With the axing of the CNN Science News team, most science stories at CNN are now being given to general assignment reporters who don’t necessarily have the background to know when they are being taken for a ride. On the Lou Dobbs show (an evening news program on cable for those of you not in the US), the last few weeks have brought a series of embarrassing non-stories on ‘global cooling’ based it seems on a few cold snaps this winter, the fact that we are at a solar minimum and a regurgitation of 1970s vintage interpretations of Milankovitch theory (via Pravda of all places!). Combine that with a few hysterical (in both senses) non-scientists as talking heads and you end up with a repeat of the nonsensical ‘Cooling world’ media stories that were misleading in the 1970s and are just as misleading now.
Exhibit A. Last night’s (13 Jan 2009) transcript (annotations in italics).
Note that this is a rush transcript and the typos aren’t attributable to the participants.
DOBBS: Welcome back. Global warming is a complex, controversial issue and on this broadcast we have been critical of both sides in this debate. We’ve challenged the orthodoxy surrounding global warming theories and questioned more evidence on the side of the Ice Age and prospect in the minds of some. In point of fact, research, some of it, shows that we could be heading toward cooler temperatures, and it’s a story you will only see here on LOU DOBBS TONIGHT. Ines Ferre has our report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
INES FERRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Will the day after tomorrow bring a deep freeze like that shown in the movie? Research more than 50 years ago by astrophysicist Milanchovich (ph) shows that ice ages run in predictable cycles and the earth could go into one. How soon? In science terms it could be thousands of years. But what happens in the next decade is still up in the air. Part of the science community believes that global warming is a man-maid threat. But Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute predicts the next 20 to 30 years will actually bring cooling temperatures.
Dennis Avery is part of the ‘science community’? Who knew? And, while amusing, the threat of ‘man-maids’ causing global warming is just a typo. Nice thought though. Oh, and if you want to know what the actual role of Milankovitch in forcing climate is, look at the IPCC FAQ Q6.1. Its role in current climate change? Zero.
DENNIS AVERY, HUDSON INSTITUTE: The earth’s temperatures have dropped an average of .6 Celsius in the last two years. The Pacific Ocean is telling us, as it has told us 10 times in the past 400 years, you’re going to get cooler.
For those unfamiliar with Dennis Avery, he is a rather recent convert to the
bandwagonidea of global cooling, having very recently been an advocate of “unstoppable” global warming. As for his great cherry pick (0.6º C in two years – we’re doomed!), this appears to simply be made up. Even putting aside the nonsense of concluding anything from a two year trend, if you take monthly values and start at the peak value at the height of the last El Niño event of January 2007 and do no actual trend analysis, I can find no data set that gives a drop of 0.6ºC. Even UAH MSU-LT gives only 0.4ºC. The issue being not that it hasn’t been cooler this year than last, but why make up numbers? This is purely rhetorical of course, they make up numbers because they don’t care about whether what they say is true or not.FERRE: Avery points to a lack of sunspots as a predictor for lower temperatures, saying the affects of greenhouse gas warming have a small impact on climate change. Believers in global warming, like NASA researcher, Dr. Gavin Schmidt disagree.
I was interviewed on tape in the afternoon, without seeing any of the other interviews. Oh, and what does a ‘believer in global warming’ even mean?
DR. GAVIN SCHMIDT, NASA: The long term trend is clearly toward warming, and those trends are completely dwarf any changes due to the solar cycle.
FERRE: In a speech last week, President-elect Obama called for the creation of a green energy economy. Still, others warn that no matter what you think about climate change, new policies would essentially have no effect.
FRED SINGER, SCIENCE & ENV. POLICY PROJECT: There’s very little we can do about it. Any effort to restrict the use of carbon dioxide will hurt us economically and have zero effect on the Chicago mate.
Surely another typo, but maybe the Chicago mate is something to do with the man-maids? See here for more background on Singer.
FERRE: As Singer says, a lot of pain, for no gain.
Huh? Try looking at the actual numbers from a recent McKinsey report. How is saving money through efficiency a ‘pain’?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FERRE: And three independent research groups concluded that the average global temperature in 2008 was the ninth or tenth warmest since 1850, but also since the coldest since the turn of the 21st century.
DOBBS: It’s fascinating and nothing — nothing — stirs up the left, the right, and extremes in this debate, the orthodoxy that exists on both sides of the debate than to even say global warming. It’s amazing.
This is an appeal to the ‘middle muddle’ and an attempt to seem like a reasonable arbitrator between two opposing sides. But as many people have previously noted, there is no possible compromise between sense and nonsense. 2+2 will always equal 4, no matter how much the Hudson Institute says otherwise.
FERRE: When I spoke to experts and scientists today from one side and the other, you could feel the kind of anger about —
That was probably me. Though it’s not anger, it’s simple frustration that reporters are being taken in and treating seriously the nonsense that comes out of these think-tanks.
DOBBS: Cannot we just all get along? Ines, thank you very much.
Joining me now three leading experts in Manchester, New Hampshire, we’re joined by Joseph D’Aleo of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project. Good to have with you us.
JOSEPH D’ALEO, CO-FOUNDER WEATHER CHANNEL: Thank you, Lou.
