BPL: Probably because it’s a social science, not a physical science. The observations, however, that supply generally rises with price, demand falls with price, and pricing is determined by marginal utility, are all backed by enormous amounts of evidence.
K: Can you tell me, do they use digits in addition and subtraction? Inquiring minds…
BPL: …Don’t include yours, obviously. You can’t answer a valid point by replying with nonsense. Well, you can, of course, but it just makes you look even more foolish than before.
Just FWIW, I think Steve Fish’s comment at #96 is pretty insightful: “…how one chooses to live can change radically.”
Social change is hard, and maximally so on a global scale. But ‘hard’ isn’t impossible, and humans, for all our perversity, are neither lemmings nor sheep.
siddsays
My inner physicist is always impressed by a straight line over seven orders of magnitude as in Fig 1b. I always suspected there was a power law lurking in timescales and rates of change, but Kemp et al. have actually done the hard work. Now all i want is someone to do this for sea level rise …
Storage capacity is limited by physics and chemistry. So go to school and study physics and chemistry. After you have a degree in physics or chemistry, it will be worth repeating what I have told you before.
Yes Mr. Greisch, you’ve told all of us that many times. FWIW, I have three degrees, two of them in the natural sciences, so I have some grasp of the basics of physics and chemistry, thank you. It would be futile to explain to you why the transition to a carbon-neutral society is an economic and political problem, not a technical one, so I’ll leave off the attempt.
If this is meant to refer to the Wright and Schaller paper, I understand that is likely to have been a misinterpretation of the drilling layers, as Pearson and Thomas showed at the start of this year.
zebrasays
Edward Greisch at 93,
Storage capacity is limited by physics and chemistry…
The reference you gave is pretty weak. Physics and chemistry tell us that we could, today, create a house that provides all the necessary utility using “intermittent” sources of electricity. It is much more a problem of economic/political forces– not market forces, because we don’t have a free market in energy in general, much less electricity– than technology.
Zachsays
So is the tragedy in Paris going to impede the Climate talks at all?
wilisays
I find the Landis piece (judging from the first few pages) a bit too optimistic. On page 8 he says projects humans releasing 1000-1400 gigatons of CO2eq. First, aren’t we pretty close to that lower figure already?
But then he adds, “we will mobilize some polar methane to boot.”
_Some_ polar methane? Unquantified? And no further polar (or other methane) for the next few hundreds or thousands of years?
He seems to be drawing heavily from Archer, which is fine. But as I recall, Archer’s model is relatively slow release of Arctic methane, which means that it will be actively increasing CO2 levels for centuries and probably millennia.
Yet, Landis has CO2 levels starting to decline after just a couple thousand years.
Do others find that to be realistic?
wilisays
Landis seems to underestimate the quantities of carbon that will come into the system from the Arctic and other sources (page 8), and if he is mainly following Archer, the timescales for that release should be millennia, but he has Landis has CO2 levels start to fall in a couple thousand years.
Am I missing something, or is he?
Edward Greischsays
104 Mal Adapted, 106 zebra: So, Mal Adapted, what is the patent number for the battery that you have invented that can store 336 billion kWh for a price of under a trillion dollars and a life expectancy of a century with less than a billion dollars per year in maintenance? And of course, there have to be enough materials for the whole world since the 336 billion kWh is for the US only, and we also need this battery for all transportation, so it has to be light enough for aircraft of all types. A car with your battery should be able to go 50,000 miles on one charge.
Yes, the transition to a carbon-neutral society is a political problem. Not really an economic problem. If you would just give us the number of your battery patent, I am sure some corporation would be willing to pay you billions of dollars for the patent.
wsays
Further problem with Landis: at the bottom of page 28, he seems to confuse gigatons C with gigatons CO2 (and that after a whole chapter on how careful we need to be when dealing with big numbers!).
Does Landis even mention permafrost? Perhaps he should have just left all the carbon calculations alone, since on p. 32 he says: “The precise number doesn’t really matter…”
So, Mal Adapted, what is the patent number for the battery that you have invented that can store 336 billion kWh for a price of under a trillion dollars and a life expectancy of a century with less than a billion dollars per year in maintenance?
Once again, Mr. Greisch takes exception to something someone else did not say. No meaningful response is possible.
E. Tziperman, M. E. Raymo, P. Huybers, C. Wunsch, 2006. Consequences of pacing the Pleistocene 100 kyr ice ages by non linear phase locking to Milankovitch forcing (pdf), Paleoceanography
I would think that at least some portion of the talks would be redirected toward the terrorist attacks. How could it not? We’ve had enough terror attacks in recent years but something about this one in particular seems different to me.
Killian mentioned Syria in association with Climate Change and I think we know that Climate has had a negative effect causing more people to leave than otherwise might have. There may be a deeper connection that is not apparent yet. Climate and terrorism are totally different topics but I wonder if there is some sort of connection between the two that hasn’t been realized? It could be one of the many complications associated with resource depletion and the feeling of a lack of hope. Just a thought.
Edward Greischsays
“Top Climate Scientists Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel to Issue Stark Challenge at Paris COP21 Climate Conference
“Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel will present research showing the increasing urgency of fully decarbonizing the world economy. However, they will also show that renewables alone cannot realistically meet the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C, and that a major expansion of nuclear power is essential to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system this century.” continues
This is progress.
Edward Greischsays
116 Chuck Hughes: You got it. Terrorism is one of the “many complications associated with resource depletion and the feeling of a lack of hope.” GW depletes 2 very critical resources: water and food. When water and food become unavailable to you, you will feel desperate too. It is much worse than being unemployed or a little short of cash at the end of the month.
Famine has caused many civilization collapses in the past 10,000 years. Many of those famines were caused by minor changes in climate.
