Imagine a group of 100 fisherman faced with declining stocks and worried about the sustainability of their resource and their livelihoods. One of them works out that the total sustainable catch is about 20% of what everyone is catching now (with some uncertainty of course) but that if current trends of increasing catches (about 2% a year) continue the resource would be depleted in short order. Faced with that prospect, the fishermen gather to decide what to do. The problem is made more complicated because some groups of fishermen are much more efficient than the others. The top 5 catchers, catch 20% of the fish, and the top 20 catch almost 75% of the fish. Meanwhile the least efficient 50 catch only 10% of the fish and barely subsist. Clearly, fairness demands that the top catchers lead the way in moving towards a more sustainable future.
The top 5 do start discussing how to manage the transition. They realise that the continued growth in catches – driven by improved technology and increasing effort – is not sustainable, and make a plan to reduce their catch by 80% over a number of years. But there is opposition – manufacturers of fishing boats, tackle and fish processing plants are worried that this would imply less sales for them in the short term. Strangely, they don’t seem worried that a complete collapse of the fishery would mean no sales at all – preferring to think that the science can’t possibly be correct and that everything will be fine. These manufacturers set up a number of organisations to advocate against any decreases in catch sizes – with catchy names like the Fisherfolk for Sound Science, and Friends of Fish. They then hire people who own an Excel spreadsheet program do “science” for them – and why not? They live after all in a free society.
After spending much energy and money on trying to undermine the science – with claims that the pond is much deeper than it looks, that the fish are just hiding, that the records of fish catches were contaminated by being done near a supermarket – the continued declining stocks and smaller and smaller fish make it harder and harder to sound convincing. So, in a switch of tactics so fast it would impress Najinsky, the manufacturers’ lobby suddenly decides to accept all that science and declares that the ‘fish are hiding’ crowd are just fringe elements. No, they said, we want to help with this transition, but …. we need to be sure that the plans will make sense. So they ask their spreadsheet-wielding “advocacy scientists” to calculate exactly what would happen if the top 5 (and only the top 5) did cut their catches by 80%, but meanwhile everyone else kept increasing their catch at the current (unsustainable rate). Well, the answers were shocking – the total catch would be initially still be 84% of what it is now and would soon catch up with current levels. In fact, the exact same techniques that were used to project the fishery collapse imply that this would only delay the collapse by a few years! and what would be the point of that?
The fact that the other top fishermen are discussing very similar cuts and that the fisherfolk council was trying to coordinate these actions to minimise the problems that might emerge, are of course ignored and the cry goes out that nothing can be done. In reality of course, the correct lesson to draw is that everything must be done.
In case you think that no-one would be so stupid as to think this kind of analysis has any validity, I would ask that you look up the history of the Newfoundland cod fishery. It is indeed a tragedy.
And the connection to climate? Here.
I’ll finish with a quotation attributed to Edmund Burke, one the founders of the original conservative movement:
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
See here for a much better picture of what coordinated action could achieve.
Re: #124
Decarbonising…
I usually find your comments particularly interesting so perhaps I should reply. I am guilty as charged. But when it comes to terminology, I judge it by the trouble it causes. One example is ambiguity and that depends on the context. I didn’t think that Realclimate readers would think I was referring to the biosphere, to old motor-cycles or be ignorant of the two oxygen atoms in the molecule.
What about global warming (GW) vs climate change (CC) then?
Forgetting about the existence of stratospheric cooling, which might favour the use of CC, and the political advice of spin-doctor Frank Luntz who also favoured CC I have come to see that there is something else involved. Only the second option automatically rules out the seven year trenders because it refers explictly to the concept of climate. So you can’t be accused of some new underhand trick when you demand that the discussion relates to climate.
What about the greenhouse effect ?
This terminology is a slight nuisance, because it so often needs to be accompanied by a disclaimer or even a longer description of experiments done with rock salt and wooden boxes. But what is the alternative?
“Chip assumes the US does something and nobody else does anything. His analysis and conclusions are just fine if you accept that idiotic premise, but the premise is still idiotic.”
The Chinese are about to make public token gestures precisely to counter exactly that argument. However the big idea is to move manufacturing to the cheap labour markets of the third world. Sustainable energy in the west will accelerate that process considerably. The end result of this process will be considerably more CO2 in the world as billions of new consumers are created.
Barton Paul Levenson
“Some experts not aligned with either camp estimate that wind power is currently more than 50 percent more expensive than power generated by a traditional coal plant. Built into the calculation is the need for utilities that rely heavily on wind power to build backup plants fired by natural gas to meet electricity demand when winds are calm.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/business/energy-environment/29renew.html
As I have said before, wind power has huge problems that nobody seems to want to account for it in their numbers.