DOBBS: He’s also the cofounder of The Weather Channel. In Washington, D.C., as you see there, Jay Lehr, he’s the science director of the Heartland Institute. And in Boston, Alex Gross, he’s the cofounder of co2stats.com. Good to have you with us.
Well that’s balanced!
Let’s put a few numbers out here, the empirical discussion and see what we can make of it. First is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has very good records on temperatures, average temperatures in the United States, dating back to 1880. And here’s what these numbers look like. You’ve all seen those. But help us all — the audience and most of all me to get through this, they show the warmest years on record, 1998, 2006, and 1934. 2008 was cooler, in fact the coolest since 1997. It’s intriguing to see that graph there. The graph we’re looking at showing some question that the warming trend may be just a snapshot in time. The global temperatures by NOAA are seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001. The ten warmest years have all occurred since 1995.
So let me start, if I may, Joseph, your reaction to those numbers. Do you quibble with what they represent?
D’ALEO: Yes, I do. In fact, if you look at the satellite data, which is the most reliable data, the best coverage of the globe, 2008 was the 14th coldest in 30 years. That doesn’t jive with the tenth warmest in 159 years in the Hadley data set or 113 or 114 years in the NOAA data set. Those global data sets are contaminated by the fact that two-thirds of the globe’s stations dropped out in 1990. Most of them rural and they performed no urban adjustment. And, Lou, you know, and the people in your studio know that if they live in the suburbs of New York City, it’s a lot colder in rural areas than in the city. Now we have more urban effect in those numbers reflecting — that show up in that enhanced or exaggerated warming in the global data set.
D’Aleo is misdirecting through his teeth here. He knows that the satellite analyses have more variability over ENSO cycles than the surface records, he also knows that urban heat island effects are corrected for in the surface records, and he also knows that this doesn’t effect ocean temperatures, and that the station dropping out doesn’t affect the trends at all (you can do the same analysis with only stations that remained and it makes no difference). Pure disinformation.
DOBBS: Your thoughts on these numbers. Because they are intriguing. They are a brief snapshot admittedly, in comparison to total extended time. I guess we could go back 4.6 billion years. Let’s keep it in the range of something like 500,000 years. What’s your reaction to those numbers and your interpretation?
JAY LEHR, HEARTLAND INSTITUTE: Well, Lou —
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I’m sorry.
DOBBS: Go ahead, Jay.
LEHR: Lou, I’m in the camp with Joe and Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, and I think more importantly, it is to look at the sun’s output, and in recent years, we’ve seen very, very low sunspot activity, and we are definitely, in my mind, not only in a cooling period, we’re going to be staying in it for a couple decades, and I see it as a major advantage, although I think we will be able to adapt to it. I’m hopeful that this change in the sun’s output will put some common sense into the legislature, not to pass any dramatic cap in trade or carbon tax legislation that will set us in a far deeper economic hole. I believe Mr. Obama and his economic team are well placed to dig us out of this recession in the next 18 months to 2 years, but I think if we pass any dramatic legislation to reduce greenhouse gases, the recession will last quite a few more years and we’ll come out of it with a lower standard of living on very tenuous scientific grounds.
DOBBS: Alex, the carbon footprint, generation of greenhouse gases, specifically co2, the concern focusing primarily on the carbon footprint, and of course generated by fossil fuels primarily, what is your thinking as you look at that survey of 130 — almost 130 years and the impact on the environment?
ALEX WISSNER-GROSS, CO2STATS.COM: Well, Lou, I think regardless of whatever the long-term trend in the climate data is, there a long- term technological trend which is that as time goes on our technology tends toward smaller and smaller physical footprint. That means in part that in the long term we like technology to have a smaller environmental footprint, burning fewer greenhouse gases and becoming as small and environmentally neutral and noninvasive as possible. So I think regardless of the climate trend, I think we’ll see less and less environmentally impactful technologies.
Wissner-Gross is on because of the media attention given to misleading reports about the carbon emissions related to Google searches. Shame he doesn’t get to talk about any of that.
DOBBS: To be straight forward about this, that’s where I come down. I don’t know it matters to me whether there is global warming or we’re moving toward an ice age it seems really that we should be reasonable stewards of the planet and the debate over whether it’s global warming or whether it’s moving toward perhaps another ice age or business as usual is almost moot here in my mind. I know that will infuriate the advocates of global warming as well as the folks that believe we are headed toward another ice age. What’s your thought?
Curious train of logic there…
D’ALEO: I agree with you, Lou. We need conservation. An all of the above solution for energy, regardless of whether we’re right and it cools over the next few decades or continues to warm, a far less dangerous scenario. And that means nuclear. It means coal, oil, natural gas. Geothermal, all of the above.
DOBBS: Jay, you made the comment about the impact of solar sunspot activity. Sunspot activity the 11-year cycle that we’re all familiar with. There are much larger cycles, 12,000 to 13,000 years as well. We also heard a report disregard, if you will, for the strength and significance of solar activity on the earth’s environment. How do you respond to that?
Is he talking about me? Please see some of my publications on the subject from 2006, 2004 and 2001. My point above was that relative to current greenhouse gas increases, solar is small – not that it is unimportant or uninteresting. This of course is part of the false dilemma ‘single cause’ argument that the pseudo-skeptics like to use – that change must be caused by either solar or greenhouse gases and that any evidence for one is evidence against the other. This is logically incoherent.