According to the JMA, October 2015 (+0.53C) is a new record, beating the record set last year by whopping +0.19C. This makes is just the second month on record, and second month in row, with an anomaly of at least +0.5C above the 81-10 average.
This is now also the largest anomaly for any month on record.
#116–Chuck, I’m pretty sure no portion of the COP 21 talks will be formally ‘redirected’ toward consideration of terrorism. (Talk on the sidelines is another matter.)
The agenda is set, positions are prepared in advance, and–IMHO, at least–the attacks are not directly relevant to the goals of the talks, at least not in the sense that they change anything we know about mitigation, adaptation, and how best to achieve them.
FWIW, here’s what the agenda looks like in overview:
(That’s not to say, of course, that climate change doesn’t provide nourishment for the social and political circumstances that support the growth of terrorism. Indeed, the history of contemporary Syria provides a great case study of just how that can happen.)
#117–Ed, you conveniently left out the very next sentence:
“The scientists will outline how only a combined strategy employing all the major sustainable clean energy options — including renewables and nuclear — can prevent the worst effects of climate change by 2100, such as the loss of coral reefs, severe damages from extreme weather events, and the destruction of biodiversity and ecosystems worldwide.”
Which is precisely what I’ve been arguing, in contradistinction to your adamant support of a ‘nuclear only’ option.
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders used the terrorist attacks in Paris to call for action to address climate change at a primary debate Saturday. But, while the plea attracted ridicule across the political spectrum, many academics and national security experts agree that climate change contributes to an uncertain world where terrorism can thrive.”
modellersays
“Climate and terrorism are totally different topics but I wonder if there is some sort of connection between the two”
I do not like science when expressed like that. Things are interesting only if we have a strong correlation in mind.
And hoping that COP21 would be postponed or moved to another country. This is not serious to keep it here on these days.
An encouraging development, albeit one attended by a considerable sense of deja vu !
Digby Scorgiesays
Doctors Hansen, Wigley, Caldeira and Emanuel could also have recommended that people scale down their high-consumption lifestyles. It would help reduce the demand for energy and resources. There wasn’t half so much over-consumption fifty years ago, and yet people still led interesting and enjoyable lives. I know — I was one of them.
This paper from Brookings Institute offers a provokingly different analysis and comes to quite an unusual conclusion — although probably only for the USA with its low price for fracked natgas. Still, the secondary conclusion that nuclear power plants are preferable to wind and solar is of general interest.
124 Kevin McKinney: That very next sentence is a compromise and a whole lot better than “nuclear is banned.” Once nuclear counts 100% for nuclear’s zero carbon output [Wind puts out more CO2 than nuclear], the electric generating companies can choose nuclear over wind, which they will if given the freedom to do so. [So quit protesting and let the engineers do the engineering.] The reason is simple: Nuclear works. Wind des not work. In fact, What I learned from the “SPP WITF Wind Integration Study” Prepared By:
Charles River Associates [CRA], 200 Clarendon Street T-33 Boston, Massachusetts 02116
Date: January 4, 2010 CRA Project No. D14422 http://www.uwig.org/CRA_SPP_WITF_Wind_Integration_Study_Final_Report.pdf
Charles River Associates is an engineering consulting firm. They analyzed wind integration into the Southwest Power Pool [SPP]. SPP currently serves parts or all of eight states: Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas and has members in Mississippi. The SPP has much better wind resources than Illinois does.
There is one word that is very popular in this report. That word is “Overload.” Wind energy causes overloads to the grid, breaking transformers and transmission lines. Another popular word in this report is “spinning” as in “spinning reserve.” Wind energy forces the electric companies to build brand new natural gas turbine power plants to make up for the intermittent nature of wind power.
What the fossil fuel industry likes about wind and solar power is that wind and solar force the closure of nuclear power plants so that they can sell more natural gas. Natural gas makes CO2, which defeats the “Green” project of stopping Global Warming. When the “Greens” campaign for wind and solar power, the Greens are shooting themselves in the foot. The Greens who campaign against nuclear power or in favor of wind and solar power are not really green.
Edward Greischsays
126 modeller: Climate and terrorism are not totally different topics. Read “The Long Summer” by Brian Fagan and “Collapse” by Jared Diamond. When agriculture collapses, civilization collapses. Fagan and Diamond told the stories of something like 2 dozen previous very small civilizations. Most of the collapses were caused by fraction of a degree climate changes. On the average, 1 out of 10,000 survived.
Civilization collapses are [almost?] always accompanied by violence. Climate change of any kind can cause agriculture to collapse. We are at the beginning of a collapse of civilization caused by GW. In Chaco Canyon, there is evidence of hunting of humans for the purpose of cannibalism [“Collapse” by Jared Diamond]. The collapse will have characteristic armed gangs roaming the streets in search of food.
You don’t have to wonder about it. It is established fact that terrorism is expected if there is GW to the point of a collapse of civilization. In a collapse of civilization, every group blames every other group and becomes violent about it.
But you have to ask social sciences people, not me.
Laurisays
Now also NASA/GISS is out with their October 2015 anomaly, 1.04 degrees C:
By far the largest positive anomaly ever in their data – they had to extend the vertical axes to fit in the new values!
zebrasays
Edward Greisch, also David Benson reference at 130:
…the electric generating companies can choose nuclear over wind … let the engineers do the engineering…
With respect to the USA: Instead of all these “studies” that are essentially irrelevant (and probably biased on all sides,) since there is not going to be a France-style affirmative, Socialist, plan to build the hypothetical plants, how about letting the consumer decide on the mix of non-fossil generation, as I suggested earlier?
Let the “utility” companies keep the wires up– guarantee equitably priced delivery of electricity, based on distance and volume, just like a trucking company or UPS. That way, I can choose to buy non-FF electricity from a nuclear or wind source, or my neighbor’s rooftop solar panels, or I can be a true USA entrepreneur capitalist myself and fill my back yard with panels to sell to my neighbors.
