The Oxburgh report on the science done at the CRU has now been published and….. as in the first inquiry, they find no scientific misconduct, no impropriety and no tailoring of the results to a preconceived agenda, though they do suggest more statisticians should have been involved. They have also some choice words to describe the critics.
Carry on…
#1039 t_p_hamiton
Because it’s a convenient red herring to toss up into the air in front of eyes glazed over by luminance they can not comprehend.
Same as the it was warmer in the past and humans were not around. They just ignore the current relevance to infrastructure, population and resource potential.
It’s like selling snake oil cure all’s. No label so you believe it works or not based on the salesman’s ability to get you to believe.
—
A Climate Minute The Greenhouse Effect – History of Climate Science – Arctic Ice Melt
—
Our best chance for a better future ‘Fee & Dividend’
Understand the delay and costs of Cap and Trade
http://www.climatelobby.com/fee-and-dividend/
Sign the Petition!
http://www.climatelobby.com
Alan Miller may be referring to a recent paper at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7289/full/nature08955.html which claims to show that Archaean paleo-CO2 levels were not much different today, and instead they propose a substantially lower planetary albedo is responsible for offsetting the diminished sun. There’s a lot of reason to believe that this paper is mistaken, but it’s rather beside the point for this discussion. The concept itself is a theoretically plausible way to offset the diminished sun, although the Earth would have to be almost perfectly black in order to do so in a 70% of today’s solar constant world. The resultant effective temperature in such a world can be approximated within simple energy balance model as {1370 W/m2 * 0.7 * 0.25 *(1/sigma)}**1/4 = 255 K for a zero albedo planet, where sigma is the S-B constant. So it’s possible to get above freezing with a modern-day like greenhouse effect (again, this is not a very realistic scenario, and in fact the paper is quite naive for a variety of reasons, but it’s not a support for the “internal forcing” stuff). This extends from principles that are well established and found in almost every relevant climatology text which mandates that the basic boundary condition which constrains the global climate is the radiative balance at the top of the atmosphere. I can assure you that El Ninos were not offsetting the diminished sun, it had something to do with different efficiency by which shortwave radiation was absorbed by the Earth and by which longwave left the Earth. The idea of internally generated forcing mechanism for significant climate changes is “twaddle.”
That said, the fact is that climate change today and in the past can be understood, to first-order, by the standard radiative forcing and feedback concepts used in todays literature. And the past has loads to offer in supporting the idea that CO2 is the largest motivator of climate change on geologic timescales. And when we see giant climate changes, such as spikes in the del18O record in ocean sediments at the PETM, we usually see something like a big carbon excursion to go along with it. El Nino or the PDO did not cause the PETM.
re:1050
“And I really wonder what interest groups are funding them.”
Let me know when you find out. My house could use a new roof.
Re:998 and 1032. I think the fit of a curve to this is somewhat brave given the scatter. The OLR is expected to be more or less constant depending mostly on the albedo on the long term. I might hypothesize the dip at 360 ppm corresponds to the period in the early 90’s when Pinatubo might have influenced the albedo, and hence OLR. The dip is more clearly seen in the time series.
Frank Giger, if you think coal is just as free as wind and solar energy, then I suggest that you build a coal-fired power plant, and just call up Massey Energy and tell them to deliver your pulverized coal fuel for free. By the trainload. Every day. Forever.
If you don’t want to pay a utility for the services of converting free sunlight into electricity and distributing it over the grid, fine. Buy your own solar panels and install them. The payoff time on the infrastructure investment is a fraction of the 25-35 year useful lifetime of modern PV panels. For most of the lifetime of the solar panels, you will be paying NOTHING for your electricity.
Frank Giger wrote: “Coal may be dirty, but it’s actually less expensive to harvest per watt than the ‘free’ sun and wind …”
Sure it is … as long as you don’t count the cost to others who have to pay to clean up the “dirt” produced by your use of coal. Or the cost to others who suffer hideous health consequences from the “dirt” produced by your use of coal.
Sometimes it seems like the fundamental ethical principle of self-described “libertarians” is their insistence that other people should be forced to pay the cost of cleaning up their “dirt”.
oops, that’s E = MC^2.