FEHR: It just seems silly to not recognize that the earth’s climate is driven by the sun.
Ah yes.
Your Chad Myers pointed out it’s really arrogant to think that man controls the climate.
This is a misquoted reference to a previous segment a few weeks ago where Myers was discussing the impact of climate on individual weather patterns. But man’s activities do affect the climate and are increasingly controlling its trends.
90 percent of the climate is water vapor which we have no impact over and if we were to try to reduce greenhouse gases with China and India controlling way more than we do and they have boldly said they are not going to cripple their economy by following suit, our impact would have no — no change in temperature at all in Europe they started carbon — capping trade in 2005. They’ve had no reduction in groan house gases, but a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in the standard of living. We don’t want to go that route.
What? Accounting for the garbled nature of this response, he was probably trying to say that 90% of the greenhouse effect is caused by water vapour. This is both wrong and, even were it true, irrelevant.
DOBBS: Alex, you get the last word here. Are you as dismissive of the carbon footprint as measured by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
GROSS: No, not really. But I think in the long term, efficiency is where the gains come from. I think efficiency should come first, carbon footprint second.
DOBBS: Thank you very much. Alex, Jay, and Joe. Folks, appreciate you being with us.
FEHR: Thank you.
In summary, this is not the old ‘balance as bias‘ or ‘false balance‘ story. On the contrary, there was no balance at all! Almost the entire broadcast was given over to policy advocates whose use of erroneous-but-scientific-sounding sound bites is just a cover for their unchangable opinions that nothing should ever be done about anything. This may make for good TV (I wouldn’t know), but it certainly isn’t journalism.
There are pressures on journalists that conspire against fully researching a story – deadlines, the tyranny of the news peg etc. – but that means they have to be all the more careful in these kinds of cases. Given that Lou Dobbs has been better on this story in the past, seeing him and his team being spun like this is a real disappointment. They could really do much better.
Update: Marc Roberts sends in this appropriate cartoon:
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Geoff Bacon the Canadian aquaculture guy?
#212 Adam Gallon,
Renewables are not quite as problematic as you seem to think.
You seem to fall in the ‘divide and conquer’ trap by analysing and dismissing each option separately. Renewables can and will be successful, but there are things you need to realise:
1. Diversification: wind + solar PV + solar thermal (with molten salt storage) + tidal + wave + biomass + geothermal
2. Think big. Think Europe. The connections between grids in Europe must be reinforced to allow more cross border energy transport. Over large areas the fluctuations in wind are much smaller. This has already been studied. See the ETSO European Wind Integration Study
3. Hydropower. Norway has lots of it. Denmark already has a link with Norway, between the Netherlands and Norway one was completed recently and one is planned between Britain and Norway. The existing Norwegian hydropower can be used to compensate for the fluctuations in wind power (and other renewables).
4. Offshore wind. It doesn’t cost land. The ever growing size of wind turbines will make offshore wind cheaper.
5. Switching to renewables is not like building a bridge. If we only get to 50% or 70%, then that is 50% or 70% won. A bridge that spans only 70% is as good a no bridge at all. So who cares if wind can’t provide 100%, that doesn’t rule out wind as a usable source of power.
Follow the realtime energy generation in Spain for some time and see how nicely it blends in with their CCGT and hydropower. As I write this, wind is providing 28% of Spanish electricity, which is a lot. Strong winds today apparently. Thanks to all that wind, they only need 4.8 GW of the total 22 GW of CCGT. 1.6 GW is used to pump water, which they will be able to use for tomorrow’s peak consumption. Usually, when the wind is strong, they throttle back on CCGT, thus saving a lot of gas.
Your remarks about a “dawn to dusk existance, shivering in winter & half starving, limited to our immediate neighbourhood”, that is just unfounded alarmism.
I have to ask – am I the only one not seeing a cartoon at the end of the post?
Dr. Pielke, the quote is of something written by “lulo” slightly earlier in the thread — numbered 130:
16 January 2009 at 11:12 AM
“lulo” said he liked your paper, claiming it as support for lulo’s statement — not attributing it to you verbatim.
As I read it Gavin was correcting that mistaken notion by “lulo” — the “lulo” person makes a lot of errors and misattributions here.
See https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/cnn-is-spun-right-round-baby-right-round#comment-109559
Most of the serious readers here do look at cites, and I think it’s obvious the “lulo” person was doing a typically “lulo” misattribution.
Then the “John L” guy later copypasted the whole chunk from that “lulo” post, including Gavin’s correction — without indicating the source.
It was the later posting you found, further confusing the attribution.
It was never about you. Doing a ‘find’ in this thread for the disputed string locates the origin of the error by “lulo”
Mark #110. Given these three hypothesis, [edit]
A) Wind, solar and other renewable energy sources are viable technologies for averting AGW.
B) Wind, solar and renewables are not viable as total solutions with current technology, so nuclear with all of its potential problems must contribute significantly to the solution.
C) Nuclear is inherently so dangerous that wind, solar and other renewables are the only viable alternatives, even if living standards must be significantly reduced.