Markets work just fine when they are true free markets, which this would be. If your favorite flavor– and this applies to all the people who insist there is only one possible right answer– is competitive, it will win.
What’s not to like?
Russellsays
Diamond resorts to just-so stories about “very small civilizations” because his microagression against historiography has little relevance to large ones.
“Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel will present research showing the increasing urgency of fully decarbonizing the world economy. However, they will also show that renewables alone cannot realistically meet the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C, and that a major expansion of nuclear power is essential to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system this century.”
This is good news, and it suggests I was wrong to argue previously that the climate science community should not be expected to make stronger public statements. Emanuel’s participation is especially encouraging, as he is a self-declared conservative Republican. That may help increase the percentage of GOP members who consider global climate change to be a “very serious” problem above 20 percent.
As noted @133, the October 2015 GISTEMP is the hottest on record at +1.04ºC. The previous record was +0.97ºC back in January 2007 & now pushed back into third is March 2010 at +0.93ºC.
The first ten months of 2015 have either been hottest for that month (Oct & Jun), second hottest or third (March) or fourth (April) hottest. (GISTEMP is a little less generous with these placings than are NCDC & HadCRUT.)
The average anomaly for the first 10 months stands at +0.822ºC and the last 12 months at +0.808ºC compared with the record calendar year to date (all the way back in 2014 if you can remember that long ago) which was a chilly +0.743ºC.
The last 12 months of ”scorchio!! stand as follows:-
71st= .. 2014.11 .. +0.68ºC
17th= .. 2014.12 .. +0.79ºC
12th= .. 2015.1 …. +0.81ºC
8th= … 2015.2 ….. +0.87ºC
5th . …. 2015.3 …. +0.90ºC
46th= .. 2015.4 … +0.73ºC
23rd= .. 2015.5 … +0.78ºC
28th= .. 2015.6 … +0.77ºC
46th= .. 2015.7 … +0.73ºC
17th= .. 2015.8 … +0.79ºC
15th= .. 2015.9 … +0.80ºC
1st . …. 2015.10 .. +1.04ºC
SecularAnimistsays
Edward Greisch’s frequent posts promoting nuclear power and attacking wind and solar power are a perfect example of why the moderators of this site are wise to rule non-fossil fueled electricity generation technologies are OFF-TOPIC for these comment pages, and why they have repeatedly asked commenters to refrain from such discussions here.
BPL: Strange, then, that more and more countries are relying on it more and more. I think Denmark’s up to 35% of its electricity from wind now, and the USA is at 5% (not large, but a lot better than the 0.2% ten years ago).
Vendicar Decariansays
#98 1:1 “correspendence between tangible items and figures on the paper”
GDP is not a measure of quality of life, so when economists make it their priority to maximize GDP they are not promoting quality of life issues.
GDP is at best a poor measure of production. And it is certainly not a measure of efficient production since GDP is enhanced by the production of shoddy goods, and through cheating the public by tricking them or forcing them to buy shoddy goods.
Social welfare is a vector. Monetary wealth is one component of that vector.
Economists promote growth only on one axis. The monetary axis. It ignores all of the others, or presumes that they can be bought.
The love of a spouse therefore becomes prostitution.
Leisure therefore becomes sloth.
Children become parasites.
Etc.
Who want’s Economic growth? No one who has actually thought through what it means.
AICsays
Perhaps the terror attacks in Paris were not just a coincidence of location:
The COP 20 negotiations in Copenhagen were undermined by the selective publication of stolen emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. (See https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/ for background if you just tuned in.)
Is this the effort to undermine COP 21?
At the very least, it will distract public attention from the climate negotiations.
#131–Ed, really? We went through that same reference on Tamino’s site already; you got it thoroughly wrong. Apparently you didn’t learn anything from the experience.
And your assertion that ‘wind doesn’t work’ carries very little weight in the context of a world energy system that has added 322 GW of wind capacity since 2004–50 GW in 2014 alone. Clearly, there are an awful lot of folks who find that wind does in fact ‘work.’
And this bit is just nuts: “What the fossil fuel industry likes about wind and solar power is that wind and solar force the closure of nuclear power plants…” No, wind and solar do no such thing. What is forcing the closure of nuclear plants above all is the difficulty of enticing investors to put money into them.
OT, but hopefully of interest here:
I’ve published a new article online–7,000+ words examining sundry climate predictions and comparing them with real world outcomes. Thoughts, reactions, editorial suggestions and especially comments are welcome–particularly since it’s a ‘challenge’ with a ‘skeptic’ writer; I’ll no doubt welcome the support.
@131 Edward Greisch: The Executive Summary Major Findings and Recommendations of the 2010 study which you cite says: “The analytical results of the study show that there are no significant technical barriers to integrating wind generation to a 20% penetration level into the SPP system, provided that sufficient transmission is built to support it.”
Thank you. I’m not sure what you mean by “Green.” What I mean by green is: sustainable. I think that’s the general intent of the usage.
patricksays
@143 Kevin McKinney: Thanks for the reference. Looks like it’s from about 2010. I note:
“Another factor influencing results was the definition of lifecycle. For example, some studies included waste management and treatment in the scope, while some excluded waste. When the study was completed, also led to a broader range in results, and was most prevalent for solar power. This is assumed to be primarily due to the rapid advancement of solar photovoltaic panels over the past decade. As the technology and manufacturing processes become more efficient, the lifecycle emissions of solar photovoltaic panels will continue to decrease. This is evident in the older studies estimating solar photovoltaic lifecycle emission to be comparable to fossil fuel generation methods, while recent studies being more comparable to other forms of renewable energy. The range between the studies is illustrated within the figure. [Table 2]”
Perhaps the terror attacks in Paris were not just a coincidence of location:
and Is this the effort to undermine COP 21?
