Since people are wanting to talk about the latest events on the Antarctic Peninsula, this is a post for that discussion.
The imagery from ESA (animation here) tells the recent story quite clearly – the last sliver of ice between the main Wilkins ice shelf and Charcot Island is currently collapsing in a very interesting way (from a materials science point of view). For some of the history of the collapse, see our previous post. This is the tenth major ice shelf to collapse in recent times.
Maybe we can get some updates and discussion of potential implications from the people working on this in the comments….?
Greg, one of the hardest notions for people to grasp is just how deep geologic time really is. Past climate change has been slow and fast in geologic time terms.
If you are just saying you don’t understand how current rates of change could possibly be different — what have you read about this?
Any of these?
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=rapid+cooling+events+paleo+time
David Archer’s book? Link in the sidebar.
#437 Thomas, valid point. Your previous posts were not melodramatic. Now that post was melodramatic.
ref #432 #433 Timothy, I know enough about climate science to know I don’t know enough to tell if an expert in the field is purposely being dishonest. I do now see that the dispute is much deeper then I had anticipated and you and everyone else here can hold me to my word that I won’t bring it up again.
Latest image of Wilkins:
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/wilkinsarctic/pub/images/ASA_IMM_1PNPDK20090410_123916_000001512078_00052_37180_7982_100m_img.jpg
Walt – I, among others do hear what you’re saying, but “how much of a fallacy is such a belief as that” (public policy can reign in atmospheric CO2) seems to be too representative – not is it a fallacy but how much – shouldn’t you start from the neutral position you espouse?
if public policy can’t accomplish anything, nothing can, but it does seem the only possible approach, and as you claim to “believe” in AGW, maybe you should start advocating for action rather then for inaction
your 5 points above objecting to mitigation (a do nothing proposal really) missed wildly on the last – the result will not be trade wars (history already), but military wars, well started now, with the USofA building massive medieval defenses along its southern border, the direction climate change/economic refugees will be (are) arriving from, not to mention pirates holding wealthy nations to ransom
somebody said: The measure of life is change, and the measure of intelligence is the ability to adapt to change … let’s get on with it
Recaptcha: respect :)
(well this thread has gone far from ice, so):
Timothy Chase:
Good summary of funding… but be really careful of focusing on ExxonMobil to the exclusion of the others. If anything, I speculate that more money has actually flowed from the foundations and other entities:
For example, according to Sourcewatch, CATO is also funded by, among others:
American Petroleum Institute
Charles G. Koch Foundation & Claude R. Lamb Charitable Foundation
[Koch Industries, i.e. Oil+gas]
Scaife Foundations […Richard Mellon Scaife … i.e., heir to Gulf Oil (=>Texaco=>Chevron)
Each of those have their own page at Sourcewatch (although of course: caveat, Wiki).
It is very difficult to know exactly how the money flows from the original funders (companies or foundations), through associations (like API), to/through thinktanks, and finally to individuals.
Greg, look, the one possibility you will find for extremely rapid change is tipping point situations — this, for example. This is not reassuring:
http://www.searchanddiscovery.net/documents/2009/50160kraus/ndx_kraus.pdf
Get as far as the fourth page where the chart shows a rapid event, comparable to what we may do if we do our worst. Caption reads:
“dramatic global warming
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM
Short-lived: Only ~150,000 – 200,000 years
Warming was rapid – analog for modern”
The cooling afterward appears equally rapid — one or two hundred thousand years.
Compare that to what’s happening now, eh?
#430 Thanks Much David, even if the Peninsula has a similar surface warming to the Arctic, the Lower Troposphere is key, if the lower Upper Air is equally or more warmer year round, it would affect the land based glacier higher up, the physics of warmer mega ice fields vs temperature is a worth while study. Greenland Glacier calving has apparently never been so voluminous, the mean surface and lower Upper air temperatures are warmer, and so should eventually Antarctica’s Glaciers.
Philip Machanick wrote in 444:
Thank you — that may come in handy for something I’m thinking about.
You might also be interested in the following…
The American Denial of Global Warming
by Naomi Oreskes, Ph.D.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T4UF_Rmlio
About 42 min 10 sec into the video, she points out that the essential strategy, even how it was described, was essentially the same, that is, “to keep the controversy alive.” Shortly after she goes into the connection between Frederick Seitz and RJ Reynolds which started in 1979, and then about 47 minutes into the video describes how S. Fred Singer had attacked the scientific consensus for the affected industries regarding secondhand smoke, acid rain and CFCs — in addition to global warming.
As for the funding of denialist organizations by Exxon, in the writeups on the individual organizations, Exxon Secrets includes links to pdfs of various Exxon documents, including their:
IRS 990 (2000): Return of Private Foundation
http://research.greenpeaceusa.org/?a=view&d=4390
Exxon Worldwide Giving Report (for various years)
Exxon Education Foundation Dimensions report (for various years)
I find it amazing just how much is known about all of this — and is out in the open — and yet so much of the media still takes these jokers seriously.
