A place for comments that would otherwise disrupt sensible conversations.
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2040 Responses to "The Bore Hole"
Waltersays
2014-03-10 China OpEd article extracts by Dr James HANSEN
“Air pollution from coal kills over 1,000,000 people per year in China. Life expectancy in North China is reduced at least five years, and those living suffer many health effects. One scientist told me that he was using his savings to send his child out of the country, to grow for a while in clean air. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2014/20140310_ChinaOpEd.pdf
[ you will need to ask James for his sources of these deaths figures ]
Hansen pg 10 Energy misconceptions
Human lives. It is worth watching a 3-minute clip of an “anti-nuke” concert held in New York City in 1979 after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania. Participants yearn for the warm glow of a wood fire, even coal, but insist that nuclear power be terminated.
Indoor wood, coal and biofuel fires kill more than 1,000,000 people per year. The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident, which exposed nearby Pennsylvania residents to a level of radiation less than the natural annual background level, will cause few if any deaths.
There have been two much more serious nuclear accidents, at Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Deaths caused by Fukushima radiation will be few, but the radiation release was a catastrophe for 300,000 people forced to leave their homes. Unfortunately the Japanese government forced many more people to evacuate than necessary. Please check out the brief, readable, “Radiation: The Facts” by Robert Hargraves. Start with the Radiation 101 side of the page.
Are those accidents sufficient reason to abandon nuclear power? We must compare the alternatives. Aircraft provide a relevant analogy. Early airliners had many accidents that killed hundreds of people, but we did not abandon the technology. Instead we improved both the technology and the safety of operations via pilot training, aircraft control systems, and safety protocols and culture.
Airlines are now one of the safest modes of travel. Similarly, improved
nuclear technologies and operations have the potential to make nuclear power the safest of all energy systems. [end quote]
Time for climate scientists and their supporters to really listen to the scientific facts about the science of science communication from other scientists and academics.
“Asking slightly different questions leads to different graphs, as the many Gallup surveys show.” Yes!
Which is why my comments and conclusions are typically based on scientific papers, and reason plus personal experience in the field of ‘communications, human resources / training, multinational corporate executive and marketing (including surveys, focus groups and supervising production of TV advertisements)’.
That’s mainly for the scientists who run RC. Kahan makes the point that Micky Mantle was a baseball player who DID baseball, he was not a radio communicator who called the game for the public. Two different things, two different skill sets entirely.
Kahan and others note that climate scientists are ignoring valid science themselves. Dr George Lakoff a leading Cognitive Scientist says the exact same thing. I have posted links to their and others work repeatedly, to little or no effect.
I wrote to Gavin directly via email last decade, again to no effect. Couldn’t even get a simple thank you reply for the effort. Nothing has changed since. I was too busy working on my own projects until late last year to contribute anything else here.
Al Gore did a good job in AIT because he was a skillful public communicator. My point is that his personal ‘political’ ideology reputation got in the way, and so was less successful in the long run. Half the population switched off and refused to go see the movie. That’s a FAIL, not a Win for Climate Science.
AS the Up Stream videos show, besides the fact that “facts” don’t really matter that much, two things are critical to be a good communicator when it comes to public and shifting people’s views (and at least having them willing to listen to you) … Warmth and Competence.
The well funded deniosphere campaign has successfully undermined the “competence” part, but the climate scientists are as cold as ice. Especially here on RC. None are competent communicators, no different than Micky Mantle was not a successful radio baseball game caller.
Schnieder wasn’t as good a PUBLIC communicator as ‘scientists’ and ‘loyalists’ believe he was, but he had no competition either. Same goes for Mann, SkS, JOE ROMM, Lewandowski and a conga line of others this day and age. They create far worse problems than they solve. James Hansen is the exception.
In hindsight, I should have gone fishing instead. So few can handle the truth or base their judgement on objective scientific evidence and intelligent analysis provided by experts in the communications fields.
So, they refuse to listen. No different than every climate skeptic on the planet. Same bone (problem/cause), different horse.
cheers, and good luck.
Waltersays
To be successful, sometimes you just have to admit you got it completely wrong.
575 Chris Dudley
“Gas cooled reactors still need water to generate electricity” what incredible duplicity that kind of a comment is. You may be gullible Chris, I am not. The rest of your comments are not worthy of being addressed.
It’s obvious you never bothered to read any of the refs, so don’t talk to me, go take it up with Hansen and others who know what they are talking about, if you have the guts and over-inflated ego to do that.
My credible sources inform me that the US will be lucky to still have a functional Navy by mid-century, and any citizen of the ‘banana republic’ that’s left at the turn of the next century won’t be able to go fishing off any US Naval wharf unless they have an aqualung should BAU and your kind of nefarious illogical postulates win the day.
re “Whereas in Greek mythology” … yes indeed, for that is all you have to support your fraudulent sophistry, Mythological Thinking – not science and zero hard evidence. *PLONK*
Waltersays
What’s the matter Gavin, have I hurt your feelings?
Last month you said in an inline comment, something like *people’s feelings* are not relevant here. Don’t appreciate the “science” and “evidence” provided that is outside your own area of expertise, or just don’t like my opinions based on that?
Oh boy, you’re doing it really tough at the moment. This too shall pass.
In your December AGU talk you speak about the critical importance of scientists being overt and open about their own Values, and yet you refuse to articulate your own on RC.
Judgments about who is and who isn’t a troll is purely a Value Judgement. My only interest is in speaking to and educating the silent majority of readers on RC about the “communication of climate science”.
I understand this is outside your domain, and therefore find it very difficult to accept and digest. The deniosphere have the exact same problem about climate science. You’re as human as the next guy. Denial makes no difference. Good luck with that Gavin.
But boy are you “predictable”.
Waltersays
83 Radge Havers, it’s ok by me that your expertise is not in ‘communication’, and that therefore you have little to no idea as to my particular methods and what is going on, and why. Nor what my good intentions are. As the referenced videos say (based on science btw) the “intuitive approach” such as you are suggesting and critising me for is in fact Wrong. No different than Monckton’s opinions and Roy Spencer’s ‘science’ about climate science are Wrong.
But Crazy Oats aka Radge Havers, you are entitled to believe whatever you wish too. Doesn’t make it right. ( smile ) Watch the videos, watch them again, read the papers associated with this topic, see the comment made by the author of the UP Stream Project to me on the link provided …. think, research, read, think, and keep thinking until you understand it, is my suggestion. Then every time you run into a Scientist, recommend the UP Stream project to them as being critical.
Someone should be inviting them asap to the next AGU meeting to present their work and expertise before the whole business of 25 years of great climate science goes down the toilet.
Recaptcha? lead as purveyor
Waltersays
Wili #584, You are spot on here, and I have noted a significant shift in your attitude, emphasis, and comments here the last 6 months.
Watch this section of the Years of Living Dangerously doco of a devout Christian Climate Scientist speaking to her peers inside a Texas Church and the EFFECT of this on real people who were “deniers”: http://youtu.be/brvhCnYvxQQ?t=48m54s
Especially note the comment by one local about Al Gore, clearly in reference to AIT and US Politics, and then his change of heart when spoken to in ways that he can relate to by someone who has the same Core VALUES as he.
Watch the first 1 to 2 minutes section of the UP Stream Pt 4 doco/research prject specifically being directed at all Climate Scientists about how important Values are, and why Listening to the community (the target market) is absolutely critical: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyRKTqsXfjM
Watch how people (the general public) are treated by others (climate scientists included) on all climate blogs when they indicate they are not yet convinced of AGW or can’t work out who to believe is telling the truth and in doing so reference someone else’s “opinion”… and try and measure the level of paranoia exhibited by pro-agw folks about such negative comments about the science.
Think about the disjointed disorganized ‘public communication’ campaigns by pr-agw climate scientists all over the world and various websites, and then consider how successful any of those have been in changing or shifting the opinion and beliefs of deniers or politicians or motivating them to some kind of action.
And then everyone should read this insightful article by a young scientist: “That summer I learned that language matters. I learned that context matters, that a truthful narrative supported by facts is compelling on its own. And I learned that our inability to tell the story of science—of its goodness, its vision, its relentless truth-seeking—is eroding the public’s trust.” http://climatechangenationalforum.org/mind-the-gap-thoughts-on-the-science-communication-problem/
imho, any of the ~27,000 climate scientists (and IPCC) who refuse to either look at the information and then accept the insights as given in these 3 links here (and the mountains of similar evidence) should resign their posts – one is either an active part of the solution or they are in fact a major part of the problem, and therefore are making matters worse, not better.
Waltersays
583 Jim Larsen, and ~10% of oecd developed nations carbon emissions come directly from the electricity use running and maintaining the Internet. Yes, 10%. Cites wanted? … http://www.google.com … God helps those who help themselves!
Waltersays
#576 Kevin McKinney, congrats to you Kevin. Well done, seriously.
What you have just done is precisely what I and a cpl of others did several weeks/mths ago regarding pro-rewnewable ideology here ( and elsewhere) as being a credible solution for the future…. based on BAU and real world constraints as they exist.
Kevin you close by saying: “But I do mean to question what appears to be a facile assumption that nuclear can scale up easy and quickly if only we could muster the political will to do it. Real world experience doesn’t support that assumption very well, as I see it.”
Yes, 100% correct, so again well done for your realism. Now you are grasping the scale of the “problem” by describing it fairly accurately now. The wise among the readership will now go back into the archives to see what it is that Diogenes was presenting, and what I have been presenting here .. at least in those posts not outright deleted or shafted into the borehole as being “not relevant”.
Truth is one cannot extrapolate the climate science out of the real world, by excluding politics, people’s feelings, people’s values, people’s false beliefs, and the most important of all the global financial system which underpins the current global economy. aka a giant Ponzi Scheme.
The money to make the changes necessary to remove carbon from the energy cycle is in fact available, if the political will of the people actually changes into reverse. The GFC cost the US $22 billion alone (GAO office data). The Derivatives market was $50 trillion per year activity. The Forex market is several $Trillion per day. All these things go back to the powerful nations like the US who refuse to Regulate said markets and simultaneously via the US Congress (and other nations) that maintains the Ponzi Scheme. Carbon Energy use and the abuse of the Environmental & Ecological assets of the world are intimately, directly, tied into the Financial and Political Systems of the world… into the Military and Industrial complex, and eventually food production and clean water for human beings to live.
Therefore, it should be clear by now that a key solution to climate change is in fact making the changes that will lead to a global realization that CO2e (like CFCs) must be Regulated out of existence on the Earth by 2050. That the world needs to realise that there is now already proven safe nuclear technology that precludes anything like a Fukushima or Chernobyl accident. That coal gas fired power plants must be shut down by 2050 and replaced with whatever works, from nuclear, hydro, renewable, energy efficiency, and massive demand reductions across the board. Plus carbon sequestration into the soils and massive re-afforestation of the globe simultaneously as CO2e emissions are driven down over the next 35 years from extreme Regulation impositions upon the 50 highest emissions nations and the wealthiest people on this earth who are directly responsible for over 90% of all carbon emissions on the planet today. iow Diogenes radical plans and ideas are closer to a realistic solution than any other known to man at this point. My point has always been that BAU is not a rational option no matter what it costs and no matter what alternative is deployed in it’s stead. That the most critical thing right now is a clear and honest portrayal of the Truth of the Problem and how huge it really is.
That any Climate Scientist publishing a Paper about Climate Change and who ignores this reality, this truth in their texts and their public presentations of their findings is not being totally honest about the subject. The Science cannot be separated from Reality nor Nature. It is disingenuous disinformation to pretend it is.
Lastly, your personal actions to try to prevent the Keystone XL pipeline and stopping the ongoing extraction of the shale oil and shale gas in nth america is a critical step to kind of attitudinal shift that’s required. Lose that battle, and Mann to lose his legal battle, fail to fix financial ponzi schemes and politics of the US Congress, and all will be lost imho. The ‘accuracy’ and fine points of the climate science are pretty much irrelevant now. Best
MAXMAREsays
If you are a passenger in a car’s friend and at some point you notice your friend is going at 120 m/h and you are headed to a sharp corner you tell them to STOP, unambiguously and without reserve and if other people in the car start making the case for some deceleration you tell all of them to stop, the car and the alternative plans. Doing otherwise is voluntarily courting disaster.