At the very least, it will distract public attention from the climate negotiations.
from a crime forensics pov, you would normally ask who benefits from a specific crime. Many crimes are primarily motivated by the opportunity to acquire an advantage, so who benefits from the Paris attacks?
1. Media – this stuff sells
2. private and public security industries –
3. nation states interested in resource wars who need a gulf of tonkin moment
4. The radical islamist groups are big winners with increased profile and standing based on the deaths attributed to them
5. The arms industry who stand to sell the gear needed to carry out attacks on communities around the globe who may or may not have anything to do with the attacks
6. The radical islamist groups who stand to gain new recruits from the retribution-type attacks on communities
7. The industries and individuals who stand to gain by the status quo economic system that relies on the activities that are driving global warming.
8. Politicians and leaders around the globe who are struggling with the popularity of their public policies and can now pick up and run with a “war on the terrorists” campaign.
That is not exhaustive list and in no particular order, but I do think the #7 group and motivation should be down the list if a person was doing benefit analysis to determine a slate of suspects.
It is also helpful to make a list of the losers in this kind of analysis, but I will pass on that for now. Certainly the list of losers would include victims of the violence and their families at the top, somewhere down the line would be the Climate Sanity Community that would like to see something good come out of COP21 (no matter how unlikely that may be)
It’s time to beat the swords into plowshares, but I don’t see a lot of folks rushing to make that happen.
modellersays
“We are at the beginning of a collapse of civilization caused by GW.”
I sincerely apologise, but I do not agree with such a discussion. It can not be verified (the edge of science) and it brings nothing useful to most of people.
Interestingly, here’s what the IEA is currently foreseeing:
The IEA said the global power generation mix is set to shift away from coal, the share of which falls from 41% today to 30% in 2040, after holding steady since 1990. The share of low-carbon technologies in total generation increases from one-third in 2013 to 47% in 2040, due to the growth of non-hydro renewables and a stable share of nuclear and hydropower.
Renewables will overtake coal as the largest source of electricity by the early-2030s and account for more than half of all growth over the period to 2040, the IEA said.
Under the IEA’s central scenario, output from nuclear power plants is forecast to increase from 2478 TWh in 2013 to 4606 TWh by 2040. Expansion in China accounts for almost half of incremental nuclear generation. However, nuclear’s share of global electricity generation is expected to remain around the same level of 12%.
Between 2015 and 2040, some 148 GW of nuclear generating capacity will be retired, the IEA says. During the same period, however, about 365 GW on new nuclear capacity will be brought online.
The IEA has tended to under predict the deployment of renewables in the past (though not so drastically as has the American EIA.) It’ll be intriguing to see if this turns out another case in point.
Hopefully it will, given that:
The IEA says that, according to its central scenario, the growth in energy-related emissions will “slow dramatically, but the emissions trajectory implies a long-term temperature increase of 2.7°C by 2100”. It added, “A major course correction is still required to achieve the world’s agreed climate goal.”
The IEA noted that, ahead of the COP21 climate meeting in Paris next month, over 150 countries – representing 90% of global economic activity and nearly 90% of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions – have submitted pledges to reduce emissions. These pledges would require cumulative investment of $13.5 trillion in low-carbon technologies and energy efficiency by 2030.
I suppose I should mention that this is drawn from the IEA’s 2015 World Energy Outlook, published last week.
Killiansays
#98 “Economics is pure fail.”
The dismal science is a work in progress, however that does not mean that it is meaningless.
Peter Bjørn Perlsø
It’s not a work in progress, it’s a mirage. It does not measure the real world in any meaningful way, and certainly in no adaptive or useful way if you seek a sustainable aka regenerative future. Kinda need the opposite of economics for that. Even the steady-state people get it wrong, thinking capitalism can be tweaked to fit regenerative patterns. Sorry, but can’t be done.
#120 “Top Climate Scientists Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel to Issue Stark Challenge at Paris COP21 Climate Conference
“Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel will present research showing the increasing urgency of fully decarbonizing the world economy. However, they will also show that renewables alone cannot realistically meet the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C, and that a major expansion of nuclear power is essential to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system this century.” continues
This is progress.
Edward Greisch
Sure, like smoking 2 packs a day vs. 3 packs a day is progress. How can grown up, educated people so badly misunderstand or underestimate or ignore exponential growth?
NOAA global temperature anomaly for October 2015 stands at +0.98ºC, the hottest month on record. The previous hottest month on record was September 2015 (which was itself revised up a couple of points since publication last month). All bar April of 2015 months are in the top twenty on record. The average Jan-Oct stands at +0.84ºC with the rolling 12-month average +0.82ºC and the hottest full calendar year on record (2014) looking even more like yesterday’s news at +0.74ºC.
Of the first 19 months of 2015, all bar January (which is 2nd) and April (3rd) are the hottest for the specific month, ratings which are more generous than either HadCRUT or GISTEMP.
The NOAA ”scorchio” numbers for the last 12 months:-
BPL: Probably because it’s a social science, not a physical science. The observations, however, that supply generally rises with price, demand falls with price, and pricing is determined by marginal utility, are all backed by enormous amounts of evidence.
K: Can you tell me, do they use digits in addition and subtraction? Inquiring minds…
BPL: …Don’t include yours, obviously. You can’t answer a valid point by replying with nonsense. Well, you can, of course, but it just makes you look even more foolish than before.
Just FWIW, I think Steve Fish’s comment at #96 is pretty insightful: “…how one chooses to live can change radically.”
Social change is hard, and maximally so on a global scale. But ‘hard’ isn’t impossible, and humans, for all our perversity, are neither lemmings nor sheep.