Chip, what happens if you give the top regions 100% emissions reduction?
203 (EL) Alleged problems of wind power
As long as wind power penetration in the grid is under 20% there is no problem whatsoever with back up, because total variation in (power supply minus demand) does not change much compared to the situation without wind power.
People have worked out what the cost is for the back up – and it is not large (a couple of cents per kWh). This has of course to do with the fact that -even if you needed 100% backup- you would still save the fuel.
Even larger penetration is possible (especially of the grid is large in a geographical sense), but you have to think carefully about grid reinforcement in critical places.
re 112
“Neither cows nor chickens face extinction, these mishaps notwithstanding. With the odd exception, people do not knowingly or deliberately abuse their own own property, since this is self-defeating. Do you knowingly or deliberately abuse your own property? Surely not.”
Aside from the fact you are essentially ignoring what was actually said to you, I would point out your representation is in error. The example of the Newfoundland Cod Fisheries is a classic exaple. While the Cod were not the fishermen’s ‘property’ per se, they were the commodity upon which their livelihoods were built.
And they decimated it.
Fact is, your premise is specious on its face – we OWN our mistakes, and we pay for them regardless of our attempts to pretend we don’t. It was once remarked that ignorance of the law is no excuse. It has also been remarked that natural laws have no pity. In the case of sustainability, this is a lesson the Eastern Islanders and many other peoples through history never learned, until it was far too late.
Chip, thought you might be interested in what Warren Washington and others have just published a paper in GRL* titled “How much climate change can be avoided by mitigation?”:
From the Abstract:
“A new low emission scenario is simulated in a global climate model to show how some of the impacts from climate change can be averted through mitigation. Compared to a non-intervention reference scenario, emission reductions of about 70% by 2100 are required to prevent roughly half the change in temperature and precipitation that would otherwise occur. By 2100, the resulting stabilized global climate would ensure preservation of considerable Arctic sea ice and permafrost areas. Future heat waves would be 55% less intense, and sea level rise from thermal expansion would be about 57% lower than if a non-mitigation scenario was followed.”
From the paper:
“To explore the global and regional distributions of future climate change that could be avoided with aggressive mitigation policies such as increased use of conservation, renewables and CO2 capture and storage, simulations with a comprehensive climate model are performed here with a new low emission mitigation scenario compared to a business-as-usual non-mitigation scenario. These scenarios were prepared by United States Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) scientists as part of a series of assessment reports. The CCSP report 2.1 [Clarke et al., 2007] provides scenarios in which carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and radiative forcings can be substantially reduced if new energy technologies and strategies are put into place….The reference non-mitigated CCSP scenario was based upon emission estimates several years before the data were published. Because of large recent emissions in China, the reference level estimates are generally believed to be lower than actual emissions (Figure 1). Thus, the magnitudes of climate change that can be avoided by following the low emission mitigation scenario should be considered conservative estimates. Actual avoided climate change in the mitigation scenario could be greater if business-as-usual emissions continue to increase at rates observed over the past few years.
Two sets of simulations were performed with a state-of-the-art global coupled climate model, the Community Climate System Model (CCSM3) [Collins et al., 2006; Meehl et al., 2005]… This model has a relatively low climate sensitivity of 2.7°C for a doubling of CO2. For future climate, we performed a non-mitigated reference case for comparison to a low emission mitigation scenario (four ensemble members each) which stabilizes atmospheric CO2 concentration at roughly 450 ppm by the end of year 2100 without an overshoot. CO2 and other greenhouse gas concentrations are calculated from the emissions specified in the two scenarios by the globally averaged gas-cycle/climate model MAGICC (Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change) that drives a spatial climate-change Scenario Generator (SCENGEN) [Wigley, 2008].
The 1900 to 2100 time series of CO2 emissions shows, for the mitigation emissions scenario, a rise over the next decade and then a peak followed by a gradual decline for a net decrease of about 70% of present-day values by the year 2100 … This corresponds to a stabilized CO2 concentration of about 450 ppm in 2100…The globally averaged surface air temperature increases by about 2.2°C (2080-2099 relative to 1980–1999) in the non-mitigated case, and about 0.6°C in the mitigation scenario (Figure 1c). The range of ensemble members is ±0.1°C…Thus, by following the mitigation scenario, a potential increase of global temperature of 1.6°C is averted, i.e., in the future we can avoid about twice the warming we have already observed since 1900.