The IPCC is giving the car driver of my analogy a pass saying the cost of our current course could only be 0.06% if god does something about it.
Compare that to the real world scenario where instead of appealing to an abstract collective will we are shouting at the car driver by their name and surname very loudly. We also address the other passengers by their names, we don’t just recommend the correct course of action to the air.
And yet that’s what we are doing with the issue is going to make human civilization crash. No naming and shaming the perpetrators and no telling what the necessary course of action should be. We need to stop burning fossil fuels and also stop using the other highly unsafe energy production that cannot be named. Period. That should be the message. What to do with your energy requirements is up to every citizen and nation, let them figure it out.
Putting greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere has to stop.
Putting radioactive materials in the environment has to stop.
I we don’t echo these two messages all the other plans have no use.
And for those living in the US, stop the use of money as speech or you will loose the ability to be heard by your representatives as they will be representing somebody with more money than you.
Now before you go back to citing statistics and pondering about risk assessments think about your children or your families children in the back seat of that speeding car.
You are going the wrong way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_akwHYMdbsM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GQSwMCHJNU
Oh, I’ve got a secret for you, but I can’t tell it here….
Aaron Sheldonsays
Forget climate change, has anyone even consider a back of the envelope calculation on how much longer the planetary auto-catalytic oxidation of hydrocarbons can occur?
The salient constraint is that the net entropy gain from dissipating the chemical potential stored in hydrocarbons has to be greater than the net entropy gain from terrestrial cooling of solar radiation. After that it’s just a matter of applying the strong law of large numbers to the partition function, integrating over the allowed linear changes in terrestrial land use, and calculating the average rate of convergence of the continuous time martingale.
So what do we need to know:
-the power return on power invested to extract hydrocarbon chemical potential, from reserve to engine, let’s call this ‘r’
-the flux (power per unit area) that needs to be invested to extract hydrocarbon chemical potential from reserve to engine, let’s call this ‘h’
-the part of the solar flux absorbed terrestrially in areas disrupted by hydrocarbon extraction and dissipation, let’s call this ‘m’
-the part of the solar flux absorbed terrestrially in undisturbed areas, let’s call this ‘n’
-the black body temperature of the solar flux, let’s call this ‘T’
-and finally that old stalwart of radiant transfer the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, let’s call this ‘s’ (I think you can see where I am going with this)
The asymptotic condition in the case that all hydrocarbons are used to extract hydrocarbons is then that the net entropy gain per unit area and unit time from fossil fuel extraction has to exceed the net rate of entropy gain per unit area and unit time from purely solar flux cooling:
The term on the right at ‘h=0’, of no invested flux is:
m*(s/m)^1/4 – m/T
The term on the right is always greater than this value. Now with a hand waving argument, we can claim that this is less than the left hand side, because if it was larger then the second law would eventually almost surely favor human industrial disturbance without any fossil fuel extraction.
The next analytic criteria is to note that the term on the right, for fixed return ‘r’, and disturbed terrestrial absorption ‘m’, has a peak at the invested flux ‘h’ of:
h = m / (r^4 – r)
I do not have a value for the invested flux ‘h’ for the tar sands off hand, but the solar fluxes ‘m’ and ‘n’ are well documented, as well a value of 1:2 to 1:5 for the power return on power invested for tar sands is also well known.
The conclusion on the planetary thermodynamic accessibility of hydrocarbon reserves is stark. Hydrocarbon reserves will become thermodynamically inaccessible long before they run out.
I can even work out your personality problems to ten decimal places if it will help.
Dan H.says
John,
There is definitely a real possibilty that we could turn to an ice age in less than 1000 years. A lot of that depends on what exactly causes the end of an interglacial period and the onset of glaciation. Berger and Loutre postulated that climate cycles are largely the result of changes in insolation at high latitude. Their data suggest an exceptionally long interglacial of perhaps 50,000 years.
More recently, Marsh has postulated that the onset of glaciation is also due to variations in solar activity, but does not follow the Milankovitch cycles as described by B&L. The combination of insolation at high latitude, solar irradiance, cloud cover, and carbon dixoide concentrations all combine to influence glacial cycles. He postulates that the start of the next ice age may be much sooner.
A new ice age starting this millenium may be a tad on the early side. However, until we can confidently ascertain the cause(s) of glaciation, we cannot rule it out.
Dan H.says
John,
There is definitely a real possibilty that we could turn to an ice age in less than 1000 years. A lot of that depends on what exactly causes the end of an interglacial period and the onset of glaciation. Berger and Loutre postulated that climate cycles are largely the result of changes in insolation at high latitude. Their data suggest an exceptionally long interglacial of perhaps 50,000 years.
More recently, Marsh has postulated that the onset of glaciation is also due to variations in solar activity, but does not follow the Milankovitch cycles as described by B&L. The combination of insolation at high latitude, solar irradiance, cloud cover, and carbon dixoide concentrations all combine to influence glacial cycles. He postulates that the start of the next ice age may be much sooner.
A new ice age starting this millenium may be a tad on the early side. However, until we can confidently ascertain the cause(s) of glaciation, we cannot rule it out.
timg56says
gavin,
“there are lots of old articles that get things wrong, are sensationalist or made predictions without a solid basis”
There are lots of current articles which do the same. The recent spate of stories on Antarctic ice shelf melting is a good example.
Walter Mannysays
The Bengtsson affair is all over the news and yet not discussed here (that I can find), though Gavin has tweeted about bad faith/good faith elsewhere, apparently about Bengtsson and the GWPF? Curious to know if there’s any concern here about the fallout, particularly in regard to the referee’s remark: “…[the comparison] is less then helpful, actually it is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of “errors” and worse from the climate sceptics media side.” [no links, assuming people have read about it in ‘The Times’ and elsewhere]
T Marvellsays
The news people are laying it on thick about El Nino coming, the damage it will do, and resulting vindication of global warming. This might damage the reputation of climate science if El Nino keeps hiding. In fact, there is no El Nino now, and SST is not increasing in an obvious way. Predictions are all over the place.
vukcevicsays
AND finaly….. June is the month when the Arctic Sea Ice outlook gets going, when the EPA releases its rules on power plant CO2 emissions,…..
AND finaly June is the month that shows there was absolutely no warming (regardless of the CO2 content or emissions) for whole of 350 years of the longest and most scrutinized temperature record there is: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-Jun.htm
Over to you…,
Dave Burtonsays
This sounds very encouraging!
The timing is poor, though, being the eve of Heartland’s big “9th International Conference on Climate Change.”
DIOGENESsays
MORE ON OZZIE ZEHNER, AUTHOR OF “GREEN ILLUSIONS” (#128)
Ozzie Zehner has a website (http://ozziezehner.com/), and I would strongly recommend it to those looking for an unbiased source of energy information. A couple of noteworthy quotes from the site.
In an extract from his article on electric cars, Unclean at any Speed, he states:
“For instance, The National Academies’ assessment drew together the effects of vehicle construction, fuel extraction, refining, emissions, and other factors.
In a stomach punch to electric-car advocates, it concluded that the vehicles’ lifetime health and environmental damages are actually greater than those of gasoline-powered cars. Indeed, the study found that AN ELECTRIC CAR IS LIKELY WORSE THAN A CAR FUELED EXCLUSIVELY BY GASOLINE DERIVED FROM CANADIAN TAR-SANDS!”
In an extract from an interview for SNL Energy, he states:
“In my mind, there is a presumption that we have a choice between alternative energy and fossil fuels. But the reason that I wrote the book was to draw out why that choice that we seem to have between the two is an illusion. And that’s because ALTERNATIVE ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES RELY ON FOSSIL FUELS THROUGH EVERY STAGE OF THEIR LIFE. They rely on fossil fuels for raw material extraction, for fabrication, for insulation and maintenance, and for decommissioning and disposal.
Aside from the physical lifespan, they also rely on fossil fuels for their financing. They rely on an economy whose growth is driven by fossil fuels. The kind of financing that you need for renewables requires that. You need concurrent fossil fuel plants running alongside solar cells and wind turbines at all times.”
Juliussays
David, you do realize that Shakova et al have personally witnessed not just holes, but kilometer-wide gaps of escaping methane. Which is why they started claiming this in the first place.
Of course, you’re in the business of maintaining a status quo on the system as it is (you support your family with it I reckon). All siding with its infinite growth paradigm, so I’m not surprised to see you writing counter-pieces to the harsh truth, which, as it stands, is that we have a pretty much dead and severely warming ocean, daily record-breaking jet-stream related weather incidents, which in turn are caused by polar temperature anomalies of +20 C as of late.
What does strike me as strange is that you seem to have no good memory of your own past. You’re older than I am. How is it you don’t recall the way it was around you? Just note the trees. Almost all of them have visible diseases now. That wasn’t the case in my teens and twenties. Sure, you can claim it’s a N=1 observation, but it stops being that if it applies to all of us.
Janet Greenhalghsays
Methane is odourless. What other facts did you get wrong?
There are obvious long term natural periodicities in the temperature data.
Both Gavin and Judith are simply not seeing the wood for the trees – you both fail to take into account the very evident 960-80 year quasi periodicity in the record see Figs 5-9 at the latest post at
Over time the 60 year periodicity essentially zeroes out. The underlying 20th century rise is part of the 960 year periodicity. There is little room left for anthropogenic warming of other than minor significance
The current hiatus represents a peak in both the 60 and 960 +/- periodicities,
The linked post also forecasts the timing and amplitude of a possible coming cooling.
Forecasts and even discussions which do not account for the timing and amplitude of this natural quasi- millennial variation are pretty much irrelevant.
Forecasts can only be tested against future temperatures over time scales sufficiently long to be largely outside the range of shorter term variability. In this case the key periodicity of interest is the natural quasi- millennial periodicity – see Figs 5-9 at te link
Note that temperatures in Fig 9 can still exceed the 50 year moving average peak 100 years and more after the moving average peak itself.
Nothing can be proved by comparing models and GCMs are inherently worthless for prediction. (see Part 1 of the Link)
The way to go is simply to state clearly what the working hypothesis is
and what are the reasonable assumptions that went into them – in my case the basic assumptions are that the current warming peak is a synchronous peak in the 60 and 960 year periodicities and that the 10Be and neutron count records are the best proxy for solar activity.
The 960 year carrier wave variability can then be modulated – i.e shorter term forecasts can be then made by looking at and projecting forwards on top of the carrier wave the shorter term multidecadal periodicities in the PDO AMO etc.
Matthew R Marlersays
Dennis Baker: Implement the Precautionary principal and replace fossil fuel Power Plants achieving the minimum 40% global emissions reduction requested by the IPCC .
I agree with that. My reservations concern annual investment ($$$ and man-years of labor per annum), and rate. BAU will achieve this goal as alternative energy sources are made more reliable, more robust (i.e. PV panels that maintain 80% for 80 years or so), and cheaper to mass produce; and as fossil fuels become harder to extract and more expensive. The future is unpredictable as everyone knows, but extrapolation of recent trends suggests that CO2 concentration will not double, and anthropogenic CO2 production rates will be lower than now.
“Concern” for CO2 increase and excess warming? Sure, the concern motivate my study.
“Alarm”, as expressed for example in the monthly missives I receive from AAAS? Not justified by scientific evidence.
Matthew R Marlersays
133 WebHubTelescope: And why do you start the counting now on doubling and not start from 1860, the start of the oil age?
The warming and CO2 accumulation since then, if they have made any difference, have been largely beneficial. Perhaps you value the changes differently, but that is WHY I start now.
If you were just above freezing, a 1% change in Kelvin would have a significant effect.
