The following editorial was published today by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors from more than 20 of the papers involved. Like The Guardian most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page.
RealClimate takes no formal position on the statements made in the editorial.
Copenhagen climate change conference: Fourteen days to seal history’s judgment on this generation
Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.
Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.
Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.
The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.
Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.
But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June’s UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: “We can go into extra time but we can’t afford a replay.”
At the deal’s heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.
Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.
Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world’s biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.
Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of “exported emissions” so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than “old Europe”, must not suffer more than their richer partners.
The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.
Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.
But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.
Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.
Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature”.
It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.
The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.
Re #364 Wind at least is cost effective versus natural gas, but not coal. So it currently is economic on the Coasts except the SE where coal is nearby. (it is interesting the difference in power costs across the us. Costs are said to be .05 in Kansas City, about .09 in parts of texas and .11 in other parts (depending upon if you get your power thru a municipal or private utility) and up to .20 on the costs. More in HI. So one should at least say that compared to the costs in some location wind and soon solar is or is not economic. A blanket statement overlooks the costs in the US. I suspect but have no information that the costs of electricity are higher in Europe, depending on the country.
This website actually invited comment on the editorial in 56 publications not ifr my hockey stick is bigger than yours. What about some scientific evaluation of the process in Copenhagen and if humanity has a chance achieving something there ?
At risk of opening the nuke debate up again I’ll make a few comments then (hopefully) leave it there. My problem with nuclear power is its potential for disaster. An accident at an oil refinery or coal plant doesn’t have the same instant potential to kill a large swath of the populace IMO. And at something like 500 plants worldwide (I don’t know the number exactly) that potential is amplified.
I know the nuclear zealots will come back and talk about the numbers of people who have died from lung cancer due to breathing pollution etc. but thats just not the same thing in my mind.
And can we really say that providing third world countries with nuclear power is a good idea, especially when at US plants, which are supposedly the best built in the world, there were (as of 2006) 200 “near misses” (that we know of)?
Another thing that bothers me is when those who work in the nuclear industry (and other industries) keep quite the hazards the local population encounters re: their industry. Look at Brookhaven for example or Rocky Flats, or Anniston Alabama (different industry). Hazards kept on the QT for decades by those who knew full well the risks they were putting people in. So I guess my problem is that knowing human nature and human history and what it’s hard for me to simply blindly trust people with nuclear power.
We happen to live ~10 miles from a nuke plant and I do worry about it. I remember about 15 years ago or so an article came out in the local paper about a potential major accident there that was averted at the last moment and which was only later discovered by this newspaper.
Then there is the issue of the lack of a long term plan about disposal of nuclear waste.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/press-center/reports4/an-american-chernobyl-nuclear
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_safety#Nuclear_accidents
http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/nukes/chernob/rep02.html
That said, if I believed that it was safe and the people running it could be trusted I would feel more comfortable with it.
#222: Any of these plans will have a cost, and no matter how much you want to gloss over it, that is the reason that politicians aren’t moving, because the cost is unbearable until the technology catches up.
#360: Every time you dis nuclear, you are working for the coal industry and shooting yourself in the foot.
Translated, don’t critisize nuclear power or we’ll call you an uneducated Luddite/corporate shill.
What the coal companies know that most people don’t: As long as you keep messing around with wind, solar, geothermal and wave power, the coal industry is safe. There is no way wind, solar, geothermal and wave power can replace coal, and they know it.
Alternative energies have been around for decades but the real scandal is the way the energy companies and their Republican pals in congress and the senate have thrown every stumbling block they can think of in the way of their development. Especially in the Bush administration. I used to have a collection of links on this but finally deleted them all. It simply has not been a level playing field.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/17/bush-cuts-alt-energy/
Alternative energy should be decentralized. http://tinyurl.com/y8hew28
tharanga – you are right – but that doesn’t matter a bit. What matters is the time ordering of the adjustments. If the time ordering is random – no problem. If the time ordering is, for example, such that the negative adjustments are predominately in the first half of the history, and the positive in the second half, then presto chango a trend appears. I have no reason to believe any particular time ordering, and I don’t claim there is anything nefarious going on. I’m just saying that the analysis as presented doesn’t mean much without a time ordered analysis. And looking at the distribution of adjustments cross-sectionally and through time is the sort of thing you would expect from an undergraduate paper….
