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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#258 James Says: “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.”
According to (1), 12.5 million hectares were strip mined in the US as of 1971; 41% of that acreage, 5.125 million hectares, was devoted to coal.
According to (2) solar thermal yields 1 million kwh per annum; therefore, if the total area stripmined for coal were converted to solar thermal generation, it would yield 5.125e12 kwh per year.
according to (3), the total annual electrical production of all fossil fuel (coal,oil, nat gas) is 2.8825e12 kwh, or only 56% of the power that could be generated from solar thermal on an area the size of that stripmined for coal through 1971.
Apparently, you can just make some stuff up.
(1)http://books.google.com/books?id=3HSCQvZ7U2kC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=coal+strip+mine+%22total+area%22&source=web&ots=-Ys0U0L7pL&sig=7gfjDcNrQTrqUhsjEmAzDkGK6Xg&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result
(2)http://books.google.com/books?id=S5tjg16utIwC&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=solar+thermal+power+%22per+hectare%22+yield&source=bl&ots=EEuB9rwoXr&sig=oMWN21V5j2QNGHngL5TTZ9TMlBM&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result
(3)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_use_in_the_United_States
jcbmack#294 Yes it is me although trying to convince you that I am what I say I am seems inordinately difficult. At least I’m posting without any pseudonym nor with only a partial name and I’m providing further information to substantiate the things I claim. Incidentally, on questions of biochem and molbiol what’s your view on the role of filamin A as an endocrine effector? How about microarrays what’s that all about? What is the significance of intron splicing sites? as to the other questions you ask, to put up a post with the amount of discussion and detail you’d provide in an introduction to or a discussion of a paper is not all that feasible due to space limitations. Sure I probably don’t pick the right papers nor quote extensively from a range of references and I’ve been on a rapid learning curve on this site. But I do have doubts about AGW however much I am assured it’s the only possible explanation for the increase in global temperature. Now there’s a point, I thought the anomalies were based on the period 1961-1990 but recent comments suggest it is now 1951-1981. If indeed there has been a change in the reference period why is that? And is the average temperature for 1951-1980 the same or higher or lower than that for 1961-1990? More significantly my doubts about AGW were initiated by irritation from comments such “as the science is in” by high profile individuals in Australia. James Hansen calling for imprisonment of CEOs of fossil fuel companies also detracts from the main stream view of AGW. I’ve been re-reading the paper by Koutsoyiannis et al May 2008 in which he compares the predictions of GCMs with actuality at 8 locations. I read this when it came out and as it states the predictive value of the GCMs is not really very good at all this further deepened ny doubts of the mainstream view on AGW. Other references are quoted that (not unexpectedly) support his view but to give them here is perhaps unnecessary. There’s a lot data that suggest AGW is not the only or even the most probable explanation and the cooling (or at least failing to rise) of global temperature for 8-10 years is not entirely conducive to unqualified acceptance of AGW either . One final point I mentioned the 650+ scientists submitting a report to the US Senate but was advised by Gavin that the information I had was dodgy to say the least. It does seem odd that all the AGW stuff is deemed kosher and all the sceptic stuff is wrong.
[Response: It’s not ‘odd’ – it’s what happens when you have massive disiniformation campaigns pushed by lobbyists and ‘think’-tanks arrayed against basic science. For instance, why do you think that the baseline for temperature anomalies is the least bit significant? Does it it affect the trend? or the rise over the 20th Century? Did someone tell you it was important? Who? and more importantly why? As for Koutsoyiannis, see here. Finally, a piece of advice – if you actually want information and engagement don’t load up your comments with a stream of consciousness ragbag of vague points of disagreement. Take one thing at a time and concentrate on that specific issue until it is resolved. – gavin]
#298. Jae, sorry to spoil your day again, but wind power is already cheaper than fossil power in many places around the world, and in many more when you account for the huge subsidies that fossil fuels get in a variety of ways. Solar power is getting close in the sunniest regions, and its price is coming down at a tremendous speed. Solar modules this year are 20-30% cheaper than last year, after some years that the huge cost reductions in the production chain did not reach the market. That was because production could hardly keep up with global demand growth which has averaged 40-50% over the past decade.
If your assertion that the “carbon content” is not extremely low had been true, this would have been quite a reasonable thing to focus on. Your mole got whacked, but your failure to apologize for its falsehood suggests you will pop it forth again at some later date, in some other discussion.
