139 BPL: Check the following for electricity in Denmark:
price per kilowatt hour: over 30 cents vs 7.5 cents here in Illinois and under 7 cents in Niagara Falls
Percent wind power actually used. If I remember, it averages about 10%. 35% is the maximum, not the average. 8.6% is the upper limit without modifications to the grid, like bigger transformers, higher voltage lines [750 KV rather than 350 KV] and so on.
Imported power from Sweden: Denmark trades power with other countries.
138 SecularAnimist: If there is to be an agreement at COP21 there are certain poison pills that must be removed. Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel are attempting to remove one of those poison pills, which is a Prohibition on nuclear power. Removing such poison pills is on topic because COP21 through COP41 will accomplish nothing as long as such poison pills remain. So the real question is: “Are you serious about wanting to stop Global Warming?” If you are serious about wanting to stop Global Warming, then you must be serious about removing all of the poison pills.
143 Kevin McKinney: That has been answered before. From your reference:
From your reference:
“The range of results is influenced by the primary assumptions made in the lifecycle analysis. For instance, assuming either gaseous diffusion or gas centrifuge enrichment has a bearing on the life cycle results for nuclear.” Gas diffusion is obsolete and we may soon go to laser ionization. Your results for nuclear are too high because gas diffusion is included.
144 patrick: 20% penetration level: Includes: New natural gas fired power plants to make up for the intermittent nature of wind, new transformers, upgraded transmission lines and more transmission lines. In other words, doubling or quadrupling or more the price of electricity. Do you really want that for your electric bill?
146 mike: Would fossil fuel company CEOs pay for murder, thus getting themselves into jail for life or the death penalty? PS: Your rocket stove needs to be vented to outdoors or you could die of CO.
Service Temporarily Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
I have heard that the number of attacks on government computers has skyrocketed. I wonder if the fossil fuel companies are attacking RC a lot.
dpsays
Re 146 it sounds a lot like those theories about the CIA being responsible for 9/11. Are these boards becoming a home for conspiracy theorists and should the mods get it to stick to climate matters.
“Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel … will 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.”
Sure.
Because just as nuclear engineers are the most authoritative expert voices when it comes to climate science, climate scientists with no expertise on energy technologies are the most authoritative voices on the technology and economics of alternative energy technologies.
Especially when — as is the case with the many engineers who deny global warming — their pronouncements are contrary to readily observed and thoroughly documented facts.
Chuck Hughessays
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.
Comment by modeller — 18 Nov 2015
You responded to a post I made earlier about Climate and Terrorism and thought it shouldn’t be part of the discussion.
You are more than welcome to not like anything someone says but you need to do a little more explaining about WHY you disagree or ‘don’t like’ a particular view point. It’s not enough to simply “disagree” unless you can state a contrary position that makes sense.
So far you haven’t said much of anything and have “added nothing useful to the discussion.” I am eager to hear your views.
john byattsays
can someone please post GISS monthly baseline temps for 1951/1980, have the yearly 14C but not each month broken down . many thanks
[Response: GISTEMP only uses the anomaly fields, and so does not calculate a seasonal cycle of absolute temperatures. There are estimates of this from Jones et al (2013) – but note that the uncertainty in the absolute value is far larger than the uncertainty in the monthly anomaly (see here for why), so adding them together can give a misleading estimate of how well the absolute value for any specific month is known. – gavin]
Killiansays
#124 “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.
Comment by modeller
I sincerely apologize, but I do not agree with ignoring reality. You care correct: The future cannot be known. Everyone lie down and stop moving, for nothing can be quantified about the future, so just no.
;-)
Reality is, we can make educated guesses about the future. The limits to Growth studies relying on a very simple World 3 program laid out a course over 40 years ago we are still nailing almost perfectly, and it says collapse this century. Peak Oil analysis says the same. Even our own famously infamous Prof Mann, et al., have laid out some pretty serious consequences for the mid-century period. In fact, other than people who have pretty much zero awareness of systems, resource limits and rate of change with climate are not concerned about it.
Martin Kristiansensays
150: Check the following for electricity in Denmark:
price per kilowatt hour: over 30 cents vs 7.5 cents here in Illinois and under 7 cents in Niagara Falls[
I pay less than 30 øre (4.3 cents/KWh) for the electricity itself. Add to that a transmission fee and lots of taxes
Ed, the source shows no significant difference between wind and nuclear at the time that it’s analysis was made. You have offered no support at all for your assertion that wind energy emits more CO2 than nuclear on a life cycle basis, simply arguing that new nuclear is cleaner than old.
Well, I’ve got news: so is new wind, since capacity factors have increased by about 30% over the last few years.
Gaia is finding a solution to the problem:
____________
The world is on the cusp of a “post-antibiotic era”, scientists have warned after finding bacteria resistant to drugs used when all other treatments have failed.
They identified bacteria able to shrug off the drug of last resort – colistin – in patients and livestock in China.
They said that resistance would spread around the world and raised the spectre of untreatable infections.
It is likely resistance emerged after colistin was overused in farm animals.
Bacteria becoming completely resistant to treatment – also known as the antibiotic apocalypse – could plunge medicine back into the dark ages.
A new NASA-funded study published today in the journal Science finds that Zachariae Isstrom broke loose from a glaciologically stable position in 2012 and entered a phase of accelerated retreat. The consequences will be felt for decades to come.
The reason? Zachariae Isstrom is big. It drains ice from an area of 35,440 square miles (91,780 square kilometers). That’s about 5 percent of the Greenland Ice Sheet. All by itself, it holds enough water to raise global sea level by more than 18 inches (46 centimeters) if it were to melt completely. And now it’s on a crash diet, losing 5 billion tons of mass every year. All that ice is crumbling into the North Atlantic Ocean.
“North Greenland glaciers are changing rapidly,” said lead author Jeremie Mouginot, an assistant researcher in the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. “The shape and dynamics of Zachariae Isstrom have changed dramatically over the last few years. The glacier is now breaking up and calving high volumes of icebergs into the ocean, which will result in rising sea levels for decades to come.”
Edward Greisch wrote: “Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel are attempting to remove one of those poison pills, which is a Prohibition on nuclear power.”
Nonsense. There is no “prohibition on nuclear power”. That’s the silliest thing I have ever heard.
Edward Greischsays
159 Kevin McKinney:
1. The concrete,, steel, etcetera required for wind turbines has been added up for you before. To get the same electricity, the wind turbines [many of them] require many times more.
2. You forgot the natural gas that you have to burn because of the intermittent nature of wind. Your wind power is a decoration on a natural gas turbine. Wind + natural gas is 80% natural gas energy. Why bother with the wind turbines?