Post #397 got me thinking in a somewhat tangential direction. One can often attach physical problems just in terms of energy balance so I often try to explain earth system warming to others simply from the measurements of solar radiation influx minus radiation out flux that roughly agrees with simple models. One would expect then measurement of the total earth energy to reflect this difference. While it is a “shame” that we don’t have enough quality measurements (atmosphere + oceans) to accurately determine energy balance, the CGMs don’t have that problem.
So my question is how much variability in total earth system energy is observed in the GCMs? Presumably with no change in external forcing (orbits, volcanoes, CO2 change, etc.) the total energy should be fairly constant, though that is not guaranteed. Variations in ocean surface temperature could lead to more, or less, blackbody radiative losses. How much less is model energy variation from what we can now measure? An how much less is that than variations we observe in forcing, such as solar, aerosols, etc. That could be a good target for justifying how much we should improve out measurements.
A related question I have is how accessible is all the phase space within the constraints of the model. For example it could be possible the models could be “attracted” to colder, or warmer states for long periods of time. Though, I suspect the decadal, or so, oscillations in ocean currents would lead to the models visiting most of accessible phase space without drifting off into and remaining in some corner of that space. The point being that the ocean current oscillations are on a faster timescale than the earth blackbody radiation equilibration time.
RE #401, are you also considering the heavy subsidies for coal? (Actually it was my Republican rep up north who admitted these subsidies.) And, of course, nuclear is off the subsidy charts. And don’t get me started on oil…but the end price also includes war costs….
That’s what we who are on 100% wind have to pay on April 15th — taxes for other people to dirty the planet with their dirty energy. I’m thinking of starting my own “tea party”!
RE Skip Smith
Skip, please go to section 2.3.2.1 “Palaeoclimate proxy indicators” of the TAR and read the section on tree rings. The authors start the second paragraph by noting the caveats that must be considered when using tree rings as temperature proxies. Each factor gets a sentence and citation; the “divergence” gets as much attention as the other issues. As Gavin noted somewhere, the TAR, like any review document, does not go into excruciating detail to describe every document that is cited.
Ron R. (403) — I suggest taking all that over to
http://bravenewclimate.com/
where such comments will be more welcome.
Tony (404) — Early drift-off problems and the resolution is briefly mentioned in “The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart, first link in the “Science Links” section of the sidebar.
Ron R, you can postulate a “potential” for disaster in any endeavor you can name. Nuclear has been historically very safe, but of course it’s POSSIBLE that hypothetically something bad can happen. But the problem is that nobody will ever decisively win a debate on which energy source is safer or more risky, except with 20/20 hindsight. Just as nobody can decisively conclude ultimately how dangerous any global warming will actually be, since it’s all just probabilities and predictions. The fact is: life is inherently risky, and it always will be. If you think we can erase risk, you’re dreaming. But what I find really strange is how folks are so concerned about the RISKS of a bunch of people dying from a nuclear accident, or dying from lung disease from coal dust, or from a 10 foot rise in sea level in 50 years, but I don’t see folks focusing on the stuff that’s killing millions of people on this planet right now with 100% certainty. Entire countries are living at a sub-poverty level, and as a result millions have been dying for years of disease and hunger, and here we are talking about spending zillions of $$ to mitigate the possible RISKS of global warming, while if we invested the same money in helping other nations improve their living standards we’d probably save far more lives. It’s just strange.
Well, this looks like a familiar pattern:
> Sunday, December 6, 2009
> Kevan Hashemi said…
> I read the Wegman Report last night, and I think I now understand….
Followed by
> There is a time an a place to suspect a group of scientists of deception
> and fraud. This one of those times, and climate scientists are the group.
> December 8, 2009 8:13 AM
Quick study. Who is the “we”/”us” at your blog — others from the Brandeis High Energy Physics Department?
I gather from others’ comments that you’ve already met Tamino and dismissed him.