The waste’s special attribute is not its mass in tonnes but its radioactivity, which I find can usefully be measured in watts, and on that basis compared with the radioactivity naturally in the Earth’s continental crust: ~1500 picowatts per litre, ~200 megawatts per metre of depth times the continents’ total surface area.
If our descendants, over those ten millennia, were going to accumulate much more than 200 MW of artificial radioactivity, they might still avoid being irradiated by it by burying it a metre deep. (Prospectors in aircraft did once survey North America for surface uranium, but the stuff had to be within ~20 cm of the surface, and the aircraft within a few hundred metres of it, for its rays to get through both rock and air.)
Without resorting to deeper burial than 1 m, they could gain a stronger assurance by limiting the buildup to much less than 200 MW; then they’d know that even if wind removed the top metre of land from all the burial sites, the rays from artificial radioisotopes, although no longer blocked, would be a small addition to the rays from those parts of the Earth that formerly were buried between a metre and ~1.2 metres deep, and now are also exposed. The burial scheme could fail safely, or as engineers say, it would be failsafe. Maybe they don’t say that any more. Casuists often pretended that it meant something else so as to refute a claim that had not been made.
The natural up-from-the-ground dose is very unevenly distributed. People show no preference for regions where it is relatively low, so they would have no reason to mind if those low spots were radiologically filled-in somewhat with artificial radioactivity. They’d still be cooler than naturally hot regions such as Colorado, and as above said, people show no rad-fear in deciding whether to go to Colorado.
Burial much deeper than 1 m is obviously possible, and is in fact being planned. This means the amount that can prudently be accumulated, because it would be unable to materially increase the Earth’s radioactivity even if got loose, is much more than 200 MW.
So how many megawatts of persistent radioactivity can accumulate if millions of megawatts of fission power* is operated for many centuries? Enough that candid nuclear nuclear proponents must mention it? Of course not.
It is, and will be, little enough that those of us not in the business can quite prudently ignore it.
— G.R.L. Cowan (How fire can be domesticated)
* Sounds like a lot, but of thermal megawatts, we’re at a million now.
In the interests of brevity, and the aforementioned problems with post numbers, I’ll combine responses to several points in one post.
Anne van der Bom Says (18 January 2009 at 4:46 PM):
“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?”
That’s my point. A favorite claim of the “renewable power can do it all and we don’t need anything else” folks is that Denmark gets some large percentage of its electricity from wind, the imputation being that if Denmark can do it, so can the rest of the world. As you say, and as I keep trying to point out, Denmark isn’t electrically isolated, so the imputation is false. Denmark’s wind generation works only because it is a small fraction of the non-wind generation of the European grid.
Nigel Williams Says (18 January 2009 at 3:42 PM)
“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.”
Yes, that would work if you could build sufficient tidal/hydro/pumped storage (or high speed flywheels, pressurized air in caverns, &c) to match the wind/solar. But existing hydro is (IIRC) about 7% of US generation, and has operating constraints (like assuring stream flows for fish & farmers) that limit how much intermittent generation it can support. All the storage schemes cost money to build & operate (a cost which increases as the percentage of intermittent generation increases) and most have significant storage losses.
As for tidal… Given that there are only a few small plants in operation, I would want to know a lot more about long-term environmental effects before starting major construction.
Nigel Williams Says (18 January 2009 at 3:57 PM):
“The bulk of the world’s nuclear waste is in storage while we figure out what to do with it.”
We know what to do with it: reprocess it into new fuel. Advanced reactors can “burn” most of this waste: what’s left can be buried in suitable geological formations. Oklo has demonstrated that such storage is safe for something over a billion years.
“And then ponder the impact of fossil fuel use in uranium mining, extraction, the construction of the power plants…”
Even with present technology, this is of the same order as for the construction of any other type of power plant. Further, there is no inherent reason why any part of the stream has to produce CO2. Much mining equipment is electrical now, railroads could easily be electrified, site construction equipment could be electrical…
“…the decommissioning and disposal of the plants and the comparatively short life of such plants…”
Which is an artifact. With proper design & occasional refurbishment, there is no reason that the basic plant structure shouldn’t last for centuries. Properly mixed concrete lasts: if you care to visit Europe, you can find examples of Roman concrete construction in use today.
truth Says (18 January 2009 at 8:49 PM):
“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.”