[edit]
I don’t think that any reasonable person can outright reject the theory of AGW, because the basic underlying science is pretty straight forward. What is not so straightforward and what is not “settled” in my mind is what are the secondary “feedback” effects of increased CO2. And as a computer programmer working on computer models for the last 20 years, I am quite well versed with the limitations of using computer models to predict the future.
What bothers me is the recent hoopla that has been well covered in most media that AGW is happening faster and with more serious consequences than what the computer models predict. If anything, the current data is ambivilant or contradictory to this particular assertion. Whether the current cooling trend or lack of warming is noise or something else may be above my pay grade, but it certainly does not indicate that AGW is accelerating faster than the models predict, and seems somewhat disingenious or desperate on the part of those putting forward these assertions.
Both sides of this debate cherry pick the data that supports their positions and ignore or downplay data that contradicts their positions. While this is qite normal human behavior, it makes it much more difficult for those people like myself who are simply wading through all of this information learning and deciding for ourselves what is the truth. But I would rather have the opportunity to examine all of the data to decide for myself, regardless of how difficult that is, as opposed to having the “truth” served to me on a silver platter by some government entity that has already decided for me.
Sig, you’re kidding, right? “Strong cooling trend since 1998”? Not so much.
PS, Dr. Pielke, you don’t allow comments at your site; I hope you’ll correct your misattribution _of_ the error there, point to the original poster’s mistaken claim about you, and note that Gavin corrected it.
Gavin could have been fiercer in your defense, I suppose. But people do that kind of thing all the time, claiming some eminent scientist supports their wacko notions hoping nobody reads them — most of us here do check claimed sources, and know “lulo” as quite unreliable.
Making several posts so I can figure out what the spam filter is complaining about.
first part —
“Well Maya, this is a bit of a non-response as none of this plethora of evidence is provided.”
Oh come on! It isn’t a non-response at all to ask you to be a bit more specific. This is like having a conversation with my seven-year-old when he asks me something like “Why does weather happen?” “Well, honey, do you mean the clouds? The seasons? When it rains?”
second part –
Since you probably aren’t seven years old, asking us to do your research for you is lazy. You’re right in the middle of one of the most informative websites available – go read it. The IPCC report is a good compilation of research – go read it. The books linked to on this site are excellent resources – go read them. Go to any of the papers or books written by the scientists who contribute to this site and read them. Find Hansen’s papers and read them.
third part –
Everything except the actual books are available online, and if you don’t want to buy the books you can ask the reference desk at your local library to obtain them for you, if they don’t already have them.
last part —
Temperatures are still rising, even this century. https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/12/2008-temperature-summaries-and-spin/
If you don’t understand that CO2 and temperatures aren’t going to exactly match every single year, or that 8 or 10 years is too short a span to base a climate trend upon, then concentrate some of your reading on the statistical end of the science, with particular attention paid to “cherry-picking” and “graph-cooking”.
I have no idea why you think Milankovich is an issue.
I’ll ask my original question in a slightly different way: If you could please provide a specific instance of a credible denialist argument, I (or someone) will be happy to provide a specific reference for refutation. Alrighty?
Barton Paul Levenson Said (#241): “Despite the alleged problems of setting up substantial amounts of wind power, Denmark seems to be getting 16% of its electricity from wind. How did they do that if it’s impractical?”
The usual claim is that Denmark gets most/all of its energy from wind. But whether it’s 16% or 100%, what you don’t consider is that Denmark is not electrically isolated. It’s part (and a small one) of the European power grid. When the wind’s not blowing hard enough along the Danish coast, Denmark imports electricity from elswhere, while if more is generated than used, it can be exported. Averaged over long period, you can say that Denmark gets X% of its electricity from wind, but it only works because of all the German coal plants, Swiss hydrolectric dams, and French nuclear plants that support the system.
“And as for the sun — solar thermal plants store excess heat from the day in molten salts and use it to keep the turbines running at night. Some STC plants achieve nearly 24/7 operation.”
And how much land would need to be ravaged to build enough of these plants to supply an appreciable fraction of electric consumption? Far more than is strip-mined for coal.
“Nuclear not necessary”
No, nuclear is desirable, since it can produce baseload power more effectively, and with less environmental impact, than those other sources. And most importantly (at least from my point of view) nuclear plants can be sited close to the major consumers of power, so that any negative effects will be felt primarily by those who enjoy the benefits.
Ian,#231
I clicked on the link and the file is not found. Also I was asking about those terms to see how you answer, but as a molecular biologists and biochemist myself I know there are nuances and discoveries that cannot be faked or found anywhere online. How you answered my questions would give or take away credibility from you. Guess how credible you are now?
Also you have made grave errors in your explanations and defenses of the cause for doubt of AGW. Back to the drawing board, Ian.
Mark (245), you’re adding common logic to the interpretation of the Fairness doctrine. Were KP a major political party, it (they) would most certainly be granted equal time in broadcasts.
Ian Lee (233) — Which item in Barton Paul Levenson”s comment #242 do yu disagree with?
You see quite fixated on certain items of misinformation. You could learn about climatology. I recommend beginning with W.F. Ruddiman’s “plows, Plagues and Petroleum” and then going on to read David Archer’s “The Long Thaw”.
