have been developed and most adverse effects of climate change might have been mitigated. Unfortunately, we are quite late in the game now, and good options are quite limited. I don’t think we will have the luxury of picking and choosing among mitigations: renewables, geoengineering, and probably nuclear power will all likely have to be brought into the equation. Geoengineering is particularly problematic, since it can make things worse if done poorly. What is more, while our understanding of climate makes the role of greenhouse gasses quite clear, most geoengineering strategies rely on aspects of the climate that are not as well understood–aerosols, clouds, uptake of CO2 by the biosphere and oceans, etc. Bottom line is we’ve squandered our most precious resource: time. And it will cost us dearly to try and buy back some of that lost time. We will have to somehow slow emissions of CO2 while we find other solutions, because if we get to the point where natural sources of CO2 and CH4 kick in the game’s over.
Can we do it? I don’t know. Technically, I think it’s possible. However, I’m not sure whether human brains, which evolved to confront threats like leopards on African Savannah’s , are sufficiently flexible to comprehend a threat like climate change. Judging by some commenters here, they are not. When I want to be hopeful, though, I think about Albert Camus’ “The Plague”. Initially, when the plague strikes the town, people are in denial. Then they adopt an “every man for himself attitude”. Finally, they realize that their only path to survival is by working together to confront the threat. And they do. At great cost, to be sure, but they succeed. We’ll hope Camus was correct in his optimism.
10 December 2008 at 8:46 AM
Jim Eager:
[edit]
What you say in your first paragraph is just plain , demonstrably not true—and I stand by everything I said.
Yes, Australia is short of water, and has been for all of its existence, and especially now, due in large part to land use changes , and cotton-growing—-but manages to do quite well anyway.
In your second paragraph, you deliberately misrepresent what I said, as anyone interested in truth can easily check.
You would know that the palm oil plantations that replace the rainforests and peat lands in Indonesia, are in operation only to meet the demands from Europe for biofuels , in order to meet their Kyoto targets.
In Brazil, the sugar cane from which ethanol is made, is being grown on lands from which cattle ranches have been displaced, those cattle producers then moving into cleared areas of what was formerly Amazon rainforest.
[edit - no more personal remarks or insults]
10 December 2008 at 9:13 AM
It is something of a shame if this site does not address the economics of global warming. There are legitimate peer reviewed studies on the subject, but they have found the social cost of carbon to be some where in the range of $10 to $350 per ton.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_global_warming
About 50% of the electricity generated in the US is powered from Coal.
The price of coal delivered to electric generating plants averages around $27 per ton.
Fuel cost are about 80% of total generation expenses, so coal prices are roughly 40% of the typical electric generation bill. Assume $150 for the social cost of a ton of coal. This would mean that coal should cost $177 per ton and would result in the price of electricity rising to 322% of its current value. Ouch!
A similar calculation could be performed for gasoline, which chemically is approximately C8H18. That works out to 92% carbon. Gasoline density is about 6 lb/gallon. So, a gallon has 5.6 lbs or carbon and the carbon tax should be $0.42 per gallon. Not too bad.
10 December 2008 at 9:50 AM
#106 & “Maybe some AGW proponents did warn about the problem with biodiesel, but they must have been very timid and muted.”
I’ve been saying from the very first time I heard about biofuels some 10 years ago this is going to come down to taking food away from starving people….so we can drive our SUVs in profligate fashion.
Just finished my anthro course with the 40% poorest in the world get 5% of world product, while the richest 20% (that’s us) get 75%. To some extent this is interconnected — our wealth is at the expense of their poverty. Plus it’s those 40% poorest who are suffering the most and going to suffer extremely from global warming.
You know the dictum about the rich man, the eye of the needle, and the camel; I’m thinking by today’s standards it would be the average American, the eye of the needle, and the elephant.
10 December 2008 at 9:52 AM
RE Craig #113
I’m suggesting nuclear because James Hansen suggests nuclear when he stated: “If power plants are to achieve the goals of the alternative scenario, construction of new coal-fired power plants should be delayed until the technology needed to capture and sequester their CO2 emissions is available. In the interim, new electricity requirements should be met by the use of renewable energies such as wind power as well as by nuclear power and other sources that do not produce CO2.” From a review of Al Gore’s and other books at NY Review of Books July 13 2006.
My suggestion would be to construct Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors, a much safer design than the current Nuke plants in use.
10 December 2008 at 10:30 AM
# 28
Lynn Vincentnathan Says:
>Watson and Crick — I remember reading something about them in Newsweek a few years back, about
>how it was actually a woman scientist who made the discovery, and they stole the idea from her.
This is incorrect. I refer you to:
Brenda Maddox: “Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA”
Maurice Wilkins’ autobiography: “The Third Man of the Double Helix”
(Statement of “conflict of interest” - I work with Watson.)
10 December 2008 at 11:22 AM
Re “truth @120: “What you say in your first paragraph is just plain , demonstrably not true—and I stand by everything I said.”
You can stand by what ever you like. Perhaps “skeptics” do now get short shrift in Australian media–bravo if they do, I don’t know as I only occasionally read Australian sources, but it is demonstrably not true in the US, Canadian and UK sources that I do read regularly.
“You would know that the palm oil plantations that replace the rainforests and peat lands in Indonesia, are in operation only to meet the demands from Europe for biofuels , in order to meet their Kyoto targets.”
Indeed, I do know, which is exactly why any clear-thinking person, AGW realists included, opposed the wholesale rush to biofuels from the outset. But I must point out that plantation-grown palm oil is not just used in biofuel schemes, but also as a cheap hydrogenated vegetable oil in industrial-scale food processing and animal feeds.
10 December 2008 at 11:26 AM
“Maybe some … did warn about the problem with biodiesel, but they must have been very timid and muted.”
You want people to pound on your door and yell and wake you up?
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?num=150&hl=en&q=%2Bbiodiesel+%2Becological+%2Brisk+%2Bdamage&btnG=Search
Results … about 952 for +biodiesel +ecological +risk +damage
10 December 2008 at 11:48 AM
Lynn #122
The US generates and earns its wealth. A poorer US would not help the the lower 40%, in fact they would suffer more in a poorer world. The poor countries are poor because they lack properly functioning governments, courts and other systems necessary to flourish. Every human being has the ability to produce and thrive if placed in an enabling environment.
10 December 2008 at 12:00 PM
William wrote: “… other than going on a crash program of building Nuclear Power plants I don’t see any solutions in the 10-20 year time frame. Anyone have some realistic solutions?”
A “crash program of building Nuclear Power plants” is not a “realistic solution” to the energy / climate problem. Expanding nuclear power is the most expensive, least effective way to reduce GHG emissions from electricity generation. In particular, it is simply not possible to build enough nuclear power plants and bring them online fast enough to have a significant impact on GHG emissions within the time frame that reductions are needed.
Investments in efficiency improvements, wind, solar and geothermal generation, and a new-generation “smart grid” can provide greater reductions in GHG emissions, faster and cheaper than nuclear. Every dollar spent on building more nuclear is a dollar wasted — since it would have been much more effective if spent elsewhere.
The USA has vast commercially-exploitable wind and solar energy resources — more than enough to provide all the electricity we currently use, and more. The offshore wind energy resources of the northeast alone are sufficient to provide all the electricity the entire country uses. The wind energy resources of a few midwestern states alone are sufficient to provide all the electricity the entire country uses. The solar energy resources of the southwestern deserts alone are sufficient to provide all the electricity the entire country uses. And distributed solar photovoltaics, deployed on houses, factories, office buildings, parking lots, etc. could generate locally most of the electricity consumed during peak demand periods (i.e. daytime in summer).
Al Gore’s proposal for the USA to generate 100 percent of its electricity from carbon-free, mostly clean renewable energy sources (he proposes retaining the existing nuclear and hydro power plants but not building more) within ten years is entirely achievable. It isn’t even that hard. The obstacles are not technological or economic. The obstacles are political: the entrenched power of the fossil fuel industries.
10 December 2008 at 1:21 PM
William, if we halve our energy needs now, it has an effect NOW. Not 15 years down the road. With that reduction NOW, we get time NOW to do the other things that need doing long term. But, whatever we do long term, the energy reductions we do NOW will continue to have their effect (and more so, since we won’t need to build potentially redundant structures) into the future.
And do you want to change your dependence on the middle east powers to a dependence on the mid african powers?
10 December 2008 at 2:01 PM
B. Buckner, “generates and earns … wealth” within constraints increasingly well understood and recognized by all but a few economists these days.
These will help:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&scoring=r&q=%2Bovershoot+%2Becology+-anemia&as_ylo=2007&btnG=Search
10 December 2008 at 2:25 PM
Thank you for your response Ray, I just hope it does not end up like another Camus book where a priest goes to Africa and loses his way from pure idyllic good to complete consumption of evil.
10 December 2008 at 2:28 PM
Personally, I think that the search for alternative hypotheses has received short shrift.
Personally, I think that the search for alternative hypotheses has received far longer shrift than it deserves.
Nobody that I know of disputes the basic physics anymore. The calculated energy due to the increase in GHGs is sufficient to have caused the observed increase in temps. Exactly what else are these other hypotheses expected to do? It’s always seemed to me that if there were some mysterious other source of energy sufficient to raise temps by the observed amount that there’d have to be an equally mysterious “trap door” which has vamoosed the energy trapped due to the increase in GHGs. That energy exists, after all. At some point, genuine skeptics would bow to Occams’s Razor, fold their tents, and call it a day.
reCapthca: directing Finally
10 December 2008 at 2:43 PM
truth (120) — Actually, the palm oil in Indonesia is almost all going to foods, so much so that many of the biodiesel producers there are in receivership. As for Amazon ranchers, I think you are just repeating an ‘urban legend’, (which I may have inadvertently started). AFAIK, the new sugarcane lands in Brazil are in the northeast which I think had almost no cattle ranches. If you find an authoritative report whiich states otherwise, please do let me know.
Lynn Vincentnathan (122) — A recent FAO report states that of the 5 billion hectares of ‘agricultural lands’, about 30% are ‘arable lands’, which I take to mean in production. Another about 20% are unused. The latter means there is plenty of land available for growing biofuel feedstacks; indeed, some of these lands in Africa are already starting to come in production for that purpose.
There is planty of food in the world; the problem, as you note, is one of equitable distribution.
10 December 2008 at 3:33 PM
Some grim news today from Poznan:
10 December 2008 at 3:40 PM
David B. Benson: “there is plenty of land available for growing biofuel feedstacks.”
This contradicts what I’ve seen from UNEP:
- 1.9 billion hectares of arable land are degraded.
- 65% (500 million hectares) of African land is degraded.
- Arable land loss is 30-35 times the historical rate.
- Loss is equal to 20 million tons of grain per year.
- 70 percent of the 5.2 billion hectares of drylands used for agriculture are already degraded and threatened by desertification.
10 December 2008 at 4:16 PM
Jim, 135, I think that, if PROPER materials are used for biofuel, then there IS plenty of land for growing it.
Plant weeds like hemp. Don’t bother watering them or looking after them. Just cut them up when available. There’s plenty of land spare for THAT. The problems become the large-scale commercialization of such land: they tend not to be easy to get to and hard to use machinery on. But for the same reasons, they aren’t being used for agriculture at the moment.
So both of you are right. There’s a lot of *useful* arable land disappearing but that isn’t necessarily depleting biofuel (weed growing) land and such land isn’t necessarily available for agriculture either. Unless we raise more goats to turn the very marginal land into meat and milk.
And degraded land is often over-farmed land which is farmed in the style of the western world, unsuitable for the land use that is sustainable in the African sub continent. But growing weeds doesn’t do this, if the right weeds are used (hemp again).
10 December 2008 at 4:44 PM
Jim Galasyn (135) — Mark in comment #136 has the right of it. While I know of no projects being started growing hemp, I do know of projects in Africa on degraded soils using other low-need plants such as Jatopha and even sweet potatoes and cassava. The latter two are, of course, foods. Still, these are not preferred foods, the ones being grown on better soils. If the preferred foods prosper, the tubers can be sold to biofuel manufacturers; if the food crop doesn’t do so well the tubers can supplement.
The main issues I see are fair returns to the farmers and developing infrastructure; water, yes, about also roads and schools, etc. Of course, try to improve all topsoils; we’ll need it all.
10 December 2008 at 4:44 PM
I think the take-home message of this post is how science moves along in the real world.
The idea that scientific progress is usually the creation of the lone underdog fighting the establishment is inaccurate. It is emotionally appealing and that is why the climate contrarians like to use it. It is straight out of the Luntz playbook.
Anyone living in or planning to visit the NYC area the American Museum of Natural History has a great climate change exhibit. Gavin has a part in the short films in the exhibit. Seeing the AMNH and the exhibit is a good way to spend an afternoon.
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/climatechange/
Recaptcha “tobacco issues”
10 December 2008 at 5:50 PM
Gibbs certainly has a lot of answers from the stil quiet no one thought of, but you make a solid point Joseph, even Darwin and Einstein worked on the reseacrh and thoughts of others… watson and crick were not considered special or intelligent in the scientific community and they stole others work, but so did Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Thomas edison, they all rely upon others. Gibbs I have to say was a bit unique though.
10 December 2008 at 5:57 PM
In central Africa they were using high powered DC lines which nowadays are very effective, I believe they tore them down, it is a shame, they should spread to western, southern and northern africa as the energy efficiency is enormous… then again they are still fighting agaisnt malaria and HIV-2, a shame really as they become the new unchartered territory for telecommunications to be industrilaized.
10 December 2008 at 6:00 PM
RE #127 & “The US generates and earns its wealth. A poorer US would not help the the lower 40%, in fact they would suffer more in a poorer world. The poor countries are poor because they lack properly functioning governments, courts and other systems necessary to flourish. Every human being has the ability to produce and thrive if placed in an enabling environment.”
You have no idea where the resources & products that we consume come from (I’m not even aware of the complete story). But I can say from what I’ve learned that a large portion of these don’t come from here in the U.S.
There are many examples of how multinational corps & our lust for stuff grossly harms the poor of the world, for instance by taking away & harming their subsistence lands. And it is adding insult to injury that our GHG emissions are causing them further harm, and will being doing so into the far future.
10 December 2008 at 6:14 PM
RE #135 thru 137. There is a tree, MORINGA, that grows about 20-30′ in a couple of years, straight up, in bad soil (drought or swampy conditions), and produces food (leaves, drumstick pods) and materials (seeds & cellulose) that can be used as food (side dish), herbal supplement, fodder (increases milk production by 30%), and (I think) biofuel.
If anyone knows more about this, let me know thru http://www.youtube.com/user/lynnvinc
We have them growing like weeds in our back yard. We had a killing frost some 4 yrs ago, and they died down, then popped back up again. They grow from cuttings, and we’ve filled up our yard. We left a few leaning against the fence months ago, and they’re still alive growing leaves and branches, tho we didn’t even plant them.
To learn more about this miracle tree you can see the PowerPoint in the right column at http://www.treesforlife.org/our-work/our-initiatives/moringa
10 December 2008 at 6:38 PM
Lynn Vincentnathan (142) — Thanks for the info.
Any biomass, wet or dry, can be used one way or another to produce biofuel. Which process is used is a matter of efficiency and whether gaseous, liquid or solid biofuels are desired, or rather in what proportion.
10 December 2008 at 6:40 PM
they’re back with the Senate minority “report” — actually just Inhofe’s blog — will it have any traction in the media, etc.?
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2158072e-802a-23ad-45f0-274616db87e6
10 December 2008 at 7:49 PM
Lynn, check the neighbors’ yards for that tree; it’s listed as a concern on various invasive plant sites.
___________
ReCaptcha likes it though: “Tenn., ferments”
10 December 2008 at 9:42 PM
Mark and David: Fair ’nuff.
11 December 2008 at 3:24 AM
Can I suggest a page with links to basic data? It takes some time to find the basic historical trend data for things like mean sea level rise, global temperature, etc.
11 December 2008 at 3:46 AM
My carbon footprint is approximately one ton per year — I pay $12 for my offsets from NativeEnergy.
Unfortunately, you are on the hook for a heck of a lot more than that. For example, a family of 4 uses about 12 KHW of electricity at their home. Yet their per-capita consumption is almost 50 KHW per year. The family could reduce their consumption to zero, and they still are on the hook for 38 KWH per year. That’s because the hotels in Las Vegas are pumping water in the desert 24×7x365 for guest’s viewing pleasure on your behalf. Your employer is heating/cooling your office nearly the entire day anticipating you might show up to do a bit of work. Your local super market is lighting its store 24×7 so if you need some cough syrup at 2 AM it’s there.
Are you 100% at peace with how many miles of airtravel your employer is responsible for each year as their salespeople scour the globe looking for another sale of an operating system that is already everywhere? Do you ever consider how many TWH of electricity are needed because your employer embraced x86 instead of ARM? You are a partial owner of all those decisions when you pick your employer.
And keep in mind that offsetting a year of Hummer driving is only $85. Please let’s not pretend that offsetting makes us good. It’s simply a way for those with $ to make themselves feel better.
11 December 2008 at 5:19 AM
Suggest you review this paper:
http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/?k=Anderson+Bows
It is very worrying.
11 December 2008 at 7:59 AM
Jeff C
So far it seems only Mr Watts’ blog has picked it up, so the answer is ‘No’
You probably have to be UK-based to fully understand the depth of the desperation that is illustrated by the fact that to get his numbers up Mr Morano had to loosen the definition of a ‘prominent and sceptical scientist’ to the point that it includes Alan Titchmarsh. :-0
JP
11 December 2008 at 8:34 AM
Lynn,
I just want to add to Hank’s comment. I encourage anyone involved with selecting plants for biofuel production, reforestation, or even home landscaping to consider the ‘Dark side’ many plants exhibit when they are introduced to ecosystems they are not native to. The list of well-intentioned, but ecologically disasterous, plant introductions is a long one.
My wife and I contributed more than a $100K towards preserving a tract of old growth native forest near Austin, Texas, and many of my weekends are spent clearing invasive non-native plants from the tract. The major culprits are Chinaberry, Wax-leaf Ligustrum, Chinese Tallow tree, Nandina and Johnston Grass. Thank goodness we don’t have bamboo or kudzu to deal with. Presently I’m shredding the waste and scattering the mulch to compost, but I’d like to try converting it to agrichar to improve the thin, alkaline soil. If anyone knows of plans for a bioreactor, preferably cheap and solar powered, I’d appreciate any information you can point me towards.
Regards - Phillip
11 December 2008 at 8:43 AM
Jim Eager: I assure you I said nothing insulting to or about you—I merely noted your anger at me—and gave a factual answer to your remarks (116), about agribusiness in Brazil.
11 December 2008 at 8:45 AM
WRT biomass, a 2006 report (Wang, Grushecky and McNeel), available at:
http://ahc.caf.wvu.edu/lit/wvbiomass.pdf
states: “The total annual biomass production potential is 3.32 million dry tons in West Virginia
(Figure ES.1, Table ES.1), which could produce 47.06 trillion BTUs.”
And: “In 2001, the state of West Virginia consumed 1,255 trillion BTUs of energy, among which only 1% was produced from biomass (EIA 2006).”
This equates to about 3.75%, broadly consistent with an older study showing about 4% of urban electrical demand could be potentially supplied by urban wood waste.
(See: http://www.p2pays.org/ref/19/18947.pdf)
The percentage is not large, but it is interesting that it is as large as it is, given that no new agricultural production whatever is involved.
11 December 2008 at 10:21 AM
Ricki, I look at the Anderson and Bows paper, and it is indeed worrisome. There will be some denialists who use this to say that all our efforts are for naught. However, I think we need to look at the difference in consequences between 450, 550 and 650 ppmv, and indeed higher. I think the crucial unanswered question at this point is when do natural feedbacks (e.g. CO2/CH4 from oceans, thawing permafrost, etc.) render all our efforts moot. That’s the level we must avoid at all costs. Other than that, it is a matter of how low we can hold emissions, how much mitigation we will need and how much geoengineering will be needed to meet that need.
11 December 2008 at 10:23 AM
Off topic, but newsworthy: Obama plans to name Steve Chu–1997 Nobel Laureate in physics–as energy secretary. I believe this represents the first time a scientist has achieved cabinet level representation. This is a tremendous victory for the reality-based community.
11 December 2008 at 10:24 AM
Speaking of reports, here’s an interesting one, from June of this year, on sustainability and economics, comparing the Club of Rome “limits to growth” model output to observed history since then.
http://www.csiro.au/files/files/plje.pdf
Of particular interest in the current context is this paragraph:
“Despite these major contributions, and dire warnings of “overshoot and collapse”, the Limits to Growth recommendations on fundamental changes of policy and behaviour for sustainability have not been taken up, as the authors recently acknowledge (Meadows et al, 2004). This is perhaps partly a result of sustained false statements that discredit the LtG. From the time of its publication to contemporary times, the LtG has provoked many criticisms which falsely claim that the LtG predicted resources would be depleted and the world system would collapse by the end of the 20th Century. Such claims occur across a range of publication and media types, including scientific peer reviewed journals, books, educational material, national newspaper and magazine articles, and web sites (Turner, unpublished). This paper briefly addresses these claims, showing them to be false.”
(Captcha gets poignant: “hoped for”)
11 December 2008 at 11:04 AM
“Truth” is damned right that I’m angry at him and all those like him that are bent on obstructing and delaying any meaningful reductions in CO2 emissions.
11 December 2008 at 11:05 AM
Great essay. However, in the early 20th century no one knew what the structure of the genetic material was, or how it operated.
The structure of DNA was famously determined by Watson and Crick, but it could just as easily have been Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins. Franklin had the X-ray scattering photograph of DNA that she had taken after years of careful work, and Wilkins was friends with Crick and both knew how to use mathematics to interpret the X-ray scattering pattern to recover the structure of DNA. However, they apparently seriously disliked one another, and were unable to collaborate. Watson then got his hands on Franklin’s photograph, took it to Crick, and that’s why it’s Watson-Crick and not Franklin-Wilkins. Academic science is a very social affair.
However, natural systems don’t care at all about academic struggles for prestige and priority. Perhaps Franklin should have got the Nobel as well, but then she did die early from cancer (probably from exposure to the heavy metal salts used in X-ray crystallography).
The structure of DNA changed the Lamarkian debate. Any alterations in the DNA sequence of cells that give rise to further generations will be passed on to those generations. We also know now that DNA and RNA are not static holders of information - they also play active roles in cell regulation.
One example is dioxin, a byproduct of organochlorine synthesis and combustion, and a common contaminant. Agent Orange, a plant hormone-based herbice used in Vietnam, was heavily contaminated with dioxin (cheap and sloppy synthesis).
Dioxin interferes with basic cellular regulation - if one’s DNA is a library full of cellular instructions, then dioxin kidnaps all the librarians - requests go unfulfilled. The effects are cell death - the notorious case of the 2006 poisoning of Ukraine’s president shows what happens.
Dioxins can also lead direct damage to the DNA itself, by insertion into the stacked DNA base pairs. This has been known for a while: 1978: A review of the genetic toxicology of chlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins. Men and women exposed to such mutagens will then pass on the genetic damage to their offspring, often with terminal results. NY Times 1991:
Another example of Lamarkian inheritance involves microorganisms, not humans. This is the transfer of plasmids between unrelated microbes. These small loops of DNA usually contain a handful of genes that code for protein toolkits for purposes such as heavy metal and antibiotic resistance. A microbe (such as a hospital Staph infection) can acquire a penicillin-resistance plasmid, and then hand it on to all descendants.
The entire Lamarkian-Darwinian debate took place in an era when the mechanisms of evolution and inheritance (DNA and a whole lot more) were not understood. Mendel actually made greater contributions than either, as he conducted experiments that tracked genes, and saw reproducible patterns in the frequency of gene inheritance. The whole debate is built on the difference between genotype and phenotype, but modern molecular knowledge shows that the distinction is blurred. RNA is now known to play important physiological roles, and it is copied directly from DNA, more or less. Physiology is phenotype, but it is also genotype.
This all has some practical consequences which relate back to fossil fuels, namely particulate fossil fuel pollution:
2005: 2,3,7,8-TCDD equivalence and mutagenic activity associated with PM10 from three urban locations in New Zealand.
In the real world, people are exposed to complex mixtures of toxins, hormone mimics and carcinogens, which is what particulate aerosols are made of. Many of those components are due to dirty fossil fuel combustion from coal, ship bunker fuel and diesel, while others come from chlorine-based industrial chemistry (herbicide, plastic and pesticide manufacture, for example).
Likewise, the damage that radioactive elements could do to DNA was not understood in the 1940s or early 1950s, when the structure of DNA and the mechanism of inheritance was unknown. People at the time thought that the dangers were mainly thermal burns - they didn’t realize that DNA damage would lead to cancers and birth defects.
Dealing with such problems requires, first of all, that people have all the facts. This is the chemical and fossil fuel industry’s first line of defense: keep the facts secret. Publicly funded science programs with a mandate to investigate environmental pollution are not desirable, from this viewpoint. The amount of pharmaceutical products dumped into rivers and lakes and the ensuing effects also get little study, especially since the pharmaceutical industry is now a major funder of academic science in the U.S.
As far as global warming goes, the real challenge here is not about personal responsibility - that’s just the tobacco industry PR line, i.e. Edelman’s PR campaign. Edelman is running the American Petroleum Institute’s PR campaign - Chevron has a nice new billboard imploring everyone to “pledge to use less energy” - while they moved ahead with adaptations to their Richmond refinery in order to handle more dirty Canadian tar sand crude.
The real challenge is to construct agricultural and industrial systems that don’t require any fossil fuel inputs. That will require heavy use of wind, solar and energy storage systems. Once you have fossil fuel-free agriculture, then you can discuss sustainable biofuel production. Or, you can simpy do algal biodiesel, which doesn’t require arable land or massive fossil fuel inputs.
The issue is not just global warming - there’s also the massive environmental pollution brought on by incomplete combustion and fossil fuel contaminants.
11 December 2008 at 11:11 AM
Re: #142 (Ricki (Australia))
I’ve got a page of links to basic climate data sets here.
[Response: I’m happy to outsource this, maybe a direct link from the side bar would be welcome? You might want to add a few of the visualisation/analysis tools that are available (climexp.knmi.nl, dapper.pmel.noaa.gov, ingrid.ldeo.columbia.edu) as well as the IPCC AR4/CMIP3 archive? - gavin]
11 December 2008 at 12:07 PM
> urban wood waste
That also raises the same issues Ike notes for fossil fuel:
> incomplete combustion
> contaminants
A biomass system, given the hypothetical enzymes that could take apart stuff like lignin, might make it possible to use that material in a fuel cell and capture the toxics as well as the CO2 from the waste stream. It’ll be tricky. Nature’s protected the lignin and such pretty well — that’s why trees live so long, the fungi can’t take them down quickly.