John Mashey wrote in 455:
Understood.
Scaife and Koch are also heavily involved in the funding of the Religious Right. Oftentimes they are funding some of the same charitable foundations as Dominionist Howard Ahmanson who was the big sugar daddy for the Discovery Institute — and who has been funding creationist organizations even in the UK.
This has really been an interesting and informative discussion. Thanks everyone, and keep up the good work!
re #299 and Drew Shindell’s (NASA GISS) work on aerosol contribution to (particularly) Arctic warming, see:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090408164413.htm
It looks like the popular right-wing press are picking up on this. Eg. the UK Daily Mail puts across the misleading message that Shindell’s results show that it is “laws created to preserve the environment [that] are causing much of the damage” with respect to Arctic warming and that, “The revelation shakes the theory that greenhouse gases, in particular carbon dioxide, are the main problem in the fight to steady the planet’s climate.”
See under the headline, here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1169007/Climate-change-goal-Laws-combat-acid-rain-DRIVING-Arctic-warming-claims-Nasa.html?ITO=1490
I wrote a polite rebuttal but so far after several hours it has not been published.
Swann writes:
When I perform Cochrane-Orcutt iteration on the temperature-CO2 regression, I still wind up with 60% of variance accounted for when the autocorrelation coefficient stabilizes.
No, correlation isn’t causation. But in this case we have a physical reason to expect such a correlation, and the evidence bears the theory out. What more do you want?
“#413 Mark my past posts were not only not devoid of critical thinking they were also not very clear and concise causing you to miss my meaning.”
Steve, not all your posts were devoid of critical thinking. However, it’s a huge waste of someone’s time to throw an idea out and then tell people they should check it out.
YOU check it out.
If you can’t, listen instead.
We have two ears but only one mouth (and that’s a multi-purpose opening).
Walt Bennett, apparently channeling Exxon-Mobile and Consolidated Coal, writes of cap-and-trade:
That was what they said about the acid rain restrictions on sulfates which worked exactly the same way.
Wrong. Fallacy of composition. They will increase the cost of FOSSIL-FUEL-DERIVED energy. The prices of wind power, solar, geothermal, and biomass will remain exactly the same, but will now have a competitive advantage — and THAT is what the fossil fuel industry is desperate enough to try to prevent at all costs. Desperate enough to lie and commit fraud. For all I know, I wouldn’t put it past them to try assassination eventually. Hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake.
Well, God forbid that should happen.
Not when those who don’t get their trade embargoed.
See above.
That’s a nonsensical statement.
You suspect wrong, pal.
Like they got rid of smoking and child labor?
Been reading Ayn Rand?
Good Lord, no. I mean, land management has never worked anywhere before, has it?
Shorter Walt Bennett: “It sounds insane to plan for actually doing anything effective about the problem.”
“because it goes without saying that the use of “idiot” should have been handled with an immediate apology”
Why does it go without saying?
If you’re being an idiot, if someone doesn’t CARE ONE JOT, they won’t point it out. Why? After all, it will just make that idiot attack you for being mean (look, everybody, feel sorry for me, he’s being mean!!!!).
But if someone thinks you can get better, don’t mean to be an idiot or are so obviously one that it has to be pointed out in case someone else starts being influenced by the number of words being spouted, then they SHOULD call them an idiot.
With any luck, they’ll change and not be an idiot.
Or do you subscribe to all this PC BS that you can’t diss anyone because you must always be sensitive to someone else’s feelings? And if that’s the case, why are you not sensitive to the person who is so annoyed at your idiocy that they felt compelled to point it out?
Walt Bennett writes:
Because it’s the only thing that will work. Period.
Because they won’t be as bad as continuing to emit CO2.
From all I’ve seen from 12 years of examining this issue, that would be a big yes.
@426
Walt Bennett wrote:
Snip.
“Such schemes will accomplish several things: 1) they will constitute a massive power grab by the political left;”
Snip.
This concern about the political left is very much an American concern. And America is only a small part of this world. And I’m not in the USA. And you don’t speak for the rest of the world.
The far left edge of the US political spectrum is well, well, well to the right of the European left spectrum and, actually, mostly to the right of our own mainstream rightwing political parties. The left is not the bogy you fear. If you visit Europe, Walt, you will find the vast majority of us are very happy – and probably slightly happier than Americans.
(And IIRC, Jim Hansen was in London the other day, and suffered a mild heart attack. Apparently he was please with the emergency medical help he received. That care, being emergency care, would be through the state National Health system. He could have then transferred to the private medical system, which runs in parallel, if he so wished).
Walt. Most of us don’t live in the States, and don’t care a tinker’s fart about the USA’s, often near religious, IMHO, worship of the free market system. But we do care about AWG.