My inner physicist is always impressed by a straight line over seven orders of magnitude as in Fig 1b. I always suspected there was a power law lurking in timescales and rates of change, but Kemp et al. have actually done the hard work. Now all i want is someone to do this for sea level rise …
doi:10.1038/ncomms9890
sidd
I hope you’re making your strawmen with organic straw.
Look, they’re using PCA again:
https://astronomynow.com/2015/11/13/psychedelic-pluto/
Edward Greisch:
Yes Mr. Greisch, you’ve told all of us that many times. FWIW, I have three degrees, two of them in the natural sciences, so I have some grasp of the basics of physics and chemistry, thank you. It would be futile to explain to you why the transition to a carbon-neutral society is an economic and political problem, not a technical one, so I’ll leave off the attempt.
“Climate history tells us the same thing as sudden large changes occur throughout climate history. We are talking 5 degrees C in a decades. – See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/11/unforced-variations-nov-2015/comment-page-2/#comment-637647”
If this is meant to refer to the Wright and Schaller paper, I understand that is likely to have been a misinterpretation of the drilling layers, as Pearson and Thomas showed at the start of this year.
Edward Greisch at 93,
The reference you gave is pretty weak. Physics and chemistry tell us that we could, today, create a house that provides all the necessary utility using “intermittent” sources of electricity. It is much more a problem of economic/political forces– not market forces, because we don’t have a free market in energy in general, much less electricity– than technology.
So is the tragedy in Paris going to impede the Climate talks at all?
I find the Landis piece (judging from the first few pages) a bit too optimistic. On page 8 he says projects humans releasing 1000-1400 gigatons of CO2eq. First, aren’t we pretty close to that lower figure already?
But then he adds, “we will mobilize some polar methane to boot.”
_Some_ polar methane? Unquantified? And no further polar (or other methane) for the next few hundreds or thousands of years?
He seems to be drawing heavily from Archer, which is fine. But as I recall, Archer’s model is relatively slow release of Arctic methane, which means that it will be actively increasing CO2 levels for centuries and probably millennia.
Yet, Landis has CO2 levels starting to decline after just a couple thousand years.
Do others find that to be realistic?
Landis seems to underestimate the quantities of carbon that will come into the system from the Arctic and other sources (page 8), and if he is mainly following Archer, the timescales for that release should be millennia, but he has Landis has CO2 levels start to fall in a couple thousand years.
Am I missing something, or is he?
104 Mal Adapted, 106 zebra: So, Mal Adapted, what is the patent number for the battery that you have invented that can store 336 billion kWh for a price of under a trillion dollars and a life expectancy of a century with less than a billion dollars per year in maintenance? And of course, there have to be enough materials for the whole world since the 336 billion kWh is for the US only, and we also need this battery for all transportation, so it has to be light enough for aircraft of all types. A car with your battery should be able to go 50,000 miles on one charge.
Yes, the transition to a carbon-neutral society is a political problem. Not really an economic problem. If you would just give us the number of your battery patent, I am sure some corporation would be willing to pay you billions of dollars for the patent.
Further problem with Landis: at the bottom of page 28, he seems to confuse gigatons C with gigatons CO2 (and that after a whole chapter on how careful we need to be when dealing with big numbers!).
Zach @107: So far most indications have been that the talks would go on, but I just saw this: https://en-maktoob.news.yahoo.com/sarkozy-demand-paris-climate-summit-postponed-111933945.html?soc_src=mediacontentsharebuttons&soc_trk=tw
Does Landis even mention permafrost? Perhaps he should have just left all the carbon calculations alone, since on p. 32 he says: “The precise number doesn’t really matter…”
#170–Well, unless additional security proves an impediment–it wouldn’t be the first time!–no, COP 21 won’t be impeded:
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/11/14/france-to-review-cop21-security-post-paris-terror-attacks/
Edward Greisch:
Once again, Mr. Greisch takes exception to something someone else did not say. No meaningful response is possible.
Who would be so philiistine as to suggest that the COP 21 Process has been politicized?
Henk Schuring @52 — That is a good question. Here are some references but these may not provide the answer you are looking for:
Archer & Ganpolski, A Movable Trigger
http://melts.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2005.trigger.pdf
E. Tziperman, M. E. Raymo, P. Huybers, C. Wunsch, 2006. Consequences of pacing the Pleistocene 100 kyr ice ages by non linear phase locking to Milankovitch forcing (pdf), Paleoceanography
I have forgotten what is in
Ridgewell and Maslin Quaternary pacing review
http://lgmacweb.env.uea.ac.uk/e114/publications/manuscript_maslin_and_ridgwell.pdf
but it was together with the other two.
Comment by Kevin McKinney — 15 Nov 2015
I would think that at least some portion of the talks would be redirected toward the terrorist attacks. How could it not? We’ve had enough terror attacks in recent years but something about this one in particular seems different to me.
Killian mentioned Syria in association with Climate Change and I think we know that Climate has had a negative effect causing more people to leave than otherwise might have. There may be a deeper connection that is not apparent yet. Climate and terrorism are totally different topics but I wonder if there is some sort of connection between the two that hasn’t been realized? It could be one of the many complications associated with resource depletion and the feeling of a lack of hope. Just a thought.
“Top Climate Scientists Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel to Issue Stark Challenge at Paris COP21 Climate Conference
Press Conference to take place on Thursday, December 3 at 14:00 in the Gallery of Solutions – Media Stage – Air and Space Museum, Paris, Le Bourget”
http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/372493/c25ebfa5d2/1603503199/be41125912/
“Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel will present research showing the increasing urgency of fully decarbonizing the world economy. However, they will also show that renewables alone cannot realistically meet the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C, and that a major expansion of nuclear power is essential to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system this century.” continues
This is progress.