Imagine some biotechnician comes up with an enzyme that can degrade lignin, starts producing it in some tank of fungus or bacteria, and spills that beastie — we’d see forests rotting the way outdated vegetables rot now, once lignin became vulnerable. Scary yet?
Even without a spill, once someone starts sellihg a cheap handy-dandy packet’o'enzymes that can be stirred into any pot full of weeds and woodchips, and turn out alcohol or biodiesel — that would be a true weapon of biomass destruction. People would chop up anything that could easily be degraded that way.
Yeah, with big pressure/temperature treatment tanks, woody biomass can be broken down now. Costs some in fuel and materials though.
This is why we really do need the emerging cross-disciplinary educational programs — we need the polymath, the encyclopedic synthesist, people encouraged to imagine and foresee consequences — not as an inevitable timeline of events focused on a goal, but as a branching tree of possibilities and how they might later interacting with other eventualities coming from other developments.
The public health folks do this. Ag-energy people need to as well.
11 December 2008 at 12:11 PM
Ike,
Thanks for your explanation. I teach Earth History almost every semester, and I always bring up the Darwin-Lamarck controversy. And I am happy to learn that my take on it is correct. With no real genetic information (DNA-based), it was a debate with basically no chance at resolution. So it wasn’t really a science-based argument countered by a faith-based argument, which is what the AGW “controversy” is. Both Lamarck and Darwin presented science based evidence and arguments, but both lacked crucial information. And we now know that if acquired characteristics affect the DNA of the parent, it can be passed onto offspring. So Lamarck wasn’t all that wrong. He was not right about the general mechanism of evolution, of course, but he wasn’t 100% wrong.
Also, I don’t think the scientific consensus on Darwin’s side at the time was as strong as the consensus among climate scientists right now that AGW is real and our fault.
11 December 2008 at 12:22 PM
#158 & “The issue is not just global warming - there’s also the massive environmental pollution brought on by incomplete combustion and fossil fuel contaminants.”
Precisely. We need a holistic approach to both the problems and solutions. The measures that cause GW, also cause many other harms. The measures that help mitigate GW also mitigate many other environmental (pollution, finite resource depletion etc), as well as non-environmental harms. So it’s like choosing between a lose-lose-lose-lose-lose situation or a win-win-win-win-win situation.
I consider GW to be a sort of umbrella issue. Solve it, and you solve many many other problems.
Except, perhaps nuclear power, which has many downsides, incl death & disease of uranium miners (many 4th world people) and destruction of subsistence lands (as in Niger, where the pastoralists don’t even use electricity or benefit in any way from the mining near their lands).
11 December 2008 at 1:28 PM
#148, matt
You should check your calculations. Power consumption in the USA is around 4 trillion kWh/year, with 300 million inhabitants that is a per capita consumption of 13.000 kWh/year, not 50.
11 December 2008 at 1:35 PM
RE #145 & 151. Thanks, Hank & Philip, for the heads-up on moringa being invasive. Just looked it up & it seems to be more a problem in South Pacific islands.
Moringa doesn’t have any vectors (such as wind, animals, birds, insects), but sometimes tiny plants do sprout up around the trees. Luckily we can just pull them up by the root from moist soil (unlike some other tree-weeds in our yard, whose roots we have to cut down as deep as possible, then cap with inverted plastic containers and bury).
We’ve gotten esperanza (a native of Latin America) from our neighbor’s yard, which we’ve transplanted, but our neighbors are pretty thorough about destroying all weeds.
We got our moringa cutting from a Filippino in our town (I have no idea who first brought it to our area). Moringa, however, doesn’t grow in San Antonio — a friend there has a potted one he has to pull into the garage during freezing times — and I think it doesn’t even grow beyond 10 miles to the north of us (Edinburg, TX), bec another Filippino friend is unable to grow them up there. Austin should be safe.
It seems to me IF the plant can be heavily used (for food, herbal medicine, fodder, and/or biofuel), AND the outer perimeter of its growing area monitored several times a year (and stray plants pulled up), its benefits might outweight its risks.
I have no idea, though, whether it might be just too labor-intensive & expensive (not cost-effective) a project for a wealthy nation like ours. Commercial moringa production seems to be working out well in some poor African nations.
11 December 2008 at 3:26 PM
Speaking of memes and contrarians/deniers, George Monbiot has published a coruscating diatribe against the crap spewed on the InterWebs by lazy bloggers and “the outer limits of idiocy” in the Guardian’s comment forums. It’s definitely worth a read.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/09/climate-change-science-environment
11 December 2008 at 3:59 PM
Re: #159 (me, and Gavin’s response)
I’ll add those links soon. Any other suggestions are welcome. It may take a few days (busy busy busy!) but I find it’s convenient for me to have links to data sources in a single location.
11 December 2008 at 4:04 PM
Ray (77) re (partial) “truth” (75), but bear in mind it is much relative. One of Obama’s assertions was that he would tax carbon so high that coal-based power producers would go bankrupt. (In that environment it’s ceasing business.) I’m not sure that our ingenuity to “manufacture in more energy efficient ways” like we did in the ‘70s will do the sanguine trick of maintaining our standards. At least in this scenario.
11 December 2008 at 4:18 PM
CNN has reported on the current US drought:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/12/11/drought.problem/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
They quote some climatologist as claiming that it is not due to global warming. They continue that while the last three years have been drier than usual in many parts of the US, overall there’s been no shortage of rainfall and the U.S. mainland experienced worse droughts in the 12th and 16th centuries.
First, just because there were droughts in the historical past does not prove that the current drought is not caused in part by global warming. Hopefully, most people realize that man made global warming is a recent phenonium that does not preclude past climate shifts from occurring.
Figure 11.12 on page 890 of the following link, the IPCC projects changes in precipitation out to 2080 to 2090:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter11.pdf
Most of the US is projected to be within 10% of current precipitation levels, which is probably not statistically significant. However, significant drying is projected in Mexico and the southern Caribbean, with summer time drying in the Pacific Northwest. Meanwhile, the Hudson Bay and Northern Greenland areas are projected to get much wetter. Still another 92 years before all the data will be in, but it is interesting to see how the current drought compares to the long term projections.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/tools/edb/lbfinal.gif
11 December 2008 at 4:26 PM
Tamino,
Your ‘Climate data links’ page is not accepting comments.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology climate change data page is another top notch site to add to your list.
The data is from the Australian Reference Climate Station network, which are the 100 or so best of all Australia’s climate stations, which have been selected to
* have long high quality climate records,
* be located in places away from large urban centres, and
* have a reasonable likelihood of continued, long-term operation.
11 December 2008 at 4:42 PM
Lynn (78), again I respect your personal endeavors. But 1) it is unrealistic to extend a small sample to an entire populace with a mere wave of the hand, and 2) one ought to take with an extremely cautious view the estimates, even by learned experts, of how great and unobtrusive mitigation is going to be. For example, try to realistically envision for the moment all 300,000,000 persons in the U.S. living within one mile of their work, school, and shops. You and a few hundred or thousands, probably so; 300,000,000, not a chance in hell. Also, I wish I had a dollar for every business commercial project (just to pick a similar example) that was put together by learned experienced experts and proved a total bust. New Coke, anyone?
Push hard for wind and solar? I fully agree a very good idea, but it is not a panacea .
11 December 2008 at 4:45 PM
“What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there.
I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.
So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.
That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.
The only thing I’ve said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.
So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.
It’s just that it will bankrupt them. …” - Obama
It’s obvious he is saying a new plant that elected to not mitigate CO2 would be forced into bankruptcy. A position I think is somewhat like that of the other guy. On the flip side, a new coal plant that fully mitigates CO2 would be free to get just as rich as pie.
11 December 2008 at 4:47 PM
Here’s an e-card for the holidays - http://action.1sky.org/t/4139/tellafriend.jsp?tell_a_friend_KEY=368
11 December 2008 at 4:48 PM
Jim (83), to be clear, are you saying there was not, in the past, a large body (chorus) of AGW proponents (realists) that strongly supported ethanol?
11 December 2008 at 4:49 PM
Rod B wrote: “One of Obama’s assertions was that he would tax carbon so high that coal-based power producers would go bankrupt.”
That’s not what Obama “asserted”. What Obama actually said, speaking to the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle in January 2008, was: “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can, it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” [Emphasis added.]
Obama was saying that charging power producers for GHG emissions — presumably through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system — would make it unprofitable to build new coal-fired power plants. Obama has never, ever expressed any intention or plan to “bankrupt” existing “coal-based power producers.”
These sorts of distortions and disinformation are common in the partisan right-wing media.
Personally I would prefer a more straightforward approach:
First, institute an outright ban on the construction of any new coal-fired power plants.
Second, set a date on which burning coal to generate electricity would become illegal, by which date all existing coal-fired power plants must be shut down.
These proposals are founded on the libertarian aphorism that “your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.” Burning coal is an act of aggressive violence against me and all other human beings. It is a moral crime and should be treated as a crime under law.
11 December 2008 at 4:51 PM
Re #165
Thank you for the link.Just when you thought you’ve heard everything- a wind turbine on Teletubbies is sumliminal advertising? How credible is someone who watches the Teletubbies!
11 December 2008 at 5:00 PM
Mark, #118.
“A bushland that was tree covered until humans turned up.
Always nice to keep that in mind when people go on about how the natives live in harmony with nature. They have to since they stuffed it up big time when they arrived and now have the two options of live with nature or die.”
You are being a bit disingenuous there.
While it is true that it is likely that the Australian aborigines and their dingos pushed many of our mega-fauna to extinction, and through the use of fire changed the ecology, they were infinitely more kind to this continent than European settlers have been. At settlement Australia’s temperate regions were covered by bush and forest. No most of that is gone and we are rapidly striping the remainder.
A society that develops giant machinery that allows a single man to strip hundreds of hundreds of acres of native vegetation per day can hardly justify it’s behaviour by pointing out the unsustainable lifestyles of hunter gatherers ecologists who successfully lived in the same landscape for thousands of years without modifying it’s essential character.
Aborigines modified the ecology and then settled into a relationship with it that left most of it intact. Given our current land management practises, much of Australia’s once hyper-diverse ecosystems will look like the Iraqi desert within a generation (as much of it does already).
11 December 2008 at 5:06 PM
Ray (87), I agree with you and Andrew that the real concern is, at the core, economic. You imply this is a “baddie”, but economic, political, or philosophical motivations, per se, are NOT bad. Neither are scientific motivations. But the crux is, IMO, that because mitigation is potentially globally and so strongly disruptive (the seers saying, “Hey! No problem. I’ll fix it by morning!” aside) that the science requires a much higher level of certainty – which is more than a bunch of scientists getting together and trumpeting, “We agree” (though there is nothing wrong per se with that either). I think, that as long as the skepticism or questioning is reasonable (which I’ll define since you all freely define unreasonable
– and I admit some are not reasonable ) it is perfectly proper and appropriate. There ought to be something between “they ran another model” and “another $400 trillion please.”
11 December 2008 at 5:54 PM
Ref. Ike Solem # 158
Ike, that is a model for contributions to this blog. It is well written, with cites to the literature, on topic and I learned from it.
Would that some of our young, enthusiastic, scatter gun posters could take it as a model.
Paul
11 December 2008 at 6:19 PM
My “climate data links” page won’t allow comments (it’s a “page” rather than a blog post), but suggestions for additions to the link list can be left on the latest “open thread” at my blog.
I may not include them all, because I want to keep the page simple. But all suggestions will be considered, and appreciated.
11 December 2008 at 7:00 PM
Rod B., So, let me get this straight: we’re going to have a different standard of scientific truth for those facts we don’t like? Well, then, by all means, let’s throw open the whole first and second laws of thermo. Those cost us trillions! How about the cosmic speed limit of c? Don’t you just hate that! Makes it so difficult to live out our Star Trek fantasies. And what standard shall we insist on, if 95% confidence isn’t good enough for you? 99%? 99.9999%? How about if we require the inerrant word of God? That will please the fundies in their attempts to get creationism taught in the schools.
Sorry, Rod, physical reality doesn’t change depending on how much we like it or how much it costs us. Science has revealed cogent evidence of a real and credible threat. Where we need to demand high standards of evidence is in the cost-benefit analysis for various mitigation schemes being considered. But then it’s no longer a science problem, but a political/economic/engineering problem. We won’t solve those by denying good science.
ReCAPTCHA gets grim: estate Tombs
11 December 2008 at 7:28 PM
Rod (173), to be sure, there were many who accepted the science on AGW and climate change and also supported the development of biofuels, but that sort of means that they were not really AGW realists, dosen’t it? And in any case, they hardly had the influence and power to sway corporate interests to invest in the schemes and pressure lawmakers to craft policies and legislation that enabled the boondoggle, did they?
The rush to biofuels was overwhelmingly spurred by the desire to make a lot of money quickly, period. Without the massive public subsidies it simply would not have happened.
11 December 2008 at 8:13 PM
Gavin
I am a farmer in the South West land division of Western Australia and have been reading Real Climate for about six months. This has improved my understanding of topics from polar ice melts to how temperature is measured around the globe.
What has struck me about most of the comments which are posted on your web site are that Global Warming is very much a theoretical subject. Not many seem to living with the consequences yet.
As a farmer farming in an area that is predicted to be one of the worst affected by climate change in the world, we are already seeing changes in runoff, changes rainfall patterns and a less predictable Mediterranean climate.
In this thread there has been some discussion about agriculture producing less carbon and there seems to an assumption that most agriculture uses irrigation where, the truth is that most farming in the world uses natural irrigation - rain.
I am working with Ag scientists at the moment on using bio-char, to reduce the fertilizer use, nitrous oxide emissions, increase soil health and aiming to make farming carbon negative.
11 December 2008 at 8:29 PM
Myles Allen had a good response to the personal responsibility troll
“I came of age in Mrs. Thatcher’s Britain. And under Mrs. Thatcher you applied the principle that you paid for what you wanted to do. And that’s essentially all we are saying here if we want to use fossil fuels we need to pay to make sure that we can use them in such a way that doesn’t impose risks on other people who haven’t chosen to take those risks.”
11 December 2008 at 8:34 PM
> machinery that allows a single man to strip
> hundreds of hundreds of acres of native vegetation
> per day
Called the “Bushman plow” - Cute name. Kind of a streetsweeper for natives.
Context:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/earth/14fenc.html
11 December 2008 at 8:53 PM
Well, Matt, I’m also partially responsible for the immense carbon footprint of the US occupation forces in Iraq, but we have to start somewhere.
11 December 2008 at 9:05 PM
Clean Coal!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#28167243
Am I missing something here? Wasn’t finding a lump of coal in your Christmas stocking supposed to be a bad thing back in the day!
I have absolutly no idea how organizations like the Onion, who supposedly make their living by satirizing the status quo can have even the slightest hope of continuing to survive. This is just way funnier than anything they have ever come up with.
11 December 2008 at 9:55 PM
For all the Australians on board; pages 896-901 of the following link describes projected climate changes for Australia.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter11.pdf
Southwestern Australia is expected to be hit the hardest during the winter. But not all regions are expected to receive less precipitation with eastern Australia expected to receive more precipitation in summer. However, with generally higher temperatures, evaporation is expected to rise and in almost all cases the moisture deficit becomes larger.
Quote from IPCC summary page 850:
Warming is likely to be larger than that of the surrounding
oceans, but comparable to the global mean. The warming is
less in the south, especially in winter, with the warming in
the South Island of New Zealand likely to remain less than
the global mean. Precipitation is likely to decrease in southern
Australia in winter and spring. Precipitation is very likely to
decrease in south-western Australia in winter. Precipitation
is likely to increase in the west of the South Island of New
Zealand. Changes in rainfall in northern and central Australia
are uncertain. Increased mean wind speed is likely across the
South Island of New Zealand, particularly in winter. Increased
frequency of extreme high daily temperatures in Australia and
New Zealand, and a decrease in the frequency of cold extremes
is very likely. Extremes of daily precipitation are very likely to
increase, except possibly in areas of significant decrease in mean
rainfall (southern Australia in winter and spring). Increased risk
of drought in southern areas of Australia is likely.
11 December 2008 at 10:30 PM
RE #170 & “For example, try to realistically envision for the moment all 300,000,000 persons in the U.S. living within one mile of their work, school, and shops. You and a few hundred or thousands, probably so; 300,000,000, not a chance in hell.”
Most people I know could live a lot closer to work; there are homes with their specs closer to work, but the realtors keep showing them houses far away. The farther houses may seem like better deals (more house for the buck), but people may not have factored in all the other costs, incl fuel, car repair, stress, harm to health from car fumes, lost family/recreation time.
Also, there are many other solutions if one cannot live within 2 or 3 miles of work. For instance, both my husband & I were working in the same place (part-time for me), but when I got a full-time job in another town, some 35 miles away (it was suburb to another suburb over back country roads, so no public transportation), I inquired into who also commuted from my home town to my work town. I found a person, and we carpooled together over 90% of the trips, saving us gas, car repairs, and perhaps saving us from accidents, since driving alone after a hard day’s work makes me sleepy, and the conversation kept me awake. Then when comparable jobs for both myself and my husband opened up at the same university in Texas (where I knew we could also get on Green Mountain 100% wind energy) we made the move.
It’s about putting forth a bit of effort to do the right thing, and if one thing doesn’t work, then there are other ways to accomplish the goal of reducing one’s GHGs. We just have to do what we can, what’s feasible.
12 December 2008 at 12:20 AM
SecularAnimist: Oh. Barrack is going to kill only the 100+ GWatts (40% of) from coal planned for the next 20-25 years and leave (much to your chagrin it seems) the current 300 GWatts alone? Ought to be a breeze. I haven’t heard — when, if ever, does he plan to kill the ~95GWatts (36%) of natural gas new generators? I would assume real quickly. A couple of finger snaps and all will be copacetic. You must be ecstatic.
12 December 2008 at 12:52 AM
Ray (180), I understand your (and others) conviction, but to the contrary AGW does not have the certainty of either Law of Thermodynamics, or the speed of light, etc. Also, a 95% confidence level expressed by the folks doing the predictions is interesting, but not a certainty. Finally, yes the standard is different and higher because of the potentially tremendous cost and disruption of mitigation. If a group of scientists say they’ve found a feed that can maintain a chicken’s growth but with 2% less feed than today, I don’t much care if that proves to be 100% correct or 10% correct.
The rub is that, IMO, the standard has not met but I don’t know where it is. Because if we continue to push for greater confidence, say 6 nines to pick something, to save all of that cost and disruption until, say, it gets proven by actually happening, that too, as you know, has some pretty noticeable costs and disruptions.
12 December 2008 at 1:02 AM
Jim (181), unquestionably the economic interests (farmers and processors mostly) were the prime movers for the growth of biofuels (mostly ethanol). But the fact is there was a very noticeable chorus of AGW proponents hot to trot for it. If that embarrasses you now (probably does most of them now, too — looked like a good deal until some of the second level details started to emerge), I can understand it; you can wish it away, but you can’t will it away.
12 December 2008 at 1:50 AM
Clean coal is possible, but again we must apply the science just right, if Barack is aware of this we could bring about great change with other well placed proposals currently possible, Eli has a commentary on clean coal as well. I know I posted an email to me: “clean coal a lie,” but if it were properly applied and not overly polticized we could get good cleaner energy yields and we could place wind power well; use DC!
12 December 2008 at 2:49 AM
#188 Lynn Vincentnathan: It’s about putting forth a bit of effort to do the right thing, and if one thing doesn’t work, then there are other ways to accomplish the goal of reducing one’s GHGs. We just have to do what we can, what’s feasible
But this doesn’t solve the problem. The US and EU need to reduce by 90+%. Doing what feels right doesn’t work, because everyone figures, “hey, this is important, and it’s hardly any CO2 in the grand scheme of things”.
That rationale makes it easy to drive kids across town to piano lessons, and let’s you zip from state to state on a huge chartered jet to try and convince the country to elect you.
Nobody is willing to SACRIFICE. Screwing in a CFL and driving a Prius might make you feel good, but it doesn’t solve the problem. But most think they are “doing their part” when they do it.
It’s taking a bucket down to Katrina and bailing by hand. Yes it helps and it might make you feel good, no it doesn’t change the outcome. Kyoto is another example. Yes it helped, but it only delayed the inevitable (whatever that might be) by a few years.
We’ll see if Obama has the gumption to go big. I’m all on board if the plan is realistic, because I believe any realistic plan includes nuclear in the near term. Excelon was a big Obama supporter, and Axelrod worked as a consultant for them too. From Obama’s Energy Fact Sheet:
Safe and Secure Nuclear Energy: Nuclear power represents more than 70 percent of our non-carbon generated electricity. It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table. However, there is no future for expanded nuclear without first addressing four key issues: public right-to-know, security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation. Barack Obama introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate to establish guidelines for tracking, controlling and accounting for spent fuel at nuclear power plants.
To prevent international nuclear material from falling into terrorist hands abroad, Obama worked closely with Sen. Dick Lugar (R — IN) to strengthen international efforts to identify and stop the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction. As president, Obama will make safeguarding nuclear material both abroad and in the U.S. a top anti-terrorism priority.
Obama will also lead federal efforts to look for a safe, long-term disposal solution based on objective, scientific analysis. In the meantime, Obama will develop requirements to ensure that the waste stored at current reactor sites is contained using the most advanced dry-cask storage technology available. Barack Obama believes that Yucca Mountain is not an option. Our government has spent billions of dollars on Yucca Mountain, and yet there are still significant questions about whether nuclear waste can be safely stored there.
12 December 2008 at 3:43 AM
189. How about “Barrak is going to kill the need for 100+GWatts (40%) and so we won’t need coal powered stations and they can be mothballed”?
After all, when the demand goes down, why spend the money on creating the need?
12 December 2008 at 3:52 AM
Craig, 176, that is irrelevant. Did I say the Aboriginies of Australia were worse than the white man?
No.
And how much of that “worse” is due to the technological advances that increase the ability of each person to increase their effects? After all, when you’re highest level tool for agribusiness is a goat and a box of matches, you’re going to have to work at it to do more damage than someone with a fleet of tractors and a long-range rifle.
“Working with the environment” is the only option these people HAD. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have survived.
And now the high-energy agribusiness is getting to a place where living with the environment is the only option. It just took longer to get there because the energy can be used to bull past the problems rather than solve them or include them.
12 December 2008 at 5:17 AM
The UK is experiencing a very cold late Autumn so it must mean that GW is a fib and a lie dreamed up by highly paid scientists who sit in their ivory towers of intellectual isolation and dream up left wing conspiricies to stop the worlds economy from prospering due to their petty minded jealously.
Thats how a lot of the skeptics have it anyway. The Internet is full of deflamatory comment these days and vast swathes of opinion on this subject. Its funny that members of the public in general are not that clued up on science in general but seems to know an awful lot about the science of global warming in relation to the politics and economic consequences of cutting carbon emissions.
Brrrrr, freezing here.
12 December 2008 at 6:05 AM
Might I suggest that Jim Eager (#181) and Lynn Vincentnathan (# 189) are possibly allowing their moral decency and natural optimism to cloud their judgements.
Jim suggests that any proponent of AGW who advocated the use of biofuels was being unrealistic. (I am supposing that he was referring to ethanol production from soya or corn). Why? In a nation such as the USA, which can easily feed itself but lacks fuel security for transport, it is not necessarily ridiculous to manufacture a transport fuel with low ERoEI pending the development of superior alternatives. There is little compelling evidence that food costs were adversely affected but, even if they were, the major sufferers would not have been US citizens. This may sound callous and probably is. It is also true that the current state of financial collapse, leading to a precipitate but probably temporary drop in oil price, was mysteriously not envisioned and has led to ethanol production being uneconomic at the present time. That said, peak oil and excess global population suggest that we are in a mess that not all will escape from. US citizens are better placed than most to do so. I wish, as a UK national, that Britain was as well placed.
Lynn seems to want everybody to upsticks and move closer to his/her place of work, a massively disruptive suggestion, particularly when many of the sources of such employment will disappear almost as soon as people have moved closer to them. I think it sensible first to consider what forms of employment are really essential to our basic needs. Personally, I can think of relatively few and they won’t necessarily be based in conurbations.
For those here who have tended to concentrate solely on threats from climate change, I would strongly advocate that they read an essay by the late Dr Price (www.dieoff.org/page137.htm) and Google chris martenson and crash course even though it might douse their optimism. We are threatened by more than global warming and all our problems need addressing simultaneously if some of us (or our progeny) are to escape with a civilised, albeit different, life style
12 December 2008 at 7:20 AM
JCH:
Obama’s statement is ambiguous, and he contradicts himself.
He signals that someone could build a coal-fired power station, but if they did so, the regulation and emissions imposts of an Obama administration would bankrupt them —they would be priced out of the energy market .
The message seems to be that if they’re silly enough[ in his view], to build a new coal-fired power station at all , his policies will bankrupt them—not that if they build and don’t mitigate, he’ll bankrupt them, because the kind of mitigation that’s required isn’t available at the moment.
That seems to be a clear signal that Obama wants an end to the coal-fired power industry forthwith, because he makes no mention of subsidising existing companies for the transition period until CCS technology is up and running—and yet it’s accepted that coal-fired power stations will have to be the providers of base load power for many years down the track—and no country is ready now for carbon capture and sequestration.
Australia was the most advanced in the CCS technology field as of late 2007 [ I think it’s still so, but I’m not sure ], but sites for sequestration here [ in Australia] , are only generally identified, with much more information [ expensive in time and money ], required on all of them, and many countries wouldn’t have the necessary geological structures anyway.
The technology isn’t ready to go, by any stretch, and the transport of the CO2 to the sequestration sites is worrying and mind-boggling when you think about the turmoil that will generate—legal challenges etc.
It seems inconceivable that Obama’s administration would not be providing enormous subsidies to existing coal companies , if compliance with his scheme will be enough to bankrupt them—-and he certainly doesn’t sound inclined to subsidise.
There are apparently more than 100 applications for new coal –fired power stations in the US at the moment, so the requirement must be there .
How would existing companies continue to provide the power required, if they’re to be hugely penalised for emitting, to the point of bankruptcy, and yet the technology to capture emissions and store the CO2 isn’t yet available to them?
It would surely become unprofitable to maintain existing c/f power stations, with their future so uncertain or compromised, and coal jobs would go—along with jobs ancillary to coal power generation and coal usage .
Likewise coal mining operations— how could an industry with so many extra costs , upgrade machinery and maintain any sort of viability , safety requirements etc?
What sort of morale levels would there be?
Either that scenario, or they would price their electricity to the levels needed to make them profitable—and not just domestic electricity, but everything Americans buy and every service would become much more expensive.