If AWG is to be tackled, the political reality is that, however this is done, will be by intergovernmental agreement, and that means working with governments that are nearly all “left” by US standards.
Theo H (An Irishman living in the UK)
Hank Roberts: “If you are just saying you don’t understand how current rates of change could possibly be different — what have you read about this?”
Of course the rates of change are different. There was a much larger greenhouse forcing then so it would have been faster. That conclusion seems perfectly obvious to me, but if you want a reference try this.
And for Ray Ladbury: It doesn’t really matter what the solar constant was at the time. The mere fact that the temperature went from much colder than today to much hotter than today due to a high greenhouse gas level (and albedo feedback) is enough to show the sun was bright enough. Nevertheless, one reference I checked estimated the solar constant was 3% lower in the Cambrian, which is about the same time period.
“In other words, am a “warmer” and I want nothing to do with restricting carbon emissions. I suspect that greater quantities of atmospheric CO2 will have diminishing effects anyway, and I suspect that market forces will, within twenty or so years, accomplish much of the same thing. There is no way I can foresee this being solved via public policy at this late date.
It is correct to begin the process of determining where to place public resources, and it is clear to me that the conversation must include mitigation, adaptation and geo-engineering strategies.”
– Walt Bennett@426
Walt, you’ve complained a number of times about others failing to understand your viewpoint. I think this is because your viewpoint is fundamentally irrational, and thus hard to understand, because people find it hard to believe you mean what you say. This irrationality in turn I think is a result of your ideological commitment to the magic of market forces. In the text I have quoted:
1) It is irrational to accept AGW (indeed, you say you think warming is happening faster than the IPCC AR4 projections), and yet reject restrictions of carbon emissions, as these are the only way we have of slowing warming. You say you are sure that reducing emissions will not avoid disastrous climate change; but this certainty is not justified, and is not shared by the majority of relevant experts. Reducing emissions will at the least delay such change, giving more time for adaptation and geoengineering approaches to be developed.
2) Your faith in market forces is completely irrational, as they cannot take externalities into account. They have done nothing to curb the growth in emissions in the past. While “peak oil” may have an effect via these forces in future, the market response may well include a large component of exploitation of low-grade sources such as tar sands and oil shales, and coal-to-oil; these would cause huge rises in emissions.
3) “There is no way I can foresee this being solved via public policy at this late date.”
The world is not necessarily constrained by what you can foresee. Certainly, reducing emissions is a problem beyond anything that public policy has yet achieved. However, we do have a precedent in the Montreal protocol (left to market forces, the destruction of the ozone layer would of course have proceeded apace); we do have an almost universal agreement among political elites that emissions reductions are essential; we do have an ongoing process intended to produce international agreements for reductions. I do not expect Copenhagen to produce adequate emission control measures; I do expect it to make a real start.
4) “I suspect that greater quantities of atmospheric CO2 will have diminishing effects anyway”
So does everyone else, as far as temperature change is concerned, as the greenhouse effect is to a first approximation proportional to the logarithm of the concentration of CO2 – so this statement makes me wonder how firm your grasp of even the basics of the science is. However (a) Emissions are currently rising faster than ever – or were until the credit crunch; and (b) This ignores ocean acidification.
You can spend the next 20 years twiddling your thumbs if you wish, along with the rest of the dogmatic right. The rest of us have better things to do.
http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/archive_articles/090216_Nature_dryas_haug/index_EN
“Try not to be tiresome. We’ve done lots of posts on the Younger Dryas or D-O events. What does this have to do with the radiative effect of CO2? – gavin]”
Nothing!
What it does have to do with is the numerous posts on here that state that the observed warming rate of the 20th century (0.6c) is unprecedented in all Earths multi billion year climatic history. Or perhaps these posts refer to the observed warming in the 21st century? Nope, I am pretty sure they don’t mean that!
Alan
[Response: Perhaps you could actually cite even one post (let alone numerous ones) on this site where anyone has said that the temperature rise in the 20th C is “unprecedented in all Earth’s multi-billion year history”? I’m curious. – gavin]
#463 Mark, even though I started the Permian conversation expecting to be able to support my remarks with citations since I have read such citations before, I was unable to find any in the clutter of global warming mass extinction hysteria on the net. True, I should have found the citations first and because I didn’t had a pretty weak argument. But don’t forget that even my weak argument lead to your aquiring the knowledge that the Siberian Flats existed so at least someone learned something. I will find my citations first should I decide to start a new conversation which would rely on them but to say that I only talk and don’t listen is an uninformed and presumptious position on your part. I have been reading this blog for well over a year on almost a daily basis and have only made comments on 3 or perhaps 4 days.
Walt Bennett says “But what we clearly see is that anybody (so far) who has engaged me on this topic sticks to his talking points and refuses to critically examine.”