3. You forgot the battery needed if you don’t want to use natural gas. For wind + solar, the battery for the US has a price around a quadrillion dollars. It can’t be built.
4. The nuclear power plant lasts for 40 to 60 years, and that will go to 100 years. Wind turbines could last for 25 years, but most fail in windstorms or thunderstorms much sooner.
5. We should recycle spent nuclear fuel twice to 100 times, lowering the average CO2 output by a factor of 2 to ….
6. Gas diffusion was obsolete a long time ago and we haven’t started using laser ionization, but that is a tiny detail. The first numbers were for gas diffusion powered by a coal fired power plant.
7. You forgot about the new transformers and power lines you need if you use wind because intermittency overloads the old grid.
Capacity factor of wind: Do you know what that is? Capacity factor was raised by putting a smaller number on the name plate and a smaller generator in the nacelle. Reality didn’t change. They aren’t getting more energy out of the wind, they are getting less.
You could look at the details at “Valuing the greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear power: A critical survey” by Benjamin K. Sovacool, but why? https://www.nirs.org/climate/background/sovacool_nuclear_ghg.pdf
You have gotten yourself wrapped around a microscopic detail while forgetting the big picture.
The engineers will try to make the changes noticeable by the public as small as possible. Preferably, the average person’s lifestyle won’t change at all while we change to near-zero CO2 production, and the investment required will pay for itself so that nobody pays more. Switching to wind and solar disrupts the average person’s lifestyle a lot. Nuclear does not disrupt the average person’s lifestyle. Wind and solar: Why are Germans paying 4 times what I am paying for electricity?
Honestly, Let’s make a deal. You do the music and let the engineers do the engineering. I retired from a career in engineering.
Steve Fishsays
Re- Ed and others.
Nuclear power is the only way to go and full speed ahead for both fission and fusion reactors. Fortunately we already have two in operation that dodge all of the complaints about the very wasteful and expensive commercial ventures to date:
In the center of our earth (the core) is a giant fission reactor that, fortunately, sends tendrils of the heat it generates to precise, known, locations that are distributed all over the globe. No need for dangerous mining and processing of radioactive materials and giant concrete containments. It has already melted down without any contamination and there is no dangerous stored waste that many advocates of commercial reactors ignore. This reactor has a lifespan quite a bit greater than the pitiful 60 years of current ones and the fuel is free!
Our already existing fusion reactor is very safe because it resides 93 million miles away. Fortunately it distributes power to every location of our earth for one half of every day. The power is free and there are no dangerous byproducts.
The benefit of these two reactors is that they complement each other. The fission reactor can provide base power while the fusion reactor can provide the larger requirements during the daytime. Another benefit is that all the components for converting the outputs of these reactors to electricity are off the shelf, don’t require many highly trained experts for installation but would, instead, employ a large number of workers at all skill levels. The world economy would bloom!
Steve
Peter Bjørn Perlsøsays
#140:
“#98 1:1 “correspendence between tangible items and figures on the paper”
>GDP is not a measure of quality of life
Never claimed it was. HDI is a measure of quality of life, and it is well correlated w/ GDP.
>” so when economists make it their priority to maximize GDP”
Qhich economists as a whole do *not*.
>”they are not promoting quality of life issues.”
“GDP is at best a poor measure of production.”
As I already said, it is not a 1:1 ditto.
>” And it is certainly not a measure of efficient production”
Ofc not, though ‘efficient’ being defined how exactly?
>”since GDP is enhanced by the production of shoddy goods,”
How much, by your reckoning?
>”and through cheating the public by tricking them or forcing them to buy shoddy goods.”
Yes, some goods I consider shoddy, certainly. My preferences and insights are however different from that of others. At which point is a consumer ‘tricked’ as opposed to simply failing to themselves doing the proper beforehand examination of what is to be purchased.
>”Economists promote growth only on one axis. The monetary axis. It ignores all of the others, or presumes that they can be bought.”
Utterly false. However in seeing this statement and other of its kind, I recall now your past behavior in the newsgroups and retract my earlier amicable greeting. EOD.
Peter Bjørn Perlsøsays
#149:
>>@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.
As can be claimed by any discipline that has not produced immediate, tangible results, which leads me to note that you, just as your likeminded Vendicar, have tremenduous defintional problems in the core points to your claims in this alley.
>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.
Blanket statements as this with the mindsets made apparent by them, not only give many greens and economists working with these problems, a bad rep; they are annoying in that they are patently false on all counts, betraying an entirely superficial knowledge (not understanding) of economics yet put forth with such bluster.
Edward Greischsays
159 Kevin McKinney re-do: I think you are playing psychological games. If not, what you missed is systems thinking. A wind turbine is a system, but it is a component of a larger system. The grid is is one of the biggest and most complex systems ever built.
Wind turbines are not compatible with the grid. Wind turbines cannot be made compatible with the grid beyond a small fraction of total power with current and immediately forseeable technology. The grid cannot be made compatible with wind turbines beyond a small fraction of total power with current and immediately forseeable technology. Wind turbines and grids are poisons to each other.
So if the law mandates 20% wind power, the electric generating companies will comply with the law, but it is going to cost you a lot. One of the costs is that they are going to make more CO2, not less.
If you are serious about reducing CO2 production, you mandate less CO2 production and let the engineers figure out how to accomplish less CO2 production. The law can also mandate a safety level, but not absolute safety. Let the engineers do the engineering and you will get the mandated CO2 production and the mandated safety level.
Politicians, preachers and other non-engineers should keep their noses out of engineering if they are serious about getting the results they claim they want. If they stick their noses in, they are going to get a system that has results that are contrary to the stated desires.
We are well aware that certain groups of people have psychological problems with this or that. Your job includes getting those people to school or to a psychiatrist so that those problems can be fixed.
Of course, the fossil fuel companies want to sabotage the laws so that a hidden objective [more CO2 production] will result. Politicians and corporations are not going to honestly tell you their objectives. Politicians and other non-engineers are not going to be able to figure out the results ahead of time for themselves.
So here is what you should do: Work with a specification writing engineer to make a specification that gets what you want. Let the engineer help you figure out what it is you want because you don’t know what you want. As a typical customer, you ask for things in very strange and misleading ways. For example when specifying a car you may ask for V8 power. They could give you a very small V8 engine. So ask instead for what you really want: You want to win the stoplight drags 73% of the time. Write it that way.
Use your spec-writing engineer to help you not get yourself wrapped around some axle, like the wind turbine axle. Remember, you specify the end result that you want, the engineer decides the best way to deliver that performance to you. You don’t say “wind turbines” ahead of time. That would be sticking your nose into engineering.