Here’s an analysis of the adjustment through time done by Roman M. It appears I was correct about the time variability. I would be interested in any insight into some of this. A few apologies would also be nice.
http://statpad.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/ghcn-and-adjustment-trends/#comment-68
Has anyone seen DOE’s Climate Change page? It was there Dec. 3rd:
http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:bnzJyETfXRoJ:www.energy.gov/sciencetech/climatechange.htm+high+energy+physics+climate&cd=4
But it doesn’t show up now (note it’s no longer shown in the left sidebar list on the current page either):
http://www.energy.gov/sciencetech/climatechange.htm
Oh wait — it’s not under ‘Science and Technology’ but there’s a page under ‘Environment’ that looks about the same, found by the site search. Maybe it moved?
http://www.energy.gov/environment/climatechange.htm
I just wanted to point out that the claim that wind is not economic depends greatly on where in the country you are. How if wind is so hopelessly uneconomic can there b 8.9 gw of wind capacity in Tx when the most that can be handled by the grid is 5 gw. and according to the mins of the ERCOT board of directors something like 70 gw of permits being sought to connect wind farms. Note the new wind farm in OR for Ca, again because much of the thermal power in CA is gas based. Also the new proposed power hub for Clovis,NM connecting the 3 US grids is driven by wind power. Coal may well be subsidized but the subsidy does not show up in the price of power which is all people care about.
Timothy #400: Thank you for your explanation. I hope you won’t mind me adding a link to your comment on my site. I can’t remember why I called that graph the Hockey Stick, because it isn’t. Strange though it may seem to you, the process you describe does qualify as data massage in my field (high energy physics). The calibration process you describe guarantees that the proxies agree in the past fifty years. Therefore, their agreement has no significance, and any plot that shows the agreement would be misleading. When we calibrate things, we do it with independent measurements. If we wanted to measure temperature with tree rings, my guess is that we’d dedicate fifty years to growing trees in a bunch of different controlled conditions in order to calibrate our method. After that we’d go around and cut down a bunch of trees all over the world and produce our measurements. If our results disagreed with global surface stations we would not re-calibrate our method to match the surface stations. We might, however, start looking for errors in our methodology, which is where we, too, would be in danger of massaging our data.
Gavin #397: If I understand your response correctly, you confirm what I thought must be the case: we have no empirical basis for gauging the inherent variability of our climate.
403 Ron R: Your fear comes from your ignorance. My statements do NOT need DISinterpretation. What you need is a degree in physics or nuclear engineering so that you could understand that my statements are correct as stated.
Why a Nuclear Powerplant CAN NOT Explode like a Nuclear Bomb:
Bombs are completely different from reactors. There is nothing similar about them except that they both need fissile materials. But they need DIFFERENT fissile materials and they use them very differently.
A nuclear bomb “compresses” pure or nearly pure fissile material into a small space. The fissile material is either the uranium isotope 235 or plutonium. They are the reduced bright shiny metals, not metal oxide. If it is uranium, it is at least 90% uranium 235 and 10% or less uranium 238. These fissile materials are metals and very difficult to compress. Because they are difficult to compress, a high explosive [high speed explosive] is required to compress them. Pieces of the fissile material have to slam into each other hard for the nuclear reactions to take place.
A nuclear reactor, such as the ones used for power generation, does not have any pure fissile material. The fuel may be 0.7% to 8% uranium oxide 235 mixed with uranium 238 oxide [uranium rust]. A mixture of 0.7% to 8% uranium 235 rust mixed with uranium 238 rust cannot be made to explode no matter how hard you try. A small amount of plutonium oxide mixed in with the uranium oxide can not change this. Reactor fuel still cannot be made to explode like a nuclear bomb no matter how hard you try. There has never been a nuclear explosion in a reactor and there never will be. [Pure reduced metallic uranium and plutonium are flammable, but a fire isn’t an explosion.] The fuel is further diluted by being divided and sealed into many small steel capsules. The capsules are usually contained in steel tubes. The fuel is further diluted by the need for coolant to flow around the capsules and through the core so that heat can be transported to a place where heat energy can be converted to electrical energy. A reactor does not contain any high speed [or any other speed] chemical explosive as a bomb must have. A reactor does not have any explosive materials at all.
As is obvious from the above descriptions, there is no possible way that a reactor could ever explode like a nuclear bomb. Reactors and bombs are very different. Reactors and bombs are really not even related to each other.
Reccomendation: Nuclear power is the safest kind and it just got safer. Convert all coal-fired power plants to nuclear ASAP. See the December 2005 issue of Scientific American article on a new type of nuclear reactor that consumes the nuclear “waste” as fuel.
Coal kills 24000 Americans and 1 Million Chinese every year. You don’t recognize most of the deaths because they are slow deaths due to pollution.
Hank Roberts says 12 December 2009 at 8:25 PM
You’ve found yet another leopard with context-dependent spots, looks like. Why would somebody imagine that they can fling accusations like that in one locale, move to another, assume a reasonable persona and get away with it?