North Korea, Iran, Pakistan… And much of the development funded by oil dollars.
Maya Says:
“Maybe one day I’ll stop being anonymous about it.”
Please do. And as soon as you get a peer-reviewed article published in a respectable journal, please post the link on this site – I’m sure lots of folks would like to read it.”
I do have some background on Economy and climate change…
In the summer of 1995 i wrote my thesis on Climate Change & Risk….
I am not sure if its “peer” reviewed because Richard Tol did not even get the date and the title right..
You can find some more info here by searching for “Harmen Roest”.
http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:tpC6rz0PnOEJ:www.uni-hamburg.de/Wiss/FB/15/Sustainability/Tol.pdf+%22harmen+roest%22&hl=nl&ct=clnk&cd=13&gl=nl
Off topic – Jim Hansen has stated that model runs suggest a runaway greenhouse effect on Earth is possible if we burn all the coal (and definitely if we burn all the tar sands and tar shale, too).
“If we burn all of the coal [on the planet], there is a good chance we will initiate the runaway greenhouse effect,” he said. That runaway greenhouse effect could become unstoppable, eventually boiling the oceans and destroying all life on earth in what Hansen called the “Venus Syndrome,” after the conditions that exist on the planet next-closest to the sun.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/hansen-calls-for-carbon-tax-to-drop-co2-below-todays-levels-5398.html
I remember a post on runaway greenhouse here that stated the Venus syndrome couldn’t happen on earth (r
Several people posting here are hinting at some conspiracy to silence those who oppose dealing with climate change (Rod B #74, lulo #109). There’s far more evidence of the opposite. The anti-science crew get copious media time often for repeating the same discredited talking points. I am running into a problem with putting together a science advisory board for my Greens election campaign: people with government or even academic jobs are reluctant to have their names associate with a pro-environment campaign for fear of damage to their career prospects. To me this is McCarthyism: the people you talk to in your spare time should not figure in your work situation.
If anyone here is interested in giving honest (i.e., not aimed to satisfy a prejudice) expert opinion to an Australian state campaign, let me know (you can find me via the link on my name). Anonymity will be preserved if necessary.
Richard Pauli[236]:
Don’t you think it’s worth consideration that a sceptic might have nothing whatsoever to do with the coal industry or any other industry—especially the cigarette companies—-but might just want freedom of speech and scientific inquiry to prevail—- might just want a hearing for those who propose alternative scientific explanations for what is happening instead of seeing them consigned to pariah status and professional blacklisting?
Do such people have no rights of communication on this matter at all, without being labelled and pilloried—even though they too will face the impacts of the solutions the AGW proponents approve of?
If a person would rather see a large research effort into clean coal technology, [whether it’s conversion or sequestration ], than see every country in the world encouraged and given the go ahead to build nuclear power industries, thereby increasing exponentially the dangers of nuclear accidents or conflict—-does that make that person some sort of planet vandal in your view?
truth 297, we’re well past the midpoint of an interglacial. Would you expect it to get WARMER and there to be LESS ice at the end of an interglacial than in the middle of it?
Re #271, 274 and others.
People seem to be having an issue with the idea of renewable technology being able to replace/mitigate the fossil fuel and nuclear ageof the recent past. This essentially means that the present industry of energy provision and the entrenched minds of the statis quo have argued successfully on the political scence via lobbyists and funding of politicians. Several scientists have also added to the debate with articles and facts about energy and in what context and lifestyle we wish to use it.
If we take the UK for example, it is known that each person in the UK on average uses 125 KW energy per day. If we take the UK as an isolated country that must use renewables to power itself then it gets the environmentalists wound up when people want to create the severn barrage to supply hydro power at the expense (in their eyes) of the flora and fauna of the area. The same goes for onshore wind warms which get peoples all upset especially if they are to be found on beautiful hills that spoil the view and then there is the noise and all of the arguing about their efficiency etc. It just goes on.
The UK has 10,000 tonnes of nuclear waste that needs dealing with but a lot of it is low grade waste, contaminated coffee grounds, suits and the like but it is said by environmental groups that its deadly and will contaminate the world with is terrible radiation. The measure of dealing with it is political in nature via a lot of scare mongering it seesm to me anyway. Lets try what James Hansen says and get IFR reactors working that work by gobbling the existing waste as a energy source. Its a technology that was a little but of a major advance but was politically decimated in the clinton era but the science and engineering still exists.