Remember that, since you are not the engineer,you are not allowed to have pre-conceptions or demands beyond the specification. Once the prime item development spec is written, it disappears from your sight and it stays dissappeared until the engineers are done building it.
When the system is built, you get to determing whether it does or does not meet your requirements. You may decide that you made mistakes in the prime item development spec. But we want it to be against the rules for the prime item development spec to be written in such a way as to require or eliminate wind turbines. Whether wind turbines are in or out is an engineering decision and is not for you to decide. Likewise, the arrangement of notes on music paper is not for engineers to decide.
If the prime item development spec left out something you need, you can upgrade the prime item development spec for the next model. But the spec-writing engineer is going to do most of the actual writng on that so that the next model will be within the realm of the possible.
Kim Stanley Robinson has clarified one important point:
Economics isn’t a dismal science.
Economics is a cheerful religion.
patricksays
@163 Edward Greisch > Nuclear does not disrupt the average person’s lifestyle.
Tens of thousands of average people in Japan disagree with that notion. The Navajo veteran and others here (in the trailer at the top of the page) disagree:
And I disagree. My electricity bill is on an endless curve markedly higher–into the indefinite future–because a nuclear generating station, starting with its back-up systems, was taken out by an inland flood. The plant was down for three years.
Guess who has to pay the massive bill for this? I do, and other ratepayers, without recourse. According to the recently forced rate of increase to the rate curve, so to speak.
Flexibility is the future.
Every new “sacrifice zone” is one sacrifice zone too many.
HadCRUT has posted for October repeating the “mucho scorchio” message of GISTEMP & NOAA.
The October 2015 HadCRUT4 anomaly sits second hottest in the full record at +0.811ºC (behind Jan 2007 +0.832ºC). The last six months of HadCRUT4 have had the hottest anomalies for their specific months. Prior to that, Jan to April were either second or third hottest.
Within the full record, all bar one of the 2015 months so far are top twenty months. Only April sits outside at 21st hottest on the full record.
2015 to-date averages at +0.714ºC and the last 12-month period at 0.688ºC which compares with the hottest callender year on record (2014) of 0.568ºC. It now requires a negative anomaly over November & December for HadCRUT4 2015 to fall below the 2014 record, negative values of a size not seen since all the way back in 1984. So I think 2015 as the hottest year so far on record – it can now be called a done deal.
El Nino has also been record-breaking in 2015 and showing signs besting the 1997/8 event in the SST record books. The 2015 Nino3.4 weekly values have been pacing the 1997 values step for step since June but while 1997 levelled off through November peaking at 2.8ºC, the first three weeks of November 2015 showed a continuing increase and last week set the weekly Nino3.4 record at 3.1ºC (that is from 1990).
A simplistic comparison between 1997/8 and 2015/6 may be of interest, here using an average of GISTEMP, NOAA & HadCRUT4. The global temperature anomaly increase through the year (Jan-Oct) has been significantly less in 2015 (0.17ºC) than 1997 (0.31ºC) but this difference is all pre-June. The October 2015 anomaly is 0.33ºC warmer than October 1997. The single-month peak anomaly in 1997/8 was (Feb 1998) 0.22ºC warmer than the October 1997 value, although more representatively, the second warmest anomaly for 1998 (July) was 0.09ºC warmer than October 1997.
Testing comments submission– page does not show ReCaptcha or text review.
wilisays
Two thumbs up for Steve Fish at 164, Hank at 168, and RealClimate at…everywhere for not going under so we can keep seeing these brilliant posts (even if they can sometimes be hard to find among the dross).
Edward Greischsays
“SIGN THE PETITION: DEMAND JUSTICE FROM EXXON”
I can’t get the page to come up without my login on it.
League of Conservation Voters
No, wind energy is not ‘poison’ to the grid. Real world experience disproves that canard.
No, increasing capacity factors for wind aren’t primarily the result of tweaking nameplate and generator capacities, they result primarily from larger turbines with better controls enabling the harvesting of a wider band of wind velocities.
No, you’ve neither provided alternate evidence to support your claims about wind’s carbon footprint, nor rebutted the evidence I put forth. As far as I can find, wind if anything has lower life cycle emissions than nuclear–according to the WNA. And that’s LIFE-cycle, meaning all the ‘steel and concrete’ you hand-wave about is included. Since you don’t respect the WNA figures, maybe you’ll take note of their consilience with Eurelectric:
The Australian national October mean temperature was 2.89 °C above the long-term mean and the highest on record for any month of the year (surpassing the record of +2.75 °C set in September 2013). http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/aus/summary.shtml
Tom O'Reillysays
The slow collapse of the world’s forests on The Science Show ABC Radio Australia
No big trees, no food, equals death.
The Earth is one degree warmer than in pre-industrial times. Reese Halter (CA-USA) describes how the slow collapse of world forests is underway and evident now.
In 2010, a subcontinental drought enveloped 3.5 million square kilometres of the Amazon Basin, a gigantic swathe of mature forest died and released 8 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide, or what the United States spends in a year.
Meanwhile, about 50% of the Great Barrier Reef is DEAD/GONE. The GBR is the only living organism able to be seen from Space – one day soon it will not be seen from Space anymore.
COP21? It’s a joke. Collectively we are F***ed – Humanity is simply too damn stupid to care.
Kevin McKinney: I’ll make you a deal: I won’t sell music if you quit trying to do engineering. If you sincerely want the answers to your questions, you can find them.
I have a policy: I don’t argue with creationists. I am extending that policy a little.
“3.5 million square kilometres of the Amazon Basin, a gigantic swathe of mature forest died and released 8 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide, or what the United States spends in a year”
That isn’t true, if my recollection of the actual research is right. What that research suggests is that the drought will eventually release 8 billion tonnes of CO2. I’m not sure it even mentioned a period, but it would certainly be far longer than a year and more likely decades. I think we need to be careful about reporting findings of research; this is more like a newspaper headline than a careful presentation of the research.
This isn’t to belittle the impacts of such events, just a plea to be accurate.
Tom O'reillysays
Edward @ 177
How about: “How would advanced humans size up our reluctance to use nuclear energy?”
They are quite critical of that across the board. Dr James Hansen being one of them, and me being another.
Thankfully there are advanced humans acting appropriately – the rest will catch up one day, if they survive long enough.
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.
I’d already pointed out the same thing when you misused the same cite on Tamino’s site–perhaps you remember that? If not, let me remind you that the host asked you on that occasion to stop posting “bullshit.”
Yet here we are again.