Obama did say that electricity prices would soar.
What would that do to America’s export trade?
Obama almost seems to be relying on the coal companies to build the new power stations and pay the imposts that he says will bankrupt them—and he says that will give him the funds to dole out to the renewables research projects.
His message is very unclear, and amazingly, he was never asked to clarify it.
12 December 2008 at 8:29 AM
Rod, since natural gas is a) the most efficient fossil energy source for electricity approaching 80% with cogeneration and 60% without and b) emits the least carbon don’t hold your breath. The issue with gas is c) supply and d) could it be used more efficiently for other things.
Please be sure you are in gear before drive by concern trolling.
12 December 2008 at 8:56 AM
I’ve been lurking around here for some time now and this morning found this and immediately thought of this discussion.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28166218
In my own sphere I’ve found that the primary reason for skepticism or usually outright rejection with regards to AGW is that people would HAVE to change. Not just get new light bulbs and make fewer trips to the store change but completely switch the paradigm they use for going about their day.
They know that they will have to be made to change and already have way to much government in their lives. Locally accepting it will be the end of the world as they know it in the Upper Ohio Valley.
They are put in a terrible catch-22. To reject AGW means, from their POV, maybe sometime down the road when things they can’t conceptualize happen be unable to feed their families. Acceptance means they won’t be able to feed their families NOW.
And no one is offering them a shred of hope that all of the money (that they already have to little of) acceptance will cost them will be worth it.
To a learned scientist acceptance is self-evident. To them rejection is self-defense.
12 December 2008 at 9:36 AM
Rod, sorry, but the standard for scientific truth is not flexible. 95% confidence means you can take it to the bank. What is more, most of the measures people are talking about in the short term actually SAVE money. There’s zero excuse not to carry through with them when confronted with a credible threat. Now I know they are not enough, but saving energy NOW buys time in the future, and time is what we need–to better understand the science of climate and mitigation AND to come up with technologies that will save our tuckuses.
I’m afraid I disagree with Matt. Folks like Lynne Vincent-Nathan and Furry Catherder and Jim Galasyn are heros, because they are doing something NOW…buying time. I have a feeling that in about 50 years, our progeny are going to wish a whole lot more of us had acted similarly.
12 December 2008 at 9:38 AM
Rod B:
“Ray (87), I agree with you and Andrew that the real concern is, at the core, economic. You imply this is a “baddie”, but economic, political, or philosophical motivations, per se, are NOT bad.”
Rod B’s core concern is economic, political and philosophical because that is what his comments usually are about. I stopped responding to him because it would just encourage off topic trolling. Remember DFTT!
12 December 2008 at 10:02 AM
RE 197 & “Lynn seems to want everybody to upsticks and move closer to his/her place of work, a massively disruptive suggestion”
I’ve always said “on your next move.” I don’t think I’m suggesting people move soley for GW reasons. But it would have been good, if over the decades people had taken into consideration peak oil and now GW in their deliberations about which house to buy when they ARE in the process of moving.
Perhaps there could even be some “house exchange” thing, where people who live in suburb A and commute to suburb B, exchange houses with people (paying the difference in values) with people who live in suburb B and work in suburb A.
Of course, those renting can move more easily, and a renter I know moved some 4 months ago to be closer to work due to the then high cost of gasoline. She had originally moved to be close to her mother, but then realized she only saw her mother maybe once a week, but had to work 5 or 6 days a week.
12 December 2008 at 10:04 AM
Rod (191), since I readily concede that there were some environmentalists and others concerned about global warming cheerleading ethanol schemes your charge that I am wishing or willing them away is rather hollow.
The fact is “truth’’s original charge was that “little is heard from AGW proponents on that” [the ill-thought-out biofuel option], and later, that those pointing out the downside “must have been very timid and muted,” charges thoroughly trashed by Hank at 126.
And the meme that environmentalists and those concerned about global warming are the influence and the power behind the etahanol gold rush is simply preposterous, no matter how much some would wish or will that that they were.
12 December 2008 at 10:41 AM
Re Douglas Wise @197: “Jim suggests that any proponent of AGW who advocated the use of biofuels was being unrealistic. (I am supposing that he was referring to ethanol production from soya or corn). Why?”
Because manufacturing ethanol from high-starch food crops is grossly inefficient, yielding barely more energy than all of the combined fuel inputs expended in planting, fertilizing, watering, weeding, harvesting, transporting and processing the crop into ethanol fuel. That alone makes it a senseless boondoggle. We might as well just burn the inputs directly since the same amount of fossil carbon will go up in CO2 and it will have no net effect on reducing imported fossil fuels.
Because growing high-starch food crops for fuel either diverts food from human consumption, or it removes agricultural land from food production.
“There is little compelling evidence that food costs were adversely affected…”
You must be joking. Although in your defense, the corn price shocks widely featured in media reports were mainly due to speculators taking advantage of the situation to boost profits, since the corn used to produce ethanol is not the type of corn used to make corn meal for tortillas.
Douglas: “but, even if they were, the major sufferers would not have been US citizens.”
Yes, that is indeed callous. Are you quite sure you want to go down that road?
And finally, I don’t think that there are any proponents of AGW, which is why I have started to use the term AGW realists.
Captcha: PUNCH down
12 December 2008 at 10:57 AM
Rod B,
If the climate science predictions continue to unfold as expected over the next couple of decades, I believe that the dire seriousness of the situation is likely to become undeniably obvious and frightening to every sane person.
Barack and the leaders who follow him, in the US and elsewhere, will be then far more likely to take on the Herculean task of switching the World’s economy to low or zero emissions through the decommissioning of fossil fuelled electricity generation, a concomitant ramp up of solar, wind and geothermal generation, and possibly (if ever possible) the commissioning of technologies to start stripping CO2 out of the atmosphere. They will be unable to resist the strident demands of their populaces that we all get on with the job.
Lamark and other scientists who passionately and honestly pursued scientific dead-ends should be remembered with respect. The contrarians who attempt to twist public perceptions of climate science to suit their political and economic orthodoxies will be remembered with derision.
12 December 2008 at 11:06 AM
Lewis, While I agree that the potential sacrifices demanded for mitigation of climate change could be daunting, how is it such a bad thing to go out and buy a smaller, more efficient car? Or even to keep your tires properly inflated to improve gas mileage. To switch to compact fluorescents? To wear a sweater in the house? How is it a bad thing to plant a garden and grow some of your family’s food? Or even to go hunting? Or to plant some trees? All of these things save money and energy NOW, and buy time in the future. Accepting the truth is essential to responsibility. Accepting responsibility is essential to self defense.
RECAPTCHA gets personal: despise Jersey
12 December 2008 at 11:17 AM
Lynn (188), I applaud your effort and agree every little individual bit helps. I’m just saying you can not credibly project these things to a satisfactory system wide solution, and set it aside as a hunky-dory done deal. Gonna take more than car pooling and keeping our tires inflated, though individuals should.
12 December 2008 at 11:23 AM
Rod B wrote: “Barack is going to kill only the 100+ GWatts (40% of) from coal planned for the next 20-25 years and leave (much to your chagrin it seems) the current 300 GWatts alone?”
As I wrote above, my hope is that the Obama administration, and the Democratic majority in Congress, will move quickly to ban construction of any new coal-fired power plants, period, and will then move to phase out and shut down the existing coal-fired power plants as quickly as possible.
I am opposed to the construction of any new nuclear power plants. There is no need for them. The USA has vast commercially-exploitable wind and solar energy resources, that are more than sufficient to provide all the electricity we need to maintain a prosperous, comfortable, technologically-advanced society. I am OK with existing nuclear power plants continuing to operate for some time yet, until they can be phased out. Of course at the end of their service lives they will all have to be decommissioned — which will be a huge, huge cost but cannot be avoided now.
The downside is that as long as those plants operate, they are producing more nuclear waste, which we presently have no way of dealing with safely. That’s bad, but not as bad as continuing to spew massive amounts of CO2 from coal, so IMO phasing out nuclear is not as urgent as phasing out coal. However, if we are going to continue running those nuclear power plants, the inadequate regulation and safety regime for the nuclear power industry — from mining and refining fuel, through operation, to waste sequestration and decommissioning of old power plants — must be considerably strengthened.
ReCaptcha says it’s “anybody’s verdict”.
12 December 2008 at 11:33 AM
#201 Ray: 95% confidence means you can take it to the bank.
I wonder what % of the time scientists that claim 95% confidence are wrong? As previously stated, experts tend to overstate what they think they know, and don’t know what they don’t know.
If confidence was really 95% on a single event, then that implies one would be willing to take some severely lopsided odds that indeed what they say will happen will in fact happen. But nobody ever will. On either side.
Which implies people aren’t 95%.
Would Hansen have won a 20 year bet that we’d be close to B? Nope. Inside A through C? Probably not. What was his confidence in his prediction?
Everyone talks about the guys that predicted the market will melt down. If in fact they believed it, then they should have made $100 for every $ they had invested.
But they didn’t.
Find me the climate scientist that will bet his kids education and his retirement on a 20 year assertion that is half as scary as the IPCC and that will deliver odds that are proportional to his confidence. Is there one? Ditto on the naysayers. Absent both, let’s not pretend we know more than we do.
12 December 2008 at 11:35 AM
Douglas (197), a minor clarification, not a disagreement. The problem with corn ethanol as a mitigator of AGW is that it depends totally on the stalks, leaves and roots sequesturing carbon forever; it’s not clear how much of that is true. As a mitigator of oil imports it works and becomes the oil import vs. food question.
12 December 2008 at 11:35 AM
““Truth” pedals anything but.” - Jim Eager@83
It’s a useful heuristic that anyone using a nym such as “truth” or “common sense” in an online discussion is almost always peddling some sort of disingenuous garbage.
12 December 2008 at 11:52 AM
#207 Ray: Lewis, While I agree that the potential sacrifices demanded for mitigation of climate change could be daunting, how is it such a bad thing to go out and buy a smaller, more efficient car? Or even to keep your tires properly inflated to improve gas mileage. To switch to compact fluorescents? To wear a sweater in the house? How is it a bad thing to plant a garden and grow some of your family’s food? Or even to go hunting? Or to plant some trees? All of these things save money and energy NOW, and buy time in the future. Accepting the truth is essential to responsibility. Accepting responsibility is essential to self defense.
These aren’t bad things IF people want to do them on their own. They don’t help any measurable amount, especially if they are adding electronic gadgets to their house at a rate that exceeds their reductions (and overwhelmingly they are). But I get the feeling that volunteering to do these things won’t be enough for you in the future.
That’s the part that worries me.
[edit - OT]
12 December 2008 at 11:52 AM
“Also, the green movements are even more dangerous than the denialists at times.” - jcbmack
Justification for this claim?
12 December 2008 at 11:57 AM
#203 LynnV: I’ve always said “on your next move.” I don’t think I’m suggesting people move soley for GW reasons. But it would have been good, if over the decades people had taken into consideration peak oil and now GW in their deliberations about which house to buy when they ARE in the process of moving.
If we substantially reduce CO2 emissions in the next few decades, either through nuclear or enormous alt energy or both, and if electric cars become the primary means of transportation, then why worry at all where people live?
In fact, cars in 20-30 years will move on highways densely packed and at very high speeds, talking to other cars around them and coordinating their moves.
Only if we stay on oil does sprawl matter. If we solve the oil problem and travel in cars moving at 120 MPH, sprawl will become the preferred path for most.
12 December 2008 at 12:08 PM
“Only if we stay on oil does sprawl matter. If we solve the oil problem and travel in cars moving at 120 MPH, sprawl will become the preferred path for most.”
And these people have asserted here that climate change is not the most important environmental risk?
12 December 2008 at 12:10 PM
#209 SecularAnimist : I am opposed to the construction of any new nuclear power plants. There is no need for them. The USA has vast commercially-exploitable wind and solar energy resources, that are more than sufficient to provide all the electricity we need to maintain a prosperous, comfortable, technologically-advanced society. I am OK with existing nuclear power plants continuing to operate for some time yet, until they can be phased out. Of course at the end of their service lives they will all have to be decommissioned — which will be a huge, huge cost but cannot be avoided now.
You can bet new nuclear plants are coming. Excelon are busy “uprating” existing plants, and planning on building more once they can be sure the red tape is out of the picture..
“Exelon will not commit to building new nuclear plants, however,
until we are satisfied that our conditions for safety, regulatory stability, bipartisan
federal, state and local support, spent fuel management and cost have been met.”
If safety and fuel storage really worried them, then they wouldn’t be uprating current plants. Instead, it’s the regulatory red tape they worry about. And that’s why they’ve donated so much to Obama.
Let’s start rolling the concrete trucks, because more nuclear is coming. Finally.
http://www.exeloncorp.com/NR/rdonlyres/6BF790FC-6ADB-422D-A7A5-36F3776748CC/0/080716Exelon2020_A_Low_Carbon_Roadmap.pdf
12 December 2008 at 12:13 PM
Eli (199), just so I understand, are you asserting the using natural gas instead of coal in power generation results in a massive reduction (for the same kWh) in CO2. My chemistry says about 40% less joule for joule (though one can find tons of different estimates for joules/mole or /kg for coal). Noticeable; but enough to say “NO PROBLEM” here?? Then gasoline which is only about 15% or so worse than natural gas ought to be no problem too, yes?
12 December 2008 at 12:14 PM
matt wrote: “… cars in 20-30 years will move on highways densely packed and at very high speeds …”
We have that technology now. It’s called a railroad.
12 December 2008 at 12:25 PM
Ray (201) But the 95% was not delivered on the tablets; it was prepared by the folks assessing their own work (hidden somewhat behind obscure math). And I can not buy the sanguine effect of mitigation that you rose-colored glasses wearers see. I suspect we will continue to disagree here.
I do support the insurance idea. It makes sense to do some not largely expensive and disruptive “mitigation”, like the individual efforts (many of which do save money — though will not fix the problem as I asserted to Lynn), or larger things that will be likely required anyway like getting off the eventually depleted oil stocks.
12 December 2008 at 12:28 PM
It’s O.K. Joseph. I’m not hungry anyway.
12 December 2008 at 12:29 PM
“Further, no one set out to disbelieve that human behavior affects climate” - snorbert zangox
This is completely false. There is a considerable section of right-wing opinion which cannot stomach the possibility that any human activity has serious environmental effects - because this undermines their faith that “free markets” can solve all problems. consider this random sample, from http://www.thelibertypapers.org/2008/10/29/the-great-libertarian-purge-of-2008/
““Belief” in AGW is a test of intelligence and knowledge, not libertarianism. The idiots and dupes and whores (Scientists who get their funding based on saying the “correct” things) believe in it, the rest of us don’t.
At a minimum, the rest of us understand that the cost of Kyoto etc. FAR outweighs any potential benefits.” - Greg Q
or follow the links from:
http://crookedtimber.org/2008/06/15/libertarians-and-global-warming/, particularly http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/2/6/155027.shtml,
the author of which claims: “The real purpose behind the global warming movement is the establishment of a world socia-list order under the control of the United Nations.”
Other examples are legion.
12 December 2008 at 12:32 PM
Matt complains: “If confidence was really 95% on a single event, then that implies one would be willing to take some severely lopsided odds that indeed what they say will happen will in fact happen. But nobody ever will. On either side.”
Ah, but you see, we aren’t betting on a single event, but rather a trend. It’s more like your retirement (at least if you are being responsible) than a roll of the dice. You claim that experts overstate their confidence. Care to provide an example of a time where the overwhelming majority of experts (>100) claimied 95% confidence and were wrong in the physical sciences? Actually, most experts I know are very conservative. If you aren’t, you don’t stay an expert very long.
12 December 2008 at 1:10 PM
#207 Ray, your long suit is science. Be true to your calling. Steer clear of politics (cf my comment about Bohr #92). Your advice “wear a sweater in the house” isn’t one of the world’s most persuasive vote-winners. I was working in Berlin when the wall fell in 1989. When the East Germans saw what they’d been denied (from bananas to Mercs) their fury knew no bounds….
12 December 2008 at 1:26 PM
OK, Simon, here’s a question: What do you have against sweaters? Why do folks like you take so much pleasure in being wasteful? You guys had a field day with Jimmy Carter in his sweater turning down the thermostat in the Whitehouse. You ridiculed Barack Obama for having the temerity to suggest that properly inflated tires could make a difference. Now these things are all demonstrably true and in fact proven. So, why do you hate the idea of giving the planet a break and backing off on wasteful consumption?
12 December 2008 at 1:37 PM
matt:”I wonder what % of the time scientists that claim 95% confidence are wrong? As previously stated, experts tend to overstate what they think they know, and don’t know what they don’t know.”
Spoken by someone who doesn’t know about level of expertise and self-assessment. As a matter of fact, it is the nonexpert who WAY overestimates their level of knowledge, precisely because they don’t know what they don’t know (because they don’t know anything). This is called the Dunning-Krueger effect. Look it up in Wikipedia.
12 December 2008 at 1:53 PM
re 217 & 218–
If environmental costs are appropriately represented in the economy, more of us will be wearing sweaters inside–as I am now, actually.
Our present economy, though, sends hopelessly mixed signals. That’s why cap and trade or some other mechanism for attaching a cost to pollution is so critical. The denialist furore surely provides us ample proof that purely individualistic, voluntary measures are not going to save our butts–some of these folk wouldn’t be convinced even if Miami *were* to be submerged in glacial meltwater, and the “tragedy of the commons” logic will still apply for quite a while as the number of the unconvinced slowly shrinks. So we will do better if structural reforms make possible to “do well by doing good.”
12 December 2008 at 2:29 PM
Ray at #207, then what?
I changed the light bulbs. If I turn down the furnace any lower the girlfriend will break up with me. She’s miserable many nights even with a sweater over long sleeved t-shirts and despite all the cuddling and despite her own desire to do the right thing.
Maybe I should just turn it down more anyway? It would be the right thing for future generations wouldn’t it?
It is a bit of quandry. Protect the earth for future generations or not father them.
12 December 2008 at 2:30 PM
Ray wrote: “… how is it such a bad thing to … switch to compact fluorescents? … save money and energy NOW, and buy time in the future.”
matt replied: “These aren’t bad things IF people want to do them on their own. They don’t help any measurable amount …”
matt is mistaken. According to WorldWatch Institute:
12 December 2008 at 3:06 PM
#214 Nick, as a scientist with a background in physics, engineering and degrees in biology and chemistry and an individual belonging to green movements email news, I know a lot of what they propose is not feaible from an engineering standpoint, far too expensive in a too short period of time and most of the people running or belonging to the green movements have little to no scientific backgrounds. Any climatologist, physicist and especially engineers know this.
12 December 2008 at 3:11 PM
#225 Ray. I have been wearing my lined wool-mix Norwegian-style sweater which I bought in Lidl two years ago for £15, every day indoors since Dec 1. The daytime temperature here (UK lat 54degN) has been freezing or thereabouts ever since then; my wife wears two sweaters of a more fashionable provenance (pure wool I believe). I do not attribute the temperature to any unseasonable effect, it’s just that I can no longer afford to heat the room of the house we normally inhabit during the hours of daylight at this time of year. I’m sorry that energy isn’t as cheap as it used to be and I’m very concerned that it will not even be available on a continuous basis in the foreseeable future. Anyway, I’ve nothing against sweaters (your first question).
Second question: “Why do folks like you take so much pleasure in being wasteful?” Maybe it’s a surprise for you to learn that I too abhor waste (although the issue “what is waste” becomes somewhat philosophical given the conservation laws of physics). Did you know BTW that if you overinflate your tyres (tires) you get much better fuel consumption? (Wears them out quicker of course).
It’s your last question that is for me the most telling however. I quote ”So, why do you hate the idea of giving the planet a break and backing off on wasteful consumption?” Wasteful consumption of what exactly?: sunlight? water? iron? aluminium? timber? coal? oil? uranium? How will “backing off” use of these resources give the planet “a break”?
12 December 2008 at 3:39 PM
Simon, give it a break. You can’t be as naive as you’re pretending to be. Overinflate your tires and you decrease the contact area, creating a severe hazard to yourself and other traffic. Don’t give advice that can get some naive reader killed, eh?
12 December 2008 at 3:39 PM
Jim Eager:
Are you sure about that? There are plenty of people who insist global warming will be a good thing, and plenty more who insist that burning fossil fuels is both wonderful and necessary. Aren’t they effectively promoting global warming?
12 December 2008 at 4:46 PM
#232 Hank - Higher tyre pressures give better consumption and better roadholding. We all knew this in the sixties!
The only negative issue is tyre life. Hank says “Don’t give advice that can get some naive reader killed, eh?” We’re way OT here Hank, but do please stick to the facts.
12 December 2008 at 4:50 PM
llewelly (233), sure there are plenty of people who insist global warming will be a good thing, but they also tend to argue that it isn’t happening, that humans aren’t causing it, that it’s the sun, that the weather stations are poorly sited, etc, etc, etc.
In other words, it’s just one more bogus argument in their arsenal.
12 December 2008 at 5:21 PM
Mention has been made several times about 95% certainty of AGW. How about a certainty exceeding 99% by one of the leading climatologists of our time, if not the leading one:
“Now, as then, I can assert that these conclusions have a certainty exceeding 99 percent.
The difference is that now we have used up all slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb. The next president and Congress must define a course next year in which the United States exerts leadership commensurate with our responsibility for the present dangerous situation.”
The above quote is from James Hansen’s testimony to Congress last June.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/twenty-years-later-tippin_b_108766.html
12 December 2008 at 5:38 PM
#230 jcbmack,
I can’t match your scientific qualifications but I have 25 years experience of activism with UK NGOs, especially the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which has brought me into contact with many green organisations and I can confirm that much of what you say is correct.
12 December 2008 at 5:41 PM
Craig (206), “if”, of course, is the operative word in all of this. Your second paragraph is probably accurate in its context. It will be a long way from the walk in the park that many predict, though. [Executive Order: Beginning next month no electricity by coal or methane and all cars, trucks and busses must be shut off and parked. Ought to work.]
And if AGW proves correct but almost too late as you say in your third paragraph, your prediction of the altitudes toward us skeptics is also probably correct — and probably not totally unreasonable. You guys will be equally derided if we upset the fruit basket at the tune of maybe hundreds of $trillions for mitigation and find it was not needed. (Admittedly, however, we might not logically be able to tell then; good position for you to be in.
)
reCAPTCHA = mighty bill
12 December 2008 at 5:53 PM
Matt, but what about all the CO2 released from manufacturing the concrete on all of those trucks???
12 December 2008 at 6:02 PM
Well, Ray, more than 95% of the scientists, starting with Ptolemy, were more than 99% certain that Earth was the center of the solar system for centuries. I know. I know. They don’t count!
12 December 2008 at 6:07 PM
Ray, “properly inflated tires can make a difference”??? Like putting bricks in the toilet tank??? Careful. I like it when you keep your wits.
12 December 2008 at 6:14 PM
Kevin, good point. Environmental costs are not properly accounted for in the market economy of things and that is a primary problem. But, it isn’t easy. And cap and trade is a smoke and mirror ineffective panacea.
captcha: Ayres legality ???
12 December 2008 at 7:33 PM
Simon Abingdon asks: “How will “backing off” use of these resources give the planet “a break”?”
Are you aware of the energy needed to produce aluminum? Have you ever seen an open-pit coal mine? Are you in denail about the effects of fertilizer run-off into streams and estuaries as well as the effect of CO2 on climate?
Look, there are a lot of things I wish were true. One of them is that we weren’t jeopardizing civilization by putting CO2 into the atmosphere. That, unfortunately, means that the advancement of science is going to be a lot slower than it would have been as we have to divert resources to address climate issues. That affects me directly. But that’s reality. It does no good to deny it. It does no good to pretend you didn’t hear the experts. We have to deal with it. It isn’t optional.
12 December 2008 at 7:42 PM
Rod,
“Make sure your tires are properly inflated. Check your manufacturers specifications, or if you have specialty tires often times their websites will tell you, if its not listed directly on the tire itself. Typcailly for most sedans its 30-35 PSI. Having properly inflated tires can get you up to 10% better gas milage on average.”
http://www.ehow.com/how_4397589_better-gas-milage.html
Good Lord, Man. As Hank says, you can look this friggin stuff up!
Now onto science: The sceintific method dates form the era of Francis Bacon and Galileo, not Ptolemy. Prior to this point, you have “natural philosophy” or philosophy, not science.
12 December 2008 at 8:55 PM
Lawerence, there was a question whether I was the smartest guy within a 20 mile radfius. I did a study and found I was, with a 99% certainty. Man!
12 December 2008 at 9:10 PM
Ray, can you reference the peer-reviewed papers that show that the average driver is driving with sufficiently low tire pressure that he can improve MPG 10% by raising it to 35psi? Actually raising to 30psi would be easier and evidently result in exactly the same improvement.
Don’t rear the ads in the car mags!
12 December 2008 at 9:14 PM
Just noting that we are in that “rare opportunity zone” right now where there is no real impact on global temperatures from an El Nino or La Nina or the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.
The ENSO has been mostly neutral for the past 5 months and the AMO in November fell to a paltry 0.055C - or more-or-less ZERO for both of them.
The southern Atlantic sea surface temperatures which have a big impact on particularly the Southern Hemisphere temperatures is also roughly ZERO right now.
In other words, temperatures are not being affected by the natural variation caused by the most influential ocean cycles - the ENSO, the AMO and the Southern Atlantic.
The Hadcrut3 anomaly was only 0.387C in November 2008 signaling there has only been about 0.4C of warming over the last 40 years.
GISS Temp for November is not out yet, but this month provides a really rare opportunity to assess how much global warming there really has been to date.
12 December 2008 at 9:46 PM
http://www.edmunds.com/advice/fueleconomy/articles/126090/article.html
12 December 2008 at 9:49 PM
See also:
http://www.edmunds.com/advice/fueleconomy/articles/126090/article.html
Rod, you can find the studies behind the current trend toward automatic tire pressure monitoring systems, I’m sure, if you look.
12 December 2008 at 9:56 PM
Wups, copypaste fail; that second link should be
http://www.edmunds.com/ownership/safety/articles/123996/article.html
Edmunds surveyed their own employees using digital tire gauges (first link), and also quotes the federal estimates (second link).
And you’ll also find — by now you know how to find this stuff for yourself:
“Underinflated tires waste gas. How much gas? The Department of Transportation estimates that 5 million gallons of fuel per day are wasted due to low tire pressure. That’s more than 2 billion gallons per year…..”