Correlation does not mean causation is a very basic aspect of statistics and epidemiology, but you are twisting the meaning Ian. Try looking at more sophisticated statistics and learn trend analysis,and while you are at it learn the difference between climate and weather. Tamino has some great links on his site, one I also have on mine, called Mathworld. I also recommend you buy an elementary statistics book at Payhalf or Amazon. Or go to your local public library. The Earth is a vast system, we are not discussing a parasite that causes a specific disease, but the attribution is very highly correlated with a high degree of confidence and many observations support the calculated warming and satellite data, though they may measure different things, show the melting of ice and changing distribution trends.
For those of you who so adamantly oppose nuclear energy’s fruitfulness, please have a look at the following links, particularly the first. We ought to be thankful for this technology, as it has helped -over the last several decades- significantly curtail the nation’s carbon footprint while increasing GDP. Without it, the world’s predicament would be considerably more dire. Nuclear energy, in my opinion, is essential to combating AGW while meeting the Globe’s ever-increasing energy demand.
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/nuclear.htm
http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power-plant-world-wide.htm
jcbmack, the URL Ian posted above has a problem common with this blog software — the trailing period is not part of the URL, but often gets incorporated in error. You’ll never find a valid URL ending in punctuation other than a forward slash; always remove it if you see it.
This works: http://tinyurl.com/7g3eww
jcbmack #260
Unfortunately the link I gave in #231 didn’t work so my credibility is zilch. Click the link I give in #247. I just tried it and got there with no problem. I used to teach about heat shcck proteins (chaperones) and their role in protein folding and transport of proteins across the ER and through the Golgi apparatus. And if you go back far enough you’ll find stuff on the use of monoclonal antibodies and in vitro effects of steroids on protein synthesis studies in JCEM. Have a look at the paper on 5-alpha reductase using site directed mutagenesis or the Y2H stuff, they should give you at least some indication that I am what I claim. As for the grave errors etc I did say I wasn’t a climate scientist so perhaps you could tell me what these grave errors are.
Maya #258
Can you explain why Stott’s paper in Science claiming CO2 increases follow temperature rather than vice versa, is incorrect? This seems a crucial difference from the popular belief that temperature follows CO2. This link should (I hope) take you to a precis of Stott’s work.
http://college.usc.edu/news/september_2007/stott.html
Finally whatever jcbmack may think I am a university academic with an interest in finding out the facts about climate change. I have an open mind and am very happy to have it proven that AGW is true. I didn’t post on this site to have a stoush ordid I expect to get slagged off as a liar and a buffoon and I find it very disappointing that this has occurred.
James 258. Certainly wind on its own presents problems for a national supply. The ideal renewable system entails a mix of wind and solar supported by strategically-located sets of tidal generators (matching the tidal offsets) with hydro (or even pumped storage) acting as the ‘battery’ to store energy (by not draining the lakes through the turbines) for those dark still cold nights. If that was the basis we were to move forwards with, then the macro-scale energy infrastructure development and upkeep could (for a change) be done with some measure of logic, instead of suffering from the diverging demands of commercial and national interests as it is now.
There will need to be much more attention paid to on-site energy storage at the domestic and small commercial user level to ease transfer loads on the grids, but if nations imposed a tax-account to each energy user where the carbon tax could only be spent by that private and commercial tax-payer on approved and proven renewable energy systems, then it would all rapidly sort itself out.
And James 258 – re your assertion that ‘nuclear … can produce … with less environmental impact…’ have a browse through:
http://kiwi.to/stuff/esr/pdfs/NuclearWasteProblem.pdf
The bulk of the world’s nuclear waste is in storage while we figure out what to do with it. That is not a ‘solution’ – its not mitigating or avoiding the effect – its just delaying the day when we must do something about it. Its the gorilla in the room of every nuclear power plant proposal.
And then ponder the impact of fossil fuel use in uranium mining, extraction, the construction of the power plants, the decommissioning and disposal of the plants and the comparatively short life of such plants (about half that of a coal-fired plant) and you will begin to appreciate that nuclear power has a huge carbon footprint – its not ‘green’ power at all.
Roger and Gavin: I am afraid that this is all a misunderstanding. The words quoted by Gavin were my own. Gavin’s response was informative, but may have inadvertently created the impression that I had quoted Dr. Pielke. I simply provided a link to a paper that purported that there is much left to be understood, which happens to be in line with my own, much less technically-informed, opinion. I apologize if my sloppy url linkage led to any misconception of what is written in Dr. Pielke Sr’s short opinion piece. The closest he comes to stating anything of the sort is “the absence of heating of the magnitude reported by Hansen and his collaborators and the 2007 IPCC report should raise issues with respect to our level of understanding of the climate system, since the global climate model projections used by the IPCC predict more or less monotonic accumulation of heat in the Earth’s system.” This is a distinct statement from my own, and I should have gone further to ensure that this statement would not be misconstrued as Dr. Pielke’s. I trust that a review of my post will show that this was not my intention, yet I understand how it might have been misinterpreted that way. Please accept my apology
nigel, 267
“And then ponder the impact of fossil fuel use in uranium mining, extraction, the construction of the power plants, the decommissioning and disposal of the plants and the comparatively short life of such plants (about half that of a coal-fired plant) and you will begin to appreciate that nuclear power has a huge carbon footprint – its not ‘green’ power at all.”