Serial misuse of citation. Are you going to tell me that’s what you learned in engineering school?
SecularAnimistsays
Edward Greisch wrote: “Kevin McKinney: I’ll make you a deal: I won’t sell music if you quit trying to do engineering.”
I’ll make YOU a deal, Edward.
How about you respond substantively to Kevin McKinney’s well-informed, well-documented post which shows your claims about wind power to be unequivocally FALSE — instead of resorting to your usual content-free name-calling and personal attacks?
In return for which, I won’t bring up the multiple times that you have accused me of being (and I quote) “paid by the Koch Brothers to promote windmills” because I simply posted a link to a news article about wind power, which, like Kevin’s post, showed your belligerent, incoherent rants to be nonsense.
Vendicar Decariansays
NOAA’s climate change science fiction – Senator Lamar Smith writes in the Moonie Times.
EG says: “So quit protesting and let the engineers do the engineering.”
I say, we might not be in the present pickle if engineers hadn’t been given free hand at ‘engineering’.
EG says: “I’m a retired engineer”
I say, thank heavens.
And I can’t help note that EG appears to have continual problems navigating his web browser – obviously computer science wasn’t part of his ‘engineering’ studies back in the dark ages.
EG appears to be unaware of the Texas experience with wind, like Denmark – more
…. EG says “let the engineers do the engineering” …. if we hadn’t let the engineers loose we might not be in the present pickle. …. EG says “I’m a retired engineer” …. thank heavens!!
Edward Greischsays
RC: Do you know somebody who could do a good article on the poison pill process in the COPs? Or a web site that deals with that political side of GW? I think it isn’t really my field and it must be rather a big project.
Franz von Rintelen says in part:
“There are only two things that need to be done: –
1) Eliminate all religious education from the school curriculum and teach maths, physics, chemistry, biology and geology to all students, making those subjects standard. What is taught is also very important. It must have at least one month in physics/biology on what makes up a human brain. It must emphasize that it is a biologically evolved machine and follows the 4 laws of nature that physics completely understands (is proven beyond any doubt). ……….
2) We need to replace liberal-democracy with the rule of scientists through a process of meritocratic selection (similar to exams or job interviews). Liberal-democracy is outmoded, built in an 18th century world where any fool as long as he had cash could get elected. Nowadays it has descended into party politics where if you want something you pay for a table to sit next to your candidate, provide his party with more funds to woo the dumb electorate, and he gives it you when he gets into power. e.g. the fracking companies and David Cameron. Such a system is corrupt, skewed and out of touch with people because it no longer fits the scientific age.
Franz Von Rintelen figures that if the high ranking politicians all had PhDs in physics, that GW would be solved in a flash.
Edward Greischsays
COP21 starts tomorrow. Will all of the contributors be there lobbying for real action? Stefan Rahmstorf, Paris is only a short drive from Potsdam? Is RC going to give us the minute-by-minute blow by blow running account of the action?
Tom Rochesays
2 simple questions:
1. Is it correct to claim (as I did in point#=3 here) that “the IPCC does not forecast beyond 100 years from present”? (Ignoring technicalities like, e.g., the IPCC only reviews prior publications.)
2. If so, can someone provide a link (preferably @ ipcc.ch) backing that statement? My brief websearch was unsuccessful.
I would like to know what Cameron’s real reasoning is. Of course, I don’t believe anything said by any politician. Is he really doing it for international corporations that want to grow in spite of having run out of Earth? The planet cannot support more growth, but corporations don’t care.
Surely his thinking isn’t so bizarre that he thinks all humans are going to survive, or is it? Did first world crazies, or fossil fuel companies, come up with the poison pills? Is anybody able to track this down for us and tell us? No doubt the answer is known, but they aren’t telling.
Giving away money has nothing to do with fighting Global Warming.
Tom Roche @189.
While much of the IPCC work considered impacts up to AD2100, the RCP scenarios used in IPCC AR5 do actually project out to AD2300 and some work is presented projecting beyond AD2300 with constant forcings out to AD3000, all as described in AR5 WG1 Chapter 12. The CO2 emissions are shown in Figure 12.44 (no caption) which has the caption as follows:-
(a) Compatible anthropogenic CO2 emissions up to 2300, followed by zero emissions after 2300, (b) prescribed atmospheric CO2 concentration up to 2300 followed by projected CO2 concentration after 2300, (c) global mean surface temperature change and (d) ocean thermal expansion as simulated by Earth System Models of Intermediate Complexity (EMICs) for the four concentration driven RCPs with all forcings included (Zickfeld et al., 2013). A 10-year smoothing was applied. The drop in temperature in 2300 is a result of eliminating all non-CO2 forcings along with CO2 emissions. Shadings and bars denote the minimum to maximum range. The dashed line on (b) indicates the pre-industrial CO2 concentration.
Woy Spencer is pretty fast out of the blocks with his November’s UAH TLT anomaly. For those anticipating the temperature spike in the satellite data that should accompany El Nino, the November value at +0.33ºC is actually lower that October. In 1997/8 the spike in temperature didn’t appear until the December, rising steeply by a total of 0.63ºC over three successive months for UAH, a little more for RSS.
SecularAnimistsays
Hank Roberts wrote: “Moderators: you are needed.”
It seems pretty clear that the hosts of this site have no interest in moderating the comment pages.
patricksays
@187 Edward Greisch > If high ranking politicians all had PhDs in physics…
Well we’re off to a start, at least. Angela Merkel lives.
139 BPL: Check the following for electricity in Denmark:
price per kilowatt hour: over 30 cents vs 7.5 cents here in Illinois and under 7 cents in Niagara Falls
Percent wind power actually used. If I remember, it averages about 10%. 35% is the maximum, not the average. 8.6% is the upper limit without modifications to the grid, like bigger transformers, higher voltage lines [750 KV rather than 350 KV] and so on.
Imported power from Sweden: Denmark trades power with other countries.
138 SecularAnimist: If there is to be an agreement at COP21 there are certain poison pills that must be removed. Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel are attempting to remove one of those poison pills, which is a Prohibition on nuclear power. Removing such poison pills is on topic because COP21 through COP41 will accomplish nothing as long as such poison pills remain. So the real question is: “Are you serious about wanting to stop Global Warming?” If you are serious about wanting to stop Global Warming, then you must be serious about removing all of the poison pills.