12 December 2008 at 10:04 PM
@SecularAnimist 229: A couple of months ago I saw these commercials claiming that switching to the more efficient bulbs was equivalent to taking millions of cars off the road. I then went to the website they advertised and found some more of their claims about these bulbs, namely the great savings over the lifetime of the bulb. With this information I emailed the site asking, if these bulbs save us so much money, where is the money going that doesn’t increase the demand for energy? Any good we buy with that savings has energy, and most likely not clean energy, as an input. Similarly with most services we buy. Then we consider the velocity of money, the fact that it will be spent again by the people we give it to; how can we know the final effects on energy usage from switching to high efficiency bulbs? It might actually increase the demand for energy by increasing our effective wealth. I never heard back from the website in response to my email. I personally do use high efficiency bulbs, in large part because of the long term savings, but I cringe when I see commercials making completely unjustified statements.
12 December 2008 at 11:52 PM
Re #247 John Lang,
Playing with numbers.
I live on the Monaro Tableland in New South Wales Australia.
Prior to 4 years ago the dam on my property froze over more than 5 times per winter. Three years ago it froze over 3 times, last year twice, this year none.
Prior to 8 years ago snow falls down to 700 meters were not unusual in this area, last year it fell down to about 900 meters for one day only, this year it was down to 1000 meters for 1/2 a day.
My observations also seem to correlate in nearby regions, see: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/snowman-would-be-stretching-it/2008/07/09/1215282928012.html
Local old time residents to this area tell me that a solid week of snow could be expected on the ground where I live and the local mountain would be snow capped for a month. In addition, strong cold fronts could bring snow right up until the end of December. They recall three Christmas day snow falls (over 50 years). There is no way that would happen now.
It is as though the Southern Ocean has warmed enough to take the bite out of the cold prior to the wind reaching Australia.
The climate where I live is behaving more like a 5 degrees C warmer increase over the last 30 to 40 years.
13 December 2008 at 6:08 AM
Ben, 251.
You can buy organic. It’s more expensive than mass produced and uses less energy still.
You can save up some money for a buffer and then quit the job you don’t really like for a job you DO like but didn’t pay enough.
You can buy local which doesn’t use cheap labour but does use more cheap oil.
Why MUST you spend all your money? if you have money left over then you don’t need your job and the freedom you get from not having to have the job means they can’t bully you.
13 December 2008 at 6:52 AM
e 242–Rod, one piece I found has this to say about the cap-and-trade approach:
“History has shown that the marketplace does a better job of developing new technologies, and a tax takes money out of the marketplace. The solution is cap-and-trade. A cap-and-trade strategy provides the incentive for all segments of the economy to compete to discover the best ways to cut emissions.
In a cap-and-trade system, the government plays a small role, and leaves the main decisions to the private sector. The government establishes an overall emissions cap and assigns specific emissions allocations to the different sources of CO2. It does not tell industries and companies what to do or how to meet their allocations. Each company is free to make those choices. It can reduce its own emissions or pay someone else to lower them. Businesses can profit by coming in below their cap and selling their extra carbon credits to others. Even farmers can profit by enhancing carbon storage in soils and trees and selling the extra carbon credits.
The advantages of cap-and-trade are significant. Unlike a tax, it encourages innovation by creating incentives and rewarding those who lower emissions at the least cost. And most importantly, a cap — unlike a tax — guarantees the necessary cuts to stabilize the climate. All a tax does is discourage emissions; it doesn’t specify an emissions target that must be met.”
Sounds like it ought to be somewhat up your alley. Could you elaborate on why you disagree? And are there some particular sources I should look at?
(Captcha: Rhoades $1,844)
13 December 2008 at 7:31 AM
Ray Ladbury:
I think you would find that many AGW sceptics do many of those things you listed, except hunting—our family certainly does [ but never hunting ].
And many have given up the second car—-while the opposite is the case with many of the trendier of AGW proponents.
Re your 223 post—this scientific controversy is different from any that have existed in the past, because those supporting the consensus AGW view are demanding world-changing interventions that may produce any number of unintended consequences for the whole world, and for individual countries—and in the process, may not even achieve the intended effect.
In this situation, where it has been ordained by the AGW ‘consensus’, and almost all of the world’s media—all of the world’s Left [ to various degree] governments—most EU governments—-that the only morally acceptable stance [ as many of you here have admonished me]is to champion the AGW orthodoxy without reservation [ no questioning allowed], even if you see arguments made by sceptical scientists that make sense, and coincide with real world observations—-in this case, the 95% agreement is meaningless because hubris, fear of job loss or funding loss, fear of professional embarrassment, enjoyment of media attention and adulation, enjoyment of the deference of colleagues etc all come into play.
It has become too much of a global cause celebre—-too political and trendy, to be compared with past situations.
Where only one outcome is acceptable, and to espouse another is akin to heresy , and an act of professional or political suicide, of course the side demanding compliance is going to have big numbers.
Re your 243 post—-it’s very emotive to raise the problems with aluminium production, coal mines, fertilizer etc, but it’s only a small part of the story.
The renewables have their very large problems with toxicity and the environment too, and use a great deal of energy in their manufacture, installation, transportation, recycling and disposal.
Eg—the polysilicon used to make photovoltaic cells requires a great deal of energy in its manufacture, and generates toxic liquid waste in the form of silicon tetrachloride—a chemical that, when exposed to humid air, transforms into hydrochloric acid and chlorine gas, which is very toxic to humans and renders soils infertile.
The waste can be recycled, but requires lots of energy input to do so, so in China it’s being dumped in fields, where it’s destroying crops and poisoning people who have no means of escaping it.
And many of the metals used in photovoltaics are dwindling in supply, eg indium and gallium.
Some of the most efficient solar panels use toxic heavy metals[ eg cadmium], in their manufacture, and disposal is therefore expected to be a massive problem—with the UE reluctant to allow their use.
There are many people who find the proximity of windmills deleterious to their lives and their health.
So it’s a slippery slope when you start to eliminate energy sources citing their problems—because most have problems.
[Response: But why do you think that discussions about what the energy mix should be and what the pros and cons of each source are, have anything to do with ‘the AGW consensus’? Since every one has costs and benefits, it is very much a political (not scientific) decision that needs to be made. However science informs those decisions by providing a way to assess consequences (whether through CO2 emissions, sulphate emissions, land use impacts, etc.) of any particular choice. - gavin]
13 December 2008 at 8:39 AM
Ben #251: The argument that we should not save energy and money because we might spend it on something that would hurt the environment has to rank among the 10 dumbest things I’ve heard this year–and this is a year that featured a US Presidential election.
It’s somewhere along the lines of: “Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I stick my finger into the light socket…”
13 December 2008 at 8:44 AM
Lawrence McLean, the southern ocean temperatures south of Australia have warmed about 0.4C over the past 40 years.
13 December 2008 at 8:47 AM
John Lang,
I’m not sure 1 month follow a pretty deep La Nina represents sufficient time to overcome the inertia of the system. If we could measure the radiative energy balance of the system, that would be interesting, but we all know why we can’t:
http://www.desmogblog.com/dscovr-killed-dick-cheney-nasa-insider-climate-change-satellite
Oops, ReCAPTCHA hits close to my heart: spend Webb (James Webb Space Telescope?)
13 December 2008 at 10:16 AM
Ray Ladbury, the Nino anomalies have been close to zero since about July.
There seems to be about a 3 month lag with the ENSO in its influence on temperatures (sometimes 2 months, sometimes 4 months, but more commonly around 3 months.)
While the Nino indices have moved slightly negative since July, the numbers are very small since the Nino anomalies can be as much as +/- 3.0C.
The most consistent analysis of the trends say you can take the Nina 3.4 anomaly of three months ago * 0.076 and you can get a pretty good estimate of the influence of the ENSO on global temperatures this month - or just +0.01C in November 2008.
13 December 2008 at 10:43 AM
Rod, re #245- What data did you use in your study? How did you analyze it to come to your conclusion?
13 December 2008 at 11:50 AM
Well, “Truth,” I’m all ears. Tell me where there’s a denialist argument that makes sense? Where is there a model anywhere that works with a CO2 sensitivity less than 2 degrees per doubling? All I hear is complete drivel from retired professors of basket weaving and accusations that it’s all a leftie plot.
Look, the “consensus” is nothing more than the ideas that scientists have found indispensable to understand the climate. Unfortunately, the unavoidable consequence of those ideas is that all the CO2 we’re adding to the atmosphere has to be warming the planet. This does not have anything to do with any political ideology. Is it the fault of the scientists that many nutjobs on the right have rejected good science. I have an answer for them: accept the good science and move on to discussions about how to handle the problem.
So, I’ll agree that this scientific controversy is different from all others–but that’s because there’s no scientific controversy. Or do you claim that every National Academy of Science and Professional organization of scientists in the world are a bunch of liberal-commie-pinko-fag junkies.
13 December 2008 at 11:52 AM
“truth”, I’ve seen that silicon tetrachloride claim before, and even commented on it, i.e. http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2008/03/back_in_the_land_of_unintended_1.html#comments
I still maintain it is either a fairytale or that the chemical engineers involved haven’t got a bloody clue what they are doing. Silicon tetrachloride is a valuable resource, it is volatile and easily distilled. Heated fairly mildly, 350°C ish, (silicon reduction in blast furnaces via carbothermal processes requires 1700°C), it will dissociate into Si(s) and Cl(g), perfect for the production of pure silicon. Instead mix it with water and you get clean SiO2 (your feedstock material) and HCl, which is employed in extracting silicon from metallurgical grade silicon in the carbothermal process. Why would you throw it away?
13 December 2008 at 12:35 PM
Hank, I find your ready acceptance of the scientific rigor (not) behind the mileage improvements of from a delta 2-5 psi a bit humorous (in a friendly way) given your bent otherwise.
13 December 2008 at 12:57 PM
From the Washington Post (Friday: here): “The modest result leaves the three-year process far short of the goal of concluding a binding agreement by the end of 2009 to curb greenhouse gas emissions and slow the planet’s warming, which under current conditions scientists predict will reach dangerous and irreversible levels by the end of the century, if not sooner.”
In the last part, “dangerous” seems obviously true (as here), but “irreversible?” where does that come from? if someone can point me to RC discussion of how/why some climate change may not be undone (through reforestation, carbon sequestration, etc.), i’d appreciate it a lot.
13 December 2008 at 1:16 PM
Kevin (254), I’ll offer one example (admittedly oversimplified but maybe instructive). Entity A is producing X tons of CO2 over its allocation. Entity B is producing X tons under its. So Entity A buys credits from Entity B. Result: B’s profit goes up. A’s profit goes down, inhibiting its capability for investing into actually reducing its emissions. Emissions of CO2 has not changed a twit. Except for the possibility of B deciding to invest in additional CO2 emitting projects to use up its credits rather than sell them.
A little like the European countries aiding their Kyoto targets, not by reducing their emissions, but by buying credits from the tanked (at the time…) Russian economy.
13 December 2008 at 1:26 PM
Rod,
properly inflated tires does improve gas mileage and reduces emissions by a little bit.
13 December 2008 at 1:35 PM
Lawrence (260), I surveyed a bunch of guys down at the local diner, estimated my sample, projected it to the populace deemed to be within 20mi. using very rigorous statistical mathematics to give me a 99% confidence level, and EUREKA!
13 December 2008 at 1:44 PM
Oh, and contrary to what Rush claims, more air in a tire will NOT lead to hydroplaning on puddle covered streets, actually is a basic concept, the more air pressure in the tire, the less the vehicle is likely to hyrdoplane, we know this based upon basic physics and its applications not only in land vehicles, but in plane tires with proper or higher tire pressure; obviously too high and a tire is more likely to pop, but that is not what the experts or the Obama mention of it was referring to. Every tire type has proper air pressure specifications.
13 December 2008 at 2:00 PM
I gave you one pointer, Rod, not an endorsement. Want the references behind that? Look for it. You know how.
13 December 2008 at 2:06 PM
@256 Its not a might. We do spend it. Unless you burn or bury your money its going to be spent. I’m not saying don’t switch to high efficiency bulbs, I’m just saying don’t lie about things that you can’t properly predict, and the full impact of switching to high efficiency bulbs is not something you can properly predict. You say its one of the top 10 dumbest things you’ve heard, but a similar argument was proposed by Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winner in economics.
@253 You only get that freedom by virtue of spending the money. Having the money doesn’t get you food and shelter on its own. You have to spend the money to get those things. And if you don’t spend all your money in your lifetime, your family or the government usually ensure that it is spent eventually.
13 December 2008 at 2:49 PM
Hank,
what happened to always posting references? That is ok, you are seeking and learning that is good to see, your learning process is real.
13 December 2008 at 3:52 PM
Being green requires concrete and steel production and the supplying of materials to conduct energy and to supply technological infrastructure which would most definitely raise our carbon footprint at first.
13 December 2008 at 3:56 PM
Rod B., Say it ain’t so. You’ve abandoned the free market. I can apply the same logic. Company A produces better widgets than company B, so company A takes market share away. This diminishes company B’s ability to retool and produce better widgets.
-OR-
It scares the bejesus out of company B, so they go get the investment they need to compete with company A. Likewise, they can get capital to clean up their process so they don’t need to buy credits. Sorry, Rod. Markets either work or they don’t. I think they do.
13 December 2008 at 4:12 PM
Rod says:
“Lawrence (260), I surveyed a bunch of guys down at the local diner, estimated my sample, projected it to the populace deemed to be within 20mi. using very rigorous statistical mathematics to give me a 99% confidence level, and EUREKA!”
Not bad, Rod. Good for a chuckle.It’s good not to take ourselves too seriously, but we oughtta take global warming seriously. You’re making light of this whole thing,either because you don’t take much stock in the climatic data, or the physics involved in the analyses.
You’d do better by taking an example from Kepler.He took the observations taken by Tycho Brahe(before the telescope),mathematically plugged it in and concluded that the planets orbits around the Sun were elliptical.
This is a little more conventional way that science is done.
13 December 2008 at 4:45 PM
A.C. Let me answer your question with another question: Once the carbon is mixed into the atmosphere at altitudes all the way up to the stratosphere, how do you get it out so that you can sequester it? Another question: Once the permafrost and oceans become net sources of CO2 and CH4, how do you reverse that? Of course, in the long run, over geologic timescales, CO2 will weather olivine and other rocks and again become sequester. However, as Keynes said, “In the long run, we are all dead.”
13 December 2008 at 9:58 PM
jcbmack (266), agreed. I simply refuted the implied hyperbolic marketing fluff that if every driver checked his tire pressure the country’s gasoline consumption would decrease 10%. It pretty much relied on the assumption that the average driver is driving probably about 10psi, at least 5 or more, under recommendations. Seems an obvious stretch. I don’t fault the marketing excesses. But I find it humorous that my learned scientist friends swallowed it right up. No big deal, really
13 December 2008 at 10:06 PM
We will only have 50 years or so left of Uranium enrichment left for nuclear applications, and I do believe the French are the ones who handle nuclear power well, I think the US is a little lazy to be applying a major % of electrical sources from nuclear. Any thoughts Ray and others?
What are we going to do, build 100 watt turbines…lol, what do we do what can we engineer, what materials should be used?
13 December 2008 at 10:07 PM
Ray we can use plants, bacteria in sequestering, not so difficult.
13 December 2008 at 10:08 PM
Ray, I said nothing related to free (or unfree) markets. For all I know A and B are in totally different enterprise markets. But I’d like your opinion: was my simple example of cap and trade likely, possible, not likely, or impossible?
13 December 2008 at 10:17 PM
Lawrence, I was being simple and humorous to make a serious point: the 95% (or Hansen’s 99%) confidence level is a construct of people, not something indelible, unassailable, and absolute delivered by God on tablets of stone.
13 December 2008 at 10:31 PM
Some further suggestions on sequestering as well: http://www.fossil.energy.gov/news/techlines/2008/08030-CO2_Capture_Projects_Selected.html
It is only politics and $ that stops us from lowering emissions faster, but these are real obstacles.
Early bacteria photsynthetic bacteria and those still around today could be utilized, not just in conjunction with planting trees and other sequestering methods, but in huge tanks where the very simple chemistry plays out to create more 02 and take in more CO2 and break down CH4 and NH4, this is the subject mater of bioengineering… the SO2 stratospheric plan is very wrong, and should not be implemented at all, but if it is, on a short time frame and only just enough to do a mild partial offset of warming, nothing more, that acid rain and potential killing of plant and other wild life is just as serious as CO2 and CH4 in that sense and the cooling reverses quickly in conjunction with variables not worth finding out the hard way.
13 December 2008 at 11:22 PM
Another place with links to data is
http://wxgr.nl/index.htm?weer_clim.htm
13 December 2008 at 11:39 PM
#218 Rod, natural gas (methane, CH4) is a limited resource, much more limited than coal, otherwise, replacing coal with methane would be a useful strategy to limit greenhouse warming. Comparing the heating value of coal with methane is a bit tricky, as coal is not a homogeneous material. It’s heat of combustion varies between 15 and 30 MJ/kg. Natural gas has a heating value of about 50 MJ/kg. Of course the CO2 emission from methane per MJ are a lot lower than from coal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_of_combustion
13 December 2008 at 11:42 PM
In #268 jbmack points out that
“Oh, and contrary to what Rush claims, more air in a tire will NOT lead to hydroplaning on puddle covered streets”
Which reinforces the aphorism that for every complicated problem there is a simple by wrong answer. Denialism is the practice of seeking them out.
14 December 2008 at 1:13 AM
Gavin:
I was answering Ray Ladbury’s post that suggested that the AGW consensus is so unassailable, that it justifies an end to aluminium smelting, etc, and coal-fired power electricity generation right now.
The claimed unassailability of the AGW consensus, results in a fever to throw out everything we now rely on, before replacement energy sources and materials are available.
I think the almost sanctification of most of the alternative options to fossil fuels, creates a false sense of security—a sense that it doesn’t matter if the uncertainties in the AGW science are glossed over—if scientists who question the consensus on the basis of the gaps in knowledge of vital areas of climate science, are ignored and reviled—-because there are all these ‘ready to go’ clean, sustainable , non-polluting , non-toxic, damage-free alternatives waiting for us to just take on board.
But that isn’t so, is it? There are many problems with the alternatives.
The decisions on carbon trading etc are political, and, because most journalists are not interested in really informing themselves on all the details of that , and of problems with the renewables, and because ‘saving the planet’ has become a very sexy and emotive issue—-so journalists defer to the AGW ‘consensus’, and favour and promote the politicians who take it on board without questioning, conferring all the power onto them.
The more thoughtful, less venal, less self-servingly- political , more questioning politicians—the ones who want only to get it right for the world—- are given short shrift—-even lose office—and are smeared as some sort of throwbacks or fiends akin to holocaust deniers—-because they won’t toe the line .
Those politicians want to be in power, but not at any cost.
Scientists have never , I think, had such a responsibility on their shoulders to do the right thing, to be really true to their profession and themselves —to forego the seductive attentions of a fickle media and self-serving politicians, and the fashion for post-normal science —-in favour of getting the science right.
It’s really ironic that scientists have had to go from being undervalued and under-respected by the community, [ in Australia anyway], due to media ignorance and inattention—to now, I think, becoming victims of media hype.
Surely, we need to have strong economies that will fund research into the most sustainable options—– and getting it wrong by shutting down coal-fired power stations forthwith, as someone has suggested here, before we know what alternatives really will sustainably provide base load power to keep our economies strong , seems to be a reckless way to go.
Strong economies, and respect for science , will be a minimum requirement, surely, for governments and others to fund the research that will find the most sustainable renewables, and/or a clean way of burning coal, that most of us want found.
14 December 2008 at 2:18 AM
Hank 250: “Underinflated tires waste gas. How much gas? The Department of Transportation estimates that 5 million gallons of fuel per day are wasted due to low tire pressure. That’s more than 2 billion gallons per year…..”
Sigh. Another “big number” quote that fails to put it into context. 2B gallons a year savings while we had an annual consumption in 2004 of 140B gallons? So around 1.5%?
Sanity check: below is another study where they dropped tire pressure IN HALF (from 40 to 20 psi) and found fuel economy dropped 3%. That’s 3% when you were driving on tires that appeared almost flat.
Question that you need only answer for yourself in the privacy of your home: If George Bush touted tune ups and proper tire pressure as as his top two ways to conserve, would you be singing its praises? Uh huh.
http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/autoexpressnews/229776/the_mpg_mythbusters.html
14 December 2008 at 2:50 AM
#229 Secular Animist: Replacing all the inefficient incandescent lightbulbs with CFLs in the United States alone could prevent 158 million tons of CO2 emissions according to one lighting company, the equivalent of taking more than 30 million cars off the road. Sub stituting CFLs under a global scenario that minimizes costs would reduce lighting energy demand by nearly 40 percent and save 900 million tons of CO2 a year by 2030, with a cumu lative savings by then totaling 16.6 billion tons — more than twice the carbon dioxide released in the United States in 2006.
Another view: If CLF is 15W, and Incandescent in 60, and if you burn 2.25 kwh/day in lights, this is about a 5% savings for the home in terms of energy cost ($5/month savings). This electricity usage translates to about 370 kg/year savings in co2 based on 0.61 kg CO2/kwh (using our current mix of coal, gas, nuke, etc).
This is a 1.3% reduction to per capita CO2 output in the US.
Note that the optimists usually assume every kwh devoted to lighting will be converted to cfl. Unfortunately, much of non-residential lighting is already fluorescent, and those that aren’t are not because of a special need (street light, spot light, etc).
So, putting the squeeze on consumers to go CFL and to properly inflate their tires just doesn’t change the outcome of the game. Yes, every little bit helps, just the same as bailing out NOLA with a coffee cup helps. We need to find big wins to solve this problem.
14 December 2008 at 2:53 AM
Agreed Eli.
14 December 2008 at 3:18 AM
Ray Ladbury: Ah, but you see, we aren’t betting on a single event, but rather a trend. It’s more like your retirement (at least if you are being responsible) than a roll of the dice. You claim that experts overstate their confidence. Care to provide an example of a time where the overwhelming majority of experts (>100) claimied 95% confidence and were wrong in the physical sciences? Actually, most experts I know are very conservative. If you aren’t, you don’t stay an expert very long.
In the physical sciences? I honestly cannot think of recent major contributions of import that were as controversial (relatively speaking) as this. By “major contributions” I mean major enough such that 200 scientists would actually take sides on an issue. Or even 150. So I think AGW is very unique. But please educate me if this is fairly common. I’ll give you the ozone hole. But even the big companies were pulling for that to be true, because they got to sell all new equipment. Nobody “lost” in that one. But it is odd that for years all we heard about was skin cancer and cataracts, and now the hole is bigger than ever but nobody is worried about skin cancer. Mission accomplished. We’ll know in another few decades if the scientists were right.
In medicine this happens all the time. I’ve repeatedly brought up H Pylori as an example in which it take a long time for the ship to turn.
The soft sciences are well aware of how frequently “statistically significant” studies touting 95% certainty are wrong, and in fact they are wrong about 50% of the time. It’s not because anyone is at fault. It’s, again, because people don’t know what they don’t know.
When Hadley claimed 2XCO2 of about 6′C in the 90’s, it’s because they didn’t understand the impact of aerosols. Now they do. Now their number is lower. Can something else be found that will revise it downward again? Sure, of course.
[Response: This can’t be correct. The response to 2xCO2 is independent of any aerosol effect, and similarly, I cannot find any reference to the Hadley model having a sensitivity of 6 deg C. Be careful of inventing anecdotes to demonstrate rhetorical points. - gavin]
You work on satellites, right? I build very high-volume consumer electronics for a living. A $3 battery that can overheat can cost $10’s of millions to replace. The stakes are very high. Same with what you do. So, I respect that your line of work has a great deal of rigor as part of the job description. I’ve looked a GCM. They are a mess. They are truly some of the worst software I’ve ever seen in 25 years of writing software. Do you feel the level of oversight and rigor is where it needs to be in building these models? Remember, the history is what it is. We can measure it. But much of what is being predicted rests on what these models are telling us. Do you think the code quality and rigor and analysis behind these models is commensurate with the expectations we’re placing on the correctness of these models?
[Response: There are over 20 independent efforts to develop GCMs - they all show the same thing, which is supported by any number of more specialised model and basic theory. More computational science support would of course be welcome. - gavin]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7915
14 December 2008 at 6:14 AM
Ray Ladbury 243
Its worth remembering that there is a direct and proportional relationship between energy consumption and standard of living,
the ultimate value of a dollar is reflected in the cost of energy, going green sounds good , but the cost will reduce the standard of living for us back to the 1930’s. [edit]
[Response: Nonsense. This would imply that opening a window in winter would make you richer. Try it and see. - gavin]
14 December 2008 at 7:00 AM
RodB, 95% means that if you were to use the same level of confidence on a thousand replications, 950+/-30 will show the level assumed.
Exactly like throwing a dice. One in six of the numbers will be 1, according to binomial counting statistics. And at the X% confidence limit, throwing a thousand such dice in parallel and treating them separately will show the given distribution. Throwing more and more dice in parallel will show a closer and closer match to the statistics.
And that’s not a human creation divorced from real life.
14 December 2008 at 7:03 AM
@270. You spend money on things you don’t need. Then you need the job to have the money to spend, so you’re in a poor bargaining position.
How about leaving a legacy for your children? If they have enough money when you die from your estate to buy their own houses or put their own kids through a better college, then you have saved your money to be spent in future on things that don’t produce CO2.
You really just don’t want people spending money on CO2.
You work for an oil company or geological survey company, don’t you?
14 December 2008 at 7:46 AM
Rod, “Seems an obvious stretch.” Is it? How often do you check your tire pressure? How often does the average hockey mom or dad checks hers? How often do experts in the field check theirs:
http://www.edmunds.com/advice/fueleconomy/articles/126090/article.html
http://news.carjunky.com/car_maintenance/few-drivers-properly-check-tire-pressure-abc521.shtml
You can look this up, you know?
The point, Rod, is that there is a whole helluva lot of low hanging fruit that would allow us to decrease consumption AND save money. So why the resistance? Why the rejection for good, simple ideas? The common thread seems to be resistance to change–any change. Yes, big changes will be needed, but if we start to save energy now, we can slow the pace of those changes, maybe preserve some options we wouldn’t have otherwise. How, pray, is that a bad thing?
As to your example… well, what would you do after having to pay through the nose for a couple of years for CCs? Pack up shop and say woe is me? How about taking out a financing to buy some equipment to clean up your operation with the knowledge that it represents a guaranteed savings? I am a firm believer in markets. I also believe that sometimes markets need help to ensure the price reflects all the costs.
14 December 2008 at 10:01 AM
could I ask if all of the curremt 20 independent climate models are based around the charney sensitivity and not the recently introduced/discovered earth sensitivity potential of less ice albedo and other additional feednacks acting over multi decades/centuries of time?