No single country can live as it presently does, but energy efficiency is not going down well presently for a lot of people (probably nearly all). Its like the PC (personal computer) argument which relates to their being 1 billion of them now and 2 billion come 2014 or so the forecasting goes. Crickey, IT already makes up for 2% of total energy usage (same as all Aircraft) and its going to go to 6%. We can make them all more efficient but its still a lot of energy usage.
The problem is a big one but as yet, no solution just more consumption.
EL @129 i tend to agree with you that if we don’t understand something we shouldn’t mess with it. of course ‘understanding’ is a continuum, not an absolute.
and using this logic, we should stop pumping greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, because we don’t know exactly what it is going to do to our planet and by extension, us. we should also not try to engineer the atmosphere, but the only way we’re going to avoid doing this is to stop adding greenhouse gas to it in the first place.
unless of course you happen to have a nice big cache of spare habitable planets lying around? because if you do, then we can surely keep increasing the level of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere with abandon and simply move onto the next habitable planet. easy.
so, can you tell me where these other habitable planets are? because i’d sure like to have a few spares given the rate we’re ruining this one.
a simple rule that applies equally well to office relationships as to pollution and climate change is this: don’t defecate where you eat.
also, that paper you linked to mostly talks about bacteria in snow, in the upper 200mm of the surface of Antarctica. when it does talk about bacteria in ice cores it says that they “were reported to be metabolically active when warmed to 3 degrees”. this is also a quote from another paper which notes that “the presence of liquid water would be required for cellular metabolism”.
so, unless you’re suggesting that there is actually liquid water in deep ice cores, then the organisms aren’t producing or consuming anything, they’re frozen.
also, it is only relevant above Lake Vostok, a lake that exists under glacial ice in Antarctica. to quote another paper quoted in your linked paper “The ice above the lake has been cored to 3623 m, stopping ~120 m above the surface of the lake. The upper 3310 m is glacial ice that represents an environmental record covering four complete ice age climate cycles. Ice between 3310 and 3539 m is transitional between glacial and accretion ice; ice below 3539 m represents refrozen lake water accreted to the bottom of the glacial ice.”
none of which negates the use of ice cores in the study of ancient climates.
now, what about those spare habitable planets?
18 January 2009 at 7:51 PM JB:
Nevada solar one is 1.6 km2 and estimated to produce 134 GWh per year. US consumption is around 4 PWh per year. Total area required: 47761 km2. That is about a fifth the area of Nevada. For 100%. I’ll leave the judgement to you whether that qualifies as IMMENSE. Comparison: according to NASA, the total built-up area in the United States is 112.000 km2
By car?
Wind turbines tend to be placed in groups, so-called ‘windfarms’ So when building the windfarm, you simply build the road to get there, if one isn’t there already.
Modern wind turbines require two inspection visits per year. This is simply a visit by a mechanic in a van. Suppose he’s living 50 km from the turbine and can inspect 1 turbine per day. That means 200 car-km per turbine per year. An average van emits around 200 g/km, so that comes in at a whopping 40 kg CO2 for ~10 million kWh. Or 4 mg per kWh. Add in a few repairs per year, with big parts having to be hauled in by truck, and the figure rises perhaps to 50 mg/kWh. Significantly flawed? I wouldn’t think so.
JB, Although I think you can do these easy calculations yourself, I was happy to do them for you.
18 January 2009 at 11:06 PM Brian Dodge:
12.5 million hectares of land is 125.000 km2, about the size of Mississippi. This way more than I ever imagined. Do you have a reference for this number?
Ark, 303: got references? And WRT windpower, just what are the enviros gonna do about all the dead birds that they have worked so hard to “save” from mankind?
Ian Lee posts:
Jesus, can’t you read? What do you think “CO2 is a greenhouse gas,” “there’s more of it,” and “it’s coming from us” mean if not that “human produced CO2 increases global temperature?”
None, but it’s completely irrelevant, as the points I make above show. Temperature leads CO2 in a natural deglaciation. The solubility of CO2 in seawater lessens with warmth and the CO2 bubbles out of the ocean. That is NOT what’s happening now. We know (point 3 above, if you’d only read it) that the new fossil fuel is coming from burning fossil fuels, not from the ocean. And temperature is not now leading CO2, it’s the other way around.