143 Kevin McKinney: That has been answered before. From your reference:
Mean Low High
tonnes CO2e/GWh
Lignite 1,054 790 1,372
Coal 888 756 1,310
Oil 733 547 935
Natural Gas 499 362 891
Solar PV 85 13 731
Biomass 45 10 101
Nuclear 29 2 130
Hydroelectric 26 2 237
Wind 26 6 124
From your reference:
“The range of results is influenced by the primary assumptions made in the lifecycle analysis. For instance, assuming either gaseous diffusion or gas centrifuge enrichment has a bearing on the life cycle results for nuclear.” Gas diffusion is obsolete and we may soon go to laser ionization. Your results for nuclear are too high because gas diffusion is included.
144 patrick: 20% penetration level: Includes: New natural gas fired power plants to make up for the intermittent nature of wind, new transformers, upgraded transmission lines and more transmission lines. In other words, doubling or quadrupling or more the price of electricity. Do you really want that for your electric bill?
146 mike: Would fossil fuel company CEOs pay for murder, thus getting themselves into jail for life or the death penalty? PS: Your rocket stove needs to be vented to outdoors or you could die of CO.
Service Temporarily Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
I have heard that the number of attacks on government computers has skyrocketed. I wonder if the fossil fuel companies are attacking RC a lot.
Re 146 it sounds a lot like those theories about the CIA being responsible for 9/11. Are these boards becoming a home for conspiracy theorists and should the mods get it to stick to climate matters.
modeller 147–please take a look at this:
http://www.ajournal.co.uk/pdfs/BSvolume13(1)/BSVol.13%20(1)%20Article%202.pdf
From the press release quoted earlier:
“Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel … will 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.”
Sure.
Because just as nuclear engineers are the most authoritative expert voices when it comes to climate science, climate scientists with no expertise on energy technologies are the most authoritative voices on the technology and economics of alternative energy technologies.
Especially when — as is the case with the many engineers who deny global warming — their pronouncements are contrary to readily observed and thoroughly documented facts.
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.
Comment by modeller — 18 Nov 2015
You responded to a post I made earlier about Climate and Terrorism and thought it shouldn’t be part of the discussion.
You are more than welcome to not like anything someone says but you need to do a little more explaining about WHY you disagree or ‘don’t like’ a particular view point. It’s not enough to simply “disagree” unless you can state a contrary position that makes sense.
So far you haven’t said much of anything and have “added nothing useful to the discussion.” I am eager to hear your views.
can someone please post GISS monthly baseline temps for 1951/1980, have the yearly 14C but not each month broken down . many thanks
[Response: GISTEMP only uses the anomaly fields, and so does not calculate a seasonal cycle of absolute temperatures. There are estimates of this from Jones et al (2013) – but note that the uncertainty in the absolute value is far larger than the uncertainty in the monthly anomaly (see here for why), so adding them together can give a misleading estimate of how well the absolute value for any specific month is known. – gavin]
#124 “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.
Comment by modeller
I sincerely apologize, but I do not agree with ignoring reality. You care correct: The future cannot be known. Everyone lie down and stop moving, for nothing can be quantified about the future, so just no.
;-)
Reality is, we can make educated guesses about the future. The limits to Growth studies relying on a very simple World 3 program laid out a course over 40 years ago we are still nailing almost perfectly, and it says collapse this century. Peak Oil analysis says the same. Even our own famously infamous Prof Mann, et al., have laid out some pretty serious consequences for the mid-century period. In fact, other than people who have pretty much zero awareness of systems, resource limits and rate of change with climate are not concerned about it.
150: Check the following for electricity in Denmark:
price per kilowatt hour: over 30 cents vs 7.5 cents here in Illinois and under 7 cents in Niagara Falls[
I pay less than 30 øre (4.3 cents/KWh) for the electricity itself. Add to that a transmission fee and lots of taxes
Ed, the source shows no significant difference between wind and nuclear at the time that it’s analysis was made. You have offered no support at all for your assertion that wind energy emits more CO2 than nuclear on a life cycle basis, simply arguing that new nuclear is cleaner than old.
Well, I’ve got news: so is new wind, since capacity factors have increased by about 30% over the last few years.
Honestly, have you no capacity to admit error?
Gaia is finding a solution to the problem:
____________
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34857015
Oops. Slipsies.
_______________
http://phys.org/news/2015-11-greenland-major-glacier-undone.html
Edward Greisch wrote: “Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Tom Wigley, Dr. Ken Caldeira and Dr. Kerry Emanuel are attempting to remove one of those poison pills, which is a Prohibition on nuclear power.”
Nonsense. There is no “prohibition on nuclear power”. That’s the silliest thing I have ever heard.
159 Kevin McKinney:
1. The concrete,, steel, etcetera required for wind turbines has been added up for you before. To get the same electricity, the wind turbines [many of them] require many times more.
2. You forgot the natural gas that you have to burn because of the intermittent nature of wind. Your wind power is a decoration on a natural gas turbine. Wind + natural gas is 80% natural gas energy. Why bother with the wind turbines?
3. You forgot the battery needed if you don’t want to use natural gas. For wind + solar, the battery for the US has a price around a quadrillion dollars. It can’t be built.
4. The nuclear power plant lasts for 40 to 60 years, and that will go to 100 years. Wind turbines could last for 25 years, but most fail in windstorms or thunderstorms much sooner.
5. We should recycle spent nuclear fuel twice to 100 times, lowering the average CO2 output by a factor of 2 to ….
6. Gas diffusion was obsolete a long time ago and we haven’t started using laser ionization, but that is a tiny detail. The first numbers were for gas diffusion powered by a coal fired power plant.
7. You forgot about the new transformers and power lines you need if you use wind because intermittency overloads the old grid.
Capacity factor of wind: Do you know what that is? Capacity factor was raised by putting a smaller number on the name plate and a smaller generator in the nacelle. Reality didn’t change. They aren’t getting more energy out of the wind, they are getting less.
You could look at the details at “Valuing the greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear power: A critical survey” by Benjamin K. Sovacool, but why?
https://www.nirs.org/climate/background/sovacool_nuclear_ghg.pdf
You have gotten yourself wrapped around a microscopic detail while forgetting the big picture.
The engineers will try to make the changes noticeable by the public as small as possible. Preferably, the average person’s lifestyle won’t change at all while we change to near-zero CO2 production, and the investment required will pay for itself so that nobody pays more. Switching to wind and solar disrupts the average person’s lifestyle a lot. Nuclear does not disrupt the average person’s lifestyle. Wind and solar: Why are Germans paying 4 times what I am paying for electricity?
Some more reading:
http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear-energy-vs-wind-and-solar/
http://www.theenergycollective.com/willem-post/2264202/reducing-us-primary-energy-wind-and-solar-energy-and-energy-efficiency
Honestly, Let’s make a deal. You do the music and let the engineers do the engineering. I retired from a career in engineering.