14 December 2008 at 10:07 AM
#229 SecularAnimist & #287, matt
A quick google reveals that around 100 billion kWh is used anually for lighting homes in the US (the 2001 figure was all I could find). That is roughly 60 million tons of CO2.
Source:
End-Use Consumption of Electricity 2001
If I assume that commercial & industrial lighting is nearly all fluorescent, then the target is clearly residential lighting. If further I assume that 2/3 of the energy is consumed by incandescent lights that can be replaced by CFL’s, then my estimate for the CO2 savings is roughly 30 million tons. A fifth of what ‘one lighting company’ claimed.
14 December 2008 at 10:33 AM
Matt, look further in the article you cited, down to the phrase “low profile tire” — their explanation for the small difference they noted: a lap around their track driving an Astra. They note the special circumstances in the same article. One test, one tire type.
Look that up — those are unusual tires, won’t give average results, don’t last very long, and can’t prove anything about average results.
“… I am considering buying the new Saturn Astra with a sport’s handling package. … Can someboy advise a good quality low profile tire?” http://ask.cars.com/2007/06/what_are_lowpro.html
Cherries.
14 December 2008 at 10:36 AM
RE #220 & “individual efforts (many of which do save money — though will not fix the problem”
Never said they would, but they are a NECESSARY measure. Efforts need to be made at all levels — individual, family, work, church, school, all levls of government (town/city, county, state, federal, U.N.).
Industries need to reduce their own GHGs & make products that help us do so, which would include reusable items (& we need to consider the whole life cycle of products, e.g., from ripping up the rainforest floor for bauxite for aluminum, the shipping & extremely high energy processing, to us tossing out the can, which end in a landfill–when recycling could solve all these problems).
Governments at all levels need to reduce their own GHGs and pass rules, regs, & laws that help others reduce, including tax incentives, etc.
Just sitting on our duffs waiting for the UN to come up with something is not nearly enough, but it is NECESSARY. Or, maybe its good to sit on our duffs instead of driving around in our SUVs.
SUFFICIENT is when all systems are reducing, and the whole world can reduce by 80%.
14 December 2008 at 10:39 AM
#287, matt
Divide and conquer. You can always divide a big win in smaller ones and then reason them away. There are different (more optimistic) angles to look at it:
- The big wins are a sum of smaller ones
- The advantage of the small wins is that there are a lot of them
14 December 2008 at 10:51 AM
Oh, and, Matt, I can’t imagine you know anyone who practices
> tune ups and proper tire pressure
> as as his top two ways to conserve
Don’t let the best be the enemy of the good.
Those are good practices.
New vehicles include sensors for both engine tuning and tire pressure, because people do maintain both better with feedback — but as Edmunds notes, manufacturers choose the level at which the tire pressure idiot light goes on. Most only light when pressure falls so low there’s immediate risk the tire will disintegrate, Edmunds says — so you still need to check it.
One more thing to consider if buying a new vehicle– is the tire pressure sensor setting feedback level useful for efficient driving?
People do better with information, but getting it takes effort: “researchers believe feedback meters could help homeowners …”
http://green.yahoo.com/blog/amorylovins/44/home-energy-feedback-meters-knowledge-is-power.html
14 December 2008 at 11:02 AM
RE #215 & “If we substantially reduce CO2 emissions in the next few decades, either through nuclear or enormous alt energy or both, and if electric cars become the primary means of transportation, then why worry at all where people live?”
Bec those cars still have to be produced & production (incl mining for metals, shipping them to the U.S., etc) is still CO2 intensive; and road will have to be maintained more with more driving, and etc. So it will still be better to reduce, along with using alt energy.
RE nuclear - aside from it enormous cost, which if allowed to compete fairly would never have made it to market - has plenty of problems, starting with destruction of land and lives due to uranium mining. If you think coal mining is dirty & dangerous….
Many of the harmed people are tribals. Nuclear is very bad right from the start.
I’m not even completely sure, when all GHGs emissions are factored in from mine to nuke waste storage (& all the university/gov work going into studying it and making it efficient and safe, & all the medical issues re health harms, and destruction of subsistence lands) if it really does reduce GHGs much over coal/oil.
But it might possibly — with these tons of caveats & assuming all the problems can be overcome (incl terrorist use of it) — help reduce harm to planet earth by reducing GHG emisions. Not sure. Amory Lovins www.rmi.org thinks energy/resource efficiency/conservation & alt energy will make nuclear a financially unfeasible boondoggle.
14 December 2008 at 11:18 AM
I am no more of a skeptic than any Missourian (the “Show Me” state). I am interested though.
John Lang posted a link to a graph:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/GTCh_Fig2.pdf
Is there anything wrong with the graph?
Because it is pretty obvious that it has not warmed as much as Scenarios A or B predicted.
I know this is all a matter of probabilities and thus that does not prove anything– merely makes things more or less probable.
Nonetheless I agree with the main text statement:
“Of course, the true worth of any scientific idea is whether it leads to more successful predictions than other theories.”
On that basis the graph suggests that the underlying theory is not doing well as a predictor.
GHG’s have gone up, so far the world has not behaved as it was predicted to behave.
I understand that recent periods may be an aberration, etc. etc. But so far, the probability that the theory is right seems to be diminishing to me. It still may be right, but that seems less likely now than earlier.
What is wrong with my thought process?
14 December 2008 at 11:22 AM
Truth, do us all a favor and save your straw men for other rightwing nutjobs who don’t care about the truth. Nowhere did I suggest all coal fired power plants be shut down immediately. Nor has Jim Hansen suggested it.
You keep alluding that there are all these scientists out there who dissent from the consensus. So where are they? Why don’t they publish their ideas in peer reviewed journals? Where are their models and evidence? All I hear from the denialist side is a rather confused mumbling about how we don’t understand climate–and all of it from people who don’t publish in climate science.
If you want to debate the science, the proper venues are between the covers of peer-reviewed journals (not op-ed pages) and in the hallways of conferences. If you want to debate what to do about the threats, there is still room at the table. Price of admission: Learn and understand the science so you can make an informed contribution.
14 December 2008 at 11:26 AM
Robert H., Google Rosenfeld’s Law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenfeld’s_Law
14 December 2008 at 11:59 AM
John Hall, John Lang, have either of you read the previous discussions? Do you know the climate sensitivity number assumed to create that particular set of scenarios, for example? Looked at anything besides the picture? If so, what have you read?
14 December 2008 at 12:10 PM
> what to do about the threats
Tyndall looked out much further than most studies. I haven’t seen much comment on their
http://earthscape.org/r1/ES17127/t3_18.pdf
Climate change on the millennial timescale
February 2006
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Technical Report 41
Report to the Environment Agency of Tyndall Centre Research Project T3.18
14 December 2008 at 12:19 PM
Matt, First, you contend that climate change is controversial. Among what group does the controversy rage? Certainly not among the climate scientists who are actively publishing and advancing the work. Not among the related scientists–physicists, chemists, meteorologists…hell, even the Petroleum Geologists, where not one professional society dissents from the consensus view. Not among National Academies, where there is also pretty much universal agreement on the consensus. It would seem that it is only controversial among those who don’t understand the science.
You attack the quality of the coding in the GCMs. OK, find anything specific that changes the physics? I’d be very surprised if you did. The only way to invalidate the consensus view would be if you could get a greenhouse gas to stop acting like a greenhouse gas or if you found a very large negative feedback. Both are contra-indicated by available evidence.
Now, as to your contention that individual actions are irrelevant, I disagree. Individual actions are critical, because 1)society is a collection of individual; and 2)individual actions indicate that people are taking responsibility. Moreover, if we can find 8 actions that reduce consumption by 1.3%, we’ve cut output by more significantly more than 11%, once you take into account costs of production, transport, distribution, etc. Individuals are not powerless if they become committed, and in any case, as you oppose coercion, I would think you would encourage individual initiative rather than try to discourage it.
14 December 2008 at 12:24 PM
John Hall, First, there are certainly uncertainties in the models for how energy gets distributed. The warming we see in the temperature may not be all there is, because not all the systems in the climate come to equilibrium at the same rate. Thus, there could be more warming “in the pipeline”. Second, climate is very noisy, and long time series are needed for trends–even strong ones–to become clear. Third, even if there temperature trends were lower than expected, other warming trends (e.g. ice loss) are happening faster. I wouldn’t draw any comfort from small discrepancies.
14 December 2008 at 12:39 PM
John Hall wrote “Because it is pretty obvious that it has not warmed as much as Scenarios A or B predicted.”
John: A, B, and C are “scenarios,” not predictions. They are hypothetical states of the future world. Each scenario assumes different greenhouse gas emission rates. The graphed lines are the different predictions made by the same model, given those different rates of greenhouse gas emissions. The only relevant line is the one for the scenario that is closest to the actual greenhouse gas emissions over the 20 years since the predictions were made. That’s Scenario B.
If you read the 2006 paper in which that figure appeared–especially the exact page on which that figure appears–you will find excellent explanations.
The 20-year old prediction actually has done quite well. Predictions made now probably will do even better, because our knowledge has improved. For example the climate sensitivity to CO2 is now known to be smaller than was believed 20 years ago. Again, read the 2006 paper in which that figure appeared.
14 December 2008 at 12:56 PM
The issue about the correlation of standard of living and energy use, is not what we are talking about. We are talking about standard of living and CO2 emissions, which is clearly non-linear, and saturates quickly
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/56/143487801_7f13664e13_o.gif
The US, Canada and Australia could have the same standard of living with about a factor of 3 less CO2 emissions if they instituted good public policies.
Captcha: Mises interested - guess not
14 December 2008 at 12:58 PM
> previous discussions
Here is one example; you can use the ‘Start Here’ link at top of page and the search box for more help:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/
14 December 2008 at 1:52 PM
information for you..
=========================================================
European leaders clash over pledges on global warming !!!
European leaders gather in Brussels today for a crunch summit, acutely divided over how to deliver on pledges to combat global warming almost two years after declaring they would show the rest of the world how to tackle climate change.
The EU is split between the poorer east and the wealthy west. Germany says that most of their industries need not pay to pollute, Italy says it cannot afford the ambitious scheme, and Britain says that the package on the table could result in huge windfall profits for companies.
“There is a very big chasm between the various parties,” said a senior European diplomat.
Prime ministers and presidents appear to be getting cold feet over key decisions that need to be taken by the weekend to enact laws that will make the climate change package binding for 27 countries.
Failure is not an option, they say. But Polish veto threats, Italian resistance, and German insistence that it will not jeopardise jobs to help save the planet, suggest that the action plan will be diluted. The risk is the EU will draw withering criticism from climate campaigners and signal weakness and indecision to the US, China, India and other key players in the global warming fight.
“It’s a question of credibility,” said Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission who described the summit as the most important of his five-year term. “It would be a real mistake for Europe to give the signal that we are watering down our position.”
A negative outcome to the talks would moreover cast a pall over the latest round of UN negotiations to secure a post-Kyoto treaty to limit global greenhouse gases.
But at talks in Poznan, Poland, on Wednesday, EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas, said: “There are a few issues left but I cannot imagine that we’re not going to get an agreement on Friday. We are going to deliver the targets.”
The EU package represents the most ambitious legislative effort on climate change anywhere which includes four laws that mandate cuts in greenhouse gases by one-fifth by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, reduce energy consumption in Europe by one-fifth by the same deadline and stipulate that 20% of Europe’s energy mix comes from renewable sources.
Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel engineered the deal as EU president in March last year. Since then the EU has been bragging about leading the world in the race to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 2C.
It falls to Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, to end his dynamic six months in the EU hot seat with a deal that could see the entire package turned into law before Christmas.
Sarkozy is staring failure in the face. But he is widely viewed as a consummate fixer who may pull it off. The disputes are fundamentally about costs, a disagreement that has become magnified in the current economic climate. While everyone agrees the headline target of 20% cuts in greenhouse gases by 2020 is sacrosanct, the disputes are about how to get there.
The heart of the scheme is the “cap-and-trade” or emissions trading system which is to supply around half of the cuts in greenhouse gases. The ceiling for industrial pollution levels is progressively lowered and industries and companies pay to pollute by buying permits in an auction system.see
http://hernadi-key.blogspot.com
=========================================================
14 December 2008 at 2:13 PM
Gavin Inline #289: Response: This can’t be correct. The response to 2xCO2 is independent of any aerosol effect, and similarly, I cannot find any reference to the Hadley model having a sensitivity of 6 deg C. Be careful of inventing anecdotes to demonstrate rhetorical points. - gavin]
Sorry, details were off but conclusion the same.
“A few years ago, a leading climate model–developed at the British Meteorological Office’s Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research, in Bracknell–predicted that an Earth with twice the preindustrial level of carbon dioxide would warm by a devastating 5.2 degrees Celsius. Then Hadley Center modelers, led by John Mitchell, made two improvements to the model’s clouds–how fast precipitation fell out of different cloud types and how sunlight and radiant heat interacted with clouds. The model’s response to a carbon dioxide doubling dropped from 5.2oC to a more modest 1.9oC.”
From http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;276/5315/1040
How do we know current models haven’t made a similar mistake? We don’t. Only after decades of accurately predicting AND researchers trying to improve and saying “man, this looks pretty good. Our changes improve the accuracy a bit, but those SOBs back in 2010 really new what they were doing” will we know that the models are “hardened” and can reliable tell us what we need to know.
It’s the same with other disciplines.
It doesn’t matter if all 20 models have nearly the same answer. If they all dismissed something because group think deemed it not important and because it wasn’t understood, then all 20 modelers will be very surprised at the change in outcomes.
14 December 2008 at 2:15 PM
Mark (291), did you just say you can prove AGW at the cr_aps table??
14 December 2008 at 2:18 PM
#295 Anne van der Bom: If I assume that commercial & industrial lighting is nearly all fluorescent, then the target is clearly residential lighting. If further I assume that 2/3 of the energy is consumed by incandescent lights that can be replaced by CFL’s, then my estimate for the CO2 savings is roughly 30 million tons. A fifth of what ‘one lighting company’ claimed.
Yes, agree. My number was 37.1M tons. Which in terms of US CO2 production is about 1% (actually about 0.6% if the total US output is 6B tons).
Thus, the savings from CFL is nearly nil.
14 December 2008 at 2:21 PM
#296 Hank: Matt, look further in the article you cited, down to the phrase “low profile tire” — their explanation for the small difference they noted: a lap around their track driving an Astra. They note the special circumstances in the same article. One test, one tire type.
As I noted, the DoT claimed a savings of 2B gallons. We drink 140B gallons a year, so that’s 1.5%.
Thus, two cited sources giving about the same amount.
The savings from proper tire inflation is very, very small.
14 December 2008 at 2:30 PM
Ray (293), I agree. All I’m asserting is checking air pressure will help like (as the man said) using a coffee cup to bail New Orleans out. How many of your soccer moms, et al are driving around for 6-12 months with about 24psi in their tires. To get the average (and the touted savings) in a normal distribution, it has to be at least 60%. Do you think that’s happening? I think the preponderance of drivers are within 5% of recommended pressure. Those folks checking will provide none of the touted benefits. But, I agree, checking periodically is something all drivers should do — for MPG and safety.
#2: Yes, eventually company B will make the investment to reduce his emissions, so eventually CO2 might diminish. Or maybe not. [How much investment does a cement producer have to make?]
14 December 2008 at 2:35 PM
#293 Ray Ladbury: The point, Rod, is that there is a whole helluva lot of low hanging fruit that would allow us to decrease consumption AND save money.
No, there’s not. Be and engineer here for a moment and ack that we need to reduce CO2 90-95% to win this.
The lowest of the low-hanging fruit, CFL and tire pressure, is generously 3%. The EPA “vampires” are another % or two. Reduced hiway speeds another %. And a few other things can probably get us to 8% for the lowest of the low-hanging fruit. And these have 2 year timetables.
The real low-hanging fruit, which is CAFE, has a 10 year timetable. It’s probably another 10%
Backfilling with alt energy is also low-hanging and a 10 year time table. It’s probably another 20%.
But then it gets hard. Really, really hard. We can do all of the above, and we don’t get anywhere near close enough to what we need.
I know the rah-rah attitude feels good. But if a manager type shows up to one of your satellite project meetings and proclaims “we need to reduce satellite weight by 95%”, do your guys start talking about removing a bolt here and there, or do they realize that with that statement business as usual has just ceased to exist and either the manager is insane or he wants everything currently used to be completely thrown away and a new way of getting things into orbit developed?
I think most AGW types fall into the “completely insane” bit, becuase they have failed to rationalize what the US and EU must actually achieve to succeed. And instead, they think a Prius + CFL will get us there. It won’t.
If they truly understood the challenges, they’d opt for nuclear tomorrow. But they don’t, and thus they’ll stick to their plan of using AGW to drive their anti-growth agenda. Sad, really.
14 December 2008 at 2:53 PM
301, John, JL’s graph doesn’t split out natural VS anthro forcings. Since natural forcings have been negative, they’re masking the signal. Arctic sea ice thickness is plummeting and volume hit another record low in 2008. Once summer arctic sea ice goes away, temps will start to rise again. It’s a tipping point no natural forcing can counteract.
14 December 2008 at 3:31 PM
Oh, there’s low-hanging fruit. The Administration has been protecting it for the past eight years.
Home appliance standards — the states sued and won:
http://www.iowa.gov/government/ag/latest_news/releases/nov_2006/DOE_appliances.html
http://www.ct.gov/ag/cwp/view.asp?Q=327996&A=2426
http://www.energy.ca.gov/releases/2005_releases/2005-09-07_ENERGY_STANDARDS_LAWSUIT.PDF
http://www.energy.ca.gov/energy_action_plan/2005-09-21_EAP2_FINAL.DOC
Saving a few dollars per transformer when replacing utility transformers, by choosing less efficient ones — that will stay in the poles for 40 or 50 years or more, like the antiques they’re replacing. Make sense to you?
———-
“According to DOE estimates, requiring all new transformers to achieve the same efficiency levels as the best units currently on the market would eliminate the need for nearly 20 large new power plants by 2038.”
…
“Making these simple improvements can make new, expensive coal plants unnecessary.”
Adopting the more stringent standards would also avoid the emission of 700 million tons of carbon dioxide — more than what is emitted annually by all U.S. passenger cars.
http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/007/california-ag-environmental-groups-challenge-weak-energy-efficiency-standards.html
http://ag.ca.gov/globalwarming/pdf/ee_petition.pdf#xml=http://search.doj.ca.gov:8004/AGSearch/isysquery/7fb5426b-ef1d-4c1f-9999-cb6254ce5bbd/1/hilite/
PETITION FOR REVIEW
… the Attorney General, on behalf of the People of the State ofCalifornia, petitions this Court for review of the final action, including the promulgation of regulations, taken by Respondents at 72 Federal Register 58,190-58,241 (October 12, 2007), entitled “Energy Conservation Program for Commercial Equipment ….”
——-
http://www.ieeerepc.org/documents/NRECADOEDistributionTransformerEfficiencyStandardsREPC.ppt
There’s plenty of low-hanging fruit. The people who own it now have been lobbying successfully to keep people from picking it.
14 December 2008 at 4:01 PM
Going back to the origin of this thread; whether evolution worked through Darwinian variation and natural selection or through Lamarckian variation and the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Lamarckians cut the tails of mice and amputated the legs from toads and bread from them, hoping to find mice being born without tails and toad developing without legs. Well, for hundreds of generations, hundreds of thousands or would it be millions of male Jews have been circumcised and they have to continue to do today, because boys are born with foreskins, showing empirically, that acquired characteristics are not inherited. There was no need for the experiments on mice or toads. The experiments had been done.
Many people believe the world is as they want it to be, rather than how it is. That is emotion not science. However, it is hard enough to see how the world is. It is much harder to tell how it will be.
14 December 2008 at 4:09 PM
Matt, This idea that we all assume the change will be easy exists only in your head, and the sooner you get rid of that straw man, the sooner we can move ahead. I agree that the low-hanging fruit alone won’t do it. I disagree with some of your details–e.g. that it will take 10 years to increase CAFE standards. Indeed, I’m not opposed to Nuclear, although 1)it’s not a near-term solution; and 2)it does require considerable work to resolve proliferation and waste storage concerns.
The most important point, though is that every watt we save buys time, and time is the most precious commodity we have in addressing this threat. Time allows us to improve the science and better target mitigation. It allows improvement of technology. It allows political evolution rather than revolution. It allows education. All I hear from you and the pro-business types is that we can’t do it. With that sort of attitude do you wonder why many who are concerned about climate change look to the left for solutions.
OK. We get it. It’s hard. Now what do we do about it. I’m waiting for YOUR solutions.
14 December 2008 at 4:28 PM
> cut the tails of mice and amputated the legs … foreskins …
Or foot binding, or neck stretching, or shaving beards or other body hair, or eyebrow-plucking, or ear-piercing.
You have to back up to the era and think this through with the information they had. There was a reasonable argument made that perhaps over many lifetimes, some actual useful activity — for example, many generations of stretching for higher branches as climate changed for the ancestors of the giraffe — could have some kind of feedback to heredity. Useful activity, over many generations, with feedback. Like exercise improved muscles, they thought perhaps exercise could alter heredity. Reasonable in the absence of evidence. But the notion was small changes over long spans requiring some sort of active effort toward some benefit.
That was a different suggestion than the notion that some externally imposed alteration could become impressed somehow on inheritance.
Look at the humble clam. Its shell is some protection, but predators have evolved ways to drill through the shell. No one argued that clams would evolve toward being pre-drilled! A deleterious alteration wasn’t expected to become inheritable. Nor was there any particular reason to think a neutral alteration might become inherited — even a strain, let alone an amputation. Some people tried it anyhow, and with no knowledge of statistics so no idea what sort of sample they’d need.
It’s hard for people to remember how _recent_ scientific thinking is. The people looking at surgical alterations had no notion of statistics either.
14 December 2008 at 4:37 PM
Regarding Scenario A, B, C etc. I have read both papers several times.
The fact is that temperatures are not keeping up with the predicted timeline in the models - not the 1988 predictions or any of the subsequent IPCC predictions. This is not really in dispute.
Maybe it takes a long time to reach the equilibrium temperatures, maybe the oceans are absorbing more of the greenhouse energy than originally predicted. But the numbers to date are turning out to be only half of the trendlines predicted.
Previously, I said this month November, 2008, provides a good opportunity to examine the warming to date figure because the big ocean cycle drivers of temperature are giving us a more-or-less neutral impact this month.
GISStemp will be about 0.48C in November, 2008 (no sense making observations if you are not going to put some predictions on the line).
[Response: One month or one year is not the determinant of anything much, and the match to the long term trends in the data and in the Hansen et al projections will remain much as it was when I wrote this post. (I’ve already done the calcs). - gavin]
14 December 2008 at 5:16 PM
#323 John Lang Said: 14 December 2008 at 4:37 PM
How probable is GISTEMP 0.48C when already RSS & UAH increased their October to November figures?
Sources Oct. Nov.
HadCRUT 0,4340 ????
GISTEMP 0,5500 ????
N.C.D.C.0,6307 ????
UAH-MSU 0,1660 0,2540
RSS-MSU 0,1810 0,2160
CRUTEM3 0,7640 ????
14 December 2008 at 5:20 PM
John Lang Says:
14 December 2008 at 4:37 PM
> Regarding Scenario A, B, C etc. I have read both papers several times.
Do you recall what climate sensitivity number they used?
How does that compare to that used in current scenarios?
How much of the difference would that explain?
14 December 2008 at 6:01 PM
To Mr Ladbury [edit] You have no choice but to believe that the CAFE changes will take 10 years, because it will take that long to turn over th existing vehicle fleet.
14 December 2008 at 6:06 PM
317 matt says, “If they truly understood the challenges, they’d opt for nuclear tomorrow. But they don’t, and thus they’ll stick to their plan of using AGW to drive their anti-growth agenda”
Nuclear power *can’t* be used as the world’s power source because the US and EU *won’t* allow *everyone* on the planet to use nukes. There is plenty of wind and solar to power the world - it’s just a safer vision of pro-growth than you have. Me? I like hybrid nuclear/methane plants. No muss, no fuss, no radioactive waste, no proliferation issues, ultra cheap electricity, and a 90+% reduction in GHG emissions as compared to coal.
14 December 2008 at 6:08 PM
John Lang wrote: “The fact is that temperatures are not keeping up with the predicted timeline in the models.”
I don’t see how you can conclude that “the numbers to date are turning out to be only half of the trendlines predicted” (in that Fig. 2 graph). Remember that you need to ignore the green and purple prediction lines, because the real CO2 emissions and other aspects of the state of the world have not matched those assumptions. Those green and purple lines correspond with planets we do not live on. (Think of them as descriptions of Earth in two universes parallel to our own–universes that diverged from ours back in 1958.) So compare only the blue prediction line to the red and black observation lines. But nor does that blue line entirely accurately correspond with the actual, historical, Earth. That blue line is not a hindcast using the actual historical state of CO2 and so on. It makes 1988 assumptions about those conditions. It has not been corrected to match the actual history.
Also, be sure you’re comparing the trends to no trend–to a flat line down at the “.0″ mark on the y axis. The angle of the observed (red and black) lines’ trend line up from that flat line is not “half” the angle of the blue prediction line’s trend line.
Then you need to see past the noise. Sure, since 1999 the actuals have been slightly below the blue prediction line. But between 1995 and 1998 the predictions were above the actuals. Keep going back and you’ll see swings in the differences between predicted and actual. That’s why inferential statistical tests need to be done to test hypotheses about differences in trends.
Finally, yes, there does seem to be a slight underprediction of the blue line. Part of the reason is the inaccuracy of the 1988 predictions about how much CO2 would be released, ocean phenomena such as El Nino, volcanic eruptions, and so on. (Remember, the blue line is not a hindcast using actual historical conditions.) Another part of the reason is, as Hansen et al. explicitly noted in that article, the 1988 model used a too-high estimate of temperature sensitivity to CO2 (last paragraph of page 14289 of that article). That estimate was 4.2 deg. C for doubling of CO2, whereas the current estimate is only 3 +- 1 deg. C. That’s not a mystery.
Most importantly, current models are not identical to that 1988 model. So if you’re wondering how well “the” models will predict the future from now, you can get a hint from looking at current models’ hindcasts versus observations. That is not what is in the Figure 2 we’ve been discussing.
14 December 2008 at 6:22 PM
#321 Ray Ladbury: OK. We get it. It’s hard. Now what do we do about it. I’m waiting for YOUR solutions.
Same answer I’ve been typing here for the last 2 years.