They only show that if you A) read them, and B) understand them, and C) are capable of making simple logical inferences.
I would not suggest trying to get any info about science from TV. It’s sad what passes for journalism on TV. Especially climate science because it is so controversial in many people’s eyes, and journalists love controversy — it sells. In addition, these journalists frequently mix news with editorial commentary, and then they’re not qualified to comment, so the result is often jibberish.
I think the best way to get the info is from books written by credible authors. Then the trick is to judge the credibility of the author, not always easy for a lay person This site is pretty good too.
“truth” posts:
No, it is not. If you actually do the matrix math that explains the Milankovic cycles, you find that we passed the peak of the interglacial 6,000 years ago and should now be COOLING.
Truth, you seem to conflate “skeptics” and advocacy for clean coal.
I myself am skeptical about “clean coal,” but it is possible to advocate the same without any AGW skepticism–for instance, those who are convinced that complete sequestration of the CO2 is feasible may also feel that doing so is vital.
IMO, the “planet vandals” are those who, through ignorance, emotional reactivity, greed or malice, impede rational debate and deny the science of AGW.
OT again (sorry).
Seems I cut off my post (307). To be brief, Hansen’s recent recommendations that runaway greenhouse warming is a possibility on earth if we burn all the coal is at odds with a realclimate post that that wouldn’t happen (r
[Response: You need to use html for a less than symbol & l t ; – gavin]
jae posts:
jae, windmills cost considerably less than nukes for the same amount of power generated, and windmill electricity is already competitive, right now, with fossil fuel electricity. Recent plans for some nuclear plants have priced out at $7 billion for a 1 GW plants, which, in the industry, is a level known as “really, really, really high.”
Sig writes:
No matter how many times you post this, it still won’t be true. BTW, the term “short term trend” doesn’t really mean anything. A trend is, by definition, long-term.
Phillip Machanick [ 308]:
You must be joking. The record needs to be set straight on this.
The situation in Australia is exactly the opposite to your description
It’s those on your side of this issue who get all the favourable airplay in Australia.
It’s the AGW proponents who are able to give their opinions freely , and are treated with great deference—eg Tim Flannery, David Karoly, Ian Lowe, Graham Pearman, Clive Hamilton, Robyn Williams, John Quiggan, Don Henry, to name just a few who are all on your side, and all frequently put the AGW view in the knowledge that they will be given complete credibility—–and for heavens sake, the Minister, Peter Garrett and his party are in power because of your Federal Greens party’s preferences—and because Al Gore and Bono told the Australian people the other side [ the conservatives] were environmentally unacceptable—-so the government is therefore well and truly in your camp—and you have all the leverage.
The Labor party takes every chance it can get, enthusiastically assisted by the Australian media, to accuse members of the Opposition [ conservatives] of being closet sceptics—and any conservative politician who gives even a hint of a doubt about AGW is sneered at and ridiculed—you did a bit of that yourself in [41] re Barnaby, but an Opposition politician doesn’t have to go over the top as Barnaby sometimes does, to get the smears and jeers—just a wrong word or a question is all it takes.
In Australia, the majority of people bought the AGW view, and Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth lock stock and barrel—-and a huge majority are in favour of the Emissions Trading Scheme—-even though, when polled, > 90% said they didn’t have a clue what it actually entailed.
JB (293), you write:
“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?). ”
Marc Jacobson did. He compared several energy sources for transport needs on a variety of criteria (climate change, land use, air pollution, etc). He finds that wind energy has the smallest footprint, both in terms of climate change and land use, followed by solar. They can be used as energy source in either electric or hydrogen fuel cell cars, where the former has a better efficiency.
Very informative: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm
Short term trends in global temps are down.
Ref Barton 9:21
The question I have is this:
Looking at Hadcrut data, the temp, short term has changed to a down trend. The winter in the Northern Hemisphere has been quit brutal.
I recognize that this is all weather and not climate.
With the solar cycle off to a very slow start, the switching in the long term Pacific Ocean to a cooling trend, would one expect this cool trend to continue?