Well, we are not just above freezing. 1% is a little larger than the modeled change in Earth temperature, and the modeled change in radiative forcing due to CO2 is a little smaller than that. That scale is “small” relative to the errors of estimation of all (as far as I know) of the relevant quantities (“physical constants”, “parameters”, etc) in all the models.
Because nobody takes in consideration the ”Earth’s Temperature Self Adjusting System” you are all bloody WRONG!Mutilating the normal laws of physics, is practical to mislead – but the truth always wins on the end: http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/climate/
Macksays
@ Ray Ladbury No 99 “Skeptics consider the evidence”
What evidence? There’s not a shred of evidence that links CO2 to any warming.
Robert Callaghansays
Diclaimer! I am not a scientist, I cut grass in a trailer park in Canada.
The message here always seems to be that methane isn’t so bad. For the sake of argument, I will allow that point of view the benefit of the doubt. Now, what about the rest of the world’s problems? These are cumulative and not isolated problems. It is the overwhelming confluence of events that will lead to cascading collapse. There will be no solar-wind nirvana thanks to the simple laws of thermodyanics.
THE PLAIN TRUTH
► 10,000 years ago humans and our livestock occupied just 0.01% of all the land-air vertebrate biomass on earth.
► Now humans and our livestock occupy 97% of all land-air vertebrate biomass.
► Humans and our livestock now consume over 40% of earth’s annual green land biomass production.
► 1 million people born every 4½ days. People live longer.
What does this mean?
► 50% of All Vertebrate Species will be gone by 2040. http://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/7350/Call-of-Life–Facing-the-Mass-Extinctiony
.
What have we done?
► 90% of Big Ocean Fish gone since 1950.
► 50% of Great Barrier Reef gone since 1985.
► 50% of Fresh Water Fish gone since 1987.
► 30% of Marine Birds gone since 1995.
► 28% of Land Animals gone since 1970.
► 28% of All Marine Animals gone since 1970.
► 50% of Human Sperm Counts gone since 1950.
► 90% of Lions gone since 1993.
► 90% of Monarch Butterflies gone since 1995.
► 93 Elephants killed every single day.
► 2-3 Rhinos killed every single day.
► Bees die from malnutrition lacking bio-diverse pollen sources.
► Extinctions are 1000 times faster than normal.
.
What’s going to happen to us?
► Ocean acidification doubles by 2050.
► Ocean acidification triples by 2100.
► We are on track in just 13 years to lock in a near term 6°C earth temp rise.
► Mass Extinction will become unstoppable and irreversible in 40 years.
► Permian mass extinction of 95% of life took 60,000 years 250 million years ago.
► Dinosaurs mass extinction took 33,000 years after asteroid impact.
► Anthropogenic mass extinction will take 300 years max.
► This mass extinction is 100x faster than anything before us.
► Antarctic meltdown now irreversible and unstoppable.
► Arctic methane burst is irreversible and unstoppable within current system.
► It takes 10 times as much rated “green” energy to displace 1 unit of fossil energy.
► Efficiency and conservation only causes more growth within our current system.
► World Bank says we have 5-10 years before we all fight for food and water.
.
What we are doing right now!
► We combine bacteria DNA with plant DNA and eat it.
► We are eating stuff that never, ever existed on earth before.
► We put man-made, computer designed, synthetic DNA into our food.
► We put nano metals and nano particles into our food.
► We put poisonous pesticides and herbicides directly into food cells.
► There are thousands of different chemicals in our foods.
► We are turning into genetic mutants because of our food.
► We are wiping out all life on earth because of our food.
► After mass extinction, genetically modified trees may be all we leave behind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUd9rRSLY4A
WHY THERE IS NO GREEN ENERGY
Our “green” energy hi-tech future requires:
► conflict minerals,
► rare earth elements,
► heavy metals,
► nano metals and graphite.
Search for “rare earth mining in China” on YouTube and see what special hell your solar panels and wind turbines produce in Mongolia. China can do this because they have undercut all the world’s production of rare earth elements with low wages, low currency and no environmental enforcement. They can do this because they ignore the radioactive thorium that comes with mining high-value, heavy rare earth elements. Rare Earth elements are approaching the break even limit on their green energy return on energy invested. Rare earth elements can’t profitably be mined outside of China without burning radioactive thorium, which is the mining by-product commonly found with heavy rare earth elements. We can’t afford to treat it as radioactive waste. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGLC59rCCDc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLR39sT_bTs
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Graphite is used in all of our so-called “green” powered batteries and is mined in China emitting deadly fine air particles resulting in a lethal smog that washes down from the skies in an ash laden rain that covers crops and water. China recently shut down several graphite mines because of the pervasive smog. Graphene, a nano-material produced for batteries, is water soluble and can cut through human/animal cells. Both graphite dust and graphene are deadly to humans because of their small size. You don’t want to breathe this stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkXF09yC3qM http://theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/471651/catch-22-energy-storage
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Solar cell manufacturing produces 3 green house gases that are over 10,000 times worse than C02. They require all kinds of deadly liquid acids to manufacture. Solar panels lose efficiency at the rate of 1% per year lasting 20-25 years. The expensive inverters they require have to be replaced every 5 to 10 years up to 4 times over the life of the panel. The new thin cell panels use nano materials and are even more toxic with shorter lifespans. It doesn’t matter how “clean” the latest experimental solar panels are because existing manufacturing plants will stay open to recoup major investments. Manufacturing just five wind turbines produces 1 ton of radioactive residue and 75 tons of toxic, acidic water used to leach out the required neodymium. Wind turbines only work at 25% of their rated capacity 90% of the time. Over 2 million children died in the Congo for the conflict minerals green energy needs. Thousands of people die in Chinese mines every year for the minerals green energy needs. Prof. Jian Shuisheng of the Jiatong-University estimates the production of just 6 solar panels requires one ton of coal. Since green power is intermittent, it would take at least 10 times the rated amount of “green” energy to displace just one equivalent unit of 24/7 fossil energy because your so-called 100 Watt solar panel delivers zero Watts at night and batteries are heavy toxic $energy hogs. One company in the U.S. cut down 5 acres of trees to build a solar farm to power a plant for the production of plastic bags. Green power will not be enough. Part-time energy and billions of batteries adds up to death to all life on earth just from destructive ecological inertia.
Tim Garrett explains why
► one dollar equals 10 milliwatts
► why we can’t decouple growth from emissions.
► why efficiency & conservation leads to more energy growth. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tim+garrett+is+it+possible+to+decouple+economic+wealth+from+carbon+dioxide+emission+rates%3F+part+i
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Did you know that the new $2 billion Ivanpah solar plant in the Mojave desert is a death ray that ignites birds in mid flight? When their bodies fall to the ground, they leave smoky trails in the sky called streamers. These birds are attracted to the bugs who are attracted to the shiny, pretty lights, just like us. It is estimated as many as 30,000 birds per year will die this way during huge migrations at just this one green power plant. Bigger solar plants of the same type are in the works including one near Joshua Tree, next to a wildlife sanctuary. During Ivanpah’s construction, up to 3,000 endangered desert tortoises suffered a temporary loss of legal protection and were allowed to be killed by heavy diesel equipment and materials. Thousands of slave workers die in China’s mines every single year to help produce the exotic minerals used in its construction. This is referred to as the “Green Economy”. If we changed the whole planet to green power, we would kill the earth we call home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq0Z_LKXQQ4
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Civilization is slowly collapsing while the earth is quickly dying.
Dimitris Poulossays
You are interested perhaps on my documentation of the formation of solar corona and the solar wind effect on Earth climate.
if is too much methane on and around Arctic – you should blame Santa and charge him methane tax; because all that methane comes from Rudolf and the other rain-dears, and from the old fatso himself: http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/methane-ch4/
gallopingcamelsays
Clearly you folks comfortable in your little echo chamber.
My goodness what rot. Has anybody looked through that UK 2012 report? These people are so in love with extrapolation it’s downright funny.
If you wanted to see what the health effects of a 2 or 3 degree temperature increase are, why not buy a ticket to the south of France or Spain and count the people who are dropping like flies in the street?
Oh wait: people do that because they LIKE things to be a few degrees warmer.
Konradsays
Gavin, your response to my comment #63 is somewhat lacking.
I am fully aware where that erroneous 255K figure comes from, and I have designed and run the empirical experiments that utterly disprove it (but only for the oceans). There is no confusion on my part.
Your claims that the errors between lunar SB calculation and Diviner measurements are due to heat capacity are false, as illustrated by the pre-launch vacuum chamber experiments. The heat capacity estimates for basalt were right. It’s just that the fine grains are sharp edged, poorly conductive, vacuum insulated and they cover everything. A large percentage of this dust has an edge dipole radiation length shorter than IR wavelengths. Surface properties matter.
You may claim my comments are veering “off topic”, but I am supporting the use of OHC as a metric and showing how climate models get it wrong. I would say “bang on target”.
Would you care to comment on the two additional sensors I propose for ARGO Deep in comment #10?
Walt Rainbothsays
#156
Good joke Steve! Unfortunately real science is part of the real world. Of course the real research began in the 1960’s and the ICAS Report No. 10a of November 1966 titled “A Recommended National Program In Weather Modification: A Report to the Interdepartmental Committee for Atmospheric Sciences by Homer E. Newell, Associate Administrator for Space Science and Application NASA, Washington, DC of 96 pages plus cover is easy to find on the internet. The term “chemtrails” was found on the cover of the Chemistry 131 manual from the Air Force Academy. That manual can be downloaded from the web also and as a biologist in the real world I take exception to the nonsense that it is full of. Typical engineers look at cause –> effect as a linear process but an ecologist realizes that it is a systems process and you never get just 1 result from single action. Climate scientists also deal with problems that are of the systems-level kind and we all have to deal with connections even if they are in the “forbidden” realm. The only secrets we have are because powerful people in our society need them to be secret, most likely because they are the perps. Oh by the way, did you hear the the real secrets carried off by the snowman included the IAEA report (2003) of the Sandia Labs study on the WTC that concluded the nukes had a signature that could be traced to Hanford. I don’t tell my students that. They have to find it on their own.
ADsays
Wow. This blog has got to be the biggest collection of preening pretentious self-congratulating government-funded idiots ever assembled. Feynman would puke at the sight of your alleged “science,” as would anyone else remotely familiar with concepts like logic, rigor and objectivity. I only hope this ridiculous assault on common sense is archived for the amusement of future generations, to take its place of honor next to epicycles, phrenology, and phlogistons. I’d add “for shame” but clearly none of you have any. Disgusting.
Now delete this entry and get back to manufacturing evidence for your masturbatory political fantasies, “scientists.”
bachcolesays
Within the next couple of years, you also will know that LENR (cold fusion) is real and that all of this fretting about human caused global warming was completely unnecessary.
DiogenesDespairssays
The real crux of the climate debate is the role of human-generated carbon dioxide. When the debate gets to that crux, here are some crucial, verifiable facts – with citations – people need to know about human-generated carbon dioxide and its effect on global warming.
The fact is, there has been global warming, but the contribution of human-generated carbon dioxide is necessarily so minuscule as to be nearly undetectable. Here’s why:
Carbon dioxide, considered the main vector for human-caused global warming, is some 0.038% of the atmosphere[1]- a trace gas. Water vapor varies from 0% to 4%[2], and should easily average 1% or more[3] near the Earth’s surface, where the greenhouse effect would be most important, and is about three times more effective[4] a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So water vapor is at least 25 times more prevalent and three times more effective; that makes it at least 75 times more important to the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide[5]. The TOTAL contribution of carbon dioxide to the greenhouse effect is therefore 0.013 or less. The total human contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide since the start of the industrial revolution has been estimated at about 25%[6]. So humans’ carbon dioxide greenhouse effect is a quarter of 0.013, works out to about 0.00325. Total warming of the Earth by the greenhouse effect is widely accepted as about 33 degrees Centigrade, raising average temperature to 59 degrees Fahrenheit. So the contribution of anthropogenic carbon dioxide is less than 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit, or under 0.1 degree Centigrade. Global warming over the last century is thought by many to be about 0.6 degrees Centigrade.