We start the concrete trucks and start pouring cookie cutter reactors similar to Westinghouse AP1000. ASAP. We fund $0.10 gas tax for an XPrize (which would be $14B/year) for achieving a battery with double the gravimetric and volumetric efficiency of Lithium Ion, and at half the cost. That would give us cars with a $12K battery that could deliver 400 miles range. The drive electronics and motors are easy and well understood.
And then we have breathing room. Lots of it. Because in 20 years, we can be to an 60-80% reduction. That is bankable. And concurrently we ramp alt energy as fast as possible, and hope that can hit 30-40% in 25 years. And then we can start dialing down the reactors and eating the cost on those IF alt energy works out. If it doesn’t, we aren’t painted into a corner.
GWB’s greatest screw-up was pissing around with switchgrass and all the other nutty ideas he had planted in his head. On 9/12 2001, if he would have stuck a $0.10 gas tax on battery technology, you can bet car makers plans for 2014 fleet would look radically different than today.
14 December 2008 at 6:32 PM
#321 Ray Ladbury: I disagree with some of your details–e.g. that it will take 10 years to increase CAFE standards.
Have you ever wondered why the car radio in your car lags so far behind what the market is currently actually using? Why, for example, do production cars JUST NOW have an mp3 port? It’s because car development lead times for even modest platform changes are 5 years. Major changes are 10-12 years. Big changes to CAFE touch almost every subsystem on a car. They are major changes requiring 10-12 years to implement.
http://www.acea.be/index.php/news/news_detail/lead_time_is_essential_cars_concept_and_production_phase_take_up_to_12_year/
Few actually understand this, however, and attribute the lag to foot dragging and some great oil conspiracy. If they only knew.
14 December 2008 at 7:04 PM
That’s right Robert, “Or foot binding, or neck stretching, or shaving beards or other body hair, or eyebrow-plucking, or ear-piercing.” It is funny to think of all these clever men, looking themselves in the mirror shaving, cutting their hair every morning. Then going to work and cutting the tails off mice. Millions of experiments for all to see, but not to understand Even when Darwin pointed them out, people still did not get it. Millions still don’t. As I say, it is hard enough to see how the world is, even when it is pointed out. It is much harder to tell how it will be when 3, 5, 8, 11 factors, all variable and some unknown interact over time.
14 December 2008 at 9:20 PM
> Westinghouse AP1000
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nucengdes.2006.03.049
14 December 2008 at 9:44 PM
re: #321 Ray
“All I hear from you and the pro-business types is that we can’t do it.”
Be really careful with that! Silicon Valley is filled with “pro-business types” who funding and working on all sorts of energy-saving/CO2-reduction technologies, as fast as we can.
1) There are plenty of entities that claim to represent business, like the WSJ for example, or a bunch of conservative thinktanks.
2) But, having worked in high-tech corporations for 27 years, often at executive level, I don’t think those entities represented *us* very well, and in fact, I think they often didn’t represent most businesses very well.
I’ve known plenty of responsible businesspeople who actually welcomed reasonable regulation to do let them “do the right thing” without being at a disadvantage. Some businesses are like farmers: they know where they’re going to be, and they don’t just pollute the place and leave. [For example, the old Bell System was pervasive, and couldn’t easily just leave and go somewhere else, although AT&T did have to threaten the CA PUC with that once.] Some extractive industries don’t exactly think that way.
Google: pittsburgh coal mine subsidence
[I grew up near Pittsburgh and worked summer jobs at the US Bureau of Mines.]
There is of course, absolutely zero-value to a coal producer that anyone works on energy efficiency… one wonders how much R&D coal companies do for themselves, rather than expecting the government to do.
3) While it is perfectly rational for businesses to wish to avoid cumbersome regulations, I’d observe that there is is a set of businesses that operate by “privatizing the benefits, socializing the costs”, particularly with regard to environmental and health issues.
Some of these entities represent *those* businesses, as is clear from the funding patterns. But of course, it’s an effective ploy on their part to take on the mantle of “representing business”, because it’s good cover, and may gain more support from other businesses. The cigarette companies especially pioneered this.
BUT, it is a really bad idea to lump all businesses together, it’s just playing into disinformational hands….
14 December 2008 at 11:18 PM
Matt # 330 is basically correct here. Blue lasers for example are an old technology, and HD was used by the military in the 1950’s, but only in the last few years have they been available to the public.
I must say though, that from any perspective, nuclear power is not a good option to increase dependence on in the United States. MP3 technology is not all that new either, but look how expensive they were and how rare at first in general public usage.
Electric car technology was in use in the 1800’s and more efficient designs are available in Britannica from the early 1900’s and in the 1990’s there were EV’s that could travel 300 miles on one charge and drive 100 plus miles per hour and were well built and did not over heat or cause problems of greater magnitude or incidence than internal combustion engines which run on gasoline.
14 December 2008 at 11:28 PM
If people want to talk about nuclear, I suggest relocating to the thread over at Breavew Climate on IFR, i.e., a technology James Hansen has written of recently, and at least avoid plowing all the same ground again.
I’ll be interested to hear what he has to say about it here Tuesday.
14 December 2008 at 11:45 PM
I am sorry to say that the Australian Govt. has just announced its targets for 2020. 5% of 2000 levels by 2020 with option to increase to 15% if international agreement is achieved next year. It represents about a 20% reduction on the current levels of emissions.
I believe this is not good enough and will be working hard to get it tightened.
15 December 2008 at 9:17 AM
John Mashey,
I agree that Si Valley has been a bright spot that shines more brightly against the dark background of American Business defeatism. However, even here, I wish leaders would be more vocal. I think there has been a tendency to merely roll their eyes when the WSJ pretends to be the voice of business, rather than give them the dressing down they so desperately need. I’ve reached the point where I wouldn’t train a puppy on the WSJ!
We’ve reached a point where the only way to put paid to the charge by denialists that addressing climate change means regressing to the stone age is to demonstrate that to the contrary it is the only path forward into the 21st century and beyond.
15 December 2008 at 12:07 PM
#265–
Rod, a thought experiment is all very well, but how about a real-world experiment? “Cap and trade” is often credited with reducing the acid rain problem very significantly. Here is a report on that (admittedly from an environmental advocacy organization, but the data they present should be verifiable, if we decide to do that.)
http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1085
Seems to me they make a decent case. What do you think?
15 December 2008 at 12:13 PM
Hmm, here’s the official EPA take on it:
http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/cap-trade/docs/ctresults.pdf
Another glowing review. . .
15 December 2008 at 12:19 PM
Oh, and the DNR chips in with this evaluation:
http://dnr.wi.gov/environmentprotect/gtfgw/documents/McTF20071113.pdf
Looks pretty positive, too. Let’s see what Google scholar has to say–I’ll get back to you on that.
15 December 2008 at 12:23 PM
. . .and there’s this book, which calls the SO2 cap and trade program a “living legend of effectiveness,” right in the chapter heading.
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=_1tN6S88HPYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA41&dq=cap+and+trade+acid+rain&ots=u2ti6ZKz7a&sig=LlouTNaRgDVs3WLLdo6mn97JH_0
But I distrust them, because I really don’t think a program qualifies as “living.” Maybe I need to look farther. . .
15 December 2008 at 12:45 PM
Ah, here is an ex-post evaluation of the Title IV SO2/NOX program:
http://tisiphone.mit.edu/RePEc/mee/wpaper/2003-003.pdf
Well, this paper seems scholarly enough. They do say that the cost savings over a pure regulatory approach were less than some claim, though still real. From their conclusion:
“The experience with Title IV and, to a lesser extent, other cap-and-trade programs
marks a turning point in the regulation of air emissions in the U.S. This experience has
shown that market-based incentive systems can reduce emissions as effectively, and even
more so, and at considerably less cost than through conventional command-and-control
mandates. As it result, it has become virtually obligatory that any legislative proposal to
limit air emissions in the U.S. include emissions trading. While the agreement of left and
right in the political spectrum is not as complete as it may appear on the surface, there
seems little doubt that emissions trading will play an increasing role in the regulation of
air emissions in the U.S. and probably elsewhere.”
Seems to me there is some reason to think that cap and trade is a bit more than
“smoke and mirrors.”
(Captcha: tandem Realty–better, I suppose, than “tandem reality”)
15 December 2008 at 2:13 PM
matt wrote: “We start the concrete trucks and start pouring cookie cutter reactors similar to Westinghouse AP1000. ASAP.”
Recommended reading re: problems with the Westinghouse AP1000:
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the reactor revival is NOT ready for prime time
By Harvey Wasserman
July 25, 2008
The Free Press
Excerpts:
More details and plenty of links to documentation in the article linked above.
15 December 2008 at 2:30 PM
Smoke and mirrors is SO2 and mercury. CO2 is life
15 December 2008 at 2:36 PM
Thank you all for your comments on #301.
I am not sophisticated in my reasoning, but let me say how the argument of ” we can’t base decisions on x years of recent data seems to me.”
The AGW predictions are not definite predictions. They are expressions of odds, e.g. it is 90% probable that it will warm y degrees.
As such they aren’t subject to proof.
But to any reasonable person the probability of a statistical assertion changes as experience accumulates. If I tell you that I can shoot a 85 on the golf course 90% of the time, around the fourth or fifth game with you that I shoot over 90 , you are going to start to regard me as a braggart. That I shoot under 85, 90% of the time isn’t disproved, it just seems less probable of being correct.
That is what is going on now with AGW. Temperatures are not rising in recent years. They may even be cooling a bit.
A reasonable response would be to lessen the odds that AGW is the dominant force in global climate. Maybe the odds don’t lessen by much — it used to be 90% likely, now it is 85% likely, —or maybe they lessen a lot. It seems to me that discussions ought to address the issue, particularly when we are talking major policy decisions.
Instead what I hear is greater vehemence on both sides. The debate seems to be degenerating into a “is”, “isn’t” dichotomy, and I don’t think that is a good descriptor of what we have. This is a “how likely” issue.
FWIW.
15 December 2008 at 2:49 PM
RE #327, Richard, what is a hybrid nuclear/methane plant? How does it work?
15 December 2008 at 3:00 PM
John Hall wrote: “That is what is going on now with AGW. Temperatures are not rising in recent years. They may even be cooling a bit.”
That is not what is going on now with AGW, since both of those assertions are false.
15 December 2008 at 3:12 PM
Eli, I suspect your humor may be a few millibars too rarefied for some!
15 December 2008 at 3:45 PM
Re #334: jcbmack,
You really need to start providing sources for your claims.
“Blue lasers for example are an old technology” - Not true. The fist patents for blue laser diodes were issued in the mid 1990s. Commercialization took several more years.
“HD was used by the military in the 1950’s” - Not true. Neither HD video cameras or HD video displays were used by the military in the 1950s. I was an engineer at the Pentagon in the early 80s and I can testify that even the briefing room for the Joint Chiefs of Staff used NTSC video projectors. Even the spy satellites used film in the 50s because there was no such thing as HD available then.
“in the 1990’s there were EV’s that could travel 300 miles on one charge and drive 100 plus miles per hour” - I don’t think this claim is true either. There were several EVs manufactured in small numbers, such as the EV-1, the Ranger EV and the RAV-4 EV, but none of them had a range anywhere near 300 miles or a top speed of 100 mph. If I’m wrong and you know of production EVs with that performance, please provide the details.
As Gavin said “Be careful of inventing anecdotes to demonstrate rhetorical points”. Words to live by.
Regards - Phill
15 December 2008 at 3:47 PM
Kevin (338), well that may be the upside. I agree cap and trade helped with the aid rain problem.
15 December 2008 at 4:31 PM
Phillip Shaw you are just plain wrong, I left my references relating to my post in mountains and molehills which overlaps at several of your points here and here are other references as well:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/394192/motion-picture-technology
Blue lasers may have been marketable later on but they existed for far longer, just pick up a Pchem book.
I will repeat this reference:”Who killed the Electric Car,” showed the technology did exist in the nineties and electric cars were once the dominate automobiles on the road. Phillip you did not work for the pentagon nor are you accurate on even one claim. The only argument you can stand on is that the HD technology did improve and that blue lasers were developed for commercial use in a mass produced format later on which I never denied.You have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool me.
15 December 2008 at 4:34 PM
here on the blue lasers: http://www.rp-photonics.com/blue_lasers.html
15 December 2008 at 4:36 PM
Rod (350)–It’s just that this question is probably going to arise in practical form quite soon, as cap and trade was important to the Obama environmental agenda. FWIW, I was somewhat skeptical about cap and trade back in the 80s because it seemed quite counterintuitive that *allowing* pollution would help eliminate it. (My then-brother-in-law, a “liberal” economist, took some pains to try and convince me on the issue, if I recall.)
It’s pretty clear–if today’s exercise in online research is correct–that cap and trade *can* work, but also pretty clear–from the same sources, especially the last–that the scheme needs to be correctly designed. So we want to be informed about whether the forthcoming proposals are a good idea or not. Which in turn was part of my motivation for the original question to you. And the essence of that question still stands–that is, if there are downsides, concerns, alternatives, caveats, or whatever to cap and trade, I’d like to know more ‘em.
15 December 2008 at 4:42 PM
John Hall @ 345
I think the most common problem people have is focussing on the *noise* in surface temperature records, rather than the trends, which take decades to extract from the noise with much significance.
I think some of this is human visual systems, and some of it is that we don’t do regression calculations in our heads.
If you look at GISS charts, for example, it is clear that “warming can stop” for 5+ years at a time, and has done so fairly often. This is exactly what one expect when:
a) There are big, irregular ocean/atmosphere oscillations that move energy back and forth, and easily jiggle surface temperatures.
b) *Most* of the variable energy is stored in the oceans, i.e., Ocean Heat Content. See this RC article.
As long as there’s an energy imbalance (more energy arriving than departing), Conservation of Energy says that the energy goes *somewhere*, which is mostly the ocean. In some sense, although we care about surface temperatures because that’s where we live, if we had a longer, accurate set of OHC measurements, that one time series would tell the story, with less noise.
This is like the advice given to US high school defensive football players:
“Ignore the runner’s head-fakes. Keep your eyes on their belt-buckle.”
15 December 2008 at 4:52 PM
346 Lynn, a hybrid nuke/methane system utilizes a very poor quality (likely thorium) fuel with seeding as needed. It’s designed so that at zero output expansion and natural cooling will prevent a meltdown. This eliminates the need for expensive safety systems. (and if a meltdown starts, the seeds dilute and the reaction stops with minimal damage to the reactor) There is no need for control rods or traditional refueling as it’s more like a giant sandbox than a reactor. At baseload, the nuclear fuel will provide all the heat required. When peaking, methane (though oil or coal could be used) is burned to supplement as the reactor core cools — though thermal mass helps moderate that need. The nuclear component is huge and stable so it’s way cheap. After all, nuclear power is durn near free except for refueling, control, waste, and safety systems. This type of system gets around all four of those requirements, and uses unenriched fuel to boot. Only the seeds pose an issue, and the quantity needed is incredibly small. They’d be a good end-use for all those nuclear bombs we’ve got lying around.
The big bonus is that the front end nuke could be retrofitted to existing hydrocarbon systems. Those dirty coal plants could become 90% cleaner. So hybrid nukes do baseload and as little peaking as possible, alternative energy does peaking (especially solar on hot sunny days and wind on cold windy nights), transportation fuel generation is used to balance the system, and suddenly, the whole CO2 issue is solvable.
15 December 2008 at 4:55 PM
Re: #354 (John Mashey)
Amen brother! I’ve been trying to educate people about the noise in temperature records for some time.
Not only is the noise sizeable, it’s complex — definitely not “white noise.” You can find some details here.
There’s no statistically valid evidence that global warming has stopped, or even slowed. None.
15 December 2008 at 5:17 PM
Re Robert H @290: “Its worth remembering that there is a direct and proportional relationship between energy consumption and standard of living”
Only up to a point. As the chart in the video of Steven Chu at the National Energy Summit that is making the rounds shows, standard of living ultimately hits a ceiling and further rise in energy consumption yields little if any rise in living standard. Most of the industrialized west is at and well along that ceiling, with ample room for reduction in energy consumption before it would negatively affect standard of living in any meaningful way.
It’s pretty hard to feel any sympathy for those used to driving a gas guzzling SUV, or two or three, and living in a 5000 square foot McMansion having to cut back their standard of living to match someone driving a more efficient passenger sedan, or horrors, taking public transit or even walking to work, while living in an 1800 square foot townhouse.
In other words, cry us a river. The party is over.
15 December 2008 at 5:20 PM
#329 matt
You’ve obviously thought this through and have probably already answered this question, so forgive me if I missed the answer. How much is your plan going to cost?
15 December 2008 at 5:27 PM
Final reference for Phillip,yes I will get stoned here as it is wikipedia based: http://www.experiencefestival.com/1940s_-_technology
15 December 2008 at 5:29 PM
Then again there were HD bands for radio in the 1940’s http://am-iboc.blogspot.com/2007/10/marketing-radio-1940s-style.html
15 December 2008 at 5:43 PM
#351 jcbmack
And global warming is a hoax, see “the great global warming swindle”
The EV’s of the 90’s were a little more than prototypes. Do you know how much they cost to produce? Even today an electric car can not compete on a cost basis. The technology may be there, but if it’s not affordable, it’s useless. The reason why we do not have electric cars is simply that cheap batteries are too heavy and light batteries are too expensive.
But now you’ve made me curious. Can you name a few EV’s with the specs you stated?
15 December 2008 at 5:55 PM
Batteries have come such a long way and since the nineties they have approached that goal Matt, if only this administration will help fund for these changes as companies that can assist do to take in a larger new market share and revenue stream which should result in bottom line profits. Also for Matt and Phillip my references can also be confirmed by encylopedia Britannica.
15 December 2008 at 7:36 PM
1990s: http://www.eaaev.org/History/index.html
15 December 2008 at 7:50 PM
jcbmack,
You are mildly entertaining, but you are so, so wrong.
On the topic of blue lasers, your claim in #334 refers to their availability to the public, i.e. the use of blue diode lasers in consumer products, but your own cite indicates that, as I correctly said, they were first developed in the mid-90s. Which hardly makes them “old technology” as you claimed. Granted there are various types of blue lasers, but only the laser diode technology is used by the public.
On the topic of HD - that term is generally accepted to mean High Definition Television with 720 or more lines of resolution. Today’s commercial HD is digital, but several analog HD formats were demonstrated but never commercialized. Were you perhaps referring to the experimental Russian ‘Transformer’ system which was demonstrated in 1958? Their military used it on a trial basis so I suppose you can claim you were correct, but analog HD wasn’t used by American or allied military in the 1950s. And digital HD wasn’t invented until about 1990. I had to smile when I looked at your cites for your claim. First you cited a Britannia article on motion pictures (not relevant), a experiencefestival article on early television systems (did you actually read the cite? the term High Definition had a different meaning in the 40s. Not relevant), and your third cite talks about a 40s-style marketing campaign for HD radio (so very not relevant). Unless you have a cite about western military HD systems in the 50s, you should just admit you were wrong.
You were also wrong when you wrote that I never worked at the Pentagon. I worked there for several years. I’ve worked on military programs since 1979 (about the time you were born, right?). Phillip Shaw is my real name. Unlike you I don’t hide in the anonymity of a pseudonym so my claims are verifiable.
And, lastly, about your claim that EVs in the 90s had a range of 300 miles and a speed greater than 100 mph - how did you think that nonsense could pass unchallenged? The specs on the EV1, and other EVs of that period, are easy to look up. The 1997 EV1 had a max range of 75 miles, the 1999 Gen 2 EV1 had a max range of 100 miles, the 1998 - 2000 Ranger EV had a range of 60 miles, as did the RAV-4 EV. All of the EVs were designed for highway travel, not racing, and only a modified EV1 that was used for a record breaking attempt could exceed 100 mph. I helped a friend work on his Ranger EV and I know it wouldn’t exceed 100 mph unless you shoved it out the back of a cargo plane. So unless you can name some production EVs from that period with a 300 mile range and 100 mph top speed just admit that you are worng on all counts.
I eagerly await your next batch of waffles. I hope you realize this nonsense is just destroying what little credibility you have here. But it is OT so I’ll try not to impose on the patience of the group too much.
Regards, Phillip
15 December 2008 at 7:59 PM
To Tamino and John Mashey,
Be careful for what you wish for (pulling the ocean cycles out of the temperature trends) because it may not show what you want it to show.
Here’s a hint: the major ocean cycle drivers of temperature are the ENSO, the AMO and southern Atlantic Ocean SSTs (which is important to explain the unusual southern hemisphere temperature trends and has characteristics similar to the northern Atlantic AMO).
If you pull these out, you get a (still) noisy global warming signal but it does seem to rise fairly consistently over time in direct relation to GHGs. You still end up with 0.7C of warming since the 1880s, but that is certainly less than the 1.3C to 1.4C the models would have predicted.
[Response: which models would they be? Certainly not the ones shown in fig 9.5 of the IPCC AR4 report. - gavin]
15 December 2008 at 9:53 PM
Reply to gavin, it is hard to see what Figure 9.5 from AR4 is really showing.
But here is a reconstruction of Hadcrut3 monthly temps going back to 1871 (1353 data points) based on the Nino 3.4 region anomaly, the AMO index and southern Atlantic SSTs (65S to 35S by 15E and 55W) and CO2.
http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/8456/finalhadcrut3modeljs7.png
After taking out the detrended ENSO, AMO and the southern Atlantic SST cycle out, we end up with a global warming signal like this (for GISS Temp this time as I have done this for all the major temp data series available) (Note the global warming model trendline in the chart is the original theoritical warming line of 3.25C of warming per doubling of GHGs (with CO2 as a proxy for all of them). This line is probably moved out 30 years now given that temps up to 2000 did not keep up with actual observations and the theory was extended to include the oceans absorbing more of the greenhouse effect impact than originally thought - this chart does not provide that break - but still meets the basic trendlines give or take 30 years - it is almost the same line as TAR provided.)
http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/3416/finalgisswarmingkd6.png
I think this demonstrates you can take out the ocean cycles even if there are errors in the rest of the analysis. You’re still left with a +/- 0.2C (ocassionaly +/-.4C) error term which is partly white noise and partly other unexplained variation in global temperatures.
[Response: How pretty. But where are all the other terms? solar, volcanoes, aerosols, ozone? - gavin]
15 December 2008 at 10:54 PM
re: #365 John Lang
Wish for??
I’m not wishing for any particular result, I’m just wishing that more people would understand the difference between trends and noise. Tamino does admirable pedagogy in this turf.
I like OHC because
a) Most of the variable energy is there
b) Unlike surface temperature, energy obeys conservation laws
c) It’s the belt-buckle.
For a similar reason, despite possible confounding effects from precipitation differences, I like glacier records because there’s no argument over choice of periods for time-averaging.
Glaciers have built-in time-constants, and the longer ones end up with smoother curves.
See Swiss glaciers, especially the red line for Great Aletsch in the 3rd figure. Alternatively, this list sorts the Swiss glaciers in descending lengths. The shorter glaciers are more sensitive to short-term jiggles, the longer ones barely notice the noise. Of course, Swiss glaciers are only a tiny local sample, but it’s a meticulous dataset.
Of course, some would prefer that people get distracted by noise…
16 December 2008 at 12:12 AM
Philip I use my real name minus an a and a o, you do the letter adding. First and last name are included in my name here. The battery technology existed for the EV in the mid to late nineteen nineties, but industry did not want them to be used, so there is your first error. Second error: blue lasers as you admit were around for sometime, now the diodes you are referring to were developed in the early nineties which makes it over a decade (almost two decades, when did the blu rays start being marketed (aggressively?) since they were applicable and sometime before that green-blue lasers were used, so both were up and running way before blue ray discs were marketed,I never said theses lasers were around since the 1950’s, now did I, there is your second mistake.
Third mistake: HD has made many improvements over the years, but screens in the 1940’s and 1950’s were at the time revolutionary HD applications which modern screens are based upon with minor improvements to increase resolution. Also the band technology was already there in the form of HD radio applications. There is your third mistake.
As far as my credibility here and in general I guarantee you it is in tact.
It is not difficult to use a common name that will be found on google, but even if it turns out that you are being truthful about your identity that is the only thing that has been said by you with accuracy. It has become more difficult to find references to old technologies on the internet, but it is still possible and I told what books to find them as well as the documentary. This conversation is really over, as my time is precious.
16 December 2008 at 12:16 AM
Anne I will answer your question if you answer mine: why are these so called green house gases not leading to warming? (CO2, CH4, H2O)Oh one more quick one, how do YOU know? Answer me coherently and scientifically with strong evidence and I will get you those specs.
16 December 2008 at 1:52 AM
Phillip and Anne I suggest you guys check out Hank Robert’s link where you will clearly see the history of the EV told in good detail and see how in the 1980’s and 1990’s EV’s were traveling very far on one charge and over 100 m.p.h. Also you should see the documentary as well. I want to thank you Hank for the link, it offered further insights, actually in addition to the other sources I have looked at and have in my library.
I missed that reference, so it was helpful to read. The only apology I owe, even though debate by its nature is at times aggressive is actually to Hank Roberts, and this I can admit as a man. Phillip you may also see my comments on Alzforum to further verify who I am.
16 December 2008 at 2:10 AM
#358 Anne van der Bom: You’ve obviously thought this through and have probably already answered this question, so forgive me if I missed the answer. How much is your plan going to cost?
Hi Anne. We discussed the cost of wind a while back in detail. But here’s a first order estimate for you on the cost to build out to 100% of our electricity needs:
Solar: $3T
Wind: $6T
Geothermal: $2.5T
Nuclear: $1.40T
http://reason.com/news/show/127793.html
16 December 2008 at 2:39 AM
#343 SecularAnimist: Recommended reading re: problems with the Westinghouse AP1000:
Sigh. Please admit that there is nothing that will ever convince you that nuclear is safe. And then also admit that you think every reactor running in France is on the verge of melting down. And also admit the US has pumped about 50B tons of CO2 into the atmosphere since the late 70’s, and that if we would have mirrored France’s roll out, that figure would be about 20B. And also admit the biggest boosters of GREEN in the world are backstepping at this very moment because they see what it is/will do to their economy. Did you think you’d ever see Merkel begging to keep the reactors running?
You anti-nuclear people give the powers-that-be no way out. And you keep thinking that somehow if you screw up enough of the viable options that eventually they will come around to your options. And they would, except the numbers aren’t there. No matter how badly you want them to be there, the engineers look and look and look, because they are all dads and moms with kids that they want to live a long, happy life, and they hate sending money to people that hate us. And they come to the same conclusion: It’d be great if it scaled to 100%, but it doesn’t right now. And we need very nearly a 100% solution IF Hansen is right.
So, keep scaring the hell out of everyone about nuclear. In another 20 years, when the US and EU are still screwing around with p*ss poor deployment numbers on wind and alt energy, and the coal and petroleum industry are still roaring along, you can pat yourself on the back.