Re- Ed and others.
Nuclear power is the only way to go and full speed ahead for both fission and fusion reactors. Fortunately we already have two in operation that dodge all of the complaints about the very wasteful and expensive commercial ventures to date:
In the center of our earth (the core) is a giant fission reactor that, fortunately, sends tendrils of the heat it generates to precise, known, locations that are distributed all over the globe. No need for dangerous mining and processing of radioactive materials and giant concrete containments. It has already melted down without any contamination and there is no dangerous stored waste that many advocates of commercial reactors ignore. This reactor has a lifespan quite a bit greater than the pitiful 60 years of current ones and the fuel is free!
Our already existing fusion reactor is very safe because it resides 93 million miles away. Fortunately it distributes power to every location of our earth for one half of every day. The power is free and there are no dangerous byproducts.
The benefit of these two reactors is that they complement each other. The fission reactor can provide base power while the fusion reactor can provide the larger requirements during the daytime. Another benefit is that all the components for converting the outputs of these reactors to electricity are off the shelf, don’t require many highly trained experts for installation but would, instead, employ a large number of workers at all skill levels. The world economy would bloom!
Steve
#140:
“#98 1:1 “correspendence between tangible items and figures on the paper”
>GDP is not a measure of quality of life
Never claimed it was. HDI is a measure of quality of life, and it is well correlated w/ GDP.
>” so when economists make it their priority to maximize GDP”
Qhich economists as a whole do *not*.
>”they are not promoting quality of life issues.”
“GDP is at best a poor measure of production.”
As I already said, it is not a 1:1 ditto.
>” And it is certainly not a measure of efficient production”
Ofc not, though ‘efficient’ being defined how exactly?
>”since GDP is enhanced by the production of shoddy goods,”
How much, by your reckoning?
>”and through cheating the public by tricking them or forcing them to buy shoddy goods.”
Yes, some goods I consider shoddy, certainly. My preferences and insights are however different from that of others. At which point is a consumer ‘tricked’ as opposed to simply failing to themselves doing the proper beforehand examination of what is to be purchased.
>”Economists promote growth only on one axis. The monetary axis. It ignores all of the others, or presumes that they can be bought.”
Utterly false. However in seeing this statement and other of its kind, I recall now your past behavior in the newsgroups and retract my earlier amicable greeting. EOD.
#149:
>>@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.
As can be claimed by any discipline that has not produced immediate, tangible results, which leads me to note that you, just as your likeminded Vendicar, have tremenduous defintional problems in the core points to your claims in this alley.
>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.
Blanket statements as this with the mindsets made apparent by them, not only give many greens and economists working with these problems, a bad rep; they are annoying in that they are patently false on all counts, betraying an entirely superficial knowledge (not understanding) of economics yet put forth with such bluster.
159 Kevin McKinney re-do: I think you are playing psychological games. If not, what you missed is systems thinking. A wind turbine is a system, but it is a component of a larger system. The grid is is one of the biggest and most complex systems ever built.
Wind turbines are not compatible with the grid. Wind turbines cannot be made compatible with the grid beyond a small fraction of total power with current and immediately forseeable technology. The grid cannot be made compatible with wind turbines beyond a small fraction of total power with current and immediately forseeable technology. Wind turbines and grids are poisons to each other.
So if the law mandates 20% wind power, the electric generating companies will comply with the law, but it is going to cost you a lot. One of the costs is that they are going to make more CO2, not less.
If you are serious about reducing CO2 production, you mandate less CO2 production and let the engineers figure out how to accomplish less CO2 production. The law can also mandate a safety level, but not absolute safety. Let the engineers do the engineering and you will get the mandated CO2 production and the mandated safety level.
Politicians, preachers and other non-engineers should keep their noses out of engineering if they are serious about getting the results they claim they want. If they stick their noses in, they are going to get a system that has results that are contrary to the stated desires.
We are well aware that certain groups of people have psychological problems with this or that. Your job includes getting those people to school or to a psychiatrist so that those problems can be fixed.
Of course, the fossil fuel companies want to sabotage the laws so that a hidden objective [more CO2 production] will result. Politicians and corporations are not going to honestly tell you their objectives. Politicians and other non-engineers are not going to be able to figure out the results ahead of time for themselves.
So here is what you should do: Work with a specification writing engineer to make a specification that gets what you want. Let the engineer help you figure out what it is you want because you don’t know what you want. As a typical customer, you ask for things in very strange and misleading ways. For example when specifying a car you may ask for V8 power. They could give you a very small V8 engine. So ask instead for what you really want: You want to win the stoplight drags 73% of the time. Write it that way.
Use your spec-writing engineer to help you not get yourself wrapped around some axle, like the wind turbine axle. Remember, you specify the end result that you want, the engineer decides the best way to deliver that performance to you. You don’t say “wind turbines” ahead of time. That would be sticking your nose into engineering.
Remember that, since you are not the engineer,you are not allowed to have pre-conceptions or demands beyond the specification. Once the prime item development spec is written, it disappears from your sight and it stays dissappeared until the engineers are done building it.
When the system is built, you get to determing whether it does or does not meet your requirements. You may decide that you made mistakes in the prime item development spec. But we want it to be against the rules for the prime item development spec to be written in such a way as to require or eliminate wind turbines. Whether wind turbines are in or out is an engineering decision and is not for you to decide. Likewise, the arrangement of notes on music paper is not for engineers to decide.
If the prime item development spec left out something you need, you can upgrade the prime item development spec for the next model. But the spec-writing engineer is going to do most of the actual writng on that so that the next model will be within the realm of the possible.
Kim Stanley Robinson has clarified one important point:
Economics isn’t a dismal science.
Economics is a cheerful religion.
@163 Edward Greisch > Nuclear does not disrupt the average person’s lifestyle.
Tens of thousands of average people in Japan disagree with that notion. The Navajo veteran and others here (in the trailer at the top of the page) disagree:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d56mjIw1hDo
And I disagree. My electricity bill is on an endless curve markedly higher–into the indefinite future–because a nuclear generating station, starting with its back-up systems, was taken out by an inland flood. The plant was down for three years.
Guess who has to pay the massive bill for this? I do, and other ratepayers, without recourse. According to the recently forced rate of increase to the rate curve, so to speak.
Flexibility is the future.
Every new “sacrifice zone” is one sacrifice zone too many.
HadCRUT has posted for October repeating the “mucho scorchio” message of GISTEMP & NOAA.
The October 2015 HadCRUT4 anomaly sits second hottest in the full record at +0.811ºC (behind Jan 2007 +0.832ºC). The last six months of HadCRUT4 have had the hottest anomalies for their specific months. Prior to that, Jan to April were either second or third hottest.