“If you don’t want to pay a utility for the services of converting free sunlight into electricity and distributing it over the grid, fine. Buy your own solar panels and install them. The payoff time on the infrastructure investment is a fraction of the 25-35 year useful lifetime of modern PV panels. For most of the lifetime of the solar panels, you will be paying NOTHING for your electricity.”
As all the Internet kids say, O’Rly?
So you’re saying that solar panels are not only free, but are suitable everywhere. Wow.
There are costs to every form of electricity. None of them are free. Period. Even the solar panels are made from something, which means mining and refining are required – unless you have a photoelectric cell tree in your back yard.
It may be less polluting, but it isn’t free.
“Coal may be dirty, but it’s actually less expensive to harvest per watt than the ‘free’ sun and wind …”
Nope, wind cheaper than coal.
Frank Giger @1050:“Coal may be dirty, but it’s actually less expensive to harvest per watt than the “free” sun and wind”
Sure, as long as you don’t include all the external costs of mitigating the damage caused by mining and burning the coal.
But fortunately the era of being able to do that is rapidly drawing to a close.
Frank: “If one is willing to say solar and wind are “free” electricity sources…”
Except that no one has said that, which makes it a straw man.
You were saying something about being dishonest?
Nor has anyone said that the infrastructure needed to convert wind or sunlight or wave action into electricity and distribute that electricity is free.
What people have said is that the wind and sunlight are free, which they are.
Frank: “and a helluvalot more predictable and dependable in output.”</em"
The only valid point in your entire diatribe, and one that a lot of people are working on solutions to address.
@John Reisman (OSS Foundation)
The so-called “fee & dividend” method has serious flaws, just as does cap and trade. It is true that cap and trade didn’t even work for sulfur, despite the claims – all it did was redistribute sulfur from truck diesel fuel to ship bunker fuel – meaning that as sulfur emissions drop on trucking routes, they go up on shipping routes.
However, with “fee and dividend” the fossil fuel interests will simply raise the price of fossil fuels across the board and charge the public the difference.
By far the most successful methods for promoting a transition to a renewable energy economy are the Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) for utilities and utility investors, on one hand, and Feed-In Tariffs on the other.
An RPS is fairly straightforward – it states that utilities must develop plans that allow them to meet certain energy targets over a given time period – for example, eliminating coal and replacing it with solar over a ten year period. Private utilities that refuse to develop such plans, or which fail to meet their planned standard, lose their regional monopoly status and are financially penalized.
Feed-in tariffs are more complex and are designed to be phased out as the percentage of renewable energy generation increases.
1) Guaranteed grid access for all renewable energy producers.
2) Long-term contracts for the electricity produced from renewable sources.
3) Purchase prices that are methodologically based on the cost of renewable energy generation.
Germany’s feed-in program has been the most successful. The result is that renewable energy producers are guaranteed a minimum return on investment over ten to twenty year periods via adjustments to electricity rates. This means a utility must buy electricity from solar panels on your rooftop, for example.
This can lead to slightly higher prices for the end-use consumer, but it also means that price volatility is dampened (since manipulation of commodity markets is limited when sunlight is the energy source.) This could be seen in the Enron-rigged California energy crisis – only businesses and local utilities with significant solar or wind power avoided the price volatility.
I’ve tried to ask the leading promoters of the “fee and dividend” approach why they’re ignoring the most successful methods, such as the two EPA lawyers that posted a youtube video promoting this method:
No response, however – despite multiple emails. They also promote the “underground storage of clean coal emissions” – which is highly implausible at best. This seems rather strange to me.
The fossil fuel industry PR experts will say “you have to be for something” – but since RPS and feed-in tariffs will dramatically reduce fossil fuel sales, they may be looking for something to “be for” that will not effect the status quo – such as “fee-and-dividend.”
You have to wonder if fee-and-dividend is, like cap-and-trade, just the most recent effort at smoke-and-mirrors, aka bait-and-switch.
Alan (1022): Thank you for your recommendation that I read the occasional book. Perhaps you would like to list your educational background and achievements and we can then compare with my own to get some idea of the breadth and depth of our comparitive reading so far in our lives.
BPL: Okay. I have a degree in physics (Pitt ’83). I’ve been studying planetary astronomy since 1973. I was president of the Tripoli Science Association. I currently have a paper under peer review at Advances in Space Science.