The field-dropping gambit always makes me snicker, too. “In my field…” followed by something hopefully impressive to the rest of us louts. If an idea is valid, it’s really not necessary to lard it up; a janitor with demonstrated skills in differential calculus should not find it useful to mention his occupation, nor should anybody else.
409 Jim M: We recognize the problems of overpopulation, undereducation, maladaptive culture and inappropriate development. What we are worried about here is a much bigger problem: EXTINCTION of Homo Sapiens. Even a .0000001% probability of extinction is WAY too much risk. Extinction is an INFINITE cost. Global Warming has, this is a guess on my part, a 50% chance of causing the extinction of the human race. We MUST deal with that risk BEFORE we deal with anything else. Nobody other than ourselves can save us. There is no other threat of extinction that poses a greater risk. Working on anything other than global warming is a waste of time in comparison.
Reference: “Population politics: the choices that shape our future”
by Virginia Abernethy, New York : Insight Books, ©1993. xix,
350 p. : ill. Library of Congress call number: HB883.5 .A23
1993.
Family subsidies only cause more poverty, April 11, 1998
[downloaded from Amazon]
Reviewer: defor@ibm.net (Colorado, USA) -This book supports
the arguments economic conservatives have intuitively had
against altruistic international welfare schemes – they
only encourage more irresponsibility, even larger families in
already impoverished lands, and only encourage immigration to
welfare states such as the United States and Western Europe —
spreading the misery of low wages due to oversupply of farm and
blue collar labor
The beneficiaries of foreign food aid are General Grain, ADM,
Cargill Inc. etc. It is poor Americans giving even more of their
money to the rich owners of those companies. Virginia
Abernethy did some RESEARCH and found out that if we help
them, they have EVEN MORE children they can’t feed in hopes
that at least one will be able to sneak into the US. Foreign aid
ADDS to the suffering.
Kevan wrote in 415:
Kevan, the post that I quoted from at your site is now gone — although I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it is back there tomorrow. That and your “misunderstanding” of the difference between calibration and verification periods in the use of PCA for temperature reconstruction, “misunderstanding” of the difference between instrumental temperatures and temperature reconstructions, etc.. strongly suggests to me that you are into mind-games.
I don’t have time for that right now. Not sure what my tolerance for that sort of thing would be even if I did have the time, and as I see it, the stakes are just a little too high (e.g., the water supply for more than a billion people who depend upon glaciers in the Himalayas, nearly all US agriculture by the end of this century) for treating global warming as some sort of troll game.
All this fuss over the GHCN temperature series homogeneity adjustments is very odd. The first thing I observe is that nearly all those commenting at Giorgio’s site have failed to do their homework, and their comments are painful to read. Many don’t seem to grasp even what data is being discussed.
I have read the paper describing exactly how the dataset was adjusted, and they use a statistical method to detect discontinuities, not metadata. While technically complicated, the basic approach seems straightforward and non-deceptive. Therefore, all this meta-analysis seems like a tautology.
But Mesa’s concerns aren’t based on logic, or the question of whether the adjustments are significant – his concerns appear to be based on the assumption that there is a vast conspiracy to falsify the adjustments in such a way as to create, increase or preserve a global warming signal. Giorgio’s analysis doesn’t address that directly, instead trying to show how ridiculous it is. Despite Eric heralding the analysis as “simple and therefore brilliant”, clearly it isn’t simple enough for deniers to grasp the key point, or in-depth enough to answer all the piffling minutia that the more clueful deniers like to worry about.
Given this, I await Eric’s promised post with interest. Can he make it obvious enough, without missing the point?
Thinking about this more, I think the most important answer to Mesa’s complaints is that we don’t expect the adjustments to be distributed evenly temporally. Petersen and Vose say: “There are many causes for the discontinuities, including changes in instruments, shelters, the environment around the shelter, the location of the station, the time of observation, and the method used to calculate mean temperature.” Clearly, many of these changes will affect many stations, and will result in increasing or decreasing adjustments as these changes are introduced over time (as new shelters are deployed, for example).
Ron R. said:
This made me laugh! Most US reactors are very old, and you haven’t built a new one in over 10 years. The paranoid regulations you have in place now mean that new reactors should be the safest in the world, but these regulations don’t apply to existing reactors. Therefore, your ageing reactors are likely to experience the occasional minor but embarrassing accident.