Now, show me Life-Cycle-Analyses for solar cells, wind turbines, and biofuels. I’ll bet they show that the solution is worse than the cure, carbon-footprint-wise.
#259, James
Please explain to me why wind should be able to provide a small country like Denmark in isolation? What is the logic of that criterium?
Here is a thought experiment for you: if the EU would decide tomorrow to unite in a single country, would wind then suddenly become viable, because its electricity stayed within the borders of the USE (United States of Europe)?
Reminder — the comment numbers CHANGE, especially in the early days after they are made. Refer to the timestamp to identify them permanently, that does not ever change.
Why? with the blog software comments may be held up for review. Some may be so simple there’s no hesitation posting them; others may be complicated enough that some thought is required by the Contributors before one of them approves it. That avoids the problem of stuff appearing that’s so stupid it has to be reviewed and deleted later, which causes the same kind of numbering problem with the opposite sign.
Eventually, once reviewed, each post will appear as timestamped on submission. But some appear sooner than others, so what you see today as say 200 may be 202 tomorrow, if a couple of other comments bumped into visibility.
How? Use /View/Source — search for the timestamp. Copy out the chunk of html, and paste it in as your reference, if you want it to show up as a clickable timestamp, or just copy and paste the timestamp or say whose posting at what time you’re mentioning.
Otherwise the livelier the thread gets, the more mentions people make by number, the less accurate people’s number references will become. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s how the tool works.
___________________
“plurality Quarrel”
Ian, I regret your disappointment. However, you did post a number of fairly assertive arguments, and I don’t think you should be surprised that they were vigorously disputed.
There is typically a fair amount of back and forth on this site, but at the end of the day, bruises to the ego are about the worst that can happen. I hope you won’t take it all too personally.
Re #270. Jae, it might be smart to do some reading before you start betting (but then again you might get more tired). Solar cells for instance earn back the energy that was invested in producing them in a year or two (better if you put them in a really sunny place). All of their remaining lifetime they produce net clean energy. Wind turbines much the same. Biofuels: depends, pretty good for all biofuels made from waste streams of course.
Jae, how can they be worse carbon-wise? Other materials-wise maybe, but carbon?
You need to extract then transport then refine (can’t do it on-site because people might nick refined uranium for a dirty bomb). CO2 is released by curing concrete and a 100 ton concrete slab is a 100 ton slab no matter how you make it.
Compared with…
JB, 264, if you’re adamantly against uranium, why would you go to those links?
A self-defeating post.
RodB 262, What did you drag a political party from? Global Warming is no political party. Climate scientist is no political party.
Now if you’re going to say there’s a lot of political power behind AGW, there’s even more behind the “think of the children” and KP especially. On occasion it even beats out terrorism for the #1 spot for raison d’etre.
WRT my comment #269, a closer look shows that it was not Gavin who posted my statement in quotes before Dr. Pielke’s paper’s URL link. It was another contributor (John L), who also does not appear to have intended to attribute the comment to Dr. Pielke. I am so embarrassed by this blogospheric debacle that I’m going to go climb into a cave and hibernate. Some of you may be pleased by this. Thanks, Gavin, for all of your informative commentary of late. :)
BPL, 242, they don’t have a problem with ANY of those points. They have a problem with point i (the square root of -1)
i) There is any change attributable to human causes. It can’t happen and therefore any evidence for this cannot be real evidence.
Now you know.
#271, jae:
happy to oblige
and for solar cells
Most research shows the energy payback time of a wind turbine is extremely short, around 6 months. For solar cells this is around 4 years.
Regarding wind & solar: You couldn’t be further from the truth.
Ian,
when you use inaccurate papers and make claims based upon little to no evidence that is what you can expect. Your grave errors were already pointed out, if you had a chance to read the analysis of Jaworowski. It is clear too you are unaware that the awareness of the Milankovitch cycles does NOTHING to change the reality of global warming largely due to CO2 increases. I have my doubts as to your sincerity when you refuse to learn the basics of climate science. If you are in fact as qualified in these other fields, then why do you abandon the scientific method when discussing climate science? This is why I had my doubts. Very few chemists or biologists deny global warming due to humankind’s activities. Most take the time to get the basics down first before asking questions and making criticisms, why have you refused to do this? It is clear from your posts you have not looked at: start here, the IPCC report and the RC Wiki.
If you’re feeling the need to assign blame for your misfortune, may I suggest a quick look into the mirror?
As an academic biochemist, you should know that you just can’t wander into a new field like climate science, in essence state “climate science is bullshit”, and expect to be treated seriously.
I’m sure you had to learn and study before becoming competent at biochemistry.
Go read some real climate science primer material, like Spencer Weart’s, and come back when you at least understand some of the basics of the science.
And Stott’s not claiming quite what you seem to believe he’s claiming, either…it in no way undermines our understanding of CO2’s role in climate.
18 January 2009 at 4:49 PM Hank Roberts:
Those lucky few using Firefox, they can select the timestamp in the page and then use ‘View selection source’. Then searching for the time stamp is not necessary, the source view will only show the time stamp HTML. After that it’s: Ctrl-A (select all) Ctrl-C (copy to clipboard) Ctrl-W (close source window).