But that’s only the beginning. We’ve had global warming for more than 10,000 years, since the end of the last Ice Age, and there is evidence temperatures were actually somewhat warmer 9,000 years ago and again 4,500 to 8,000 years ago than they are today[7]. Whatever caused that, it was not human activity. It was not all those power plants and factories and SUVs being operated by Stone Age cavemen while chipping arrowheads out of bits of flint. Whatever the cause was, it melted the glaciers that in North America once extended south to Long Island and parts of New York City[8] into virtually complete disappearance (except for a few mountain remnants). That’s one big greenhouse effect! If we are still having global warming – and I suppose we could presume we are, given this 10,000 year history – it seems highly likely that it is still the overwhelmingly primary cause of continued warming, rather than our piddling 0.00325 contribution to the greenhouse effect.
Yet even that trend-continuation today needs to be proved. Evidence is that the Medieval Warm Period centered on the 1200s was somewhat warmer than we are now[9], and the climate was clearly colder in the Little Ice Age in the 1600s than it is now[10]. So we are within the range of normal up-and-down fluctuations without human greenhouse contributions that could be significant, or even measurable.
The principal scientists arguing for human-caused global warming have been demonstrably disingenuous[11], and now you can see why. They have proved they should not be trusted.
The idea that we should be spending hundreds of billions of dollars and hamstringing the economy of the entire world to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is beyond ludicrous in light of the facts above; it is insane. Furthermore, it sucks attention and resources from seeking the other sources of warming and from coping with climate change and its effects in realistic ways. The true motivation underlying the global warming movement is almost certainly ideological and political in nature, and I predict that anthropogenic Global Warming, as currently presented, will go down as the greatest fraud of all time. It makes Ponzi and Madoff look like pikers by comparison.
[1] Fundamentals of Physical Geography, 2nd Edition by Michael Pidwirny Concentration varies slightly with the growing season in the northern hemisphere. HYPERLINK “http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7a.html” http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7a.html
[2] ibid.
[3] HALOE v2.0 Upper Tropospheric Water Vapor Climatology Claudette Ojo, Hampton University; et al.. HYPERLINK “http://vsgc.odu.edu/src/Conf09/UnderGrad%20Papers/Ojo%20-%20Paper.pdf” http://vsgc.odu.edu/src/Conf09/UnderGrad%20Papers/Ojo%20-%20Paper.pdf. See p. 4.The 0 – 4% range is widely accepted among most sources. This source is listed for its good discussion of the phenomena determining that range. An examination of a globe will show that tropical oceans (near high end of range) are far more extensive than the sum of the earth’s arctic and antarctic regions and tropical-zone deserts (all near the low end). Temperate zone oceans are far more extensive than temperate-zone desert. This author’s guess of an average of 2% or more seems plausible. I have used “1% or more” in an effort to err on the side of understatement.
[4 NIST Chemistry Webbook, Please compare the IR absorption spectra of water and carbon dioxide. ] HYPERLINK “http://webbook.nist.gov/” http://webbook.nist.gov/
[5] Three quarters of the atmosphere and virtually all water vapor are in the troposphere. Including all the atmosphere would change the ratios to about 20 times more prevalent and 60 times more effective. However, the greenhouse effect of high-altitude carbon dioxide on lower-altitude weather and the earth’s surface seems likely to be small if not nil.
[6] National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. HYPERLINK “http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html” http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html. The estimated 90ppm increase in carbon dioxide, 30% above the base of 280 ppm, to a recent reading of 370 ppm, equates to just under 25% of present concentration, the relevant factor in estimating present contribution to the greenhouse effect.
[7] Oak Ridge National Laboratory http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nerc130k.html
[8] New York Nature – The nature and natural history of the New York City region. Betsy McCully http://www.newyorknature.net/IceAge.html
[9] Global Warming: A Geological Perspective John P. Bluemle HYPERLINK “https://www.dmr.nd.gov/ndgs/Newsletter/NL99W/PDF/globlwrmw99.pdf” http://www.azgs.az.gov/arizona_geology/archived_issues/Winter_1999.pdf This article, published by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency, is drawn from a paper by the author in Environmental Geosciences, 1999, Volume 6, Number 2, pp. 63-75. Note particularly the chart on p.4.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Wikileaks: Climatic Research Unit emails, data, models, 1996-2009 HYPERLINK “http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_emails,_data,_models,_1996-2009” http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_emails,_data,_models,_1996-2009.
See also HYPERLINK “http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246661/New-scandal-Climate-Gate-scientists-accused-hiding-data-global-warming-sceptics.html” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246661/New-scandal-Climate-Gate-scientists-accused-hiding-data-global-warming-sceptics.html and
HYPERLINK “http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704075604575356611173414140.html” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704075604575356611173414140.html and, more diplomatically: HYPERLINK “http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01tier.html” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01tier.html. Et al.
ADDENDUM
What initially troubled me was the aberrant behavior of the climate research unit at East Anglia University, which has been the main data source for AGW arguments. They initially refused (!) to reveal their algorithms and data on the grounds that they were proprietary(!!). They responded to critics with ad hominem attacks and efforts to block their publication in scientific journals. Now, as I am sure you know, this is not how one does honest science, in which you PUBLISH your data and methodology and invite critical comment to ferret out error or oversights. It took the now-famous Wikileaks “Climategate” to pry loose the data and expose their machinations. Yet despite the devastating blow these revelations should have to their credibility, the AGW “cause” has taken on a life of its own.
Fundamentally, the argument seems to rest on a logical fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc – after this, therefore because of this. We see a rise in temperature and a rise in (principally) carbon dioxide, and therefore conclude one must have caused the other. It does not necessarily follow at all. There can be other causes entirely behind both phenomena, and as you see above, almost certainly there are. Beyond that, I have encountered numerous assertions of fact that cannot add up given the physical properties of water vapor and carbon dioxide that go unchallenged. One-sided arguments proliferate and people arguing the other side are frequently denounced as being employed by business interests rather than rebutted on the merits.
In sum, I have not come lightly to the conclusion that the AGW argument as it applies to carbon dioxide is largely untrue and certainly does not account for more than a very small, nearly negligible part of the phenomena we are seeing. The implications of widespread assertions of and belief in such an untruth are staggering, and potentially enormously destructive. It is unwise indeed to let oneself be stampeded in this matter, and stampede is clearly what many have been and are trying to induce.
I can understand politicians behaving this way; a carbon tax or carbon trading regime would allow enormous revenues to fall into their hands. I can understand “Progressive” ideologues; it logically leads to enormous expansion of government power over industry, the economy, and the daily life of individuals, which they regard as a good thing. I understand the environmentalists; they want to shrink the size and impact on the environment of modern civilization. But responsible citizens need to put aside such considerations.
Girmasays
Correlation between solar activity and global mean surface temperature :
More than 95% of the 5yr running mean of the surface temperature change since 1850 can be replicated by an integration of the sunspot data (as a proxy for ocean heat content), departing from the average value over the period of the sunspot record (~40SSN), plus the superimposition of a ~60yr sinusoid representing the observed oceanic oscillations.
Change in CO2 lags behind change in temperature at all time scales, so we need to consider cause and effect as well as correlation.
huntersays
Clean up your own side of the issue then get back on what skeptics should do to meet your apporval. The more you ignore and misrepresent the skeptics, the more desperate and empty your position looks.
it was specifically McIntyre, Pielke jnr and lucia.. and you also called them dishonest)any examples of why you thought, Mcintyre, Pielke nr, Lucia dishonest/disengenous)
Brent Hargreavessays
Given that CO2 continues to rise, and given the hiatus since 1998, could it be that CO2 is not a major driver of global warming?
”Science” is: looking the problem from every angle, for a correct solution.
I suggest; you guys occasionally should look at it from the ”denier’s” point of science.
Honest denier would never deny that climate is changing – because H2O is regulating the climate, not CO2. The ”Temperature Self Adjusting Mechanism (TSAM) readjusting the ”overall” temp is infallible – not known to the rest! b] heat is neutralized by the ”cold vacuum” that penetrates into the atmosphere; not by heat radiating out of space and albedo gizmo, please read the Holy Grail!!!: https://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/2014/07/12/cooling-earth/
There is no such a thing as ”the pause” Just there isn’t any global warming! By inventing the therm ”pause” you guys are delaying the inevitable: ”global” warming doesn’t exist / H2O is regulating the climate, not CO2!The truth exist; truth is much more important than million believers: https://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/2014/07/12/cooling-earth/
Steve Harrissays
Conclusions: Steve Koonin’s article in the WSJ is a far more rational discussion than any of you can muster. I’m saying goodbye to the Real Climate cult of religious zealotry. You can go on hurling your epithets of “denier” and “liar” at your own peril. In my view this behavior represents a far greater public danger than does CO2. Just as the tee party and sarah palin helped the democrats, you have unwittingly become the best thing to happen to the republican party since ronny raygun. My gawd, you even have naomi klein spouting off for you. Good luck with that. I will be on my way now, as I’m sure your responses will be sizzling. However, I hope that I have made at least some of you think about this a bit. A little humility can work wonders.
What really concerns me, down the line (I hate that phrase “going forward”), is not the bankrupting of the world economy due to panic over climate change. I see no way that could actually ever happen, the consequences would just be too extreme. What I do see, however, is a coming era where every single unusual and/or extreme weather event gets blamed on “climate change” by die hard zealots, who then proceed to attack anyone and everyone who failed to take the extreme measures they insisted on.
We are getting a preview of that sort of thinking already. A devastating heat wave in Russia that killed tens of thousands — yet was very likely NOT caused by climate change, according to the scientists who methodically investigate that event. A major California drought, also deemed unlikely to have been caused by climate change, according to most of the scientists who studied it. There has also been an effort to blame global warming for the combination of a major lake effect snowstorm and a bitter cold wave gripping practically all the continental US. Yet, as we’ve seen demonstrated here, there are always going to be those who refuse to accept such conclusions. And in a sense they are right, because in principle there is probably no way to tell for sure one way or the other which event was precipitated by climate change and which wasn’t.
But for the zealots it won’t matter. Every time such an event occurs during the 21st century, climate change will be blamed, and when there are fatalities, those who refused to do the zealot’s bidding will be attacked. Hopefully not physically, but who knows? Hysteria over this issue has been building, in certain circles, to a fever pitch. Very scary business.
Kensays
You should consider bringing Steve McIntyre and Judith Curry on board and fostering debates over key issues.
2014-03-10 China OpEd article extracts by Dr James HANSEN
“Air pollution from coal kills over 1,000,000 people per year in China. Life expectancy in North China is reduced at least five years, and those living suffer many health effects. One scientist told me that he was using his savings to send his child out of the country, to grow for a while in clean air.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2014/20140310_ChinaOpEd.pdf
[ you will need to ask James for his sources of these deaths figures ]
Hansen pg 10 Energy misconceptions
Human lives. It is worth watching a 3-minute clip of an “anti-nuke” concert held in New York City in 1979 after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania. Participants yearn for the warm glow of a wood fire, even coal, but insist that nuclear power be terminated.
Indoor wood, coal and biofuel fires kill more than 1,000,000 people per year. The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident, which exposed nearby Pennsylvania residents to a level of radiation less than the natural annual background level, will cause few if any deaths.
There have been two much more serious nuclear accidents, at Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Deaths caused by Fukushima radiation will be few, but the radiation release was a catastrophe for 300,000 people forced to leave their homes. Unfortunately the Japanese government forced many more people to evacuate than necessary. Please check out the brief, readable, “Radiation: The Facts” by Robert Hargraves. Start with the Radiation 101 side of the page.
Are those accidents sufficient reason to abandon nuclear power? We must compare the alternatives. Aircraft provide a relevant analogy. Early airliners had many accidents that killed hundreds of people, but we did not abandon the technology. Instead we improved both the technology and the safety of operations via pilot training, aircraft control systems, and safety protocols and culture.