There are two points to remember: The design of modern nuclear reactors make a Chernobyl-style accident impossible. This means that the impact of even the most severe nuclear accident cannot be anything like the apocalypse that the doom-merchants would have you believe. Yes, in an extreme event, people would die. But nowhere near the numbers that are sometimes quoted – and extreme events are rare. The risk is calculated as being so small that I have no way to conceptualise it. Second, even in the case of a large release of radioactive material, the US is prepared with potassium iodide so there shouldn’t be excess thyroid cancers.
I find the list of nuclear accidents more comforting than threatening. In each case, there were multiple failures of design and operation. New designs have never (and often can never) experience similar problems.
Of course, it is up to all of us to insist on proper independent inspection and regulation.
EG: Every time you argue in favor of wind, solar, geothermal and wave power, or against nuclear, King Coal is happy.
BPL: Coal doesn’t want any of the above to succeed. To say coal companies favor renewables is just stupid.
Did: We know nuclear is cheaper than renewable energy, and even marginally cheaper than coal.
BPL: Price of electricity in California: Wind, 9 cents per kilowatt-hour. Coal, 10 cents. Nuclear, 15 centers.
JimM: nuclear is the only really responsible and viable primary generation source if you really want to reduce greenhouse emissions and reliance on coal and oil
BPL: Garbage. 42% of new electrical capacity installed in the US last year was wind. Denmark gets 20% of its energy from wind and plans to increase it to 50% by 2020. Solar thermal plants with excess heat stored in molten salts are achieving on-line time as good as coal-fired power plants.
two-fingered, you’ve just displayed the psycological problem if schizophrenia.
Argument 1: Nuclear is cheap and really safe and as proof, we have all these nuclear power stations that haven’t killed
Argument 2: We need the new safer (unmentioned: unproven) designs rather than those old inefficient ones to realise how cheap and safe nuclear is
#2 nukes (pardon the pun) #1.
But you don’t realise.
Theo: the developed nations are asking the developing nations to limit their development.
BPL: NO, they are NOT. They’re asking them to limit their use of fossil fuels. That is NOT the same as asking them to limit their development. There are other power sources available.
Mesa, you can prove your charge easily–just break the measurements in half at the halfway point and run the analysis again. If you get left-skew in one half and right-skew in the other, your point is proved, there’s no global warming, and we can all buy Hummers.
I tried posting my (long and fatality-filled) list of nuclear accidents, but it got flagged as spam. I’m going to put it up as a web page.
Ron R. writes
Of course it has no such potential, and of course the regulators of whom we must demand vigilance are, many of them, permanently stationed on site, and vigilance can reasonably therefore be expected of them.
I thought I’d delay a while and see if any of the nuclear opponents here would show their quality by correcting Ron R. on this basic point. Surely not every falsehood that benefits governments’ natural gas income is sacred?
Ron R., can you see in this page’s second, small photo, under the title “Lonnie Power to the Poles!”, a suggestion that people who live by saying, or at least insinuating, that nuclear reactors are not safe, act as if they knew this to be a lie?
(How fire can be domesticated)
When participants in discussions of matters of this kind leap to declare their “believer”/”denier” allegiances then pretend to conduct scientific discourse, precious little real science is practiced and scant trace of the scientific method is in evidence. The actions of those who are primarily driven to prevail run counter to good science. Debate is no substitute for thoughtful constructive collaboration.
Believer/Denier? A scientist would never put himself in either camp – ever.
Okay, it’s up:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/NukeAccidents.html
If anyone has any information or corrections I can add, please let me know.
Thank you to all those who have read my quick analysis on the blog and thanks Eric for link and future post. I am looking forward to read more here, Eric.
I find what Didactylos #420 say a very good view but I’d like to add two things (maybe a bit more optimistic). The main goal of that little post was to show to the people at blogoshpere that they were barking at the wrong tree. If the point is to find overall bias, one should look at the big picture. I believe this message has come across and I hope that
some of the sceptics understood that now.
Ed Every says, “Believer/Denier? A scientist would never put himself in either camp – ever.”
No, a scientist would allign him or herself with the evidence, which is what the climate scientists–more than 90% of whom agree that we are warming the planet–have done. The evidence is undeniable–which is why the anti-science side in this debate are termed denialists.