Ian,
after reading Stott’s work I can tell you it is a little vague and far more evidence is needed to validate it. He may have a point that CO2 alone did not end the ice age, however, without more direct reference to his data collection and methods along with others work verifying the results this is just a hypothesis. The article takes liberties on what the findings might suggest, but does not strongly evidence it. Going back to your correlation does not equal causation, this study is not even well correlated, or at least I see no correlation methods utilized.Do you have his original work along with several others published in the journals? If in fact the lower depths of the ocean warmed before a rise in CO2 how does this change what most of the data indicates about CO2 as a driver of temperature increases?
Thanks Kevin #272. I think robust discussion is the essence of scientific arguments but I think being called a liar is something else. As Shakespeare put it ‘he who steals my good name steals all’ and jcbmck certainly did that withj as far as I can see no reason to say “I seriously doubt Ian os a biochemist or a molecular biologist. Not only that but I doubt if he/she will have the courtesy to comment after checking my credentials. I have had a look at my posts and in none of them do I take a personal swipe at anyone. As for the rest, I hope I don’t in future make snide comments such as “learn the difference between climate and weather’ and purchase a stats book and “Uh you do know CO2 is a greenhouse gas” etc. I think too many on this site are smugly full of their self importance and self righteous belief that their views on climate change are the only possible valid interpretation of the data. In December of last year in excess of 650 scientists presented a report to the US Senate that cast some doubt on the current mainstream understanding of AGW. Are all these scientists liars and buffoons or just deluded fools who need to be shown the folly of their dissenting ways?
[Response: I strongly suggest you check into your various claims before you make them. The ‘650 scientists who presented a report to the US Senate’? Go look it up – it is a list of misquotes and misrepresentions of many scientists, combined with a scatter-shot collection of people who have nothing to do with climate, all collated from newspapers (and mis-counted) by somone on Senator Inhofe’s staff. It has no official standing whatsoever, and people who’ve been embarrassed to be on it have been unable to get off it. There are certainly some liars and buffoons among them (as in any large collection of people). If you do not want to be counted among their number, do some reading and thinking before engaging. You cannot take your sources (whatever they may be) at face value. If you are not lying, then someone is lying to you – and don’t you think you owe it to yourself to see? – gavin]
That’s all true, but one should be equally quick to rebut the disinformation about nuclear energy not being even lower in carbon emissions. It is enormously lower in unprevented fossil fuel revenues, so other fossil fuel revenue cancellers must be suspected of being tokens.
— G.R.L. Cowan (How fire can be domesticated)
Lets get something straight here folks.
Temps are cooling and have been for 8,000 years. IT would appear from the temp graphs that I have been able to find, that we were at least 1.5 to 2.0C warmer 8000 years ago than we are now. There was a very rapid rise in temps at the beginning of the Halocene period which seemed to peak 7-8000 years ago. Since that time we have had a slow drop in average temps with cyclical varaiations within said drop.
That is climate…..the data based on 20-30 years is weather. Kinda like the ice in the Arctic. What we are seeing there is weather being people seem to be stuck since 1979, ignoring evidence that the NW passage has been ice free numerous times prior to 1979. In 1944 it was ice free, but we didn’t have satalites then, only ships like the St Roch.
Ideas?
lulo- RE #270 thank you for also clarifing!
Sig (289) — There is certainly evidence which shows that in some regions in was about 1–2 K warmer 8000 years BP than ‘at present’. But ‘at present’ is defined to be 1950 CE and BP stands for ‘before present’. In the intervening 59 years many parts of the world have warmed most rapidly and considerably; I believe there is evidence from the Pacific Warm Pool showing it is now warmer there there at any time in the past several hundreds of thousand of years.
The ‘very rapid’ warming leading up to the so-called Holocene Climatic Optimum whipped along at around 0.1 K per century; we have now caused an increase of around 0.8 K per century recently. What is that? Ultra fast?
My apologies for raising the issue of the carbon content of nuclear power. I’m sorry because it’s the wrong thing to be focussing on.
If proponents of nuclear power ignore the issue of dealing with the consequences of nuclear power (the radioactive waste etc) then they must accept that they are suffering from the same myopia as those who don’t think we (those living today) should deal with both the cause and the consequences of sea level rise, global warming or peak oil. Most of us will be dead before these three horrors are visiting us in full force, but there are many who feel we have a duty of care to the future earth and to our children to leave it a better place, and so we are encouraging everybody to look ahead and make plans today to avoid as far as we can the worst outcomes.
A nuclear power plant that did somehow fulfil its promoter’s environmentally-benign vision would definitely be a useful quick fix for some of today’s energy concerns, but it has within the intrinsic and inescapable issue of what are our children going to do for the next 10,000 years with the thousands of tonnes of waste from the up to 8000 nuclear power plants?
Either we care about our children’s legacy or we don’t. Many of us do. Intensely.