116 Chuck Hughes: You got it. Terrorism is one of the “many complications associated with resource depletion and the feeling of a lack of hope.” GW depletes 2 very critical resources: water and food. When water and food become unavailable to you, you will feel desperate too. It is much worse than being unemployed or a little short of cash at the end of the month.
Famine has caused many civilization collapses in the past 10,000 years. Many of those famines were caused by minor changes in climate.
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/gwp/temp/oct_wld.html
According to the JMA, October 2015 (+0.53C) is a new record, beating the record set last year by whopping +0.19C. This makes is just the second month on record, and second month in row, with an anomaly of at least +0.5C above the 81-10 average.
This is now also the largest anomaly for any month on record.
Graph here:
http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/gwp/temp/fig/oct_wld.png
(Thanks to bftv at neven’s Arctic Sea Ice forums for these links.)
#116–Chuck, I’m pretty sure no portion of the COP 21 talks will be formally ‘redirected’ toward consideration of terrorism. (Talk on the sidelines is another matter.)
The agenda is set, positions are prepared in advance, and–IMHO, at least–the attacks are not directly relevant to the goals of the talks, at least not in the sense that they change anything we know about mitigation, adaptation, and how best to achieve them.
FWIW, here’s what the agenda looks like in overview:
http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/paris_nov_2015/application/pdf/overview-schedule_cop21cmp11.pdf
(That’s not to say, of course, that climate change doesn’t provide nourishment for the social and political circumstances that support the growth of terrorism. Indeed, the history of contemporary Syria provides a great case study of just how that can happen.)
#117–Ed, you conveniently left out the very next sentence:
“The scientists will outline how only a combined strategy employing all the major sustainable clean energy options — including renewables and nuclear — can prevent the worst effects of climate change by 2100, such as the loss of coral reefs, severe damages from extreme weather events, and the destruction of biodiversity and ecosystems worldwide.”
Which is precisely what I’ve been arguing, in contradistinction to your adamant support of a ‘nuclear only’ option.
http://time.com/4113801/climate-change-terrorism/
“Why CC and Terrorism are Connected”
“Drought in Syria has contributed to instability
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders used the terrorist attacks in Paris to call for action to address climate change at a primary debate Saturday. But, while the plea attracted ridicule across the political spectrum, many academics and national security experts agree that climate change contributes to an uncertain world where terrorism can thrive.”
“Climate and terrorism are totally different topics but I wonder if there is some sort of connection between the two”
I do not like science when expressed like that. Things are interesting only if we have a strong correlation in mind.
And hoping that COP21 would be postponed or moved to another country. This is not serious to keep it here on these days.
117:
Thanks for an update attended by a strong sense of deja vu.,
117:
An encouraging development, albeit one attended by a considerable sense of deja vu !
Doctors Hansen, Wigley, Caldeira and Emanuel could also have recommended that people scale down their high-consumption lifestyles. It would help reduce the demand for energy and resources. There wasn’t half so much over-consumption fifty years ago, and yet people still led interesting and enjoyable lives. I know — I was one of them.
Why the Best Path to a Low-Carbon Future is Not Wind or Solar Power
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/planetpolicy/posts/2014/05/20-low-carbon-wind-solar-power-frank
This paper from Brookings Institute offers a provokingly different analysis and comes to quite an unusual conclusion — although probably only for the USA with its low price for fracked natgas. Still, the secondary conclusion that nuclear power plants are preferable to wind and solar is of general interest.
While posted for those interested I shan’t discuss it here. Consider discussion in
http://bravenewclimate.com/2015/10/25/open-thread-23/
124 Kevin McKinney: That very next sentence is a compromise and a whole lot better than “nuclear is banned.” Once nuclear counts 100% for nuclear’s zero carbon output [Wind puts out more CO2 than nuclear], the electric generating companies can choose nuclear over wind, which they will if given the freedom to do so. [So quit protesting and let the engineers do the engineering.] The reason is simple: Nuclear works. Wind des not work. In fact, What I learned from the “SPP WITF Wind Integration Study” Prepared By:
Charles River Associates [CRA], 200 Clarendon Street T-33 Boston, Massachusetts 02116
Date: January 4, 2010 CRA Project No. D14422
http://www.uwig.org/CRA_SPP_WITF_Wind_Integration_Study_Final_Report.pdf
Charles River Associates is an engineering consulting firm. They analyzed wind integration into the Southwest Power Pool [SPP]. SPP currently serves parts or all of eight states: Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas and has members in Mississippi. The SPP has much better wind resources than Illinois does.
There is one word that is very popular in this report. That word is “Overload.” Wind energy causes overloads to the grid, breaking transformers and transmission lines. Another popular word in this report is “spinning” as in “spinning reserve.” Wind energy forces the electric companies to build brand new natural gas turbine power plants to make up for the intermittent nature of wind power.
What the fossil fuel industry likes about wind and solar power is that wind and solar force the closure of nuclear power plants so that they can sell more natural gas. Natural gas makes CO2, which defeats the “Green” project of stopping Global Warming. When the “Greens” campaign for wind and solar power, the Greens are shooting themselves in the foot. The Greens who campaign against nuclear power or in favor of wind and solar power are not really green.
126 modeller: Climate and terrorism are not totally different topics. Read “The Long Summer” by Brian Fagan and “Collapse” by Jared Diamond. When agriculture collapses, civilization collapses. Fagan and Diamond told the stories of something like 2 dozen previous very small civilizations. Most of the collapses were caused by fraction of a degree climate changes. On the average, 1 out of 10,000 survived.