Oh, you mean the science? Yes, well that is unfair, since you don’t have any on your side to support you. You can hardly blame us for not discussing policy as: 1)your accusations were initially quite vague; and 2)most people are here to learn about the science; 3)you were making rather wild, unsupported accusations that science was being subverted.
If Snowball Earth took place, and melted due to an ultra-CO2-driven albedo-positive-feedback mechanism, Greg Simpson is almost certainly correct that the warming rates reached higher than current levels. Maybe as high as 1K/decade. 10+% atmospheric CO2 will do that for you. But (a) it’s still a pretty weak hypothesis at the moment; and (b) it hasn’t happened for at least 600 million years: if it happened at all it was in utterly different circumstances, about as relevant to the modern climate as Lindzen’s invocation of Mars or Pluto.
I think Greg’s original remark, in comment #407, was a joke. It certainly made me smile.
“Perhaps you could actually cite even one post (let alone numerous ones) on this site where anyone has said that the temperature rise in the 20th C is “unprecedented in all Earth’s multi-billion year history”? I’m curious. – gavin]”
I am not referring to any posts you have made Gavin. I ampretty sure you would not make such sweeping statements. I refer to posts like that of Hanks at #401.
“Walt Bennett, you’re missing two things by thinking that what’s happening is within natural variation.
1) the physics of adding CO2 to the atmosphere, trapping heat
2) the rate of change, far faster than anything in the past short of an asteroid impact
You’re saying everything has happened before. True.
It’s been hotter and colder on Earth.
CO2 has been higher and lower.
No previous event has burned carbon as fast as we’re doing.
No previous warming has happened anywhere near this fast.
The exceptions to natural rates of change are catastrophes.
So is the present rate of change.
Asteroid impacts or flood basalts caused the past catastrophes.
Human fossil fuel burning is causing the present catastrophe.
Catastrophe — as in math — meaning you can’t back up and simply reverse the course of events.
You don’t like the fact that people can’t see what’s happening.
Can you do anything for ‘Global Cooler’ who can’t see the trend in a chart? There are far more people like her or him out there who need your help.
Reality, as P.K. Dick said, is what’s still here when we wake up, what doesn’t go away when we quit beieving in it.
The rate of change is real.
Address it please”
Why the big focus on a trailing indicator like sea ice and shelf ice? Don’t the oceans control this process and doesn’t it lag actual climate trends by 4 to 7 years?
I would like to thank those who gave advice on high school/secondary school level experiments to confirm CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
But some more advice please.
(I’m somewhat busy right now, so I haven’t followed it all up, Easter holiday week, but I want advice while this particular discussion is still “hot”)
I now want to do the experiment myself, using what I can find here at home.
I have two 12 litre demijohns/carboys (home brewing), two certified food thermometers, coal dust to go in bottom of flasks as heat sink, polystyrene foam slab to insulate under flasks, and my mobile phone which has a timer. The heating source to be (around here) the infrequent sun or a couple of halogen security lamps.
So far, so good – but what about the CO2?
I don’t have CO2 around the place. I have considered my fire extinguisher (but that means breaking the seal and then having to buy a new one) and have rejected shaking a can of Coke. So I’m going for placing a burning bit of dry fungi (Daldinia concentrica. AKA King Alfred’s Cakes) in one flask. This will give me CO2 – plus water or water vapour. The nitrogen and some of the oxygen will remain.
OK, Class. Pay attention!
*Will the water/water vapour caused by the burning invalidate the experiment?*
One of the reasons I would like to do this is a “warmist” was recently challenged by a “denialist” on the telly: “Have you ever done an experiment to prove CO2 etc, etc”. Non- scientist warmist had to admit he had not.
If the experiment shows warming, I’ll send a paper to Nature and await the call from the Nobel Committee.
If it fails, I will contact the Hartland Institute with view to a free trip plus accommodation at the next conference in NY.
Theo H
reCAPTCHA grerms April
Alan, The only posts like that have pointed to the fact that the rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere is roughly 30 times as fast as anything ever recorded in the ice sheet CO2 bubbles, which provide a record for the last 800,000 years or so.
Beyond that, you can get sediment record data on temperatures from stable isotope analysis – and indirect proxies for CO2. That gives us a picture of a world that was last ice-free a little over 3 million years ago, when sea levels were something like 5-20 meters higher than they are now, in this interglacial. That appears to be the world we are headed for, the only question being: how fast?
The real problems for human civilization include loss of living space due to coastal erosion and sea level rise, serious damage to agriculture from more intense seasonal heat waves, droughts and floods, loss of biological diversity and habitat, and the spread of tropical infectious diseases into new temperate zones.
It is true that the early Holocene (some 10,000 years ago) was perhaps as warm as it is now – but there was also a giant ice sheet stretching across all of northern Canada, the Laurentide, which acted as a thermal buffer – and we’re slowly but steadily melting off our thermal buffers in Antarctica and the Arctic.