Hah okay they I ask you this: How many solar panels and wind turbines will we have been constructed within the U.S. in order to attain 20-30% energy capacity? Millions, over an area that is IMMENSE (anyone wish to quantify?). These units will eventually be placed ALL OVER the U.S. even along perhaps the entire eastern and western coastlines. How do you intend on getting to and from these locations to repair and install these units? Furthermore, because these units will be more exposed to nature’s elements, they will require constant attention and will be more inclined to deteriorate faster in the less hospitable conditions. Until transportation is running strictly on renewables/electric, wind and solar will be significantly flawed in the former regard. Whereas with nuclear energy, all repair and maintenance issues will remain in-house, requiring no transportation to ensure the plant is working sufficiently. This would also be significantly less time-consuming and thus more economical.
Now, I am not at all saying that wind and solar technologies are not excellent prospects; they are. However, if people wish to examine and compare how “green” a technology is due to its carbon footprint one cannot start and stop at the building/manufacturing/preparation process when weighing it against nuclear. The fact of the matter is, no one or two forms of renewable energy will be the answer. Employing the available technologies collectively will yield the best results in the long run, as some are good where others lack and vice versa. A development of all the known technologies will furthermore allow us to adapt more accordingly if one or several of the renewable forms of energy prove less suitable/viable due to some currently unknown/”negligible” variable(s).
Ian,
even if this is you in these publications how is it you are not using proper references, the scientific methods which you would use in all branches of science and you are using so few references. In general if one looks at both sides of an argument or the evidence from two sides, one must consider both ends with compelling evidence. You have not done this. Where is the validated data, the high degrees of evidence?
Yeah … you don’t have a clue.
If you think posting outright falsehoods here are going to convince us that the scientists who run this site are wrong about climate science, you’re in for a rude awakening.
> View Selection Source
(used with rightclick after hilighting e.g. timestamp)
Thanks Anne, I did not see that in my Firefox; here’s why, for others:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=1043275&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&sid=3823df97093acdf47e5daf2f84913bba
Reminder, folks, when you’ve referred to prior postings by the sequential number — those numbers often have changed, in a lively thread like this one, by the time someone looks. Check your references.
Re 62, and Gavin’s response—— both of them in response to 54:
Neither of you actually answered the [54] question directly.
The IPCC answer appears to be that the fact that the models are unable to produce the global temperature changes seen , without anthropogenic forcing—– is in itself, strong evidence for AGW.
But that assumes that the models are 100% correct—and that the global temperature change measurement methodologies are unflawed and unassailable.
The IPCC claims their conclusion is ‘robust to variations in model formulations’, and uncertainties in forcings.
It’s hard to see how they could be certain about that, when the uncertainties they admit to, involve such important components of climate.
It’s to be expected that there would be warming now, is it not—even if the Industrial Revolution had not occurred—since we’re in an interglacial period still?
The total ice extent would not be expected to remain static in an interglacial, would it?
So many of the AGW proponents seem to be desperate to dump the coal industry, and want nothing to do with developing clean coal technology.
It seems almost certain , if Steven Chu is confirmed as Energy Secretary, that the shift will be towards nuclear power for base load power —-everything we hear about him attests to his enthusiasm for that—at least until renewables are ready to go, some time down the track.
With America and Europe building up their nuclear industries, it seems impossible to believe that every country around the world would not follow—especially as AGW proponents already give praise to countries [ like Germany and France] that are hugely assisted in their Kyoto compliance by their nuclear industries.
Nuclear capabilities in every country around the world, large or small, stable or unstable, [both seismically and politically ], seems like a recipe for a whole lot worse than a warming climate.
That eventuality will change the world forever, with no going back—wall to wall nuclear powers , some of them at each other’s throats—-many of them murderous dictatorships, some of them suicidal.
[Response: Now who’s being alarmist? – gavin]
OK, all. I screwed up and conflated cost and carbon-footprint. It’s the cost that is the problem with wind and solar, not the carbon footprint. But I guess in this era, nobody cares about that. “The government will cover that.” LOL.
Ref 291 time stamp 7:06.
I have read research that indicated solar forcing at approx .5C per century in the early Halocene period. It had an error bar of plus or minus .3C.
I have not read about a current warm pool that has exceeded prior ocean temps, so I can’t comment on that.
I do know that since the switch in the Pacific, that overall ocean temps have fallen from 1996-1998 levels.
Data from ARGO seems to verify this trend.
The short term trend in global temps is down since 1998. That is weather, the criterion will be if it continues on this path to become climate.
There is some question, it would appear, as to co2 whether it is a driver or a follower of temps. Ice core data from Greenland seems to verify both sides of the arguement depending on the time frames in reference.
There are a lot of forces that have culminated at the same time to bring global temps down, and they seem to be doing it quit rapidly.
As a farmer I have a keen interest in the trend in temps, and also the sun cycles, as the cycles correlate with reduced ag production. We are very similiar to 1913 in this sun cycle, and 1913 was not a good year for production.
The rise in temps since 1850 could be a blurp in climate. I do know that the science is not there to say with certainty that they are or aren’t. Climate year 2009 looks to be starting on a very cold foot, that I do know for sure.
My apologies to all concerned if I seemed to mis-attribute a quote, a link, and Gavin’s response. I was not sure what html codes were accepted in postings and was sloppy. I should have used better punctuation or elliptical comments to make clear who was who within the blockquote.
Again, my apologies.