Airlines are now one of the safest modes of travel. Similarly, improved
nuclear technologies and operations have the potential to make nuclear power the safest of all energy systems. [end quote]
Hansen and others on CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2013/11/08/ac-later-pandoras-promise-energy-alternatives.cnn.html
Note the content in videos here:
https://theconversation.com/what-science-communicators-can-learn-from-listening-to-people-25087
Time for climate scientists and their supporters to really listen to the scientific facts about the science of science communication from other scientists and academics.
75 Pete Dunkelberg, graph is from #66 wili’s ref
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/09/3424593/showtime-years-dangerously-response/
“Asking slightly different questions leads to different graphs, as the many Gallup surveys show.” Yes!
Which is why my comments and conclusions are typically based on scientific papers, and reason plus personal experience in the field of ‘communications, human resources / training, multinational corporate executive and marketing (including surveys, focus groups and supervising production of TV advertisements)’.
Kahan is a good example of scientific work: The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change.
http://www.climateaccess.org/sites/default/files/Kahan_Tragedy%20of%20the%20Risk-Perception%20Commons.pdf
He is referenced in the videos here:
https://theconversation.com/what-science-communicators-can-learn-from-listening-to-people-25087
That’s mainly for the scientists who run RC. Kahan makes the point that Micky Mantle was a baseball player who DID baseball, he was not a radio communicator who called the game for the public. Two different things, two different skill sets entirely.
Kahan and others note that climate scientists are ignoring valid science themselves. Dr George Lakoff a leading Cognitive Scientist says the exact same thing. I have posted links to their and others work repeatedly, to little or no effect.
I wrote to Gavin directly via email last decade, again to no effect. Couldn’t even get a simple thank you reply for the effort. Nothing has changed since. I was too busy working on my own projects until late last year to contribute anything else here.
Al Gore did a good job in AIT because he was a skillful public communicator. My point is that his personal ‘political’ ideology reputation got in the way, and so was less successful in the long run. Half the population switched off and refused to go see the movie. That’s a FAIL, not a Win for Climate Science.
AS the Up Stream videos show, besides the fact that “facts” don’t really matter that much, two things are critical to be a good communicator when it comes to public and shifting people’s views (and at least having them willing to listen to you) … Warmth and Competence.
The well funded deniosphere campaign has successfully undermined the “competence” part, but the climate scientists are as cold as ice. Especially here on RC. None are competent communicators, no different than Micky Mantle was not a successful radio baseball game caller.
Schnieder wasn’t as good a PUBLIC communicator as ‘scientists’ and ‘loyalists’ believe he was, but he had no competition either. Same goes for Mann, SkS, JOE ROMM, Lewandowski and a conga line of others this day and age. They create far worse problems than they solve. James Hansen is the exception.
In hindsight, I should have gone fishing instead. So few can handle the truth or base their judgement on objective scientific evidence and intelligent analysis provided by experts in the communications fields.
So, they refuse to listen. No different than every climate skeptic on the planet. Same bone (problem/cause), different horse.
cheers, and good luck.
To be successful, sometimes you just have to admit you got it completely wrong.
And start again.
81 Hank Roberts,
Hey Hank, that Diogenic comment belongs here:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/03/unforced-variations-mar-2014/comment-page-12/
It was made for you!
LOL
575 Chris Dudley
“Gas cooled reactors still need water to generate electricity” what incredible duplicity that kind of a comment is. You may be gullible Chris, I am not. The rest of your comments are not worthy of being addressed.
It’s obvious you never bothered to read any of the refs, so don’t talk to me, go take it up with Hansen and others who know what they are talking about, if you have the guts and over-inflated ego to do that.
My credible sources inform me that the US will be lucky to still have a functional Navy by mid-century, and any citizen of the ‘banana republic’ that’s left at the turn of the next century won’t be able to go fishing off any US Naval wharf unless they have an aqualung should BAU and your kind of nefarious illogical postulates win the day.
re “Whereas in Greek mythology” … yes indeed, for that is all you have to support your fraudulent sophistry, Mythological Thinking – not science and zero hard evidence. *PLONK*
What’s the matter Gavin, have I hurt your feelings?
Last month you said in an inline comment, something like *people’s feelings* are not relevant here. Don’t appreciate the “science” and “evidence” provided that is outside your own area of expertise, or just don’t like my opinions based on that?
Here’s some science about that:
In The Angry Smile: The Psychology of Passive Aggressive Behavior in Families, Schools, and Workplaces, (and discussion forums) 2nd ed., passive aggression is defined as a deliberate and masked way of expressing covert feelings of anger (Long, Long & Whitson, 2008).
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/passive-aggressive-diaries/201011/10-common-passive-aggressive-phrases-avoid
from 11 Feb 2014 at 8:42 PM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/02/unforced-variations-feb-2014/comment-page-3/#comment-456836
( smile )
Oh boy, you’re doing it really tough at the moment. This too shall pass.
In your December AGU talk you speak about the critical importance of scientists being overt and open about their own Values, and yet you refuse to articulate your own on RC.
Judgments about who is and who isn’t a troll is purely a Value Judgement. My only interest is in speaking to and educating the silent majority of readers on RC about the “communication of climate science”.
I understand this is outside your domain, and therefore find it very difficult to accept and digest. The deniosphere have the exact same problem about climate science. You’re as human as the next guy. Denial makes no difference. Good luck with that Gavin.
But boy are you “predictable”.
83 Radge Havers, it’s ok by me that your expertise is not in ‘communication’, and that therefore you have little to no idea as to my particular methods and what is going on, and why. Nor what my good intentions are. As the referenced videos say (based on science btw) the “intuitive approach” such as you are suggesting and critising me for is in fact Wrong. No different than Monckton’s opinions and Roy Spencer’s ‘science’ about climate science are Wrong.
But Crazy Oats aka Radge Havers, you are entitled to believe whatever you wish too. Doesn’t make it right. ( smile ) Watch the videos, watch them again, read the papers associated with this topic, see the comment made by the author of the UP Stream Project to me on the link provided …. think, research, read, think, and keep thinking until you understand it, is my suggestion. Then every time you run into a Scientist, recommend the UP Stream project to them as being critical.
Someone should be inviting them asap to the next AGU meeting to present their work and expertise before the whole business of 25 years of great climate science goes down the toilet.
Recaptcha? lead as purveyor
Wili #584, You are spot on here, and I have noted a significant shift in your attitude, emphasis, and comments here the last 6 months.
Watch this section of the Years of Living Dangerously doco of a devout Christian Climate Scientist speaking to her peers inside a Texas Church and the EFFECT of this on real people who were “deniers”: http://youtu.be/brvhCnYvxQQ?t=48m54s
Especially note the comment by one local about Al Gore, clearly in reference to AIT and US Politics, and then his change of heart when spoken to in ways that he can relate to by someone who has the same Core VALUES as he.
Watch the first 1 to 2 minutes section of the UP Stream Pt 4 doco/research prject specifically being directed at all Climate Scientists about how important Values are, and why Listening to the community (the target market) is absolutely critical: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyRKTqsXfjM
Watch how people (the general public) are treated by others (climate scientists included) on all climate blogs when they indicate they are not yet convinced of AGW or can’t work out who to believe is telling the truth and in doing so reference someone else’s “opinion”… and try and measure the level of paranoia exhibited by pro-agw folks about such negative comments about the science.
Think about the disjointed disorganized ‘public communication’ campaigns by pr-agw climate scientists all over the world and various websites, and then consider how successful any of those have been in changing or shifting the opinion and beliefs of deniers or politicians or motivating them to some kind of action.
And then everyone should read this insightful article by a young scientist: “That summer I learned that language matters. I learned that context matters, that a truthful narrative supported by facts is compelling on its own. And I learned that our inability to tell the story of science—of its goodness, its vision, its relentless truth-seeking—is eroding the public’s trust.” http://climatechangenationalforum.org/mind-the-gap-thoughts-on-the-science-communication-problem/
imho, any of the ~27,000 climate scientists (and IPCC) who refuse to either look at the information and then accept the insights as given in these 3 links here (and the mountains of similar evidence) should resign their posts – one is either an active part of the solution or they are in fact a major part of the problem, and therefore are making matters worse, not better.
583 Jim Larsen, and ~10% of oecd developed nations carbon emissions come directly from the electricity use running and maintaining the Internet. Yes, 10%. Cites wanted? … http://www.google.com … God helps those who help themselves!
#576 Kevin McKinney, congrats to you Kevin. Well done, seriously.
What you have just done is precisely what I and a cpl of others did several weeks/mths ago regarding pro-rewnewable ideology here ( and elsewhere) as being a credible solution for the future…. based on BAU and real world constraints as they exist.
Kevin you close by saying: “But I do mean to question what appears to be a facile assumption that nuclear can scale up easy and quickly if only we could muster the political will to do it. Real world experience doesn’t support that assumption very well, as I see it.”
Yes, 100% correct, so again well done for your realism. Now you are grasping the scale of the “problem” by describing it fairly accurately now. The wise among the readership will now go back into the archives to see what it is that Diogenes was presenting, and what I have been presenting here .. at least in those posts not outright deleted or shafted into the borehole as being “not relevant”.
Truth is one cannot extrapolate the climate science out of the real world, by excluding politics, people’s feelings, people’s values, people’s false beliefs, and the most important of all the global financial system which underpins the current global economy. aka a giant Ponzi Scheme.
The money to make the changes necessary to remove carbon from the energy cycle is in fact available, if the political will of the people actually changes into reverse. The GFC cost the US $22 billion alone (GAO office data). The Derivatives market was $50 trillion per year activity. The Forex market is several $Trillion per day. All these things go back to the powerful nations like the US who refuse to Regulate said markets and simultaneously via the US Congress (and other nations) that maintains the Ponzi Scheme. Carbon Energy use and the abuse of the Environmental & Ecological assets of the world are intimately, directly, tied into the Financial and Political Systems of the world… into the Military and Industrial complex, and eventually food production and clean water for human beings to live.
Therefore, it should be clear by now that a key solution to climate change is in fact making the changes that will lead to a global realization that CO2e (like CFCs) must be Regulated out of existence on the Earth by 2050. That the world needs to realise that there is now already proven safe nuclear technology that precludes anything like a Fukushima or Chernobyl accident. That coal gas fired power plants must be shut down by 2050 and replaced with whatever works, from nuclear, hydro, renewable, energy efficiency, and massive demand reductions across the board. Plus carbon sequestration into the soils and massive re-afforestation of the globe simultaneously as CO2e emissions are driven down over the next 35 years from extreme Regulation impositions upon the 50 highest emissions nations and the wealthiest people on this earth who are directly responsible for over 90% of all carbon emissions on the planet today. iow Diogenes radical plans and ideas are closer to a realistic solution than any other known to man at this point. My point has always been that BAU is not a rational option no matter what it costs and no matter what alternative is deployed in it’s stead. That the most critical thing right now is a clear and honest portrayal of the Truth of the Problem and how huge it really is.
That any Climate Scientist publishing a Paper about Climate Change and who ignores this reality, this truth in their texts and their public presentations of their findings is not being totally honest about the subject. The Science cannot be separated from Reality nor Nature. It is disingenuous disinformation to pretend it is.
Lastly, your personal actions to try to prevent the Keystone XL pipeline and stopping the ongoing extraction of the shale oil and shale gas in nth america is a critical step to kind of attitudinal shift that’s required. Lose that battle, and Mann to lose his legal battle, fail to fix financial ponzi schemes and politics of the US Congress, and all will be lost imho. The ‘accuracy’ and fine points of the climate science are pretty much irrelevant now. Best
If you are a passenger in a car’s friend and at some point you notice your friend is going at 120 m/h and you are headed to a sharp corner you tell them to STOP, unambiguously and without reserve and if other people in the car start making the case for some deceleration you tell all of them to stop, the car and the alternative plans. Doing otherwise is voluntarily courting disaster.
The IPCC is giving the car driver of my analogy a pass saying the cost of our current course could only be 0.06% if god does something about it.