…the regional warming that is averted in the mitigation case is roughly 3°C in the Arctic region and 1–2°C over land areas (Figure 2). Note that despite a 70% reduction in emissions over the 21st century, there is virtually no cooling. This is consistent with recent results that find similar behavior even for a 1000 yr timescale and a zero emission CO2 case [Solomon et al., 2009]. The reason is that the decrease in atmospheric CO2 that would occur in the long term is compensated by the commitment warming.
Clearly, the impacts of climate change with a mitigation scenario are substantially less than with a non-intervention emission strategy, and the amount of climate change that can be averted with mitigation is considerable.”
*[GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 36, L08703, doi:10.1029/2008GL037074, 2009]
Looks like some folks using some of the same tools you use disagree pretty strongly with your conclusions about what’s possible Chip.
“The point at issue, which still stands, is that farmed animals are the least likely of all animals to face extinction.”
You’re entire premise is a straw man.
Or are you seriously proposing that if we just domesticated the biosphere, everything would be fine?
You can’t “farm” whales, as you suggested when you first brought up this empty analogy. And, as I pointed out, we own the problems we create, intended or not. And farmed animals bear little resemblance to the stock from which they were derived, anyway. They are actually more susceptible to disease, they tend to spread contagion, they are pumped up with drugs that in turn contribute to growing pollution problems and contamination of water supplies.
re #192 Barton Paul Levenson
I respect your posts and appreciate the answers you gave me on earlier threads that were instrumental in converting me from being a sceptic to a believer in AGW. Since my “conversion”, I have spent a great deal of time, in my amateur way, reading about solutions.
With respect to nuclear power, my initial reaction was to be anti- not because of safety or proliferation risks which I regarded as trivial relative to those of peak oil and global warming but because of finite uranium resources (lack of sustainability) and the time and heavy costs of construction. I thus focussed initially on wind, solar power and CCS coal. Onshore wind seemed to win on cost grounds, albeit with problems of intermittency which don’t appear to matter till we get to 20%. As we are well short of that, I am absolutely in favour of riding roughshod over NIMBYs and getting on with it. I came to believe that a totally renewable energy future (incorporating currently relatively expensive solar solutions plus wind) might be our only hope. However, it would, it seemed to me, require a precipitate drop in living standards for populations in the developed world and a quashing of aspirations of those in the developing world to get through the emergency with this so-called blend of solutions. The political feasibility of this appeared remote. I next began to speculate whether a massive disaster (eg a war of previously unimagined proportions) might be the best hope for at least a proportion of human civilisation and other animals to survive. It was at about this stage in my musings that I started to read about 4th generation fission power. If all I read was correct, it would provide a “get out of jail” card. It might be possible to treble our power supplies in an affordable way, thus making possible international agreements on controlling CO2 and sustaining a population (already in the pipeline) of 9 billion by 2050. The only downside would be continuing population growth rather than reduction thereafter.
Having cheered myself up with these thoughts, I decided to test my new found hope by inviting more expert opinions on the subject from correspondents on the RealClimate site. All I got tended to be an anti nuclear rant with no differentiation made between 3rd generation (unsustainable) and 4th generation (sustainable) technologies.
Barton, you have supported wind and criticised nuclear on cost grounds, citing California. Might I ask you to read the cite given by Sidd (#558 “Hit the brakes hard”) which I repeat: http:// http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2009/5/1/174635/6513 . The author is a wind enthusiast. Please appreciate from Figure 6.8 that the USA is atypical with respect to the rest of the world as regards relative power costs. In Europe, for example, the kWh cost of nuclear is much cheaper than that of wind and even coal (with or without a carbon levy). The article also makes clear that the cost of wind and nuclear power (due to absent and minimal fuel costs in the former and latter case respectively) are primarily attributable to construction costs and interest charges. The latter, in turn, are enormously influenced by discount rates. Construction costs of conventional (3rd generation) nuclear power are stated as being about half those of wind power per kWh generated. I suspect that nuclear power costs in the States are so high because of unnecessary delays and bureaucracy created by the anti nuclear lobby and NIMBYs and possibly also by power companies which will demand much higher profits for being prepared to face up to them. However, India, Russia and China are pressing ahead and the two former are well down the road top 4th generation nuclear power. This promises to be safer, have lower fuel costs, be quicker to construct (lower interest charges)and to have load following capabilities.
It seems to me (as a total non expert) that 4th generation nuclear technology should at least be given a fair chance to compete with other sustainable and CO2 free technologies.
#205 Dick Veldkamp:
That rebuttal is way too specific and factual, not vague enough. Remember, you’re not having a rational argument here; EL’s discussion is centered on nebulous fears and generalized anxiety about change of any kind. In order to engage, you ideally need to respond without citing any real world empirical data and preferably without any numbers at all.