Within the full record, all bar one of the 2015 months so far are top twenty months. Only April sits outside at 21st hottest on the full record.
2015 to-date averages at +0.714ºC and the last 12-month period at 0.688ºC which compares with the hottest callender year on record (2014) of 0.568ºC. It now requires a negative anomaly over November & December for HadCRUT4 2015 to fall below the 2014 record, negative values of a size not seen since all the way back in 1984. So I think 2015 as the hottest year so far on record – it can now be called a done deal.
El Nino has also been record-breaking in 2015 and showing signs besting the 1997/8 event in the SST record books. The 2015 Nino3.4 weekly values have been pacing the 1997 values step for step since June but while 1997 levelled off through November peaking at 2.8ºC, the first three weeks of November 2015 showed a continuing increase and last week set the weekly Nino3.4 record at 3.1ºC (that is from 1990).
A simplistic comparison between 1997/8 and 2015/6 may be of interest, here using an average of GISTEMP, NOAA & HadCRUT4. The global temperature anomaly increase through the year (Jan-Oct) has been significantly less in 2015 (0.17ºC) than 1997 (0.31ºC) but this difference is all pre-June. The October 2015 anomaly is 0.33ºC warmer than October 1997. The single-month peak anomaly in 1997/8 was (Feb 1998) 0.22ºC warmer than the October 1997 value, although more representatively, the second warmest anomaly for 1998 (July) was 0.09ºC warmer than October 1997.
The Scorchio!!! reported by HadCRU is as follows:-
=106th …. 2014.11 …. +0.489ºC
24th ……. 2014.12 …. +0.634ºC
12th ……. 2015.1 …. +0.688ºC
19th ……. 2015.2 …. +0.660ºC
13th ……. 2015.3 …. +0.681ºC
21st ……. 2015.4 …. +0.656ºC
=10th …. 2015.5 …. +0.696ºC
6th ……. 2015.6 …. +0.730ºC
=10th …. 2015.7 …. +0.696ºC
5th ……. 2015.8 …. +0.740ºC
3rd ……. 2015.9 …. +0.785ºC
2nd ……. 2015.10 …. +0.811ºC
Testing comments submission– page does not show ReCaptcha or text review.
Two thumbs up for Steve Fish at 164, Hank at 168, and RealClimate at…everywhere for not going under so we can keep seeing these brilliant posts (even if they can sometimes be hard to find among the dross).
“SIGN THE PETITION: DEMAND JUSTICE FROM EXXON”
I can’t get the page to come up without my login on it.
League of Conservation Voters
Ed, #163 & 167–What a Gish gallop!
No, wind energy is not ‘poison’ to the grid. Real world experience disproves that canard.
No, increasing capacity factors for wind aren’t primarily the result of tweaking nameplate and generator capacities, they result primarily from larger turbines with better controls enabling the harvesting of a wider band of wind velocities.
No, you’ve neither provided alternate evidence to support your claims about wind’s carbon footprint, nor rebutted the evidence I put forth. As far as I can find, wind if anything has lower life cycle emissions than nuclear–according to the WNA. And that’s LIFE-cycle, meaning all the ‘steel and concrete’ you hand-wave about is included. Since you don’t respect the WNA figures, maybe you’ll take note of their consilience with Eurelectric:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.eurelectric.org/media/26740/report-lca-resap-final-2011-420-0001-01-e.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwi–t-stqzJAhUHYiYKHTKABMEQFgglMAI&usg=AFQjCNES-tRK4trKYJ6ejyGdmTNVCD_QFA&sig2=9mEk9-AA6DJg_NdaX78ADA
Sorry for the long link, I’m mobile and pressed for time.
Global warming and El Nino make 2015 hottest year ever on record: BOM
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2015/s4360264.htm
Global warming and El Nino set to make 2015 the hottest year on record, WMO says
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-25/2015-set-to-be-hottest-on-record-wmo-says/6974530
The Australian national October mean temperature was 2.89 °C above the long-term mean and the highest on record for any month of the year (surpassing the record of +2.75 °C set in September 2013).
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/aus/summary.shtml
The slow collapse of the world’s forests on The Science Show ABC Radio Australia
No big trees, no food, equals death.
The Earth is one degree warmer than in pre-industrial times. Reese Halter (CA-USA) describes how the slow collapse of world forests is underway and evident now.
In 2010, a subcontinental drought enveloped 3.5 million square kilometres of the Amazon Basin, a gigantic swathe of mature forest died and released 8 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide, or what the United States spends in a year.
Not only has the Amazon lost billions of oxygen producing mature trees since 2005, but also their phenomenal ability to make daily rain clouds, regulating the water cycle, providing massive afternoon white cloud surfaces, reflecting incoming solar radiation, ameliorating Earth’s temperatures.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/the-slow-collapse-of-the-world%E2%80%99s-forests/6959148
Meanwhile, about 50% of the Great Barrier Reef is DEAD/GONE. The GBR is the only living organism able to be seen from Space – one day soon it will not be seen from Space anymore.
COP21? It’s a joke. Collectively we are F***ed – Humanity is simply too damn stupid to care.
http://energyrealityproject.com/how-would-advanced-aliens-size-up-our-reluctance-to-use-nuclear-energy
How would advanced aliens size up our reluctance to use nuclear energy?
http://energyrealityproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/12274436_10208601877390844_1413685245783942297_n-624×414.jpg
Kevin McKinney: I’ll make you a deal: I won’t sell music if you quit trying to do engineering. If you sincerely want the answers to your questions, you can find them.
I have a policy: I don’t argue with creationists. I am extending that policy a little.
Tom,
“3.5 million square kilometres of the Amazon Basin, a gigantic swathe of mature forest died and released 8 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide, or what the United States spends in a year”
That isn’t true, if my recollection of the actual research is right. What that research suggests is that the drought will eventually release 8 billion tonnes of CO2. I’m not sure it even mentioned a period, but it would certainly be far longer than a year and more likely decades. I think we need to be careful about reporting findings of research; this is more like a newspaper headline than a careful presentation of the research.
This isn’t to belittle the impacts of such events, just a plea to be accurate.
Edward @ 177
How about: “How would advanced humans size up our reluctance to use nuclear energy?”
They are quite critical of that across the board. Dr James Hansen being one of them, and me being another.
Thankfully there are advanced humans acting appropriately – the rest will catch up one day, if they survive long enough.
#178–Ed, I am quite sure that most readers here would welcome your ‘deal’ if it meant an end to your endless rebunking of blatant falsehoods.