We’re already in for significant and serious changes to climate, some of which have begun to appear already – and the only thing that will slow the rate of change is the elimination of fossil fuel combustion.
Water vapour is a variable to be controlled, for obvious reasons.
An alternative production to CO2 is to heat sodium bicarbonate; about 70 or 80°C minimum IIRC (hotter will give a quicker reaction). Water and CO2 will be driven off. You could condense the water to give you a drier CO2.
An alternative is to find someone who’s using dry ice (use gloves!).
Hi Walt, you have very funny PR skills:
First, accuse your accuser of what it is you are being accused of, or, in playground jargon, “I know you are but what am I!”
Second, use mush language that says nothing “actual science, sound science” – I believe the technical term is “Luntzspeak”, who provided this memo: http://www.ewg.org/node/8684
Yes… rare indeed. However, the specific issue of the current “PR Blitz” is mostly about making sure that Copenhagen in December doesn’t turn into a successful global agreement to reduce fossil fuel consumption and increase renewable energy generation – it’s simply a carbon-copy replay of the effort to defeat Kyoto-style legislation carried out in the 1990s. For most of the past decade, fossil fuel executives have sat in key policy positions in government, so such large-scale PR pushes were not quite as evident.
The current PR push is coming out of two main areas:
1) The coal mine-railroad-coal utility sector, which provides 50% of the electric power in the United States, and about as much of the corruption. It’s essentially a legal monopoly that views competition as destabilizing and innovation as disruptive, and uses fraudulent and dishonest tactics (FutureGen, environmental front groups, etc.) to maintain the status quo, which involves pulling 500 million tons of coal out of Montana’s Powder Basin every year and pumping it into the atmosphere. A key part of their strategy is the use of political leverage to ensure renewables are not allowed to compete. See “Americans for Clean Coal Electricity”: http://www.cleancoalusa.org/ – their director is a railroad executive.
2) The unconventional fuels sector, which includes coal-to-gasoline processes, tar sand to syncrude, and shale oil production. Some of the producers of very heavy, dirty oil might also fit into this category. One barrel of Canadian tar sand oil burned in Kansas generates something like three times the amount of CO2, overall, as does a barrel of conventional Kansas oil (not that there’s much of that left). That’s using lifetime energy accounting, as is (sometimes) done when people talk about “energy budgets” and biofuels. Unconventional fossil fuels are incredibly dirty, but also expensive to produce, and they rely on high oil prices (>$60 barrel) to be profitable. Here, the approach is to hide the truth – for example, the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline is really the Tar Sand Development Pipeline, despite the claims of “supplying gas to the lower 48”.
What’s interesting is who is not doing this as much: Producers of conventional oil and natural gas, who are now realizing that blocking unconventional fuels is good for their bottom line in a world of plummeting fossil fuel demand (so is keeping renewables and electric cars off the market in the U.S., however). When the Qatar oil minister says that “$50 a barrel oil is fine”, is he really saying “because at $60, we’d lose market share to tar sand oil”? In addition, some Arab countries are now becoming world leaders in renewable energy. UAE will host the International Renewable Energy Association, and Dubai is doing similar things: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38187
Now, within the U.S. there is a massive PR blitz, designed to keep fossil fuel demand high, head off government regulations that would cap fossil fuel consumption, and prevent the rise of competitive renewables. Some examples:
a) The American Petroleum Institution’s $100 million contract with Edelman PR to “improve the industry image”. Edelman is known for their “rapid internet response”, i.e. loading up comment sections with anonymous drivel. They keep dozens of bloggers on staff to do just that – it’s not a unique phenomenon, Burson-Marstellar, Hill&Knowlton, Rendon & Lincoln, they all use this tactic. The coal version of the API, the Edison Electric Institute, has a similar program – every time a provision calling for 15% renewables generation is introduced in Congress, it is defeated in the Senate – usually by votes like 85-15. Together, coal and oil rule the Senate, and exert only moderately less influence in the House – but often they exert even greater power in local and state politics, but only in certain regions.
b) The $100 million deal between Stanford University, ExxonMobile, Schlumberger Oil Services and Toyota – Stanford’s GCEP, the “Global Climate and Energy Program.” Not much climate science, a little puff of hydrogen, some hot air and carbon capture – and, most interestingly, final decisions about which projects got funded were made by a 5-person committee in which “all partners were equally represented” – and not only that, the industry partners got the patent rights – “exclusive extendable 5-year licensing opportunities”.
c) The entire DOE budget can be viewed as a propaganda operation, more or less. The DOE has become a distorted beast that successive political generations have taken turns dissecting and reinventing, a classic example of why scientific institutions should be kept separate from direct political influence. DOE’s role is unclear – nuclear waste cleanup is the largest single item in the DOE budget, but then there are the secretive National Labs, the nuclear warfare and biological warfare “defensive programs”, the large “carbon capture and sequestration program”, which has never shown any plausible method of doing so – in fact, it’s hard to say what if anything the DOE has accomplished since its inception. Solar PV and biofuel and wind turbine research are non-existent – believe me, I’ve looked.