205 – We are not talking about a supporting role anymore, but the replacement of fossil fuel technology with wind power. In other words, wind power to become the dominate method of energy generation. When your in Texas on a nice hot summers day, what are you going to do when wind power drops to 4% capacity with all those air conditioners running? You can’t just flip on the old nuclear reactor like a light switch. You have to have a second infrastructure in place to kick in with the other 96% of that power. When the wind blows… your going to have a infrastructure just sitting there… No matter how you want to tease the books… when you figure this in, it is expensive. Wind power is just not viable for a dominate role.
We need a solution that can play the dominate role in order to phase out fossil fuels. Until we find one, we are going to have fossil fuels burning. I hope for the best that wind power will at least knock the edge off the CO2 emissions; however, I wouldn’t hold my breath on replacing fossil fuels with this technology.
Re: #207
Jim,
You continue to act as if you haven’t read Part II of my analysis, in which I found that:
My results are right in line with Washington et al.
-Chip
“It has also been remarked that natural laws have no pity”
Paraphrased on bumper stickers as “Nature bats last”, which being a baseball fan, I much enjoy.
The paper by Washington and others that Jim Bouldin cites in #207 is available without subscription at
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/knuttir/papers/washington09grl.pdf
211 EL, the current fleet of power plants won’t magically disappear once renewable generation is built. Thus, the required backup is ALREADY THERE AND THERE IS NO NEED TO WORRY ABOUT IT.
This fish analogy fails in one important respect: fish caught is a positive indicator while CO2 emitted is a negative one. Suppose we add fish farms, which would be analogous to renewable energy. Now, the questions become more realistic.
Captcha says: opposing land
Chip (212):
Then why do you say there:
“If the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, Europe, and former Soviet countries all limited their emissions of greenhouse gases according to the schedule laid out under Waxman-Markey…it would, at most, avoid only a bit more than one-half of a °C of projected global warming (out of 4.5°C—or only about 10%).
Including what you quote in 212, then emission reductions by Central and South America, and Africa (the only remaining un-named areas), are responsible for 2.37 – (1.13 + 0.5) = 0.74 degrees of mitigated warming, or about 150% that from the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan combined? Is that right?
Chip, are you completely unfamiliar with China’s renewable energy law?
If you only get your news from a small number of national outlets, it’s not surprising that you wouldn’t have heard of it:
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/3874
Thus, I’m sure you are an advocate of replacing cap-and-trade with feed-in tariffs for renewables, yes?
Of course, cap-and-trade is just a cosmetic effort which gives the fossil fuel industry and politicians what they want: business-as-usual and the appearance of diligence in the public interest, respectively.
After all, wasn’t Duke Energy able to rewrite the law to their liking?
I don’t really see what the coal & oil industry is all upset about – you’ve got Interior Secretary Ken Salazar pushing for more oil drilling in California, as well as promoting the bogus ‘clean coal’ myth on the Daily Show the other night.
Similarly, the second-in-command at DOE, Steve Koonin, was BP’s chief scientist while they were getting into Canadian tar sand oil – yes, read his words in 2008:
Likewise, Chu himself has voiced support for ‘carbon capture’ and FutureGen, although there is no prototype and the entire concept is as implausible as a Ford SUV that captures its own emissions.
I don’t see what the fuss is – aren’t the coal and oil lobbies getting everything they wished for from this Administration, same as the last one? So, the Republicans have been abandoned by the fossil fuel lobby, who are now throwing all their weight behind coal-state Democrats – not really any different, is it? Or am I missing something?
I’m starting to be reminded of Bush’s ardent calls for a ‘hydrogen economy’ in 2003 – I don’t see any hydrogen cars, do you? Bush also called for clean coal and carbon sequestration, same as Ken Salazar. What I want to know is, what does Barak Obama have to say, and do his words match with his appointments and budget decisions? Or are all pronouncements on energy policy going to be fed out through people like David Chu, Ken Salazar and Steve Koonin? Is the promised ARPA-E energy program anything other than smoke and mirrors, or will they be providing billions per year in federal grants to renewable energy researchers at public and private universities, the way the NIH and the NSF do?
It doesn’t look too good for anyone but fossil fuel interests, does it? Now, Obama is threatening to slash California’s federal stimulus package over some silly labor dispute – and we actually will use the money to build renewables. I don’t see any massive stimulus package flowing to the leading electric vehicle manufacturer, either (which is Tesla) – but I do see the Republican governor giving a lot of support to electric vehicles. Obama gives $30 billion to GM, one of the worst climate offenders, and ignores Tesla’s wildly popular electric vehicles – is this for real?