Civilization collapses are [almost?] always accompanied by violence. Climate change of any kind can cause agriculture to collapse. We are at the beginning of a collapse of civilization caused by GW. In Chaco Canyon, there is evidence of hunting of humans for the purpose of cannibalism [“Collapse” by Jared Diamond]. The collapse will have characteristic armed gangs roaming the streets in search of food.
You don’t have to wonder about it. It is established fact that terrorism is expected if there is GW to the point of a collapse of civilization. In a collapse of civilization, every group blames every other group and becomes violent about it.
But you have to ask social sciences people, not me.
Now also NASA/GISS is out with their October 2015 anomaly, 1.04 degrees C:
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/T_moreFigs/
By far the largest positive anomaly ever in their data – they had to extend the vertical axes to fit in the new values!
Edward Greisch, also David Benson reference at 130:
With respect to the USA: Instead of all these “studies” that are essentially irrelevant (and probably biased on all sides,) since there is not going to be a France-style affirmative, Socialist, plan to build the hypothetical plants, how about letting the consumer decide on the mix of non-fossil generation, as I suggested earlier?
Let the “utility” companies keep the wires up– guarantee equitably priced delivery of electricity, based on distance and volume, just like a trucking company or UPS. That way, I can choose to buy non-FF electricity from a nuclear or wind source, or my neighbor’s rooftop solar panels, or I can be a true USA entrepreneur capitalist myself and fill my back yard with panels to sell to my neighbors.
Markets work just fine when they are true free markets, which this would be. If your favorite flavor– and this applies to all the people who insist there is only one possible right answer– is competitive, it will win.
What’s not to like?
Diamond resorts to just-so stories about “very small civilizations” because his microagression against historiography has little relevance to large ones.
Edward Greisch, quoting a press release:
This is good news, and it suggests I was wrong to argue previously that the climate science community should not be expected to make stronger public statements. Emanuel’s participation is especially encouraging, as he is a self-declared conservative Republican. That may help increase the percentage of GOP members who consider global climate change to be a “very serious” problem above 20 percent.
As noted @133, the October 2015 GISTEMP is the hottest on record at +1.04ºC. The previous record was +0.97ºC back in January 2007 & now pushed back into third is March 2010 at +0.93ºC.
The first ten months of 2015 have either been hottest for that month (Oct & Jun), second hottest or third (March) or fourth (April) hottest. (GISTEMP is a little less generous with these placings than are NCDC & HadCRUT.)
The average anomaly for the first 10 months stands at +0.822ºC and the last 12 months at +0.808ºC compared with the record calendar year to date (all the way back in 2014 if you can remember that long ago) which was a chilly +0.743ºC.
The last 12 months of ”scorchio!! stand as follows:-
71st= .. 2014.11 .. +0.68ºC
17th= .. 2014.12 .. +0.79ºC
12th= .. 2015.1 …. +0.81ºC
8th= … 2015.2 ….. +0.87ºC
5th . …. 2015.3 …. +0.90ºC
46th= .. 2015.4 … +0.73ºC
23rd= .. 2015.5 … +0.78ºC
28th= .. 2015.6 … +0.77ºC
46th= .. 2015.7 … +0.73ºC
17th= .. 2015.8 … +0.79ºC
15th= .. 2015.9 … +0.80ºC
1st . …. 2015.10 .. +1.04ºC
Edward Greisch’s frequent posts promoting nuclear power and attacking wind and solar power are a perfect example of why the moderators of this site are wise to rule non-fossil fueled electricity generation technologies are OFF-TOPIC for these comment pages, and why they have repeatedly asked commenters to refrain from such discussions here.
EG 131: Wind des not work
BPL: Strange, then, that more and more countries are relying on it more and more. I think Denmark’s up to 35% of its electricity from wind now, and the USA is at 5% (not large, but a lot better than the 0.2% ten years ago).
#98 1:1 “correspendence between tangible items and figures on the paper”
GDP is not a measure of quality of life, so when economists make it their priority to maximize GDP they are not promoting quality of life issues.
GDP is at best a poor measure of production. And it is certainly not a measure of efficient production since GDP is enhanced by the production of shoddy goods, and through cheating the public by tricking them or forcing them to buy shoddy goods.
Social welfare is a vector. Monetary wealth is one component of that vector.
Economists promote growth only on one axis. The monetary axis. It ignores all of the others, or presumes that they can be bought.
The love of a spouse therefore becomes prostitution.
Leisure therefore becomes sloth.
Children become parasites.
Etc.
Who want’s Economic growth? No one who has actually thought through what it means.
Perhaps the terror attacks in Paris were not just a coincidence of location:
Paris Attacks: COP 21 and the War on Terror
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/33667-paris-attacks-cop21-and-the-war-on-terror
The COP 20 negotiations in Copenhagen were undermined by the selective publication of stolen emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. (See https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/ for background if you just tuned in.)
Is this the effort to undermine COP 21?
At the very least, it will distract public attention from the climate negotiations.
#131–Ed, really? We went through that same reference on Tamino’s site already; you got it thoroughly wrong. Apparently you didn’t learn anything from the experience.
And your assertion that ‘wind doesn’t work’ carries very little weight in the context of a world energy system that has added 322 GW of wind capacity since 2004–50 GW in 2014 alone. Clearly, there are an awful lot of folks who find that wind does in fact ‘work.’
http://www.gwec.net/global-figures/graphs/
And this bit is just nuts: “What the fossil fuel industry likes about wind and solar power is that wind and solar force the closure of nuclear power plants…” No, wind and solar do no such thing. What is forcing the closure of nuclear plants above all is the difficulty of enticing investors to put money into them.
OT, but hopefully of interest here:
I’ve published a new article online–7,000+ words examining sundry climate predictions and comparing them with real world outcomes. Thoughts, reactions, editorial suggestions and especially comments are welcome–particularly since it’s a ‘challenge’ with a ‘skeptic’ writer; I’ll no doubt welcome the support.