Timothy #419: Which post is gone? I have been correcting the errors in my Climate Analysis page, as pointed out by you and others. That page is not a fixed document, but an evolving one. But I did not remove any sections, and I certainly did not mean to remove any posts or comments from my blog. I will correct any such removal if only you would be so kind as to point it out, and regret any confusion I may have caused by modifying the text of my climate discussion.
Didactylos:
You wrote that my concerns about Giorgio’s analysis were “based on the assumption that there is a vast conspiracy to falsify the adjustments in such a way as to create, increase or preserve a global warming sign..”
I challenge you to find any statement resembling that in my posts, or one attributing any motivations to anyone at all. If you can’t, then please post a retraction for your obnoxious comments. What I did say is that the total distribution didn’t say anything about the temporal pattern, that the pattern might not be random or trivial, and that Giorgio’s analysis didn’t mean very much. I was right. The other posters including the moderators were wrong.
I haven’t said anything about whether the adjustments are “right” or “wrong”, just that they should be understood. I have absolutely no idea. They may well be perfectly correct and justifiable. We will see.
And I think this little example shows you why people like me, with scientific backgrounds, don’t get a very comfortable feeling from the degree of introspection and rigor of the climate science community.
And thanks again to Roman M for doing the temporal analysis of Giorgio’s graph.
For those holding up France as a model for nuclear power development, do you know that France was forced to shut down up to 1/3 of their nuclear power plants during the heat waves of 2003 and 2005? Do you know that in order to maintain at least adequate levels of power, the French government allowed the plant operators to discharge water in excess of 25 C, causing extensive damage river ecosystems? Do you know that Areva is years behind schedule and billions over budget on new plants in both Finland and France?
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/the-guardians-editorial/comment-page-8/#comment-148690
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/the-guardians-editorial/comment-page-8/#comment-148737
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/the-guardians-editorial/comment-page-9/#comment-148779
Kevan Hashemi removes without explanation, rather than explaining.
Not a game worth playing. http://www.pbfcomics.com/archive_b/PBF216-Thwack_Ye_Mole.jpg
Hank #417: Mentioning the field I work in is, in my opinion, entirely appropriate. Lawyers are not expected to present evidence that compromises their argument. Indeed, a lawyer who argues against his own client is going to get fired. In physics, quite the opposite is the case. A physicist who hides evidence that contradicts his theory is going to lose his funding. I don’t know what the standards are in climatology, but it’s clear that Gavin other climatologists see nothing wrong with curtailing the Briffa graph when it conflicts with their faith in the surface temperature record. The standards in law, climatology, and physics are different. Researchers in each field must be judged by their own standards. My climate page is for physicists, engineers, and computer scientists. My definition of data massage is appropriate for those fields. It may not be appropriate for climatology, and it’s certainly not appropriate for legal work.
Edward Greisch #416 said: Why a Nuclear Powerplant CAN NOT Explode like a Nuclear Bomb … As is obvious from the above descriptions, there is no possible way that a reactor could ever explode like a nuclear bomb. Reactors and bombs are very different. Reactors and bombs are really not even related to each other.
First I did not say that a nuke plant “can explode like a nuclear bomb”, (though explosions have occurred) so you’re arguing a strawman. I am refering to the possibility of meltdown. Second, take a look at the following sites:
http://www.chernobyl.info/index.php?userhash=&navID=10&lID=2
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/chernobylforumclosingday
Even the NRC says that Chernobyl exploded. Perhaps you’d like to clarify your statement.
Didactylos #421 said: The paranoid regulations you have in place thanks to these “paranoid regulations” we’ve not had more accidents then we have.
even in the case of a large release of radioactive material, the US is prepared with potassium iodide so there shouldn’t be excess thyroid cancers
According to the “2010 Important Emergency Information” booklet we recently received in the mail from our local nuke plant we live in an area that is eligible to receive a free packet (two doses) of KI. Wheee! That’s certainly a relief! To receive it we must submit a voucher which says that “we understand that”, “KI protects only the thyroid gland from only radioactive iodine. In a radiological release, I would be vulnerable to possible exposure to other potentially dangerous forms of radiation”.
Nuclear bullies, hoping to capitalize on the climate change, trashing their opponents in a way that does not speak of honesty. If you are honest you wil acknolwledge the shortcomings.
G.R.L. Cowan, by “instant” I did not mean that people would fall down dead on the spot, though some would die within hours as happened at Chernobyl. No, the rest would get cancer and die. BTW, I’m not getting your point re: the photo.