Alan: Perhaps you ought to read more about the Archean period, whose sediments show no massive concentrations of greenhouse gases, yet maintained life and liquid water with the Sun’s output of only 70% of todays.
Perhaps you would like to quote the actual concentration of say atmospheric CO2 that would be required to make up for a reduction of 30% in the Sun’s output given that opinion states that a 2% change is equivalent to a doubling of atmospheric CO2.
I think you might find the calculated figure instructive!
BPL: Since I have been corresponding with Jim Kasting since 1989, I am more than familiar with the Faint Young Sun problem (Sagan and Mullen 1972). Assuming the present Earth reflectivity (bolometric Russell-Bond spherical albedo A = 0.306), Earth’s radiative equilibrium temperature with TSI = 0.7 x 1366.1 would have been Te = 233 K. To maintain the same surface temperature as today (Ts 288 K versus Te 254 K), given kc = 0.027 and partial optical thickness proportionate to the square root of partial pressure, then, given the same level of water vapor partial pressure and surface heating losses due to radiation, conduction, convection, and evapotranspiration–very unlikely, of course–it would have required 106 times more CO2 than today, or about 3,560 Pascals (about 3.5% of atmospheric pressure). To keep it just above the level at which water freezes, say, Ts = 274 K, it would have required 44 times as much as today, or 1,480 Pa (0.015 atmosphere).
Sam (1010) — While Knutti & Hegerl (2008) offer some conjectures, only albedo change seems to be mentioned as a equilibirum climate sensitivity (ECS) changer. Albedo isn’t going to change much any time soon. More interesting are constraints on the smaller values of climate sensitivity. The second link I provided you calculates a transisnt reponse, normalized to 2xCO2, of 2.28 K. I’ll claim, without going ito details here, that this provides a rather firm lower bound on the actual ECS despite the model not including an ocean heat uptake component. The reason is the millennial scale of deep ocean changes; a mere 13 decades are not enough to have made much difference yet (although I suppose the point is arguable).
In any case, I’m claiming that 2.28 K is a lower bound to ECS. From model computations of TCR (rather similar net forcing to last 13 decades) and ECS we know that, approximately, TCR/ECS = 2/3. Using that I estimated that ECS is around 3.3 K, but just use that as indicating the physics of the model is not overly simplified, not as an estimate of ECS, which is known to be about 3 K.
You might care to read again, more carefully and thoughtfully, the policy section of Knutti & Hegerl. Even 3 K will be very bad; see Mark Lynas’s “Six Degrees”.
Chris Colose (1052) — That paper looks ok to me, although not taking into account even more recent research indicating that the Terrean magnitosphere did not form until about 3.3 Gya. That suggest that before then Terra lost quite a bit of water and so possibly changing conclusions about earlier geochemistry, etc.
Kevin McKinney (1024), you raise some good points. I want to mitigate without totally refuting your albedo argument. Albedo, which measures reflectivity as opposed to emission/absorption is different — and considerably lower — at IR radiation than it is at visible wavelengths.
Septic Matthew,
Again, I think that you misunderstand me. My goal was not to “score points” or to attribute to you any advocacy of ID. Rather, my point was to illustrate that by invoking a “cause” that could explain anything (e.g. an almighty designer), ID makes it impossible to PREDICT anything. It is after all, predictive rather than explanatory that is the goal of science.
As to indeterminacy–the results from quantum mechanics so far are inconsistent with any sort of deterministic or hidden variables approach. What is more, it is difficult to understand how a theory of the micro-world could be completely deterministic. That’s an empirical rather than a theoretical conclusion.
What is more, the distinction between a “theory of anthropogenic climate change” and a general theory of climate is very important. Warming is a prediction of the latter that provides support for the general theory. What this means is that any theory that does not predict warming due to CO2 must account for all of Earth’s climate and have as much predictive power as the consensus theory. It is a rather higher hurdle to clear.
Well, it’s about time we saw this!