To cite just the most egregious, you cited this:
http://www.uwig.org/CRA_SPP_WITF_Wind_Integration_Study_Final_Report.pdf
…to ‘prove’ that ‘wind doesn’t work.’
Yet Patrick quoted the bottom line conclusion of that same study back at you:
https://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=18830#comment-637822
I’d already pointed out the same thing when you misused the same cite on Tamino’s site–perhaps you remember that? If not, let me remind you that the host asked you on that occasion to stop posting “bullshit.”
Yet here we are again.
Serial misuse of citation. Are you going to tell me that’s what you learned in engineering school?
Edward Greisch wrote: “Kevin McKinney: I’ll make you a deal: I won’t sell music if you quit trying to do engineering.”
I’ll make YOU a deal, Edward.
How about you respond substantively to Kevin McKinney’s well-informed, well-documented post which shows your claims about wind power to be unequivocally FALSE — instead of resorting to your usual content-free name-calling and personal attacks?
In return for which, I won’t bring up the multiple times that you have accused me of being (and I quote) “paid by the Koch Brothers to promote windmills” because I simply posted a link to a news article about wind power, which, like Kevin’s post, showed your belligerent, incoherent rants to be nonsense.
NOAA’s climate change science fiction – Senator Lamar Smith writes in the Moonie Times.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/26/lamar-smith-noaas-climate-change-science-fiction/
EG says: “So quit protesting and let the engineers do the engineering.”
I say, we might not be in the present pickle if engineers hadn’t been given free hand at ‘engineering’.
EG says: “I’m a retired engineer”
I say, thank heavens.
And I can’t help note that EG appears to have continual problems navigating his web browser – obviously computer science wasn’t part of his ‘engineering’ studies back in the dark ages.
EG ignores the experience of Texas with wind power.
https://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2014/12/18/how-denmark-and-texas-became-wind-energy-kings/
https://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2014/08/07/price-of-wind-energy-goes-down-in-texas/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Texas
http://www.powertochoose.org/
EG appears to be unaware of the Texas experience with wind, like Denmark – more
…. EG says “let the engineers do the engineering” …. if we hadn’t let the engineers loose we might not be in the present pickle. …. EG says “I’m a retired engineer” …. thank heavens!!
RC: Do you know somebody who could do a good article on the poison pill process in the COPs? Or a web site that deals with that political side of GW? I think it isn’t really my field and it must be rather a big project.
Richard Dawkins website has a proposal from a “Question of the Week” challenge.
“Question of the Week
Last week we asked, “How best can societies in Europe and the rest of the West combat terrorists and the circumstances that helped produce them?”
The winner is Franz Von Rintelen
https://richarddawkins.net/2015/11/question-of-the-week-nov-18/?utm_source=Richard+Dawkins+Foundation+Newsletter&utm_campaign=4d1acdff78-Newsletter_November_25_201511_24_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f8fb39ec0e-4d1acdff78-179530813#li-comment-190614
Franz von Rintelen says in part:
“There are only two things that need to be done: –
1) Eliminate all religious education from the school curriculum and teach maths, physics, chemistry, biology and geology to all students, making those subjects standard. What is taught is also very important. It must have at least one month in physics/biology on what makes up a human brain. It must emphasize that it is a biologically evolved machine and follows the 4 laws of nature that physics completely understands (is proven beyond any doubt). ……….
2) We need to replace liberal-democracy with the rule of scientists through a process of meritocratic selection (similar to exams or job interviews). Liberal-democracy is outmoded, built in an 18th century world where any fool as long as he had cash could get elected. Nowadays it has descended into party politics where if you want something you pay for a table to sit next to your candidate, provide his party with more funds to woo the dumb electorate, and he gives it you when he gets into power. e.g. the fracking companies and David Cameron. Such a system is corrupt, skewed and out of touch with people because it no longer fits the scientific age.
Franz Von Rintelen figures that if the high ranking politicians all had PhDs in physics, that GW would be solved in a flash.
COP21 starts tomorrow. Will all of the contributors be there lobbying for real action? Stefan Rahmstorf, Paris is only a short drive from Potsdam? Is RC going to give us the minute-by-minute blow by blow running account of the action?
2 simple questions:
1. Is it correct to claim (as I did in point#=3 here) that “the IPCC does not forecast beyond 100 years from present”? (Ignoring technicalities like, e.g., the IPCC only reviews prior publications.)
2. If so, can someone provide a link (preferably @ ipcc.ch) backing that statement? My brief websearch was unsuccessful.
TIA, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche@pobox.com>
So why does David Cameron, a conservative, want to give money to the third world countries at COP21?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3338808/Cameron-urges-world-follow-UK-aid-tackle-global-warming-PM-outline-5-8bn-British-taxpayers-help-poor-countries-battle-climate-change.html
I would like to know what Cameron’s real reasoning is. Of course, I don’t believe anything said by any politician. Is he really doing it for international corporations that want to grow in spite of having run out of Earth? The planet cannot support more growth, but corporations don’t care.
Surely his thinking isn’t so bizarre that he thinks all humans are going to survive, or is it? Did first world crazies, or fossil fuel companies, come up with the poison pills? Is anybody able to track this down for us and tell us? No doubt the answer is known, but they aren’t telling.
Giving away money has nothing to do with fighting Global Warming.
Moderators: you are needed.
Tom Roche @189.
While much of the IPCC work considered impacts up to AD2100, the RCP scenarios used in IPCC AR5 do actually project out to AD2300 and some work is presented projecting beyond AD2300 with constant forcings out to AD3000, all as described in AR5 WG1 Chapter 12. The CO2 emissions are shown in Figure 12.44 (no caption) which has the caption as follows:-
Hank, #191: +1
Woy Spencer is pretty fast out of the blocks with his November’s UAH TLT anomaly. For those anticipating the temperature spike in the satellite data that should accompany El Nino, the November value at +0.33ºC is actually lower that October. In 1997/8 the spike in temperature didn’t appear until the December, rising steeply by a total of 0.63ºC over three successive months for UAH, a little more for RSS.
Hank Roberts wrote: “Moderators: you are needed.”
It seems pretty clear that the hosts of this site have no interest in moderating the comment pages.
@187 Edward Greisch > If high ranking politicians all had PhDs in physics…
Well we’re off to a start, at least. Angela Merkel lives.
http://unfccc6.meta-fusion.com/cop21/
http://unfccc6.meta-fusion.com/cop21/events
SA@195,
So, visited the borehole recently? I recommend it on occasion–a little like listening to the disembodied voices of the damned.
This December was was rummaging around older entries and found November’s Unforced Variations…