It’s here:
http://hubpages.com/politics/Climate-Change-Predictions-How-Accurate-Are-They-Really
“Wind puts out more CO2 than nuclear…”
Not according to this World Nuclear Association meta-study, it doesn’t:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/WNA/Publications/Working_Group_Reports/comparison_of_lifecycle.pdf
@131 Edward Greisch: The Executive Summary Major Findings and Recommendations of the 2010 study which you cite says: “The analytical results of the study show that there are no significant technical barriers to integrating wind generation to a 20% penetration level into the SPP system, provided that sufficient transmission is built to support it.”
Thank you. I’m not sure what you mean by “Green.” What I mean by green is: sustainable. I think that’s the general intent of the usage.
@143 Kevin McKinney: Thanks for the reference. Looks like it’s from about 2010. I note:
“Another factor influencing results was the definition of lifecycle. For example, some studies included waste management and treatment in the scope, while some excluded waste. When the study was completed, also led to a broader range in results, and was most prevalent for solar power. This is assumed to be primarily due to the rapid advancement of solar photovoltaic panels over the past decade. As the technology and manufacturing processes become more efficient, the lifecycle emissions of solar photovoltaic panels will continue to decrease. This is evident in the older studies estimating solar photovoltaic lifecycle emission to be comparable to fossil fuel generation methods, while recent studies being more comparable to other forms of renewable energy. The range between the studies is illustrated within the figure. [Table 2]”
AIC at 141 asks:
Perhaps the terror attacks in Paris were not just a coincidence of location:
and Is this the effort to undermine COP 21?
At the very least, it will distract public attention from the climate negotiations.
from a crime forensics pov, you would normally ask who benefits from a specific crime. Many crimes are primarily motivated by the opportunity to acquire an advantage, so who benefits from the Paris attacks?
1. Media – this stuff sells
2. private and public security industries –
3. nation states interested in resource wars who need a gulf of tonkin moment
4. The radical islamist groups are big winners with increased profile and standing based on the deaths attributed to them
5. The arms industry who stand to sell the gear needed to carry out attacks on communities around the globe who may or may not have anything to do with the attacks
6. The radical islamist groups who stand to gain new recruits from the retribution-type attacks on communities
7. The industries and individuals who stand to gain by the status quo economic system that relies on the activities that are driving global warming.
8. Politicians and leaders around the globe who are struggling with the popularity of their public policies and can now pick up and run with a “war on the terrorists” campaign.
That is not exhaustive list and in no particular order, but I do think the #7 group and motivation should be down the list if a person was doing benefit analysis to determine a slate of suspects.
It is also helpful to make a list of the losers in this kind of analysis, but I will pass on that for now. Certainly the list of losers would include victims of the violence and their families at the top, somewhere down the line would be the Climate Sanity Community that would like to see something good come out of COP21 (no matter how unlikely that may be)
It’s time to beat the swords into plowshares, but I don’t see a lot of folks rushing to make that happen.
“We are at the beginning of a collapse of civilization caused by GW.”
I sincerely apologise, but I do not agree with such a discussion. It can not be verified (the edge of science) and it brings nothing useful to most of people.
Interestingly, here’s what the IEA is currently foreseeing:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/EE-IEA-sees-global-energy-transition-1011154.html
The IEA has tended to under predict the deployment of renewables in the past (though not so drastically as has the American EIA.) It’ll be intriguing to see if this turns out another case in point.
Hopefully it will, given that:
I suppose I should mention that this is drawn from the IEA’s 2015 World Energy Outlook, published last week.
#98 “Economics is pure fail.”
The dismal science is a work in progress, however that does not mean that it is meaningless.
Peter Bjørn Perlsø
It’s not a work in progress, it’s a mirage. It does not measure the real world in any meaningful way, and certainly in no adaptive or useful way if you seek a sustainable aka regenerative future. Kinda need the opposite of economics for that. Even the steady-state people get it wrong, thinking capitalism can be tweaked to fit regenerative patterns. Sorry, but can’t be done.
#120 “Top Climate Scientists Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel to Issue Stark Challenge at Paris COP21 Climate Conference
“Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel will present research showing the increasing urgency of fully decarbonizing the world economy. However, they will also show that renewables alone cannot realistically meet the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C, and that a major expansion of nuclear power is essential to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system this century.” continues
This is progress.
Edward Greisch
Sure, like smoking 2 packs a day vs. 3 packs a day is progress. How can grown up, educated people so badly misunderstand or underestimate or ignore exponential growth?
NOAA global temperature anomaly for October 2015 stands at +0.98ºC, the hottest month on record. The previous hottest month on record was September 2015 (which was itself revised up a couple of points since publication last month). All bar April of 2015 months are in the top twenty on record. The average Jan-Oct stands at +0.84ºC with the rolling 12-month average +0.82ºC and the hottest full calendar year on record (2014) looking even more like yesterday’s news at +0.74ºC.
Of the first 19 months of 2015, all bar January (which is 2nd) and April (3rd) are the hottest for the specific month, ratings which are more generous than either HadCRUT or GISTEMP.
The NOAA ”scorchio” numbers for the last 12 months:-
=54th … 2014.11 … +0.69ºC
=11th … 2014.12 … +0.83ºC
14th …… 2015.1 … +0.81ºC
=4th …… 2015.2 … +0.88ºC
3rd ……. 2015.3 … +0.89ºC
=23rd … 2015.4 … +0.77ºC
=9th ….. 2015.5 … +0.85ºC
=6th ….. 2015.6 … +0.87ºC
=16th … 2015.7 … +0.79ºC
=6th ….. 2015.8 … +0.87ºC
2nd …… 2015.9 … +0.91ºC
1st …….. 2015.10 … +0.98ºC