Now, tips on discussion:
Topic a) is generally considered to be taboo for all newspaper editors and journalists, as well as politicians, many of whom have close relationships with PR firms. You won’t make friends with political figures and media by talking about that – but academics will enjoy it.
Topic b) makes academics unhappy, as you are pointing to a kind of insidious hypocrisy in which university administrators exchange academic freedom and integrity for corporate financing. This will definitely lead to academic irritation, and is best avoided. The press and politicos don’t mind hearing about it, though.
Topic c) is worth thinking about. The goal there is to take the DOE, have the military absorb the nuclear/biological warfare programs and evaluate what exactly they’ve been up to, and convert the rest of the DOE to a civilian science program set up along the lines of the NIH or the NSF or other successful independent peer-review based science funding institutions. A similar strategy is to have the most successful renewable energy program in the U.S. take over the DOE – that would be DARPA.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/DARPAs-Vulture-What-Goes-Up-Neednt-Come-Down-04852/
It’s not too surprising that the U.S. military is the largest developer of renewable energy in the country today – they have a more practical understanding of the dangers of drinking your own Kool-Aide than do the leaders of the U.S. energy industry, who have too much control over federal energy policy. In this situation, you can expect state governors and legislators and independent entrepreneurs to lead the way towards a renewable-based economy, while being handicapped by Congress and energy cartels at every step.
#443 Walt Bennett
You’ve made some broad statements that lack context, substantiation and specificity. When you say you don’t want anything to do with restricting carbon emissions, it indicates that you do not understand what is required to address climate change.
When you say we won’t stop burning coal, and it’s not sciences job to tell us to, you are missing many points, which indicates that you do not understand the role of science. I would argue it is sciences job to do the research to help us (people and policy makers) understand what needs to be done based on the well reasoned evidence.
This web site is dedicated to the science and you really seem to want to concentrate on the politics. Maybe Hank is right, and you should start your own blog to concentrate on the politics, oh you have a blog. Well discuss it there to your hearts content. In here the conversation does wander from science to politics, and that is not too bad but if you want to just have a political discussion, invite people over to your blog to discuss it.
When you say why are we discounting the risk and unintended consequences, what do you mean? What is the context? My read on somethings you state is that you are discounting the risk sand unintended consequences.
When you say things like:
It sort of just sounds like some sort of right wing paranoia born of rhetorical spin from the distinct bias of a view, as opposed to likely potentials.
So from my perspective it still seems clear that either you have not attached sufficient substance to your statements as to enable them to be reasonable, but that you are merely making statements. Generally, it seems clear to me and maybe others here that you just are not making much holistic sense in such statements.
In your #426 you state
But from what I can see, it is beyond insane to not plan for CO2 reductions. Since you claim you have a sharp grasp of the science, I am confused, because these statements herein-above of yours indicates that you don’t especially regarding the interrelationship of economy, environment.
Or are you merely accepting that it is insane for public policy to reign in CO2?
Which of course is at least to some extent countered by your post in #442
Yes, they are having difficulty with the reduction agreements, but they are making progress. Yes there are countervailing forces at work such as profit v. survival of % and quality of life issues, greed, hope, risk, food, water, etc.
What is it you think people don’t understand in here?
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008GL037155.shtml
Levitus, S., J. I. Antonov, T. P. Boyer, R. A. Locarnini, H. E. Garcia, and A. V. Mishonov (2009),
Global ocean heat content 1955–2008 in light of recently revealed instrumentation problems,
Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L07608, doi:10.1029/2008GL037155
11 April 2009
A quick search around the net reveals a couple of items that may be at your level of scientific sophistication :
Greenhouse Gas Experiment
Follow Up Post
#464 Barton Paul Levenson
Barton thanks for that one. In summary, in my opinion even though I am a huge fan of Ayn Rand and my uncle George Reisman (Capitalism) used to hang out with her and, and, and… I believe that 99% of the people that read Atlas Shrugged to not understand the main premise is not about making money, but creating valuable exchanges devoid of waste of effort.
It’s a hard sell, as most are hypnotized by the idea that it’s all about making money, getting rid of government, and beliefs that create artificial inflation components based on guilt as opposed to work that is productive in a utilitarian sense.
Nick Barnes wrote in 473:
600 million years?
There wouldn’t have been any animal life on land at this point, and I suspect it was barren but for bacteria. Pretty much everything was still “happening” in the oceans. And even in the oceans, animal life was fairly primitive, at least by our standards. My ancestors would have been seaworms infested with perhaps a few retroviruses, if I am not mistaken. I am not even sure that whether they would have already flipped upside down in the way that distinguishes vertebrates from invertebrates at that point.