Compare that to the real world scenario where instead of appealing to an abstract collective will we are shouting at the car driver by their name and surname very loudly. We also address the other passengers by their names, we don’t just recommend the correct course of action to the air.
And yet that’s what we are doing with the issue is going to make human civilization crash. No naming and shaming the perpetrators and no telling what the necessary course of action should be. We need to stop burning fossil fuels and also stop using the other highly unsafe energy production that cannot be named. Period. That should be the message. What to do with your energy requirements is up to every citizen and nation, let them figure it out.
Putting greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere has to stop.
Putting radioactive materials in the environment has to stop.
I we don’t echo these two messages all the other plans have no use.
And for those living in the US, stop the use of money as speech or you will loose the ability to be heard by your representatives as they will be representing somebody with more money than you.
Now before you go back to citing statistics and pondering about risk assessments think about your children or your families children in the back seat of that speeding car.
You are going the wrong way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_akwHYMdbsM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GQSwMCHJNU
David (#136),
“A certain commenter here is a font of misinformation.”
I know! OMG! Can you even believe what Edward linked?!?! Even before it was published the comments pointed to “Reinventing Fire” and by a Killian no less…. Can you even?!?! Talk about two faced!!!!! http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/#comment-316
Oh, I’ve got a secret for you, but I can’t tell it here….
Forget climate change, has anyone even consider a back of the envelope calculation on how much longer the planetary auto-catalytic oxidation of hydrocarbons can occur?
The salient constraint is that the net entropy gain from dissipating the chemical potential stored in hydrocarbons has to be greater than the net entropy gain from terrestrial cooling of solar radiation. After that it’s just a matter of applying the strong law of large numbers to the partition function, integrating over the allowed linear changes in terrestrial land use, and calculating the average rate of convergence of the continuous time martingale.
So what do we need to know:
-the power return on power invested to extract hydrocarbon chemical potential, from reserve to engine, let’s call this ‘r’
-the flux (power per unit area) that needs to be invested to extract hydrocarbon chemical potential from reserve to engine, let’s call this ‘h’
-the part of the solar flux absorbed terrestrially in areas disrupted by hydrocarbon extraction and dissipation, let’s call this ‘m’
-the part of the solar flux absorbed terrestrially in undisturbed areas, let’s call this ‘n’
-the black body temperature of the solar flux, let’s call this ‘T’
-and finally that old stalwart of radiant transfer the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, let’s call this ‘s’ (I think you can see where I am going with this)
The asymptotic condition in the case that all hydrocarbons are used to extract hydrocarbons is then that the net entropy gain per unit area and unit time from fossil fuel extraction has to exceed the net rate of entropy gain per unit area and unit time from purely solar flux cooling:
(m + rh)*(s/(m+rh))^(1/4)- h*(s/h)^(1/4) – m/T > n *(s/n)^(1/4) – n/T
The term on the right at ‘h=0’, of no invested flux is:
m*(s/m)^1/4 – m/T
The term on the right is always greater than this value. Now with a hand waving argument, we can claim that this is less than the left hand side, because if it was larger then the second law would eventually almost surely favor human industrial disturbance without any fossil fuel extraction.
The next analytic criteria is to note that the term on the right, for fixed return ‘r’, and disturbed terrestrial absorption ‘m’, has a peak at the invested flux ‘h’ of:
h = m / (r^4 – r)
I do not have a value for the invested flux ‘h’ for the tar sands off hand, but the solar fluxes ‘m’ and ‘n’ are well documented, as well a value of 1:2 to 1:5 for the power return on power invested for tar sands is also well known.
The conclusion on the planetary thermodynamic accessibility of hydrocarbon reserves is stark. Hydrocarbon reserves will become thermodynamically inaccessible long before they run out.
I can even work out your personality problems to ten decimal places if it will help.
John,
There is definitely a real possibilty that we could turn to an ice age in less than 1000 years. A lot of that depends on what exactly causes the end of an interglacial period and the onset of glaciation. Berger and Loutre postulated that climate cycles are largely the result of changes in insolation at high latitude. Their data suggest an exceptionally long interglacial of perhaps 50,000 years.
ftp://ftp.soest.hawaii.edu/engels/Stanley/Textbook_update/Science_297/Berger-02.pdf
More recently, Marsh has postulated that the onset of glaciation is also due to variations in solar activity, but does not follow the Milankovitch cycles as described by B&L. The combination of insolation at high latitude, solar irradiance, cloud cover, and carbon dixoide concentrations all combine to influence glacial cycles. He postulates that the start of the next ice age may be much sooner.
http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200804/marsh.cfm
A new ice age starting this millenium may be a tad on the early side. However, until we can confidently ascertain the cause(s) of glaciation, we cannot rule it out.
John,
There is definitely a real possibilty that we could turn to an ice age in less than 1000 years. A lot of that depends on what exactly causes the end of an interglacial period and the onset of glaciation. Berger and Loutre postulated that climate cycles are largely the result of changes in insolation at high latitude. Their data suggest an exceptionally long interglacial of perhaps 50,000 years.
ftp://ftp.soest.hawaii.edu/engels/Stanley/Textbook_update/Science_297/Berger-02.pdf
More recently, Marsh has postulated that the onset of glaciation is also due to variations in solar activity, but does not follow the Milankovitch cycles as described by B&L. The combination of insolation at high latitude, solar irradiance, cloud cover, and carbon dixoide concentrations all combine to influence glacial cycles. He postulates that the start of the next ice age may be much sooner.
http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200804/marsh.cfm
A new ice age starting this millenium may be a tad on the early side. However, until we can confidently ascertain the cause(s) of glaciation, we cannot rule it out.
gavin,
“there are lots of old articles that get things wrong, are sensationalist or made predictions without a solid basis”
There are lots of current articles which do the same. The recent spate of stories on Antarctic ice shelf melting is a good example.
The Bengtsson affair is all over the news and yet not discussed here (that I can find), though Gavin has tweeted about bad faith/good faith elsewhere, apparently about Bengtsson and the GWPF? Curious to know if there’s any concern here about the fallout, particularly in regard to the referee’s remark: “…[the comparison] is less then helpful, actually it is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of “errors” and worse from the climate sceptics media side.” [no links, assuming people have read about it in ‘The Times’ and elsewhere]
The news people are laying it on thick about El Nino coming, the damage it will do, and resulting vindication of global warming. This might damage the reputation of climate science if El Nino keeps hiding. In fact, there is no El Nino now, and SST is not increasing in an obvious way. Predictions are all over the place.
AND finaly…..
June is the month when the Arctic Sea Ice outlook gets going, when the EPA releases its rules on power plant CO2 emissions,…..
AND finaly June is the month that shows there was absolutely no warming (regardless of the CO2 content or emissions) for whole of 350 years of the longest and most scrutinized temperature record there is:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-Jun.htm
Over to you…,
This sounds very encouraging!
The timing is poor, though, being the eve of Heartland’s big “9th International Conference on Climate Change.”
MORE ON OZZIE ZEHNER, AUTHOR OF “GREEN ILLUSIONS” (#128)
Ozzie Zehner has a website (http://ozziezehner.com/), and I would strongly recommend it to those looking for an unbiased source of energy information. A couple of noteworthy quotes from the site.
In an extract from his article on electric cars, Unclean at any Speed, he states:
“For instance, The National Academies’ assessment drew together the effects of vehicle construction, fuel extraction, refining, emissions, and other factors.
In a stomach punch to electric-car advocates, it concluded that the vehicles’ lifetime health and environmental damages are actually greater than those of gasoline-powered cars. Indeed, the study found that AN ELECTRIC CAR IS LIKELY WORSE THAN A CAR FUELED EXCLUSIVELY BY GASOLINE DERIVED FROM CANADIAN TAR-SANDS!”
In an extract from an interview for SNL Energy, he states:
“In my mind, there is a presumption that we have a choice between alternative energy and fossil fuels. But the reason that I wrote the book was to draw out why that choice that we seem to have between the two is an illusion. And that’s because ALTERNATIVE ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES RELY ON FOSSIL FUELS THROUGH EVERY STAGE OF THEIR LIFE. They rely on fossil fuels for raw material extraction, for fabrication, for insulation and maintenance, and for decommissioning and disposal.
Aside from the physical lifespan, they also rely on fossil fuels for their financing. They rely on an economy whose growth is driven by fossil fuels. The kind of financing that you need for renewables requires that. You need concurrent fossil fuel plants running alongside solar cells and wind turbines at all times.”
David, you do realize that Shakova et al have personally witnessed not just holes, but kilometer-wide gaps of escaping methane. Which is why they started claiming this in the first place.
Of course, you’re in the business of maintaining a status quo on the system as it is (you support your family with it I reckon). All siding with its infinite growth paradigm, so I’m not surprised to see you writing counter-pieces to the harsh truth, which, as it stands, is that we have a pretty much dead and severely warming ocean, daily record-breaking jet-stream related weather incidents, which in turn are caused by polar temperature anomalies of +20 C as of late.
What does strike me as strange is that you seem to have no good memory of your own past. You’re older than I am. How is it you don’t recall the way it was around you? Just note the trees. Almost all of them have visible diseases now. That wasn’t the case in my teens and twenties. Sure, you can claim it’s a N=1 observation, but it stops being that if it applies to all of us.
Methane is odourless. What other facts did you get wrong?
There are obvious long term natural periodicities in the temperature data.
Both Gavin and Judith are simply not seeing the wood for the trees – you both fail to take into account the very evident 960-80 year quasi periodicity in the record see Figs 5-9 at the latest post at
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
Over time the 60 year periodicity essentially zeroes out. The underlying 20th century rise is part of the 960 year periodicity. There is little room left for anthropogenic warming of other than minor significance
The current hiatus represents a peak in both the 60 and 960 +/- periodicities,
The linked post also forecasts the timing and amplitude of a possible coming cooling.
Forecasts and even discussions which do not account for the timing and amplitude of this natural quasi- millennial variation are pretty much irrelevant.
Forecasts can only be tested against future temperatures over time scales sufficiently long to be largely outside the range of shorter term variability. In this case the key periodicity of interest is the natural quasi- millennial periodicity – see Figs 5-9 at te link
Note that temperatures in Fig 9 can still exceed the 50 year moving average peak 100 years and more after the moving average peak itself.
Nothing can be proved by comparing models and GCMs are inherently worthless for prediction. (see Part 1 of the Link)
The way to go is simply to state clearly what the working hypothesis is
and what are the reasonable assumptions that went into them – in my case the basic assumptions are that the current warming peak is a synchronous peak in the 60 and 960 year periodicities and that the 10Be and neutron count records are the best proxy for solar activity.
The 960 year carrier wave variability can then be modulated – i.e shorter term forecasts can be then made by looking at and projecting forwards on top of the carrier wave the shorter term multidecadal periodicities in the PDO AMO etc.
Dennis Baker: Implement the Precautionary principal and replace fossil fuel Power Plants achieving the minimum 40% global emissions reduction requested by the IPCC .
I agree with that. My reservations concern annual investment ($$$ and man-years of labor per annum), and rate. BAU will achieve this goal as alternative energy sources are made more reliable, more robust (i.e. PV panels that maintain 80% for 80 years or so), and cheaper to mass produce; and as fossil fuels become harder to extract and more expensive. The future is unpredictable as everyone knows, but extrapolation of recent trends suggests that CO2 concentration will not double, and anthropogenic CO2 production rates will be lower than now.
“Concern” for CO2 increase and excess warming? Sure, the concern motivate my study.
“Alarm”, as expressed for example in the monthly missives I receive from AAAS? Not justified by scientific evidence.
133 WebHubTelescope: And why do you start the counting now on doubling and not start from 1860, the start of the oil age?
The warming and CO2 accumulation since then, if they have made any difference, have been largely beneficial. Perhaps you value the changes differently, but that is WHY I start now.
If you were just above freezing, a 1% change in Kelvin would have a significant effect.
Well, we are not just above freezing. 1% is a little larger than the modeled change in Earth temperature, and the modeled change in radiative forcing due to CO2 is a little smaller than that. That scale is “small” relative to the errors of estimation of all (as far as I know) of the relevant quantities (“physical constants”, “parameters”, etc) in all the models.