16 December 2008 at 2:50 AM
#351 jcbmack: I will repeat this reference:”Who killed the Electric Car,” showed the technology did exist in the nineties and electric cars were once the dominate automobiles on the road.
While that documentary was enjoyable, it failed to give the viewer a lot of details that were actually needed to make an informed decisions. Most that saw it believed that car companies killed electric cars because they were somehow a threat to all the money the car companies made at the pump. Wait. Never mind. It actually all ties back to the Masons some how, but I don’t remember.
Seriously, the reason electric cars aren’t here is because the batteries. Period. Full stop.
By the way, Tesla has brought an electric car to market for about $100M. They purchased a “shell” of a car from Lotus, and worked their magic on the inside. And there’s nothing that says that deal couldn’t be worked again. Some investors get together, get a shell from Honda, stick the batteries and electronics inside, and voila, a car that is even more reliable than a Honda because it’s simpler.
And the movie failed to really ack that all the hollywood stars and execs that were dying for the EV1 could have easily raised $200M (the price of a movie today), and started their own car company, complete with execs that would have been friendly to their whims.
But of course, we know why that didn’t happen. Because the hollywood types learned what they thought was possible was really almost impossible, and that the odds of them getting their money back would be about 2%. So they went back to making movies.
I guess they really don’t care that much afterall. But they like you to think they do.
16 December 2008 at 7:27 AM
Dear John Lang,
There is an aspect of the fit that you have obtained that should perhaps bother you.
Gavin has pointed out that you have not explicitly included the effects of volcanic eruptions, yet your fit during those events appears quite good.
An implication would be that one or more of your data sets includes the effects of eruptions. There is a very real risk that they also contain effects of other forcings, e.g. solar. They may also contain some aspect of the WM-GHG signal. I do not know, but I would check to see how the data sets you have used have been generated to see whether you feel they may contain some element of the WM-GHG signal.
As an initial practical measure, I would try removing any linear trend in the AMO data prior to using it.
Best Wishes
Alexander Harvey
16 December 2008 at 8:06 AM
Re my 374,
I have taken brief look at the AMO data and it appears that it has in all probability been detrended and I believe that it may be just the detrended North Atlantic SST.
[Response: Yes it is. - gavin]
Strangely, that it is already detrended could also turn out to be a problem.
The WM-GHG signal is not a linear trend, it has a dog-leg around the 1950s, so detrending and de-WM-GHG-ing are not the same thing.
Given that I would shy away from using the AMO data set without a lot more analysis.
Best Wishes
Alexander Harvey
16 December 2008 at 8:46 AM
Dear All,
I have to confess an anxiety regarding all matching of forcings directly to temperature records.
It begs the question, “Where have the oceans gone?”
Without the oceans “best fitting” is almost certain to come up with low values for the CS.
As you add oceans (model thermal mass) the best fit CS will rise.
So when do you stop?
Well along with the surface temperature records we have estimates of the OHC.
I believe that even the simplest models need to account for both simultaneously before their estimation of the CS needs to be taken all that seriously.
I also believe that, without a realistic model of thermal mass, the forcings can not be reconciled to the temperature record. In particular volcanic eruptions are way out. But also for solar cycles, and critically for the WM-GHGs.
I am not reserving my anxiety to amateur efforts, I feel that the simple models in published papers are commonly lack any attempt at validation against OHC data.
Best Wishes
Alexander Harvey
16 December 2008 at 10:12 AM
Alexander’s points regarding OHC reinforce (albeit obliquely) a question that I’ve had circulating in my mind for a while.
We know that during the past two Arctic melt seasons we have had really dramatic amounts of melt. At 333 J/g, that’s a lot of sensible heat going latent (if I may phrase it so.) I presume that a very general picture would be that, had the ice (magically) not been there to melt, we would have seen significantly higher temperatures in the Arctic than were actually observed.
So, returning to reality from the counterfactual case–are there portions of the temperature data that actually show some sort of signature from this melting? (I’d expect a sort of ‘mesa’ curve–steep rise, flattish top, perhaps a gradual decay–but my expectations have to count as fairly naive. After all, there would be multiple interactions among radiation, atmosphere, ice and ocean and none of the processes would be instantaneous, or even necessarily on the same time scale. So it’s probably not very simple at all.)
BTW, this post is 100% agenda-free–a product of pure curiosity. But–any thoughts?
16 December 2008 at 10:47 AM
Kevin (353), I just have the impression that a lot of cap and trade, at least initially, will not be very effective like my initial simple example. There will (maybe) be a lot of trading with little reduction. I got no more than this. (As an aside, as a skeptic I probably would not be bothered as it would not cause great grief to the entities, but this is totally irrelevant.) But, you’re correct: the experience of the SO2 process seems to counter my intuitive analysis; while some of the European cap and trade under Kyoto seems to support it, at least in part — though I dunno, maybe not enough to kill the idea.
16 December 2008 at 10:59 AM
I think you guys need to define HD and if text book projections satisfy available, as in blue LEDs. The current HD as in high definition television is wholly dependent on a digital encoding scheme that was not buildable until around the 90s, though it was theoretically known. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been orgasmic over the advent of 9.6kbps modems.
16 December 2008 at 11:15 AM
367 John Mashey says, “I like OHC because”
OHC is good. I also like sea level because it includes both OHC and ice melt. Plus, it’s one of the two variables (the other is ocean pH) which affect civilization the most.
372 Matt said, ” It’d be great if it scaled to 100%, but it doesn’t right now. And we need very nearly a 100% solution IF Hansen is right.”
This and 371 are too “eggs in one basket.” We could drop consumption 10% a year without much trouble, with perhaps a two year lag to get started. (Raise 2011 CAFE to 30MPG, 2013 to 50MPG, and 2015 to 70MPG, start insulating, ban incandescent lights, etc) That will give us a surplus of generating capacity almost immediately. You want to build nukes when there is a surplus of capacity already? That makes as much sense as building refineries. We need to be decommissioning refineries! It would also drop the price of oil in the toilet. Suddenly we can stop playing in that Middle East hornets’ nest. How much of a boon would that be to the economy? Gotta include that in a cost/benefit. Conservation alone, without any reduction in living standard, gets us down 50% within ten years, balances the budget, and drops the cost of energy in half, for a 75% cost savings! That offsets a lot of the costs - conservation saves money even without the reduced cost of energy factored in. We have 20% renewable and nuclear, so carbon requirements drop by 60% even before we add any generating power.
Switch our tax structure to carbon and away from income. Who says a tax takes money from the economy?? It doesn’t if other taxes are 1 for 1 swapped - cap and trade is simple theft and a way inefficient way to do business.
Start adding nuclear pre-heaters to existing fossil generators (and new solar thermal ones - nuke/solar thermal is a way efficient combo as it keeps the generators from sitting idle) and we’re down a total of 90+% in a decade. This isn’t a difficult problem to solve. The problem is that some folks think that energy consumption *must* rise. Sorry, but humans have a limited body mass and our ability to move mass and information continues to get more efficient. The more advanced the society beyond a 1950s tech base, the less energy that society needs. Our embedded excessive power generating capacity along with the embedded military capacity needed to protect fuel sources gives us incredible flexibility and funds to solve the problem. 90% in a decade. I challenge any contrarian to give a reason why it isn’t doable. Guys, lets talk real solutions to real problems.
16 December 2008 at 11:50 AM
> credible in tact
The errors in writing were
– “EV’s”
– “and”
So readers thought the statement was that in the 1990s there were EV’s that could go 100mph and 300 miles between charges.
Checking, it turns out that there was one electric vehicle that did exceed 100mph on one measured lap; there was another EV that did, once, go 300 miles. Each unique.
Memory isn’t reliable, and doesn’t work both ways. And there’s nothing worse than having a reputation for being a reliable source to make one become careless. At some point I’ll reach the age and condition where I forget to check my assertions more and more, and they diverge more and more from the facts. I think that’s called ‘Emeritus’ level. Maybe next week.
16 December 2008 at 1:00 PM
Rod B, you’ve got me looking at some of the criticisms of the European trading scheme, including the analysis by the GAO. (See: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-151)
While a lot of the (I’d say, “agenda-driven”) blogosphere labels the European model “a failure”, GAO doesn’t say that.
But it does seem that it’s critical 1) to have good baseline data on emissions (one of the GAO recommendations); 2) to allocate allowances appropriately (ETS gave them away–politically attractive, but not necessarily the right thing economically; and the supply of allowances exceeded demand in 2006, resulting in price collapse–this is obviously related to point 1); 3) to deal appropriately with offsets, as this area is highly problematic in terms of efficacy and throughput. (Note that the Title IV cap and trade scheme, which addressed SO2 and NOX so successfully, had no provisions for offsets.)
RichardC, you write that “cap and trade is simple theft and a way inefficient way to do business.” I don’t understand what you mean–who is stealing what from whom? (I’m wondering if you are thinking of the windfall which can result when allowances are simply awarded? But that needn’t be the case under cap and trade generally–this is one of the specifics that needs to be done right.) And the experience with the Title IV SO2 emissions trading scheme found it highly efficient in reducing emissions. Can you provide a little more substance to your thoughts, either by fleshing out your ideas or by giving some references?
16 December 2008 at 1:13 PM
#377 Rod B, #353 Kevin McKinney:
A cap and trade in the US on greenhouse gases might be more successful than in Europe. In US regulations the stakeholders have a more direct participatory role in the process. This tends to lead regulations that are more effective and efficient.
Many environmentalists initially opposed cap and trade because the regulated industries would be too involved. See Chevron v NRDC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_v._NRDC
Now most groups embrace it.
Recaptcha: leaders resent
16 December 2008 at 1:23 PM
Gavin and Alexander Harvey asked about the volcanic impact in the reconstruction.
Certainly, the large volcanoes have an impact on temperatures and there is no volcanic forcing included in this reconstruction at all.
The effect, however, does seem to be picked up by the ocean indices I am using. Volcano happens, planet cools off, land cools off and Oceans cool off (I imagine.)
I looked very closely at all the major volcanic eruptions over this period - Krakatoa, Santa Maria, Novarupta, Agung, Mount Pinatubo etc. - (as I originally thought I would need to include a volcanic influence as well). It was not required.
For the most part, the impact is picked up. The reconstruction does not do as well with Pinatubo as it was a little low going into the eruption and then it is a little high when the impact was at its deepest, but it does go somewhere through the middle of the impact. The other major eruptions are matched pretty closely.
I could have put in some plugged figures here and there but decided not to just to preserve the simple calculations that the reconstruction is based on.
[Response: But then you are essentially using the temperature variations to predict temperature variations. This has very little predictability (actually none). - gavin]
16 December 2008 at 2:35 PM
jcbmack -
You are still wrong on all three points, and all of your bluster and waffling won’t change that.
The value of this ‘discussion’ - 0
Your being unable to simply admit your mistakes - PRICELESS
Cheers - Phillip
16 December 2008 at 3:11 PM
RichardC (380), Wow! I trust that low-fat pie in the sky you’re eating tastes good. You say, “Guys, lets talk real solutions to real problems.” following a litany of ethereal “solutions”. Boggles the mind. (To be fair there were a couple of ideas buried in there that weren’t too far off the chart and maybe deserving of some thought.) 70MPG CAFE in six years?? Hello!!
16 December 2008 at 3:26 PM
382 Kevin, cap and trade distributes allowances to be traded. Those who pollute retain the right to pollute. This can be altered to make it fair by selling the allowances up font, but then the system converts into a simple carbon tax. Adjusting the tax year-to-year to follow the market is easy and cheap. It also gives industry a stable benchmark. Why add another layer of complexity, when what we really want is a price per ton of CO2 which ratchets emissions down in a predictable fashion?
Then there is the issue of international borders. The atmosphere is common property, one which most folks consider equally owned by all people. Should the receipts, either from a carbon tax, or a modified tax-cap and trade system be distributed to everyone on the planet? It would provide a way to eliminate foreign aid.
16 December 2008 at 3:28 PM
Kevin (382), regardless of the ballyhoo, most of Europe missed Kyoto targets badly (or some just a little and some were not very bad at all); and a bunch of what they did accomplish was through the faulty (semi-faulty?) cap and trade plan put in place. Even so, being objective, I for one would not call their effort a failure. They got something out of it, and probably learned a bunch about the process. The GAO observations you cite seem quite good.
Maybe the situation is more like one of those pithy business sayings I heard long long ago. There is nothing wrong with any idea or project as long as one understands there are two and only two ways to do it: 1) smart; 2) stupid.
16 December 2008 at 3:30 PM
Rod,#379, you are essentially correct. The modern technology for what we now refer to as HD did start around the 1990’s, actually the mid to late 1980’s, but the kinks were worked out in the 1990’s and the marketability went up so mass production had begun to be facilitated, the upper middle class began to buy them, the price went down, the technology improved, the internal electronics became smaller and more shades of color became better resolved and resolution continued to improve (pixel count, clarity etc…)Actually there is a new 7,000 dollar HD tv with far more color shades than anything else on the market and it utilizes new advances on previously existing technology, eventually the price will drop and what is HD now (though I do not argue against a digitial basis) will be old news and obsolete. Those tv’s in France in the 1940’s-1950’s got close to the basic HD tv now in terms of resolution, but in color and aspect ratio clarity.
Phillip, The blue laser itself existed before the 1990’s, but the diode technology did become better in the early to mid 1990’s, (depending on your source or what interview transcript it could be as late as 2001 where drastic improvements were made)but even so if it is 1996 we want to consider the year of engineering development application of the diode and focusing the lower frequency blue laser, the potential for it and the basic principles and devlopment are far older, but here is the point: it took several years after it was working well before it became applied to blue ray discs and the like though it was already tested and effective.
Finally the EV’s. well, it turns out batteries did exist in the late 1990’s that could go approximately 300 miles on one charge and the very early 2000’s they were well documented, but not fitted into almost all vehicles as Hank pointed out from his reference, there was one maybe two if I look in the archives well enough which at a future date I will and will let you know my findings and cite the references. Just becasue the cars were not fitted as a whole does not mean that the technology did not exist, it was developed by Mashinksi, (I think I spelled that right, if you google the engineering of batteries by this couple you will find the information) but rejected by car companies. Batteries, Matt are very expensive and difficult when we get to certain power efficiency levels and yes if you are only building 4 vehicles or so a day they are VERY expensive, however, with proper marketing and mass production the prices would have dropped.
The point I was making is that all this technology is not so new and what we can do now was long ago predicted by chemists and engineers.
16 December 2008 at 3:31 PM
“but not in color and aspect ratio clarity.”
16 December 2008 at 3:50 PM
369 jcbmack
You misunderstood me. Did you notice the smiley?
You were referencing a documentary as support for your arguments. I merely tried to convey the message that I do not have much faith in documentaries. ‘Who killed the electric car’ is just as biased by personal beliefs as the documentary I mentioned.
Just to be absolutely clear about this: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it is already altering the climate and will probably cause us some nasty surprises in the future. We should stop the tinkering with that which we don’t understand as soon as possible.
And to be clear about another thing: I love EV’s, I’ll be the first person to buy one (if it’s within my budget).
So back to my question: where are the 300+ miles EV’s?
16 December 2008 at 3:57 PM
Anne first tell me why global warming is not true.
16 December 2008 at 4:02 PM
#371 matt
I am afraid the numbers in your article fail to convince me. The solar & wind numbers are based on real-world, actual projects. The Westinghouse estimate is probably from the marketing department. If Westinghouse signs a deal fixed price/fixed date to deliver a 1GW nuclear plant for $1.4 billion, I will believe their number.
Tell me, T Boone Pickens seems a smart business man to me. Why doesn’t he invest in nuclear if that is so vastly superior to wind?
16 December 2008 at 4:03 PM
386 Rod, the 2010 Prius is a very large car and is slated to get close to 70MPG. A smaller version would exceed 70MPG. I bet a lot of companies would license the technology.
Remember, CAFE isn’t required to be met - it’s a cap-and-tax system ($11/MPG). Right now CAFE is like giving out first-place ribbons to all the kids so as to ensure their economic egos aren’t bruised. If a 70MPG target would get automakers to double their efficiency (50MPG), then my stated goal would be achieved. I bet Toyota would make 70MPG and so their cars would be taxed $220 less than a corporation that gets 50MPG. CAFE should be set at or higher than the best corporation’s ability to deliver.
16 December 2008 at 4:35 PM
#370 jcbmack,
What Hank’s link shows is a list of failed attempts, toys for the rich and cars with limited use. The claims about performance and/or range are based on single trips in specially prepared one-off cars, out of reach for ordinary people and of no use in normal life. Even the EV-1 was a two-seater.
I am afraid we’ll have to wait another 10 years for the battery technology to mature. While waiting for that, I hope I can buy a plug-in hybrid early next decennium.
16 December 2008 at 4:44 PM
#371 matt
Oops forgot an inconvenient question: The $1.4 billion Westinghouse figure is that in- or exclusive of decomissioning costs?
16 December 2008 at 5:14 PM
#392 jcbmack
Are you playing with me?
Where is this statement lacking in clarity?
And I was not serious when I wrote:
16 December 2008 at 5:53 PM
re #323 + 324 turns out that 0.48C of John Lang became 0.58C, so much for being in touch with weather events around the globe.
Sources Oct. Nov. ChangeHadCRUT3v 0,4320 0,3860 -0,0460
GISTEMP 0,5800 0,5800 0,0000
N.C.D.C. 0,6365 0,6148 -0,0217
UAH-MSU 0,1660 0,2540 0,0880
RSS-MSU 0,1810 0,2160 0,0350
CRUTEM3v 0,7810 0,764 -0,0170
GISS announced a review policy commencing December, so they now turned in their temps last.
2008-12-16: Please see our preliminary discussion of this year’s data.
Starting this month, the data will be held, investigated, and potential problems reported to and resolved with the data provider before making them public. However, as we noted in the “Data Quality Control” section of our 1999 paper: We would welcome feedback from users on any specific data in this record.
A few station data from Canada were reported as potentially incorrect and subsequently removed by NOAA.
16 December 2008 at 6:21 PM
jcbmack (389), sounds good. I was merely saying what is being debated/discussed should be defined. Like TV: HD comes in two aspects. One is the TV production itself in terms of chromo processing, screen/tube technology, etc. The other is transmission and delivery.
16 December 2008 at 6:28 PM
Anne, part of T. Boone’s motivation is to have wind provide the electric power and free up the natural gas (his) to burn in cars and trucks. I suppose nuclear could do the same but most smart businessmen, unless they were already immersed, would look at the nuclear morass (which has nothing to do with any of this topic) and run like hell. Wind has its implementation problems, but not as bad as nuclear.
16 December 2008 at 6:47 PM
396 Anne asked, “The $1.4 billion Westinghouse figure is that in- or exclusive of decomissioning costs?”
Don’t forget insurance, whether funded by taxpayers (as in liability exclusions) or business. And fuel costs. And waste storage (again, even if taxpayer-funded). And outages/shutdowns. And terrorist protection. Nukes are $expensive$
16 December 2008 at 7:16 PM
RichardC, I did a little digging, starting from your comment about carbon taxes vs. cap and trade.
From (Pizer, 1997): “Uncertainty about compliance costs causes otherwise equivalent price and quantity controls to behave differently. Price controls — in the form of taxes — fix the marginal cost of compliance and lead to uncertain levels of compliance. Meanwhile quantity controls — in the form of tradable permits or quotas — fix the level of compliance but result in uncertain marginal costs. This fundamental difference in the face of cost uncertainty leads to different welfare outcomes for the two policy instruments. . . . This paper applies this principal (sic) to the issue of worldwide greenhouse gas (GHG) control, using a global integrated climate economy model to simulate the consequences of uncertainty and to compare the efficiency of taxes and permits empirically. The results indicate that an optimal tax policy generates gains which are five times higher than the optimal permit policy — a $337 billion dollar gain versus $69 billion at the global level. This result follows from Weitzman’s original intuition that relatively flat marginal benefits/damages favor taxes, a feature that drops out of standard assumptions about the nature of climate damages. A hybrid policy, suggested by Roberts and Spence (1976). . . uses an initial distribution of tradeable permits to set a target emission level, but then allows additional permits to be purchased at a fixed “trigger” price. The optimal hybrid policy leads to welfare benefits only slightly higher than the optimal tax policy. Relative to the tax policy, however, the hybrid preserves the ability to flexibly distribute the rents associated with the right to emit. Perhaps more importantly for policy discussions, a sub-optimal hybrid policy, based on a stringent target and high trigger price (e.g., 1990 emissions and a $100/tC trigger), generates much better welfare outcomes than a straight permit system with the same target. Both of these features suggest that a hybrid policy is a more attractive alternative to either a straight tax or permit system.”
17 December 2008 at 1:56 AM
#393 Anne van der Bom I am afraid the numbers in your article fail to convince me. The solar & wind numbers are based on real-world, actual projects. The Westinghouse estimate is probably from the marketing department. If Westinghouse signs a deal fixed price/fixed date to deliver a 1GW nuclear plant for $1.4 billion, I will believe their number.
China signed an agreement for 4 AP1000 reactors at $8B, or $2B apiece, and they will be turned on in 2013 and are under construction right now. The Reason article claimed Westinghouse can do it for $1.4B. It would take about 900 of these to power the US, so you should have reasonable faith that if they will build two for $2B each, then indeed they’d build 100 for much, much less. Kind of like buying toilet paper at Costco. The more you buy, the cheaper it gets (to a point).
Now, deeper in the Wiki article there’s a fascinating other number. In the US, Georgia Power Company signed a contract to buy two of the AP1000 reactors for $14B, or $7B each.
So, assuming the reactor designs are exactly the same and they are built exactly the same, the difference is regulatory overhead. In China, the reactor cost is $2B quantity two, in the US, it’s $7B quantity two. It would be interesting to better understand the difference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000
By the way, the Reason article assumed 100% utilization on the wind figures. Typically, 30% is more likely. So the real cost of wind would be about 3X the stated cost.
I don’t know why Pickens isn’t spending on nuclear. I know that the Chinese are betting on nuclear over wind. They have plans for over 100 of these nuclear reactors.
17 December 2008 at 2:08 AM
#396 Anne van der Bom: Oops forgot an inconvenient question: The $1.4 billion Westinghouse figure is that in- or exclusive of decomissioning costs?
Probably it doesn’t. Round nubmers: If a nuclear plant costs $1B, can produce 1000 MW 80% of the time and has a useful life of 30 years, and has a decommissioning cost (today’s numbers) of $250M, then the first year decom cost is 250/30=$8M, while you sold 800 MW * 24 * 365 * 0.10/kwh = $700M/year in electricity. So, the annual decom cost is about 8/700 = 1.1% of revenue. So, perhaps it eats 5% of your sales a year to fund the decommissioning cost.
Seems manageable, assuming my math is right.
17 December 2008 at 2:30 AM
#389 Rod: Batteries, Matt are very expensive and difficult when we get to certain power efficiency levels and yes if you are only building 4 vehicles or so a day they are VERY expensive, however, with proper marketing and mass production the prices would have dropped.
No kidding. But consider Tesla. They use a about 6000 standard laptop batteries in a single car. They plan to ship 1200 cars a year, which means they are buying 7.2 million of these standard laptop cells per year.
They do not have any problem negotiating with any supplier with that quantity. And they won’t see the price drop much doubling or tripling their volume. They are about as far down the cost curve as you can be at that volume.
But, consider too, that the entire laptop industry is about 120M laptops/year, and each laptop might have 4 of these cells. So, perhaps the industry makes 500M cells/year.
Tesla need only increase their production from 100/month to 7000/month and suddenly they are using more Lithium batteries than the entire laptop industry COMBINED. See how that is potentially a problem?
The US sells about 15M cars per year. If 80% of those ran off of Lithium batteries, it means the car companies would buy 72B lithium batteries per year. The laptop industry buys 500M. That’s a 144X increase. Yes, buy stock in lithium mining operations. And get ready to see them go big. And hope the mining is done responsibly. And yes, the US is the leader in lithium mining (North Carolina, of all places).
17 December 2008 at 10:18 AM
It’s amazing to see how tenaciously one will hang onto their cherished political beliefs …
Matt, the difference isn’t clearly “due to regulatory differences”. Wages are far lower in China (the only reason why “Made in China” is one of the most frequently used phrases in the English language). This will impact not only direct labor costs for construction of the plants, but indirectly in the price of concrete, structural steel, etc etc.
We *know* the price of labor is lower, so we can state this with confidence. The regulatory costs *might* be a factor, and I would guess are, but to state that 1) this accounts for the full 7x price difference and 2) to imply that regulations are bad is … a reach, at best.
17 December 2008 at 10:19 AM
402 Kevin, thanks for the info. The hybrid system seems to take the step of adjusting the tax via market forces instead of through a yearly audit. Sounds fine to me. It still leaves the question of what to do with the money raised.
CORRECTION: I stated that CAFE’s tax was $11/MPG. It’s really $55/MPG. Oops! Given that I’m speculating on a near tripling of the CAFE standard, an equivalent tax would be $20/MPG.
405 Matt, batteries are probably not the answer. Flywheels are a better concept. Here’s an article from Discover 1996 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_n8_v17/ai_18471043/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1
17 December 2008 at 11:29 AM
> 4 AP1000 reactors … are under construction right now
Westinghouse submitted Revision 17 to the Design Certification Amendment on September 22, 2008….
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/design-cert/amended-ap1000.html
17 December 2008 at 11:39 AM
matt wrote: “I don’t know why Pickens isn’t spending on nuclear.”
Because even with hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, nuclear power is a proven economic failure.
17 December 2008 at 12:18 PM
Here’s a couple of updates on the flywheel concept RichardC mentioned.
Right now, aerospace and UPS applications are being realized, apparently–one of these links menions that “initial costs of around $1,000/kWh are about double those of a lead-acid device,” and that that is a deterrent to consumer applications. It seems a really interesting technology, and one that could really help achieve a sustainable energy economy.
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=909
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.05/flywheel.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V2V-4MG6P8C-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=726b555fad4c7bf13937f68b8d1de842
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
Thanks, Richard!
17 December 2008 at 12:29 PM
dhogaza: We *know* the price of labor is lower, so we can state this with confidence. The regulatory costs *might* be a factor, and I would guess are, but to state that 1) this accounts for the full 7x price difference and 2) to imply that regulations are bad is … a reach, at best.
A nuclear plant is about 400,000 yds^3 of concrete. At $100/yd^3, that’s $40M in concrete cost. Insignificant.
If a reactor takes 1000 workers 3 years, and they average $70K/year, that’s $210M in labor. Insignificant.
Sanity check: Link below indicates materials cost is 1% of total reactor cost.