Oh, those were simpler times…
#470 Alan Millar
You seem to have a context problem combined with some sort of blockage. Either go see a doctor and see if it is curable, or do your homework. At the moment you are getting an F. Let’s see if we can get those grades up, we wouldn’t want you to end up working in a job beneath your potential now would we?
For the sake of clarity, you have no idea what yo are talking about.
#474 Alan Millar
Your context problem revolves around time scale. Look carefully at this picture
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/natural-variability/overview/image/image_view_fullscreen
read about it
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/natural-variability
check the source link
http://www.ncar.ucar.edu/research/climate/now.php
Now, for Pete’s sake listen! No one is saying it has never been warmer.
You need to understand that the forcing levels have changed due to human industrial output of GHG’s and aerosols
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/forcing-levels
We know it is human caused
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/human-caused
and that the causes are measurable
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/greenhouse-gases
Greenhouse gases:
* http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/index.html
How do we know CO2 is a greenhouse gas?
* http://www.espere.net/Unitedkingdom/water/uk_watexpgreenhouse.htm
Major GHG’s (Greenhouse Gases)
* http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/co2.html
* http://www.epa.gov/methane/sources.html
* http://www.epa.gov/nitrousoxide/sources.html
Human & Global Impacts
* http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/co2_human.html
* http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/globalghg.html
High GWP’s (Global Warming Potential) Gases
* http://www.epa.gov/highgwp/sources.html
* http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/oct/HQ_08-268_Greenhouse_gas.html
The natural variation statement can reasonably be taken in the assumable context if one is rational.
You are not being rational. You are being irrational.
To those who say that this is a science site, I would say you are exhibiting exactly the insularity I have been describing.
This is a blog, a gathering of voices. I’d venture that 90% of you have no formal training in climate science.
Hank, I intend to check out the site you referenced. That blurb does sound fruitful.
Now, how many references have been made to my views being bought and paid for? Those of you who wrote such things are the most confused of all. First, you ignore my obvious and repeated assurance that I am well grounded in the basic science of AGW and accept much of it as well done; thus, it is beyond futile to try to pin one of those labels on me. Second, is that all you got? Somebody disagrees with you and you start looking for ways to brand them? I laugh at such silliness, but it does also reveal just how insular – or just plain ignorant – many of you have become, or perhaps always were.
You should know that when the first sentence of a comment mocks me, I never get to the rest of the comment, so you are writing such things only to amuse yourselves or the peanut gallery.
I did catch where Bart wrote that emissions reduction is the only thing that will work.
If he believes that, he represents exactly the delusion of which I speak.
Re: #454
Squeeze,
How much more of a call for action can I possibly make? Discussing emissions reduction is EXACTLY the same as doing nothing, because either (1) it will never get past the talking stage or (2) it will get past the talking stage and STILL not solve the immediate problem. Thus, those of you who stick to emissions reduction as the grand strategy are the true inactivists.
I have been, for over a year now, calling for allocation of resources into mitigation, adaptation and geo-engineering pursuits.
That is MY call to action.
Perhaps you haven’t noticed: the obfuscators won. We have to find a way to move the ball.
Re: #447
Lawrence, you make my case brilliantly, thank you. You do recognize how late in the game it is; from there it is a short walk to the realization that emissions reductions as a strategy for dealing with the immediate problem (ice sheet stability) is dead on arrival.
Your own observations tell you that.
Thanks again for assisting me in making that point.
Nitpick, aside:
“reign in” is a peculiar typo, most frequently seen from bloggers of a particular persuasion; it seems to come up from people who are claiming some societal action represents an infringement of personal property that — for “royal libertarians” at least — they believed they were granted forever and ever, inheritable by their descendants.
Or else they just can’t spell, of course. There’s always that.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_metaphor
_________excerpt follows_____________
horses once played an important part in human activities, but nowadays few people in the West have experience of them. Despite this, modern English is riddled with equine metaphors: “holding the reins of power”, “trot it out”, “take the bit between one’s teeth”, “be saddled with”, “put him through his paces”, “ride roughshod over”, “flogging a dead horse”, “give the whip hand”, “hold your horses”, “long in the tooth”, “put out to pasture”, “getting his oats” and so on. … equine-related meaning is generally not appreciated by the contemporary user.
Walt Bennet said:
“Such schemes will accomplish several things: 1) they will constitute a massive power grab by the political left…”
I think you’re looking at it exactly backwards. If I can be forgiven a brief, non-partisian excursion into politics, I think you’ll find that historically political groups – left, right, or whatever – sometimes find their doctrines in conflict with reality. When that happens, and they persist in clinging to the doctrine, they lose power. Happened to the Church when it clung to geocentrism; happened to the Left in the ’70s and ’80s; now it’s happening to the Right.