Readers: WebHubTelescope knows me from my postings at Climate Etc. For the rest, here is a brief introduction:
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/matthew-marler/15/21b/9a9
I’ll leave you know. Probably catch you later?
Because nobody takes in consideration the ”Earth’s Temperature Self Adjusting System” you are all bloody WRONG!Mutilating the normal laws of physics, is practical to mislead – but the truth always wins on the end: http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/climate/
@ Ray Ladbury No 99 “Skeptics consider the evidence”
What evidence? There’s not a shred of evidence that links CO2 to any warming.
Diclaimer! I am not a scientist, I cut grass in a trailer park in Canada.
The message here always seems to be that methane isn’t so bad. For the sake of argument, I will allow that point of view the benefit of the doubt. Now, what about the rest of the world’s problems? These are cumulative and not isolated problems. It is the overwhelming confluence of events that will lead to cascading collapse. There will be no solar-wind nirvana thanks to the simple laws of thermodyanics.
THE PLAIN TRUTH
► 10,000 years ago humans and our livestock occupied just 0.01% of all the land-air vertebrate biomass on earth.
► Now humans and our livestock occupy 97% of all land-air vertebrate biomass.
► Humans and our livestock now consume over 40% of earth’s annual green land biomass production.
► 1 million people born every 4½ days. People live longer.
What does this mean?
► 50% of All Vertebrate Species will be gone by 2040.
http://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/7350/Call-of-Life–Facing-the-Mass-Extinctiony
.
What have we done?
► 90% of Big Ocean Fish gone since 1950.
► 50% of Great Barrier Reef gone since 1985.
► 50% of Fresh Water Fish gone since 1987.
► 30% of Marine Birds gone since 1995.
► 28% of Land Animals gone since 1970.
► 28% of All Marine Animals gone since 1970.
► 50% of Human Sperm Counts gone since 1950.
► 90% of Lions gone since 1993.
► 90% of Monarch Butterflies gone since 1995.
► 93 Elephants killed every single day.
► 2-3 Rhinos killed every single day.
► Bees die from malnutrition lacking bio-diverse pollen sources.
► Extinctions are 1000 times faster than normal.
.
What’s going to happen to us?
► Ocean acidification doubles by 2050.
► Ocean acidification triples by 2100.
► We are on track in just 13 years to lock in a near term 6°C earth temp rise.
► Mass Extinction will become unstoppable and irreversible in 40 years.
► Permian mass extinction of 95% of life took 60,000 years 250 million years ago.
► Dinosaurs mass extinction took 33,000 years after asteroid impact.
► Anthropogenic mass extinction will take 300 years max.
► This mass extinction is 100x faster than anything before us.
► Antarctic meltdown now irreversible and unstoppable.
► Arctic methane burst is irreversible and unstoppable within current system.
► It takes 10 times as much rated “green” energy to displace 1 unit of fossil energy.
► Efficiency and conservation only causes more growth within our current system.
► World Bank says we have 5-10 years before we all fight for food and water.
.
What we are doing right now!
► We combine bacteria DNA with plant DNA and eat it.
► We are eating stuff that never, ever existed on earth before.
► We put man-made, computer designed, synthetic DNA into our food.
► We put nano metals and nano particles into our food.
► We put poisonous pesticides and herbicides directly into food cells.
► There are thousands of different chemicals in our foods.
► We are turning into genetic mutants because of our food.
► We are wiping out all life on earth because of our food.
► After mass extinction, genetically modified trees may be all we leave behind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUd9rRSLY4A
WHY THERE IS NO GREEN ENERGY
Our “green” energy hi-tech future requires:
► conflict minerals,
► rare earth elements,
► heavy metals,
► nano metals and graphite.
Search for “rare earth mining in China” on YouTube and see what special hell your solar panels and wind turbines produce in Mongolia. China can do this because they have undercut all the world’s production of rare earth elements with low wages, low currency and no environmental enforcement. They can do this because they ignore the radioactive thorium that comes with mining high-value, heavy rare earth elements. Rare Earth elements are approaching the break even limit on their green energy return on energy invested. Rare earth elements can’t profitably be mined outside of China without burning radioactive thorium, which is the mining by-product commonly found with heavy rare earth elements. We can’t afford to treat it as radioactive waste.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGLC59rCCDc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLR39sT_bTs
.
Graphite is used in all of our so-called “green” powered batteries and is mined in China emitting deadly fine air particles resulting in a lethal smog that washes down from the skies in an ash laden rain that covers crops and water. China recently shut down several graphite mines because of the pervasive smog. Graphene, a nano-material produced for batteries, is water soluble and can cut through human/animal cells. Both graphite dust and graphene are deadly to humans because of their small size. You don’t want to breathe this stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkXF09yC3qM
http://theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/471651/catch-22-energy-storage
.
Solar cell manufacturing produces 3 green house gases that are over 10,000 times worse than C02. They require all kinds of deadly liquid acids to manufacture. Solar panels lose efficiency at the rate of 1% per year lasting 20-25 years. The expensive inverters they require have to be replaced every 5 to 10 years up to 4 times over the life of the panel. The new thin cell panels use nano materials and are even more toxic with shorter lifespans. It doesn’t matter how “clean” the latest experimental solar panels are because existing manufacturing plants will stay open to recoup major investments. Manufacturing just five wind turbines produces 1 ton of radioactive residue and 75 tons of toxic, acidic water used to leach out the required neodymium. Wind turbines only work at 25% of their rated capacity 90% of the time. Over 2 million children died in the Congo for the conflict minerals green energy needs. Thousands of people die in Chinese mines every year for the minerals green energy needs. Prof. Jian Shuisheng of the Jiatong-University estimates the production of just 6 solar panels requires one ton of coal. Since green power is intermittent, it would take at least 10 times the rated amount of “green” energy to displace just one equivalent unit of 24/7 fossil energy because your so-called 100 Watt solar panel delivers zero Watts at night and batteries are heavy toxic $energy hogs. One company in the U.S. cut down 5 acres of trees to build a solar farm to power a plant for the production of plastic bags. Green power will not be enough. Part-time energy and billions of batteries adds up to death to all life on earth just from destructive ecological inertia.
Ozzie Zehner explains “Green Illusions”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6uVnyjTb58
Tim Garrett explains why
► one dollar equals 10 milliwatts
► why we can’t decouple growth from emissions.
► why efficiency & conservation leads to more energy growth.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tim+garrett+is+it+possible+to+decouple+economic+wealth+from+carbon+dioxide+emission+rates%3F+part+i
.
Did you know that the new $2 billion Ivanpah solar plant in the Mojave desert is a death ray that ignites birds in mid flight? When their bodies fall to the ground, they leave smoky trails in the sky called streamers. These birds are attracted to the bugs who are attracted to the shiny, pretty lights, just like us. It is estimated as many as 30,000 birds per year will die this way during huge migrations at just this one green power plant. Bigger solar plants of the same type are in the works including one near Joshua Tree, next to a wildlife sanctuary. During Ivanpah’s construction, up to 3,000 endangered desert tortoises suffered a temporary loss of legal protection and were allowed to be killed by heavy diesel equipment and materials. Thousands of slave workers die in China’s mines every single year to help produce the exotic minerals used in its construction. This is referred to as the “Green Economy”. If we changed the whole planet to green power, we would kill the earth we call home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq0Z_LKXQQ4
.
Civilization is slowly collapsing while the earth is quickly dying.
You are interested perhaps on my documentation of the formation of solar corona and the solar wind effect on Earth climate.
http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/1486/
if is too much methane on and around Arctic – you should blame Santa and charge him methane tax; because all that methane comes from Rudolf and the other rain-dears, and from the old fatso himself: http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/methane-ch4/
Clearly you folks comfortable in your little echo chamber.
If any of you care to engage in a debate of the underlying science please feel free to comment here:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/stefan-rahmsdorf-goes-all-naomi-oreskes-publishes-futureshock-fantasy/
”Official global temp” is all the heat, from the ground to as far up as the oxygen &nitrogen are going / the troposphere.
Heat ”stored” into the sea, or in new trees, or in the atoms = that is ”stored heat” b] when any ”extra” heat gets out of the sea -> the troposphere expands extra and wastes that extra heat: http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/global-temperature/
My goodness what rot. Has anybody looked through that UK 2012 report? These people are so in love with extrapolation it’s downright funny.
If you wanted to see what the health effects of a 2 or 3 degree temperature increase are, why not buy a ticket to the south of France or Spain and count the people who are dropping like flies in the street?
Oh wait: people do that because they LIKE things to be a few degrees warmer.
Gavin, your response to my comment #63 is somewhat lacking.
I am fully aware where that erroneous 255K figure comes from, and I have designed and run the empirical experiments that utterly disprove it (but only for the oceans). There is no confusion on my part.
Your claims that the errors between lunar SB calculation and Diviner measurements are due to heat capacity are false, as illustrated by the pre-launch vacuum chamber experiments. The heat capacity estimates for basalt were right. It’s just that the fine grains are sharp edged, poorly conductive, vacuum insulated and they cover everything. A large percentage of this dust has an edge dipole radiation length shorter than IR wavelengths. Surface properties matter.
You may claim my comments are veering “off topic”, but I am supporting the use of OHC as a metric and showing how climate models get it wrong. I would say “bang on target”.
Would you care to comment on the two additional sensors I propose for ARGO Deep in comment #10?
#156
Good joke Steve! Unfortunately real science is part of the real world. Of course the real research began in the 1960’s and the ICAS Report No. 10a of November 1966 titled “A Recommended National Program In Weather Modification: A Report to the Interdepartmental Committee for Atmospheric Sciences by Homer E. Newell, Associate Administrator for Space Science and Application NASA, Washington, DC of 96 pages plus cover is easy to find on the internet. The term “chemtrails” was found on the cover of the Chemistry 131 manual from the Air Force Academy. That manual can be downloaded from the web also and as a biologist in the real world I take exception to the nonsense that it is full of. Typical engineers look at cause –> effect as a linear process but an ecologist realizes that it is a systems process and you never get just 1 result from single action. Climate scientists also deal with problems that are of the systems-level kind and we all have to deal with connections even if they are in the “forbidden” realm. The only secrets we have are because powerful people in our society need them to be secret, most likely because they are the perps. Oh by the way, did you hear the the real secrets carried off by the snowman included the IAEA report (2003) of the Sandia Labs study on the WTC that concluded the nukes had a signature that could be traced to Hanford. I don’t tell my students that. They have to find it on their own.
Wow. This blog has got to be the biggest collection of preening pretentious self-congratulating government-funded idiots ever assembled. Feynman would puke at the sight of your alleged “science,” as would anyone else remotely familiar with concepts like logic, rigor and objectivity. I only hope this ridiculous assault on common sense is archived for the amusement of future generations, to take its place of honor next to epicycles, phrenology, and phlogistons. I’d add “for shame” but clearly none of you have any. Disgusting.
Now delete this entry and get back to manufacturing evidence for your masturbatory political fantasies, “scientists.”
Within the next couple of years, you also will know that LENR (cold fusion) is real and that all of this fretting about human caused global warming was completely unnecessary.
The real crux of the climate debate is the role of human-generated carbon dioxide. When the debate gets to that crux, here are some crucial, verifiable facts – with citations – people need to know about human-generated carbon dioxide and its effect on global warming.