By the way, the zealots are not even mentioning the risks from terrorist attacks on plants. OBL has, in fact, made just such a threat. Additionally I wonder what would have happened to nuke plants if the economic meltdown that we hear was close to being total if not for the bailout had occurred. Let’s just say that everything suddenly fell apart. What would happen to these plants?
BPL: Price of electricity in California: Wind, 9 cents per kilowatt-hour. Coal, 10 cents. Nuclear, 15 centers.
I did point out that my figures were global, not local. Subsidies in the US distort the market considerably. What is your source for these numbers? I have never seen wind this cheap.
Completely Fed Up waffled:
The world is larger than the US. Considerably larger. *sigh*
Newer designs are deployed routinely around the world, with great success. Since the US stopped building reactors, development has continued with generation III and generation III+ reactors, many of which have been built. Generation IV reactors are still being researched.
Now please try to avoid being rude. I have little time for rude people.
BPL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents
Nuclear accidents are scrutinised possibly more closely than any other industry in the world. Since Chernobyl, there have been 9 accidents, and only a handful of people have died.
More people die every year in coal mines.
The most severe nuclear accident since Chernobyl did not involve a reactor at all, it was caused by a medical radiation source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
BPL, you talk a good deal of sense on every other subject I have heard you touch on. I am confident your sense of proportion will return if you step back a little.
Oh, I almost missed these comments in the same post:
#421: The paranoid regulations you have in place … Of course, it is up to all of us to insist on proper independent inspection and regulation.
Make up your mind :-)
BPL:
I just noticed your own list. I see you have included military accidents as well as civilian accidents (which is insupportable when discussing civilian nuclear power). Even if we allow this inflation, you only have 98 confirmed deaths since 1944. That’s less than 2 per year.
I don’t think that you were trying to make the point that nuclear power is incredibly safe, but that’s the conclusion I see.
> Kevan Hashemi says: 13 December 2009 at 11:13 AM
> Hank #417:
Wrong. I didn’t write #417; Doug did.
He started by referring to an earlier post I made; the comment at 417 is his.
Kevan Hashemi, I challenged you above to point to the data behind your claims you had based on the chart you had up on your blog. Instead you removed the picture. Now you add other claims about data being fudged, again with no cite, and here you assert “curtailing the Briffa graph when it conflicts with their faith in the surface temperature record.”
I’d try to say something encouraging, but I fear you are have shown us the best you can do.
Didactylos – I’m aware that Chernobyl was a bad design with bad management. Although we have some problems with oversight of what might otherwise be safer nuclear power in the U.S. But anyway …
How about comparisons of nuclear, solar, wind, etc. Maybe, including potential advances in nuclear power (Th fuel cycles?), they’re all far far far better than coal. But there there is an issue with implementation time with nuclear power (the opportunity cost), which doesn’t preclude nuclear power in long-term plans but suggests boosting solar and wind power in the near term would be quite helpful.
Ron R:
Not really. I am talking about regulations introduced since the US stopped building reactors – regulations that do not apply to existing reactors, but that have stifled the building of new reactors. Such regulations that already apply to existing reactors have, as you so eloquently observe, proved sufficient. I don’t think there has been a single direct fatality from a civilian nuclear accident in the US. Any other industry would kill to have such an amazing safety record!
That’s just to placate paranoid people. In the event of an actual release, medication would be distributed. No doubt you can find documentation for your local emergency service plans, or the FEMA plans, or wherever they are hidden away.
Even if a meltdown were somehow induced, the design of all modern reactors precludes a severe runaway reaction. Even if the largest possible explosion were somehow generated, the containment building should remain mostly intact. Lessons were learned from Chernobyl. Nobody has yet come up with a plausible way in which a similar accident could occur again.
Mesa, Just one little teency weency problem with your buddy Roman M’s allegations of “hiding the decline”. There are two datasets based on satellite measurement that show temperature increases commensurate with the terrestrial-based estimates. The satellite datasets are 100% independent of the GHCN data or adjustments.
Oops! Another teency weency little problem–there’s all the pesky phenological data and all the ice melt data showing that the planet is warming.
It would appear that you still have the strategy of sticking your fingers in your ear and repeating incessantly “La-la-la-la, I can’t hear you, la-la-la-la…” How’s that working out for you?