US research paper questions viability of carbon capture and storage, Guardian UK Sun Apr 25
In other news – Going directly from algae to oil, but skipping the 100 million year burial:
Pressure-cooking turns algae into biofuel (UPI) Apr 23, 2010
It was only a matter of time before science trumped propaganda! :)
BPL, 1061: Why concentrate on CO2 in the Archaen? Oxygen was nothing more than a trace gas in the atmosphere at that time, therefore wouldn’t methane have had a much longer residence time in the atmosphere than it has today? It is a very effective greenhouse gas. Other differences might be significant, too: for instance the continents were smaller in extent then, the seas would have been more extensive. The day was shorter and the Moon was closer so tidal warming might have been a factor, too. Then the heat from the Earths interior (and the resultant volcanicity) would have been greater as it originates from radioactive decay and there would have been greater quantities of radiogenic elements at that time, which have since decayed. It is probably a mistake to think of the Earth of Archaen times in the same terms as the present-day Earth. It was a different world. I guess the challenge is to envisage the consequences of the many differences.
Ike Solem (#1060),
Fee&Dividend is much more ambitious than the schemes you advocate. Fee&Dividend is not limited to utilities and is not contingent on renewable pipedreams actually working out but is simply designed to force emissions reductions across the board. It respects people’s freedom to make their own individual and collective choices. And it’s designed to be efficent (it relies on markets and there are no loopholes or ways to game this scheme) as well as politically workable (everyone can understand the scheme and determine what they have to gain and lose from its implementation).
The way Fee&Dividend works is indeed by raising prices. That’s the whole point: everything that has a carbon footprint becomes more and more expensive until carbon-neutral alternatives are put on the market and/or consumption drops.
The only way Fee&Dividend would not reduce fossil fuels sales is if consumption was insensitive to price. Surely you’re not suggesting that! Yet you suggest that Fee&Dividend would not reduce sales… why is that? Are you deliberately trying to fool those of us who have not thought it through?
You say Germany feed-in program has been a success but that’s not the case. From the point of view of the climate, it’s a failure: emissions have not dropped! By contrast, France’s nuclear program was extraordinarily successful and it wasn’t even designed to cut emissions.
Rod B. @1064, Well… not quite. Albedo is basically light-out over light in–all light. Yes it does measure reflectivity, but reflectivity depends on material. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflectivity
I believe albedo is integrated over the spectrum.
Rod B (#1064), thanks.
Your point about visible/vs IR albedo is noted, but I don’t think it affects my argument. (My point was that when albedo *for visible light* increases, less solar energy is available for re-emission as IR. Therefore, visible light albedo changes should drive changes in OLR to some degree.)
After I posted, it occurred to me that the annual cycle in OLR, which is quite visible in both Arctic and Antarctic graphs, must reflect (pun unintentional) not only albedo, but also the seasonal temperature changes as well.
1067–Give BPL a break, he was responding to an external forcing!
AC – While I pretty much agree with what you say, here in British Cloumbia the carbon tax/dividend has so far [only about a year+] not made a dent in the upward trend of emissions, and has generated a lot of opposition from the public and the farther left politicos – if the govt changes next election the carbon tax will likely be repealed :(
Ike says in 1060:
The so-called “fee & dividend” method has serious flaws, just as does cap and trade. It is true that cap and trade didn’t even work for sulfur, despite the claims – all it did was redistribute sulfur from truck diesel fuel to ship bunker fuel – meaning that as sulfur emissions drop on trucking routes, they go up on shipping routes.
That’s only partly true. Oil stopped being used for electrical generation and diesel fuel eventually dropped to lower sulfur levels. The high sulfur fuel was shifted to ocean transport, true.
The big deal that you’re overlooking is that the cap-and-trade also greatly lowered emissions from coal fired power plants. As one who has lived in the US Northeast during the whole time – downwind from lots of US coal fired generation – I can say it was very successful in reducing acid rain.
BPL in particular may wish to read
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2008/Lean_Rind.html
1065, Ray Ladbury.
That one’s ok, so long as we agree that I never wrote anything in support of ID.
#1060 Ike Solem
The comparison you present (on sulfur) is not a good one. The Fee & Dividend does not care where the fossil fuel is, it still gets applied. So it would not simply change routes, it simply increases the fee progressively so that fossil fuels become less and less sought after as prices increase.