If this kind of two-faced nonsense continues, California citizens should just start delivering 75% of their federal income taxes to the state, and tell Washington to keep their stimulus packages.
215 – The entire idea is to make the current fleet disappear. If the goal isn’t to make them disappear then what is the point? Quite frankly, we have to get rid of the fleet… it’s doing a lot of damage. It’s just not going to be done with wind power…
If I was one of the 50 worst fishermen, I would be looking for a new line of work or hope I live in a comunist society. If I can only catch 10% of the top fishermen, I’m not good enough to compete in a capitalistic society.
218 EL, NO, the entire idea is to reduce the USE of the current fleet by 80%.
After the worst 50 fisherman find a more rewarding line of work.are out of the picture, you have reduced the catch by 20% already.
Jim Bouldin, you forgot Asia.
>and CFLs will be replaced by low energy LEDs with better light, hopefully soon.
This replacement happens sooner if people don’t invest in ten-year CFLs in the meantime.
As a Mechanical engineer I have used computers to model systems since I graduated in 1963. I never lost sight of the fact that my predicted results were never better than the assumptions I had to make to simplify the problem so that it was solvable on the computers that I had available at the time. I guess that if you can delude yourself into believing that, with today’s computing power, you can predict the future climate then you can also believe that the world’s population will come together and solve the “climate commons” problem.
222 MikeN – true. It is better to invest each dollar you would have spent on CFLs on LEDs instead to promote the technology. Each year replace a bulb or two and help save the planet. LEDs last forever. CFLs suck.
Jim Bouldin, you forgot Asia
No, that’s included in the 1.129 value (see 212, from Chip’s Figure 5). However, I may have excluded Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
I have never gotten more than 1 to 2 years from CFL’s. My standard florescents last for years.
re: #223 Jim Norvell
Please read about models and why people over-generalize.
Quite often, people who have long used one class of computer models think that all models have the same properties.
They don’t.
Jim, yes Eastern Europe and Middle East is what’s missed. The first number is with OECD90, and the all in number includes REF, ALM, and ASIA. I do think there is one flaw in Chip’s paper, not his doing. The IPCC emissions scenarios show a dropoff in later decades for ‘developed’ countries.
Jim Bouldin #225 — According to the latest issue of POWER, India is planning an increase in coal-fired capacity in the range of 200 GW to 400 GW by 2030, up from the 77 GW today. Coal provides 52% of India’s electricity. India is a representative example of the other atmospheric commons users: they are desperate for more power.
http://www.powermag.com/issues/features/Powering-the-People-Indias-Capacity-Expansion-Plans_1858.html
For India, and China as well, capacity must be increased just to keep up with anticipated growth in the economy. If plug-in cars are added, the need for more coal power will explode. In terms of electricity use, per capita consumption was only 480 kWh in 2005 — a quarter of China’s and 1/20th that of developed countries.
EL has been patiently trying to bring some sense of scale and some technical realism to the discussion of wind power. The intermittency of wind and solar power can’t be ignored. One major reason that wind is not more widely deployed is that it is most abundant at night, and scarce on still hot days when you need it most. You can’t just switch on a coal or nuclear plant when the wind dies down — they take days to get up to speed. At night, there is already enough power in the “spinning reserve” of coal and nuclear to meet demand, so wind goes to waste. Please don’t give up, EL.
#223 Jim Norvell:
You’re more than a day late and more than a dollar short.
As a MechE, do you think you’re qualified to make important judgments and form sweeping conclusions about the state of the art of machine computation?
As a MechE, do you consider yourself qualified to critique the science of climate modeling and find it lacking?
As a MechE, do you you believe yourself qualified to insult people working in fields other than your own?
As a MechE, do you imagine anyone credits that being a MechE gives you any particular useful insight into this topic?
As a MechE, do you assume your omniscience to be sufficiently reliable that we can all rely on you as the first and only one of thousands repeating exactly the same dull, tired talking points who happens finally to be correct?
Sorry, friend, but we’re both working on a childishly low level compared to the proprietors of this site and indeed many of the folks who regularly post here. You’re going to have to try a lot harder, or at least read enough of the topic to understand that unsupported assertions of the sort you made are the lowest form of sediment found on RC.
SecularAnimist often claims that renewable-energy electricity generation is already competitive with fossil fuels, even without any type of pollution tax. Yet China, Britain and others continue to build coal-fired stations. Doesn’t seem to add up.