19 January 2009 at 8:54 AM jae
Wind turbines are no bird killers
Here’s a shorter article from the American Bird Conservancy
Now you wrote 18 January 2009 at 9:01 PM:
That left me thinking you’d actually learn from your mistakes. How foolish. Your next post will probably read something like:
“OK, all. I screwed up and conflated bird killings.”
Do us all a favour and check you preconceptions before posting them.
Ian (231), it was just a simple typo that should have read 386 ppm, the current level of atmospheric CO2. And your misunderstanding of the physics of the greenhouse mechanism and your gullibility in believing purveyors of pseudo-science is breathtaking for someone claiming to be a scientist.
And Anne (240), no, I meant well below, since the greenhouse properties of CO2 would have to cease operating well below 386 ppm for the assertion that fossil fuel-source CO2 has not been the major cause of the last 30 years of observed warming to be true.
Captcha observes: OCEAN firm, which is what Earth’s oceans would be if CO2 were not present in the atmosphere. Very firm indeed.
194 – That is a fair argument, but can also be made on many traded resources. The real issue with fossil fuels is infrastructure or lack thereof. We don’t have an infrastructure or technology in place to make any kind of switch over from fossil fuels.
If the large USA based motor companies such as GM and Ford were to make electric cars, we couldn’t support the needed electricity. The pricing of electricity would skyrocket due to increased demand. This would make the cost of heating homes too high for some people as 33% of Americans’ make under 15-20k a year. Companies would also seek to do business elsewhere due to higher cost of operating. Not to mention that you are going to end up burning more coal and likely pollute more from such a change.
The technology and infrastructure to stop the use of fossil fuel simply isn’t there. Any advances you make in America is only going to be countered by increased demand from technology and increased c02 emissions in other developing nations. In a nutshell, I believe that we are looking to upwards to a century before the world has switched over from fossil fuels. C02 emissions are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
161 Jim – There is a big difference between theory and hypothesis. There is more of the latter then the former. I don’t know how I can explain it any other way to get that across. The simulations can only be as solid as the understanding and some of that is still in it’s infancy. I’ll give you another question just as important as the first one, to perhaps better illustrate this:
How much C02 is needed in the atmosphere to keep mankind prosperous?
It’s a slippery slope any way you want to look at it. The question brings us back to the point, science is calling for changes thats not fully understood.
Gavin – I know you want a forum man. Just think of all the things you could select as your aviator. =P
Bart, 321: What you guys have to try to understand is that you STILL have to have the traditional power plants for peak power backup. For when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining (often when it is the coldest and much power is needed). And WRT windmills, what are you enviros going to do about all the dead birds that you worked so hard to save from humanity?
BTW, it wouldn’t hurt to reference your numbers.
Truth, Australia looks to be the first industrialized nation to be seriously affected by AGW. It’s no wonder people there accept it as a reality, especially people who live in the Murray-Darling basin.
Ian (247), an increase in atmospheric CO2, regardless of source–human or natural, will raise temperature. This is simply not disputable. It was demonstrated in laboratory experiment as early as 1859 and can be demonstrated today in any high school science lab.
You’ve fallen for the “CO2 lags temperature” meme by assuming that it “proves” that CO2 can not be a climate forcing.
If you are a trained scientist then it should be easy for you to see the logical fallacy of that meme: CO2 can act as both a climate feedback and as a climate forcing, depending on the circumstances.
What the lag of CO2 during a deglaciation in the ice cores demonstrates is that CO2 was not the initial forcing, but rather an amplifying feedback to the initial forcing, namely rising insolation caused by the Milankovic cycles. So were rising methane levels and falling albedo. As CO2 rose it then added still more warming, amplifying the initial change in insolation. This is easy to demonstrate by calculating the change in insolation, which can be shown not to be enough alone to completely end a glacial staid.
But today there is no change in solar insolation, and no consequent solar warming of the ocean or other natural source of enough CO2 to cause the observed increase. But there is a man-made source more than large enough to account for the increase, and it has left a distinctive carbon isotope signature in the atmosphere. This time fossil carbon-based CO2 is being emitted directly into the atmosphere at a rate that outstrips the ability of natural carbon sinks to absorb it. As a result, it’s concentration has risen by nearly 38% and continues to rise.
Bypassing the natural feedback stage means that this time CO2 is acting as a direct forcing, something that rarely happens naturally, although it has happened in the deep past. See Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), or Permian–Triassic Extinction Event, for example.