The fact that fossil fuel companies might just raise prices runs into two problems. We are already in a challenging economy and just raising prices would further increase the likelihood that fossil fuels are less and less attractive.
As to the notion that telling corporations to develop plans has loopholes written all over it. Rules and legislative mechanisms are subject to the changing environment of an already politically corrupt reality by virtue of election cycle politics and state incentives, especially those that have lots of coal. Same goes with penalty plans, they can always get the equivalent of a pardon from local or state representatives if not federal based on the political winds.
We are heading into peak oil and it is very close based on refining capacity limitations. The temptation to rule in favor of fossil fuels are very high.
You mention the complexity of Feed-in tariffs, which I am not familiar with, but complexity in policy increases the odds of loophole production and potential.
While Germany might be able to employ a complex policy, I have less confidence that that can happen in America.
As far as I can tell, the Fee & Dividend is a simple mechanism by which to reduce the corruptibility aspect of policy while providing a means by which incentive changes between fossil fuels and renewable/sustainable energy.
Demand drops as prices rise, simultaneously providing incentive for the market system to develop efficient and effective solutions through innovation that is not subsidized.
To say Fee & Dividend will not change things though seems odd. A progressive fee that politicians can’t touch is nirvana for the people and while it may seem Pollyannic (I don’t think it is though, I think it is a most realistic plan), may or is likely the most effective way to produce non subsidized (efficient/effective) incentive to transition to renewable/sustainable energy.
In reality, we need a miracle. From my understanding of the political system ‘Fee & Dividend’ is the best, simplest, most effective mechanism to give us what we need.
I don’t understand how you can possibly interpret it as “smoke-and-mirrors” or “Bait-and-switch”.
#1068 Anonymous Coward
I just read your post and I think you said it better than I, or at least more succinctly.
—
A Climate Minute The Greenhouse Effect – History of Climate Science – Arctic Ice Melt
—
Our best chance for a better future ‘Fee & Dividend’
Understand the delay and costs of Cap and Trade
http://www.climatelobby.com/fee-and-dividend/
Sign the Petition!
http://www.climatelobby.com
Chris Colose #1052,
You make an interesting argument against internal or chaotic forcing. I think the problem with your reasoning though is that you are looking at variations on too long of a timescale (And of too great a magnitude). No one is claiming that internal chaotic forcing caused the ice ages for example. Milankovitch cycles fit them like a glove but some seem to have an insatiable desire to assign CO2 a role in that.
[Response: Don’t be an idiot. Assignments of a contribution (about 40%) to changes in greenhouse gases during the ice ages is not based on an ‘insatiable desire’, but simply the well known properties of greenhouse gases and the totality of the paleo-climate evidence. Indeed, what I detect instead is an insatiable desire among some people to continually diminish our knowledge of radiative physics because they can’t deal with the fact that there is a problem here. – gavin]
Also, what could have even theoretically lead to a drastic lowering of the planet’s albedo other then say the loss of ice cover — which is not something you would expect with 30% less solar radiation?
BPL #1018,
“Sam (1010): Could CS have zero predictive value?
BPL: Sure. It’s just that the chances against that being true are about a zillion to one.”
I think the only likely utility of the estimates of CS could possibly be in the values of the high and low extremes. These might represent what is even theoretically compatible with nature or what a balanced energy budget would even allow. To me whatever is in between is probably meaningless; again because I think that at the very least CS should be a formula or more appropriately a model that has inputs for many dynamic and static atmospheric and terrestrial conditions. It’s like trying to find THE single value for x in f(x)=x^2. (I know the example wasn’t necessary…) Only in this case instead of x being able to go infinity, it is limited by common sense to range from 0 – 10.
Also, is there anyone else who sees a strange similarity between Climate Sensitivity and the famous Cosmological constant? The question is though, will climate scientists one day be forced to admit that CS was their “greatest blunder” like Einstein once – perhaps wrongly – admitted to? I know this post is rambling btw, it’s Monday my brain isn’t quite working yet. (Throwing you a softball here Ray)
David B. Benson #1062,
I will honest and admit that the appartent solidness of the lower end estimates of CS are slightly worrying. I still think though that our climate is much more stable then we give it credit for. I’m sure it has faced much worse things then the gas guzling SUV and the private jet over the course of the last several billion years and yet somehow there still seems to be life on this planet…
[Response: And ‘life’ will continue in any case. However, I have a very partial preference for Homo sapiens over Periplaneta americana, YMMV. – gavin]
Brian Carter (1067),
All valid points, if only qualitatively. Methane may not help, since it would create a haze layer and an anti-greenhouse effect like that on Titan. I wasn’t trying to realistically portray the Archaean Earth; I was just trying to answer Alan Millar’s challenge.