Thus, it does seem the regulatory cost of building a reactor in the US is 3-5X the reactor cost itself. Yes?
http://seekerblog.com/archives/20080827/cera-construction-costs-for-new-nuclear-plants-up-over-230-since-2000/
17 December 2008 at 1:28 PM
> regulatory cost of building a reactor in the US
> is 3-5X the reactor cost itself. Yes?
No.
You don’t know what each individual unique plant costs until it’s been used up and disposed of.
Westinghouse is still working on modifications to the design of the device — yet China’s already building … something.
China’s doing what the US did decades ago, rushing into building to support a rapid growth period, and the costs will be determined later.
The US is looking hard at the longterm costs based on prior experience.
China builds good heavy industrial steel — ocean port shipping cranes shipped to Oakland a while back for example,
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?m=/c/pictures/2005/03/06/mn_crane_037_df.jpg&f=/chronicle/archive/2005/03/06/BAGDTBLAIS1.DTL
the largest in the world. By contrast, if you look up “crane collapse” you’ll find that smaller cranes have a terrible safety record recently. Not sure who makes those.
But look at problems with concrete.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/16/asia/AS-GEN-China-Bridge-Collapse.php
or children’s toys, or baby formula.
Complicated things are hard to get right. Complicated radioactive things are hard to repair.
Do it once, do it right, is a hard attitude to inculcate.
17 December 2008 at 3:14 PM
Anne I apologize, I misread your statements. It is the end of the school year and I am busy teaching, grading papers, tests, and other projects. I am also spending far too much time here at RC and so I am taking a much needed break. Regarding the batteries, yes it is a tricky technology to improve upon both from an engineering and economic one, but from what I have seen in Britannica and from what my engineering friends tell me and the documentary and the Mashinski technology as well, the capacity to do what I stated from a strictly scientific/applications perspective has been there.I agree that market is not ready for another 10 years or so.
The coaxial cable for digital transfer was invented in the late 1970’s and used in the early 1980’s, so that is where the capacity to apply modern digitally based HD was possible, but analog TV’s did exist long before with high resolution technology and so were the bands for high definition to exist as well, which was applied in military applications.
That’s it, if I made some minor error or misspoke a little, then I will be more clear and cautious in the future, but a lot of technology and the scientific basis for the technology has been around longer than can be found on google; google is great, but not all encompassing.
17 December 2008 at 4:41 PM
matt wrote: “I know that the Chinese are betting on nuclear over wind.”
“Betting on nuclear over wind” is a pretty vague statement and it is difficult to know what you mean by it, so it is difficult to know what exactly you claim to “know”.
However, China is certainly “betting on” wind power — and betting large. According to WorldWatch Institute, as of June 2008:
And according to the Global Wind Energy Council, China is expected to become the world’s top wind turbine manufacturer in 2009, with an annual production capacity of about 10 gigawatts per year, which is more than half of the current world market.
17 December 2008 at 5:16 PM
matt #403, #404
The Westinghouse & China contract includes exactly what? The complete plant? Only the reactors? Only the core parts? Only the technology? How much local labor and suppliers are used?
What you call ‘regulatory overhead’ I would call ‘higher safety standards’.
For me the $ 7B Georgia Power deal is the actual number. That is a real, tangible contract. With this knowledge the figures from your post #371 should be:
Solar: $3T
Wind: $6T
Geothermal: $2.5T
Nuclear: $6T (excl. decommissioning costs)
17 December 2008 at 5:52 PM
#413 jcbmack
Ok. I have already noticed you post a lot here.
Battery technology is improving fast. Of all the chemistries under development, lithium seems the most promising. The current energy density is only a tenth of the theoretical limit. The technology is there, the price is still too high, but heading southward.
17 December 2008 at 7:02 PM
Regarding the costs of proposed Westinghouse AP-1000 nuclear power plants in the USA, the Free Press article that I linked to above notes the following (emphasis added):
As always, the only way that private investors, including the utility industry, will go anywhere near nuclear power is if the public is forced to absorb all the costs and all the risks … including the financial risks of the plants being unprofitable to operate once they are built.
This is completely the opposite of the solar and wind energy industries, which are the fastest and second fastest growing sources of new electricity generation worldwide, where private investors are falling over themselves to pour money into the industries.
17 December 2008 at 10:24 PM
Reality check on wind & solar.
I’m a big fan of both of these … but their use really depends on where you are, and different countries and parts thereof have vast variabilities. Hence, there may be X good space for something in a country, and you may gear up for that, but some places may still need nuclear.
James Hansen was here at our local Town Center giving a talk last night, and this got discussed both over dinner and during questions after the talk.
See post at BraveNewClimate, and especially check out the world-wide wind-potential maps of Archer &Jacobson and a solar insolation map.
17 December 2008 at 11:24 PM
> the coaxial cable for digital transfer
> was invented in the late 1970’s
Really? Something different from
http://www.tech-faq.com/coaxial-cable.shtml
coax used for broadband?
“May 23, 1929 … a patent for broadband coaxial cable, the first broadband transmission medium…. a new kind of wire system … based on the use of a coaxial conductor ….”
http://www.corp.att.com/attlabs/reputation/timeline/29cable.html
17 December 2008 at 11:27 PM
#414 SecularAnimist: However, China is certainly “betting on” wind power — and betting large.
And yet you fail to cite what their annual needs are. Which is exactly what the reader needs to put it into context.
China will see 60 GW of nuclear generation by 2020. That will be about 3% of their total generating capacity. Today, they have generating capacity (all sources) of 400 GW. In 2020, they will have nearly 1 TW.
Note that today China has 9 GW of installed nuclear capacity, delivering 62B KWH. That’s about 80% utilization.
The 100GW of power in 2020 that you note is nameplate. In practice, it will generate about 26B KWH.
So, it could be said they are favoring nuclear 2.4:1 between now and 2020. And that’s reasonable. I’m not against wind. But it has to be augmented by something bankable. And dont’ forget, China is in a unique position to make wind more reliable than anyone else because they can build massive energy storage facilities by damming up huge regions that could never happen in north america because of the green lobby.
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssConsumerGoodsAndRetailNews/idUSL0868760220080308
17 December 2008 at 11:50 PM
#415: Anne van der Bom: For me the $ 7B Georgia Power deal is the actual number. That is a real, tangible contract. With this knowledge the figures from your post #371 should be:
Here are some folks that seem in-the-know on the actual costs for a variety of nuclear projects. They claim the AP1000 for China isn’t the full enchilada, and that $5B is the more realistic price.
http://www.reactorscanada.com/?p=14
Fair enough. But that’s still better than wind. And it works (almost) 24×7. If you want wind to be there (almost) 24×7, then you must derate it’s nameplate rating even further. For example, if you want a farm of 1500 KW generators to deliver power with 80% reliability, then you can only count on 20% of the nameplate rating.
So, as you rely on wind for more of your baseload, then the $6T figure for wind must go even higher…nearly twice as high.
See graph on page 56: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf
17 December 2008 at 11:55 PM
matt (403) says, “I don’t know why Pickens isn’t spending on nuclear… ”
I think you do: two paragraphs up in your own post, maybe!
18 December 2008 at 12:29 AM
Hank (412) says, “You don’t know what each individual unique plant costs until it’s been used up and disposed of.”
True. But the same must be said for turbines, solar, methane plants and coal plants…, and, I suppose, flywheel farms.
18 December 2008 at 12:56 AM
Hank, the operative word in “coaxial cable for digital transfer” re the discussion is digital, not coax. Coax has been around for sometime; but high-speed digital transmission channels (T4 and T5 in telephone land), requiring new electronics and encoding scheme, only since early 70s.
18 December 2008 at 4:38 AM
Matt, when the rollout of the “inexpensive” nuclear option is paid for, what do you do in twenty years time when you have run out of nuclear? Now, think about when wind will run out. Or solar.
18 December 2008 at 7:42 AM
Donald writes:
The actual Christian belief is that “The Earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof” (Psalm 24:1, see also Psalm 50). God never told anybody to “exploit” the Earth. And please note that 86 leading American evangelicals have just signed onto a statement asking their congregations to do more to fight global warming. Please don’t stereotype.
[Response: No further discussion of religion please. - gavin]
18 December 2008 at 8:22 AM
Ike Solem (158) — to be Lamarckian, it’s not enough that acquired characteristics be inherited, they have to be adaptational. The whole point about Lamarck was that he thought striving drove evolution. The giraffe stretching its neck and passing the trait down to its descendants made the descendants more viable.
18 December 2008 at 8:24 AM
tamino — the link to my climate sensitivity page goes to the defunct AOL site — the new site is at http://www.geocities.com/bpl1960/ClimateSensitivity.html (remove the hyphen).
18 December 2008 at 8:42 AM
Mark says: “Matt, when the rollout of the “inexpensive” nuclear option is paid for, what do you do in twenty years time when you have run out of nuclear?”
The same as you do when the solar panels or windmills have to be replaced, albeit, you don’t have to worry so much about half-lives with these technologies. Everything wears out–or as a reliability physicist I know says, “Failure is not an option… It’s a standard feature.”
18 December 2008 at 10:40 AM
Neither Lamarckism nor Darwinism had anything to do with speciation or the creation of any of the higher taxonomic categories. All of creative evolution was preplanned, prescheduled and emergent from the relatively few organisms that were capable of leaving decendents markedly different from themeselves. Natural selection, allelic mutation, and Mendelian (sexual) reproduction were all conservative and anti-evoluitionary, serving only to maintain the status quo for as long as possible.
Furthermore there is not a shred of evidence that creative, progressive evolution is any longer in progress. Just as ontogeny ends with the death of the indivdual, so phylogeny ends with extinction. The present biota seems to be the terminus of the evolutionary sequence and I see no reason to assume evolution will ever resume. In short -
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
For a further discussion and documentation I refer to my weblog -
jadavison.wordpress.com
18 December 2008 at 10:44 AM
jcbmack@230,
That’s a reiteration of your claim that “the green movement” is dangerous, not a justification. The major environmental pressure groups employ fully qualified scientists. How about some concrete examples of proposals made by such groups - not random people on the internet - that you claim are unfeasible, with proper justification?
18 December 2008 at 10:56 AM
John A Davidson says “For a further discussion and documentation I refer to my weblog -”
Don’t hold your breath.
18 December 2008 at 11:03 AM
Rod, what coaxial cable do you imagine was invented in the 1970s that he could be talking about? Maybe he’s thinking about HDMI, which was multiple twisted pair cable. In 2007 there’s a mention of success transmitting HDMI over coax — a distance of a few feet.
If there was an invention there’s a patent.
Or maybe the words mean something different?
18 December 2008 at 11:12 AM
#430
Oh good grief, as if it’s not enough that climate change denialists infest this site, now we have evolution denialists as well.
18 December 2008 at 11:52 AM
410 Kevin, the other tech trying to replace batteries is the ultracapacitor, which uses static charge to store energy. They are wicked cool, but still wicked expensive.
421 Matt claims, ” And it [nuclear] works (almost) 24×7″
You win the Golden Eyeroll award for that one. If one counts operational reactors, 80% is a good number. If you include the failed reactors, 60% is about right. Here’s Canada’s CANDU’s performance: http://www.cns-snc.ca/media/reliability/reliability.html
About 10% of that is scheduled maintenance so it occurs at non-peak seasons, so bumping the total reliability figure up to 65% is reasonable.
On Evolution and Climate Change: things change once a mechanism for the dominant view is established. Evolution’s line was the discovery of DNA. Climate’s line was the discovery of CO2’s greenhouse effect. Interestingly, Climate’s line came long before the Climate issue became relevant while Evolution’s line came long after the issue was settled. “Some unknown factor” isn’t terribly rational once the line is crossed. Yep, there’s always another level to explore, but to advocate policy based on the vain hope that established science is fundamentally incomplete is stupid. A good analogy is Newton. Relativity proves Newton wrong, but policy based on Newton being correct is still good practice. Newton was correct enough.
18 December 2008 at 11:59 AM
Hank, I said coax, a level-1 physical layer was not the question. The transmission and networking layer with its electronics and protocols were the stuff first realized in the 70s. (And not so much generic “protocol”, as encoding schemes to generate high-speed bit streams and, more important, detect them reliably at the receiver.)
Nick (434), not to mention dangerous environmentalists denialists…
18 December 2008 at 12:33 PM
“things change once a mechanism for the dominant view is established. Evolution’s line was the discovery of DNA.” - RichardC
Not really. Darwin’s evidence for common descent was already overwhelming, and convinced all serious biologists quite quickly.
Once population genetics was formulated by Fisher, Haldane, Wright and others around 1930, it was clear that natural selection was the main mechanism of evolution. That meant biologists knew what properties the genetic material must have - without that, they would not have discovered the structure of DNA.
18 December 2008 at 1:03 PM
Rod B writes:
You do realize, don’t you, that there will be tremendous cost and disruption from NOT mitigating? It’s not a case of doing nothing being the safe course to follow.
18 December 2008 at 1:30 PM
matt writes:
It doesn’t have to. Switching to solar thermal power, photovoltaics, wind, geothermal, HDR, cogeneration, and insulating houses can give us a much bigger cut, and will.
18 December 2008 at 1:52 PM
I’d like to be the first to state on this blog that I will pay MORE in electric bills if I know the power is coming from renewables, rather than from fossil or solar. It’s worth it to me to screw up the environment and public health less.
[Response: You can already (at least in New York). - gavin]
18 December 2008 at 2:11 PM
Barton Paul Levenson wrote: “I’d like to be the first to state on this blog that I will pay MORE in electric bills if I know the power is coming from renewables, rather than from fossil or solar.”
Gavin replied: “You can already (at least in New York).”
I already do, in Maryland — I buy 100 percent wind-generated electricity through the local utility PEPCO. It is more expensive than PEPCO’s “standard” mix which is about 80 percent coal-fired with the remaining 20 percent coming from gas and nuclear (Calvert Cliffs). But as Barton says, it’s worth it.
Also, in the summer of 2007 I replaced my aging gas furnace with an electric heat pump, so now all my HVAC is 100 percent wind-powered. I was warned that the cost of heating during the coldest months would be much higher than with gas, but it has turned out to be only slightly higher, even with the more expensive wind-generated electricity.
18 December 2008 at 3:31 PM
HANK # 419, yes, but I was referring to more modern applications of digital transfer.Just like the HD technology from the 1940’s and 1950’s was analog, the coaxial cable was upgraded and found new applications in the 1970’s to 1980’s. I was actually correcting and clarifying myself in this regard. I looked in Britannica again and called a few engineering friends (electrical and computer) and I was more careful in my post wording, careful not to be too long or too vague.Again limited time, but the capacity for the technologies has been there, but the financial drive to develop and market them has been far slower.
18 December 2008 at 3:41 PM
Hank # 433, look it up in a scholar technology journal or go to the library and look at an older technology book that is relevant. I am not speaking of HDMI. This will get you started from scholar, where the technology devlopment began in the 1960’s with wide ranging applications: Digital Transmission Systems By David Russell Smith
A Detailed description of modern tv applications and a details on analog: Modern Cable Television Technology By Walter S. Ciciora, James Farmer, Michael Adams
There are many more available, but this will get you started Hank and others interested.
18 December 2008 at 3:51 PM
Nick, you are misquoting, I am supportive of green technologies and reducing fossil fuel emissions, but many green websites are misinformed and lack solid science to back them up. I am referring to the “tree huggers.”
18 December 2008 at 4:29 PM
I’ll second Nick Gotts’ requests (#430 and 214) for more information about how inaccurate, misguided or dangerous the green groups, websites, or movements are, the more specific the better.
In the US even the opponents of the environmentalists admit the environmentalists have the facts on their side and use them better. See the Luntz Memo. Many of the same people and organizations who misrepresent science also use the same tactics against environmentalists, for example the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Steven Milloy on Junk Science.
recaptcha “lenox fabrication”
18 December 2008 at 4:42 PM
> get you started
Jacob, the point of a citation is to get people _there_. Think of later readers of the thread who may wonder what you’re talking about. Or think of the editor of the journal you’re submitting a paper to. Good citation is good practice, and takes practice.
Perhaps you’re recalling hybrid fiber coax?
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4135202.html
Right year; invention; patented; coax; the basis for most modern cable television; in the news lately.
The hybrid fiber-coax architecture covered by U.S. Patent No. 4135202 was invented in the laboratories of Rediffusion, Inc….
www.ipdevelopment.com/news2.htm
Citation: give sufficient information that a later reader can find the basis you relied on to make your claim.
I tested whether it was easy to do that for yet another of your claims; ‘t weren’t.
You want to be a reliable source known good? Cite.
If you can’t remember the source for your belief,
and you can’t find a source, and check your belief,
handwaving “exercise for the student” is not optimal.
18 December 2008 at 5:18 PM
I see I am not welcome here. That is your loss.
18 December 2008 at 8:36 PM
John Davison, On the contrary. Anyone who really wants to learn about climate science usually finds they are welcome here. What is not welcome is spam for a website pushing an anti-science agenda–and yes, creationism/ID is anti-science.
ReCAPTCHA chimes in: men Pescia
18 December 2008 at 9:28 PM
Hank my citation is appropriate it verifies what I am saying. I have not performed any hand waving.
18 December 2008 at 10:21 PM
BPL (438) says, “You do realize, don’t you, that there will be tremendous cost and disruption from NOT mitigating?…”
If true, yes. Therein lies the rub of playing a very high stakes game. (Pardon the metaphor; it’s instructive, but I admit the AGW issue is far from a game.)
19 December 2008 at 2:23 AM
#441 SecularAnimist: I already do, in Maryland — I buy 100 percent wind-generated electricity through the local utility PEPCO. It is more expensive than PEPCO’s “standard” mix which is about 80 percent coal-fired with the remaining 20 percent coming from gas and nuclear (Calvert Cliffs). But as Barton says, it’s worth it.
So how are you dealing with the interruptions in electricity during the day? Or are you actually relying on the coal to provide your baseload and instead using funnymoney accounting such that when the wind blows the provider buys that wind power but doesn’t actually burn any less coal???
You have checked into this, right? I mean, a power company would never charge you a premium for a product if it didn’t help, right?
Ask your power provider how many fewer coal plants they would have to build if all their residents went to wind power. The answer might surprise you.
19 December 2008 at 8:09 AM
“Nick, you are misquoting” - jcbmack
Where have I misquoted? I quoted you, accurately, as saying:
“Also the green movements are even more dangerous than the denialists at times” (#93)
You have, IIRC, made very similar claims, without evidence, on other threads. Back your claim up or retract it.
19 December 2008 at 8:15 AM
“I see I am not welcome here. That is your loss.” - John A. Davison
We will just have to try to bear up under this crushing disappointment.
19 December 2008 at 9:11 AM
Matt, you know your request in #451 is unreasonable. If someone is on the grid, you can’t identify where every frigging electron that traverses their house will be from. What matters is that the green producers are supported, that they are producing power and that they are eliminating the need for more coal-fired power plants. That the wind is sometimes calm probably doesn’t surprise much of anyone except maybe you. What is more, it certainly doesn’t invalidate the contribution that green power generators are making to solving the problem of climate change.
19 December 2008 at 11:15 AM
Re: Barton (440): “I’d like to be the first to state on this blog that I will pay MORE in electric bills if I know the power is coming from renewables”
I already do: http://www.bullfrogpower.com/
19 December 2008 at 11:19 AM
Ray (454), matt’s question might be a teeny smarty pants (though that makes for fun reading…) but hardly unreasonable. He’s merely asking about the degree of reality of wind power replacing coal power, which is less than the panacea like it is often described. When the wind powered kWh’s decrease lower than the subscriptions, the fill-in comes from coal power. Now how much (but not whether) the wind power is displacing coal power is a matter of the power company lowering the production from coal plants and then being able to bring it back on line in a timely fashion as the wind dies down; or buy it from some other producer — who likely didn’t reduce its coal production.
I’m sure you know this and I don’t mean to be pedantic. I’m just pointing out that while it is good in a rah-rah manner to proclaim, “I just bought a CFL so I’m saving the world!” (everything helps presumably), there is room for a rational assessment of the actual degree and the effectiveness.
19 December 2008 at 11:36 AM
Re matt @451, I happen to live in a jurisdiction where 75% of electrical generation capacity is from nuclear, hydro, and wind. The remaining 25% is from two domestic coal-fired plants, only one of which is close enough to supply any power to the grid in the region where I live. The specific supplier I purchase electrical power from operates only hydro and wind plants, and actually builds new capacity to meet demand as they gain customers. Aside from actually reducing my use of electricity, which I also do, short of installing my own solar or wind equipment, what more would you suggest I do?
19 December 2008 at 11:41 AM
> relying on the coal to provide your baseload and
> instead using funnymoney accounting
Funny accounting: imagining accounting for individual carbon dioxide molecules — or electrons — to claim none that you’re responsible for came from fossil fuels. That’s not what carbon-neutral means. It’s a shared world. Change what you can.
19 December 2008 at 1:33 PM
458 Hank, wonderful. I note they didn’t ask what happens when more wind is blowing - why, less coal is burned! That a plant exists is essentially irrelevant to CO2 emissions and the coal plants already exist. Hydro and fossil are the two main ways to level the load, but levelling the load isn’t going to break the CO2 bank.
Levelling can be made far more efficient with the building of an electrical backbone so power can be shipped with less loss. The sun is shining/wind is blowing, somewhere. What’s the fatal flaw in a solar/wind/hydro system with a backbone, and fossil spare capacity kept around for contingencies, with nuclear hybrid tech to add to all types of thermal plants? Add in some wave power and geothermal and whatnot. The more different types of generation and the longer the efficient reach from production to user, the less overcapacity is required.
Matt, please drop the *DORKY* insinuation that “all power MUST come from a single source”. You’re deliberately destroying the multi-faceted system in order to “prove” … what? We ALL agree that wind alone or solar alone or hydro alone or waves alone or ______ alone would be prohibitively expensive because of the required overcapacity.
By the way, nuclear alone would be incredibly expensive since it, like renewables (except hydro), is best run as flat-out as is safe. With fuel being so small a portion of the cost, nobody wants to run a nuke at less than the maximum which is prudent. An offline nuke costs almost as much as one going full blast. Goose and gander, Matt.
Captcha sez, “reply greatly”
19 December 2008 at 1:41 PM
Rod, in my experience, human actions don’t make things perfect. They make things better or they make things worse. To contend that because something doesn’t make things perfect it is worthless is not just “smarty-pants,” it’s flat dishonest and counter-productive.
It seems that the denialist tactics run a predictable course
1)It’s not happening.
2)It’s happening, but it’s not our fault.
3)It’s happening and maybe we’re doing it, but it’s not that bad.
4)It’s happening and maybe we’re doing it and maybe it will be bad, but doing something about it will be too hard/impossible.
I’m afraid I have zero sympathy for any of these lines of argument. 1) is not tenable. 2) is ignorant and irresponsible; 3) doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, and 4) is damned pathetic.
19 December 2008 at 1:51 PM
matt, 451. Uh, when has there NEVER BEEN ***anywhere*** on the planet, no wind?
Now in my neck of the woods, there are not coal deposits. Not a lump. Not even a power station burning it. Yet we still have coal-powered electricity coming in the house.
It’s called “An Electricity Grid”. It’s quite the modern convenience, as opposed to the old days when you had to go out and pick your own electrons to power your computer…
19 December 2008 at 2:36 PM
Re #461: “Uh, when has there NEVER BEEN ***anywhere*** on the planet, no wind?”
Not the operative question. Ask instead about the variation in wind over the distances - on the order of 1000 miles - which existing/practical transmission grids can transport power.
So for a practical example, say you’ve got wind power capable of providing, in average wind conditions, 50% the power needed by the WSCC (the western US, basically) grid. The turbines are well distributed across the area. Given weather variability, on how many days of the year will the wind power be only 25% of what’s needed? 10%?
19 December 2008 at 3:25 PM
As has been pointed out in past threads, improving energy storage technologies will do a lot to facilitate adopting renewable energy generation technologies such as wind, solar, tidal and so forth. And fortunately, as has also been pointed out previously, this is more of an engineering problem than a science problem because scientific breakthroughs are not needed, just refinement of already demonstrated technologies. Flywheel, pumped storage, compressed air, and molten salt are just several of the approaches that have been demonstrated for storing energy. And, of course, many off-the-grid systems use battery banks to ensure 24/7 power is available.
If you feel that energy storage is unrealistic/uneconomical then check out the website for Beacon Power. Their off-the-shelf unit is a compact, reliable 25 kwh flywheel which can be used both for energy storage and grid load regulation. Installations are under construction which will have as many as 200 of these flywheel units working together. There is every reason to believe that such systems will become more cost-effective, more reliable and have greater capacity in the near future.
While there is a lot of truth in the old saying “There’s no horse so dead it can’t be beaten” isn’t there anyway we can stop rehashing discussions we’ve had multiple times? Renewable and sustainable energy generation is in our foreseeable future, and the faster we wean ourselves from fossil fuels the better. If you are unhappy about those realities, go and have a good cry and then come back to the forum with ideas about how to make the enormous transition as efficiently as possible. We need all the good ideas we can get.
Cheers - Phillip
19 December 2008 at 4:04 PM
> degree of reality
Make a list of all the different things that can be improved. Anyone old enough to remember when rare-earth magnets first became commercially common? All of a sudden audio speakers could be made really small, yet still sound good.
Improve the efficiency of electric transmission and you don’t just get a better grid. You get better generators and motors, with better electromagnets and better winding wire. Come up with other ways to take electrons out of any system (whether a better way of changing the relation between a current-carrier and a magnetic field, or biomimicry of photosyntesis). Stronger materials lighten and shrink everything that we can build now, improve everything we can barely build safely (big heavy fast flywheels), and make dreams possible (skyhooks? vacuum-”filled” rigid airships?).
If someone were to lay out a database with all the varieties of tech, all the current limiting factors, and all the economics, we might notice particular key items that could be slightly improved that would give us the most bang for the buck by improving a lot of different things slightly.
But to do that we’d probably need much better databases and spreadsheets.
19 December 2008 at 9:47 PM
Ray, was your #460 responding to my #456? If so, I missed it completely. What does your four steps have to do with assessing how effectively utilities handle a somewhat unpredictable variable supply with a varying load??
19 December 2008 at 11:12 PM
Re #463: “If you feel that energy storage is unrealistic/uneconomical then check out the website for Beacon Power. Their off-the-shelf unit is a compact, reliable 25 kwh flywheel…”
Now how exactly are we supposed to check out the “uneconomical” part, when they seemingly can’t be bothered to post the price of their units?
Even if you do have a price, you still wind up with the same meteorological/statistical problem: how much extra capacity and/or storage do you need to build into the system in order to provide a specified quality of service? How much will