Rather than read pseudoscince I suggest that you bring yourself up to speed with the real history of climate science and the physics of the greenhouse-effect. Spencer Weart’s The Discovery of Global Warming is an excellent starting point and is available for free here: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html
Captcha is on a roll: well-informed awoke
Barton, your forbearance is remarkable.
jae’s quite the troll; you can see his work at Deltoid frequently.
Don’t expect improvement.
Sig (289), in 1944 the St. Roch was unable to transit through the McClure Strait to the Beaufort sea due to pack ice. RCMP Corporal Henry Larsen instead had to travel down the narrow channel between Banks Island and Victoria Island to reach the southern route through the Amundsen Gulf. In 2007, and again in 2008, the McClure Strait was open.
Facts: they are terribly easy to look up.
Captcha continues: regular current
“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”
Ah, much better, Ian, thank you. I do much better with specifics.
First of all, let me draw your attention to this quote:
“However, the study does not question the fact that CO2 plays a key role in climate.
‘I don’t want anyone to leave thinking that this is evidence that CO2 doesn’t affect climate,’ Stott cautioned. ‘It does, but the important point is that CO2 is not the beginning and end of climate change.’”
I take that last part to mean that CO2 isn’t the only factor in climate change, and that’s quite true, it isn’t. We know that already – there are a number of greenhouse gases, feedbacks both positive and negative, and external forcings. It probably IS a popular belief that temperature follows CO2 – that’s a simplification, and much easier for a layman to get his or her head around. And, it isn’t untrue – just incomplete.
Stott’s paper – and I hope it’s ok to summarize this way – points out that when the Antarctic started to warm about 19,000 years ago, the melting ice created a feedback, much the same way we’re seeing in the Arctic in recent times. The melting ice exposed more seawater, which absorbs more energy, which accelerated the warming and melting.
Another quote: “In addition, the authors’ model showed how changed ocean conditions may have been responsible for the release of CO2 from the ocean into the atmosphere, which like the albedo feedbacks, also accelerated the warming.” The emphasis is mine.
Now I don’t know exactly how the change in the oceans released CO2, but oceans can sequester it, so I will assume they can release it as well. You’re the marine biologist, so you’ll no doubt understand that part better than I will.
The crucial point here is that Stott isn’t saying that rising CO2 doesn’t cause rising temperatures, only that in this case, something else started the rising temperature first, and then CO2 got into the mix and accelerated the warming. Indeed, to accept what he’s saying in its entirety (and I see no reason not to) you have to also accept that CO2 does indeed cause a rise in temperature.
Now, if it will help, here are some links on the various factors that go into our current climate change. In our case, it appears that a human-caused rise in CO is the largest factor in the rising temperature.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/crowley.html
http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/global-warming-science-brief-august08.pdf
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/senate/
ps. Oops, sorry, the underlining I had meant to put in the second quote from the article didn’t show up. I had meant for the phrase “also accelerated the warming” to be underlined.
#309 truth (sic)
Not everyone who is anti-science works for an oil or coal company, in fact most don’t.
A catalog of reasons for being anti-science in this subejct is here.
But, if you think you’re not anti-science, you might try reading how to learn.
Apologies if this is too off topic but these giant response threads make ‘conversation/argument’ very difficult. The method of replying to someone eg RE:#279 said……makes it ridiuclously cumbersome.
Are there any plans to move the forum style to cascade response so people can reply to each others sub-thread?
Moderator, please remove this comment if inappropriate, but I would very much appreciate a reply my e-mail off list as I feel a new forum stlye would make it very much easier to have logical argument. even make it more accessable and readable to people looking in for the first time.
regards,
Marcos.
Harmen, thank you, I did indeed find the title:
Drs. Harmen Roest, 1997, Risk aversion and climate change, Department of Economic
Sciences and Business Administration, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
My sort-of-challenge was directed at “lulo” but this sounds interesting. There’s no link to the paper itself that I can find – can you post a summary?
Oil companies hire excellent scientists, and that is a big reason why they are starting to change their tune. I have a recent ExxonMobil newsletter in which they champion how much CO2 mitigation they can attribute to their recent battery (could facilitate the transition to electric cars) and tire (lighter tires and more reliable pressure retention) inventions. The CEO of ExxonMobil recently endorsed carbon taxation as the best means of mitigating CO2. Both inventions look very promising.