Don’t worry; my science teacher new how to give my class a clear picture of what happened when the hacking occured – he showed us a news article relying on the most professional opinion possible; Christopher Mockton (thats sarcasm, for the record)
@John Reisman…
Fee and dividend is not so different from the cigarette tax and dividend program, is it?
It’s pretty simple – the government raised taxes on cigarettes, and the cigarette makers simply raised the price of their cigarettes, passing the costs on to the consumer. Nicotine addicts will pay more for cigarettes, and so the tobacco sector sees no change at all – and they’ve also managed to increase tobacco sales in developing countries with few legal restrictions. Fee-and-dividend will have the same result with fossil fuels – prices will go up, but no alternatives will be available.
Cap-and-trade, as noted, did nothing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. All that happened was that high sulfur coal was put aside, while low-sulfur coal was burned instead – there’s no coal shortage – and as I already pointed out, with diesel fuel the sulfur fraction simply ended up in the ship bunker fuel. As also repeatedly noted, the offsets (such as planting trees) are bogus when viewed from the carbon cycle perspective.
Hence, the best method is three fold:
1) Eliminate all fossil fuel subsidies, especially the billions pumped out through the DOE fossil fuel programs, as well as the billions pumped through various government bank agencies (Ex-Im, the World Bank, etc.), as well as the various other tax breaks, hidden or not.
2) Implement regional Renewable Portfolio Standards for all utilities.
3) Institute feed-in tariffs that guarantee renewable energy producers stable prices over ten-year periods, and which also ensure them access to the grid (currently blocked by many utilities).
With this kind of program in place, it’s pretty clear that the U.S. could eliminate all fossil fuel imports within a reasonable time span, while also getting off coal. There are no technological barriers – just political ones.
Unfortunately, the large cash flows involved in fossil fuel sales make it very easy to corrupt politicians, who then start serving those who control said cash flows, rather than serving the public interest. I’d say both Bush and Obama fall into that category – simply based on things like their DOE budget requests and their refusal to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies for everything from coal-to-gasoline plants to offshore oil drilling. If you follow the money and ignore the rhetoric, that’s what you’ll find.
It’s the same with press as it is with the politicians – look at the PBS NOVA distortions, if you don’t believe me – or the absolute refusal of the vast majority of the U.S. media to cover the Cochabamba climate conference.
It seems like a much bigger scandal than the CRU emails – doesn’t it?
Frank: “and a helluvalot more predictable and dependable in output.”
Uh, if it’s so predictable, please explain why there is the process called “Brown Out”? Please also explain how Denmark is a net exporter of energy to nuclear/coal powered neighbours if nuclear/coal is so predictable and dependable in output.
“So you’re saying that solar panels are not only free, but are suitable everywhere. Wow.”
Where aren’t solar panels suitable?
Do you think there’s a place where the sun shines not?
Wow.
Odd. Fox News is talking about the release of Goldman Sachs internal emails in a fraud by Wall Street and calling it a travesty. One commentator is worried that corporations will have to consider their internal private emails that could be embarrassing could be released.
Funny how where there’s absolute proof and there’s taxpayer money spent far FAR more than is spent on climate research (never mind AGW) in shoring up the fraud is considered so differently from Fox’s view on CRU…
flxible (#1072),
My understanding of the BC tax is that it wasn’t a proper Fee&Dividend. I would probably have voted against it.
Not only that, it’s way too low to be successful. But a serious Fee&Dividend would hardly be workable at the provinvial level anyway (assuming that BC is limited in what it can do as are states and provinces in other countries) so that’s understandable. It would be best if such a policy was devised in cooperation with the US actually.