The fact is, there has been global warming, but the contribution of human-generated carbon dioxide is necessarily so minuscule as to be nearly undetectable. Here’s why:
Carbon dioxide, considered the main vector for human-caused global warming, is some 0.038% of the atmosphere[1]- a trace gas. Water vapor varies from 0% to 4%[2], and should easily average 1% or more[3] near the Earth’s surface, where the greenhouse effect would be most important, and is about three times more effective[4] a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So water vapor is at least 25 times more prevalent and three times more effective; that makes it at least 75 times more important to the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide[5]. The TOTAL contribution of carbon dioxide to the greenhouse effect is therefore 0.013 or less. The total human contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide since the start of the industrial revolution has been estimated at about 25%[6]. So humans’ carbon dioxide greenhouse effect is a quarter of 0.013, works out to about 0.00325. Total warming of the Earth by the greenhouse effect is widely accepted as about 33 degrees Centigrade, raising average temperature to 59 degrees Fahrenheit. So the contribution of anthropogenic carbon dioxide is less than 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit, or under 0.1 degree Centigrade. Global warming over the last century is thought by many to be about 0.6 degrees Centigrade.
But that’s only the beginning. We’ve had global warming for more than 10,000 years, since the end of the last Ice Age, and there is evidence temperatures were actually somewhat warmer 9,000 years ago and again 4,500 to 8,000 years ago than they are today[7]. Whatever caused that, it was not human activity. It was not all those power plants and factories and SUVs being operated by Stone Age cavemen while chipping arrowheads out of bits of flint. Whatever the cause was, it melted the glaciers that in North America once extended south to Long Island and parts of New York City[8] into virtually complete disappearance (except for a few mountain remnants). That’s one big greenhouse effect! If we are still having global warming – and I suppose we could presume we are, given this 10,000 year history – it seems highly likely that it is still the overwhelmingly primary cause of continued warming, rather than our piddling 0.00325 contribution to the greenhouse effect.
Yet even that trend-continuation today needs to be proved. Evidence is that the Medieval Warm Period centered on the 1200s was somewhat warmer than we are now[9], and the climate was clearly colder in the Little Ice Age in the 1600s than it is now[10]. So we are within the range of normal up-and-down fluctuations without human greenhouse contributions that could be significant, or even measurable.
The principal scientists arguing for human-caused global warming have been demonstrably disingenuous[11], and now you can see why. They have proved they should not be trusted.
The idea that we should be spending hundreds of billions of dollars and hamstringing the economy of the entire world to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is beyond ludicrous in light of the facts above; it is insane. Furthermore, it sucks attention and resources from seeking the other sources of warming and from coping with climate change and its effects in realistic ways. The true motivation underlying the global warming movement is almost certainly ideological and political in nature, and I predict that anthropogenic Global Warming, as currently presented, will go down as the greatest fraud of all time. It makes Ponzi and Madoff look like pikers by comparison.
[1] Fundamentals of Physical Geography, 2nd Edition by Michael Pidwirny Concentration varies slightly with the growing season in the northern hemisphere. HYPERLINK “http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7a.html” http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7a.html
[2] ibid.
[3] HALOE v2.0 Upper Tropospheric Water Vapor Climatology Claudette Ojo, Hampton University; et al.. HYPERLINK “http://vsgc.odu.edu/src/Conf09/UnderGrad%20Papers/Ojo%20-%20Paper.pdf” http://vsgc.odu.edu/src/Conf09/UnderGrad%20Papers/Ojo%20-%20Paper.pdf. See p. 4.The 0 – 4% range is widely accepted among most sources. This source is listed for its good discussion of the phenomena determining that range. An examination of a globe will show that tropical oceans (near high end of range) are far more extensive than the sum of the earth’s arctic and antarctic regions and tropical-zone deserts (all near the low end). Temperate zone oceans are far more extensive than temperate-zone desert. This author’s guess of an average of 2% or more seems plausible. I have used “1% or more” in an effort to err on the side of understatement.
[4 NIST Chemistry Webbook, Please compare the IR absorption spectra of water and carbon dioxide. ] HYPERLINK “http://webbook.nist.gov/” http://webbook.nist.gov/
[5] Three quarters of the atmosphere and virtually all water vapor are in the troposphere. Including all the atmosphere would change the ratios to about 20 times more prevalent and 60 times more effective. However, the greenhouse effect of high-altitude carbon dioxide on lower-altitude weather and the earth’s surface seems likely to be small if not nil.
[6] National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. HYPERLINK “http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html” http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html. The estimated 90ppm increase in carbon dioxide, 30% above the base of 280 ppm, to a recent reading of 370 ppm, equates to just under 25% of present concentration, the relevant factor in estimating present contribution to the greenhouse effect.
[7] Oak Ridge National Laboratory http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nerc130k.html
[8] New York Nature – The nature and natural history of the New York City region. Betsy McCully http://www.newyorknature.net/IceAge.html
[9] Global Warming: A Geological Perspective John P. Bluemle HYPERLINK “https://www.dmr.nd.gov/ndgs/Newsletter/NL99W/PDF/globlwrmw99.pdf” http://www.azgs.az.gov/arizona_geology/archived_issues/Winter_1999.pdf This article, published by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency, is drawn from a paper by the author in Environmental Geosciences, 1999, Volume 6, Number 2, pp. 63-75. Note particularly the chart on p.4.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Wikileaks: Climatic Research Unit emails, data, models, 1996-2009 HYPERLINK “http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_emails,_data,_models,_1996-2009” http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_emails,_data,_models,_1996-2009.
See also HYPERLINK “http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246661/New-scandal-Climate-Gate-scientists-accused-hiding-data-global-warming-sceptics.html” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246661/New-scandal-Climate-Gate-scientists-accused-hiding-data-global-warming-sceptics.html and
HYPERLINK “http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704075604575356611173414140.html” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704075604575356611173414140.html and, more diplomatically: HYPERLINK “http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01tier.html” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01tier.html. Et al.
ADDENDUM
What initially troubled me was the aberrant behavior of the climate research unit at East Anglia University, which has been the main data source for AGW arguments. They initially refused (!) to reveal their algorithms and data on the grounds that they were proprietary(!!). They responded to critics with ad hominem attacks and efforts to block their publication in scientific journals. Now, as I am sure you know, this is not how one does honest science, in which you PUBLISH your data and methodology and invite critical comment to ferret out error or oversights. It took the now-famous Wikileaks “Climategate” to pry loose the data and expose their machinations. Yet despite the devastating blow these revelations should have to their credibility, the AGW “cause” has taken on a life of its own.
Fundamentally, the argument seems to rest on a logical fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc – after this, therefore because of this. We see a rise in temperature and a rise in (principally) carbon dioxide, and therefore conclude one must have caused the other. It does not necessarily follow at all. There can be other causes entirely behind both phenomena, and as you see above, almost certainly there are. Beyond that, I have encountered numerous assertions of fact that cannot add up given the physical properties of water vapor and carbon dioxide that go unchallenged. One-sided arguments proliferate and people arguing the other side are frequently denounced as being employed by business interests rather than rebutted on the merits.
In sum, I have not come lightly to the conclusion that the AGW argument as it applies to carbon dioxide is largely untrue and certainly does not account for more than a very small, nearly negligible part of the phenomena we are seeing. The implications of widespread assertions of and belief in such an untruth are staggering, and potentially enormously destructive. It is unwise indeed to let oneself be stampeded in this matter, and stampede is clearly what many have been and are trying to induce.
I can understand politicians behaving this way; a carbon tax or carbon trading regime would allow enormous revenues to fall into their hands. I can understand “Progressive” ideologues; it logically leads to enormous expansion of government power over industry, the economy, and the daily life of individuals, which they regard as a good thing. I understand the environmentalists; they want to shrink the size and impact on the environment of modern civilization. But responsible citizens need to put aside such considerations.
Correlation between solar activity and global mean surface temperature :
http://orssengo.com/GlobalWarming/GlobalTemperatureSunCorrelation.png
Source: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/isolate:300/mean:48/offset:0.08/from:1954/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1954/compress:12/scale:0.001
Correlation between global mean surface temperature and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere:
http://orssengo.com/GlobalWarming/GlobalMeanTempAndCO2correlation.png
Source: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/compress:12/derivative/detrend:-0.3/normalise/plot/esrl-co2/compress:12/derivative/from:1980/normalise
Conclusion
The cause of both global warming and increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is solar, not anthropogenic.
More than 95% of the 5yr running mean of the surface temperature change since 1850 can be replicated by an integration of the sunspot data (as a proxy for ocean heat content), departing from the average value over the period of the sunspot record (~40SSN), plus the superimposition of a ~60yr sinusoid representing the observed oceanic oscillations.
Change in CO2 lags behind change in temperature at all time scales, so we need to consider cause and effect as well as correlation.
Clean up your own side of the issue then get back on what skeptics should do to meet your apporval. The more you ignore and misrepresent the skeptics, the more desperate and empty your position looks.
Eric Steig says:
8 Dec 2014 at 6:04 AM I’ve been asked a number of times why I once used the work “disingenuous” when referring to Watts and his apologists. Stefan’s post provides a very good explanation. –eric – See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/12/the-most-popular-deceptive-climate-graph/comment-page-1/#comment-620170
accuracy?
– actually Watts was never mentioned…
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/06/what-do-climate-scientists-think/comment-page-2/#comment-178909
it was specifically McIntyre, Pielke jnr and lucia.. and you also called them dishonest)any examples of why you thought, Mcintyre, Pielke nr, Lucia dishonest/disengenous)
Given that CO2 continues to rise, and given the hiatus since 1998, could it be that CO2 is not a major driver of global warming?
”Science” is: looking the problem from every angle, for a correct solution.
I suggest; you guys occasionally should look at it from the ”denier’s” point of science.
Honest denier would never deny that climate is changing – because H2O is regulating the climate, not CO2. The ”Temperature Self Adjusting Mechanism (TSAM) readjusting the ”overall” temp is infallible – not known to the rest! b] heat is neutralized by the ”cold vacuum” that penetrates into the atmosphere; not by heat radiating out of space and albedo gizmo, please read the Holy Grail!!!: https://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/2014/07/12/cooling-earth/
There is no such a thing as ”the pause” Just there isn’t any global warming! By inventing the therm ”pause” you guys are delaying the inevitable: ”global” warming doesn’t exist / H2O is regulating the climate, not CO2!The truth exist; truth is much more important than million believers: https://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/2014/07/12/cooling-earth/
Conclusions: Steve Koonin’s article in the WSJ is a far more rational discussion than any of you can muster. I’m saying goodbye to the Real Climate cult of religious zealotry. You can go on hurling your epithets of “denier” and “liar” at your own peril. In my view this behavior represents a far greater public danger than does CO2. Just as the tee party and sarah palin helped the democrats, you have unwittingly become the best thing to happen to the republican party since ronny raygun. My gawd, you even have naomi klein spouting off for you. Good luck with that. I will be on my way now, as I’m sure your responses will be sizzling. However, I hope that I have made at least some of you think about this a bit. A little humility can work wonders.
What really concerns me, down the line (I hate that phrase “going forward”), is not the bankrupting of the world economy due to panic over climate change. I see no way that could actually ever happen, the consequences would just be too extreme. What I do see, however, is a coming era where every single unusual and/or extreme weather event gets blamed on “climate change” by die hard zealots, who then proceed to attack anyone and everyone who failed to take the extreme measures they insisted on.
We are getting a preview of that sort of thinking already. A devastating heat wave in Russia that killed tens of thousands — yet was very likely NOT caused by climate change, according to the scientists who methodically investigate that event. A major California drought, also deemed unlikely to have been caused by climate change, according to most of the scientists who studied it. There has also been an effort to blame global warming for the combination of a major lake effect snowstorm and a bitter cold wave gripping practically all the continental US. Yet, as we’ve seen demonstrated here, there are always going to be those who refuse to accept such conclusions. And in a sense they are right, because in principle there is probably no way to tell for sure one way or the other which event was precipitated by climate change and which wasn’t.
But for the zealots it won’t matter. Every time such an event occurs during the 21st century, climate change will be blamed, and when there are fatalities, those who refused to do the zealot’s bidding will be attacked. Hopefully not physically, but who knows? Hysteria over this issue has been building, in certain circles, to a fever pitch. Very scary business.
You should consider bringing Steve McIntyre and Judith Curry on board and fostering debates over key issues.
New blog post that might be of interest to some reading here:
http://amoleintheground.blogspot.com/2014/12/are-we-headed-for-disaster.html