Re 212 Chip:
A major assumption underlying your conclusions is that US actions serve little if China & India (mainly) refuse to act. Strangely, a major reason China cites for not doing more on AGW is the lack of action from the Western nations and our double standards (Australia gets a swipe too).
China and India have more at stake from the consequences of climate change than the US, Australia, and indeed most Western nations. You as a climate scientist should know this. Both have huge populations within 1-2 metres of sea level and both have vast areas of productive agricultural land predicted to suffer as a result of higher temperatures and less rainfall.
Their incentive to act – once there is an end to the stone-walling and pig-headedness from the nations primarily responsible extra CO2 in the atmosphere at the moment – is enormous. To assume, as you implicitly do, that they will not contribute to emissions reductions is disingenuous, to say the very least.
173 Ike Solem
the tragedy of the commons is a piece of bogus 20th century economic handwaving aimed at justifying private ownership of everything under the sun,
It isn’t bogus handwaving, it refers to the often observed phenomenon of unowned resources being needlessly run down.
Like farmers grazing their cattle on common ground, who have no incentive to not overgraze, since if they hold back they risk other farmers overgrazing. Noone can stop anyone else overgrazing, since noone has property rights over the grazing.
and the classic example of this is those pundits who claim that only “privatization of the atmosphere” will save us
I must say I have never encountered any such pundits. Have you?
Consider the Easter Island case – the locals eventually cut down all the trees which they had used to build their deep-sea canoes
In all likelihood this was also a tragedy of the commons – nobody owned the trees.
[Response: It’s tempting to speculate how the Easter Islander’s managed (or didn’t) their resources, but there are many more ways that they could have got it all wrong – unpriced externalities related to erosion, warfare, etc. So while it is an example of a society collapsing, one can’t know the exact path it took. – gavin]
Re #226, cheap ones abound, they last no time. Good ones are more expensive. Capatalism always finds a way of making stuff cheap and crap.
Worrying about CFLs and LEDs is concentrating on trivia. You probably only burn 1-2 kWh per day on lighting. Depending on where you live, if you drive a car you are spending between 14 and 40 kWh on petrol, and maybe 30-40 on heating if you have cold winters. These are the areas to address.
#99 Theo Hopkins Says:
“The UK only produces 2% of global emissions. So there is no point in us in the UK doing anything – is there?”
If you divide the world in 50 parts, each part has 2%. Following your argumentation there would be no point for each part, i.e. the total world population, to do anything.
Jim Norvell
9 May 2009 at 9:30 PM
Then you must be the unluckiest man on the planet, having bought all duds out there.
I have a house full of CFL’s, and every single one of them is more than 5 years old, the majority more than 10 years old. I even have a 3 w bulb serving as a night light in the bedroom of my 12-year old son that was one of a pair I bought when he was 3. The first one blew out after 1,5 years, the other one has been burning since then every night for a total of 8 yrs * 365 days * 10 hrs ≈ 30.000 hrs.
Be careful when writing a reply, you might spill your coffee in your laptop ;-)
SecularAnimist
8 May 2009 at 3:02 PM
You should take the average capacity factor into consideration when making these kind of comparisons. That means you need ~3 GW of wind to replace 1 GW of coal (assuming you meant 27 new 1G coal-fired power plants, since 1 GW is a typical capacity for a coal plant).
Gavin,
It is becoming very clear that there is another post (or series) on how climate models work and how their results are interpreted, as well as how the models and results are validated. Denialists are talking as if all computer models are the same–confusing even dynamical and statistical modeling. They also seem to think that whatever the computer spits out is taken as Gospel writ in stone.
Perhaps a series of posts might discourage the use of such straw men.
#195: “The tragedy of the commons isn’t actually a tragedy of the commons – it’s a tragedy of the free-for-all. There are any number of ways to overcome the tragedy of the commons – from Mutually Assured Destruction, to consensual co-operation – (and in many societies around the world, the latter has worked for centuries to millenia), but the free market ain’t one of them.”
This is confused. The “free market” certainly pulls on the chain of destruction where resources are not owned or managed, and may, by introducing new technologies, even accelerate the destruction of commons and to the breakdown of communal systems. But broadly speaking, where there are adequately defined and protected “property rights”, the free market does not itself generate the destruction of commons.
And property rights, broadly speaking, are simply instituitions that societies have gradually developed to side-step tragedy of the commons situations.
#196 Tamino, I share your sentiments.
Many of those who profess to be interested in protecting “free market capitalism” really have no clue themselves as to how it works, and why it DOESN’T work in the case of environmental problems.
By likewise, many “environmentalists” have very little understanding of how and why markets can go wrong.