Jim Eager – thank you, you’re helping out with the CO2 explanation. :) I think Ian really does want to learn, but got some bad information to begin with.
Hey, I used to be a skeptic myself, long years ago, and decided that I couldn’t form an opinion on the matter until I knew both sides of the story. So, I started reading. At first, because of other things the media has messed up in reporting, I figured that global warming was just another fashionable disaster, like cholesterol in eggs or the latest diet craze.
Indeed, the “it’s all blown out of proportion” line did seem to be plausible. After all, we’re a very resourceful species, so we oughta be able to find solutions, right? And I kept reading. And reading. And there was lots of science to back up the global warming theories. The other camp seemed to come up with some good arguments, but when you look at them closely, they have holes. When all the arguments and counter-arguments are played out, they always come down on the side of the climate change science.
I didn’t want to believe it. It just seemed too horrible, you know? The more I read, the more horrified I became. Terrified. Maybe I’m weird this way, but I don’t find it all that outlandish to think about the consequences 100 years or 200 years or 500 years from now. I won’t live to see the worst of it, but my grandchildren and their grandchildren will.
So anyone I can convince … is worth it. For every person we educate instead of ridicule, is a grain of sand on the side of sanity instead of disaster. It’s worth the effort.
So come, Ian, sit with us and learn. I’ll be patient. Ask your questions and I will answer, or I’ll find someone who will.
333, Hank: Hmm, there must be more than one jae, then, because I don’t post on that site.
326, Anne:
I guess we could get into a contest to see who has more references. Given the environmentalists’ great support for screwing up capitalism with carbon taxes, they would probably gladly sacrifice birds. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-04-windmills-usat_x.htm
337 – I only have one ill against science, the lack of ethics. Which is true with almost every field =(
> jae
Good to hear. Encouraging, thank you.
Citing sources for where you read what you believe will make the difference obvious.
Er, so far, no, no clear difference. The same pseudonym shows up often, e.g. one at CA, one at Deltoid, and several others, all seeming to state exactly the same political point of view, lots of spin. Are you different?
Sig (299) — You ought to give your reference, because I believe you misunderstood the point. The global temperature change from LGM to HCO was about 5–6 K and mostly occurred over 5000–6000 years; about 0.1 K per century.
As a farmer, you should be quite concerned about the effects of AGW. And by the way, AGW is about as well established as anything in all of science.
Barton Paul Levenson Says (19 January 2009 at 9:20 AM):
“jae, windmills cost considerably less than nukes for the same amount of power generated, and windmill electricity is already competitive, right now, with fossil fuel electricity.”
Perhaps true (I’ve never studied the cost of windmill construction), but you’re neglecting the additional cost of the storage infrastructure that would need to be built in order to provide 24/7/365 reliablity. You’re also doing a bit of cherry-picking by taking the highest estimate you can find for the cost of one nuclear plant. It seems reasonable to assume that if a number of plants were to be built to a standard design, the per-unit cost would decrease. France does this: what did the newest French reactor cost?
I’d also suggest looking beyond the cost of individual pieces, and think about how to build a CO2-free power system. You might come to the conclusion that including some more-expensive parts reduces the total cost, and gets the system in place sooner.
346, Hank: I just scrolled through the last 220 comments at Deltoid and did not find any jae. I hope there is not some conservative creep using my handle!
Jae (343), I note that your reference, a news report dating from 2005, discusses one of the early wind farms that used open grid structural steel towers with relatively short but rapidly turning blades, rather than the current designs that use enclosed pylons and longer, slower blades. One reason that open grid steel towers resulted in a serious number of bird kills is that their open grid structure made excellent nest sites and inviting perch sites for raptors, the short whirling blades, not so much. Fortunately that type of structure is no longer used for new construction. Care to cite something a bit more relevant to the impact of current and future wind farms on avian species?
Oh, and as for your belief that carbon taxes would result in “screwing up capitalism”, they would simply internalize the heretofore external, and thus not accounted for cost of dumping the effluent from burning fossil fuels into the atmospheric commons, thereby screwing up the atmosphere and climate. Carbon taxes would place those costs squarely on those doing the burning, and financially encourage a reduction in their burning. Bad for fossil fuel producers, perhaps, good for just about everyone else. But at least you clearly demonstrated that your objections are based on political and ideological grounds and not on science.