John P. Reisman (#1076),
Maybe you’re not saying it because you figure it’s not politically correct but the main point of Fee&Dividend is not to reduce the opportunities for corruption but to make a serious carbon tax bearable or even beneficial to middle- and low-income households. A high Fee&Dividend would effectively be a negative income tax (the policy advocated by Milton Friedman). Moneyed interests would hate it. It’s kinda revolutionary…
Ric Merritt #1040 please don’t presume if you are new to this site that everything everyone knows has appeared in one thread. Sometimes the trolls aren’t worth answering in detail. The Oil Drum is interesting. I also recommend reading David MacKay’s Sustainable Energy — without the hot air (reviewed on my blog).
“Also, is there anyone else who sees a strange similarity between Climate Sensitivity and the famous Cosmological constant? ”
Strange? Yes.
Similarity? No.
CFU :”“Coal may be dirty, but it’s actually less expensive to harvest per watt than the ‘free’ sun and wind …”
Nope, wind cheaper than coal.”
You should tell it these idiot chinese people who build so many coal plants that the must now import coal ( http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2010-02/23/content_9490004.htm) , although they have plenty of unused and free wind in their country. Rather strange for people who don’t seem to be totally idiot in business…
“You should tell it these idiot chinese people who build so many ” renewable plants that they have overtaken the US in the production of renewable generation capacity.
Who’d a thunk it.
Gullible misses the reality.
Sam, how old are you? Like 12 years old? Again, have you ever taken a science class? Do you have any idea how science works? Do you at least admit that it does work–and spectacularly well?
You don’t even seem to understand what we mean by climate sensitivity. Your comparison with the cosmological constant is simply silly. Einstein was operating at a time when we simply did not have good data on galaxies, what and where they were, etc. To campare that to climate science, which has been progressing steadily for nearly 200 years is fatuous.
Ask yourself something, please: Why is it that you are so certain that the climate scientists are wrong? What lies behind that opinion. If it is a fear that we might see energy prices or taxes rise, then ask yourself again how that has any bearing on the aspect of physical reality that we call climate. Climate is what it is. We simply have to learn how to live in it without rendering it incompatible with our continued existence.
Now, I will suggest again: Why don’t you take some time and actually learn what has been done by scientists and what the models actually say? Start with Spencer Weart’s History. Because right now, what you are saying doesn’t even make sense.
#1089 CFU
Loooool do you think China’s growth come from coal or renwable energy ?
Damn do you have any idea of the orders of magnitude ?!
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/China/Electricity.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/China/Background.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electricity_production_in_China.PNG
Energy consumption : coal 70%, oil 20%, hydro 6%, nuclear 1%, renewables 0.06%
Electricity generation : 83% coal, 15% hydro, 2% nuclear.
Re: 546….very good points. Add one that is not talked about enough…too volatile I suppose…and that is that humans have yet to put the reins on continued population growth, which will make all human-based solutions moot unless our own numbers are restrained.
David Miller (1073), and what part did the legislated scrubbers have?
AC@1085 – Not sure just how the BC tax would be classed, but it’s claimed to be a tax on CO2e, supposed to be “revenue neutral” and is incremental. One of the reasons cited for it’s implementation was the need to get on with making emissions more expensive as the USA was obviously not going to ;)
I would think that applying to pretty much all emitting fuels burned in the province [where most electricity is hydro] could have a useful effect regionally. Any solution needs to come from the bottom up.
CFU (1083), spend much time in Seattle?? ;-)
CFU (1084), it’s one thing to hack into a system (bad as it is) yet a whole ‘nother thing for a Senator in his official capacity to release emails that he didn’t hack, but purposely released in violation of his own rules.
Rob B:
True. One’s a crime, the other isn’t. Does Rod B know which is which?
The current Congressional hearings are designed to immunize the suspects from prosecution. Noh drama. No substance.
“CFU (1084), it’s one thing to hack into a system”
Yes, hacking into a system is illegal.
Legal access to emails aren’t.
And you avoided the implied query: how come those emails aren’t public property anyway? All GS had to do was refuse government bailout.
“Loooool do you think China’s growth come from coal or renwable energy ?”
LOL you can’t refute the statement that China are the worlds biggest producers of renewable capacity, so you bring up an irrelevancy to produce a “Oh look! Monkies” moment.
ROFLMAO