However, it’s not a “power grab” by the Left (though of course they use it). That a vocal part of the Right has decided, not just to ignore the reality of AGW, but to claim that it’s not happening, is effectively a voluntary cession of power. The solution is to change the doctrine to fit reality.
re #477 Ike Solem
Dr Eric Wolff of the British Antarctic Survey speaking about the results from the 800,000 year Dome C ice core, reported in the UK newspaper “The Independent”, 5th September 2006 stated, “The core shows that carbon dioxide was always between 180 parts per million (ppm) and 300 ppm during the 800,000 years. However, now it is 380 ppm. … But the rate of change is even more dramatic, with increases in carbon dioxide never exceeding 30 ppm in 1,000 years — and yet now carbon dioxide has risen by 30 ppm in the last 17 years.”
That would make the present rate of increase of CO2 about 59 times greater than at any time in the last at least 800,000 years.
Does anyone know what the accepted maximum natural rate of increase in CO2 has been over the last c. one million years? Is Dr Wolff’s statement on the rate still regarded as correct?
#479 Ike Solem
That’s so funny. I thought the same thing re. “I know you are but what am I!”, re. Walt Bennett argument.
Alan Millar (446) — Checking Vostok ice core data shows Antarctica did not participate in Younger Dryas. The rapid temperature swings then were in Greenland and the Nordic Sea; elsewhere, even in northern Europe (except maybe parts of Norway), the rates were moderated.
How bizarre Walt Bennett’s thought processes are. Basically he’s saying: the problem is very serious, therefore we should not take action (by reducing emissions) to prevent it getting worse. Weird.
#488 Walt Bennett
You directly contradicted your self. You say “Discussing emissions reduction is EXACTLY the same as doing nothing, because either” (which is largely the call to action) is fruitless, and then you say your have been for over a year now calling for allocation of resources into mitigation adaptation and geo-engineering pursuits (which is merely adding to the discussion that you think is fruitless).
The pot calling the kettle black…
There is something obtuse about your posts and the thinking you are apparently attempting to project???
As to moving the ball? Which ball, you have already claimed that you don’t want to even discuss CO2 reduction. Maybe if we all just stop discussing it the climate will just settle down and the warming will stop?
A relevant bumper sticker:
“Maybe if we ignore the environment, it will just go away.”
By reasonable accounts you are obfuscating the issues but you have won nothing and rightly so in my opinion.
BTW, and Gavin, please feel free to edit me, you are being idiotic in these obfuscating assertions, hypocritical statements and vague statements that have little to now context or basis to what is relevant, in my opinion.
You call to action is apparently don’t discuss action, just go out and do the action? What are you advocating, blowing up coal plants? So far all you have done is add to the discussion which you hate, so why are you in here discussing? What the hell are you talking about???
David B. Benson (#351:
I see that my little middle-school science experiment report has made it over here from DotEarth. I’d like to add a couple of notes.
First, my statement that “It’s really that simple” needs to be taken in context. Of course, it’s not really that simple (although I do think it’s instructive). But the “experiment” paragraph was part of a very frustrated response to an individual who was insisting that you can disprove AGW in its entirety by simply comparing the average temperatures in any two randomly selected years: if any year is cooler than any prior year, AGW is disproved, period. “In order for a scientific theory to be right, it must be right all the time.” Multiple attempts at polite explanation failed. Frustration and possibly some overstatement ensued.
Second, my understanding (as a non-scientist) was that this very simple two-bottle experiment was pertinent. I’ve seen it several times, including in a Science Channel (I think) program on climate change. It does work, in the sense that the CO2-enriched bottle does indeed get warmer. But if this is actually demonstrating something other than the basic physics behind AGW, I’d welcome the correction.
Re #489:
Walt, you’re welcome-I think. Yet,ice sheet stability,isn’t the only factor in the equation, and I fail to see how emissions reduction, can be anything but a helpful strategy in the overall problem.
Slioch (492) — I don’t know of any CO2 records older than 800,000 years. A good, much longer, record of (deep ocean) temperatures at the millennial scale is the LR04 stack. Here is a graphic of temperatures for 65 million years:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png
To me this implies slow changes to CO2 concentrations for at least the last 14 million years, despite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River_Basalt_Group
Mr Bennett’s statements seem to be at step 3 of the progression
1) its not happening
2) ok, its happening, but its not our carbon emissions thats causing it
3) ok, its happening, and its our carbon emissions thats causing it, but its too late to fix it by reducing our carbon emissions.
the people screaming 1) and 2) for the last score of years are to blame for 3) if 3) were true.
But of course, 3) is not true, it is just that some argue for 3) because they wish to persist in gluttony to the end.
i had kinda expected 3) to make its appearance at some point. anyone seen this particular lie before ?