A little discussed aspect of the problem is that there is also a rather apparent tragedy of the GOVERNMENT commons, as governments both tend to do a poor job of managing assets and frequently end up either serving special deal to special interests or as public battlegrounds (since different people can`t simply do independent deals to accommodate their differing perspectives).
It`s the battle to influence and win favors from government that leads to partisanship (and “ludicrous rationalization”), which is often hijacked by special interests.
It`s not clear to me how much Chip Knappenberger understands markets, or understands how his posts provide cover for fossil fuel firms/investors who profit while shifting risks to all of us.
But there`s plenty all around. I note that even Jim Hansen strongly favors taxes over cap and trade bureaucracy and green pork.
227 I looked through some of his opinions.
“d) Models that are “wrong”, but very useful.”
All models are wrong, but some are useful. No model can be complete and consistent at the same time. If anyone tells you differently, they are very wrong.
[Response: You are thinking about a pure mathematical construct (cf. Godel) that isn’t quite the same as the models we are talking about in climate. Physical models are consistent, and strive to be complete (though still have some ways to go). There are no complete but inconsistent models in climate. – gavin]
He is correct that people take different views depending upon their background. Sometimes they are correct, and they may be expressing a side of the story you don’t normally see in another profession.
It reminds me of a joke.
A biologist, a physicist and a mathematician were sitting in a street cafe watching the crowd. Across the street they saw a man and a woman entering a building. Ten minutes later they reappeared together with a third person.
– They have multiplied, said the biologist.
– Oh no, an error in measurement, the physicist sighed.
– If exactly one person enters the building now, it will be empty again, the mathematician concluded.
I have read nearly all replies to this post and what some people realise, but not enough imo, is that humans base their decisions almost entirely on emotions. How much we like to flatter ourselves thinking we are rational life forms, when it comes to the point of choosing a or b, it is done on gut feeling and the logic is applied afterwards to justify that decision.
Imo the kind of reasoning that Chip Knappenberger stands for is: “We (the western world) must not do anything unless we can be sure they (the developing nations) will do their part as well” (justified afterwards by some numerical analysis that shows that doing something unilaterally would not make a difference).
That would make the developing nations feel like they are as responsible for the problem as we are. But they don’t feel that way, and with good reason I might say. Ignoring that feeling is a recipe for failure. No matter how much ‘scientific evidence’ and ‘economic analyses’ you throw at it, they will not be convinced. If we want to get the job done, we must get them on board. If we want to get them on board, we must convince them. If we want to convince them, we must deal with their emotions.
What they want to see is us admitting that it is a problem that we created. The only convincing way to do so is to start unilateral emission reductions. Then you can be sure they will do their share. Or can’t you be sure? You see, essentially it is a question of TRUST.
Wilmot McCutchen
10 May 2009 at 12:41 AM
I hope you don’t mind me doing some education too.
It is more accurate to call it ‘variability’ instead of ‘intermittancy’. The latter makes it sound as if one moment there is wind and the other moment there is not. Wind power fluctuates over time. Wind is not binary.
Variability does not equate to unpredictability. Wind can be predicted quite accurately on an hourly basis 1 day ahead. REISI (the German grid operator) does so routinely with an error of 6%. That gives them ample time for planning any necessary additional power. Also, the better complement for renewables are combined cycle gas turbines, not coal and nuclear.
And do not forget solar. Especially the solar thermal with molten salt storage variety that can easily follow demand and get you through those relatively calm summer periods.
I could easily turn that around: “At night, there is already enough wind power so the inflexible coal and nuclear power goes to waste”. In the energy industry, nuclear and coal are generally used as ‘baseload’ as their inflexible nature makes them hardly suitable for spinning reserve.
Night time surpluses do not need to go to waste, there is enough pumped hydro available around the world to deal with that. It is also not unrealistic to predict large amounts of electric vehicles charging overnight. And nobody is advocating 100% wind, so don’t make the error of discarding any energy source that can not on its own provide for 100% of our energy needs in todays world.
An interesting approach:
Contrast with:
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_extension_tragedy_commons.html
Extension of The Tragedy of the Commons
by Garrett Hardin, 1998, published by The American Association for the Advancement of Science
“… the weightiest mistake in my synthesizing paper was the omission of the modifying adjective “unmanaged.” In correcting this omission, one can generalize the practical conclusion in this way: “A ‘managed commons’ describes either so cia lism or the privatism of free enterprise. Either one may work; either one may fail: ‘The devil is in the details.’ But with an unmanaged commons, you can forget about the devil: As overuse of resources reduces carrying capacity, ruin is inevitable.” With this modification firmly in place, “The Tragedy of the Commons” is well tailored for further interdisciplinary syntheses.
A final word about interdisciplinary work–do not underestimate its difficulties. The more specialties we try to stitch together, the greater are our opportunities to make mistakes–and the more numerous are our willing critics. Science has been defined as a self-correcting system. In this struggle, our primary adversary should be “the nature of things.” As a matter of policy, we must not reply in kind to those critics who love to indulge in name-calling. (They are all too numerous in interdisciplinary undertakings.) But critics who, ignoring personalities, focus on the underlying nature of things are the true friends of science.”
————-
It’s sadly ironic that Hardin long ago answered most of the complaints and opinions and political rants posted in the comment thread above, correcting the misapprehensions people grab onto.
Read his summary, folks. He long ago spoke to the misunderstanding Ike and Tierney and everyone in between is demonstrating.
________
“A ‘managed commons’ describes either soc iali sm or the privatism of free enterprise. Either one may work; either one may fail: ‘The devil is in the details.’ But with an unmanaged commons, you can forget about the devil: As overuse of resources reduces carrying capacity, ruin is inevitable.” — Garrett Hardin
_________
Mangling of the word s oc i al i sm courtesy of the spam filter
In all likelihood this was also a tragedy of the commons – nobody owned the trees.
Ownership didn’t stop Maxxam from slaughtering the redwoods on the California coast as fast as they possibly could 25 years ago, or numerous companies from doing the same in the Great Lakes states 125 years ago, or same in the Pacific Northwest shortly after that, or…
Your propositions are ludicrous and have no basis in reality. Has nothing to do with “ownership” unless by that term you denote a shared sense of responsibility and right of influence (which you do not).
Anne van der Bom Says (10 May 2009 at 8:58):
“Also, the better complement for renewables are combined cycle gas turbines, not coal and nuclear.”
Err… Don’t those combined-cycle gas turbines generally run on natural gas? Isn’t natural gas a fossil fuel? So how does using them in combination with wind get to zero CO2?
“And do not forget solar. Especially the solar thermal with molten salt storage variety…”
Which can’t be built in sufficient numbers without causing unacceptable (to me, at least) environmental destruction?
“Night time surpluses do not need to go to waste, there is enough pumped hydro available around the world to deal with that.”
This is not the case. There is in fact very little pumped hydro storage, and few suitable sites. There’s also a large energy loss (15-30%) due to inefficiency. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
Phil Scadden Says (10 May 2009 at 4:26):
“Worrying about CFLs and LEDs is concentrating on trivia. You probably only burn 1-2 kWh per day on lighting.”
But as the saying goes, “many a mickle makes a muckle”. Add up all the little bits of saving, that can be done with little or no effort, and you get a respectable total. Here you can get better quality light, save money & time over the long term, and reduce energy use.
“Depending on where you live, if you drive a car you are spending between 14 and 40 kWh on petrol, and maybe 30-40 on heating if you have cold winters.”
Again, easy enough to reduce that. There’s at least a factor of 5 spread in energy efficiency even between current car models. At a rough estimate, I use about half your 14 KWh minimum, and when the Aptera & similar electric/hybrid models reach the market, that’ll be cut at least in half. Likewise with home heating: small investments on insulation &c can reduce your estimated energy use by quite a bit, while in much of the country solar heating could reduce use still further.
James wrote:
Where is the evidence to support your assertion that there are “many better choices” than concentrating solar thermal when it comes to environmental impacts?
Let me refer you to a study that I have cited before:
From Stanford University’s press release describing this study (emphasis added):
So, Jacobson’s quantitative, detailed study found that concentrating solar thermal was the second best solution after wind power, considering its overall impacts, including water, land use and wildlife.
By the way, Jacobson’s study found that nuclear power tied with coal (with carbon capture & sequestration) as the worst in their overall impact.
And as ClimateProgress notes:
So again, where is the evidence to support your assertion that “there are many better choices” than concentrating solar thermal?
Wilmot McCutchen wrote: “The intermittency of wind and solar power can’t be ignored.”
Anne van der Bom replied: “It is more accurate to call it ‘variability’ instead of ‘intermittancy’.”
Anne is correct that the accurate term is variability, and it has neither been ignored nor is it the huge problem that some commenters suggest.
Jacobson’s study also addressed this issue. From the Stanford press release:
The same applies to solar — and of course concentrating solar thermal with thermal storage is 24×7 baseload power.
Multiple studies in Germany and the USA have found that a diversified regional portfolio of renewable energy sources — wind, solar, geothermal, biomass — can produce 24×7 baseload power that is at least as reliable as coal or nuclear.